Work Text:
Kohane prods at An’s fang with the tip of her finger. It takes all of An’s self control not to lick up the drop of blood that oozes out when it pierces the skin.
‘Ow!’ Kohane yelps, as if she had not just been very deliberately poking a sharp object. ‘Wow, that’s sharp.’
An briefly considers questioning Kohane’s intelligence at the surprise in her voice. But then she turns to her untouched maths worksheet on the table in front of them, which Kohane is supposed to be helping her with, and decides that Kohane is the smartest, sweetest human being ever, because she agreed to help dumb, hopeless An with her homework.
Speaking of which, she’s not really sure how they ended up in... this position instead of doing the homework. Kohane is straddling her lap, peering at An’s face with adorable concentration. One hand is holding An’s face still, and the other has a finger in her mouth. In her mouth. What? An, meanwhile, is sweating profusely as she tries not to sink her teeth into warm, soft flesh. Her hands are clenched into fists at her sides, and her vision is starting to get distorted. Which is bad. It’s probably from lack of oxygen, because An forgot to breathe.
‘Are your gold irises also because of your vampirism?’ Kohane asks, removing her bleeding finger from An’s mouth. She wipes the blood off on a napkin, and An swallows as her eyes follow the smear of blood.
‘Yes?’ An squeaks.
Kohane hums, seemingly satisfied, and gets off of An’s lap, fixing her gaze immediately on An’s homework.
‘Ah, An-chan. Sorry for getting distracted, let’s start now.’ Kohane blushes and smiles sheepishly up at An.
An’s mouth flaps a bit. ‘Uh.’
‘Your fangs are kind of cute though, like Count Pearl’s,’ Kohane muses.
An doesn’t know how she should feel about being compared to Kohane’s pet snake, but it’s probably not whatever feeling she’s afflicted with now, which can be accurately summarised by ‘askdjbioaugsdoiho’.
Kohane squints at An. ‘Are you okay?’
A hand waves in front of An’s face. The instant she snaps out of her Kohane-induced trance, she feels a warmth bloom across her face and hides her face in her hands. When did Kohane get so bold? She’s always been so sweet and innocent and shy, and suddenly she’s - wait, is she flirting?
And then Kohane starts reading the first question out loud, and with her infinite IQ, An deduces that no, Kohane is not flirting. Kohane, who is blissfully clueless in the romantic department despite the absurd number of shoujo manga she reads, has never flirted and probably never will.
They get through the question sheet within one long, agonising hour. Better than the bajillion years it would have taken An alone, at least. An sighs and stretches her arms over her head.
‘Thanks, Kohane. I really appreciate it. You’re the best!’
‘I-it’s no problem, An-chan. Anything for you.’
And the smile Kohane gives An after that line is worth about a hundred stars. An is blinded. Ouch.
-
Kohane is unusually curious about An’s biology. Not in a weird way. Well, yes in a weird way, because she’s always asking to look at An’s fangs, as if she hasn’t just seen them five seconds ago, and she has a seemingly endless bank of questions, only half of which An can actually answer, and she keeps asking about her feeding habits. She asks a lot about her feeding habits. An thinks it’s just some passing fascination, but Kohane only grows more enthusiastic about learning more about An. Needless to say, An is confused.
It all makes sense all of a sudden when An sees a photo of Count Pearl for the first time and the unending love Kohane has for her pet snake. Also the unending weirdness with which Kohane acts when matters regarding her pet snake arise. Like how she gushes about how Count Pearl loves eating live mice, and how adorable she is when she’s excited about dinnertime. Vampires are natural predators to humans, but in that moment An feels a strange urge to run for her life.
They’re hanging out at An’s house, like they do sometimes, and after the brief weirdness that occurred with the surfacing of a photo of Count Pearl, Kohane has been acting like normal, cute Kohane again. She blushes when An compliments the photos she took the other day and gets shy about showing them to An, and when An pinches her cheeks she complains weakly but lets her do it anyway.
‘Kohaneee, you’re so cute,’ An gushes as she squishes Kohane’s cheeks again.
As expected, it elicits a blush and a refusal to meet An’s eyes. Kohane is really too adorable. An might die from how cute she is.
‘An-chan,’ Kohane says with a pout.
And then, the beautiful moment is shattered. Because the next words out of Kohane’s mouth are: ‘I’ve been wondering about your teeth.’
Yes, Kohane has made that quite clear. Abundantly clear, in fact. An is honestly starting to be worried about how fascinating Kohane finds vampire teeth.
‘Specifically, how it would feel if you bit me..’
What?
‘What?’ An asks dumbly.
‘How would it feel if you bit me, An-chan?’
An has to think for a second. It’s a strange thing for Kohane to want to know. ‘Uh, it would hurt, I think.’
‘Oh.’
An continues: ‘But there’s a numbing venom in our fangs, so it would only prickle a bit on the initial bite.’
Kohane seems to perk up suddenly.
‘An-chan?’
Her tone is hesitant. If An didn’t know better, she’d think Kohane was scared or apprehensive.
‘Do you want to bite me?’
Oh. Now that question is certainly not for the sake of knowledge acquisition. Certainly not. An feels strange. She doesn’t usually think much about what she says, but her reply to this question feels important. Wait, does Kohane want An to bite her? Should she say yes? Or is Kohane scared after finding out An is a vampire and wants her to say no?
It’s a true dilemma. A dilemma of all time. Should she say yes? No? ‘Only if you want me to?’ God, no, that last one was way too flirtatious. An is about to answer, having figured that sweet, innocent Kohane would never want to be bitten by a vampire.
‘Uh, maybe?’
Nope. Whatever she was supposed to say, that was not it.
‘I mean, uh, I don’t know? No, that’s not-’
An realises she is just progressively making it worse now and shuts up. Kohane shrinks into herself. Oh god, An feels horrible.
‘O-oh, sorry, An-chan, that was a bit weird, wasn’t it?’ Kohane giggles nervously.
‘No! No, it wasn’t weird at all,’ An blurts out. In an attempt to rectify the awkwardness of the situation, which, by the way, what’s up with that? They’re never awkward around each other, An says: ‘Why don’t we watch a movie?’
Kohane stares at An. The situation is not rectified. The stare bores holes into An’s skull, for sure, because An can feel the burn.
The silence is agonizing and long.
Until it isn’t, because Kohane starts laughing airily, and then she’s turning back to the photo editing software she has open on her laptop. The tension diffuses. Or it osmosised into An’s brain, or something. Because suddenly her skull seems awfully tight and constricting for the magnitude of her thoughts, ninety percent of which are just repeating ‘why did she ask that???’ So much so that it hurts.
It takes a pathetically long time for An to figure that she can just ask Kohane. They’re sitting at the dinner table with Ken and An’s mother, peacefully eating rice, when An’s mind finally makes this realisation.
‘Kohane, why did you ask whether I want to bite you?’
Ken chokes. An’s mother spews water. Kohane misses her mouth with her chopsticks, effectively stabbing herself in the face.
‘Uh.’
Ken starts laughing. Unfortunately, he does not stop choking, which means he’s now making a concerning ghackaaheackaghcka sound. An’s mother sets down her glass of water and wipes at her mouth with a napkin. Ken falls off his chair and starts writhing on the ground.
‘Uh, is Ken okay?’ Kohane asks.
‘Yeah, he’ll be fine,’ An answers distantly, too focussed on how cute Kohane looks with rice on her face to formulate a proper answer, or to notice her dad practically dying on the floor.
Kohane nods. An’s mother helps Ken up from the floor and pats his back. An winces as she hears his spine crack.
‘Uhm, it was… It was because…’ Kohane turns her face away. ‘An-chan, I don’t want you to, uh, think I’m weird or anything…’
An’s mother starts sneaking towards the door with Ken draped across her back. She manages to make a swift exit without having to interact any more than necessary with An’s unbelievable stupidity.
‘Kohane, I would never think you’re weird!’ An assures. And then she thinks about Kohane’s pet snake and the poor mice. But then she decides she can overlook a few things because it’s Kohane. ‘You’re perfectly normal! Well, above average, actually.’
‘An-chan, I kind of want you to bite me,’ Kohane mumbles.
Oh. Yes, that is, for sure, by definition, weird, because nobody wants to get bitten by a vampire. Except Kohane, apparently.
‘Oh. You want to bite me? I mean, you want me to bite you?’
Wow, An is a genius with words.
Kohane nods shyly. ‘Yes.’
‘Like, now?’
Kohane makes a strangled noise in her throat.
‘Uh, I would need to get, like, some first aid stuff, I think, and some tissues,’ An says.
As An makes to get up, Kohane grabs her wrist, forcing her to sit back down.
‘Wait, An-chan. When we’re in your room, please?’
And so, after dinner has been had and cleared away and Ken has been safely returned to the land of the living, An and Kohane end up on An’s bed again. There’s a first aid kit on the bedside table, and Kohane is laying back on a copious amount of pillows, a towel laid across them just in case the blood drips.
It strikes An, suddenly, that she’s about to bite Kohane. Which is crazy. Because Kohane is her best friend, not food. Her best friend who she also has a massive crush on. She can’t believe she’s about to bite her. It feels too intimate. Too exposed. Like, jeez, An needs to at least take Kohane out for dinner first! Also, An has only ever bitten a human once when she went a bit feral and it was a nasty experience because he turned out to be a smoker, and his blood tasted rank. But Kohane does smell pretty delicious, so An is sure this will be different. An slaps herself for thinking that Kohane is delicious. Best friend. Not food. She repeats it in her head a few times, and apparently it slips out of her mouth as well, because Kohane blinks up at her and says: ‘How about best friend and food?’ with a toothy smile and a furious blush.
Kohane is a genius, really.
‘Are you sure?’ An asks. Not that she really needs to ask. Kohane is baring her neck for An, pulling down the collar of her t-shirt. She’s obviously nervous, from the twitch in her fingers and the shallow, quick breaths she’s taking, but she also obviously wants this.
‘Mm hmm,’ comes the reply.
An leans down and bites.
Kohane yelps slightly as she breaks the skin, and then she sucks in a breath. An doesn’t quite figure when she lets it out. The first thing she registers is the warmth that floods into her mouth. It’s nothing like the slimy, viscous fluid that pours out of the cartons in the fridge and sticks unpleasantly in her throat and on her tongue. It’s thin like juice, and it goes down easily. It’s fresh and warm and full of life, and it tastes slightly buttery under the tang of iron and salt. It’s addictive.
She stops after the fifth mouthful.
‘Holy shit,’ An says.
‘Holy shit,’ Kohane slurs in agreement.