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“The girl from housekeeping saw us.”
The soft reverberation of his voice skitters pleasantly against Itachi’s skin, cool and caressing as silk along the tender groove of his throat. He holds back a shiver at the sensation, keeps his clothed thighs closed under the weight of the other’s leg draped over them.
“How do you know?”
“Noticed her peeping through the keyhole,” Shisui replies easily. His face nuzzles deeper into the crook of Itachi’s neck, languid as a serpent coiled atop a sunbaked rock, as he goes on, “I’ve never seen an eye go so wide before. So big and round. You’d think she’d seen a ghost.”
And not just two men in bed with one another, Itachi thinks. He considers their current state, then, the lengths of their bodies pressed close together, candlelight casting a bronze glow over their still forms. And it’s not hard for Itachi to imagine the young maid’s shock. To picture her eyes going saucer-wide at such unabashed intimacy, the precarity of it even when hidden away inside of a locked room.
“How scandalous,” he says simply.
“Isn’t it?”
Itachi doesn’t answer. Normally, the danger of being discovered would alarm him, a pinprick jab of worry nagging his brain like an erratic heartbeat. However, a spell of heaviness seems to hold him in place. A terrible, dreamy lassitude spreading out through his bloodstream like wine on an empty stomach, turning his limbs to lead. It leaves him immobilized and drowsy, feeling unmoored from his body as his eyes rove idly about. Taking stock of the grayish smoke-stains smattering the ceiling, the lone candelabra on the table sitting opposite its own reflection, the tall oval mirror leant against the wall across from it.
The image of light lures his gaze toward it like a moth, each quivering flame seeming, from this angle, to hang suspended in midair like a cluster of bodiless halos in the dusty glass, hovering will-o-wisps that sputter and protest the hot pools of melted wax at the base of their wicks.
He watches with hypnotic interest as the glossy liquid oozes gradually over the edges, carving milky rivulets down each stalk.
Slowly, with movements viscous as honey, he strokes his lover’s hair, twirling an inky curl around one finger. Funny, Itachi thinks absently, he hasn’t even lost any blood tonight. Yet Shisui appears to be just as sated without it, happy enough with the calm and steady cadence of Itachi’s pulse by the shell of his ear to soothe him into blissful torpor. Docile as a sleeping tiger.
The room they occupy is small and dingy, yet the mothball-scented air retains an aura of past elegance still, the old furnishings imbued with a Western style of décor: warm shades of burgundy and ocher around a chipped mahogany dresser, the wallpaper peeling apart in some places to reveal the whitewash paint underneath. At the window, the heavy curtains are drawn tightly together, enveloping them into an amniotic sense of privacy. Closed off from the rest of the world while beyond the veil of their sanctuary the city hums restlessly outside, darkness pressing softly at the edges.
It's not much, but it’s better than an abandoned shack in the countryside, don’t you think? Itachi had asked, half-jesting, wholly hoping Shisui would agree, would come with him here. It had taken some coaxing, getting Shisui to leave his refuge. He was afraid at first – too many people around, too many throbbing bodies tantalizingly close to him, the city streets like an orchard of fruit hanging low and bulging with sweet juices, just waiting to burst at the first bite. The train ride here had been like crawling through perdition.
But he’d come, nonetheless. Because Itachi had asked him to.
Smiling at him – a bright, human smile – that first dawn as they settled into their room, shutting the curtains as the sun began to breach horizon like blood slowly welling inside of a cut.
It’s perfect.
Thoughtfully, he asks, “What are you going to do?”
“About the girl?” Shisui divines his meaning. “Nothing. She can tell tales if she wants.”
“Yeah,” Itachi agrees quietly. They’d call her a gossip, as maids are known to be. Perhaps even scold her for spying. Tell her to mind her work, leave the guests be. What harm can two men do, simply laying in bed with one another? With a flutter of quickening pulse he recalls the stab of teeth at his throat, the wet-hot flow pouring out into the other man’s eager mouth. Careful as they were, a few bloodstains dot the sheets. “It’s just…if she does tell someone what she saw—”
“I won’t let that happen,” Shisui assures him. It’s as firm as a command.
“How?”
“I’ll hypnotize her.” As though it’s obvious. As though it’s perfectly natural.
“Can you do that – to that degree, I mean?”
Shisui lifts his head, propping his chin so their faces are level, and points an index finger to one eye, a glittering dark ruby, dark as congealed blood. Beneath the spidery shadows cast by his lashes, his eyes almost seem to emit a glow all their own, separate from the scant candlelight. “There’s a lot of things I can do. Hypnosis is easy enough – it’s more like suggestion, really. You look deep into someone’s eyes and hold them there, and reach into them, just like you would stretch an invisible hand forward. Mold their memories with your own mind, until your will and theirs become indiscernible. Like braiding two threads together until they seem as one. You can make someone think anything, forget anything, without them ever knowing their thoughts have been altered.”
Itachi’s breath catches for the briefest instant, under the spell of that red gaze. With practiced self-control, he forces himself to blink free of Shisui’s stare, to focus his attention again on the candles and their weepy trails of wax. Only then does he consider the other’s words.
It sounds painless, the way he describes the act; an almost gentle form of assault on another. And yet a seed of unease lingers, burrowing into the back of his head, near the raised hairs at his nape.
“Just…don’t overdo it, Shisui.”
“Mn. She’ll think it was a dream, or her imagination.”
A dream. Nothing more than a wisp of smoke evaporating with the morning light, as weightless as air.
Shisui reaches up a hand and lightly cups Itachi’s chin between two fingers shaped into a “V,” turns his face so their eyes catch again. But instead of the paralyzing spider-with-its-prey-snared-in-the-web stare, his gaze is warm, a veil of restraint dimming the severity of it, making it seem almost tame now.
“So don’t worry, Itachi. Let me handle it.”
The sound of his name on Shisui’s tongue smooths over him like a salve, tucking his anxieties away. Just as it always does, like it always has, since their childhood days. Don’t worry, it’ll be fine. Like magic words, somehow Itachi always trusts that it really will, when his friend is the one promising him.
He registers then the other’s hand sliding down over his chest, beginning to fumble with one of the buttons of his shirt. “There are a lot of things I can do,” Shisui repeats, his voice lower, thicker, “but right now, there’s only one thing I really feel like doing…”
Oh? Would that ‘thing’ be me? Itachi thinks. Only the quip dies half-formed in his throat – the shock of cold at Shisui’s touch eliciting a soft gasp, an icy thumb brushing his nipple. Itachi’s heart beats harder in response, a steady thump-thump-thump drumming beneath his sternum, humming against Shisui’s palm.
The other man goes on prying his shirt apart in a gradual progression, deftly plucking each pearly button free with one hand, revealing little and little more with the sort of relish one might find in unwrapping a delicate gift. Itachi isn’t as patient; restlessly, his fingers weave around Shisui’s and promptly yank the remainder undone, earning him a chortled “Slow down” feathering over his collarbone. The white garment falls open all at once, baring Itachi’s torso.
“But aren’t you hungry?” he teases, though it comes out shaky, his breathing already uneven.
Grinning, Shisui hooks a knee over his hip and leans forward, bringing their faces close. “Starving.”
Their mouths open for each other as he dips his head, and all at once the copper and earthy taste overcomes Itachi’s senses. The contact seems to awaken something in them that laid dormant in the calm – a heady, irresistible attraction, an animal desire so encompassing as to shed all reason and leave only lust in its wake. Let the housekeeping girl watch all she likes, he thinks, let all the world see the two of them for what they are. The swirl of their tongues quickly growing heated, desperate. They breach then, the kiss tracing downward, dragging his bottom lip with it just as Itachi begins to part for him again, to a flutter of breath that skims over his jaw. Itachi angles his face aside, baring his neck for the other’s access.
Go on, the gesture conveys, take what you want.
He closes his eyes, bracing for the initial jolt of pain. He swallows the anticipation down, the bob of his throat drawing attention to the soft, tender skin there, to the sweet spot at his jugular where his blood courses dark and hot, as rich as ichor.
Shisui doesn’t wait before he ravages the place with tongue and teeth, Itachi’s sensitivity too enticing, too delicious, to ignore for long. Sucking at the hollow by his Adam’s apple, hard enough to leave a bruise. Itachi’s head falls back into an open-mouthed look of surrender, pressing into the pillow with a low, euphoric sound from his lips that fills the air like music, as needle-point fangs scrape down the pale column of his throat.
Danger, his brain screams. Danger, danger. A primal sense-reaction in his gut lurches him toward fleeing, thrashing free of the iron grip pinning each wrist at his sides, every nerve ending becoming electrified and standing on end, as a rabbit catching a wolf’s scent. Despite himself, Itachi relishes this: the pendulum in his head swinging from pleasure to pain, terror to delight. He won’t kill me. He’ll stop himself from drinking too much blood, from draining me. He always does. And if, for some reason, this time he doesn’t…
The mental back-and-forth zips into chaos, ricochets him into dizziness.
Suddenly strong fingers slip into the hem of his pants and yank them down, trousers and undergarments both in one go, sliding them down his legs and off his ankles with a flare of expert swiftness. The jerk of his hips as he’s stripped rather unceremoniously dazes Itachi for an instant. He can almost see himself from Shisui’s view, then, as the other man kneels between his thighs, looking down on the sight before him: Itachi naked beneath him, save for the unbuttoned shirt still sheathing his arms, his fully erect cock flopped back and dribbling a milky smear of precum near his navel. The half-lidded, fawn-vulnerable look in his gaze, the darks of his eyes so completely swollen as to resemble ink-black moons below the sweep of his lashes.
He looks angelic. Even the glow of candlelight diffuses around him like a halo. All at once his body becomes a sacrificial offering, the bed they share an altar, belonging only to Shisui. Shisui’s to worship and desecrate. To use as he likes and sate his hunger. Open and trusting as a lamb trotting to its slaughter.
Shisui sheds his own shirt, the silky fabric peeling from his skin like water, and lets it thud to the floor in a puddle beside the bedpost. His broad shoulders gleam white as he leans down, taking each of Itachi’s wrists into his shackle-like grip, and presses a kiss to each of Itachi’s pebbled nipples, the corner of his lips tugged into a devilish smile, wearing the look of an incubus who slithered out of a dream.
Itachi likes it this way, the element of roleplay they indulge in, fitting himself into the part of the damsel, the vampire’s helpless victim. The excitement builds in his chest, pools down into his belly, with every pounding heartbeat. He peers through his half-lidded gaze down at the messy top of the other’s hair, soaking up the contours of his lover’s muscular back, the way it tapers down into his slender waist, the adorable dimples at his lower back. He hugs his knees to Shisui’s sides and pulls him deeper into his thighs, enough to feel Shisui’s own erection straining for release against the crotch of his pants. While Shisui circles his tongue around one areola, nibbling and nipping at the dusky nub at the center, Itachi begins to grind against him, rubbing the head of his cock against his friend’s. His breathing comes out heavier, peppered with small, guttural sounds, only then registering that he’s lost control of his breathing entirely.
Gently, with most arduous care, Shisui bites down, teeth slowly sinking into the flesh of his right pectoral.
“Ah.” Itachi sucks in a breath.
The other’s teeth slide out slowly, leaving two identical crescents curved parenthetically on either side of the areola, four deeper punctures standing out within the constellation of red. The blood flows out in lovely, gleaming little threads. Shisui drags his tongue over the tiny wounds, flicking at the nipple teasingly as he goes, a long, indulgent sigh unfurling over the other’s skin. The restraint from before drains from Shisui’s expression, his lashes fluttering slightly, eyes rolling back. Like a diabetic tasting sugar once again, or a parched man wetting their lips with drink, the blood seeps into him with the effect of a drug: each time, as though it’s his first. Itachi watches as a savage hunger begins to take over, coursing into the other’s ministrations as he returns to lapping at his blood, tasting him more roughly now, savoring the flavor and smiling at the way Itachi’s erection twitches so needily.
“Baby, you’re shaking,” he croons, coming up to press their foreheads together, the scent of iron fresh on his breath.
Itachi presses his lips tightly together, biting back the moan that threatens to erupt from his throat, loud enough to alert the entire inn. Shisui slips his tongue past his jaw, prying him open with a kiss, and swallows the sound that Itachi lets out. The mattress beneath them creaks and groans amid their passionate movements.
“Shisui,” he gasps, the walls around him becoming unfocused, blurry, losing the ability to speak as he devolves into plaintive babble. “Shi…Shi…”
Spurred on by the lovely sounds, Shisui trails his kisses lower, traveling further and further down his abdomen, lips coming to graze the tip of Itachi’s cock. Taking the length of it into his fist, pumping slowly. Watching Itachi squirm, his hips searching for more friction than he’s allowed. The fat vein snaking the underside of his shaft practically dances for him, throbbing emphatically.
“P-please,” he pants, unable to say more. He’s so hard it hurts, his cock so completely engorged and tender to the slightest sensation. The entirety of his slim figure trembles in anticipation, brows knit into a look of suspended agony.
The other man lowers his head, lips parting, and lifts his eyes—
There’s a tantalizing pause as their gazes meet, Shisui’s face framed between his legs, irises burning scarlet with bloodlust. For a full, heart-stammering beat, Itachi feels panic threaten to overtake him, a visceral fear seizing him, freezing him in place.
But then, Shisui takes his cock into his mouth, his cheeks hollowed, and begins to suck. Itachi’s vision goes white as his senses dissolve into ecstasy, into oblivion.
o
Outside the cathedral, the courtyard is blue with moonlight, as desolate as a grave. The quiet suits them; it’s one of the reasons why they picked this hour for their nighttime stroll. Midnight mass having concluded, the crowd of pious worshippers trickling through the heavy and ornate wooden doors of the church out into the nocturnal chill. Their faces drawn and tired, yet serene.
Tonight marks the feast day of some saint, one among the plethora of holy, tortured figures. But that’s not why Shisui insisted they come.
“They say that the Hunter’s moon this year will appear closer to the earth, even bigger and brighter than usual.”
His friend explained it to him earlier; it’s more of an optical illusion, really, the exact sort of thing which fascinates Shisui. But it’s caused by an astronomical occurrence, a rare lunar phenomenon having to do with when it reaches the point of perigee, the imperfect shape of its orbit causing the moon to achieve a more extreme degree of periapsis at inconsistent intervals. That’s why it’s special, something deserving their audience.
It does, indeed, look bigger, Itachi observes. Supernaturally large and radiant, the rabbit image splayed in full view against its mother-of-pearl surface, its silkweb light breaking through the thin wisps of clouds schooning across the sky like phantoms prowling the night. Everything as visible as during the day, only dreamier, as though a veil lay draped over their surroundings, a velvety film of moondust blanketing the earth.
Like a scene from a painting, they take it in together, walking shoulder-to-shoulder along the cobbled path. Their gaits are idle, subdued, imitating the sluggish tread of wading through water as they bathe in the moon’s ambrosial glow.
And yet, for all his earlier enthusiasm, Shisui is silent beside him, uncharacteristically taciturn. Which perplexes Itachi, mainly because if anyone should be able to read the other man’s silences, it should be him. Maybe it’s the brightness, he speculates. So bright, that it’s reminiscent of the sun, perhaps.
This is the closest Shisui will ever come to feeling something akin to daylight again. Only this pale, anemic shade reflected from the moon, the source of its light softened down into a mere trickle of a burning star’s incandescence. The real thing would kill him, would reduce him to ashes.
The thought catches in Itachi’s chest like a barb.
They used to love watching the sun set together. Just the two of them, like this, only everything was golden, all molten hues and tangerine glows cascading over them, gleaming in their hair, slanting through the tree branches over their heads. In the village where they grew up, they’d spend every evening by the bluff overlooking the river, the last light of day sparkling on the water, painting the twilit world a vibrant orange. A place only they know, that exists now only in their memories.
Somehow, a childish part of Itachi had grown to believe that sunsets belonged to them. But maybe that’s only because it’s one of the things they lost.
He ruminates on how to ease the hurt, to lighten the mood, but finds nothing. He’s not used to being the cheerful one between the two of them. That’s always been the older man’s role (Itachi worries, Shisui soothes; such is the natural order). Itachi tries, nonetheless. For Shisui’s sake, as much as his own.
“The moon looks beautiful tonight, doesn’t it?”
It sounds odd as soon as the words leave him. Too gauche and wooden.
Shisui doesn’t seem to hear him, however; his attention is fixed instead on something across the way, his unsmiling expression hard, wary. Itachi follows his stare.
Standing outside the wrought-iron gate of the churchyard cemetery is a woman, dyed silvery in the moonlight. She looks ethereal, like a figure that slipped from out of a fairytale book. Her long, loose hair flowing behind her in the breeze, as white as a crone’s, only her face is that of a girl’s, her ivory features supple and young, arrestingly beautiful. She holds her arms about herself delicately as though chilled by the cold, her spare figure seeming even smaller as a result, fragile – a bird-boned creature with a broken wing, waiting to be rescued.
Woefully, the woman’s gaze meets theirs, her eyes glistening and red-rimmed as though she’s been weeping. It makes the deep crimson of her irises all the more alluring.
The blood in Itachi’s veins turns to ice. Every muscle in his body tenses, his hand flexing to reach lightning-quick for the hidden blade within his boot, for a weapon of any kind to grip.
Monster.
Before he can succumb to the impulse to attack, Shisui touches a hand between his shoulder blades, causing him to go still.
“She won’t do anything,” he murmurs. There’s a calm certainty to his tone, even while his eyes remain trained on the vampire woman, glaring a warning. His fingers trail down to the small of Itachi’s back, the gesture at once protective and possessive.
A long moment drags by, one glowing scowl latched onto the other.
The woman breaks first, a flash of anger peeling back her soft countenance into a look of pure, vicious hatred, only for it to dissemble just as quickly back into that somber mask from before. They watch her back as she turns to slowly amble away, stepping along the stone path without a sound, looking forlorn as a drifting spirit.
Itachi exhales, realizing then how tightly he’d been clenching his jaw. He’s still conscious of the other’s hand on him, a small part of him wishing to lean into it, to let his guard thaw. Only—
“Is it really alright to let her go?” he wonders aloud. “She’ll just find a victim elsewhere, unless I stop her.”
“Not with a Hunter around she won’t,” Shisui replies. He catches the look of doubt furrowed between the younger man’s brows, explaining, “The vampires around here aren’t like the ones the two of us used to go after. They’re more motivated by survival than hunger. Better self-preservation instincts, you could say. They usually bewitch their prey rather than kill them outright.”
As if that’s better, Itachi thinks. As if this difference makes the sunless creatures here more well-behaved, and not just more adept at hiding in plain sight, like blood-sucking wolves among sheep.
Since they came to live in the city, they’ve become aware of several of these types already: these urban, “sophisticated” vampires, who appear far more human than the feral and deformed beings he’s used to hunting. The kinds that terrorize small villages, slaughtering livestock and ripping throats without a shred of prudence or caution, having long gone mad with isolation and savage with thirst. Beings like the ancient, harpy-like creatures that killed his friend.
It’s not lost on Itachi, either, how so many of the vampires who reside in cities like this one tend to be “younger,” too – he’d be surprised to find that more than a handful of them have even reached a single century of undead existence. They’re green with novelty, new enough to remember their humanity. It’s the same kind that Shisui can number himself among.
The idea sits like a clot of sourness in the back of his throat.
He swallows it down, tries to shake the thought free from his mind. Even so, an ill feeling still lingers. That Shisui should be like them, should share such commonalities. He realizes then the source of his disquiet, why the sight of the vampire woman unsettled him so.
“Hey,” Itachi starts, “don’t you think that woman must have found it odd for us to be together? A vampire and a vampire hunter…”
“Well,” Shisui answers, scratching his chin somewhat sheepishly. “She probably thinks that I’m hunting you.”
He gives the other a pointed look, remembering his earlier words, recalling their body language. Did I really look like I was under a spell just now? Shisui fails to stifle his laugh, the color rising into the younger man’s features as he veers away, letting the long hair framing his face create a curtain between them. Then again, in that instant when Shisui suddenly placed his hand behind him, could that glint of startlement in his eyes have been mistaken for being smitten?
“You seem so sure,” Itachi mumbles.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it,” Shisui chortles. “Like I said, that one won’t try anything. If she’s wise enough to avoid a confrontation, then she knows better than to attract any unwanted attention. And besides,” he slides Itachi a sly look, his smile pulled lopsided, the tips of his fangs peeking out from his crooked gin, “the only thing a vampire hates more than a vampire hunter is two hunters.”
He wants to mirror the smile, wants to share in the private, ironic humor of their odd situation. But it fades as a thought occurs to him.
“Do they know that you used to be a Hunter, too?”
There’s a pause before Shisui replies this time. “It would probably be bad for me if they did.”
A shard of memory stabs through Itachi’s mind: the sight of Shisui’s body when he first found him, the mangled, ruined state of what was left of him. It sends a trickle of cold up his spine.
“I’m not worried, though. If anything, since I’ve turned into – turned this way, I’m even stronger than I was. They don’t scare me.”
He watches his friend’s face, studies the thin cloud of apprehension that chases across his expression, that hardens with courage. Itachi says nothing. Even while his heart twists.
Shisui turns to him, red eyes beaconing to his night-dark ones.
“Itachi,” he chides him gently. “Don’t do that.”
The younger man blinks, suddenly pinned in place.
“What?”
“Don’t fret so much.”
“I…”
Ah, that’s right. You can hear my thoughts. The way they’re written in his blood, sung out through his pulse.
The palm at his back snakes around to his waist, snagging their bodies closer.
“Come on. There’s something I wanted to show you.”
“This is why I really brought you out here.”
Itachi isn’t sure at first what he’s supposed to be seeing – aside from his friend, that is, who’s standing before him poised with his arms loosely spread.
He rakes a calculating gaze over the other man, lips pursed. Then scans their surroundings, the architecture of the church building behind them, the wider scenery, scouring for any minor detail out of place, any subtle shift from normalcy. Shisui knows he can’t resist a riddle. He watches the younger man patiently, smiling enigmatically all the while.
Itachi inspects him again, his hawk-eyed stare narrowing. Just as he verges into ruefully admitting defeat, he notices it then: a hairsbreadth difference, down at the other’s feet.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you had grown taller, Shisui.”
Shisui beams at him. “Hah, I thought I had you there. You’re too sharp, Itachi.”
His secret discovered, he floats up a tad higher, showing off.
Itachi crouches down to get a closer look, tilting his head at an angle. The flats of the other man’s shoes float little more than a centimeter or two from the ground, suspended as though puppet strings were holding up his sturdy form. Directly below him, the white cobblestone remains shadowless, only Itachi’s hunched silhouette stretched beside him. It could be a trick of the eye, Itachi thinks, or some form of witchery that vampires can do. When did his friend learn such tricks without him knowing? He thumps the toe of Shisui’s shoe with two fingers.
“Is this also an optical illusion?”
“Do you want to see for yourself?”
When he lifts his face, there’s a jade-pale hand offered to him, waiting. The invitation fills his vision, from the tips of Shisui’s fingers to his soft, keen expression. He hesitates for a mere second before he clasps his palm in the other’s, lets himself be pulled up to his feet and into the other man’s grasp. Shisui’s other arm wraps firmly around his waist, their chests pressed close. All at once, Itachi feels himself begin to levitate, too, as though some invisible thread tethering the soles of his feet to the earth has suddenly been cut loose. They begin to rise higher, bodies becoming weightless together. Holding onto one another as though engaged in a motionless waltz.
They ascend even higher, passing the stained-glass windows of the church’s second story, the winged gargoyles ornamenting the eaves. As they become level with the belfry, all at once, reason floods Itachi’s senses, the realization of what they’re doing, and the distance between them and the ground below, causing him to seize in Shisui’s arms. He throws his arms around Shisui’s neck, as a drowning man at sea.
“Shisui—”
“I’ve got you,” Shisui soothes, steadying him. Their legs tangle together, nonetheless, dangling above the sensation of nothingness beneath them. His friend adds, smiling, “As if I’d let anything happen to you.”
Itachi doesn’t reply, though, quivering a bit, the tension eases from his limbs. A part of him wants to tell him That’s enough, let me down. But now that the spike of panic has subsided, the adrenaline becomes exhilarating. He recalls what it was like to be adventurous once, both of them stealing across rooftops in pursuit of vampires when they were younger, leaping across the span of alleys from one to the other. It’s not so bad, being high up, Itachi thinks.
They nearly graze the clouds when Shisui decides to pause, becoming still. The soft breeze they’d felt on the ground is more biting at this altitude, sending a shiver through Itachi as the wind ripples by.
“I’d fly you to the moon, if I could,” Shisui says, “but I thought I’d at least bring you closer to it. Doesn’t it look even bigger now?”
He glances at the moon, hanging like a giant opal in the sky beside them, seeming so near now that they might be floating astride it. And then, as if this, too, is a power his friend possesses, the last wisp of cloud drifts clear of the moon’s beams, the full splendor of its light pouring unencumbered over them, illuminating their entangled figures. Shisui’s expression fills up his gaze as he smiles broadly at him, his eyes like crescents. Within the white brilliance of the moon, his face is even paler than moonlight, an indigo shine gleaming in his dark curls, his inkbrush lashes.
“Yes,” Itachi breathes. “It’s beautiful.”
Though, truthfully, he’s long stopped staring at the moon.
o
“I thought you were going to bite me.”
Beside him, Shisui lays with an arm pillowed behind his head, his tone flush with amusement. “And ruin such a beautiful cock as yours? Never.”
A heavy dimness settles around them, the candle flames nearly extinguished, coming close to drowning in the melted wax. The smell of blood and sex permeates the room as they lay naked above the covers, sweaty and sticky and utterly sated.
Shisui is even cheekier than usual, his cheeriness all the more pronounced in the post-coital blood drunkenness. His every cell responding to the musical thrum of Itachi’s pulse, as ocean waves obeying the moon’s supernatural pull. Like tides cresting higher, his mood swelling with the taste of Itachi’s orgasm lingering on his tongue. He practically hums as he toys with the pair of spectacles on the nightstand – the ones Itachi bought for him, thinking the red, circular lenses would be useful in masking the red of Shisui’s eyes when they go out and walk together in the city.
Worn out though he is, Itachi’s mind goes on churning with thoughts, replaying in his head the look in Shisui’s eyes earlier. The way the blood coursed through his erection, how easily he might have sank his teeth into the petal-soft flesh there. He thinks of how difficult it used to be for his friend to even be present in a room with another creature that has a heartbeat. He wonders sometimes where this humanizing degree of self-discipline comes from, if such a thing as a tame vampire exists.
No, that’s not the right word.
Peering down at himself, Itachi observes the damage their lovemaking wrought, eyeing each bitemark and puncture wound, particularly those inside his thighs and around his chest. His nipples are an angry red, chewed raw with the skin around them purpling with bruise-like hickeys.
You sure didn’t have any reservations about attacking my nipples, Itachi thinks.
“You’re so sensitive there, I can’t resist,” the other responds. A beat goes by, before he shifts his hips to face him, a little awkwardly. “Sorry, is that eerie of me to do?”
Itachi mirrors his position, turning onto his side, gazing back at him softly. He reaches a hand to cup the other’s face gingerly, his cheek cold as marble under his touch. “It doesn’t bother me.”
He leans forward then and kisses him deeply, the taste of his own blood and semen swirling into his mouth. A seed of arousal sprouts in him anew, as he tastes himself the way Shisui tastes him, reversing their roles. In his mind, Itachi invites him into himself, pulls him into probing further, spooling their thoughts in with the other’s. Braiding them into one.
Were I the same as you, I would be truly monstrous, he thinks. I would drink every last drop of blood in your body, I would devour you completely, gorge myself on the taste of you, and make you all mine. I’d keep you all to myself, become inseparable from you, body and soul, I’d—
He pulls away, suddenly ashen with embarrassment, realizing he’s revealed too much. I’m sick, Itachi thinks. Unclean. There is a darkness enveloped inside him, a clot of sin lodged in his heart. Swirling with jealousy, possessiveness, with a depthless appetite for the other man that can only be unnatural in the absence of a vampiric curse.
Shisui stares back at him evenly, knowingly, holding his gaze. The look he gives Itachi is so tender, however, so completely besotted. It strips the shame from Itachi straight down to his bones, cracks his tough exterior open to let in the warmth from his friend’s ruby eyes. As if on its own, his body moves into the cocoon of the other’s arms.
No words are needed in this telepathic thread that tethers them together, through mind and body, red as a string of fate: assailant and victim, hunter and hunted, lover to lover.