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“Do you think this is still good, Yuu-chan?”
Yuu looks over to where Mika is standing and holding out an open can of... something, squinting at it with curious red eyes.
While traveling, the group had split up to scavenge food and supplies from nearby stores, all staying within a block of each other in case of any danger. They’d divided into groups of twos or threes, Mika and Yuu both volunteering to pair up, jumping at the chance to be alone with each other once again.
As it turned out, unsurprisingly, staying in a group like this did not leave much room for privacy or time away. And what little time away they got, such as now, was occupied with working or fighting to survive. They both hated it, their hands and hearts constantly yearning for each other, but that time apart just made moments like this all the more worth it.
“Mika,” Yuu sighs now, peeking over into the can. “That looks disgusting... I’m not eating that for dinner.”
Mika almost looks offended at how Yuu didn’t seem to appreciate what he found, setting it back down and following the other boy deeper into the store. “Well, we have to find something, Yuu-chan. We can’t return to the others empty-handed. They’ll think we slacked off.”
“Oh, so you care what they think now?” Yuu teases over his shoulder, grinning at how Mika’s eyes narrow at him. He impulsively turns to the other and catches his hands in his own, walking backwards while pulling Mika along in front of him. They both smile at the playful air that swoops them up, and Yuu cocks his head, looking at his vampiric partner through half-lidded eyes. “What if I wanna slack off with you?”
The responding blush on Mika’s face is immediate, and he looks away, not knowing what to say to that.
Yuu tugs on his hands, yanking him around a shelf and into a hug, their first hug in quite some time after traveling. It’s familiar and grounding, and Yuu thinks that maybe this is how Mika feels when he hasn’t had blood for a while and finally gets a taste, refreshed and relieved and alive.
“Yuu-chan...” Mika whispers. “We should search more.” His arms betray his words as they wind around Yuu’s waist tighter, pressing their full bodies together. He feels Yuu shift a foot between both of his, trying to get impossibly closer.
“So search more,” Yuu counters. Mika can practically hear the smirk on his lips.
He finally lowers his arms from around Yuu and takes a step back, but Yuu takes one forward and follows him, still holding him in an embrace.
“I can’t when you’re attached to me like a leech,” Mika mutters, feeling Yuu’s hands start to smooth gently up and down his back. He keeps his arms at his sides still, sighing into the feeling but stubbornly refusing to reciprocate.
“Just relax with me for a bit, Mika,” Yuu says. “You’re always so tense and worried. I hate seeing you like... We’re finally back together again, so we’re allowed to celebrate that, you know.”
“I know, but...” Mika mutters, trailing off.
He feels Yuu start to lean back and just knows he’s going to start questioning him, scrutinizing his thoughts and worries, so he wraps his arms around Yuu and tries to pull him back in, not quite ready to have such a conversation yet. Not now at least. Not when Yuu has been smiling so sweetly for him, joking around and giving him soft embraces. One day, he will share his deepest feelings with Yuu, because he owes him that much, but... now?
Although Mika tries to pull him in again to distract him, Yuu removes an arm from around him and plants a hand on his chest. They look into each other’s eyes, still so close together, and Mika feels like Yuu is trying to see right into his heart. It makes him anxious, but in a funny way that makes his chest warm, like he’s a human again.
“...You’re worried about something,” Yuu declares, pinning Mika down with his gaze. The vampire mentally curses.
He is worried about something, and has been for a while, but it’s nothing he wants to involve Yuu in right now. The last thing he wants to do right now is ruin the lovely atmosphere between them.
“Don’t even say that you’re not,” Yuu speaks before he can even get his mouth open, so he abandons that plan of fully denying it and puts on a smile, trying to paint it as casual, instead.
“It’s nothing too serious, Yuu-chan,” he insists, trying to look away, but Yuu’s palm comes up to cup his cheek, and he can’t help but look into his eyes again.
“Tell me, Mika,” Yuu whispers. Mika can tell it’s less of a suggestion and more of a plea. “You know you can talk to me about anything, stupid.”
“Gosh,” Mika sighs, glaring like a bothered cat at the insult, and Yuu laughs at his expression like they’re kids again.
“Please, please, please, tell me,” he teases, cupping Mika’s face with both hands. “Tell me the truth, and I’ll love you forever.”
His tone is light-hearted and joking, but Mika still goes wide-eyed, blushing.
“Yuu-chan...”
“I’m a man of my word, so spit it out.”
Mika’s blush fades as his mind tries to grapple with his troubled thoughts, his eyes drifting away from Yuu’s and to the shelves around them.
“What if...” he starts, hesitant. He bites at his lip before he continues. “What if.. I don’t like being what I am?”
Yuu lets go of his face, breaking all contact between them and responding as easily as if Mika had asked him what the weather was like outside.
“Then I’ll change you back.”
Mika’s eyebrows lower, just a bit, but enough that Yuu notices. “Okay... And what if I do like what I am?”
“Then I won’t change you back.”
This time, Mika frowns, turning away entirely. He takes a few steps away, then stops, looking down. When he speaks again, his voice is strained with emotion. “Why are you so... It’s not that simple. You can’t just-” A frustrated sigh sounds through the room. “Don’t you want me to be human..? To be normal again?”
Ah, Yuu thinks. So that’s what this is about.
“Mika...” he breathes, honestly. “I want you to be happy.”
“That’s not-”
“Fair. I know. I know, Mika. I know better than anyone. I know, okay?”
“Just stop, Yuu-chan... You don’t know. You will age. I will be stuck in this body, exactly like this, 16 years old forever, and you expect me to just stand by your side, watching you grow and mature and leave me behind? I’d rather... I’d rather just..!”
Yuu steps closer and reaches out for Mika’s hand, but it is moved away as soon as their skin touches.
“Mika, I would never leave you,” he starts to say, but Mika steps away abruptly, walking towards the entrance of the super market, and the words fall from his lips and dissolve into the air around them.
Before they fade completely, they echo back in his own ears, and the thought that Mika might not believe his promise makes his heart drop like a boulder in his chest.
“Idiot! Hurry up and go!”
Blood flowing out onto the white floor... Soaking into their white clothes, into their skin. Mika’s palm pushing him back, begging him to run away. To live. To leave him.
He couldn’t. He couldn’t possibly. Yet he did. He ran, and he didn’t look back.
And here he is. Standing behind the boy he left to bleed out and die, with a hole in his chest and a missing arm. That small, kind boy with blond hair and blue eyes, who had stuck by his side for four years when he had nothing else. Who had been his everything when he had no one.
Yuu stands and watches as Mika walks away from him, wrapping his arms around himself.
This kind blond boy who fought through a hoard of both humans and vampires to get him back, and how would do the very same time and time again if he needed to.
Yuu realizes somewhere in his heart that he will love him until the day he dies.
“Answer me,” that blond boy asks him now, his voice a faint whisper in the air. “What would you really, honestly prefer me to be, Yuu-chan?”
Yuu’s mind races, through all their memories together, through Mika’s sacrifice, through their hard-fought reunion, through all their touches and hugs and whispered words of affection. He gives an answer straight from his heart.
“Alive.”
Mika freezes in total shock.
“Be anything,” Yuu whispers. “Be with me, or be away from me, or never see me again for the rest of your life after we finish this mission, if that’s what you want. Be anything, anything at all. But be alive, Mika. That’s what I want you to be. If you can do nothing else for me, please, let it be this one thing.”
He’s not surprised at all when moisture gathers in the corners of his eyes, and a tear trails down his cheek. He just lets it carve a path down his skin, trying to keep his voice even and strong. For Mika’s sake.
“Live for me, and I will never ask anything of you ever again. Two favors are all I ever need from you, my first being when I told you for the first time to drink my blood so you could survive. You did that one for me, you became a vampire, so my last and only request is that you live. And keep living for as long as you can. Okay? Because those years when I really thought you were dead were the worst years of my life.”
Mika doesn’t move, still facing away from him, remains turned to him, but Yuu doesn’t need a response. He has gotten all that he needed: for Mika to listen to his request.
He forces himself take one last look at Mika’s back then walks around him, towards the exit, knowing they still need to complete their mission of finding food. If Mika wants to stay in this building, alone with his own thoughts, so be it. He will walk away without looking back, as he did all those years ago when they were children, his footsteps heavy against the tile floor, and his heart heavy in his chest.
When he nears the door without hearing a single sound from Mika, he takes a deep breath, closes his eyes briefly, and opens them as he pushes the front door open, willing to leave Mika behind.
“Yuu-chan, wait!”
The panicked shout reaches his ears, a heavy weight piles onto his back, a pair of arms wind around his neck, and he is pulled to his knees.
Mika clings to him on the ground, holding him and pressing his face into his black hair.
“I will!” he cries out, urgent, as if Yuu had really been threatening to leave him forever. “I will, I promise! I will live for you. ”
Yuu peels his arms away so he can turn around, Mika throwing himself at him again as soon as they are face to face.
“It was so selfish of me to think those things... I don’t want to die, Yuu-chan. I don’t want to leave you. I’m so sorry.. that I even thought of such things.” His voice is so pained that Yuu wants to melt into his skin and soothe from him the inside-out. “Even if I have to be a vampire, I want to live with you, and be with you. So please love me forever... Okay, Yuu-chan? I’m sorry.”
“You know there’s no way I couldn’t love you forever,” Yuu tells him, smiling at the feeling of Mika’s cool tears on his neck. He smiles brighter and tightens his hold when Mika’s body shakes with sobs at his words. “Shhh, crybaby. I love you.”
“Yuu-chan.. Don’t joke around right now...”
“Mika, Mika,” he sighs, leaning back. Mika’s cheeks are coated with drying tears, his beautiful red eyes squinted, his fingers digging into Yuu’s back. Yuu scans his face, unable to stop himself from pressing a kiss to his forehead, right between his eyes. “You think I’m joking?”
They never manage to find much food to bring back for the group, but neither stop to care.
They stay there for far longer than they should, kneeling together on the floor of that store, Yuu pressing kisses to Mika’s face and neck and hands until his tears start to turn to smiles.
Once he’s calmed down and accepted Yuu’s request to live and survive as he is, Mika wants nothing more than to thank him with a kiss, but takes it a step further and thanks him with a hundred of them, all over his face, just as Yuu did to him. Yuu sits still and smiles the whole time with his eyes closed, blindly pressing back wherever Mika’s cold lips find their way to his own warm ones.
Though his heart is soaring, a part of Mika still quietly hurts, and he worries that he will hurt forever, but with Yuu like this, beneath his hands, against his lips, and within his heart, he knows that pain won’t last for very long at all.