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Akechi had known his luck was bound to run out eventually, he just hadn’t banked on it running out so soon. Something terrible had happened tonight – of this, he was absolutely certain – and it must have been truly awful for him to end up like this, face-down on the pavement and unable to move, white noise crackling in his ears, leaving him deaf to the world around him.
The first sense to return was his sense of touch, or more specifically, the sense which allowed him to feel – and god, did he feel. Aching, searing pain snaked from his shoulder down to his chest, where something sharp was jabbing him in the side, and although he felt lucid enough to roll over, a fresh wave of pain washed over him the moment he did. Surely his ribs were broken, and yet, as more and more memories of the evening returned to him, he found that to be the least of his worries.
How had Shido found out? Akechi had been so careful, never writing anything down, memorizing his own plans and sharing them with no one. The only way two people could keep a secret would be if one of them was dead, and his dream of revealing Shido’s true nature to the public had to remain very secret indeed.
Perhaps that was the reason. Shido couldn’t risk someone like Akechi running around – he knew far too much and had the evidence to back up his claims, had the clout to prove something as insane as “Masayoshi Shido, popular forerunner in the election for the new Prime Minister, is a vampire”. To kill Akechi, however, would be to expose himself to risk again…
So instead, Shido had him turned. It was a simple safeguard: Akechi could no longer expose Shido without running the risk of exposing himself as well, and that would be tantamount to public suicide.
And now here he was, alone, discarded, thrown to the street the moment he became a liability instead of an asset, and above all else… hungry.
It took him some time to identify the feeling, but it was undoubtedly hunger that coursed through Akechi’s body like an angry beast, rattling at its cage and demanding attention. Shido’s punishment was even crueler than he’d originally thought: here, left to his own devices and without a soul around to guide him, Akechi would be forced to kill if he wanted to survive, or else he could starve to death in some empty, lonely alleyway.
…where was he, anyway?
Finally, Akechi pushed down the hunger pangs enough that he could look up and attempt to get his bearings. It was dark and windy, a storm on the horizon, probably close to midnight, and although the alleyway around him was devoid of any identifying markers, the whole place seemed somehow… familiar…
He tried to think. What was the last thing he could recall…? Frightened and in terrible pain, he had fled from Shido’s office as quickly as his feet could carry him, without considering where he would go, and now he was… here.
“Hello?”
Akechi froze. He was just delirious enough that he might have hallucinated it, but no; he looked up in time to see the outline of a human sticking their head out of the door in the building closest to Akechi. It was only a silhouette, but it was enough to awaken Akechi’s newly-found instincts: his senses become sharper, his nostrils flaring as he tried to pick up this creature’s scent.
It was definitely human, and it smelled incredible.
No, Akechi wanted to scream, watching the stranger leave the safety of their home to come check up on this poor, pathetic wretch lying in the alley. No, get back. Don’t come over here… I don’t want to kill, but I don’t want to die…
He groaned and tried to drag himself to his feet. He needed to get out of here before that person arrived, before Akechi would be forced to do something he would regret…
But the figure came closer, and Akechi squeezed his eyes shut. He took a deep breath and steadied his shaking limbs, bracing himself against the ground, resolution washing over him. He bared his teeth.
I don’t want to die…
“Akechi?”
Instantly, Akechi’s conviction faltered. The voice that spoke was hushed, full of concern, and, of course, achingly familiar. Akechi felt so stupid; he should have realized that, in his time of need, his mind would seek out the one place in all of Shibuya that brought him comfort: Leblanc.
“Shit,” he heard Akira say, and then, “Here, can you stand? Let me help you…”
Akechi was in no state to resist as Akira took him by the shoulder, carefully pulling him to his feet. He let Akechi use him like a crutch, and then before Akechi could protest, led him over to Leblanc, propping the door open with his other arm and ushering him inside.
“Come in, come in, quick,” he said.
Akechi stumbled as gracefully as he could into the dark café, and in an instant, Akira had an arm around him again, walking him across the room towards the stairs in the back, which Akechi was surprised to learn led not to an attic, but a little living space – or, perhaps more accurately, an attic that had been repurposed into a living space. He had spent plenty of time in Leblanc, and while he’d seen Akira coming and going from those stairs before, he never thought to imagine what lie beyond their precipice.
There was a couch sitting on the left side of the room, but as Akira tried to steer him that way, a dizzy spell swept over him, causing him to sway and rock even as he collapsed onto the sofa.
“God, you look awful,” Akira said, leaving Akechi’s side to go and rummage around in an old desk on the other side of the room. Upon his return, Akechi discovered Akira had procured a small first aid kit, out of which he pulled a bottle of disinfectant and a sterile cloth.
“I’m going to start with your face,” Akira announced, sitting down beside Akechi. He ran his hands lightly over Akechi’s arms, brushing the dirt from his clothes, and another wave of dizziness hit Akechi, though it wasn’t the same as before; this time, it seemed Akira’s proximity was getting to his head. Akechi’s sense of smell was so much stronger than it used to be. “I need to clean up the little cuts… it’s going to sting, okay?”
“No worse than when I got them, I expect,” Akechi managed to say.
Grimacing, Akira wet the cloth with disinfectant and pressed it delicately to a sizeable cut on Akechi’s forehead. “What happened?” he asked.
“It’s –” Akechi hissed in pain as the alcohol made contact with the inflamed skin, but he balled up his fists and endured. “It’s nothing you need to know. Please don’t concern yourself with that, Kurusu-kun.”
Akira sighed, but he let the issue go for the time being, leaving them to sit in silence while Akira took his time cleaning up Akechi’s myriad wounds. He started with the top of Akechi’s face, slowly working his way down over his cheeks, his split lip, and then to his neck, where… the bite…
The bite.
Akechi jolted away the moment Akira’s gauze brushed over the harsh gash where he’d been bitten. It startled Akira enough that Akechi could spring up from the couch, though not without difficulty: inky blackness crept in around the edges of his vision, and he staggered unsteadily forward, forcing himself to take a deep breath in an attempt to will the pain away.
“When did this happen?” Akira asked, in a tone of voice impossible to parse. Was he shocked? Disguised? Terrified?
Akechi glared at the ground. “When did what happen?”
“When did you… get turned?”
The question turned Akechi’s blood cold, or it would have, if his blood had been warm to start with.
“What do you… how…?” Akechi whipped around to face Akira, stopping only when another sharp hunger pang coursed through his body, causing him to double over in pain. Of course; Akira wasn’t stupid – he’d seen the bite, which could hardly be mistaken for anything else – and the fact that he knew of vampires shouldn’t have been a surprise to Akechi, not with that familiar of his always hanging around the café.
“Can we talk about that later?” Akira asked. “Please. I want to help you, but I need to know what happened.”
“I… I don’t remember,” Akechi admitted. “It was a few hours ago, maybe… maybe half a day. I don’t recall my attackers’ faces.”
“So they just… turned you and dumped you out in the street?” Akira asked. This time, Akechi thought a hint of anger permeated his voice.
“I don’t know. I can’t – I feel weak. I… I have to go.”
Akira stood up. “You’re hungry,” he said. It wasn’t a question. “You need to eat.”
“I know,” Akechi said, taking a single, shaky step away from Akira.
Akira was too quick; he grabbed Akechi by the wrist.
“You need to eat right now.”
“I know that, Kurusu,” Akechi growled, wrenching his arm out of Akira’s grip. “Which is why I have to get out of here…”
“Or you could save yourself a lot of trouble and just feed on me.”
Akechi’s breath caught, watching as – without a moment’s hesitation – Akira sat back down on the couch and laid his arm palm-up on his leg, exposing his wrist, exposing the spot where his pulse thrummed beneath his skin.
An offering.
Akechi swallowed. Every fiber of his being was screaming go to him, take what’s been given to you, but he couldn’t shake the memory of watching Shido feast on humans, on the carnage such an event would cause. He shook his head.
“I can’t. I don’t want to kill you, Kurusu-kun.”
Akira laughed, of all things. “Then just stop before you suck me dry. You can do that, right?” Smiling warmly, he looked up at Akechi. “You can. I trust you.”
Trust. He’d never… no one had trusted him before – not with something this important, anyway. Akira was, quite literally, putting his life in Akechi’s hands. Was it foolish of him? Akechi had the bad luck to have seen Shido feed a few times in the past, and it was a gruesome sight: to him, humans were disposable; he would gladly pluck a man off the street and drain his blood, not even because he was hungry, but just because he could – and it was never clean, never. He was vicious and cold, believing that no one’s life had any meaning outside of what they could provide to Shido himself.
But…
But, a rational part of Akechi’s brain told him, it didn’t have to be that way. Humans gave up blood all the time, and weren’t there hundreds upon hundreds of stories about humans and vampires co-existing, if not in harmony than at least in relative peace? Akechi was not Shido. Things could be… different.
Trembling, Akechi took a step towards the couch, and then another, dropping to his knees in front of Akira’s parted legs and descending upon his arm. He ran his fingertips lightly over Akira’s vein and took a deep breath, inhaling the scent that clung to Akira’s skin. It was a human smell, earthy and heady, mixed with a new and tantalizing scent that Akechi knew must have been Akira’s blood. It was so uniquely Akira that it made Akechi dizzy, and he tightened his grip around Akira’s wrist.
With instinct as his guide, Akechi pressed his fangs against the vein and bit down, piercing the skin and letting Akira’s blood flow freely. Above him, Akira flinched, his free hand coming to rest on Akechi’s head, ready to yank him away at a moment’s notice – but he didn’t pull away, and the muscles in his arm relaxed again.
Akechi pressed his lips tightly to Akira’s skin and sucked.
The prospect of drinking blood was the one that most frightened him when he first realized what he had become, but it soon became clear that he’d worried for nothing; Akira’s blood was light and refreshing, with a faint metallic tang – and above all else, it was absolutely heavenly, like the sweetest nectar, restoring strength to his body already.
Delirious with need, Akechi thought he could easily kneel at Akira’s side and drink until he was fully satiated, but he forced himself to pull away after only a short time. He had to be patient; if he drained Akira right here and now… Akechi would never have the chance to drink this blood again, and right now, nothing frightened him more than that.
So he pulled away, lapping at the twin puncture wounds with his tongue, somehow certain this would assist the healing process, and finally, he looked up at Akira, whose chest was rising and falling in quick bursts, his eyes hooded and dark. When he realized Akechi had stopped drinking, he snapped to attention, his expression refocusing, to the point that he looked almost normal.
In the split second before he’d registered that Akechi was watching him, though… the look on his face just then… Akechi couldn’t think of a word to describe it other than “pure bliss”. Of course, he’d heard rumors that vampire bites could be pleasant, even pleasurable, but when his only exposure up to this point had been Shido, who relished in feeding from victims as viciously as possible, he’d written off such a claim as a complete myth. Now, however, when Akira looked down at him with such affection…
“How do you feel?” Akira asked. His voice was breathy, like he’d just exhausted himself running.
Looking Akira in the eye, Akechi ran his tongue over the wound again, straying awfully close to Akira’s palm. It made Akira shiver.
“You taste incredible,” Akechi murmured.
“A-ah. Um. Thanks.”
“And… I feel better. I thought – I was afraid it would be terrible, you know… drinking blood. That it would taste awful, or that it would be unbearably violent, but this was… a rather pleasant experience, thanks to you.” Akechi ran his thumb over Akira’s wrist. The wound had already begun to heal. “How do you feel, Kurusu-kun?”
Akira closed his eyes and tipped his head back against the wall. “Good,” he whispered, and then, louder, “I, uh – a little light-headed, I guess? But it didn’t hurt.”
“Good.” Akechi finally let go of Akira and got to his feet, offering Akira a hand instead. “Come, you should lie down – and I should be going.”
“You don’t want to stay?” Akira asked, allowing Akechi to pull him to his feet. He stumbled a little too close to Akechi for comfort, so close Akechi could smell his scent again, the pulse point on his neck looking ever so enticing.
“I – the sun. I need to get back to my home and regroup,” Akechi said, shaking his head to jostle away the temptations. Akira seemed to accept this, lowering himself down onto his futon and allowing Akechi to let him go. “Kurusu-kun, I…” He trailed off. How could he be expected to thank Akira for something like this? To put his life on the line, even when Akechi offered him no explanation at all… “Thank you,” he said. “I believe you saved my life tonight. Truly, I’m in your debt – and I would hate to overstep my bounds, but… if, in a day or two, I find myself in need of a meal again, would you—”
“Yes,” Akira said before Akechi could finish. He snapped his mouth shut like he’d surprised himself, too. “I – yes. If you’re asking to feed on me again, then the answer is yes.”
“Okay,” Akechi breathed. “Thank you.”
He left through Akira’s window – Akira needed to rest, and he almost certainly would have insisted on walking Akechi to the front door do that he could lock it again – and descended into the cool night. Rain had begun to fall, but the even as the drops began to soak into his overcoat, Akechi paid them no mind. He was buzzing with energy, feeling giddy, elated, and stronger than he ever had before; he smiled into the lonely night, a wicked grin on his face.
Shido had just make a terribly grave mistake, and Akechi intended to make sure it would be the last one he ever made.