Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Madam?”

“Yes, Soroi?”

“Pardon for the intrusion, but may I ask you a question?”

“Mmm… I see no harm in this. Go right ahead.”

“May I ask why our guest is currently situated atop the vintage chandelier above the main entranceway?”

Razor-sharp eyes peered over the rim of a teacup, where her favorite drink sloshed like moon-borne tides. Amused, she set the fine piece of bone china upon its saucer with a ‘clink’, delicately blotting away the remains of the blood dotting her lips with a silken napkin. 

“She is?”

“Indeed. Iori has dutifully taken up the task of attempting to remove her. Unfortunately, her claws are making it impossible for him to get close.”

“Oh dear. I’ll see what I can do.”

Ryuuko hissed, baring her impressive canines and swatting away the long pole as it once again tried to push her off her mount. Glass and strung crystals shook dangerously, the blonde ghoul readjusting his grip and preparing another push.

“Matoi. Stop this foolishness.”

She whipped her furry head around, glaring at the vampire countess coolly looking back at her from her position midair, cape curiously missing and a comically large pair of bat wings sprouting from behind.

“Y’all fuckers will put an apple in my mouth over my dead body!”

“Apple in your…?”

Understanding dawned upon the vamire then, and she lowly chuckled.

“You misunderstand. I meant you would be my guest. But,” her voice dropped to a low whisper, smirking face dangerously close to the werewolf’s own and tongue mockingly roving across cherry lips. “I can have you for dinner, in… other ways… if you would prefer… I did technically only have a light meal tonight.” 

“Bullshit. You’re telling me…”

“That you were welcome to dine with us. Yes. Now please stop manhandling the furniture.”

With a low growl, Ryuuko leapt from the light fixture, landing on the marble flooring with a resounding ‘thunk’ and a shake that easily caused tremors throughout the household proper. 

“Un-fucking-believable,” she grumbled, stalking away on all fours after a shaking Shiro, who unfortunately still had the task of showing her to the dining room.

“My Lady?”

A pair of heels touched down beside him, wings folding back and seamlessly transitioning back into a billowing cape with a flourish.

“Yes, Soroi?”

“May I ask what exactly did you say to her?”

A head with a glorious cape of hair flowing behind scarcely turned to meet his curious gaze, and she returned his inquisitive look with a sly gaze of her own.

“Nothing… Only that I would have liked to have her for… dinner.”

Chapter Text

“You know... for such an uncouth and mangy individual, I’m surprised how... gentle and fluffy you can be in the worst of times.”

The werewolf below her grumbled lowly but didn’t otherwise move, flicking her lupine ears foward and darting ochre-sclera’d eyes away from the vampire currently splaying her disgustingly freezing body over her pelt. Triumphant, the countess smiled against the feather-soft tresses of fur and further pressed her corpse-cold body against this blessed source of warmth, where Kiryuuin-approved shampoos and conditioners had performed miracles on this formerly coarse and unappealing living rug stretched before her now.

The fireplace behind them crackled merrily, tray loaded to the brim with freshly loaded logs and embers spiraling scarlet and honey in dancing patterns during their ascent. Outside, the blizzard howled on, freezing winds rattling aged window panes and snowdrifts growing past the ornamental stone pieces scattered about the front lawn. In another few days, the freak storm would completely pass after burying the hill-perched mansion deep under snow, and then the real work of digging the entire building out would begin. Fortunately for them, werewolves were snow-proof.

Ryuuko grumbled, clawed arms crossed and a scowl pemanently plastered on her furry face as a slyly smiling heiress held her by the scruff of her neck, far above the snow.

“Come now. It’s only three meters deep. Surely it’s not a lot to move.”

“Yeah. Three meters multiplied by the ass-ton of pavement you have here. Why the fuck do you even need long driveways in the first place!?”

“Status symbol.”

“Kami’s sake, Kiryuuin! You have a giant-ass mansion and you can’t afford a snow-plow or a snow-blower at the very least!? And don't give me the excuse that it's because it's in a remote area; you can carry it. You literally dead-lifted me anf flew my ass across the country last week!”

“Mmm, they say hard work makes the honest individual.”

“I call bullshit.”

“I’m going to ignore that. Now, are you ready? Soroi can’t possibly do this work by himself.”

Grumble.

“Pardon me? I didn’t catch that.”

“Fuck. Fine. You better hope I get a reward for putting up with this.”

“I promise to provide a heaping pile of tenderloins and steaks of the finest quality. Perhaps I’ll throw in a rack of lamb and baked dijon salmon. Only the best for my adorably fluffy food source, after all.”

Without warning, pale ivory fingers released their payload, and the dark-haired mutt plummeted, creating a meter-deep indent in the freshly fallen white. Satsuki nodded approvingly as giant piles of the glittering ice and muffled swears soon started to fly into the air, launched on an express one-way trip down the frozen riverbank courtesy of Matoi airways.

“May I come in?”

“Fuck off.”

Eyeing the globs of melting snow splattered all over the manor’s marbled tiling, Satsuki merely quirked a brow as the werewolf continued to feed voraciously, biting into bone and tearing the exquisitely cooked meat off with naught but a mere head flick. Cautiously, she stepped closer, Soroi exhibiting excellent management of the Kiryuuin clan household by dutifully removing the pile of chewed bones. Ryuuko growled lowly with every step she took, hackles raised and the fur along her spine bristling.

“I apologize,” she confessed, rubbing black-furred ears experimentally and moving closer when no hostile response was garnered. “I thought werewolves liked the snow.”

“I said I tolerate the cold, Kiryuuin,” Ryuuko snarled, snapping a bone in half and gnawing at the marrow inside. “I don’t cream myself at the thought of burying myself in it.”

A pause. A gap in apologetic ministrations.

“Will you forgive me?”

Slitted eyes flicked back towards her, and the werewolf dropped back onto her butt, fur ruffled but yet not quite so much anymore. 

“You’re just doing this because you’re hungry.”

“Mmm... Think whatever you want. My reasons are my own.”

A snort.

“Yeah, yeah. Save it. Hurry the fuck up and eat. I know you like to eat me out right after I’ve finished,” Ryuuko grumbled, dropping into a prone position before turning onto her side ever-so-slightly, freely exposing her neck. 

One gentle feeding later, and the vampire rested against her unexpected pet meal friend, basking in the beast’s shared warmth thrumming beside and within her, both idly watching the moon stream through the skies on its endless celestial course.

Chapter Text

In the end, it wasn’t a silver bullet or a sharpened stake that caused her downfall. It wasn’t a biological attack or neurodegeneration that took her. No, it was the oldest and most hated enemy of all- time.

It was a simple run through the woods, just the both of them, gamboling amongst the trees in the oddest game of tag one could ever experience first-hand. But then, just as Ryuuko leapt to playfully swipe at a distracted Satsuki’s back, she faltered, and crumpled upon the forest floor, curling up into a ball and wrapping clawed arms protectively around her. Satsuki had embraced her then, all pretense of maintaining the visage of a refined and merticulously groomed countess all but lost upon seeing her friend of over a thousand moon cycles shaking and crying out in pain.

They called the best medical experts in the country, of course, ensuring their complete silence and discetion for their inhuman patient with more cash than they could ever hope to make in five years. They poked and prodded her with tools, shone flashlights into her eyes, and pumped her full of medicine that made her sleepy and irritable. Satsuki had spared no expense- there was an endocrinologist for her endocrines, a urinologist for her urine, a dermatologist for her derma, a pathologist for her pathos, a psychologist for her psyche, a cardiologist for her cardio, an anesthesiologist for her anes, and a neurosurgeon for her neuros. There wasn’t an inch of her person that wasn’t photographed, drugged, and dusted for information.

But a whole lot of good they did her, for each one of them shook their heads at an increasingly desperate (though outwardly calm) Kiryuuin heiress that they could do nothing, that since this was an unprecedented disease of inhuman origin that they could do nothing for her in the small time she had left. And as they placed her on a list of medications longer than said werewolf’s dictionary of swears and put her on tubes, her condition only grew worse as moon cycles waxed and waned.

Ryuuko became quiet, limp and unresponsive of her own volition, looking upon the world with glassy eyes as her end drew near. Food failed to motivate her. Her favorite activities seemed dull and unappealing. Mako long since passed, and even if she were here, her words would have fallen on deaf ears. 

And one day, in the middle of the night, she quietly unhooked herself and slowly, painfully, padded over to where Satsuki sat by the fireplace, a cup of fresh blood always by her side but never quite fully imbibed.

She noticed her entrance right away, of course, for nothing can fully escape Kiryuuin Satsuki’s notice. And when she wavered, and when she fell, Satsuki caught her.

And trembling uncontrollably and swearing at Ryuuko and shaking her violently, she sliced open a finger and offered the bleeding appendage to Ryuuko’s lips, silently pleading with her eyes for the werewolf to drink of her vampiric essence the same way she had always taken from her when the lycan was healthier and her wolf-born claws sharper. And Ryuuko smiled and Ryuuko laughed (in oh so much a Ryuuko-like way) and swore back, but pushed the corpse-cold hand away.

“I can’t, Sats. Not like this.”

And the dam of tears broke then, and Satsuki wept into the younger’s tresses, cursing and damning the world for the unfairness of it all that Ryuuko would die at the tender age of 150, while she lived forever. And she cursed Ryuuko too for being so stubborn and bullheaded, although both of them knew that a life as a vampire-werewolf-human chimera brought nothing but pain and misery- two forces that weren’t meant to mix sloshing violently and ready to burst at the seams, a nuclear reactor just before meltdown.

And Ryuuko weakly lifted a hand and raised it to her face, and gently, ever-so-gently, wiped away her tears, smiling sadly when she looked up at her in confusion.

“A pretty face like yours,” she murmured, “shouldn’t be so sodden with tears.”

She lifted her neck then, and pressing it against cold lips and even colder fangs, reassuringly wove her hands through ebony-black strands and rested them against the back of the older woman’s neck.

“Make me happy, Sats. I want to die a happy woman.”

A choked sob.

“You’re not going to die. Don’t you dare-!”

A weak laugh.

“Sats. Please. I want to see you smile. One last time. I know it makes you feel good too, otherwise you wouldn’t have offered to do it so often.”

Satsuki drank then, forcing razor-sharp fangs through paper-thin skin and drinking deeply from the well of life so well-used. And the taste hit her then, the blood slightly soured and embittered from the medications but still delicious as ever, a rolling wave of orgasmic bliss following in its wake. And she knew by the faint whimpering that the werewolf underneath made that it felt just as good.

And she pressed her fangs in deeper and drank and drank, feeling the younger’s steady heartbeats through pulses against her teeth. And she continued drinking, even when the beats grew few and far in between, watching with tears in her eyes and a sad smile on her face as the lupine’s smiling eyes grew duller and duller until they lost their shine completely and slid shut with the feather grace of swans.

And she drank until Ryuuko ran dry, holding the werewolf’s pale, limp body in her arms, once again alone in the world under moonlight breaching gray clouds. 

Chapter Text

Grumble, grumble.

Stomp. Stomp stomp stomp.

“Fuck... My... Life.”

Delicately filed nails pushed forward a ceramic mug, owner casually continuing to read yet another published paper as enamel scraped against polished bamboo and steam rose from its depths. A body bonelessly plops into the seat opposite of her, knuckles white and clenching thick wads of stapled papers. It’s geminal limb supports a heavy head, elbow propped against the tabletop and fingers brushing against a close eyelid, coming just short of snatching a stray strand of wavy ebony locks to toy with.

She raises a brow, once again pushing her lover’s mug towards her. Unlike hers, Ryuuko’s is old and chipped, as roughened in its appearance as its owner; Satsuki wonders how Ryuuko doesn’t keep cutting her tongue everytime she drinks. She files away a mental note to replace the drinkware and takes a sip of her coffee.

Black. No sugar- just how both of them liked it.

For her, it was a matter of being able to actually taste the drink and appreciate the bitter undertones instead of drowning it in sugar and fat. For Ryuuko, it was a perfect complement to her mean style and meaner attitude- the bitter, the better. Lemons were devoured- skin and all- without an eyelid batted. How much easier a task with coffee?

Ryuuko opens her unhindered eye, blearily considering the drink before closing it again, appearing to have drifted off where she sat.

Satsuki frowns, suddenly concerned. It wasn’t like her to refuse the drink she called “the very nectar of the gods” just a day before, a drink she imbibed so frequently that her blood might as well be made out of it.

“Ryuuko.”

The eye reopened. A reproachful glare, and a mumbled grumble later, and a novella’s worth of scanned backtests were momentarily pushed aside in favor of cupping the oasis of warmth, where it warmed her skin soothingly.

Satsuki eyed it, her expression turning sympathetic.

“Test today?”

A short nod. “Mmm.”

“I’m sorry.” A hand reached out and gently rubbed ar Ryuuko’s free brow, the younger melting into her touch appreciatively. She looked at the dark circles so starkly contrasting the younger’s fair skin, nose wrinkling. “Have you been awake long?”

A distracted look, fingers fidgeting with the handle and moving the drinkware across the wooden surface in lieu of an answer. “...Maybe.”

An exasperated sigh. “All night? Again?”

A brief look upward, locking eyes. Then it gone, and her gaze redirected to the scene below. “Mmhm.”

Sigh. “Did you at least take a nap?” 

Satsuki’s hand left her face then, and the president herself rose neatly, positioning her body directly behind her girlfriend’s. She knew the answer before it left her lips. ‘No’, ‘no’, and ‘fuck no’.

“Mm-mm.”

Silence. A beat.

“You need to take care of yourself more.”

A sleepy nod, distracted. Hands reaching for the collection of previous exams and their owner downing half the mug’s contents in one go, eyes sweeping over questions and answers of old once more. 

Satsuki massaged Ryuuko’s shoulders for as long as she liked, a worried frown still managing to make itself known despite her attempts to conceal it.

One test had Ryuuko running ragged. How much more for the rest of the four classes she had to take!? 

Lovingly, she placed kisses along Ryuuko’s jaw, careful to mind her razor-sharp fangs- just the way she liked it. The shorter of the two craned her neck gratefully, passively allowing the same to be done along the hollow of the organ. 

Satsuki finished her ministrations with a short nip to the younger’s earlobe, pulling away and letting her finish the rest of her coffee.

“Now go. You have a test to ace.”