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Shirabu won’t bite him.
“Not enough to turn, I don’t even know how that works, but won’t you try it just once, you know I eat healthily! You know I’d taste so good—”
“Enough,” Shirabu snarls, and yanks the back of Goshiki’s head into a searing kiss. His other hand is hot at Goshiki’s hip, tugging him close—those same teeth tug at Goshiki’s lips, bullying the seam of it open; tugging out his bottom lip, biting down. Goshiki whimpers, broad hands clutching at Shirabu with all the desperation of a newborn fawn. How could Shirabu detest the thought of biting Goshiki where it mattered, when he toyed with him so easily?
”Please,” he’s saying, gasping, nonsensical; in the breaths where Shirabu pulls away, their joined bodies a single line of heat. Goshiki’s lashes flutter, tears pearling at the corners. His mouth is kiss-bitten, lips puffy and red, and when Shirabu’s hand tightens in his hair, the line of his lips tremble. “Anything,” Shirabu whispers against his lips, breath hot even as the rest of him is cold. “Anything but that.”
Shirabu pulls him close again, and Goshiki forgets what he is asking for. He indulges Goshiki such that he thinks he will be consumed, devoured whole; blood rushing hot and frantic, pulse jumping when a cold hand presses against Goshiki’s throat, thumbing at the artery.
Goshiki’s body feels electric, a live wire, laid bare. He pushes back, one hand raised to cover Shirabu’s own; the other to the back of the vampire’s neck. How ridiculous, standing in the middle of the room like this. Not that he remembers. Not that it matters. There are bags under Shirabu’s eyes, pallid such that he can see the blue vein running up the center of his throat—
Feed on me, Goshiki pleads, silent. I’m yours, I’m yours, I’m yours.
Such devotion. Such earnest, guileless love.
Shirabu knows that he holds Goshiki’s heart in his hands. Shirabu knows, too, that he would bleed him dry.
This is enough, Shirabu presses back, triumphant when his tongue runs along the roof of Goshiki’s mouth and the boy folds like a bad hand of cards. This is enough.
Goshiki gives in. He always does, with Shirabu. He doesn’t ask again.
—
“You’re dying.”
Shirabu snorts, humorless. His back is turned. “You don’t know a single thing about dying.”
He doesn’t see how Goshiki’s eyes flash. The boy bows his head, knuckles whitening in two fists. Half-moons curl into his palms. If he presses harder, the skin will break. And if he bleeds—
No. No, he—he can’t. Goshiki relaxes his hands, even as the rest of him feels like an ill-tuned violin, just one wrong turn from snapping—and looks up. To Shirabu, in the moonlight of one large picture-window; watering the flowers on the windowsill to the point of drowning. Shirabu had never been much good at these sort of conversations. At looking Goshiki in the eye. He tries to swallow the bitter tang that rises like bile in his throat. It tastes like copper.
“What do you know about being alive?”
Shirabu goes still.
He looks fragile like this, wreathed in silver. He looks otherworldly—and he is. The billowy material of his white dress shirt is almost translucent, revealing the faint outline of his body just underneath. High waisted black trousers outline the thin trim of his waist, fitting in the broad spread of Goshiki’s hands. Goshiki thinks about holding him close, and doesn’t.
Goshiki’s out of line. He knows he is. He knows he was done for from the very first moment they had locked eyes across the room of some shitty bar, drawn to the vampire like a moth to the flame; like Eve to ruin. He braces himself, and waits. Shirabu was growing weaker by the day, and looking at him made Goshiki want to scream. Why not feed from Goshiki, when he was right here—why not– why not bleed the wildlife dry, why not, why, why, why?
(I’m tired, he remembers Shirabu confessing, on a night just like this.
Of what? He’s standing behind Shirabu, the vampire looking into the dresser mirror at a reflection he can’t see. At Goshiki, boyish hands carefully combing through the silk fall of his hair.
Everything, he whispers, leaning into Goshiki’s touch. Everything.
When Goshiki looks in the mirror, he is alone.)
Shirabu turns, one foot toward Goshiki. Still, he does not show his face. “Being alive?” His voice is velvet; smooth, and soft, and dangerous. Goshiki draws himself up, broad and tense. He could take Shirabu on in a fight. Not for long. Not to win. But enough to make it hurt. To make Shirabu see sense, the worth of his life even if he was no longer quite alive—
The vampire slinks forward, coming to a stop just inches away from his lover. “More than you would know. More than you ever will, if I give in to you.”
If I bite you. If you bleed.
Goshiki just looks at him, breath caught in his throat, Adam’s apple bobbing. He exposes the long line of his neck, taunting.
When he speaks next, it hits Shirabu like a knee to his stomach; like that night in the street, so many decades ago; lanterns flickering, muddy and indistinct.
“I trust you.”
Shirabu has to look up to see Goshiki. To look him in the eye. But all he needs to do is keep his gaze level at the sight of his bared throat, long column honey-sweet, tanned from a sun Shirabu can no longer walk in. All for him, as if presented with a pretty bow—
His mouth goes dry. “You shouldn’t,” he gasps, and it sounds like a man dying.
Shirabu loved like fire, all-consuming. Like flowers wilting beneath his care, the water of its sustenance now its drowning ruin. “I am violence,” Shirabu whispers, having stepped so close without his knowledge; murmuring into the hollow of Goshiki’s throat. The boy’s pulse beats beneath his lips.
Goshiki’s arms wrap around him like he’s something delicate. Something precious, and not with fangs, and talons, and bloodied hands.
“I am yours,” he returns simply, and Shirabu shudders all over. It is weakness. It is a terrible, pressing ache; this raw gaping thing in his ribcage that he doesn’t let anyone see. But Goshiki breaks him open like tissue paper. But Shirabu lays himself bare, in these scant moments where the boy can’t see his face—and he lets Goshiki hold him together.
His fingers crumple in the back of Goshiki’s shirt, trembling with the weight of unsaid things. How cruel of him, to let Goshiki have loved him at all.
“Thank you,” he has the good sense to say. I’m sorry, he doesn’t.
—
On paper, Goshiki has no reason to throw his life away. He’s an athlete, a good one. He’s on track to graduate with just a few more semesters, he just needs to retake that Literature course…
On paper, no one knows that he’s dying.
(He remembers, some doctor’s office, soft music straining from a record player. He remembers the doctor’s kind eyes.
I’m sorry, she tells Goshiki, brown gaze, silver glasses. If only we had found it sooner.)
Goshiki… his parents had gone abroad, long ago. He’s worked enough, saved up enough, that his grandmother will live comfortably, to the end of her days.
Is he bitter?
…Of course. He wants to rage at the world. Wants to fight, and scream, and cry.
Instead, he drinks. Some shitty bar, some shitty part of town, where the streetlights flicker and he doesn’t know anyone’s name. The room is dark, the counter grimy.
Shirabu shines like the moon through the clouds. And Goshiki… Goshiki had always loved pretty things. The chase is long, and wheedling, and stubborn. But Shirabu comes home with him…Goshiki to his…and had never left. Days turn to weeks, to months, to the changing seasons. They don’t see anyone else.
Goshiki finds out entirely by accident.
Shirabu, wreathed in moonlight. His petal lips, bright with blood, a stag dying in some forest clearing. He’s at Goshiki’s throat in an instant, and Goshiki…Goshiki hates himself, for how naturally his hands settle at Shirabu’s waist.
This is the boy you met in the bar, the one you took home.
This is a monster.
They embrace, Shirabu looking up at him, sweet as a lover. Crimson drips onto Goshiki’s clothes, he can’t breathe, can’t breathe—
When Shirabu speaks, it’s a low murmur.
“Are you scared?”
Goshiki’s throat works, something hot up his throat, through his fingertips. “No.”
Shirabu’s head tilts, assessing. “Maybe you should be.” It’s a scoffing thing; a derisive thing. Shirabu leans back in Goshiki’s hold, taloned hands raising to clasp about the back of Goshiki’s neck. Pressed together like this, the vampire sees himself reflected in Goshiki’s eyes.
Sees, for a moment, that the boy has nothing to lose.
So it’s like that, he thinks, and in the next breath they’re upon each other, like a sacrifice on the altar; like the python about the apple, corrupted. Hot, open-mouthed. Desperate. Goshiki tastes him, a possessive hand threaded through Shirabu’s hair, and when he licks the blood from Shirabu’s lips, the way his eyes flutter shut is rapture.
They don’t ask each other things. Maybe it’s selfish.
Maybe it’s the best way to protect each other from themselves that they know.
Goshiki is Shirabu’s happiness; this unflinching, senseless march of time, through the years, through the decades. He sees Shirabu with warmth.
But…Shirabu is tired. He should know how to let things go. He cuts people and places and his heart off so, so easily… but he knows Goshiki, by now. Knows he won’t leave unless it’s to a place he can’t follow. Unless it’s through death. And Goshiki is so young. Has so much left to do.
So he wastes away. He could hide it, at first. He’s always been thin. But he’d underestimated Goshiki’s sharp, assessing eyes; hidden beneath how he seems to be a puppy, brown gaze wide and watering. His devotion makes something well up in Shirabu’s throat.
Goshiki has a trip coming up soon, doesn’t he? He’ll do it, then. He’ll walk into the deep blue sea. The ocean will be his tomb.
Goodbye, his letter says. He’s never liked texting. Thank you.
I’m sorry, he thinks about writing, and doesn’t. He doesn’t know if he’ll be reincarnated. To never see Goshiki again; to never ruin him again—that would be the best repentance he can think of.
He never expects the accident.
A hit and run. The shine of headlights, in the pouring rain. The reflection of the moon, in the puddles that form around him. The pooling of deep, deep crimson.
Kenjirou, Goshiki rasps, when Shirabu reaches him, a comet borne to earth, knees hitting the ground without a second thought, long coat wet and soaked. A bloodied hand reaches to Shirabu’s cheek with a smile so sad and happy that a scream tears out of Shirabu’s throat like ruin.
I wanted to see you. I won’t ask you for anything, anymore.
He’ll be dying. He knows he won’t be fresh. But then, wasn’t this some sort of sick, perfect happy ending? Goshiki aches all over. His ribs hurt like shrapnel with every breath. He’ll bleed out right here, some distant, aching part of him knows.
Better that he die beneath Shirabu’s teeth.
No, no, no, no, he hears. He thinks. Thunder rips the sky right open, lightning lashing their faces in the pouring rain. Cold hands flutter about him, pressing down. Sticky and crimson beneath Shirabu’s fingers. It’s no use. They both know this. It’s no use.
When Shirabu finally leans over him, desperate sobs wracking his entire body, and sinks his teeth into his throat, Goshiki closes his eyes, blood-stained smile like salvation. At last, he thinks. At last.
The clouds swallow the moon, and they fall into darkness.
Into the abyss.
—
So. You’ll live forever?
Yes. I’ll never age past 23.
Oh, Goshiki says, and his smile is blinding. I turn 23 soon. Won’t you celebrate with me?
Kenjirou?
—
He doesn’t take him to a hospital.
God willing, Goshiki will never have to step foot in one again. God willing, Shirabu would never have to lead such a wretched existence at all—
To save him is to kill him. To save him is to kill him.
(Shirabu remembers, two generations and a lifetime ago. Spilling sleeves, silk like water. A physician's needles in his hands.
And then the disease lay waste.
"Do you want to live?" someone had asked him. A figure in shadow. A figure made of moonlight.
Yes, Shirabu rasps, pallid and weak. His arm shakes as he tries to raise it from his sickbed.
Okay, the figure tells him, and leans in. Okay.)
To save him is to kill him—
The Hippocratic Oath. Good thing, then, Shirabu laughs to himself, even as blood vessels burst beneath his teeth. Good thing the disease took me, before I could take it.
When Goshiki wakes, he will no longer be human at all. When Shirabu finally, finally apologizes—
He doesn’t think Goshiki will forgive him.
That’s okay, he thinks desperately. Goshiki’s lifeline tastes like euphoria.
He realizes that he loves him.
What a terrible, wretched thing; his useless heart. Shirabu wishes, sometimes, that he could no longer feel at all. He’s sobbing, crying. Tears turn into the pouring rain, blood-stained lips spilling all the things he couldn’t say. It’s Goshiki’s blood on his hands. It’s his fault, Shirabu’s fault—
I love you, when fangs first break skin. I’m sorry, when he presses in, ravaging, as he’s always had—and poison circulates through Goshiki’s body in the most intimate of corruptions.
It is a welcoming as much as it is a goodbye. Shirabu will hold him through it, when he turns. They will get through this wretched first night together.
Happy birthday, Tsutomu, cradling that blood-soaked head in his lap, rain a requiem all around them. I love you. I’m sorry.
—
Goshiki will never turn 23.
He knew this, already. When the doctor had sighed from behind her desk, heavy. When he receives a card on his doorstep, a bouquet of vibrant flowers with it.
I hope you find peace, Mr. Goshiki, the card says in his doctor’s careful hand. I’m sorry.
It had been his last visit, after all. That hot day in July.
What a shame, he thinks, bouquet tossed onto his shitty apartment counter. He’s never even bought a vase.
With August came the late summer rains. He visits his grandmother, holding thin, callused hands between his. He changes all the lightbulbs; he sweeps every doorstep. Live well, he tells her. Something in those aged eyes know he is saying goodbye.
There’s one more thing, at least.
The wretched red string he’d tied himself, from the very first moment Shirabu drew crimson, beneath the moonlight. This ill-fated love, severed only by the will of the heavens, because Goshiki had always hated farewell.
Won’t you celebrate with me? He asks. Shirabu indulges him in the shallow things, the carnal things. He holds Goshiki’s beating heart as if with doctor’s gloves. Impersonal. Always put back in the empty cavern of his ribcage.
Silence, in Shirabu’s old, empty house. Goshiki’s already braced himself for rejection. What’s one more, in this lonely life of his?
But then Shirabu smiles, painted something like home in the buttery light of his living room. Yes, Tsutomu, he says.
Just come to me.
It’s the 20th of August, isn’t it? Maybe he’ll even make it to the 21st.
I’m coming to see you, Goshiki texts, convenience store bags held in one hand. He’d let himself into Shirabu’s house even if he doesn’t respond.
Can’t Shirabu smell that he’s sick?
An intimate thing. A bone-deep thing. But lately Shirabu does not let him close, at all—and Goshiki can only be grateful that death permeates those walls such that Shirabu will never find it on him.
It’s not far, now. The bus routes stop just before Shirabu’s street. But he’s not thinking, blood a storming sea between his ears. But he’s deciding how many candles to light, squashed cupcake rattling from his plastic bags. He wonders if Shirabu would sing for him.
He never sees the car.
Oh, he thinks, as the headlights shine, then drive away. Perhaps this is heaven.
And when Shirabu’s lovely, pained face appears in front of him—he knows it to be true. Fangs meet his throat like rapture.
Amen, he thinks, to a god that has abandoned him—all but this once. Shirabu, at least, will be saved. One hand to Shirabu’s face; the other still curled around his plastic bag, umbrella scattered far, far away.
Won’t you sing for me, he rasps, even as his ribs collapse in his chest. I came. I see you. You’re here.
The last thing he hears is the pouring rain.
—
“I’m scared of a lot of things, you know.”
“I know, I know. You think you’re slick, but you’re just a crybaby.”
“Hey, so mean! At leaat let me finish….”
Shirabu sighs, head resting against one closed fist, and reaches out with his other hand to pinch Goshiki’s cheek. “Ah, go on then.” He lets go and pats Goshiki’s face, just this side of too hard—and feels his breath catch in his throat.
Goshiki is looking up at him, from under his lashes—Shirabu’s hand caught under his own, bowl of porridge forgotten. Broad, boyish fingers, clasping Shirabu to him like something precious, even as they sit across from each other, morning sunshine slanting in.
“I’m not scared if it’s you.”
Shirabu’s head shoots up, and Goshiki waves a frantic hand in his face. “And– and I know it sounds ridiculous, don’t interrupt me again! I just…”
He looks away here, suddenly shy. “I feel safe with you. That’s all.”
Shirabu frowns, one, two, three—and yanks his hand from Goshiki’s grip. He can’t quite blush anymore, not the way Goshiki does—but it suddenly feels as if his ears are burning.
You’re a fool, he tells him, and just smiles into his own water bottle when Goshiki beams, bright and soft and blinding.
I’m yours, Goshiki returns.
—
Forever, Shirabu rasps, and when Goshiki looks back at him there are tears in the vampire’s eyes.
“You didn’t mean forever, did you, you fool!”
Ah, lips parting. It feels as if there are thorns in his throat. When he looks around, it’s to moonlight, his head cradled in Shirabu’s lap. Blood from an altar, again—and he is the sacrifice. He is the god. He raises one hand to his lips, then to his eyes. From his fingers shine talons.
That— he only saw these when Shirabu was feeding, when he was angry—
When vampires are new.
Goshiki gasps, shooting to sit up from Shirabu’s arms, tears welling in his eyes so hot and fast he can hardly see. Shirabu, Shirabu, Shirabu, he’s saying, twisting in his hold until he’s got his arms about him, and they fall to the ground and Goshiki bullies his way into his lover’s embrace and sobs into the hollow of his throat.
I was scared, I was scared, and there are strong thin arms about him, one carding through his hair.
I was scared, but at least I saw you.
Shirabu sounds choked up, hushing him, soft nonsense as Goshiki’s hands crumple in his shirt, as the fabric tears and he is clasping tight enough to break skin—
He’s not in his right mind. He almost hadn’t made it back at all, having shot up from the road into the forest, animal carcasses laid all around them—
But he can’t, he can’t—he can’t hurt Shirabu. Goshiki shudders, letting go of Shirabu all at once, looking down at himself in horror. He can’t feel his heartbeat. His body feels heavy, and light, and new. He tears at his own shirt, pressing against his ribcage, bones shattered in his chest—
“Everything,” Shirabu’s saying, cold hands pressed against his own, and the world comes slowly into focus. “Everything is new. Your bones reknit in your chest. You cannot die.”
Shirabu swallows, here, as if he is bracing himself for something. The regret of a black hole, in the face of the brightest star he had ever seen.
“You can never be alive again.”
God, he can hardly look at Goshiki. The star he had snatched from the glittering heavens; the one he had stolen, ensnared, destroyed, in the selfish way one plucked flowers from a garden and killed them—
It would be half his repentance for Goshiki to never want to see him again, and the silence that falls is as good as the executioner’s bell.
Curse at me, Shirabu’s closed eyes tell him. Say you want to tear me limb from limb, and I’d accept it.
I’d let you.
What Goshiki hears is, I’m sorry.
When the boy smiles, his lips are still stained crimson—but the tears that slip from his half-moon eyes are relieved. “You’ve been apologizing all this time, haven’t you?” Shirabu stiffens, snapping to look at him like a deer caught in headlights. Shock and relief wars across his face, and for a moment he looks so young Goshiki’s heart breaks between his ribs.
“I heard you,” Goshiki whispers, one hand raised to Shirabu’s cheek—pulling him close, until their foreheads press together, still a mess on the forest floor.
“Forever,” he says next, and when he opens his eyes again, his hand moves to back of Shirabu’s head, into his hair, and tightens. His eyes glow red in the backlit moon, and Shirabu gasps as he realizes he’d never caught Eve, at all.
Finally, he whispers, crimson smile, brushing one reverent hand against the newly raised scar on his neck—and pitches forward to sink his teeth into Shirabu’s throat.
I am yours forever—
And you are mine.