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With a graceful swing of Mikaela’s blade, an arc of light cleaved through the final Horseman of John. Its legs melted in clumps, and fringe too grainy to be feathers fell like ash. A breeze swept them over his feet and across the rutted roads. After guzzling his last drops of blood, the thorns sprouting from his blade receded from his hand.
Following the custom of their deployments, the new livestock gathered around René for perfectly rehearsed logistics of their new normal: this territory stood under the safeguard and control of vampires, and through that security, they consented to give the life pumping through their veins.
A deathly lust rose in the air, and Mikaela kept his focus on the prisms haloing the moon. A young child’s scream echoed and collapsed with equal speed. Lacus Welt, certainly. Not a day passed in Sanguinem where he couldn’t be found leaning against a bridge, bemoaning the laws keeping him from emptying a bloodstream.
What used to be human dropped to the earth as a pitiful husk.
Lacus wiped his spoil’s remains with the back of his glove, and he said with a feigned yawn, “Another livestock pit, another day.”
He stole a sharp glance at Mikaela and, used to his lack of acknowledgment, continued anyway.
“Are you stealing a sip while we’re out—”
“Hell no! How dare you!?”
Despite reflecting Mikaela’s sentiments, that cry of refusal belonged to someone else. Its cadence captured the ears vampire and mortal alike, sending a pang of embarrassment he knew too well.
“Him again…” Lacus sighed.
Mikaela refrained from rolling his eyes. To break through the crowd took seconds; humans cleared from his path with mere eye contact.
He’d grown desensitized to their stares, resentful yet anxious. To regard him as a subduer (when he himself suffered in their place only four years prior) once emphasized his crushing solitude.
And then, his sire brought home a second progeny: the source of his healing and long-lost friend from childhood.
A vampire rivaling Ferid in eccentricity stood center-stage, whose adorable face betrayed all the innocence vampiric psychology allowed. Beneath his foot lay a stranger. His droopy eyes drank in his surroundings with bewildered desperation, and his short build made Yuuichirou’s boot appear wider.
His pale skin crimsoned amidst his freckles.
“Mika!”
“What are you doing?” Mikaela asked, reluctant to condone whatever nonsense led to this spectacle. “There’s no need to harm civilians.”
“Please…” Said civilian sputtered, “Forgive me I—I didn’t think—”
“I have to! What he did was unforgivable!”
“What’s going on, Mikaela?” René called amidst the flock.
The surrounding humans dared not speak and reeled in the manner of frightened servants, awaiting the punishment of a man made an example.
“This guy…”
Yuuichirou grit his teeth, his fingers gracing the hilt of his sword.
“He told me to suck his blood!”
Like a pebble tossed into still waters, confusion-laced whispers ripped among the crowd. Was not retrieving their blood the sole purpose and the only use of their bodies? How did the odd fellow ask to receive such scorn? How detestable could he have been to justify a face full of dirt?
“That’s it!? Just take some!” Lacus cried, shoving aside a family of four.
“No! What’s wrong with you!?”
“Me!?”
Mikaela restrained his love-struck impulses and placed his hand on Yuuichirou’s shoulder for no longer than a second. He stiffened to sidestep any impression of intimacy.
“I understand if you’re uncomfortable,” He said, “We… You haven’t been a vampire for that long—”
“Who cares!?” Lacus broke in.
Pouring cold water on Mikaela’s efforts to console Yuuichirou, he raised a small girl by the wrist as a living visual aid.
“You’re not this anymore! What does it matter if—”
“I’m not two-timing Mika, idiot!”
Mikaela’s mouth hung open. To know Yuuichirou’s attitudes by heart didn’t slow the blood surging to his face.
Lacus, too, quieted himself at once. His newfound livestock enlivened themselves with gossip like school children.
“‘Two-timing? That’s cheating, isn’t it?”
“Who does a bloodsucker cheat on!? No way he’s dating a person!”
“A vampire’s more likely. Can they even love? Is that how their relationships work!?”
The child in Lacus’s grasp fell to the ground, and he silenced every voice when he cried, “The hell is that supposed to mean!?”
Grabbing Mikaela’s hand and waving it about, Yuuichirou answered as though the question was as obvious as it was sacrilegious.
“Mika’s the only person I’ve ever drunk from! And this—this human told me to two-time him!”
“Two-ti… Listen to yourself! What kind of human logic is that—!?”
“Enough!” Mikaela snapped once the embarrassment released its choke-hold on his voice.
He rested his palm against his forehead and, after venting a dreary sigh, locked eyes with Yuuichirou’s victim. Nothing in his cowering gait or runny rose suggested a man of seductive conceit.
“Don’t just stare! Apologize to Mika! Right now!”
“Yuu. Shush.”
“What!? But he—”
His hand muffled Yuuichirou’s voice. He ignored the echoing murmurs of his name, of an audience piecing together that he was the ‘Mika’ the man supposedly wronged.
“Talk.”
“A horseman came r-right towards me!” The man stammered on the brink of sobbing, “H-He saved me and—I thought it’d be a token of appreciation! Please don’t kill me! Had I known the rules—”
“What rules!?” Lacus shouted.
“If I knew he’d be cheating on you, I’d never have—I’m begging you! Believe me!”
“Right, okay,” Mikaela said. “Got it.”
He led Yuuichirou’s foot off the poor soul. When he at last regained freedom, he limped into the bewildered arms of a friend. His savior refused to move a muscle until René, with a half-amused shrug, went on describing the lifestyle of a typical vampire territory.
After a brief inspection, Mikaela pulled Yuuichirou closer by the waist, for his masking of affection grew sloppy when flustered.
“I drink human blood! And so do you!”
“Not from the source!” Yuuichirou whined back. The moment these words parted his lips, however, a tragic realization passed over his features.
“Unless…” He whispered, “Mika, don’t tell me…”
“No! Ugh, come here!”
Striving to keep as much attention from them as possible, Mikaela lead him further along the road.
“Don’t you get it? It’s…”
He made the mistake of admiring Yuuichirou’s face for too long, and he amended his reply to something gentler.
“Um… It’s only cheating if it’s another vampire.”
“Really?”
Mikaela offered his most assuring smile. A worry seized him Yuuichirou wasn’t convinced, but the sparkling grin he treasured most graced his lips.
“I never knew! I’m glad!”
His darling expression having shattered Mikaela’s defenses, he enjoyed a brief yet passionate squeeze of his hands.
“… About that, when was the last time you had something that wasn’t my blood?”
Yuuichirou’s innocent laugh betrayed him, and his excuse upon receiving Mikaela’s vial was shoddy at best.
“Thanks! I… forgot mine!”
He drank with greed, and blood dyed the corner of his mouth upon finishing.
Mikaela cleaned it with a thumb that lingered and trailed across the entirety of his pliant, soft lower lip.
“Geez… be more careful. I keep saying you can’t live off me alone anymore.”
That hand found itself in Yuuichirou’s, who slipped off Mikaela’s glove at once.
“But nothing tastes as good!”
His forefinger hovered so close to Yuuichirou’s mouth that a slight warmth graced the tip.
“May I?”
“Yuu, now’s not the time…”
“One little drop! I promise! I’ll let you have some too!” He begged, patting where Mikaela’s bite marks once lay on his neck.
With a groan more enticed than he wanted, his fingers pushed further between Yuuichirou’s lips, and he shuddered when they scraped his bottom teeth.
“You’re so spoiled.”
“Then stop spoiling me!”
Yuuichirou held his arm still, and Mikaela gasped when fangs entered his wrist.
“That’s not my—Yuu—!”
He cut off his voice, lest the loving suffix he gave only when they were alone would slip.
A thick wall of endearment segregated the two from the rest of the world, and Lacus crossed his arms on the other side.
“… Hey. What’s with that lovey-dovey atmosphere?”
Despite their distance, the passing clouds unveiled the moon’s spotlight on their location. Every blissful look, giggle between sips, and subtle kiss on Mikaela’s skin bathed in that particular glow.
The victim of Yuuichirou’s assumptions picked the dirt off his sweatshirt, marveling at the drastic shift in his tormentor’s mood.
“Aren’t they… like, vampires?”
In the distance, Mikaela lifted Yuuichirou’s upper arm and huddled against his body.
“If you want to make it up to me,” He appealed, “Give me your blood, too.”
Refusing to endure another round of syrupy nonsense, Lacus answered the man with “Barely!” and made a full pivot toward, as far as he was concerned, the sole vampire among him.
“Our work is finished here,” René said. “Lord Ferid awaits us in Sannomiya.”
Lacus jerked his thumb in Mikaela and Yuuichirou’s direction.
“Tell them that.”
Between whispered guarantees of ‘never giving themselves to anyone else,’ they nestled each other’s faces in the sanctuary of their palms.
When the tips of their noses rubbed together, they exhausted what morbid curiosity René had left, and he dragged Lacus to a ‘sanctuary’ of their own: the approaching helicopters.
“Keep walking. Don’t turn around. They’ll find a way back themselves.”