Chapter Text
“You should just give in,” Tatsumi said.
Natsuno stood, facing the window. The lights of window would be beckoning him in a seductive manner, whispering at him to come outside. Whispering in one particular voice.
The boy gave no sign of his longing. His pointed silence, the sight of his slender back, silhoutted against the desperate sparkle of manmade light within the darkness was enough to drive Tatsumi mad.
He hadn’t tied up Natsuno again. Nor had he replaced the chair. Not that he needed to. Natsuno didn’t try to escape.
“Why don’t you run?” Tatsumi asked. He wasn’t sure if this sullen, silent child would even answer him.
To his surprise, the boy did.
“What’s the point in running?” Natsuno asked. He turned slightly away from the glass, but only slightly. “You’d only come after me.” The streetlights cast shadows on his pale face. “Besides, I could never run from what’s inside me.” Death and rebirth had deepened the purple hue of Natsuno’s blue eyes. Never had they been more violent, or haunted as they fixed themselves upon Tatsumi. “You keep reminding me of that.”
“True,” Tatsumi conceded. He took advantage of this moment of vulnerability to take a step closer to Natsuno. “I wondered if you might not have found an entirely new way to hide.” His shadow was overlapping with Natsuno’s, as he moved towards the boy. Some shiki cast no shadows, it was true, but this rule didn’t apply to jinrou. At least, not to Tatsumi and Natsuno. “Maybe you’re using this apartment and myself to hide from what you truly want? Or perhaps I should say who?”
It had been the wrong thing to say. Natsuno abruptly turned back, away from Tatsumi. To face the window and fill the apartment with his aggressive silence once again.
Not a chance. Tatsumi had smelled a weakness. He wasn’t about to let Natsuno escape into his passive aggression again.
“You can smell him out there, can’t you, Natsuno-kun?” Tatsumi murmured. He continued, step by gentle step, easing his way into Natsuno’s shadow. His own loomed over the boy’s, swallowing it, as he came closer to the boy himself. “Ozaki-sensei is alive. He’s somewhere in this very city.” One of his hands reached out for Natsuno’s. It was trembling.
Tatsumi stopped, startled by his own reaction. He stared down at his hand, willing it to still. Did he need this hostile, seductive creature this much, after a few intimate exchanges? His own body ached at being this close to Yuuki Natsuno. It wanted more.
No, Tatsumi would not be conquered, not so easily.
“If only Megumi-kun could see you now!” Tatsumi said, injecting a note of forced gaiety into his voice. “She might have not have been so reluctant to attack the Ozaki clinic, if she’d known how precious the good doctor would become to you!” Tatsumi lowered his hand. It still trembled. “Perhaps it’s just as well she didn’t. What if we had gotten Ozaki-sensei? The chance that he might have risen as you did, is too terrible to contemplate!”
“There’s no chance about it,” Natsuno said. Anything which might have been vulnerable about the boy was gone, as he cocked his head toward Tatsumi. The tiny smile on Natsuno’s lips was exactly like the one he’d worn, when Tatsumi first spoke to him. Natsuno had been threatening to run, if Tatsumi attacked him. Never had a vow to flee sounded more like a promise to fight. “Ozaki-sensei would have risen if you'd attacked him. As he would rise if I attacked him now.”
“What makes you so sure of that?” Tatsumi demanded. “Not even Sunako knew who would rise and who would stay dead!”
“She could have figured it out, if she'd spotted the signs in her victims,” Natsuno said. There was no trace of doubt in his manner, as he regarded Tatsumi. “If you can detect them, you’ll know who will rise and who will stay dead.”
“Exactly what signs are these?” Tatsumi demanded. All right, he was curious, in spite of himself. What did Natsuno think he’d spotted, which other shiki had missed? “What did all of our victims have in common, which induced them to rise from their graves as shiki?”
“Unfinished business,” Natsuno said simply. “There were things they still wanted to do, which they hadn’t done when they were alive.”
For a moment, Tatsumi could only stare at this slight, pretty boy, who continued to surprise him. “You desperately wanted to leave the village,” he said, slowly.
“Shimizu wanted the same thing,” Natsuno said, with a slow nod. He closed his eyes, as if he didn’t want Tatsumi to see what they might reveal. “Tohru-chan wanted to ask Ritsu-san to go on a date with him,” he said. Every word was uttered with a precise lack of emotion. Too precise. “He was planning to ask her the day after Shimizu attacked him.” A little quaver in his voice betrayed how much he was holding back. “Such a little thing, but it was enough to make someone as kind as Tohru-chan unable to rest in peace.” He opened his eyes.
There it was. That cold, violent gleam in Natsuno’s eyes which made Tatsumi want to shove him against the window and ravage him. Never mind who might be watching outside.
“While Sunako wanted to live, no matter what the cost,” Tatsumi said, doing his best to meet that brutally seductive gaze. Concentrate on Sunako, he told himself. It’s what you’ve always done, whenever you wanted strength. “To do all of the things she never had a chance to do.”
“Every shiki who ever rose had unfinished business,” Natsuno said. His violet gaze locked onto Tatsumi’s, refusing to let it escape. “Can you guess what Ozaki-sensei’s is?”
“To destroy all shiki,” Tatsumi said, swallowing. How strange to be what he was, yet to still get lumps in his throat. He wasn’t sure if they were brought on by the thought of Ozaki-sensei as a vengeful shiki, or Natsuno’s proximity. “He can’t save the village. The village is gone.”
“All things considered, I don’t think you want me to go after Ozaki-sensei,” Natsuno said. An unpleasant smile twisted at his mouth. “Do you?”
“Come away from the window,” Tatsumi said. That smile might have fooled him once. He was getting to know its lips only too well. Well enough to notice, when they trembled, ever so slightly. “Stop tormenting yourself with thoughts of him.”
One of his hands reached out for the drape cord. Natsuno’s hand shot up to intercept it.
“You yourself know how impossible that is,” Natsuno growled. “I’ve fed on him too many times to forget!”
“I know,” Tatsumi said. The tenderness in his own voice surprised him.
It shocked Natsuno. He stared at the other jinrou with his eyes wide. For one moment, his guard dropped. He looked as young, vulnerable, and desperate as Sunako had ever been. A precious moment of weakness, which Yuuki Natsuno was reluctant to reveal to anyone. Even to his Tohru-chan.
It was beautiful. It shook Tatsumi to the core.
No. This boy was entertainment, company. He was not Sunako. He could never be what Sunako had been!
Anger fought with fear, as Tatsumi shoved down these unwelcome feelings. The easiest way to hide from them was behind a sadistic sense of humour.
“Tohru-chan was just as addicted to you, when he was feeding upon you,” Tatsumi said. The words came out harsh, not at all humourous. “He couldn’t get enough of your blood, or your body.”
The unguarded look vanished from Natsuno’s face, as if it had never been. His mouth turned down, making the delicate bones of his face harder, as his entire expression narrowed in cold anger.
Good. Tatsumi wasn’t the only one, betraying someone he loved with this passion. He had to remind Natsuno of that, keep the two jinrou on equal footing.
As if he himself had just realized the same thing, Natsuno cocked his head.
“Was Sunako the same with you?” Natsuno asked, as he regarded Tatsumi. His lips twisted into that unpleasant smile. “Was she addicted to your blood, your body, when she took you? Did she leave you unable to beg for mercy, or anything?”
“No,” Tatsumi said. He took a deep breath, which he wasn’t sure if he truly needed. “I was the one addicted to her. I didn’t become anything special to Sunako-sama, until after I died and rose as a jinrou.” He stared at Natsuno, as his own mouth twisted into an unpleasant smile of his own. “My romance with my killer was quite one sided. Unlike yours.”
The smile slipped from Natsuno’s face. He stared at Tatsumi, as his expression softened. It wasn’t the vulnerable, unguarded expression of before, but it was no longer cold.
Tatsumi released Natsuno’s wrist. He turned to close the blinds.