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The scenario should have been familiar. He should have felt experienced, confident, after all, he had followed this instinct hundreds of times over the past twenty years, but somehow Kaito doubted he would ever get used to these sensations. The tingling in his teeth. The overwhelming smell of iron in the air. The taste of blood on his tongue, sweet and heavy, filling his mouth as if it wanted to suffocate him. He grimaced. This scenario should have been familiar to him for a completely different reason. From a different perspective. But whenever he tried to remember there was just a blind spot in his memory and the somber premonition of too much pain.
Kaito narrowed his eyes bitterly, trying to block out the alley he was standing in and the pulse under his lips, and instead breathe calmly through his nose, but it was no use. He could still smell the blood and the only thing that suddenly felt very familiar to him was the wave of nausea rising in his guts. His stomach twisted furiously. Because drinking was days overdue again. By now, he should really know better than to suppress this damned urge every god-forsaken time. No matter how much willpower he scrambled up, the desire for blood wouldn't just magically disappear.
It never did.
With a tiring gasp, Kaito let his teeth slide out of the young woman's throat to swallow and although part of him would have wanted to vomit at the motion, he managed to keep the gag reflex under control. Still, he had to stifle a cough as the blood trickled down his throat, sticky and strangely warm, as if he had forced some living creature into his esophagus. With a shudder, Kaito buried his face in the crook of the woman's neck again, trying hard to ignore the effects of the blood. His heart was racing. Somewhere, as if from a great distance, he could feel the young woman clinging to his shirt, the movement she made as she willingly tilted her head to one side to give him better access. That was natural too. An intuitive reaction he had seen too many times already. Vampire biology. He knew that. It should have felt normal. But part of him, young and absolutely scared in that damn back street in the dark, could only think about how he might have acted the exact same way years ago.
Disgusted, Kaito tumbled backwards, away from the woman who was not to blame, away from the rich, tempting liquid just below his lips. He swallowed, hastily averted his gaze from his victim and wiped the remnants of blood from the corners of his mouth. The smell was still there, in the alley, on his clothes, on his skin. Distance. He needed distance. With two unsteady steps he dragged himself to the wall, propping one hand against the stone and pressing the other one to his mouth as a precaution when his stomach convulsed again in pity. Don’t puke. Just don't throw up. He would have to drink again if he couldn’t keep it down now.
Between the busy traffic noises of the city, the music from the club he had just left was barely audible. Kaito had to strain his ears to hear it softly floating over to him, but the distraction helped a little to keep the nausea raging inside him at bay. Then slow steps approached. He bravely dropped his arm from his mouth to try and not look quite as pathetic as he felt, but he already suspected that he wouldn't have been able to fool Edo anyway.
"Kaito?"
Edo's blue pair of eyes flickered briefly over the unconscious woman on the floor before it came to rest on him, picking up all the signs that Kaito wished weren't so obvious. His teeth were still tingling, a sluggish, perturbing feeling like a slowly fading numbness, and he just couldn't stop shaking. His fingers on the wall were clammy and slippery.
"Are you okay?"
'Okay' was absolutely not how he was feeling right now, but Edo knew him well enough to not press any further than he would allow.
"I- ... it's ... fine," Kaito gasped out with difficulty, blinking at the daze that was still pulling at him so persistently. Edo's steps echoed quietly in the side street as he came all the way over to him and Kaito clung to the beat, the flicker of his familiar warmth in the air to block out all the other exuberant impressions.
"How many days have you been postponing it?" There was no reproach in his voice, just the shadow of concern about a situation that had happened far too often already, and somehow that was worse.
Kaito stared at the cobblestones, trying and failing to recapture his wild heartbeat.
“Three or four,” he muttered hoarsely. “…Maybe six. I know I shouldn't be doing this - there's no point in torturing yourself - but ... I just can't get used to it.” It would happen again. They both knew.
Kaito gritted his teeth, saving himself the excuse that was on the tip of his tongue. Instead, he raised his head cautiously, glancing uncertainly over his shoulder at the young woman who lay behind him.
"How is she?," he asked weakly, more to distract from himself than out of actual concern. Physically, she would be perfectly fine. In the vast majority of cases, he was very considerate of his victims. His entire personality consisted of compulsive self-control. And a mountain of guilt.
Edo’s gaze didn’t leave him for even a second. So much for his attempt at distraction.
"She's okay," he explained slowly and in the darkness of the alley the sympathy in his eyes shone brighter than Kaito would have liked. "You're still shaking," he added gently. "How much did you drink?"
Kaito lowered her eyes, running the back of his hand over his mouth once more to wipe away the last traces of blood. Or maybe just the memory of it.
"... Enough," he whispered.
"Kaito."
"Enough," he repeated, a little more confident this time. Blinking away the tiredness he somehow managed to finally let his hand slide off the wall without falling over. "It’s okay. I ... I just need a little fresh air."
On one of the better nights he would have gone back to the club to wash down the disgusting taste on his tongue with alcohol, but today he wasn't sure if he could stand being close to all these people in town any longer. Edo seemed to have come to the same conclusion long before he did. He had brought his jacket with him, Kaito noticed as he put it around his shoulders now, and probably paid for their drinks as well.
"To my place?" Even though it was more of a demand than an invitation that requested his decision, Kaito nodded. "I'll make you some tea. You can take the bed. "
"I'll take the couch," he replied, allowing Edo to push him out of the alley gently but firmly. "…Thanks."
Kaito's heart pounded uselessly in his chest. Something tore at his carotid artery, a greedy, consuming pain, and suddenly his mouth was full of blood. He choked, trying desperately to swallow or spit it out. He couldn't breathe, he couldn't-
The scream was still chafing in his throat long after he could breathe again. With his pulse racing, Kaito stared at the blurry window front at the other end of the room. The pale shimmer of twilight was seeping shyly under the dark curtains, drawing the first delicate contours of his surroundings in the hazy chaos of his mind. A neatly arranged bookcase, the edge of a carpet with a fancy tea table on it. Edo's apartment.
Relief washed over Kaito, so sudden he almost slumped on the couch on which he had just shot up in panic. He leaned forward to rest his head on his hands, gasping for breath. His heart was still pounding so fast it hurt. Dazed, he looked down at himself. The blanket had caught in his lap and the clothes he was wearing were sticking uncomfortably to his skin. He frowned in irritation. These clothes didn’t belong to him. When had he -? Oh. Right. He had changed clothes to sleep. Of course he had.
In the diffuse distance beyond his mind, a door was thrown open. Then there was the sound of hasty steps in the hallway, and when Kaito turned around, Edo was standing in the passage to the living room, staring at him. He looked tired, but his eyes were wide and dark with worry. He took a troubled first step into the room and Kaito clenched his hand in the blanket in his lap.
"I woke you up," he whispered, miserably, before he had the chance to hear the concern in Edo's voice that would clearly be there. "I'm sorry." His throat was still burning from the scream, sore and overly sensitive. Talking felt strangely rough. “Just ... just lie down again. I'll be fine."
"Do you really expect to get rid of me like that?," Edo countered gently.
Kaito shrugged half-heartedly. He didn't trust his voice.
"It was the same dream again, wasn't it?" When there was no answer, Edo quietly stepped up to the couch. Kaito turned his head in embarrassment, but he could almost hear the grief on Edo's face giving way to soft understanding anyway, when he finally crouched down in front of him. "You are processing a trauma, Kaito."
A trauma that effectively scared his body to death, but only evoked incoherent sensations in his head and tormented him with parallels he couldn’t grasp.
"That's stupid," he snapped, a lot more helpless than he wanted to sound. “How am I supposed to cope with an experience in my dreams that I don't even remember? Everything that happened in that cursed alley back then is just a huge black hole in my mind. I don't know anything about the guy who almost killed me. I don't even know what I did or felt in that situation.” That was the worst part of his lack of memory for that night. In an instant his whole life had been turned upside down and he couldn't even tell how it had happened. And whether he had fought to prevent it. "What if I reacted as willingly as- ..." As the woman, he had just chosen himself. Like all people would react to a vampire’s bite. Because that was normal. Kaito swallowed at the lump in his throat. For a fleeting moment he could taste the blood on his tongue again, feel it blocking his windpipe. "What ... if I even enjoyed it?"
When he had woken up in the hospital, somewhere in the fog of painkillers and panic, his throat had burned as if someone had poured liquid fire into it, but he couldn't remember whether the pain had come from his throat literally being ripped apart or whether he had screamed himself sore in the endless hours before.
"Kaito. Hey.” A hand brushed his bare arm. Kaito let out his breath, whimpering. In the next moment, Edo had firmly grabbed his shoulders, gently shaking him to make him look up again. “You may not remember the experience itself, but I know you have read your file hundreds of times, looked at these… gruesome pictures more times than I would like to know. And I know you probably remember every word the doctors said to you when you woke up.”
The hands gripped him tighter, warm and comforting. Kaito slumped his shoulders, swallowing awkwardly. In the faint backlight behind the window, Edo's gaze shimmered in a haunting dark blue.
“What did the doctors say, Kaito? What’s written in your file about the photos of your injuries?"
The x-rays of the fracture in his wrist. The bruises. Abrasions on his arms and face.
"Defensive wounds," Kaito muttered flatly. Edo nodded.
"Exactly. Because you put up a god damn impressive fight. The guy didn't have an easy time with you for a second, Kaito. Not for a second. So please ... don't believe that."
The grip on his shoulders shook gently. Kaito blinked against the imprints of the dream, which looked so suspiciously like the alley next to the club he had found himself in, and slowly the irrational despair inside him began to dissolve.
"Okay," he murmured. Edo carefully pushed him an arm’s length away to look at him, and Kaito hoped the tiny twitch of the corner of his mouth was better at expressing his feelings than his voice. "It’s okay. I calmed down again. ... You can let go."
"I'll make you some more tea," Edo announced thoughtfully as he rose from his crouch.
The tea was tart and light and so pleasantly warm that Kaito gratefully curled both of his hands around the cup in his lap. Edo was sitting next to him on the couch, the blanket still messed up somewhere between them, but that didn't matter. Kaito had long since closed his eyes and leaned against Edo's side, listening to the steady rhythm of his breathing in the silence.
"Better?"
"Yeah," he confirmed sleepily. The fact that his heartbeat had finally calmed down certainly wasn't thanks to the tea, but he wasn't going to say that out loud. He didn't have to.