Work Text:
The sun prises open the sky as it yawns into the horizon, rays paving its way as it climbs up by fractions to take its throne. Curled up on slate roofing with his coat drawn about him to stave off the cold Vanitas watches the day creep in, languid, and waits.
Behind him comes a sudden scuffling sound from the direction of the attic window. Recognising the footsteps he makes no move to turn, even if their occurrence is something odd for the hour. Above him the sky is a shallow blue and mottled with white, the underbellies of the clouds warmed over by encroaching day.
Soon enough there is a shadow to his left. “Vanitas,” Noé says, voice heavy with sleep as he settles down right next to him, “I thought I’d find you out here.”
Curiosity piqued, he steals a glance sideways and finds his eyes drawn towards the line of Noé’s profile, illuminated by the morning sun. Even the warm light seems to cherish him in the way it falls.
Before he can be caught in the act Vanitas tears his gaze away and lights back on the pale yolk whose head has barely surfaced from the meniscus below, huffing a nonchalant sound. “I’m always out here, genius.”
“Mm.” A quiet rustle. In the periphery of his vision Noé has drawn his knees up to his chest and folded his arms on top of them, resting his cheek to a hand and gazing contentedly at the sunrise. “You used to be,” he corrects softly, “But after the catacombs you actually use your bed. Sometimes, at least.”
Vanitas stills. “You noticed?” he says, eventually, finally allowing himself to turn a little bit to look at Noé head on. He opens his mouth and barely catches himself before the plaintive next word tumbles out. Why?
Noé squints at him, brows furrowed together in a frown made soft by the rumple of his hair, the line of a blanket pressed into his face. “You’re my partner,” he points out, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world and not something he would never be caught dead admitting ordinarily.
“‘Course gotta…” Noé continues as he yawns, blinking slowly and forcefully a few times. He draws his blanket around him - Vanitas double takes when he realises he had come onto the roof in his pyjamas and dragging his blanket - “Gotta. Keep an eye out for you.”
It startles a laugh out of Vanitas, the inelegant sound five sizes too large in the silence. “You’d be better off taking care of yourself, Noé,” he retorts, leaning back onto his hands and gazing back up at the pale blue, growing deeper by the minute. “You trust everyone, it’s frankly a nightmare.”
Noé turns his head to face him, eyes bright and lucid for one profound moment. “Someone has to,” he says, decisively, before being interrupted by yet another yawn. He rubs at one eye with the back of a hand. “Wha’ dime i’ it?”
The image strikes Vanitas, just then, sticking indelibly in his mind. Noé, for all his bullheadedness and vampiric brute strength, is in so many ways childlike in his naïveté, wholehearted in his belief. He is possessed of a generosity it is difficult to convince yourself you deserve.
Vanitas wonders if he will remember this conversation, after.
Despite the position of the sun in the sky it is only approaching seven. “Time for you to sleep another 3 hours, sleepyhead,” Vanitas sighs, unable to suppress a note of fondness in his voice. With a groan he gets up, dusting his trousers off as he makes to herd Noé off the slant of the roof and back towards the window.
“Come on, let’s get you back to bed,” he hums, as if talking to a stubborn pet. Noé follows obediently, too close to nodding off to protest the treatment.
“There we go,” he praises. “Good vampire. Eaaaasy.”
---
“How’s the arm,” Vanitas asks abruptly, speaking around a mouthful of a croque madame as he chews.
It is a few uneventful days later; they are having breakfast in the al fresco area of a cafe overlooking a square with a fountain. When Noé glances up at him over - what else - a slice of tarte tatin, he raises one wrist and shakes it meaningfully, a crude shorthand for remember when it got torn off? Yeah, that arm.
Noé's eyes widen in understanding. "Oh," he breathes, setting his utensils down delicately and working his left sleeve down to locate the join, heedless of how he's crinkling the fine material of his jacket. "It was here," he says, tapping an invisible line on his arm. He twists to bring it a little closer to Vanitas. "Here. You wanna see?"
No, Vanitas almost says out of a juvenile instinct, but he really does, so he shuffles a little closer instead, trying not to look too eager. "Can I -"
"Touch?" Noé finishes, shrugging lightly. "Yeah, sure. I can't feel anything anyway."
Vanitas peers down at Noé's forearm, squinting to make out the line Noé seems to be able to indicate so instinctively. Where his index meets the warm tan of his skin Vanitas follows, pressing a tentative finger there, as if he would be able to tell.
Predictably, there is nothing - no foreign sensation, no tell-tale seam that there was ever anything to mend, only the thrum of heat through the material of his gloves, and for one dizzying, careless moment Vanitas wonders how it would feel directly pressed to his skin.
He twitches back when he catches up to himself, rejecting the proximity he had inadvertently created. “…it’s a perfect join,” he quips, by way of recovery. “Hey, what would’ve happened if you didn’t align it correctly? Would you have a hand facing the wrong way now?”
Noé, predictably, blanches, tugging his arm back into the safety of his general person. “I hope not, that would be horrible,” he mourns. “I really didn’t know how to deal with it. Just got it splinted together and hoped for the best.”
Vanitas mulls it over for a second. “You haven’t done this before, then.”
Wide amethyst eyes blink at him. “What? Of course not.”
Vanitas finds his mouth twisting into a knot. “So you didn’t know it would work,” he drawls, slowly. He takes a sip of his tea; the expensive porcelain makes a loud clink as it tips back down onto the saucer.
Noé smiles brightly, and pops a forkful of pastry into his mouth. “Nope! But my teacher told me the theory of our restorative limits, and -"
It frustrates him, the ease with which Noé can behave so recklessly. “And yet you rushed ahead to do it,” Vanitas snaps, uncertain why an ugly emotion is coiling heavily in his sternum, just above his lungs.
“What if it hadn’t worked? What would you have done then?”
Something in his tone must get across. Noé slows down in his chewing, shifting a little to face Vanitas. The earlier levity leaves, in its place a faint lethargy.
“What would you have had me do,” he responds, sounding a little resigned. “One of us can’t die unless staked or beheaded or bled out very quickly, and it’s not you.”
To be fair, I haven’t tested that, Vanitas thinks, numbly.
Noé continues, solemn. “I know what you’re going to say, Vanitas. That I’m an idiot, or naïve, or selfishly cavalier because I have some sort of strength you don’t.” He drags a hand over his face, suddenly looking tired.
“But this is scary for me too, okay? I didn’t sign up for any of this. Or - well - I did, in a manner of speaking, but not the specifics of going head to head with a vampire-hating chasseur on a rampage. If I - if I hadn’t made that split decision you’d be down one shield, and we both know I’m no good to you dead.”
Noé takes a breath, lets it out all at once. “It worked out, so that’s what matters. I’m - I’m not going to dwell on it.”
He delivers this with a finality, lip quivering faintly, before he retreats to his breakfast, cutting bites of the sugary sweet confection and stuffing them into his mouth with more determination than finesse. Noé looks anywhere but at Vanitas, who watches this silently for a long moment, then another, then a third.
“Did it hurt?” Vanitas asks, softly. His voice cracks a little when he uses it, and he curls his hands in his lap so they don’t do something foolish like give him away.
Noé pauses, fork to mouth. “Yeah,” he admits, in a very small voice. His expression gives away just how much. “But I wanted to see Jean-Jacques and Chloé safe. We couldn’t lose.” You understand that, don’t you?
There is something very personal about Noé’s devotion to curse bearers; Vanitas can respect that conviction, if nothing else.
In lieu of a response he waits for Noé to look up before tossing him a crooked smile.
“Well, eat up,” he exhorts, tapping a fork impolitely against the edge of his plate. “We’ve got a bunch of sights to hit today, and somebody had to sleep in till ten…”
---
His hands and legs are bound; he knows better than to resist. There are needles in his veins, a tube shoved into his respiratory tract, and all his alarm bells are ringing, even though this has happened so many times his system should know by now there is no good that comes of panicking.
You’re such a good, good boy, no. 69, coos a voice - Moreau’s, surely, even though the man is nowhere in sight, echoing off the walls of the Chamber. His vision is blurred by the examination lamps turned high into his face. You don’t even struggle when we prepare you anymore.
You could at least knock me out, his dry mouth doesn’t move to say. You could just fucking kill me. All the will to fight has long bled out of his bones; better him than Misha. Poor, sweet no. 71, with his wide-eyed wonder and belief in a greater good, and his stubborn grip on his name.
I had one too, didn’t I? There must have been parents, they must have called him something. On lucid days it rests in a chest in his mind which he occasionally dusts off to check. He squeezes his eyes shut. He’ll look later, if it’s necessary, if there’s even a later.
The blade for today, Moreau hums lovingly, as cool steel is set to his skin. Will you sing, no. 69? Will you lead my symphony?
I won’t, he promises himself as the blade dips into his flesh, begins its loving, heady drag to cut him open. I mustn’t. If I do -
“Vanitas. Vanitas, wake up.” An urgent voice is whispering his name, and he becomes dimly aware of a presence near him, but the person doesn’t touch. Bright blue eyes fly open, focus on the silhouette of a figure with hair like snow. The tang of fear is still sharp in his mouth. White hair - no, not like them, their hair was so much longer…
Seeing he is awake, his roommate gets up from where he had been kneeling by his bedside, ducking into the kitchenette to retrieve a glass and a wet towel.
“You were having a nightmare.” Now that his vision has cleared he can recognise Noé as he murmurs, setting the glass of water down next to Vanitas and kneeling by him again. He holds out the damp towel - almost making as if to sponge off Vanitas’s forehead - then seems to think better of it at the last second, weakly pressing it to one of his hands instead. “Here.”
Gratefully, Vanitas takes the glass in hand and begins to drink. Noé’s expression is hard to read - there is a degree of wariness, but of what, Vanitas really couldn’t say. He isn’t sure if he’d even be able to identify his current name if it hadn’t been the first thing he heard upon waking, Vanitas, Vanitas, Vanitas.
He focuses instead on the soothing rush of water down his throat, absently wiping off his forehead before resting the terrycloth on the back of his neck. Feels his throat work as he swallows, and when he’s done Noé asks, gaze fixed pointedly somewhere west of his face, “Another glass?”
The initial terror has subsided; now the sensations flood in, of the refreshingly crisp late springtime air on his skin, the soft touch of moonlight in their attic room. The very faint flush on the bridge of Noé’s nose.
“I can get it mys -“ Vanitas starts, but the glass is swiped from under his nose and Noé is already across the room, filling him a fresh one. When Noé returns Vanitas clutches the glass in both hands, fully intending to nurse it this time. “Thanks.”
“It’s no trouble,” Noé says, even though he must’ve been awoken abruptly by the sounds of Vanitas’s nightmare. The hour hand of the clock on his nightstand points a little south of 3. “Are you… okay now?”
It’s clear he wants to ask something else, but is too polite to. “Moreau,” Vanitas tells him, simply. He glances down at the water cupped between his hands. The luminous blue of his eyes stares back.
Noé’s gaze shutters. “Oh.” He pulls his knees up so his feet rest on the bed, as well, locking his knees loosely into place between his elbows. “Does… that happen a lot?”
Vanitas quirks a smile, humourless. “Nightmares?” He gazes out the window, the moon ripe and watching. A beat passes before he decides he gains nothing if he lies. “Yeah.”
“Oh,” Noé says quietly, no doubt running the math on why Vanitas is so rarely seen in his bed.
The stretch of his own mouth feels tight and inauthentic, but Vanitas presses on, feeling a shred of guilt at having disrupted the other’s rest. “Go back to sleep, Noé. You must be tired.”
Noé turns at the waist, then, and begins nudging his way onto the mattress, leaving Vanitas to dodge him with small yelps of protest. “Move over,” he says, unnecessarily.
“Noé, what the hell,” Vanitas grumbles as he’s cornered onto the left half of his bed. “This is mine. Yours is over there.”
“I’llsitwithyou,” Noé mumbles, settling into a loosely cross legged position, propping himself up against the headboard with a pillow. He busies himself with arranging the sheets until they’re pooled around his legs and covering his feet, bothering Vanitas until he is arranged into a similar position.
Vanitas blinks and puts up no resistance to the manhandling. “What?” He asks. “I’ve never known you to speak so incomprehensibly before.”
Noé scowls half heartedly. “I’ll sit with you,” he repeats almost inaudibly, head turned to focus on a spot on the pristine sheets. “‘Til the morning.”
It is such an absurd notion - meant to offer comfort, he knows, and isn’t that a foreign idea, a spectacular waste of one’s own time and resources. He opens his mouth to tell Noé exactly what he thinks, to disabuse him of that notion as bluntly as is his wont -
- and doesn’t, can’t when Noé looks like that, curled up with his brow knit and shoulders close to his ears like he’s already bracing for rejection but still asked anyway.
“…if you must.” Vanitas heaves a huge put-upon sigh, flopping backwards with an undignified thud. He resolutely doesn’t look to process the expression of wonder he knows is making its way over Noe’s face. “I may as well take this time to educate you on all the vampire history your teacher seems to have conveniently left out.”
Noé gapes, in a show of offence, but he doesn’t protest when Vanitas begins by quizzing him on the factions in the war, stays quietly attentive until dawn breaks and takes with it the night.
---
The thing about Dante, Vanitas thinks distastefully, is that he takes his coffee black with three cubes of sugar, and doesn’t even have the decency to stir.
It had been a sleepless night again. Vanitas isn't sure if he can blame his foul mood on the lack of sleep or the core of his own personality. “That’s disgusting,” he offers flatly, watching under heavily lidded eyes as Dante lifts the cup to his lips, chugging with nothing short of relish. “I never asked, but why do you do that?”
“Two flavours, one cup,” Dante responds swiftly, winking and smacking his lips. “What’s with the sudden taking a personal interest? Careful, I might start to think you’re actually human.”
Vanitas is temporarily rendered speechless. That’s true, he realises. He’d never made personal conversation before.
“It’s that vampire of yours, isn’t it,” Dante continues. The corner of his mouth quirks up, like he’s in on a joke Vanitas is too slow to get. “Funny how that plays out.”
Hysterical, Vanitas thinks bitterly. A vampire has to teach a human humanity. Poor Vanitas, less what he is than someone who isn’t. He opens his mouth to deliver a scathing comment about how the jokes about his humanity are getting old.
“Touch him and die,” he bites, instead.
That makes Dante’s eyebrows fly straight into his hairline. “Whoa, whoa,” he says, hands raised in a placating motion. “What could I do to him? I’m basically a longer living human who occasionally drinks blood smoothies when the urge hits, if you’ve forgotten.”
He’s right - Vanitas hasn’t. But the dhampirs trade in information without any true loyalty, and while he’s maintained an amicable working relationship with them, it’s born out of necessity with a distance bracketed by caution. He hadn’t meant to let the threat slip.
“Meat shields willing to come along with me are hard to come by,” he drawls instead, as casually as he can. “You know I don’t like to be - inconvenienced.”
Dante narrows his eyes at this, clearly disbelieving. Vanitas drums a clawed hand against the table, lets slip one unnaturally sharp tooth in the accompanying smile. He allows the tension to sink in, relishing in Dante’s growing discomfort.
“Let’s get to it,” he says abruptly, smacking a palm on the table to make the broker jump. “What d’you have for me today?”
Dante freezes in shock, thawing only when Vanitas rests his face on his hand, elbow propped up on the table, and looms into his vision. “C’mon, my money and I don’t have all day.”
The mention of income finally jolts Dante out of his stupor. There’s been a series of sightings near Versailles, Vanitas hears, stray dogs that seem benign until their targets - mostly children who wander away from their families to play - are found mauled the next day.
It’s unclear whether it is one curse bearer or several working in concert, but multiple sightings have been reported in the same timespan in different parts of the suburb. People are fearful, and mistrustful. A curfew has been instituted after sunset. Count Orlok is trapped in negotiations on how to deal with the issue, the humans equally demanding responsibility but rejecting the idea of giving vampires licence to cause any further trouble.
“Politically,” Dante does add, looking around a little nervously, “If anything goes wrong and you’re found acting without being given any say-so, you could be in pretty hot soup with both sides. And if anyone asks, you heard all this yourself; I had nothing to do with it.”
Vanitas takes all of this in with a fair amount of good cheer, humming to himself as tosses Dante a bag of coins. Already his mind is racing with logistics and calculations, theories about the malnomen surfacing in rapid succession.
“No problem,” he says, grinning so widely Dante shuffles his chair back an inch or two. “My lips, my friend, are sealed.”
---
They arrive in Versailles just before sunset that same day, a little worn on the end of a flurry of sudden preparations. As the carriage draws up to the front of their hotel Noé glues his face to the window, eyes sparkling with awe at the sights.
The familiarity of the scene almost makes Vanitas smile.
“That’s the Palace of Versailles,” he tells Noé as they check in. “It’s a museum now, so we can visit after we’re done, if you like.”
“Would I,” Noé gushes happily while Vanitas takes the keys and the bellboy leads them into the lift towards their rooms.
As the mechanisms groan the door closed Vanitas takes a look at the bellboy. He’s young, blond, stood slightly hunched away from them at the lift buttons like he’s afraid of interaction. Unlikely to have perfected the art of unobtrusive professionalism drilled into most hotel staff, and therefore perfect.
“Terrible news about here recently, isn’t it,” Vanitas sighs conversationally, stretching his arms up and behind his head. “Imagine my surprise when I heard we had to change our plans to get in before curfew today - isn’t that right, Gilbert?”
When Noé doesn’t respond Vanitas tosses him a pointed look before indicating the bellboy with a violent jerk of his head. “O - oh, yes, it was quite a shock, Vincent. But you don’t suppose there’s anything behind the rumours?”
Vanitas snorts as dismissively as he can. “Hogswash,” he caws. “There’s no way something like that could -”
“They’re real,” the bellboy says, quietly and suddenly. Instantly the small space falls silent as his head shoots up and the colour drains out of his face. “I - I beg pardon, sirs, I didn’t mean to -“
Vanitas is on him like a bird of prey. “What do you mean they’re real?” He asks. “Do you mean you’ve seen the beasts?”
The bellboy turns towards them, smiling weakly. “I have,” he admits. “Three nights ago, I was h-heading home after the night shift - around two or so. When I passed an alley I thought I heard the sound of a dog whining.” He glances up at them tentatively, and Vanitas nods, urging him on.
“I looked in, and sure enough there was a dog that looked injured - but when it saw me its eyes glowed r-red and suddenly there were three of them, large wretched shadows. I r-ran as fast as I could, of course, but I don’t know why they didn’t chase me.”
He looks down, fiddling with the hem of his fine uniform jacket. “Tourism is down anyway, so for now the hotel is putting us up in spare rooms when we have the late shift. Just to keep us away from the streets at night.”
Vanitas shares a look with Noé. “Aren’t you afraid to leave the house at all for work, then?”
The boy - he’s got grey eyes, actually, this close - shakes his head. “Nobody’s seen them before sundown or after sunrise,” he tells them. “It’s really only dangerous when it gets dark.”
A bell chimes as they finally reach their destination on the highest floor, and the boy leads them out without much ceremony. “I’m glad you’re safe,” Noé offers, because it isn’t in Vanitas’s nature to. “Take care - oh, I don’t think we got your name.”
“Henri,” he offers, with a very small smile as he unlocks the door and hands Vanitas the key. “Have a good night, monsieurs.”
The room is far smaller than the one they have at Hotel Chou Chou, but it has a balcony that offers a decent view. Vanitas sets his trunk by one of the two single beds - the one closer to the window - and heads straight for the double doors, leaving them open for Noé to follow.
“It’s odd that he was right there and they didn’t go after him,” Vanitas says without preamble when Noé’s shadow eclipses the doorway. He’s propped his head up on the railing, looking not up at the moon yawning wide and pale in the depths of the sky, but peering down into the twists of the streets below. “But it matches the intel - only children have gone missing.”
“The curse bearers have a grudge against children, then,” Noé surfaces, coming to stand next to Vanitas. He radiates warmth, even through the space. “Why?”
The roads are completely empty. Vanitas fixes his gaze on a lamp that has begun to flicker, its yellow glow irregular, and shrugs with one shoulder. “We’ll have to see them to know.”
Quiet descends upon them, draping about their shoulders like a blanket. They'll have to set out on their search, soon, when the sky deepens to black, but for now the brief respite is welcome.
"Vanitas," Noé says, very suddenly. "I'm sorry."
Vanitas quirks an eyebrow, turning towards him. "Huh?"
Noé continues, haltingly. "For putting my expectations on you - about salvation. Back in Gevaudan. When I …" he pauses for a while, searching. "Couldn't understand, not really. I still don't, but…"
Vanitas harrumphs, going loose-limbed against the railing all at once. "Oh, that," he says, turning his face so his cheek is pressed to the metal. "It's fine. I don't expect anyone to get it." Whether you want me to or not.
Noé chews on his lip for a while, but doesn't push it. Swiftly, he changes the subject. "What do you think we'll find?"
Vanitas smiles, very thinly, without a trace of humour. The sky is cast in an inversion of day; pinpricks of starlight have begun to emerge like a warning. "No point speculating," he replies, toying with a dagger in a holster. "We may as well find out."
---
In the aftermath, Vanitas supposes he should have been grateful he hadn't made any promises.
“We couldn’t,” Noé chokes out hysterically, sleeves soaked in his own blood, eyes wild as he braces himself on the floor. His fingers curl in the concrete as his shoulders shake, and this must be grief, Vanitas realises, even if he isn’t sure why.
He had been right, about the malnomens, but a single look at them had told him plain and clear - they were only children, and cursed altogether so the rot had set in horrifyingly fast, the disorder feeding and amplifying itself between them. There had been nothing left of their names to return.
Please, Vanitas, Noé had begged, eyes hollow and dark. If I hold them off, can’t you see if there’s another way?
Against his better instincts Vanitas had gone along with it - had truly, genuinely tried. Son of starlight. Time-blessed dancer. Songbird at dusk. He had called out to them, bidding them come out into the light, reminding them of their real purpose,
and severed their connections to existence when they went for Noé’s heart.
“And the worst of it is that I’m grateful,” Noé bites, now, bringing his head to the stone as he curls up, eyes squeezed shut and hands forming fists. “That you saved me, Vanitas. That they didn’t take me with them. Again.”
Stunned into silence he can only gape as Noé shudders with the force of his sobs, hacking pained sounds that are halfway between a laugh and a wail. “Noé,” he starts, but has nothing to say. Again?
“They were only children,” Noé continues, softer. His breathing is uneven, almost laboured. Vanitas frowns, searching his memory of the fight. “If I were more powerful - if I could be -“
“You don’t have to be anything, you idiot,” Vanitas curses, jolted out of his own reticence. He scrambles over on all fours, struggles to get Noé upright so he can assess his wounds. “Just the way you are is fine.”
Noé doesn't seem to hear him, eyes fixated on the far wall, where two of them had turned to dust. He is like a doll in Vanitas’s hands, limp and compliant to his handling. "I'm so sorry, Vanitas," he mumbles, near void of inflection. "You tried to tell me, before. I didn't listen."
Frustrated, Vanitas claps Noé’s face between his gloved hands, shaking him a little for good measure. "Listen to me now," he demands, "You don't have to think like me. It's better if you don't.”
He isn’t meant to. “I - I'm fucked up, Noé, and jaded. You - you're not meant to be like that. You can't." A pause, Vanitas breathes. Noé’s eyes look wrong devoid of light. "I won't let you."
"We couldn't save them," he repeats, dully. As if mocking himself for the tension between their individual notions of salvation he corrects, “I couldn’t.”
"We managed to save her," Vanitas says gently, indicating with his head the human girl in the corner draped in Vanitas's coat, unconscious from exhaustion. "And we need to get her to safety, then back to her parents in the morning. Do you think you can do that, Noé?”
As he waits for a response Vanitas completes his scan. Despite his fears Noé has sustained no other major visible external wounds - most likely broken ribs, if the way he is listing to one side is any indication.
Noé shuts his eyes and takes one shuddering, sobering breath, then two. When he opens them again the line of his mouth is firm. "Yeah," he manages. Slowly, and with effort, he hauls himself to his feet. Vanitas makes no move to help.
“They … they need to know she’s safe.” He nods, clearly to himself. “Yeah. I can do that.”
In lieu of speaking any further Vanitas goes towards the child and picks her up carefully, then starts walking, trusting that Noé will follow.
They trudge through the streets in quiet, their way lit by yellow domes of light cast about each of the street lamps. With the curse bearers dealt with the streets are benign, almost peaceful in their desolation.
Two wordless blocks later Noé speaks again. “You…” He stops, reconsidering his words. “Just now. You knew what to say.”
He hesitates, then mumbles, “Thank you.” Their footsteps are loud on cobblestone. “And sorry - for being surprised.”
Well, Vanitas thinks to himself, mirthless, Even I cared for other people, once.
---
They don't talk about it, even though Vanitas knows that Noé must suspect that Vanitas is picking apart the oddities in his behaviour, has all the pieces laid out waiting to be puzzled together.
It's only fair, anyway. Noé can afford to keep a few secrets. You never tell me anything!
He mulls this over as they huddle at a table in the corner of Count Orlok's estate library weeks later, surrounded by books on vampire history. Sunlight filters through the tall glass windows and picks out the textures of Noé's hair.
At the weight of his stare Noé glances up quizzically, raising an eyebrow in silent question. Vanitas rests his cheek in his palm, leaning all of his weight on one side, and smiles enigmatically, saying nothing.
Noé huffs, but returns to his reading with a good natured roll of his eyes. There’s the tiniest shift in the air - Noé has always been shy under attention, and a becoming flush creeps over his cheeks as Vanitas continues to watch him openly. He’s handsome, Vanitas realises. It is somehow unsurprising as a revelation, as if he had already been aware but was only now making a note of the fact.
“Noé,” Vanitas starts, relishing the tiny jump he does when called. "You're staring."
Noé purses his lips. "You did it first."
"Only because I'm making up for all the times you look at me when you think I'm not paying attention." Vanitas's voice is a lazy drawl, lilts upwards when he smirks, challenging. "For the record, I'm always paying attention."
Caught, Noé's mouth forms a tiny "o" of realisation. “I don’t -” he starts, a denial, then tosses it away. “I mean, it’s not like I’m not allowed to -” no, that sounds even worse -
"I - I find you fascinating," he confesses, eventually. "I've never met anyone like you."
"Is that all it is, then," Vanitas murmurs, oddly regretful. He is all too familiar with being an object of interest. He slants his gaze away. What a shame.
Noé's face falls. "No, wait, I didn't mean like - like that," he protests, pushing books aside in his haste to stand up and round the edge of the table to where Vanitas is. His hands are held out in a placating gesture, fingers flexing like he wants to reach out but isn’t sure if he should.
"That is to say - this may sound odd, but I want to know more about you.” His voice comes a little closer, a hint of urgency surfacing. “Vanitas, look at me.”
Vanitas whips his head around then, eyes luminous and wild. He takes in the plea in the knit of Noé’s brows, his proximity, the thing like the sting of rejection already surfacing on his features.
Noé has crouched into a kneel, and from there it is devastatingly easy to cradle his face between two palms, touching their foreheads together. Noé stiffens briefly, but doesn’t pull away.
“Careful with the fangs, Archiviste,” Vanitas murmurs, two types of warning, and watches his eyes flutter shut as he presses their lips together.
It feels like second nature to kiss Noé, like water returning to the sea. Vanitas breathes him in, thinks how easy this is, and when they break apart a few long breathspans later neither makes any sudden moves, aware of the fragile tension of the moment.
This is, most likely, a mistake. The thought isn’t enough to make him draw back, to leave while he still can.
Noé’s eyes are still shut. “You’re out of your mind, Vanitas,” he sighs, leaning into one of his gloved hands, chasing the touch. “You’d kill me if it suited you.”
Vanitas hums an affirmative, tender like a kiss. He doesn’t deny the fact. “I wouldn’t do that for just anyone, you know.”
Noé blinks once, twice, then bursts out into a riotous laugh, his eyes crescenting adorably. “I’ve spent way too much time with you,” he snorts, warm. “That almost sounded like a compliment.”
---
Vanitas talks a lot, for someone who doesn't really say anything much at all. He’s doing it now, in response to something Noé’s innocently asked about the blue moon and the vampire associated with it.
“ - has anyone even stopped to question how it could be, anyway, that an entire species is born under a very specific lunar occurrence? What about you, Noé, are you positive you know what the sky looked like when you were born?”
He can’t not be avoidant, not even if he tries. Vanitas only hopes it works, wonders how long it’ll be before Noé tires of him, too.
Noé sighs in exasperation, placing a hand over Vanitas’s where it lies curled into a fist on the table. “Vanitas, none of that answered what I asked at all. You never - “
“Tell you anything,” Vanitas finishes, looking away. “I know.”
Noé brushes a thumb over his. “Then why?”
I don’t know how to be honest. “You’re the one who said you’d stay by my side,” Vanitas points out petulantly. Please, you said you would.
With a long, searching gaze, Noé crosses his arms. “I don’t go back on my promises,” he agrees, “but that doesn’t mean I should just blindly follow you around tripping over my feet all the time.”
His hand is warm and grounding, as it always is. “You don’t have to tell me about what happened after Moreau,” Noé tells him, quietly. “But I can’t help you if you’re perpetually leaving out facts about our cases that I should know. If you never let me in.”
“All things in good time, Archiviste,” Vanitas snipes, meaningfully, then sags back into his chair, the fight escaping him. “I know, okay. But I don’t know how.”
The wan daylight filtering into their room lights on Noé’s delicate features. Vanitas wants to kiss him, to get him to blush, to make the conversation go away. Instead, he bites on his lip and squeezes his hands into fists so he can’t reach out for a touch.
“I wish you’d trust me a little,” Noé confesses, looking pained. “That way, if you’re wrong, at least we’d be wrong together.”
“I don’t know how,” Vanitas repeats, slowly. He hates seeing that frown - realises, now, that he has given himself a weakness. “I don’t know how, but - but if it’s you, Noé - I think I’ll try.”
A small smile finally cracks the tension in Noé’s expression. Like daybreak, Vanitas thinks, after a long endless night of waiting.
“Thank you, Vanitas,” he murmurs, leans forward to press a chaste kiss to his forehead. “I mean it.”
It is a wondrous thing, Vanitas learns, to be treated like something tender. Caught in the generous tides of the now he pulls the other into him, chasing a deeper kiss, backing Noé into his bed (I like it because it smells like you) and tumbling into him since there’s nowhere they have to be until after lunch.
Time will not always be so giving, he muses, committing to memory the feel of Noé’s skin against his, his hair white against whiter sheets. But until then, Vanitas, he prays, until then, let us have this.