Chapter Text
“Missed you by that much,” Satoru says as soon as Suguru unlocks and opens the balcony door, his eyes squinted and his fingers held a hair’s width apart.
The slanted, toothy grin he wears displays his fangs in full. Though he gives every outward appearance of playful teasing, a low, bitter sigh slips out there at the end—a telltale peek at his simmering frustration at having come so very close to catching Suguru outside the bounds of the refuge that is his home.
Suguru, still breathless from racing up five flights of stairs to reach his apartment floor, rakes a hand through his hair. It’s damp at the roots, drenched in a flash of panicked sweat. A delay at work had dominoed into him leaving later, taking a later train, and making the last leg of his journey home in growing, deepening shadows. He knew he was cutting it close even as he turned the handle and stepped inside, half expecting to feel hands clasp around his middle and wrench him backward, his neck slotting right into a waiting pair of jaws.
“Next time,” Satoru says with a wink, as if this is a game they’re playing.
Maybe it is, in a sense. The stakes are high, though—life and death, if Satoru wants them to be.
“Mhm.”
Suguru leaves it at that, too irritated to bother with him right now. He heads to his bedroom to grab some clean clothes, ignoring the increasingly insistent, then worried, calls of his name. Despite the chilly temperatures of late November, his undershirt is soaked with nervous sweat from his sprint home.
He’s only just flipped on the bathroom light when he hears the scratching and tapping of Satoru’s clawed fingers on the outside wall, following him here from the balcony. A pale face appears on the other side of the window just as Suguru is about to peel off his shirt.
Unbelievable. In a huff, he storms over to draw down the blinds.
The vampire has the audacity to look disappointed. Did he seriously think he was going to get a show? Tonight, of all nights?
Suguru starts the water running, letting its high-pressure rush drown out whatever whining Satoru is doing outside. What really and truly irks him—beyond the daily inconvenience and stress of his commutes now—is that he himself is partially culpable for Satoru being so spoiled for attention. Like a wild bear that's been fed junk food, he keeps coming back in the expectation of more. And for the past month, Suguru has indulged him to a foolish degree.
His quick, scalding hot shower includes a lot of angry muttering and too-hard scrubbing at his skin. Alone with his thoughts and the white noise of running water, Suguru stews on the mess he's gotten himself into.
Though he has played it safe in terms of physical boundaries, everything else between him and Satoru has only grown more blurred since Halloween. They spend long nights doing as friends might do, watching movies, playing games, and talking about anything that comes to mind. All the while, Satoru probably daydreams of exsanguinating him there on the living room floor—which is, pitifully, nowhere near enough to curb Suguru's indecent thoughts of Satoru sucking him dry in an entirely different manner.
Prolonged and repeated exposure to Satoru’s eyes and voice are to blame, maybe. Maybe it’s the kisses, each of them further muddling Suguru’s eroded sense of self-preservation. It could be the way Satoru makes him laugh, even when he’s being terrible, or their hours-long conversations over history, movies, and monsters. Or perhaps it’s the gifts—Suguru has shelves of them now, trinkets and jewelry and crane-game stuffed animals. Not to mention the fresh flowers he receives multiple times a week.
He’s only a man, after all. A somewhat sentimental one, at that.
Like a leech, Satoru has latched on and made himself cozy here, drawing more affection out of Suguru with every passing night. And Suguru, a willing idiot, has played host out of… what? Loneliness and lack of intimacy? The want of being wanted? The thrill of being craved by his walking wet dream? The fantasy of being something more, someone worthwhile, to Satoru?
Whatever it is or was, the spell has broken. The novelty and amusement of a real life vampire making bedroom eyes at him on a nightly basis has worn off. Tonight was a hell of a wakeup call and Suguru is over it.
He dries off and dresses strictly for comfort, pulling on his baggiest, ugliest sweatpants and an oversized tee that hangs well past his hips. All the while, he can hear that annoying tap-tap-tap of claws on glass as Satoru tries to steal his attention and maybe a free peek. Suguru ignores it in favor of finding a blanket to drape around his shoulders, too frazzled to fuss with a hoodie. His stomach rumbles and squirms in on itself, ravenous after stressful hours spent empty; its hunger pangs are so keen and caustic that they leave Suguru borderline nauseous.
Had he not been in a rush to get home, he would’ve stopped for groceries. Like he’d planned to. Like he needed to. After glumly trudging to the kitchen, Suguru stares into a fridge that holds only too-old leftovers, condiments, pickled mushrooms, and soy milk. His kitchen cabinets contain pantry staples, but not much else. Rice and mushrooms can tide him over until breakfast, as they have before, but…
Back on the balcony again, Satoru clears his throat and asks, “Out of something?”
“Out of everything.” Suguru pushes the refrigerator door shut with more force than he’d meant to. Then he rolls his eyes and settles his stare on Satoru, scowling at the cause of his current predicament. “I was going to stop and do some shopping on my way home but thanks to a certain menace, I can’t set one foot outside after dark.”
“You can, though. I’m not stopping you," Satoru says with a hand pressed to his chest, miming innocence. Then he lights up, beaming. “Suguru~! Let’s go get some groceries together!”
Suguru's molars squeak together as his jaw clenches, a torrent of surly, snappy words barely held back. If he lets himself blow up, the neighbors are going to hear it.
He has shifted the day-in, day-out of his whole life—his work schedules and personal engagements and mundane errands—just to preserve it. And Satoru thinks it’s all a funny joke, him living this way? A nighttime prisoner in his own home? Suguru covers his face with his hands as he slowly exhales, glaring between his fingers.
“Oh. You’re in a mood,” Satoru murmurs, taking on an assured, placating tone that only makes Suguru bristle more aggressively. He leans in as far as the threshold boundary will allow, clucking his tongue. “I get it. I get hangry, too. So how about I bring you some takeout?”
Takeout?
Suguru wavers there on the spot, his stomach already gurgling in anticipation. The thought of food from any one of the dozens of delicious restaurants around here has him salivating. For weeks now, he’s been skittish about ordering delivery here, afraid to bring some innocent bystander into Satoru’s general vicinity. He’s made do with simple home-cooking and quick convenience store dinners for so long… a hot, restaurant-quality meal might be his greatest temptation at this exact moment.
“You’d do that?” he wonders, eyeing Satoru even as he lowers his hands.
“Sure. All you ever have to do is ask. I brought you drinks when you needed one, didn’t I? This isn’t any different." Standing there with his hands in his pockets, Satoru pauses and reconsiders. "Except you totally froze me out of the shower stuff this time. That wasn't very fun.”
“And what are you expecting in exchange, exactly?” Suguru tilts his head to one side as he steps closer to the door, hunting for some flicker of mischief or malice behind Satoru’s dimpled, cheerful smile. He clutches his throw blanket tighter around himself. “You feed me, I feed you?”
“Oh? I’ll always take that trade! Are you offering?”
“No.”
Satoru sighs dramatically, slumping a shoulder against the doorframe.
“Figures. I’ll have to get something else from you, then.” He makes a show of tapping his pursed lips and humming. Then, with a wide, bright grin and two fingerguns pointed at Suguru, he says, “Let’s race. Mario Kart. You have that, right? Pretty sure you have it. We’ll see who can do best of five—no, seven rounds. No, ten—”
“Seven is my max,” Suguru cuts in, hoping to get to bed before midnight. His evenings with Satoru tend to crawl into the wee hours without his noticing and it’s taking a toll. “And… seriously? That’s it?”
With a shrug, Satoru explains, “The last thing I want is to see you go hungry, Suguru.”
“Ah.” That does make sense, actually. Who lets the goose they’re saving for the holidays grow scrawny? “Right. Okay. Yeah. Takeout would be perfect, actually,” Suguru says, rubbing along his brow with his thumb, his mood a jumble of lingering irritation and hungry, hopeful anticipation. “If you’re serious.”
Takeout for Mario Kart? He feels like he’s getting off scott-free here.
After consulting one of the many menus he keeps in a kitchen drawer, Suguru calls in an order at a nearby Italian place. Will he feel queasy after inhaling two orders of pasta in a heavy, cream-based salmon roe sauce? Probably, but that won’t hit until later tonight. At the moment, on a woefully empty stomach, it sounds amazing.
While presenting Satoru with a couple of rumpled ten-thousand yen notes pulled from his wallet, he says, “It’s the place just a few blocks that way, on the corner. Sia la Luce. It’ll take about twenty to thirty minutes to be ready, but let me give you this before I forget. All you need to do is get the food, Satoru, and bring it straight back. Please. Don’t terrorize anyone in the process.”
“Who do you think you’re talking to?” Satoru scoffs, his stare going cool and disinterested as it dips down toward the money Suguru is wiggling and waving for him to take. “I’ve been refining my social skills longer than you’ve been alive. I’m an expert at human interactions.”
Suguru wrinkles his nose and scratches behind his ear, head cocked. Does Satoru genuinely think so? Is he somehow normal-passing in conversations with other people? Is he flat out lying? It’s a toss-up.
With one last glance down, Satoru sneers and flicks the yen notes loosely pinched in Suguru’s fingers right back at him. Without a word, he is then he is swallowed whole in a plume of blue-tinged shadow. As the dark wisps of it dissipate, Suguru sees that the balcony is empty.
“Oh. Okay.”
He picks up the loose yen Satoru oh-so-politely rejected and then mills in front of the open door, unsure of what to do. His order won’t even be ready for another half an hour…
With an anxious sigh, Suguru closes the door and fixes himself a soothing cup of tea. Karmically, is it on him if Satoru gets a bite for himself while waiting to pick up the pasta? Even though Suguru expressly asked him not to?
That’s probably a yes. Satoru may be a voracious force of nature, inclined to kill wherever he goes, but he is only here in Shibuya because of Suguru. Whoever is unfortunate enough to become his meal before or after their nightly visits might’ve otherwise lived, if not for happenstance proximity to this apartment. But, Suguru supposes as he curls on the couch with his tea and thickest slippers, it’s no more or less death than there would be regardless. Like any predator, Satoru kills for sustenance—here, there, anywhere.
If he dwells on it too long, the guilt begins to make his empty, uneasy stomach twist with an ill feeling that tea cannot settle. Because if he really cared about the harm Satoru naturally inflicts on the people around him, he’d do something about it.
Suguru isn’t naive enough to believe he could slay a vampire—least of all Satoru, who could kill him a hundred different ways before Suguru even lifted a stake. But he could feed one. He could take responsibility and offer himself in place of some other, unwitting soul. It might be an exchange Satoru is willing to make: a measure of Suguru’s allegedly delectable blood, freely given, in place of a full meal he’d have otherwise taken elsewhere.
It’s a thought. And it isn't the first time Suguru's had it.
Twenty minutes ticks by. Then thirty. Nervous, impatient, and irritable from hunger, Suguru paces the small living room. Every few seconds, he glares at the glass door leading to the balcony, disappointed to see it’s still empty. If he turns on the local news, will he see there’s been a bloodbath at one of his favorite local eateries?
A sudden, soft knock on glass has Suguru’s head whipping to the door, where he sees Satoru standing with no less than six different bags strung on his arms. Finally!
Suguru wrenches the door open with more force than he should. A cursory glance shows no crimson stain on Satoru’s lips nor any drips of red on his shirt. It isn’t much in the way of confirmation but Suguru is relieved nonetheless. Then his gaze drifts lower.
“What is all that? I didn’t order…”
He squints. The myriad paper and plastic bags looped around his wrists are emblazoned with the logos and names of various other restaurants. Most of them Suguru recognizes. Some he's never even tried.
“While I was waiting on your order, I picked up a few extra things.” Satoru pauses for praise. When Suguru only stares blankly at him, his expression shifts from expectant to dryly annoyed. “Oi. You said you were hungry, didn’t you?”
“I did. I am.” Suguru licks his lips at the smells wafting in on the cold breeze. “This is all for me?”
“Wellll, I got myself a little something from the bakery next door to the Italian place,” he admits, passing bags of takeout inside one by one, “but other than that, it’s all yours.”
Still suspicious, Suguru takes the bags he is handed and checks the receipts attached, half-sure he’ll see the names of various strangers whose meals Satoru snatched up. To his growing delight, all of them have the same name listed for the order: Satoru’s.
“You paid for all of this? Satoru...”
That's all the acknowledgement it takes for Satoru to smile again. He gives a good-natured shrug and gestures for Suguru to dig in.
Plopped down by the kotatsu table in the small living room area, Suguru begins pulling out containers and popping them open to review his options. As he removes the lid from a plastic bowl containing a silky soup broth, the escaping steam burns his thumb. He sucks it until the pain resides, then shakes out his hand.
“Phew! This is still piping hot.”
“Near instantaneous delivery,” Satoru brags from just outside, “is just another perk of my company.”
Suguru hums through his smile. With how cold it is outside—and therefore in his apartment, too, thanks to the open balcony door—a warming, indulgent dinner like this is exactly what he needed.
“Thank you, Satoru,” he says upon opening his pasta and finding it still-steaming, as fresh as if he were eating right in the restaurant. “I really do appreciate it.”
So much so that his built-up ire and frustration have mostly dissipated off. All Suguru cares about at the moment is stuffing himself full.
Looking pleased with himself, Satoru sidles up to the open door and turns his head, tapping his cheek with his index finger.
How presumptuous. How shameless, making silly requests like this when Suguru was dangerously close to biting his head off less than an hour ago. Worse still, Satoru remains stupidly, unfairly attractive even when he’s being insufferable, those cute dimples framing his oh-so-confident smile. No one should wear smug certainty so well.
With a sigh, Suguru gets up and meets him at the balcony doorway. He leans in, stopping a hair’s width shy of touching his lips to Satoru’s cheek. “I thought the deal was to play Mario Kart?”
Satoru stops batting his lashes. “What, no tip? I went above and beyond what you’d asked.”
Exactly! Suguru didn’t ask for a week’s worth of meals at Satoru’s expense. Still… it is a welcome effort to make up for terrorizing him into sprinting up five flights of stairs in the first place. Or this is simply Satoru’s attempt at kindling something like a Pavlovian response in Suguru, placating his caged prize until the positive association sticks.
Either way…
After some wavering, Suguru lets his lips brush over Satoru’s cold cheek, featherlight—just enough to reward the vampire’s good behavior, yet far too little to truly satisfy. If the barely-kiss leaves Satoru as frustrated as Suguru himself feels, all the better.
“Stingy,” Satoru mutters as Suguru turns back to the food-laden table, the pads of his fingers pressed to the spot where Suguru’s lips just touched. “Hey. If I win, can I get a real kiss?”
Now seated before a spread that could easily feed four or five, Suguru charitably considers it. In addition to the pasta he’d ordered for himself, there are skewers of grilled chicken thighs and livers, a soba noodle set, and multiple beef dishes, all courtesy of Satoru. And that’s not even including the bakery sweets and desserts.
“Sure. Since you were so generous, I’ll be generous, too,” Suguru decides, smiling as he samples a few slices of steak before diving into his pasta. “I mean, gyudon, yakitori, and steak? This is more meat than I usually have in a week.”
“I’ve noticed.” Though he’s stuck looking in from the balcony, Satoru now seems to be in a fine mood. “Eat up. It’ll do you good.”
One corner of Suguru’s mouth pulls, amused to have landed upon the true motive for Satoru’s generosity. All this red meat will be good for him, sure—and good for his blood.
“You’re a little too good at this,” Suguru mutters from one side of his mouth, his controller lying in his lap after losing yet another round.
Having gorged himself on the dinner Satoru brought him, he is now stuffed, sleepy, and wallowing in defeat. Also, annoyed all over again—how the hell is a guy who was born pre-electricity beating him at this? And to the tune of six brutal losses?
“Like, seriously,” he continues, rubbing at his eyes with the heel of his palm, “why are you so good at this?”
Satoru snickers and grins, the tip of his tongue poking out between his teeth. “Pure skill. I’ve got, like, a few hundred hours of single-player time under my belt, too.”
That checks out. Obviously, Suguru can’t compete with immortal shut-in levels of free time, and Satoru evidently has nothing going on in his un-life. He’s here every night, isn’t he? You’d think a big bad vampire would have more pressing business to attend to than slasher movie binges, blowing on Suguru’s toenails as they dry, and playing delivery boy. The Gojo clan must be woefully short on jobs for him to handle.
“Also, you kind of suck at drifting,” Satoru laughs, noisily chewing some sickeningly sweet strawberry gum that Suguru can smell from two meters away, “so you’re not charging your mini-turbo boost fast enough. And instead of turning when you overshoot, you should do a little hop instead—”
“I am,” Suguru snaps back.
Most of the time, anyway. Some of the time. He hasn’t even touched this game since Haibara crashed here for a few weeks last year, so he’s allowed to be a little rusty.
Satoru makes an insufferable expression instead, one eyebrow cocked. Quietly, but not quietly enough, he mumbles, “Are you, though…?”
Without a word, Suguru turns off both the console and the TV.
“Suguru. C’mon. It’s barely after midnight! One more round.”
“The deal,” Suguru reminds him, “was seven.”
Satoru’s smile spreads slowly, oozing overconfidence all the while. “Don’t be a wuss. Listen, I’ll go easy on you.”
Suguru snorts at the obvious patronization. “Don’t piss me off. I beat you earlier, if you recall.”
“Once.” Suddenly straight-faced and dead serious, Satoru leans over on the outdoor beanbag and holds up a single pale finger. “And only because you distracted me with your sirenlike looks.”
Suguru stares back at him, well aware he’s got his unwashed hair in a sloppy bun and is currently swimming in blankets and oversized clothes—hardly anyone’s definition of temptation. He gets up on his knees, shuffles to the door, and gestures for his other controller back.
Satoru tosses it at him, borderline petulant. Then he lifts his arms and arches his back, stretching. “You know, this lack of commitment is why you’re going to keep getting your ass handed to you.”
“Whatever. Like I’m going to lose sleep over Mario Kart,” Suguru grumbles, although he likely will lie awake stewing on it tonight. “I’m better at fighters anyway.”
Satoru’s sulkiness evaporates into a toothy, beaming smile. “Really? Which ones? You should’ve said something sooner! Oh, hey, there’s an oldschool arcade not far from—”
The thin, high-pitched squeal of the balcony door sliding shut drowns out the tail end of Satoru’s rambling. Suguru’s heating bill is already nightmare enough.
“Su-Suguru?” Satoru’s crestfallen voice from the other side of the glass is faintly muffled. He sits up straight as Suguru turns out the living room lights. “Hey, hey, hey! My kiss? My kiss?”
Suguru yawns as he heads down the short hallway and into his room. He’s weary from a long, busy day and more than ready to cuddle down into a warm bed. Who cares if Satoru trounced him? So what if he’s an insufferable winner? Does it matter that Suguru still wants to kiss his smug, smiling mouth regardless?
He shouldn’t. He won’t. He can't give Satoru the satisfaction.
A soft thud sounds at the nearest bedroom window as Satoru presses against it, palms flat to the glass.
“Did you forget you owe me something?” he complains through the pane, lips leaving smudges on the outside. With his voice measured—loud enough to pass through the window but low enough to wake no neighbors—he adds, “Stop being such a sore loser. It's not my fault you have a skill issue and won't take advice from a pro.”
Suguru licks his teeth, feeling whatever goodwill Satoru had earned with dinner evaporate. Stony-faced, he stares through the window and contemplates whether he ought to drop the blinds, pull the curtains, and continue ignoring Satoru until tomorrow night. They’d never set a timeframe on awarding that kiss, technically…
Perhaps sensing the turning of those gears, Satoru goes from demanding to pleading in a blink.
“Suguru. Suguruuu. Suguru, open the window,” he whispers, now fully smushing his face to the glass. “Please? Please, please, please—”
Instead, Suguru drops his blanket and strips his shirt off, too.
Satoru falls silent. Good.
Between the chill on his bare skin and the hungry pair of eyes on him, Suguru shivers. He slips his thumbs into the waistband of his sweats and shimmies out of those next, which leaves him standing in the cool darkness of his bedroom in just fitted, almost-skintight boxers.
Suguru trails his fingertips down from his ribcage and along the center of his abdominal line, lightly tapping them along. They linger under his navel, hovering along the waistband of his boxers. He hooks a black-painted thumbnail just inside the elastic band and runs it back and forth, teasing. Heat flushes under his goosepimpled skin as Satoru’s gaze obediently follows, fixed and unblinking.
Suguru relishes the interest. At times like these, he can believe Satoru sees him as more than a meal on legs. At the very least, he’s a meal with legs—nice ones, too.
It's reassuring to know that under the bloodlust and playful prowling, the vampire outside is still a man—one with a taste for Suguru that goes beyond mere sustenance, even if the two appetites remain dangerously entwined. After so long spent cornered and at a steep disadvantage, Suguru will take any morale boost he can get... and seeing Satoru distracted, frustrated, and desperate on his account? It's a thrill he doesn't quite know what to do with. This little measure of sway he holds is a thin lifeline Suguru can cling to as everything else seems well beyond the bounds of his control.
And Satoru himself may be predatory and unpredictable, along with a host of more pleasing qualities, but this? This is safe. It’s the safest fifty square meters on earth, as far as Suguru is concerned. And within the bounds of the invisible ward that guards him from Satoru’s more lethal inclinations, he can do whatever he likes. That includes denying Satoru, who must otherwise be accustomed to getting anything he wants.
He toys with the waistband of his clingy boxers, drawing one side down his hip, tantalizingly low… and then he lets go, allowing the fabric to snap back into place. The aggravated sigh Satoru lets out is audible even on this side of the glass.
Suguru represses a shiver as he crosses the room, its cool air stirring against his bare skin. Though he’d love to pull on his coziest flannel pajamas and crawl into bed, he can’t let this prime opportunity go to waste. It’s his turn to be smug and smiling and drive Satoru up a wall, the way Satoru so often does when he beckons Suguru to come join him outside. Plus, Suguru would hate to let him off easy after proving to be such an obnoxious winner.
He rests his elbows on the windowsill and leans in close, coyly batting his lashes at Satoru outside. With a low groan, Suguru slowly and deliberately rolls his neck, his fingers kneading along his spine and the juncture of his shoulders.
It has the desired effect. Satoru whines and rubs his forehead against the windowpane, miserable. After a moment spent languishing like that, his muffled voice asks, “Am I being rewarded or punished right now?”
“Hmmm, good question…” Suguru casually uses his biceps to bunch his pecs together and push them forward, amused at the way Satoru’s eyes nearly cross. “What do you think?”
He waits, still smiling, for Satoru’s answer. Instead of the pouting and whining he expects, the vampire looks up from under his lashes with a stare cold enough to freeze his blood still. A set of sharp nails drag down the glass between them, the faint but hair-raising sound sending a shudder down Suguru’s spine.
“I think you’re being very short-sighted, teasing me like this.”
Suguru’s breath hitches. Sheepishly, he swallows and licks his lips and tries to assume a confident smile. What is there to say to a warning like that?
“Maybe.”
“Definitely,” Satoru corrects, the narrow pupils set in the unnatural blue of his irises making small, slight, calculating movements.
Suguru swallows, and Satoru’s unblinking stare flits to follow the motion. How can he be anything other than short-sighted, given the predicament he is in? At this rate, Suguru doesn’t dare wonder where he’ll be in five years—or one, even. If he can make it to the long days of summer, he might be able to coast along for a while. Will a little bit of flirtatious, go-nowhere teasing really change his fate? Satoru can do whatever he wants if and when the opportunity presents itself, regardless. Is it really so bad if Suguru finds a smidge of entertainment in working up the metaphorical dragon who has him trapped in this metaphorical tower? Is only Satoru allowed to be vexing?
“You shouldn’t let yourself be so easy to tease, then,” Suguru murmurs, absently tracing the shape of a heart on the glass between them. “It’s too much fun to pass up.”
Now Satoru sulks like Suguru is used to. With his chin resting on the windowsill and his bottom lip rounded out, he mumbles, “I’m not having fun right now, Suguru.”
“Aw.” Suguru pushes the window open, removing the physical barrier between them. With a tilt of his head, his hair spills forward over his shoulders. He can tell the moment his scent hits Satoru in full: those pupils go wider and the pale blue around them deepens several shades. “Would a kiss help?”
He isn’t merciless. And for now—for forever, hopefully, although Suguru doesn’t see how he’ll manage it—he’s still the one calling the shots here.
“The one I won fair and square, you mean?” Satoru’s head lifts, suddenly smiling and eager. “That’s what I came to collect.”
Suguru beckons him with a finger and a mild sigh. “Then get closer.”
Weeks of this—careful, controlled kisses that won’t leave him too vulnerable—have taught Suguru almost exactly where the vital dividing line between them lies. He leans forward and tips his chin up, lips hovering just far enough out for Satoru to kiss them without his nose ramming into an invisible wall that only one of them can feel. Suguru’s hands tighten on the windowsill, keeping himself from reaching out. Despite it all—weeks of being tempted and touch-deprived, his vigilance tried and tested by relentless flirtation, the cold lips currently dragging across his—he can’t let himself get carried away.
With lips still soft and sweet from the pastries he’d had earlier, Satoru doesn’t make it easy. His kisses are cold but inviting, drawing Suguru toward him one hair’s width at a time. Is it a vampire thing, charming humans out of their wits like this? Is it just Satoru?
It might just be Satoru.
Or it might be that some still-naive, still-hopeful sliver of Suguru takes all of Satoru’s assurances to heart. He can’t help but let the vampire in, metaphorically speaking.
Before he knows it, his eyes are shut and his head is full of dreamy, disconnected thoughts. Thorough, claiming kisses paired with roaming touches. Being held in strong, cold arms and feeling safe all the while. Laid bare without so much as a lick of fear. Wistfully, he imagines being doted on by a Satoru who isn’t out for his blood. They could have actual dates outside of this cramped apartment, even if night-bound. There would be casual hand-holding and cuddling for movie nights, as opposed to sitting on opposite sides of an open door. He could fall asleep to the tickle of fangs and that voice purring in his ear, certain of Satoru's intentions.
It takes a monumental effort to come back to his senses after letting himself wander. Suguru’s eyes flutter open to find Satoru’s boring straight into his, as per usual. What surprises him is the avid intensity in that stare, which seems disproportionate for a mere kiss… Satoru looks ready to plow him through a mattress, devour him alive, or both. Probably both. Probably at the same time.
Suguru laughs nervously as he breaks the kiss—or tries to.
The laughter dies on his lips as he finds himself stopped short. For all the precaution thought he’d been taking, Suguru is now in a bind: Satoru has his bottom lip caught between the rows of his teeth, one fang pressing in on flesh that would give like butter under slightly firmer pressure. His heart hiccups into his throat for a split second, reminded of the bruises and bloodied lips Satoru had given him on Halloween. If the vampire wishes to do worse now—if he wants to punish Suguru for toying with him or steal a quick shot of blood—it would take no effort at all.
With a quick nibble that makes Suguru wince, Satoru lets go.
Suguru sits back and licks his lips, tasting for blood and finding none. In disbelief, he runs his finger along the inside of his bottom lip to double check. No spotting of red comes away on it.
Satoru snorts. “Don’t look so surprised.”
“Like you haven’t left me bloody before,” Suguru mutters back.
Like Satoru wouldn’t do it again, if given a proper chance.
Satoru rolls his eyes, mouth smacking as he stares off toward the city around them. Then his gaze slides back to Suguru, almost guilty. “One time, Suguru. Just messing around. I even healed you right after. Safely escorted you home, too.” He blows out a heavy sigh and then mopes, “And look where it’s gotten me. I should’ve just taken you back with me on Halloween.”
“Okay, see? You keep saying things like that and it doesn’t exactly inspire trust, Satoru.”
“Why wouldn’t it? I had the chance and didn’t eat you or kill you or whatever else you fret about. You treat me as if I’m a ravening monster growling at your door when I’m just… here. Courting you. Respectfully.”
Suguru all but rolls his eyes. “You were literally drooling on my windowsill three minutes ago.”
Satoru tips his head back like he can’t believe that’s being held against him.
“At you and your spiteful-yet-flirty idea of torture, not your blood! Not that there’s anything wrong with your blood, of course. Obviously. Just the smell alone is enough to—I would never say no, is all I'm saying.” Perhaps sensing that Suguru’s blood and the temptation it poses isn’t a winning line of discussion for the blood-haver in question, Satoru clears his throat and says, “Listen. I like you, Suguru. And you like me. I can tell. You said so yourself.”
Suguru scratches behind an ear, grimacing. “Well, yes. But liking you and trusting you with my life are very different things, Satoru. At the end of the day, no matter how charming or well-behaved you are, all it takes is you changing your mind or losing control for a split second…”
And Suguru wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. Satoru could kill him, keep him, turn him, whisk him away from everyone he knows forever. The only things stopping the vampire are his own whims and the ward Suguru currently hides behind.
“If I make you a promise, Suguru, I mean it.”
“A promise,” Suguru repeats back, thinking of Halloween and Satoru’s repeated assurances that he wouldn’t kill or bite Suguru without his say-so. “I’m supposed to hinge my life on that? Take you at your word?”
“What else? You don’t exactly hand me chances to prove myself. And when I do show impressive restraint, you don’t seem to think much of it.”
Suguru smiles at that. “The idea that I should be impressed because you aren’t actively tearing me up is part of the issue, yeah.”
Satoru’s mouth briefly quirks to one side, disappointed. His stare slides the other way, avoiding Suguru. Sullenly, he folds his arms along the narrow ledge and rests his jaw atop them.
On the other side of the open window, Suguru props his chin in his hand and sighs. Though partially distracted by Satoru’s looks—this close, he can see individual lashes and faint, cool-tinged veins under his pale alabaster skin—he mostly watches for some sign that will help him make up his mind.
He’s not immune to Satoru’s allure or the appeal of his company. If anything, Suguru is predisposed to find him intriguing and enticing. He would love to put his faith in Satoru and have it be rewarded. He craves nothing more than reassurance and an end to his anxieties. He wishes he could actually believe he’s something special to someone who could’ve plucked up any lover he wanted across literal ages. And the sight of this frighteningly powerful creature all sad and in need of soothing speaks directly to some deluded sense of empathy Suguru can’t shake. Satoru is like a sweet-faced wolf whimpering to be let in from the cold, promising to keep his sharp canines hidden away in favor of nuzzling; he’s a snow leopard lazing in a cage, pitifully alone, with only the prey outside the bars for distraction and company both.
Suguru wants to smooth his palm along Satoru’s cheek and cup his face, thumb stroking its curve until Satoru doesn’t look so dejected.
He doesn’t risk it.
“You should head out, Satoru,” he whispers gently. “I’m going to bed.”
Satoru stirs at that, lifting his head. After a blink, he says, “Go ahead. I’ll hang around a little longer.”
Suguru can’t let that pass without comment. “So you can watch me sleep? Creepy.”
“No. Not creepy. I’m not getting off out here, okay?” Satoru hisses back, pointedly glancing down at the four empty stories of air below him. “I’m—I’m watching over you. Protectively.”
“That's sweet, but you really don’t need to.” Suguru has to stifle a smile at the thought. “I’m perfectly safe. And capable of protecting myself. Generally.”
Suguru refrains from pointing out that the only real danger in his life is, in fact, the vampire supposedly set on guarding him from it.
“It’s not like I have anything else to do.” Satoru shrugs after saying so, then begins idly poking his thumbnail between his upper teeth. “I ate before I got here, so after this I’ll just go home, watch a movie, and sleep. So I might as well stay. I'm not missing out on anything if I do.”
Suguru watches the vampire then pick at a bit of rubber at the bottom of the windowsill, his stare low and deliberately avoidant—as if making eye contact will get him told off again, banished for the night.
The Gojo family must not have any errands for their frightful, powerful patron—not for a while now, given Satoru’s reliable schedule of lurking here—and beyond that obligation, they don't sound particularly close. From their past conversations, Suguru has gathered that Satoru lives alone and has few, if any, friends. Without any work to occupy him, he must have nothing but time on his hands… and with every daylight hour confined indoors, trapped away forever from the waking world.
Not for the first time, Suguru imagines how lonely it must be: decades in the dark, stored away in slumber; roused by all new faces lifetimes later, in a time ever further from his own; put to work and then turned loose until the novelty of being awake once again fades. A cycle of sleep, slaughter, and slowly succumbing to ennui, over and over again, for centuries. Little wonder Satoru is sparse on attachments. Everyone from his human life is long gone. Anyone he has met during one brief bout of waking would be dead before the next. Moving through the world alone must seem simpler, at a point. Or inevitable.
Before Suguru can think better of it, his hand is out the window and brushing into Satoru’s hair. It’s light and downy soft, those fine, starlight-white strands cool against his fingers.
In a helplessly human sense, he feels for Satoru. Bloodthirst and lust might be the vampire’s primary motivations for latching onto him, but underneath those lies a person, still—one who must crave companionship and intimacy no less than Suguru himself does. Or is it different for vampires? If souls are real, do they keep theirs even after dying and turning? Is Satoru the same Satoru that lived nearly a millennia ago, or did he come back… different, less human on the outside and in? What did his family think when he returned to them with fangs and an unbeating heart? And what must it have been like for Satoru, coming home with a hunger for the very people who’d raised him?
Suguru wonders.
With a slow sigh through his nose, his attention turns outward again—at his hand resting atop Satoru’s head, absently rubbing a fluffy tuft of hair between his fingers, and the luminous eyes locked onto him.
Suguru jerks his arm back as if he’d laid his fingers across a hot iron.
Satoru is faster, though. Always. His hand locks around Suguru’s wrist, the pressure of it causing Suguru’s fingers to twitch. His mouth yawns open, nose wrinkled with a snarl that curls up his lip as well. His fangs, bared in full, glint. Each one is long enough to pierce centimeters into Suguru’s flesh. And no matter how Suguru instinctively twists and pulls, throwing his shoulders and hips into it, Satoru’s hold on him remains unyielding.
With his jaws open and primed to bite, Satoru reels back before dramatically lunging in at the wrist in his grasp—but after giving an exaggerated, cartoonish chomp sound, he only mouths at the back of Suguru’s curled hand.
For a brief moment, Suguru feels the points of fangs light across his knuckles, the softness of Satoru’s lips, and the cold of his breath. Nothing more.
“I’m only playing with you, Suguru,” Satoru says, listlessly releasing him right after. “See? See how I didn’t yank you out here and start sucking you dry?”
Even with all his limbs safely inside again, Suguru is still jittery. With his thumb pressed to the underside of his wrist, right over the veins Satoru could’ve easily tapped, he stares point-blank at the vampire outside.
It’s true that he's slipped up more than once, leaving himself more open than he intends. Satoru has yet to capitalize on any of it. Which could mean nothing.
“Yes, thank you for not dragging me out the window and gobbling me up.”
Satoru smiles at that, glad to be given any amount of credit.
“You can keep petting me like you were, you know,” he adds, stare darting down to Suguru’s hand and then back to meet his eyes. Almost purring, he adds, “Reminded me how you kept pulling my hair when I was lapping blood off of you. Mm.”
Between the way he utters those words and the brazen glance that follows—downward and lazily slow, tongue poking the inside of his cheek as he admires Suguru’s bare chest—a fuse that runs all the way down to Suguru’s stomach is lit. It ignites something there, and then lower still. The mental image of Satoru blood-smeared and suckling on him there in that alley has Suguru holding himself tensed, his thighs squeezing inward and his fingernails curled into his palm.
He doesn’t need any of this right now. He's in over his head as it is.
“I already told you,” Suguru says, hoping Satoru isn’t paying attention to the quickened pace of his heart. “I need to get to bed. Some of us actually have to work in the morning.”
“Not gonna take the rest off first?” Satoru asks as Suguru steps back and rubs his goosepimpled upper arms, still clad in nothing more than dark, tight underwear that show off every curve. Half petulant, half playful, he mutters, “Tease.”
No, Suguru wasn’t planning to strip naked, least of all on a night where Satoru had the gall to annoy him twice over. He’d really like to have the last laugh, though.
With flat, feigned nonchalance, he says, “Well, yes? It would be pretty hard to sleep in the nude if I didn’t.”
It takes a full second for Satoru to register the implication there. His jaw nearly drops open. “W-uh-what? Nude? Since when? You don’t—”
“Anyway~! Goodnight, Satoru.”
Suguru blows a kiss before sliding the window shut.
Satoru is pressed to the glass before Suguru has even latched it, aghast at the notion of Suguru lying naked in bed mere meters out of his reach. He is still tripping over his own tongue and flashing desperate puppy-eyes as Suguru smilingly draws down the blinds and closes the curtains.
As he dresses for bed, he notices a distinct lack of noise at the window. If Satoru is really lingering outside to ‘watch over’ him, he is at least doing so with courteous silence—and some effort at stealth, Suguru hopes. He doesn’t need the police getting called to his door because someone saw a man scaling the wall to a fifth floor window.
Once cozy under the covers, Suguru drowsily mulls on Satoru’s words. All of them. The friendly banter. The affectionate flattery. The tempting promises. The veiled threats that one day the tables will turn and Suguru will regret dangling himself before a devoted hunter like Satoru. And for all the nights they’ve shared in strangely amicable, even flirtatious conversation, Satoru will remember who left him waiting out in the cold.
Suguru screws his eyes shut and rolls in his blankets until he’s formed his own cocoon. In time, his breathing settles and a sleepy sort of resignation overtakes his circling, dreadful thoughts.
If he's honest with himself, there's no way he's getting out of this alive. From the moment Satoru first laid eyes on him, his fate's been sealed.