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It still feels a little unreal.
He’s gone through a full rollercoaster of emotions: grief at thinking that he’d lost him forever, due to his own weakness; rage at the vampires that have made this cruel world possible; hope upon seeing him alive and whole again; worry at seeing the pain on the other’s face.
Happiness that they’ve finally met again.
“It’s really you,” Chuuya says, slightly choked up, not just by the punishing grip around his body. “You’re really here.” He reaches up and touches Dazai’s face, cool even through the gloves. “…You made me so worried, shitty mackerel.”
The years have been extremely generous to Dazai. He’s now more than a full head taller and his cheeks are more pronounced, baby fat all gone. There’s a stern set to his jawline and he lets his fingertips feel the lines of the other’s face.
Like this, it’s almost easy to ignore everything else. Like the fact that Dazai has basically swooped in and kidnapped him from the frontlines of battle. Like the fact that Dazai, who’s always had twig-arms, is carrying him like someone who’s flagrantly stolen a bride. Like the fact that Dazai is wearing an all-white uniform that is familiar to him—because they’re the usual form of dress by vampires, the enemies of humanity, the enemies that Chuuya’s sworn to exterminate in the name of vengeance.
It’s strange, really.
When they’ve been much younger, their relationship has never been that of demonstrative affection. They stuck together, as children from the same orphanage, as kids that have been captured together by vampires, as captives that have been inducted to the same vampire food farm. They’ve worked especially well together, Dazai’s cunning strategies and Chuuya’s raw power.
And then, they tried to stage an escape from being nothing but vampire food.
Dazai had sacrificed himself so Chuuya could escape and find his way towards the group of human resistance.
And now, Chuuya can’t stop the sudden swell of affection, overpowering him with the need to continue touching Dazai’s face, as though he can only keep on believing that Dazai has survived and returned to him, as long as there’s physical contact between them.
“Where are you bringing me?” Chuuya asks eventually when Dazai only keeps on running, flitting past abandoned buildings. “The Agency isn’t so bad, you know. A lot of them are such goody-goody two-shoes it sometimes makes me sick, but they know to protect their kind. Even if… you know, you’ve transformed, they’ll welcome you. I’ll vouch for you.”
With the way that Dazai’s been carrying him, his ear is pressed right against the other’s ribs. He can’t hear a heartbeat. Coupled with the cold skin and the uncharacteristic burst of strength… Chuuya isn’t stupid. The only way Dazai could have survived is for him to have been transformed to a vampire.
Dazai, who hates vampires more than anyone, because they were the cause of death of Oda-sensei, the only adult that had been kind to them back in the orphanage where they met. Dazai became a vampire so he could survive—even if he’d always joked about wanting to die because this world is so wretched anyway—so he could come back to him.
Dazai clenches his jaw harder, and then carries Chuuya inside one abandoned building. It used to be an arcade, even if now, none of the neon lights are switched on. There’s a heavy scent of dust and disuse, but it’s hard to focus on all of the signs of dilapidation when there’s Dazai’s face right there, all pinched and serious.
Dazai’s arms tighten around Chuuya’s form, before unceremoniously flinging him off at the far wall.
“Oi—!” Caught off-guard, Chuuya scrambles to jump off the wall before landing on a crouch to absorb the momentum better. He keeps his eyes on Dazai, who’s looking at him with wild eyes, glowing bright brown even in the dimness of the area. Oh, this is really unfair—he’s always been handsome, but there’s no denying now that he looks absolutely devastating.
Thinking back on all of the vampires that he’s faced, they’ve always possessed some kind of otherworldly aura of beauty. Of course, it hadn’t mattered one whit to him, for he’s always mowed them down with his sword, their looks not mattering to him in the slightest. Now that he’s looking at Dazai though, it seems that it really is true, that vampires could be unfathomably beautiful.
But then, Dazai’s face twists into something like anguish, and Chuuya feels his heart clench.
“What’s the matter, Dazai?” He makes to close the gap between them, and Dazai groans before backpedalling away. “Did you—did you get injured as we were running away?”
“You are so fucking stupid as always,” Dazai’s words—his first words to him after four years apart, of thinking that he’d never hear that infuriating voice ever again—to him are tinged with hysteria. “You think you could take on Gogol? That is Dostoevsky’s second-in-command!”
Fyodor Dostoevsky, the current, undisputed leader of all the vampires in the world. Nikolai Gogol, a high-ranking vampire that has arrived at Yokohama’s soil last week, ostensibly to deal with the Agency of resistance. The battleground where Chuuya has been unceremoniously plucked from just now, is battling with Gogol.
“We are strong,” Chuuya responds and reaches out to Dazai. “If you join us, we’ll be even stronger.”
“I don’t want to team up with a group of idiotic, weak humans,” Dazai spits out.
Chuuya tilts his head. “But you’re human.”
“I’m no longer human, you stupid chibi!” Dazai’s eyes burn brighter, and each time he opens his mouth, the lengthening of his fangs becomes more obvious. “Isn’t it obvious that I’m a vampire now?!”
“Okay. You’re still the same shitty Dazai.”
Dazai spends the next few minutes gaping at him, before: “Urgh, I can’t believe I wasted energy saving an idiot like you…”
“Since you’re a vampire now, does that mean that you have intel on Gogol?” Chuuya takes a few more steps forward, until he’s nearly backing Dazai against the wall. “You don’t have to be friends with them if you don’t want to. It will just be like last time.”
Before, others looked at Dazai with half-awe and half-distrust. Chuuya and Oda-sensei had been the only ones who were able to coax things other than one-word rejections and cutting sneers from him. Before, Chuuya had never been able to be honest about how much he valued Dazai. Before, Chuuya had thought that he’d forever lost the chance to be with Dazai.
No, it cannot be exactly the same as before.
“Don’t you get it, chibikko?! I’m a vampire now. Your side’s enemy!” Dazai raises an arm between them, as though to deter his advances. “Vampires drink human blood for sustenance! I can’t stay with you!”
Chuuya smiles. “Then just drink from me.”
Once again, Dazai is reduced to open-mouthed gaping. “You, you, you’re so stupid! Dumbass! Idiot chibi!”
“What’s with you?! I’m offering a solution to your problem!”
“It’s not that simple! You think you’re offering one time, but I’ll have to drink it for the rest of my life!”
“Then you can drink from me for the rest of our lives, shitty Dazai!” Before Dazai can gape at him again, Chuuya barrels on, “You haven’t drunk from anyone in four years, right?! That’s why your eyes have not yet turned red! And you can’t survive if you don’t drink, right?! I can’t lose you again, now that I’ve found you!”
Briefly, as though pained by the deluge of honesty, Dazai closes his eyes. “…I’m the one who tracked you down, chibikko.”
A roll of eyes. “You’ve become more annoying than before.”
“I won’t let you change your mind,” Dazai breathes out, tilting forward until his face is tucked against his neck. “I won’t let you ever leave me, Chuuya.”
Upon hearing his name on the other’s lips, Chuuya closes his eyes as he shifts them, so that he’s the one whose back is against the wall. He raises his arms so that he’s embracing Dazai closer to him, his hands carding through the other’s hair.
Four years ago, Dazai had been bleeding, surrounded by vampires as he yelled at Chuuya to move and not waste his chance at escape. Survive for both our sakes, was his willful wish. Chuuya had tried his best to be selfless, by following Dazai’s will instead of going with his own selfish wish of wanting to stay with him until the bitter end.
Now, it’s Chuuya’s time to be selfish.
“I won’t let anyone or anything separate us again,” Chuuya promises, something dark and powerful curling inside his gut. “Even if it’s that crazy vampire clown, or the king of vampires. I won’t let them.”
Dazai shudders against him. Then, he opens his mouth and sinks his teeth against the skin of Chuuya’s neck. There’s the pain of skin tearing, but more than that, Chuuya feels happiness from each pull of blood, contentment from each biting suck against his neck.
It’s strange, and a little bit unreal.
He’s heard that humans who’ve had their blood sucked by vampires felt nice, yes, but they’ve also supposedly felt weak afterwards.
Right now, Chuuya feels intoxicated, pleasure humming through his veins. More than that, he feels powerful, as though he’s the one who’s being nourished instead of the other way around.
A dizzying amount of comfort, like he’s finally come home.
He clutches Dazai closer and Dazai burrows against him, as though he’s trying to melt into his skin. His knees wobble and he lets out a moan after one particularly aggressive suck, and he feels himself sliding down the wall, Dazai chasing after him.
Dazai’s mouth latches onto his skin once more, but he doesn’t bite again. He licks at the wound, alternating between almost-shy kitten licks and more aggressive laps. Chuuya feels his skin stitching closed, and the sensation of Dazai’s tongue against the tender skin makes him moan again. There’s no second feeding bite, but Dazai drags the edges of his teeth against his pulse, his clavicle, as though the other is already mapping out his future biting spots.
Chuuya’s legs fall apart wider, and Dazai climbs more securely on top of his lap, eager and greedy in his actions. It’s pure instinct when Chuuya uses his hands to drag Dazai’s face upwards, until their lips meet. Dazai opens his mouth immediately, and the taste of his own blood is almost sweet against his tongue. It’s pure instinct and his instincts have never led him astray, just like now.
His instincts hiss insistently at him, to devour Dazai so he can’t be ever lost to him again, to keep Dazai’s tongue and essence in his tongue and swallow him whole so he can become a gemstone inside his stomach. All impossibly greedy things, and Chuuya sucks on Dazai’s tongue instead and hopes it pacifies his wants.
With another groan, Dazai tries to wrench his mouth away from his. Chuuya pulls him down again for another kiss, that turns into another, into another, into another.
Outside, there is an ongoing war. There is the problem of a high-ranking vampire suddenly being sent to personally go against human resistance groups. There is the world that’s still a desolate shell of what it once was.
But then, there is Dazai with him, and with that Chuuya is sure that with the two of them, there is nothing that they can’t overcome.