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“If someone asked you to dip your hand into scalding water, would you?”
“Is that a real question?”
“Would I ask if it wasn’t?” Keigo grins, trailing his thumb across Touya’s cheekbone, his fingers threading deeper into black locks.
“I’m not listening to the prick that thinks he can get away with asking something that stupid,” Touya sighs, eyes never leaving Keigo’s face, even as the blond’s gaze wanders. “So… no.”
“Why not?” Keigo cants his head, eyes hooded as he chews his cheek. His greedy fingers stop their exploration of Touya, stilling in his hair.
“Because, angel…” Touya reaches up, hooking his long fingers around the nape of Keigo’s neck and guiding him toward a lazy kiss. “That would hurt like a son of a bitch.”
He tastes sickeningly sweet, like those tooth-rooting coffees he always drinks, especially after all-nighters. He tastes a bit like cinnamon, too.
Touya’s chest tightens. His body feels hot, and bloodlust pools in his gut. A voice buried deep in his heart tells him Keigo would taste better if Touya sank his fangs into him.
Relaxing into the bed, Touya sighs deeply. He’d bet money his eyes have already gone red if Keigo’s expression is any indicator, familiar curiosity gleaming in his golden eyes.
“In that case, why do you listen when you’re told not to drink blood?”
“You’re comparing apples to oranges,” Touya rasps, voice catching in his throat.
It’s a dangerous game bringing this topic up when they’re close like this—Keigo’s body pressing into Touya, their breath shared, the silly human’s heart beating hard and heavy in his chest.
“No.” Tawny curls fall across Keigo’s eyes when he shakes his head. “I can see how much it pains you to be near me like this and how you pale when someone gets hurt, even if you haven’t seen their blood yet. You always leave before you can fully transform, or you use those sedatives that make you lethargic.”
“What are you getting at?” The words ghost past Touya’s lips, floating up between them toward the ceiling. His heart feels like a balloon, bobbing along precariously, seconds from drifting into open air.
Keigo pulls out a needle, unafraid to pop it before it can fly free.
“Did you know,” he breathes, shifting his weight so that their legs tangle further, his thigh pressing between Touya’s, pushing up, nearly crushing him, “that drinking blood increases your lifespan and that it can heal you faster if you get hurt?”
With his ruggedly handsome features, messy curls, and supple skin, Keigo is divinity embodied as he looks down at Touya.
However, the half-vampire muses, he might just be a silver-tongued snake in disguise.
“Who told you that?”
Touya’s heart pounds against his ribs. The pressure along his gums tells him his fangs are already elongating. Overly aware of Keigo’s heat and proximity, Touya scrambles to remember where he left his sedatives.
“I read it somewhere.”
It’s a lie. It has to be. Touya has heard no such thing, not even during his orphanage days.
Drinking blood leads to rampage and slaughter, nothing more.
“What if I let you drink mine?”
Touya’s blood pressure spikes, and he sees white. Everything is hot, burning, and disorienting. No one has ever offered him their blood, least of all while lying in bed with him.
“Keigo,” Touya grits out. “Get off of me.”
“What if I say no?” Keigo tests, eyes glinting darkly, mischievously.
“I’ll throw you off.” The threat is a hiss that melts into a plea. “Please, I need to find my sedatives.”
It’s embarrassing how Touya’s voice wavers, trembling as a child’s would.
Keigo sits back on his heels, but doesn’t move from the bed. His gaze is unnervingly calculating in its appraisal of Touya, and he doesn’t bother masking it.
Now more than ever, Touya is trapped under Keigo’s microscope, squished like a bug between slides.
Only this bug, this pest, isn’t one that can’t fight back.
Disentangling himself from Keigo, Touya reaches for the nightstand, ripping it open with too much force. Scraps of paper fly into the air. Wood scrapes on wood as the drawer’s weight collides with the bed frame. Pens scatter, and Touya searches through the mess with shaky hands.
If he can’t find a fresh syringe, he’ll have to bolt before his baser instincts overcome him—attacking Keigo is the last thing he wants right now. Not because he loves the human. Not because he’ll lose his credibility as a devil rights activist. Not even because he’ll be arrested for drinking blood.
It’s the last thing he wants right now because he already knows the truth.
Keigo is good at what he does, damn good. But this whole time, he’s underestimated Touya.
And so, Touya knows that Keigo’s been sent to ruin his life, not out of malice but for a greater cause. He knows that he’s the domino that the government has chosen to topple first, revitalizing civil unrest across the country.
He can easily imagine the headline they’ll run: Devil Rights Activist’s Rampage Leaves Countless Dead. Should Devil Guidelines be Rewritten?
What he doesn’t know yet is why, which is the reason he’s continued to participate in the charade where Keigo and Touya are besotted graduate students, rather than sending the bastard spy packing.
At the bottom of the drawer, a single syringe hides beneath a crumpled hanami pamphlet.
Grabbing the lifeline, Touya flicks the cap off the needle with a long nail. He’d barely felt them transform. His hands had been at the small of Keigo’s back.
How easy it would have been to cut him then, he thinks, stomach knotting.
Without hesitation, he slams the needle into the meat of his thigh, injecting the sedative.
Keigo’s game is a dangerous one, tempting a devil, toying with him. But Touya’s is even deadlier, playing along.
The sedative works fast. Touya feels calmer already. His fangs and nails recede, and his heart stops racing, his bloodlust dulling to a low simmer.
“I could kill you, you know,” Touya groans, sagging back on the bed. Resting a hand over his eyes, he refuses to look at Keigo. The pretty bastard has caused enough problems. Touya doesn’t need more.
“Never,” Keigo whispers, his breath fanning across Touya’s collar. No sooner has the word left him does his head come to rest on Touya, cradled in the curve of his shoulder. “I trust you, Touya. If you haven’t killed me yet, I don’t think you will. I mean…” Keigo laughs. “I offered you my blood, and you rejected me.”
“I wanted it,” Touya admits.
He’s not sure he meant to say as much, but Keigo should know how thin the wire was that he’d so gayly walked.
“And if I drank it, if I hurt you, I would have killed you and lost control.”
“No.” Keigo shakes his head gently, snuggling closer to Touya. “I don’t believe you.”
Keigo wakes alone in a bed meant for two. Groaning, he drags himself up and pads around the apartment. It’s empty. No brooding, half-dead-looking vampires in sight. A shame, really.
Pulling out his burner phone, Keigo taps out one of the many numbers he has memorized but not saved.
“Zero Two, this is Zero Three. The mission failed.”
“Again?” Zero Two’s voice is dry, unamused and unimpressed. “I’m starting to have doubts about your abilities. How many failures is this now? I’m losing count.”
Keigo clenches his teeth as pressure builds at his temples. “He’s shockingly in control of his instincts. I point-blank offered to let him drink my blood, and he not only refused me but left me entirely unharmed. What do you want me to do? Cut myself in front of him?”
“If you must.”
Of course that’s her response. Results are paramount; Keigo’s life is disposable.
“I’m not sure that’ll be enough,” he hisses through the line.
“You’re clever, are you not, Zero Three? Get the target to spill human blood, no matter the cost, personal or otherwise.”
When the line goes dead, Keigo throws his phone across the room.
Keigo’s skin splits easily under Touya’s nails, brilliant crimson welling from each tender wound, eventually spilling over to bathe his body in blood.
Keigo smiles, murmuring Touya’s name like a prayer as he chases the vampire’s lips.
“Promise me that we’ll always have this.”
The world tilts, but Touya doesn’t stumble, doesn’t waver. He only pulls Keigo closer, anchoring himself with the human pressed to his chest. Wrapping his arms around Keigo, Touya trails kisses down the human’s neck, stopping to salivate over the perfect, smooth curve where his neck joins his shoulder.
He shouldn’t bite Keigo. Not when he’s already bleeding, blood trickling from cuts beneath his eyes, from his cheeks, his palms, his chest, his skin washed red like a fiery sunset.
But he can’t help himself. Keigo’s blood calls to him, beckoning with a promise of a brighter future, a fuller one. Squeezing his eyes shut, Touya clings by a thread to his convictions.
As it is, he can barely breathe. The scent of iron and copper fills the air, choking him with a bouquet so palpable he feels it glide down his throat. His toes curl at the thought of satiating himself with Keigo’s blood.
When he opens his eyes, he realizes he’s already bitten Keigo.
Two hours before his alarm, Touya wakes with a start, fangs extended and sweat beaded along his brow, plastering his hair to his forehead. Tears trail down his cheeks, dripping from his jaw onto his now tattered sheets.
Reality is cruel. But dreams, Touya thinks, are crueler.
Sighing, he checks the time, then his phone. It’s as good a day as any for a sick day. After emailing his professors, Touya shoots a message to the lab. He needs to visit her.
Touya lived his entire life believing that he was an orphan—until the day he found he wasn’t. On that day, he learned the truth about Rei.
His memories of ONLO are fuzzy at best. Perhaps that’s why it had been so easy to believe it was an orphanage all those years, rather than a devil research lab.
Walking down its long, sterile halls does nothing to trigger old memories. Though perhaps that’s because Touya has never been in this part of the facility. The children aren’t housed with the monsters—the lifers that will never leave ONLO, condemned to live under the lab’s observation for the rest of their miserable lives, like his mother.
Touya’s expectations aren’t set; he has no clue what lies ahead of him. Still, he’s shocked to find a young man—no, a teenager, accompanied by a man that looks so tired it’s impossible to tell if he’s a vampire or simply a haggard human—standing in front of his destination.
The boy’s fingers move like he’s signing to someone, but Touya, having never bothered to learn Japanese Sign Language, can’t begin to fathom what he’s saying.
Touya’s escort stops in front of the large cell. Thick glass separates them from the figure shrouded within. Beside them, the teen stops signing and stares. Touya’s chest tightens. One of the boy’s eyes is transformed, the white of it red, his iris yellow and slitted. He’s a devil, too, and his face is achingly familiar, like looking into a mirror.
Touya’s never seen a vampire like this before—one that seems so entirely in control despite being partially transformed.
“You won’t be able to speak to her,” Touya’s escort says. “Her fangs make speech impossible, and sound doesn’t carry well through the glass. She knows JSL, though. So if you know any, you’re in luck.” With a polite nod, the woman steps away to stand idle several cells away, then she pulls out her phone and starts tapping.
Ignoring the teen, Touya peers into Rei’s cell. For a devil, she’s beautiful, he can’t help but think. He may find his own visage repulsive and horrifying, but he’d be remiss to say the same of her. Snow white hair falls in her silver eyes. A black mask hides her mouth, concealing her permanently transformed fangs, and cuffs bind her wrists, her long nails capped with metal sheaths. She holds herself well despite the heavy collar that shackles her to the cell’s floor, and her pale skin glows softly like the moon on a starless night.
Touya wonders when she last saw the sky.
When he steps closer, pressing near the glass, her eyes widen in surprise, followed by recognition that flashes across her face. Tears stain her cheeks, and Touya’s heart seizes.
“How do you know Rei?” the boy beside him asks.
“I don’t.”
It’s the truth, and he didn’t come here to get to know her either.
He came to remind himself how far a devil can fall. He wanted to see the pits of hell waiting for him, wanted a place to imagine in his nightmares, wanted a face to remind him there’s a reason he’s still fighting.
Twenty-five years ago, Todoroki Rei, after years of quietly living alongside humans, killed fifteen people and was sentenced to death.
ONLO made a case for her immediate transfer to the laboratory, so rather than hang, Rei became a lab rat with no hope of release.
Touya doesn’t know what happened on that day twenty-five years ago, and he doesn’t think knowing would change anything. Right now, what he needs is the strength to fight a little longer against Keigo’s attempts to break him.
Bile rises in Touya’s throat, and he tears his gaze from Rei. Coming here was a mistake.
“So…” A healthy pink flush saturates Keigo’s cheeks as he fiddles with the handcuffs. He sits with his legs folded beneath him, nestled between Touya’s legs.
“I did some reading.”
Touya’s half-read novel slips from his fingers.
“No, I heard that,” Touya says, grimacing when he catches his reflection in Keigo’s glasses.
It’s frustrating how pathetic he is. With Keigo, it takes so little to trigger Touya’s transformation, and there isn’t a day the devil doesn’t rue the ever-present link between lust and bloodlust.
Scrubbing at his red eyes with the back of his hand, Touya grits his teeth. “Repeat what you said before that.”
“I want to see how far we can go,” Keigo breathes. “I trust you and—”
“You shouldn’t,” Touya growls, pulling his legs back from Keigo.
“Touya, please.” Keigo pouts, blush deepening—the bastard. Touya knows it’s all for show; he’s certain of it. “If you can turn down my offer to drink my blood, then I think you can—”
“That’s different.” Touya’s head pounds, and when he speaks again, it’s with his fangs fully extended. Even if this is an act on Keigo’s part, Touya can’t deny it’s riling him up. The scheming human must be aware of how he looks, swimming in one of Touya’s shirts and nothing else, wanton and pouting with that frustratingly enticing blush.
If Touya wanted, he could slip his fingers beneath the shirt’s hem, trail his fingers up the warm length of Keigo’s thigh and—
Touya clenches his fists, hissing when his fully transformed nails dig into his palms.
“It’s different,” he whispers, the words now a plea.
Blood drips from Touya’s hands onto the sheets. Keigo bites his lip, inhaling sharply.
Wordlessly, the human reaches for the devil, and Touya, afraid to move, lets Keigo handcuff him.
It’s impossible to tell if Keigo truly trusts Touya, but Touya can say with certainty that not an ounce of trust remains for the human. If their relationship meant anything at all, beyond Keigo using Touya and Touya desperately searching for answers, Touya would walk away and not look back after this.
Assuming there was anything left of Keigo to walk away from.
It’s that revelation that hits Touya the hardest—the dawning realization that he’s motivated by more than fear. Somewhere along the way, this thing between them became real. At least to Touya. And he’d rather leave Keigo than allow the human to tempt fate like this.
Then again, he thinks darkly, if Keigo felt the same, he wouldn’t be playing this game. He wouldn’t be pushing Touya’s buttons hard enough to break them.
Keigo’s head feels light and his body heavy. Heart pounding, he releases his grip on Touya’s wrists.
There’s something decidedly wrong with him, he realizes. He’s not meant to feel anything toward the devil. He’s meant to restrain him and then force him to drink blood. But he does feel, and what he feels is too much.
Shameful want courses through Keigo, hot and pooling in his gut. His mouth waters even as his guilt builds, twisting his stomach. Disgust clings to Keigo like a second skin. He feels sick. This is wrong.
But it’s his mission. And it’s this or a bullet in his head. He can’t help how his body reacts.
So he rolls up a sleeve and reaches out for one of Touya’s bound hands.
Keigo makes the mistake of meeting Touya’s gaze. Even transformed, the vampire is attractive, in a haunting and monstrous way—but attractive nevertheless.
A steady stream of tears flows from Touya’s tortured crimson eyes. Keigo swallows and reminds himself who he’s doing this for.
Gently, Keigo holds one of Touya’s nails to his forearm, applying pressure, almost enough to break the skin.
“Don’t,” the devil breathes, his whispered tone raw and aching. “Whatever they’ve promised you, it’s not enough.”
Keigo’s breath catches in his throat, and his heart skips a beat. He had to have heard Touya wrong, but… he knows he hasn’t.
“You don’t understand,” Keigo says, voice strained. “I don’t have a choice.”
Keigo drags Touya’s nail harshly across his arm. Blood wells to the surface as his skin splits, and a wave of dizziness nearly knocks Keigo out. He’s not one to feel faint over the sight of blood, but spilling his own, here and now with Touya trapped at his mercy, is positively overwhelming.
“You always have a choice, angel,” Touya says. His body trembles beneath Keigo, and there’s no doubt in Keigo’s mind that the vampire is using every last ounce of his control to resist the urge to devour him.
Blood drips down the length of Keigo’s arm, the red rivulets staining his skin.
In comparison to Touya’s suffering, Keigo’s toil is child’s play. Though his heart may thunder in his chest, his palms may shake, and his shoulders may tremble, his resolve pales beside Touya’s determination.
A crack forms in Keigo’s heart.
Touya strains against himself, body rigid and taut. Sweat beads along his brow, and his dark hair is plastered to his forehead. His labored breath hitches in his throat, and his hooded eyes are clouded with lust that’s overshadowed by pain and frustration.
He’s… beautiful.
Keigo’s stomach sours.
Who is he to defile a soul so set on standing in the light? Who is he to drag Touya into the shadows by force?
He knew there was a reason he’d brought tranquilizers.
Touya wakes alone in a bed meant for two, sheets stained with blood, handcuffs lying on the floor. He scrubs at his face and drags himself out of bed.
The apartment is empty. No traitorous, alluring spies in sight. Heartbreaking, really.
A hastily scrawled note sits on the counter, Keigo’s cell phone beside it, screen cracked.
Perched atop a light pole, Touya surveys the moonlit city. Somewhere out there, the man he loves is on the run.
He’s going to find him.
I can’t explain, but I also can’t do this anymore. Even if it means being taken out. I’m sorry for everything. It’s better if you forget about me. Though I doubt I’ll forget about you.