Chapter Text
In the end, the doctor was only too easy to find. All Natsuno had to do was follow the faint scent of failed heroism and smoky despair. They lingered upon a trail of cigarette butts along with the imprint of Ozaki-sensei’s lips.
Not that the young jinrou needed clues to find his former ally. Ozaki-sensei was hardly trying to hide. He was living in a small apartment off one of the main drags of the city. It was close enough for the former doctor to walk beneath the city lights at night, dressed in a leather jacket which exposed his stubbled, inviting neck. It was secluded enough for a shiki to follow the doctor back to his home for a private visit, if he could get an invitation inside.
Is it me you’re waiting for, or Seishin-sensei? Natsuno wondered as he moved from shadow to shadow, following what he refused to admit was his prey. Are you hoping one of us will attack you? Or are you just hoping anyone will, putting you out of your misery?
The doctor walked a little slower than he had in the the village. No wonder. His purpose had been taken from him. Natsuno could taste the ashes in Ozaki-sensei’s mouth as if it filled his own. The connection between vampire and victim was still strong, in spite of the distance Natsuno had tried to put between the two of them.
Natsuno ached to see the lingering shadows underneath the young doctor’s eyes, just as he ached to see Ozaki-sensei walk with such careless abandon through the rougher areas of town. The doctor was silently inviting danger, inviting an attack.
He’s waiting for you, Natsuno’s hunger whispered. Go ahead. Take him. Are you depriving him of anything he’s not more than willing to lose by doing so?
The young jinrou hugged a broken piece of chair to his chest. Unknown to Tatsumi, he’d kept this token of his attempt to escape from their bizarre relationship. It was a sturdy piece of wood. It made a good stake.
Keeping a firm grip on it, he followed Ozaki-sensei to his very doorstep.
His caution was unnecessary. The doctor walked, as if in a dream, not paying attention to anything around him. He shuffled up the steps to his apartment, took out his keys, and unlocked his front door. It opened, but he didn’t go in. He paused on his doorstep, before the darkness of the open doorway.
“I know you’re out there,” Ozaki-sensei said. “Did you think I couldn’t sense you?”
The doctor spun to face Natsuno, even though Natsuno was hidden in a nearby alcove. Some of the old fierceness burned in his warm brown eyes, turning them ruddy with amber light.
Natsuno had always been drawn to the fire in Ozaki-sensei, even before he’d changed.
All he had to do was close his eyes and remember the first moment he’d really noticed the young doctor. He’d been having a very private breakdown over losing his patients. One no random village boy was meant to see.
Their eyes had met. Something quickened in Natsuno, which the boy buried down since he was too tired, shaken, and exhausted from sleepless nights, too haunted by Shimizu to acknowledge it.
He pushed it down into the same place he’d been trying to shove his growing love for Tohru-chan. Not that that place kept anything for very long.
The doctor had mumbled some meaningless formalities. Natsuno had asked the question which had been tormenting him. Just how dead was Shimizu?
Natsuno had fled before the doctor could say anything more to him. What might have happened if he’d stayed? They’d both been human back then. No longer.
“Are you still trying to be a gentleman, Natsuno-kun? Is attacking your victim on his doorstep too uncivilized for you?” Ozaki-sensei asked. His generous mouth twisted into a smile. Natsuno wondered if it wasn’t the twin of the expression which sometimes crept over his own face when he was amused by his pain.
“Allow me to make things easier.” Ozaki-sensei made a mocking little bow to the night before stepping over his threshold. “Come inside, Yuuki Natsuno-kun! I invite you into my sorry excuse of a home!”
He didn’t wait for Natsuno to answer. He whirled around to march into the waiting darkness of his doorway.
Natsuno’s hunger couldn’t resist. He moved forward, no longer bothering to hide in the shadows up the stairs and through the doorway.
Shapes appeared in the darkness with a vividness invisible to human eyes. Chairs. A sofa. A kitchen, which looked like it had never been touched.
Ozaki Toshio-sensei’s apartment had a lot less personality than Tatsumi’s did. It was as if he’d allowed no part of himself to touch its environs. His smoky scent permeated the place, luring Natsuno towards him.
He was waiting in the bedroom.
Natsuno’s lower regions tightened with a need which never failed to surprise him. After all he should be dead, but Tatsumi had proved in a very physical way that he wasn’t. If anything, such needs had intensified after his change, mingling with his blood lust.
He’d already wanted this man a little when he’d been a mortal boy. He’d shoved the desire down and ignored it, along with his affection for Tohru-chan and every other feeling of attachment he didn’t want.
It was a lot harder to deny such things, after the change. No wonder Shimizu had gotten so crazy after turning into a vampire. She’d already been crazy when she was alive.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” Ozaki-sensei said. He was standing, facing his bed. His back was to Natsuno. “Your father and friends think you’re dead, but I’ve been expecting your visit since the village burned to the ground. What took you so long?”
The young doctor turned. Desire, a hunger equal to Natsuno’s own lingered in his amber eyes as he looked into the boy’s. His stare was almost wolf-like as it took in Natsuno, devouring him in bits.
For a moment, Natsuno dared to hope. Dared to hope this hunger was more than the connection between vampire and victim. He took a step forward, before he stopped himself.
Why was he doing this, to himself and to Ozaki-sensei? Their relationship had been of mutal advantage and loneliness. What was he doing, trying to burden this already broken man with an expectation of something more?
“You know exactly what this is,” Natsuno said. His hands clutched the stake. It felt rough. Splinters dug into his fingers. It didn’t hurt as much as it would have when he was human, but it was enough. “You’ve seen what’s between us in the village again and again. It’s what’s between every single vampire and his victim.”
“Or her victim.” Ozaki-sensei shrugged as he looked over Natsuno, enjoying some secret amusement he shared with no one. “A vampire attacks a human, only to return to the same human again and again. The human is unable to refuse.”
His eyes moved to the stake in Natsuno’s hands. His smile grew. “Shouldn’t I be the one carrying that?”
“Well, as you may have guessed,” Natsuno said. A tiny smile was tickling the edges of his mouth, answering the doctor’s own. “I seldom do what I’m supposed to do.”
“What exactly are you supposed to do, Natsuno-kun?” Ozaki-sensei asked. His eyes darted from Natsuno’s neck to his lips to his hands to his hips, only to return to his eyes once more. “Everyone thinks you’re dead, so what are you supposed to do?”
“I am dead, or I should be.” Natsuno ignored the hot flush of memories of Tatsumi and shared blood, which insisted he was still very much alive. He offered the stake to the doctor. “I just need a little help in finishing the job.”
The smile vanished from Ozaki’s lips. He stared at the stake as if Natsuno had just pointed a gun at his chest. “What?”
“I made you a promise.” Natsuno's lips trembled. Ah, he could smell Ozaki-sensei’s anger rising from him, like the scent of roasting meat on a grill. Equally delicious. “I promised that all the shiki would be dead, including me. I’m sorry, sensei. I haven’t been able to keep that promise.”
Only you’re not keeping it now, a nagging voice in his head reminded him. Otherwise, you’d give him Tatsumi. You’d tell him where Tatsumi is and that he’s still alive.
Natsuno’s mouth opened to tell Ozaki-sensei this, but the words stuck like sludge in the middle of his throat. The taste of Tatsumi still lingered there.
“Exactly why are you here, Natsuno?” Ozaki-sensei asked. His voice was harsh with pain, loneliness, and concern. Natsuno found the man’s concern as compelling as he always had, even as his own conviction wavered. “To get me to drive a stake through your heart as someone once drove a stake into your Tohru-chan?”
Tohru-chan. It still hurt to hear his name, to think of his body with a bloody piece of wood buried within it. What would he have thought, to see Natsuno here, offering a human a stake? Tohru-chan had wanted so badly to live. For Natsuno, there had always been much worse things than dying.
“Please,” Natsuno whispered. His self control was crumbling, even as it had crumbled the night he faced Tohru-chan. “Do it. While I’ve still got enough of myself left, the self who wants to keep his promise to you. Do it, before I truly stop being human!”
Ozaki-sensei took a step forward. His teeth were bared as if he was the one who meant to bite Natsuno. His chest bumped against the stake. His lower lip quivered.
The young jinrou found an unexpected laugh, tickling in his throat at their role reversal. The throbbing pulse in Ozaki-sensei’s neck was entirely too beautiful. It reminded Natsuno of exactly what he was.
“Promises must be kept, musn’t they, Natsuno-kun?” Ozaki-sensei asked. His voice softened, becoming conversational, although anger still thrummed within his veins. The young jinrou could smell it, wafting from the older man’s skin. “No matter who they hurt or destroy.”
The young doctor’s hands reached out for Natsuno’s own, which were still clutching the stake. They wrapped themselves around his small, slender fingers, claiming them.
The feel of that warm, pulsing flesh, tinged with a faint whiff of possessive concern was enough to drive Natsuno mad.
“Stop it,” he whispered. He closed his eyes. “Don’t touch me unless you’re going to drive this stake through my heart.”
“I made a promise once. I swore I’d protect my village when I was very young,” Ozaki-sensei said. The warmth in his voice matched what throbbed in his hands. Everything about this man was warm. How anyone have mistaken his willingness to kill for coldness? “It was a hereditary promise, handed down from my father, but I was more than willing to make it. Natsuno, look at me when I’m talking to you!”
The intimate use of his name, without honorifics, made Natsuno’s eyes snap open.
The inside of his eyes threatened to play back an image of Tohru-chan, smiling as he stood in the sun. One finger pointed at Natsuno as if it was a magic wand, casting a spell over his heart. “Natsuno!”
Ozaki-sensei’s eyes were glistening with an openness Natsuno had never seen before. He didn’t want this, but he couldn’t turn away from it, any more than he’d been able to turn away from Tohru-chan.
“I failed to keep that promise. Failed in so many ways!” Ozaki-sensei’s voice was harsh with pain. Pain which only could be released as anger, frustration, the rage of a trapped beast who couldn’t escape from his fate.
His eyes never left Natsuno, fixing themselves upon him as if the young jinrou had something he craved even more than Natsuno craved blood. “I let so many of the villagers die at the fangs of the shiki, including you! I killed even more of the shiki themselves, beginning with my wife! I became something so ugly, the person I loved most in the world left me for the enemy!”
A tear ran down the doctor’s cheek. Such naked grief lived within this proud, self possessed man. Natsuno didn’t even try to check it. The grief was too powerful to contain. It had to run its course, run free, if this man was ever to be free of it.
Not that Natsuno was sure Ozaki-sensei ever would be. He’d never escaped from his own.
“I didn’t keep my promise, Natsuno. Please, I’m begging you.” The doctor’s voice broke, losing some of its harshness. One of his hands released Natsuno’s to reach up for the boy’s cheek. “Don’t let me be the only one with nothing, but a broken promise to keep him company. Don’t leave me alone with another corpse!”
Ozaki-sensei’s entire frame shook with a choked sob, ripping its way out of his throat.
The stake dropped from Natsuno’s hands. It made a soft thump, as it hit the carpeted ground. Not that Natsuno or Ozaki-sensei noticed.
“Sensei,” Natsuno whispered as he gathered the older man in his arms. Ozaki-sensei was so much bigger than Natsuno, but he seemed so fragile right now. This fragility coaxed another name to his lips, one which belonged to another, but it felt so right. “Toshio.”
Ozaki-sensei, no, Toshio’s head slumped down, to bury his face in Natsuno’s hair. His hands clutched at Natsuno with that desperate need he’d shown whenever Natsuno fed upon him. It was an invitation, a plea.
Natsuno’s hunger flared in response to that invitation. His fangs popped out at the sight of that warm, willing flesh inches away.
He tried to push it down, as he stroked the doctor’s back and face.
Toshio was having none of that. One of his hands grabbed one of Natsuno’s wrists. The other seized his head, pushing it towards his neck.
“Go ahead,” Toshio said. His voice was husky with grief, mingled with desire, loneliness, and his need, which filled the air like an intoxicating perfume. “Stop holding back, Natsuno. Stop trying to be a gentleman.”
His lips pressed against Natsuno’s forehead, his hair, moving across his face. He pulled the boy closer, even as he backed against the bed. “Let’s find ourselves in each other, once again.”
Natsuno felt himself lose his balance, falling onto the bed. The doctor was pinned beneath him, still clinging to Natsuno, tempting him with the insistent press of his warm flesh.
“No,” Natsuno growled, but the doctor’s skin was too near. As he growled, one of his fangs pricked the flesh of his neck. The blood started to flow. The jinrou’s mouth was filled with the taste of this man, his prey, his, his….Natsuno’s hunger overwhelmed his willpower.
His fangs sank into Toshio’s flesh as their torsos and nether regions pressed together. He could feel himself hardening, even as answering passion pressed against him.
The doctor was weakening, but life still rallied within him, crying for release. His hands were reaching for the fastenings of his trousers, along with those of the jinrou’s.
Natsuno drank, as he felt that life exploding in his mouth, his brain, taking over his heart and his body as if it was always meant to do so.