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“How many times have we met?” Kanae asks him suddenly one afternoon after returning home one night from drinking. Though Kuzuha barely touched the alcohol, Kanae had decided to indulge for once, placing it in his apparently capable hands to get them both home. It took some well-practised experience for Kuzuha to drag his friend back home that night, having opted to loop their arms together and guide his giddy company home with swinging arms and cheerful songs.
They'd garnered quite a fair bit of attention from Kanae's obnoxious drunken singing, Kuzuha had felt so hot in the face he thought he might've caught on fire out of embarrassment. But after not so gently muffling his friend with his scarf and bribing him with snacks when they got home if he shut up; they'd arrived back home to his apartment in one piece.
Right now, Kanae sat on the floor with his back against the couch between Kuzuha’s knees, a bowl of snacks laid out on his lap as he watched some romance movie Kuzuha wasn’t paying much attention to. Kanae always loved to watch the most ridiculously cheesy films.
“What kind of question is that?” Kuzuha asks with a raised brow.
“Noooo,” Kanae whined, placing aside his bowl of snacks to turn and look at him properly, “the other me’s! Did you meet many?”
Kuzuha sighed, feeling a headache coming on. “What’s suddenly got you so entranced by this topic? Huh?”
Ever since Kuzuha had revealed to Kanae he was a reincarnation, the man had been prodding him subtly for answers about his past lives. Though it was nothing but natural human curiosity, Kuzuha still couldn’t shake the nervous feeling he got when he was cornered into answering his questions.
Kanae had asked about it before, though briefly. Kuzuha had tried to make it clear that he didn’t enjoy speaking about his past, or more specifically his past with Kanae… perhaps due to the varying natures of some of their past relationships- not that Kanae needed to know about all that.
He didn’t need to know how pathetically Kuzuha searched for him in every life, or how Kuzuha’s soul was ripped in two with every passing.
“It’s cool. Dontcha think?” Kanae rested his head against his leg. His expression softened by the alcohol with cheeks flushed. It made the vampire’s winter heart feel a spring of warmth.
“I guess.” He says vaguely, before pretending to watch the movie again. But it was hard when Kanae all of a sudden wriggled himself further up and into his lap like a worm. “Kuzuhaaaa.”
“What?”
“Did I go by the same name every time?”
He did, no matter the place, or the country. Kanae was Kanae in the literal sense.
Kuzuha nodded stiffly, eyes flicking back to the screen. He could practically feel Kanae’s heartbeat through his palms on his thighs. His teeth ached ever so subtly at the enticing inclination, as minimal as his instincts may be, sometimes they wrestled their way to the surface. A fleeting thought here, a fleeting thought there. He didn't realise his gaze had wandered until he heard Kanae speak again.
“Kuzuha,” Kanae said after a long pause, his voice breathy, like a butterfly, his mind floating in liquor. “Kuzuha, do you want to bite me?”
The question was unexpected, his mouth hung agape, unsure how to answer. With an expression like this, his pointed fangs were revealed to Kanae’s keen eyes.
Kuzuha had no warning before his jaw was taken in a surprisingly strong hold and tilted further as Kanae leaned forwards with an intensity that made the vampire feel numb, “Would you?”
He shook his head desperately in his hold.
The man frowned, releasing him from his grasp before exclaiming loudly; “You're such a borrrrinngg vampire! Ya know that?"
Like this, Kuzuha realised their positioning, and couldn’t help but squirm. Trapped between Kanae and the couch he leaned back to accommodate- being this close to a human always made him a little nervous. Being this close to Kanae... was much fucking worse!
“Are you shy?” Kanae asked, his expression unreadable through his drunken stupor. His grey eyes were like storm clouds on winter horizons.
“I’m not shy, I’m claustrophobic,” Kuzuha huffed, kneeing his friend gently in the stomach. Rather than moving away from the kick though, unexpectedly Kanae gripped his leg and pushed it aside, drawing closer still till their noses brushed.
“Haven’t you been with someone before? This is how they start it, ya know…” his voice rumbles; and those storm clouds seem terribly close, threatening to thunder.
“Kanae,” Kuzuha said, “you’re drunk. Stop saying weird shit.”
Kanae tilts his head and Kuzuha can’t help despite the situation being slightly endeared by his soft expression. An expression he felt should have faded long ago from his memory from centuries past- an expression he thought he’d lost the chance to see again.
An ache filled his heart where Kanae’s hand rested over gently, touching there like there was value in that bloodless mockery.
“Kuzuha?” Kanae asked in a sultry tone. His fingertips barely brush the base of his pale throat. There was no pulse there to speak of, and Kuzuha was glad for it.
“Hm?” he replies, floating between melancholy and joy, his hand rests steadily on Kanae’s waist where he wobbled above him. His flushed features were so entrancing in this light.
“I think I’m gonna be sick.”
──⇌••⇋──
Kanae feels the cool edge of the porcelain bowl against his forehead, sick enough not to care about the hygiene involved with such a thing. He’s not exactly sure how long he’s been there, but he’s been vaguely aware of his friend Kuzuha milling around him.
The vampire rubs his back, and holds his hair, using his long nails to scratch comfortingly along his scalp between intervals of heaving up nothing but acidic bile. His stomach had tossed and heaved, until slowly like it had been wrung dry, the worst of it ceased.
Kanae feels miserable, exhausted, dehydrated and regretful of his past decisions.
“I shouldn't have drunk that much…”
“I tried to warn you moron,” Kuzuha sighed, “that stuff is always much stronger than it tastes.”
Kanae groans in reply, pulling back from the bowl to lean back against the presence currently seated behind him. He’s not entirely coherent about what part exactly of Kuzuha he manages to lean against but it's comfortable, and he’s grateful for their company despite the embarrassment that came with it.
“Feel alright?”
“Tired…” he replies.
“It’s been a while since you threw up, do you want to go to bed?” Kuzuha subtly shifts his hair from his face where it had stuck to his sweaty forehead. It's domestic and soft, and Kanae finds he likes it very much.
Kanae contemplates for a minute, mentally taking in his current state with closed eyes and furrowed brows before eventually nodding.
There’s a flush of a toilet and a helping of hands as he’s guided from the bathroom and into his bedroom- for a precaution the vampire had procured him a bucket and a bottle of water for beside the bed. He sighs in relief as Kuzuha lays him down on the bed.
Instantly he goes boneless. Kuzuha's bed was so lavish it was totally unfair... he makes a mental note to try to weasel his way into Kuzuha's room some night.
Kanae will definitely wake up with a hangover in the morning, but he can't find it in himself to regret it when Kuzuha is being so unexpectedly sweet like this... perhaps he should fake an illness some time.
“K-Kanae you’re so damn heavy,” Kuzuha grunts dramatically as he lifts each one of his limbs to rest properly on the bed. Kanae giggles as he's roughly shoved around on the bed.
“Some vampire you are…” he grumbles with a smile, “aren’t you supposed to be… strong?”
Kuzuha successfully wrangles his legs beneath the covers and grumbles, “The misconceptions about vampires these days are truly disproportionate…”
“Using big words tonight…”
“Shut up.” The vampire slaps his arm lightly, before reaching over grabbing something and pushing it into his arms, “Here. Go to sleep.”
Kanae melts into his pillows and holds the thing Kuzuha gave him tightly, the softness tells him it's Roto. He presses his nose into the polyester fur and sighs deeply before mumbling; “Kuzuha?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you stay for a while?”
His friend snorts but his eyes are tender with soft mirth, “Want a bedtime story too?”
Kanae blinks his bleary eyes up at the vampire with surprise, “You would?”
“Nope,” Kuzuha says melodically, nullifying him with a soft flick to the head.
“You’re no fun….” He groaned but nonetheless settled into the bed with a yawn. “Goodnight Kuzuha.”
“Goodnight Kanae.” The vampire replied, his weight on the edge of the bed was comforting. Perhaps being lulled to sleep by a vampire contained some hidden symbolism.
Kuzuha wasn’t much of an affectionate person, this much, people knew. But he had his moments.
And he had them with Kanae.
Amid the onset of the dreamlike haze, Kanae felt a brush of cold fingers against his own, tentative and trembling. Kanae smiled to himself and held those cold fingers reassuringly tighter. He definitely wasn't going anywhere tonight, and certainly not tomorrow. If he whispered something saccharine that night, he'd blame it on the alcohol... and he knew Kuzuha would never tell.