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Bleeding from underneath the door of apartment one-oh-eight, two voices tangle together in a floaty bliss designed for lovers.
Knuckles burdened with Caution or Pain or both knock to the beat of Yoichi's thundering heart.
He lets himself in to the welcome of a sour stench stinging his lips.
Trash treads at his feet. Rotten and forgotten tools of trade to cleanse, to purge a vampire’s sins in the toilet when the immortal body rejects the not-blood mortal materials:
Cheap, off-the-convenience-counter bottles of vodka lay like corpses on the floor; spoons dipped into bowls of jellied curry sit on the kitchen island.
(An antique time touched with intimacy whispers, colored in vibrant shades by Yuu’s mouthful of laughter that teases Yoichi and Mika to join him. Sometimes Kimizuki, Shinoa and Mitsuba join too.)
(Yoichi understands he was a fool to ever suggest he could stand in for Yuu in blood and likeness. Mika favors type A. Yoichi never liked curry.)
Embracing Mika’s scourge, Yoichi sears every bowl and bottle into mind, a hot brand boiling flesh and bone.
Mika doesn’t turn when Yoichi comes in, continues to spin the conversation he weaves with Yuu in the living room. Yoichi can hear the haggard smile, feel the playful scorn lilting Yuu’s breath as it brightens the unlit apartment.
(But Mika’s laughs have wrung dry.)
Yoichi fishes his buzzing phone from his pocket, swipes through Kimizuki’s all-caps text scolding Yoichi's decision to "swing by" Mika's at six in the morning following another all-nighter at the university’s research lab. A softer message after coaxes his safe return, whispers the promise of a kiss and hot chocolate to greet him just like the night before, and the night before that, and...
“Don’t be mad at him.”
Yoichi stiffens.
Silence answers Yuu, and Yoichi must yearn for a piece of punishment to do the unthinkable and crane his head around the corner to look for the vampire.
The unreadable expression on Mika’s face is highlighted in cool blues from the screen, and it's dead, not like the warmth of the man untouchable beyond the television—
Yoichi is back to that day.
He’s there when he hides tries to hide the thick manila folder with ‘Mika’ written in the signature rushed Yuu-scrawl addressed to their apartment.
He’s there when Mika tears it from Yoichi’s grip in a strength classic to his kind, and Yoichi is reminded he is unable to compare to this strength when the locked door doesn’t shatter and splinter by his fists, obey his cries to open.
Curled at the door to apartment one-oh-eight, Yoichi cannot fathom why Yuu decided to tell Mika this way, when he cannot brush the tears from Mikaela’s cheeks and can only give a weak smile untouchable beyond the television—
(Yoichi has no right to criticize. Hiding Yuu’s illness with the grandiose dream of being Mika's silent defender: That’s sick. Yoichi has no right.)
“I’m sorry,” coos a weak admission after a stretched pause, “I didn’t tell you.”
A wretched cry. The final string of sanity snaps. Mikaela breaks.
Yoichi recalls the smoking hot chocolate waiting on his coffee table.
Another bottle?
I can make more curry.
Such offerings don’t pour from Yoichi’s lips today.
He sprints to the fluorescent-lit hallway and curls himself at the door of apartment one-oh-eight. It bleeds the scream and wails of just one.
(Their conversations haven’t been the same.
A week ago when Yuu said those same words with that same, sickly smile and same sweet expression. Mika had laughed and said he was fine.)
.