Chapter Text
Oh, but you should never let your guard down, darling, Ferid once said, when Mika was thirteen. Ferid’s fingers, gloved and long, dug into Mika’s bone thin wrist with red pressure. For a clever little mouse, you sure relax too much. Makes you too easy to read, you know?
Get off—Mika flinched, and jerked his hand away, blood running cold under his skin.
Ferid’s smile was sharp and full of teeth.
Do remember that you’re in a den of cats, Mika-chan.
-
It starts with an order, when Ferid summons Mika like a dog to a Council meeting he shouldn't be a part of.
There are tens of blood red eyes on him, and Mika bites his lips, taking hasty retreat into the shadows.
"My bad, Counselor. I can't be without my dear servant for even just a minute."
A string of murmurs echo across the hall, most in protest, and Ferid says something that makes the Counselor resume the meeting without any more fuss, except.
A pair of eyes won't leave Mika, even after he's veiled himself in the dark, away from prying eyes, and his stomach churns at the wrongness of being watched, taken apart, opened up like a pinned butterfly.
(He glances back, briefly, and feels something of a curious child's gaze on him, and shivers.)
-
Twice a day, Mika lets his muscles relax on a chair with a thick spined book, flipping through the worn pages in their familiar weight—when he feels something of a prick rise up the back of his neck.
He’s on his feet faster than one can blink, hand reaching for his sword—only to find nothing but an eerie shadow of himself cast on the wall behind him.
“Who’s there?”
The silence drags, and he exhales, pulse thrumming loud in his ears as he lets go of the hilt of his sword.
Nothing.
It happens again and again, with nothing to show for his—paranoia—other than dead insects under his bed. Once is a chance, twice is a coincidence, Mika thinks. By the third time, he starts ignoring it, chalking it up to paranoia.
(After that, he stops bothering.)
That is his mistake number one.
-
And then there’s his misguided assumption—that vampires are nowhere near as nosey as humans.
When Lacus throws him a vial of freshly drawn human blood from the closest livestock—“yo, I’ve got some leftover”—Mika catches it, and puts it in his pocket without another word.
“Not gonna drink?” Lacus asks, curiously, and Mika cuts him off with a cold glance.
It’s a temptation Mika doesn’t like to admit he has, and it’s all the harder to resist when it’s in plain sight and reeking of sweet metallic warmth around him.
(So maybe he’s a little too hasty in throwing away the vial once he leaves the room.
Mistake number two.)
-
Then it’s only natural that Mika keeps methodic count of Krul’s vial of blood on him at all times. One vial per day, two if there’s a battle involved, in total adding up to seven at once.
They’re like an invisible leash keeping him chained to Krul no matter what. Running low means the chain has been pulled short, and running out means slow, painful starvation.
(“Yuu, run away with me. Please.”)
So when his count turns up one vial short, after an intense battle somewhere in Shinjuku against humans, Mika, against all his instincts telling him otherwise, chalks it up to a vial lost in the heat of the battle—his final mistake.
(Strike three, you’re out.)
-
The proverbial shoe drops when Mika is alone on his patrol, rounding past the headquarter wall in the dark.
“You’re a strange one,” a low voice says from behind. “Ferid always has interesting things around him, no?”
Mika freezes, slowly twisting around to see a tall, looming figure.
“Mikaela Hyakuya, am I right?” The figure steps into the light, revealing a pair of fangs and dark red hair tied in a long, thick braid. Mika recognizes him as one of the Progenitors on the Council—Crowley Eusford—and remembers the flash of curious gaze peeling him down to his darkest insides, his stomach tying in a tense knot.
Crowley laughs, and holds up both his arms as if to show that he doesn’t mean harm. “Hey, don’t be alarmed. Just a fellow vampire here.”
Mika swallows, and forces his muscles to relax, though his instincts are screaming at him to run, to get away.
“May I—”Before Mika can stop him, Crowley’s hand reaches out to his blond bangs, cold glove brushing against his cheekbones.
Mika jerks away from the hand, breath hitching. “Don’t touch me—”
Crowley peals into laughter, and retracts his hand.
“Oh, don’t worry. I don’t share Ferid’s creepy interest in little ones. I just wanted to take a look at your ears.”
“My ears—”
“And what blue eyes you have there. Interesting.”
Mika flinches, averting his gaze, thumbing the shell of his all too—human—ear and knows, instinctively, where this is going.
(No one pays attention to the sad little blue-eyed vampire who won’t drink human blood. A little anomaly, that is all.)
(Oh, but you should never let your guard down, darling.)
-
Crowley is all smiles and fresh-pressed lapel held up high around his neck when he talks.
“See, I’ve had my eyes on Ferid and Krul for a while. Secretive bunch they are,” he says with a flick of finger to remove imaginary dust from his cape, lilting smile playing in the corner of his lips. “And apparently, you’re the fat human skeleton in Krul’s closet, and so I looked.”
Mika’s eyes gloss over as he lets out a short breath. “So I wasn’t imagining it.”
(The thought of Crowley’s blood-shot red eyes on him, for who-knows-how-long, when he’s reading, feeding, not feeding, sleeping, having broken dreams about Yuu—)
Crowley shrugs, and reaches under his cape to pluck out a red vial pinned on his belt. “Dunno, I found it absolutely fascinating, you know? That you’d go to such lengths to avoid drinking.”
Without warning, Crowley crushes the thin flask between his fingers, watching it shatter into pieces and spilling red everywhere. “It’s always interesting to see what makes someone tick.”
Mika sucks in a breath at the smell of sweet human blood, pupils dilating in the dark, but he takes a step back, away from the red pool crawling closer and closer.
“Why are you doing this—”
Before Mika can blink, Crowley jumps, his hand flying around Mika’s throat, knuckles turning white against the fragile skin.
“The real question is, what will you do when you’re pushed to a corner?” he says, breathlessly, and Mika shudders at the cold air touching the shell of his ear.
(For a clever little mouse, you sure relax too much. Makes you too easy to read, you know?)
-
A thread of panic rises up Mika’s throat when Crowley grins, bringing his bloodied hand to his lips, the sweet metallic tang almost brushing against the corner of his mouth.
Mika twists, clawing against the broad arm holding him down, and lashes out with his boots.
(He's horrified at himself for the instinctive flick of tongue he made towards the blood.)
“Now, now,” Crowley says lightly, humming a low tune under his breath. “You just showed your hand there. Now I’m really curious.”
Mika bares his teeth, wrapping his hands around his throat turning pink and red. “You know nothing about me,” he snarls, voice barely audible.
Crowley tilts his head. “Oh, you’d be surprised.”
A faint tremor runs along Mika’s spine at the curious, childlike fascination gleaming in Crowley’s red eyes.
“Let’s play a game, Mikaela."
(Do remember that you’re in a den of cats, Mika-chan.)
-
Crowley’s rules are simple. Drink, or he will force feed Mika himself.
But seriously, don’t sweat it so much. Think of it as a token of loyalty to us vampires, yeah? Clinging to humanity like that—it’s pathetic.
It’s but a game to Crowley, who has too much time on his hands, and Mika doesn’t know why Crowley is so hellbent on having him drink.
I’ll give you until—tomorrow night sounds good.
Mika glares at the trickling blood on the ground, nose buried in his gloved hands, and feels a dull twinge of fear—pain—thirst rising up his stomach, and screams.
-
When you’re panicking, time tends to drag and fly at once.
The moon sits fat and yellow on his window as Mika shifts in his chair, fingers pressing his temple.
Shit.
He remembers the flash of sweet warm blood touching his lip, and the lurch of need, and imagines Crowley holding him down with brute force as he shoves blood down his throat.
He isn’t sure if he’ll be able to spit it back out once it’s in his mouth, and he hates himself for it.
Mika shudders, fist clenched white around the leather cushion as he thinks, plans, and formulates.
(It doesn’t matter that Crowley gave him a day, because he will never.)
-
There are probably a million better ways to approach this, Mika thinks. But he chooses this one, because it’s convenient, and killed in action has a nice, poetic ring to it.
“Please allow me to be dispatched to the battle today,” he asks Krul, face carefully blank as he half-glances at the mirror, watching Krul’s reflection tie her own hair in a ribbon.
Step number one.
Krul smiles, ever so indulgent, and reaches for her wrist with her sharp nails, when Mika speaks up again.
“I have enough to last me until this week. Thank you.”
Krul’s face scrunches up at that, just a little, and Mika doesn’t let a muscle twitch.
(This is Mika, when he’s pushed to the edge of a long, dark fall.)
-
The battle is a small one, and it’s a both a blessing and a shame that Mika doesn’t recognize any of the humans charging at him with demon weapons drawn.
(A small, selfish part of him had kind of hoped to see Yuu again today, but really, it’s better that he isn’t here.)
Mika leaps, a wave of dizziness nearly catching him unbalanced—he isn’t so sure about not having taken Krul’s blood this morning anymore, but blood heals him and it’s the last thing he wants.
Mid-battle, he can tell he isn’t moving fast enough, though, and the humans must’ve realized that he’s the weak link of the chain too, because they’re starting to focus their attacks on him.
Step number two.
A glowing blade whizzes past his shoulder and Mika dodges to his left with a grimace, when a bullet slams straight into his shoulder blade.
Pain laces along his spine as Mika grunts, hand flying to the exit wound on his chest as he falls to his knees, breath short and heavy.
Dark, warm blood stains his glove as he grits his teeth to stop himself from screaming, when another bullet pierces his knee.
(Funny how the wounds aren’t healing, Mika notes in numb panic. He’s planned this, he’s wanted this, but fear seeps into his mind anyway, like a half-remembered dream of his childhood.)
“Target down. I repeat, target down.”
Mika blinks, trying to clear his vision, but his world remains blurry as a man with short, silver hair and a giant rifle strapped on his back approaches him, rocks shifting under his boots.
“Guren, shut up. I’m about to finish off a vampire.”
Yuu’s salty smile is the last thing Mika sees in his darkened vision before his world goes completely black.
Step number three.
-
This is what Mika doesn’t hear, through the static noise of a radio—
“Don’t kill it. I want you to bring it back alive.”
Shinya pauses, letting his finger on the trigger falter. “Oh. Another one died?”
“Yeah. A ranked soldier is better than a rogue weakling anyway.”
“Right.” Shinya nods, and puts his rifle down.
-