Chapter Text
The blood of Grimslaw demons runs a sickly green, the color of fell magics and run-of-the-mill demonism. It courses slow down the sharpened length of blessed steel and drips to the earth, where it lands in the pine needles and shriveled grasses with a caustic hiss.
Shiro daintily twists the dagger to examine the blade, careful of flicking any more of the mess onto his soiled clothing. Through the sheen of Grimslaw blood, he can see hairline cracks in the metal and a bent tip. It's unsalvageable, unfortunately— at least by his unpracticed hand— and no slayer can rely on a weapon that’s primed to fail them. Shiro flings the ruined dagger into the underbrush, demon blood and all, and peels off his latest pair of cheap gloves to toss away after it.
“Nicely done, Slayer,” a voice in the treeline calls, churning Shiro’s blood into a cold slush that seizes in his veins and stiffens his limbs.
Keith. Again.
The vampire loves to catch him like this, covered in dirt and demon gore, his body already working overtime to heal scrapes and raking slices through his flesh. It’s the scent of his blood that draws Keith to him, the way sharks can scent a drop from miles away. It’s his own biology that betrays him every time.
Shiro can’t help but bleed, though. It comes with the job.
He draws his sleeve over his cheek to wipe a dark, wet smear of blood from his temple, privately mourning the state of his partially shredded top. He liked this sweater. He’d snagged it on sale last winter, enamored with the flattering cut and the soft, warm-toned grey of its wool. Shiro had slipped it on for tonight’s patrol with the utmost reluctance, knowing it might well end up a casualty in the eternal fight against evil; he’d had no other options left, the nightly destruction of his clothing having already taken a gruesome toll on his wardrobe. Hell, soon enough he’ll be duking it out with demons in nothing but tattered denim cut-offs, the cost of constantly replacing his ruined outfits no longer affordable.
“Enjoy the show?” Shiro asks through a clenched jaw, his spine held rigid as a steel rod. It helps to counter the tremble working through him, body amped by another heavy influx of adrenaline and fear strong enough to whip his senses into a heightened frenzy.
“Sure did,” Keith says as he unfolds his arms, laces his fingers together, and stretches both limbs overhead; Shiro traces the long, lean lines of his black-clad form, wary of the inhuman strength resting just under the surface. “Ready for some audience participation?”
There’s no pause for a reply. Keith’s cutting grin suddenly appears square in front of Shiro's nose, his body pressed against the slayer's, his unnaturally warm hand skimming up a burly arm—
And then clawed fingers grip tight around his bicep, searing a bruise into his flesh. Before Shiro can even raise a hand in defense, he’s wrenched off his feet and hurled high into the air.
On the bright side, the distance from Keith grants him a moment of icy clarity. Separated from the vampire by twelve or fifteen feet of empty air, gazing down on a pale face accented by sharp eyes, unruly locks of dark hair, and the slash of a mouth itching to be painted red, Shiro has a moment to think. Or his body does, at least. He twists, catlike, and reorients so he’ll land on his feet. And in the meantime, spinning out the last of the hangtime he has before impact, he pulls a sharpened stake from the holster strapped around one thigh and grips it so tight that his fist aches.
As soon as his heels hit the earth, Keith is on him again. The air swims with his acrid scent as he lunges close, clinging fiercely to Shiro and the shreds of his sweater. It’s the smell of long-burning fires and fine ash, of death by heat, and the vampire wears it thick enough to choke on.
There’s a wet snap near Shiro’s ear— the click of pointed teeth aching to bury themselves in his throat and bleed the life out of him. The next bite grazes, lips alone connecting with his skin. The near miss must frustrate Keith, judging by the groan he lets out.
There are times Shiro almost feels like he’s being walked through the fight, Keith perpetually two steps ahead in a dance only he knows. The vampire dodges his swings and stabs with preternatural grace, even more flexible than he is strong. It’s like fighting smoke made loosely solid, a vapor condensed into the shape of a man with perfect features and a lean body that anticipates Shiro’s every move.
Rarely, Shiro manages to switch things up enough to land a hit. Still, the sensation feels off. There’s no visceral satisfaction in it, no gut-deep reassurance that his blows are making a difference. Keith’s open palm seems to absorb all the force he throws into his fists, stopping his punches cold.
A lung-crushing kick to Shiro’s chest sends him stumbling back, but he charges in again as soon as he can draw breath. Keith is efficient when it comes to takedowns— a sweep of his leg, a twist that turns Shiro’s momentum against him, aerial tricks that the slayer can’t help but envy— but Shiro is practiced at taking a beating. He exhales as he pushes himself back up for the fifth, tenth, dozenth time, bouncing light on his feet before throwing himself back at Keith.
As he closes in, he feints another punch-stake combo; Keith buys it. Shiro drops down at the last second and throws his shoulder squarely into the vampire’s chest. The collision is like plowing into a bronzed statue full-speed. The force of the impact doubles back on Shiro, a shock of pain rippling through his body and jarring his bones.
Shiro manages to catch Keith’s wrist as the vampire takes a swing at him. It’s a stroke of luck, drawn more from instinct than honed skill, and the tensile strength he feels in that delicate joint is a terrible reminder of the disparity in their power. With a strained grunt, Shiro quickly leverages their momentum and heaves Keith high, swings him overhead, and slams him down onto the ground with enough force that small stones nearby rattle.
Keith bounces, even, and the slayer takes no small amount of pride in that. Without allowing a moment for the vampire to gather himself, Shiro throws himself down on Keith and bears him to the earth, stake clutched in hand.
“Oh no,” Keith moans as Shiro falls onto his knees astride his chest, trapping him between thick, clenched thighs.
For a moment, Shiro marvels at having Keith like this— pinned under him, still as a statue, all of his weight pressing the vampire down into the soft soil. It’s a drastic reversal, an upheaval of the normal order of things. It’s a first for Shiro.
“You really ought to be taking this a little more seriously,” he sneers as a hand crawls up the outer curve of his thigh, the touch clearly meant to unnerve him. But he’s killed dozens of vampires who’ve done worse, clawing into his clothes and flesh as he holds them down and puts a wooden stake through their heart. If his luck holds, this kill might be one of his cleanest yet.
So Shiro trusts in the move that hasn’t yet failed him with other, weaker vampires, wild with ravenous hunger. He uses the same quick downward strike, pouring in all the strength he has left to force the wood through unnaturally resilient flesh and steely muscle, between reinforced bones, into the vulnerable softness of a black, unbeating heart.
A gloved hand curls tight around the shaft of the stake with blinding speed, stopping its pointed tip millimeters from piercing Keith’s chest. “Really, Slayer? And let you ruin my favorite jacket?”
Unbothered as Shiro strains to push the stake the last few inches needed to end him, Keith reaches up and brushes the sweaty ends of white fringe from his eyes. No, white and red. There are strands colored and clumped from the fresh blood smeared down the side of his face and along his brow.
Shiro flinches from the movement, surprised when the touch is nothing but tender. Mind games, he realizes, as if Keith halting him with a single hand as he bears down with all his strength isn’t enough of a power move.
“You have such pretty eyes, Slayer,” the vampire answers as he rolls strands of bloodied hair between his thumb and forefinger, a smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. It exposes a long canine, wet and gleaming in the moonlight.
Shiro grunts as he leans forward, sacrificing the surety of his pinning hold on Keith in a desperate bid to sink the stake into his heart. It’s ridiculous— absolutely, unbelievably absurd— that the vampire can keep him at bay with so little effort, cool and unfazed as Shiro’s whole body strains with exertion.
The risk doesn’t pay off.
It’s too easy, the way Keith bucks up and flips them over, laying out Shiro on his back before he can even reflexively roll away. It’s over in an instant, Shiro suddenly staring up at a dark sky swirled with the bright glimmer of the stars, Keith looming over him like a shadow that threatens to blot out the rest of the night. When Shiro tries to move, he finds his wrists are pinned. His whole body is, really, but that doesn’t stop him from struggling to break free, though his reserves of strength are woefully depleted. He’d wasted them on what had seemed like his first and only opportunity to put an end to Keith’s menace.
“You really shouldn’t be taking this so seriously,” Keith tells him. The ends of his hair tickle at Shiro’s jaw as he leans in close, mouth hovering just above his cheek, his ear, the soft reaches of his upper throat. His breath is hot like a furnace. Keith is— he’s warm. It’s not a human warmth, though, too intense and radiant to be mistaken for anything natural. And it’s a far, far cry from the clammy, chill-as-the-grave vampires Shiro is used to slaying.
In time, Shiro ceases to strain against the points where Keith presses into him. He goes limp, pliant, like a creature hunted to the point of exhaustion. He rolls his head aside and bares the part of him every vampire hungers for— a thick, throbbing vein of blood. An easy meal. And as Keith gives a guttural purr that makes the slayer’s spine tingle, the tips of pointed fangs just brushing over his skin, Shiro abruptly swings his head hard into the vampire’s face.
His skull meets Keith’s with a resounding crack that leaves Shiro dazed, lashes fluttering as his vision swims in the dark. A warning throb at the back of his head promises Shiro that if he survives this encounter, he’s going to be dealing with the concussion of a lifetime. His nose wrinkles as he looks up and finds Keith still perched atop him, unbudged by the last-ditch effort to unseat him. He squints.
The vampire slips in and out of focus, blurry as he wipes at his nose and stares at the dark, violet-hued blood that comes away on his hand.
“That hurt, Slayer,” he says.
“Good,” Shiro hisses, feeling stubborn to the end. But however much Keith is smarting, Shiro got it worse.
And now his own blood is smeared across Keith’s cheekbone, flecked over his skin like a stretch of freckles. It’s stuck tacky in the strands of dark hair that hang down to the vampire’s jaw. Shiro can only sit tight and watch as Keith drags a thumb through the transferred blood, fathomless pupils fixed on him all the while, and then slowly runs the pad of his finger over his outstretched tongue.
He can feel the shudder that runs through Keith. The vampire grinds down into him for a heartbeat, pressing the air out of his chest, and then those lean thighs squeeze tight to keep him from drawing new breath.
Shiro gasps when the lock of Keith’s legs finally loosens.
“Kill me and another slayer will be chosen in my place,” he snarls even as his lungs strain under the vampire’s dense mass. As a threat, it doesn’t carry much bite. Not for a vampire like Keith. Not for most vampires, maybe. But it’s a balm for Shiro’s conscience— even if he falls, all is not lost. The fight’s not on his shoulders alone, although it’s only ever felt that way.
Keith drags his hand across Shiro’s chest, wiping a trail of dark blood across the pale grey fabric. “You surprised me back there. A couple of times, actually.”
Shiro flexes under him, testing the give. There isn’t any. For all Keith’s casual appearances and aloof attitude, his hold on Shiro is deadly certain. Unyielding.
Keith smiles. There’s still a smear of blood under his nose— black under the moonlight, like liquid shadow— and Shiro’s eye is drawn to it as the vampire inhales deep. It’s not for the sake of drawing breath, but to swallow in the scent of him. Of a slayer’s freshly spilled blood mixing with the air.
Keith’s hand curls under Shiro’s jaw, fingers digging in tight, his claws extended just enough to prick the human’s skin and discourage any spirited struggle. He leans in anew, moon-pale face looming above Shiro.
This close, Shiro can see the threads of red that lace through the dark, dark violet of his irises. He can trace the fine shapes of Keith’s eyes, lined in long, dense lashes. He can marvel at the smoothness of his unnaturally perfect skin and teeth that shine like opaque gemstones.
His mouth slips open in surprise when Keith leans down and licks him.
It’s a slick, searing heat. A saliva-wet brand drawn across his skin with agonizing patience. There’s a texture to Keith's tongue like soft scales, strange and alien as it sweeps a path through panic-sweat and sticky blood. The thin, insubstantial wash of it cannot possibly feed him well, but Keith presses the flat of his tongue against Shiro like his spilled blood is honey and it’s the last sweet thing he’ll ever taste.
Shiro writhes under the insistent glide of the vampire’s long, ember-hot tongue, but Keith is inescapable in every manner. His scent covers Shiro like rolling fog across the fens; he smells of the air at the height of wildfire season, a persistent note of char hanging on him like musk.
The tip of Keith’s tongue runs a lazy circle around the little slice along his temple, coaxing out more blood— a weak, fresh run of it, just enough to wet his mouth— and then it draws away. Shiro can feel the slick spider’s threads of saliva stretched between them break and fall thinly on his skin, already gone cool. The nighttime breeze chills the wet trail Keith licked up the side of his face in a frigid instant.
Shiro wrenches his eyes shut and waits, his jaw tight and his body taut with anticipation. But the throat-rending bite never comes. One second passes, and then another. A tremble rattles through him, both from the cold that slips in through the tatters of his sweater and from the lingering touch of fear.
“Just a taste,” Keith whispers as he leans back and grins with smug satisfaction. His touch lingers on Shiro’s skin, claw-tips and fingerpads dragging sinfully slow down the sweaty, blood-washed plane of his cheek.
Shiro looks up at him in a daze. His own tongue sits heavy and immobile in his mouth, dumb with shock. Maybe that concussion from earlier is setting in, too. He closes his eyes and swallows hard, wondering what comes next.
And then the weight across his middle shifts. The sweltering pressure bearing him into the ground disappears as swiftly as a canny crow, and when Shiro opens his eyes he finds himself alone in the wooded clearing, feeling strangely bereft.
Weeks pass without a glimpse of Keith.
The absence of his personal vexation incarnate unsettles Shiro, but the respite is a relief. His nights fall back into routine of patrolling, slaying, and sleeping a scant few hours with a stake clutched in his curled fist. He dusts vampires and beheads demons, and though there are some who challenge him more than others, there is nothing and no one like Keith.
When Shiro’s thoughts get away from him, memories of that last encounter rise in his mind like steam. It forms a haze he can’t shake, a miasma of heat, smoke, ash, blood. A weight on his chest like the compression of sleep paralysis. Fear constant in his veins, like the cold drip of an IV during his childhood stints in the pediatric ward, colorful characters plastered on white, white walls to lessen their bleak intensity. The bitter tang of failure. Disgust at a vampire— a creature that subsists on human death and suffering, the bane of his personal existence and all of humanity— stirring up unseemly feelings—
The chain of emotion-laden thought breaks there. Shiro’s skin remains an unsightly, flushed red even after he retreats to the cramped bathroom of his apartment to hunch over the sink and splash his face with cool water. He wonders if he’s catching a fever.
Keith’s intentions remain a mystery, as does his sudden disappearance.
For all their horrors, the other demons and undead Shiro has encountered are at least straightforward. Predictable. They want blood, they want flesh, they want to kill and destroy and inflict pain. There is comfort in what’s familiar, even if it’s awful. But Keith has never stopped surprising him, stretching all the way back to their first meeting in that dimmed alleyway just two weeks after receiving his calling as a slayer— Keith effortlessly playing human to slink in past Shiro’s fledgling defenses, and Shiro falling for the act hook, line, and sinker.
The memory still makes his blood pressure spike, hands curling tight around the edges of the sink.
Shiro stubbornly hopes for the best out of his current circumstances. Maybe Keith crawled back into his coffin to sleep another hundred years, as older vampires sometimes do. Or perhaps he simply grew bored of whatever game he’d been playing with the local slayer. Maybe he tripped and fell on a white picket fence post while stalking some poor family, sparing Shiro the trouble of staking him.
Free of Keith’s surprise visits, Shiro is able to fully focus on other threats, of which there’s no short supply. He clears out vampire dens in the sewers around the city; he ranges far into the woods and deep places underground to root out evil creatures in their lairs. He’s productive. And even as he struggles to maintain the vestiges of an ordinary human life in the daylight hours, Shiro clings to the noble purpose of his calling like it’s driftwood in a churning sea.
It’s the rumor of a sudden spat of gory disappearances that spurs him to travel a few hours north to a remote forest sprawled across the foothills, shadowed by mountain peaks. Hikers, rangers, hunters— they’ve all gone missing on the trails over the last few months. The scattered pieces of their remains have even led to calls for hunts to cull the forest’s bears, wolves, and coyotes.
But Shiro knows better. Half a year of slaying under his belt has refined his eye for the awful and tuned his senses to things gone terribly awry. His suspicions are enough to set him off on a thin, winding trail through the forest, following his hunch with righteous determination and an axe gripped tight in hand, its blade coated in blessed oil.
Shiro’s journey ends with him stumbling into the ritual camp of a vampiric witch and her cadre of dark, demonic druids. He’d been right about something in these woods being wrong. One look tells the slayer that the magics at work here are deeply at odds with everything good and natural, so dark and twisted they taint the very land itself. One look also tells Shiro he’s well and truly fucked himself, and that stepping into this cesspit will cost him his life and everything else.
But by then, it’s too late.
Fighting Haggar’s druids is like fighting smoke. His axe breezes through them without causing a lick of damage, and he’d mark them as incorporeal if not for the solidity of their claws as they rake jaggedly through his flesh, bleeding him until his clothes grow saturated with blood and stick to him like a second skin. With a flash of violet light— magic, the kind that tears through reality to enact sudden and violent change— the witch severs his right arm completely. It falls to the carpet of pine needles and moss with his axe still in-hand, a chunk of himself lying there in plain sight.
The excited hissing of the druids drowns Shiro’s agonized scream. As he stumbles away, they set on him like carrion birds ready to rip his carcass apart, the pale masks that mark their faces splitting to reveal jaws containing row after row of stubby, pointed teeth.
His flight from the ritual site is staggered, his steps hunted, and between the shriek of the monsters pursuing him and his own flagging strength as he bleeds out, Shiro knows he won’t survive.
He’d thought he was ready for it. He’d thought he’d stopped being afraid of death after a youth spent knowing it lived in his own body, in his genes and the marrow of his bones. The healing gifts granted by his calling as a slayer might’ve cured him of the terminal illness ticking away inside of him, but Shiro had already accepted that he’d merely traded one early death for another. He’d thought he’d die a hero, at least. That he’d make a difference— a real one, saving lives and souls and humankind— before he succumbed.
But death is different in real time. This is terror that throttles his mortal heart. It’s the sting of a hundred wounds that tear open a little wider with every stride. It’s his life running out of him in rivulets that whet the appetites of the chittering, hissing monsters on his trail.
When his legs fail him, Shiro keeps struggling forward, toward the feeble shelter of a redwood’s exposed roots. Vision swimming from exhaustion and a deluge of lost blood, he tucks himself among the gnarled, mossy wood and blindly fishes a knife from his boot. He barely has the strength left to curl his fingers around the cheap rubber-coated handle, its surface slick with what he assumes is his own blood, but Shiro aims to take at least one of the druidic nightmares down before they finish tearing him apart.
As the sounds of his demise draw closer by the second, he can’t help the tremor that travels up and down his body, coursing through his remaining limbs. It’s frighteningly lonely, dying like this. It’s cold. It’s dark, the periphery of his vision eaten up by encroaching shadow, and then darker still.
In the muddled void, Shiro sees things. Shapes. Figures. Even with his eyes squeezed shut, their shadows play across his lids. It might just be the fever consuming his skin and swamping his mind, but he thinks he even sees demons.
Maybe it’s hell. A hell. One of the many pocket dimensions of suffering that branch from their own, inhabited by spirits and demons and the suffering souls they feed on. Perhaps slayers who die in the line of duty aren’t even guaranteed a place in some heaven somewhere. Or maybe Haggar and her druids took more than his body— his soul, bright and eternal, could be nothing more than her plaything now.
Shiro labors to keep his eyes firmly shut, afraid that opening them will make his fate real. But still the shadows move, forming a shape he can trace and follow, clearer by the moment— a demon, large and dark as oil-fed smoke, tall enough to scrape the ceiling. Colors form even behind his closed eyes, light shining through the shadows; the demon’s head is crowned with myriad horns and a ring of red flame, and set into the darkness like inlaid gems are a set of white, white teeth.
When Shiro wakes, it’s with a sudden jolt, a heaving chest, and a crisis of confusion. How am I not dead? I should be dead. Did I die? Is this hell?
It takes time to collect himself, his senses all scattered like loose grains of sand that slip through his grasp each time he goes to gather them. It’s a bed he’s resting on— not a metal autopsy table, not the blood-soaked slab of a demonic altar or the soft lining of a coffin, not the soil of an unmarked grave. The walls are pretty and wood-grained. The ceiling lacks his apartment’s water stains and ugly popcorn texture. The sheets are luxuriously soft to the touch, even soaked through with his cooling sweat.
No, he’s eighty or ninety percent sure he’s not dead. And he’s almost positive this isn’t hell, unless there are hells that consist of a comfortable bed in a slightly rustic bedroom with more plaid than Eddie Bauer.
It’s not his room, though. Not his bed. It’s too plush, too supportive, too comfortable. There’s tranquil silence rather than the sounds of sirens and clanking plumbing through cheap walls. And there’s a smoky, musky smell that pervades everything, troublingly familiar but impossible for his muddled mind to place.
Shiro pushes himself up to get a better sense of his bearings, and that’s when he’s hit with another realization.
His arm is gone. Gone-gone. Memories he’d drowsily hoped were only nightmares seep down into the crevices of his mind, too real to be dismissed. Shiro sinks back down with a soft whimper and stares at the empty sleeve lying limp beside him. Tentative, he runs his left hand down his right shoulder, palming until he reaches the healed-over stub that extends just past the joint.
The pain is there, but it’s duller than he’d have imagined for a fresh and callously delivered amputation. It throbs low through the bone, weak enough that Shiro thinks a little ibuprofen could nip it. And even more than the pain, he feels loss. It’s acute, his center thrown off-balance by what’s missing. It’s strange and alien, knowing some part of him still lies there in the woods where it fell.
Shiro pushes the covers down to his hips and actually manages to sit up this time, his head swimming at the miniscule change in altitude. He’d fought a battle he couldn’t win. He’d been maimed and hunted to exhaustion. He’d lain on death’s doorstep, too weak to even knock, and waited to be collected. And now he’s in a dim bedroom, tucked in a pillowy bed, wearing a soft plaid nightshirt that doesn’t belong to him. Shiro tugs at the material resting over his chest and stares at the thick flannel that's lined with something like fleece. It feels wonderful between his fingers, warm and soft on his skin, but it’s definitely not his.
The windows are hidden behind the drape of heavy, dark curtains, but a light from the bathroom is enough to see by. There’s furniture— the bed he’s in, a chest of drawers, a loaded bookshelf, a big armoire. In the attached bathroom, he can see the sleek curve of a porcelain tub, the glint of a glass shower, dark towels hung to dry. There are paintings on the walls and although it’s too dark to read every detail, Shiro can tell they’re landscapes and nature scenes. Pretty, too, if starkly rendered.
As he shakily swings his feet over the side of the bed, Shiro finds a pair of slippers waiting on the cold floorboards. They match the plaid of his nightshirt, like they’re part of a set. He slips them on and wobbles to stand, already missing the cozy warmth of the bedspread.
It’s almost like a dream as he shuffles from the bedroom to a hallway. It’s a house— a cabin, judging by the bare pine everywhere, the exposed rafters and pervasive presence of hardwood— and he’s currently on the second floor. There’s a polished railing overlooking the living area below, and Shiro surveys the room with a bleary eye.
A chandelier of interlocked antlers hangs from the rafters, the light at its center throwing thorny shadows across the walls. The furniture is almost all wooden, all solid, possibly hand-carved. Fur rugs in myriad shapes and sizes stretch across the floor, though Shiro can only guess at which animals they came from. He gets the impression of a hunting lodge, a refuge from civilization hewn out of the forest itself. Maybe some lone woodsman happened upon his bled-out body and brought him here as a kindness.
As Shiro hangs a right turn and begins descending the creaky oaken steps of the staircase, he notices something else: a deathly pale, still figure seated on a small, dark couch, reclined against the upholstered arm as he watches Shiro approach.
The slayer swallows thickly and takes another step down, not sure what other recourse he has at this point. He’s weak and sleep-addled, mired in confusion, and— somehow, against all odds and instinct for self-preservation— he’s stumbled right into the den of a vampire.
And not just any vampire.
“Keith,” he greets, the name coming out dry and raspy. When was the last time he spoke?
Shiro’s heart rattles his ribs and he clutches the wooden railing tighter. He’s weak, but not helpless. If he can snap off a portion of the bannister, he’ll have a makeshift stake; it’d serve Keith right for living in a house built of one of the few materials that can so easily be turned against him.
“Shiro,” the vampire answers, touching two fingers to his brow in a greeting little salute. “Up so soon?”
Shiro doesn’t respond, eyes locked with Keith’s as his fist clenches tight around the rail, knuckles blanching. But as the vampire’s stare drifts lower, trailing its way down Shiro’s body, the slayer glances down at himself, too.
And he notices for the very first time that the plaid nightshirt only hits him mid-thigh. His legs are bare down to the ankle, interrupted only by the plush fleece of the matching slippers, and his blush deepens considerably when he realizes he definitely doesn’t have on anything underneath.
“You look…” Keith licks his lips as he mulls over his next words, gaze slowly roving its way back up to the human’s red-flushed face. “Well-rested.”
“I…” Shiro draws in a long, shaky breath, fingers strumming against polished pine. Questions fill his mind like the pounding rush of blood in his ears, each one wailing and begging to be answered. “Why am I here? Why are you here? Why aren’t I dead? Why haven’t you killed me?”
Keith lifts his chin slightly, dark eyes still fixed on him. With his hands folded over the book lying in his lap, he shrugs and simply responds, “I saved you.”
Oh. Those three words semi-satisfactorily address Shiro’s most pressing concerns, although they also trigger a new deluge of thoughts— sharp, skeptical, suspicious. He can think of reasons that Keith might have whisked him away and let him live, if only for now, and none of them are good. He takes another step, holding fast to the railing for balance.
“Like, saving me for a snack?” he asks, thinking of the feeder humans that some vampires will keep alive for weeks or months on end. But Keith makes no move to leap on him, to restrain him, to wolf him down; he only watches as Shiro edges closer down the stairs, head still tilted curiously. “Or were you planning on keeping me as a pet of some kind?”
“I already have a pet,” Keith says, as though that ought to lay Shiro's every doubt to rest.
It doesn’t, shockingly. “Highly reassuring.”
If there’s a door to flee through, Shiro has yet to see it. For all he knows, Keith might simply turn into a bat and zip in and out of the chimney, thus requiring no door at all— but then how did he bring Shiro here? So, there’s probably a door. But not here. These walls are solid logs of pine, and there are no windows on the ground floor through which he could hurl himself and make a break for it.
Shiro doubts he has the strength for an impulsive escape anyway. And what would he do next? Drag himself through the nighttime wilderness, exhausted, injured, and half-naked? Let himself fall into Haggar’s grasp again? Become a meal for some lowly, crawling little demon that has never before tasted the flesh and blood of a slayer?
No. Shiro settles back on his heels and puts any thoughts of trying to strike out on his own to rest. He’s in no condition for it, and here he at least has the security of four walls and light through the long dark of night. Here he has warmth. Here he only has to contend with Keith— and he’d rather deal with the devil he knows.
“I can practically hear your gears turning,” Keith calls from the couch, not even looking up as he turns a page in his book and continues reading. “You can unclench, Slayer. If I wanted you dead, I’d have killed you as you slept. Or left you in the woods for Haggar. Or done you in a hundred times before that.”
It’s hard to deny the truth in it. Though he and Keith have clashed numerous times, Shiro’s never walked away with anything worse than scrapes and soreness, all of it healed in a few hours’ time. By all rights, Keith could’ve and should’ve torn his throat out long ago, and yet…
“Your blood would be a nightmare to get out of the floorboards anyway,” Keith adds.
Oddly enough, that reasoning is easier to swallow. Shiro lets go of the railing and takes a few uncertain steps toward the vampire, tugging down the hem of his shirt as he goes. “Is this a truce?”
“If you want to call it that,” Keith answers, lifting a shoulder. “Sure. I won’t harm you under my own roof.”
Shiro wants to believe that. He tentatively accepts Keith’s word on it, comforted solely by the knowledge that if the vampire wanted to kill him, he might as well have already done it. As he steps down onto the landing, he flicks at the hem that barely makes it halfway down his thighs.
“So… did you dress me in this number?”
“I bought it for you,” Keith says, eyes burning as his gaze slithers down the slayer’s body, drifting well below the hem of the plaid nightshirt in question. “But it was Ulaz who changed your clothes.”
“Ulaz?”
Keith smiles, but it’s there-and-gone. “A relation of sorts. He’s always been… soft for humans. Enjoys practicing human medicine. I’d say that you’d like him, Slayer, but your kind tends to be predisposed to hating mine.”
“Can’t imagine why that might be,” Shiro mutters. “I’m sure it’s hard to fathom from the top of the food chain, but indiscriminate slaughter does tend to leave my kind wary. Or are you suggesting I make nice with every demon I see and just hope they’re not looking to strangle me with my own intestines?”
He doesn’t sneer, but it’s a near thing. His introduction to demonkind had been harrowing, messy, frightening in ways that had shattered his understanding of reality and refitted the pieces into something like a waking nightmare. His life— and his body, too— had been forever altered with that first confrontation. The surprise attack by a pack of vampires had left him curled pitifully on the floor in a smeared puddle of his own blood, a slash in his face so wide and so deep that even his newly granted regeneration couldn’t outstrip the damage.
His nose still sits a little crookedly where his nasal cavity caved in, and there are tiny shards of chipped, shattered bone stuck under the discolored scar that stretches from one cheek to the other. It serves as a reminder every time he catches sight of himself in the mirror. It conjures up memories of that night and dozens more like it, horrific in myriad ways but all of them similarly spawned from vampires, their ilk, and the cruelty that comes so easy to them.
But Keith’s frown, along with the precarious nature of his current circumstances, gives the slayer cause to reconsider.
“I’m sorry,” Shiro says, very much aware that he’s standing wounded and half-naked in a vampire’s living room, toes curling anxiously in his plush slippers. “That wasn’t exactly generous of me, given that you did apparently save my life. In my defense, my experiences have led me to form some strong opinions.”
“I don’t blame you,” Keith answers, one claw idly tapping at the arm of the couch he sits on. “When a mob of angry, cruel, righteous villagers burned my very human father alive in our farmhouse and chased me away into a winter night at the tender age of nine years, I formed some strong opinions about humankind, too.”
Keith's voice comes soft, but anger tickles at the edges of his words like low-burning flames.
Shiro blinks. He’s only ever known Keith as a peril with a heated stare and jaws that could crunch a human spine into wet splinters, and the notion that he was ever anything so vulnerable as an orphaned half-human child turns over and over in his mind. It certainly doesn’t match the capable killer sitting before him now without a lick of humanity or mortality left in him, all lean, ferocious lines and worldly knowledge.
But… Shiro supposes they’re not far apart, in that regard. Surely it’s just as difficult to reconcile him as he is now— superhuman in strength and endurance, a natural at sending his fist through demons’ skulls and severing vampires’ heads— with the sickly little boy he’d once been, fighting just to live as he was shuttled in and out of hospitals.
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” he offers, shifting awkwardly in place.
Keith sighs as he stands. “You don’t need to console me. It’s ancient history.”
“Doesn’t make it any less cruel,” Shiro murmurs. He’s more than a little wary as the vampire approaches him with slow, measured steps. “Especially for a child to go through.”
The slash of Keith’s mouth turns in a smile, lips pale and bloodless. “Even if that child was an ugly little half-demon?”
Shiro starts at Keith’s tone, all dark, self-deprecating, sneering with hurt.
“Any child. I do have a hard time imagining there’s ever been a day in your life you were ugly, though,” he admits, and it’s true. Keith is many things— and apparently half-demon vampire with a human father can be added to the list— but ugly isn’t one of them. He’s more striking than pretty, his pale face all fine, sharp angles that draw attention, and his eyes are lovely. Mesmerizing, even, and Shiro's stared into them enough times to know.
Keith hums, possibly amused. Maybe flattered. “Well, the serfs in our village disagreed. They had no fondness or sympathy for little boys with devil horns or purple skin or a long, swishy tail.”
“You had the works, huh?” Shiro asks, looking on him anew. The description doesn’t quite match any species of demon he’s encountered, and he’s curious to know what Keith looked like back then, half-human and mortal. He wonders where the horns were and how they were shaped. Was his tail curly? Furred? Prehensile?
“Yeah,” Keith says, cracking a smile at his phrasing. “The works. Everything shy of cloven hooves.”
Shiro is swayed to smile, too, against the cautious parts of him that still cry out to remain on-guard against the vampire inching toward him. “So… where’d it all go?” he asks, gesturing above his head to convey horns.
Keith’s grin broadens and he slips a little closer. Too close, Shiro’s better judgment warns even as the heat rolling off of Keith hits his bare skin and makes his spine tingle. Every breath he takes carries the cloying scent of ash that always seems to cling to the vampire’s skin, as if Keith bathes in bonfire smoke and burned maple.
“As I got older, I gained more control over my appearance. My more demonic features only slip through when my emotions are running high,” Keith explains. “Or if I need to make use of them.”
Before Shiro’s eyes, the blunt nails on one of Keith’s hands lengthen until they could pass for talons, the tips turning opaque and dark as onyx. He swallows thickly as they come to curl under his chin, warm and glassy smooth where they brush back and forth along his jaw. In all the times they’ve fought, he’s never seen Keith with claws like this, long and wicked enough to shred him. Considerably more deadly than what the average vampire comes armed with, too.
Shiro can feel the well of panic in his gut, rising to fill— wait, no. It’s something worse.
His stomach chooses that moment to let loose a thunderous growl, its wavering pitch and protracted groan bringing an embarrassed flush to the heights of his cheeks and ears.
But it cuts clean through the moment of whatever that had been building up between them, the vampire laughing softly and drawing back a few steps as he asks, “Hungry?”
“I guess you could say that,” Shiro mumbles. The last meal he’d had was on his way up to the forest where he’d heard people were going missing, and it had been sparse— a fast food fish sandwich, a handful of trail mix, and half of an energy bar left in his jacket pocket. It’s as if his stomach only just now woke up, about fifteen minutes behind the rest of his body, and its first act is to throw a tantrum.
“There’s food for you in the fridge.”
“For me?” Shiro asks as he takes a few hesitant steps toward the darkened kitchen. He has doubts still, especially with the way Keith looks at him— like a tempting treat in a bakery window, if Shiro had to describe the scrutiny he feels— but his own hunger is a powerful compulsion. “Like, human food?”
Keith nods and gives him a nod toward the kitchen. “Unless you want blood. I have that to offer, too.”
“Uh, thanks. I’m good with solid food.”
The contents of Keith's fridge seem to have been chosen at random.
There’s blood, of course. A whole shelf of it, actually, stored in jars and plastic baggies that remind Shiro of the Capri Suns he used to drink as a kid. But above that are shelves stacked with human sustenance. There’s a box of fried chicken from a grocery store deli counter, cartons of eggs, a pre-packaged chicken salad sandwich, goat cheese, a bag of tomatoes, a whole pineapple, and six— six!— full gallons of milk.
“What’s all the milk for?” he asks, raising his voice so it’ll carry to the living room.
“Humans love milk,” is the reply that comes back.
Humans love milk. As a general statement, Shiro supposes he can’t argue. Maybe decades of exposure to Got Milk? ads informed Keith’s opinion. Being mildly lactose intolerant, though, Shiro is a little flummoxed about how he’s going to get rid of all this dairy Keith clearly expects him to consume.
Still, the gesture is nice. Shiro is more than a little affected as he grabs the fried chicken and pulls out a slightly soggy drumstick. The combination of spongy breading and cold meat is like manna from heaven for his empty, whining stomach, and it takes no time at all for Shiro to polish off the entire container as he stands hunkered over the kitchen island. It’s not exactly dignified, but he can’t much find it in himself to care whether Keith thinks of him as a slovenly animal.
He washes up after taking a few long drinks directly from the tap, and when he returns to the living room he finds Keith crouched in front of the fireplace with a steel poker in hand, carefully tending a roaring fire.
The vampire only spares him a glance. “Noticed you were cold.”
“Um, thanks. I was. This whole place is pretty chilly.” Shiro is less than graceful as he kneels down on the massive fur spread before the hearth. He’s a long way from being used to this new unevenness in his own body, the shift in his center of balance, the reliance on just his left arm.
He struggles to preserve his modesty, stretching the shirt out so he can tuck the hem under himself. “You could’ve bought me pants, too. Just saying.”
The play of firelight and shadows accentuates the little curve at the corner of Keith’s mouth, but he stares steadfastly into the hearth as he continues to turn the logs and stoke the flames.
Crackling fills the heavy silence between them. Awkwardly, Shiro shifts closer to the black-stoned fireplace on his knees, hoping to leach up more of its radiant warmth. Minutes drift past uncounted, the slayer lulled by the contentment of a full belly and a warm place to rest, and Shiro catches himself wondering how Keith ever managed to bring him back here alive.
Nevermind his severed arm and heavy bleeding; nevermind his dead weight and the pack of shadowy, unholy druids chasing his scent. It’s Keith’s appetite he dwells on. A vampire’s thirst is a force to be reckoned with, and Shiro knows his blood-soaked body must’ve presented a temptation like no other— a slayer ripe for the taking, his scent thick in the air.
“Thank you, Keith,” he says after several long minutes have elapsed. “For saving me. It can’t have been an easy thing to do.”
The vampire smiles as he turns and toys with the poker in his hands. Though the metal is a warmed-through red on one end, the temperature doesn’t seem to bother him in the slightest. “I couldn’t just let my favorite slayer die.”
“Your favorite, huh?” Shiro asks. A little bit of a chill sweeps through him, tingling down his spine in a charged sensation that verges on pleasant.
Keith stares. It takes a few moments for Shiro to realize what he's looking at— the goosebumps on his skin, the hairs raised as he’d shivered.
“You’re still cold?” the vampire asks, rising up in perfect silence. “Wait here.”
Shiro stumbles over a response, caught between politely reassuring that he was fine and remarking that of course he’d be waiting here. Where else could he go in his current state? When Keith returns a few moments later, it’s with an armful of knitted blankets and a thick, white fur that looks like it came from the most enormous wolf in existence. Or maybe a polar bear.
“Oh, this is— you didn’t have to, Keith,” Shiro says just before they’re all unceremoniously dumped onto the floor before him. It’s overkill, but maybe that’s just how vampires do everything. “Thanks. I— oh, you don’t have to do that—”
But Keith is already draping the blankets over his shoulders one at a time, creating a stifling cocoon that Shiro’s not sure he could break free of without substantial labor.
“You should be warmer now,” the vampire observes.
“That’s putting it mildly,” Shiro answers. He’s already sweating.
But it’s not unpleasant. The pile of blankets and fur may be a little stifling, but Keith’s doting isn’t. Shiro can scarcely remember the last time someone else cared so much for his comfort. His last boyfriend, probably, but the memories he has left of him have long since soured.
“You have a nice house,” Shiro says as more time lapses. “It’s not what I expected.”
At Keith’s furrowed brow and slightly off-put expression, Shiro’s eyes go wide and he backtracks to clarify. “I mean, I thought there’d be stereotypical movie vampire stuff. Black paint, velvet furniture, candelabras, skulls everywhere.”
“I have some skulls,” Keith says, pointing to a tall bookcase with shelves lined with horned animal skulls. Some are even painted, stars and comet trails artfully rendered on matte black or covered in intricate flowering vines. Some are just burned, scorched to a charred black and cracked from the heat.
“Uh… human skulls, was what I was thinking.”
“Oh.” Keith sets the poker back in its rack. “Why? They’re not very interesting.”
“Humans, or our skulls?”
As Keith returns to the couch and his book, he answers, “Both, for the most part. You’re special.”
Stretched out before a roaring fire with a full stomach and a pile of blankets, apparently under the protection of a vampire more than capable of snapping him in two, Shiro does feel somewhat special. Content, even.
And it’s been ages since he’s had any semblance of company, he realizes. Even before receiving his calling to venture into the night and slay the undead, he’d drawn back from everyone else left in the orbit of his life. A defense mechanism, Adam had called it. A stubborn means of confronting his prognosis on his own terms, without his every choice being second-guessed and dissected.
And this— this strange kindness, this bizarre bonding experience with an enemy— is the most intimacy he’s experienced in years.
Fuck. That’s sad.
Shiro's drowsy thoughts drift further, like a glass in a bottle out to sea. Then they go dark.
It feels like it might be day outside when Shiro opens his eyes, though he has no way of knowing. There’s fur under his cheek and a smothering pile of blankets atop him. The fire in the hearth still burns low, the ashes swept out and fresh logs crackling. Keith must’ve been tending it even as he slept.
Drowsy, sweaty, and hungry anew, Shiro rolls across the floor until most of the covers are cast off. He stops short at the sight of a bare foot, a fine ankle, and the hem of black joggers. A glance up reveals Keith reclined in his same spot on the couch, a different book in-hand, wearing an unzipped red hoodie that bares a stretch of his chest and well-defined abdomen.
“Uh, good morning,” Shiro croaks as he sits up on his knees, then yawns while he settles back to rest on his heels. A hand through his hair tells him that a combination of sweat and static from rubbing his head across the rug probably has him looking wildly disheveled. The drool dried along the corner of his mouth can’t be helping, either.
Keith’s gaze flicks from the page to Shiro once, twice, and then again to stay, lingering slow over the stretch of bare thigh revealed by his hiked up nightshirt. Shiro shifts and subtly tugs the shirt down, tucking the hem under his folded knees so it’ll stay.
“Good morning,” the vampire echoes back, flashing a soft smile as he turns a page.
Absently, Shiro rubs at his neck, working out the soreness from where and how he’d slept. It turns out the hardwood floor— even when covered by a luxurious fur spread— isn’t the most comfortable place to bed down. Too late he realizes that the gesture has garnered him keen interest, Keith’s tongue stroking back and forth over the edges of his teeth as he watches Shiro roll his neck and drag his palm over flushed skin. Those red-tinged eyes nearly glow in the dimness, blazing from firelight and a hunger so intense Shiro can feel it.
He drops his hand to his lap, where it lays curled in a loose fist, and hurriedly appeals to a different part of Keith. “Um, what are you reading there?”
It takes a moment for Keith’s mind to shift gears, but he does. The hungry look recedes and something more familiar wells in his gaze. He flips up the cover for Shiro to read, allowing him to draw his own conclusions. Except… it appears to be written in German, and there’s a picture on the front that is decidedly technical. An engine, maybe. A manual for a model of engine?
Shiro has no idea, so he hums and nods. “So… you’re more of a nonfiction guy, huh?”
Keith frowns and considers it. “You could probably say that. I like practical knowledge.” He clears his throat and slides forward in his seat. With more grace than Shiro thinks he could ever hope to have, Keith lowers himself to the floor beside him and asks, “How are you feeling tonight, Slayer?”
“Me?” Shiro fidgets slightly under the vampire’s careful scrutiny. “Uh, pretty good, considering my arm got lopped off like a day ago.”
“Five days ago,” Keith corrects, nodding as Shiro gives him a blank stare. “You’ve spent more time unconscious than you have awake. It’s not surprising, given how badly injured you were.”
Shiro shifts in place as he lays out a mental timeline of just how fucked he is. Five days in Keith's inexplicably kind care means that he's blown off almost a week of work without a word of notice. And it had been near the end of the month when he headed upstate to investigate the missing hikers, which means he’d probably already missed the window to pay his rent without getting hit with a late fee. Which means he’s already behind on having enough for his power bill. The delicate financial juggling act he performs monthly is absolutely blasted to hell, and that’s even before considering whether or not he still has a job at all. He dreads the thought of checking his voicemails.
Without a word, Shiro lays back down and slowly piles the blankets up over his face until he’s left with only his own hot morning breath and insulated darkness that smells of the same fabric softener he likes to splurge on.
He can hear Keith’s voice faintly through the death mask of blankets. “Are you alright?”
He doesn’t respond, consumed already with the fear that he’s soon-to-be homeless. Crummy as it is, his small apartment is his only sanctuary— the one place vampires can’t cross without an invitation, a place where he can rest and feel only low-to-moderately at risk. Paired with his newly disarmed state, Shiro wonders if he’ll survive the year. No, the season. Maybe not even the month, depending on how quickly he’s turned out by his landlord.
There’s movement above him, like the pile of blankets is being carefully taken apart. Layers of fur and fabric are tugged away one-by-one until Shiro’s sweaty face is revealed to Keith.
“I think you need to eat again,” the vampire says, studying him with concern. “And have some milk.”
He is probably dehydrated, but dairy is the last thing Shiro wants or needs. It takes some convincing, but Keith eventually concedes and brings him a plain glass of water. And then another, after Shiro down the first in four seconds flat.
“Here,” the vampire says, pressing a whole tomato into Shiro’s hand. “You won’t get your strength back unless you eat, Slayer, and eat well.”
The words and concern are sincere. Shiro doesn’t know what to do with that, or with the tomato itself. “Thank you, Keith.”
The vampire’s chest puffs.
“Can I… can I grab more food?” He really doesn’t want to have to eat this whole tomato by itself to appease his host.
“It’s all in there for you,” the vampire says as he casually hauls Shiro to his feet and delicately straightens out the drape of his plaid shirt. His hands are warm, his long fingers deft. He fixes a button that had come undone and then thumbs at the collar. Keith’s laugh is a soft, rough, surprisingly pleasing sound. “It’s not like I’m ever planning on having another human here. Eat anything you want, Slayer. If there’s anything else you’d like, tell me and I’ll find it for you."
“Kind of you,” Shiro murmurs while Keith thoughtfully refolds and pins the length of his empty sleeve.
“Just being a good host,” Keith replies, as if Shiro can’t tell it’s more than that. He clears his throat. “I need to pay a quick visit to a friend. It shouldn’t take long, but if you give me a list I can stop and pick up anything else you might need while I’m out.”
“You’re going to leave me here alone?”
Keith smiles at him, finally done fussing over the slayer’s hopelessly rumpled pajama shirt. “I can trust you not to burn the place down, right?”
Shiro nods, a little dumb with shock at the faith extended to him. Even weak from his ordeal, even maimed, he could certainly cause enough devastation to make Keith regret being so hospitable. “Not unless Haggar comes knocking for me,” he says, smiling thinly at the vampire. “And even then, I promise I’d try to keep the destruction to a minimum.”
Keith’s smile is softer than air and as quick to vanish as smoke; the subtlest flex of muscle, the smallest show of his sincere feelings. Now that Shiro’s kept his company long enough to have some idea of what to look for, he finds that Keith is far more expressive than he’d first marked him. He is no death mask of restrained emotion. He’s not impossible to read.
Shiro only has to make an effort.
“You’re safe here,” Keith tells him, leaning in until the quickened huff of the slayer’s breath stirs the hair that hangs across his forehead. “Even if Haggar was able to find my home— and I’ve taken great precautions to ensure she can’t— there are wards surrounding us that she’d need an army to break. And those pathetic druids of hers don’t count,” he adds as he zips his jacket and grabs a sheathed blade from a nearby table.
Shiro snorts. “They were pretty substantial threats when I faced them.”
He follows the vampire from the wide open living room and down a broad, dark hall lined with closed doors, all of their knobs carved into lions’ heads. It ends at the cabin’s entry, a few wooden steps leading down to a wide, octagonal landing and a set of eight-foot-tall double-doors. They’re barred from within by a thick slab of wood and a column of heavy iron locks, and the sight puts Shiro at ease.
Keith steps into a pair of boots left sitting neatly off to one side and shrugs a dark leather jacket on over his red hoodie. His tone isn’t unkind. “I’ve been killing those things for centuries, Slayer. They’re like gnats to me at this point.”
Shiro is at a loss. He’d known Keith was old, strong, of a caliber higher than the sort of foes he usually faced, but… “That’s kind of comforting, actually,” he says as he leans against a stout supporting beam.
Keith flashes him one of those blink-and-miss-it smiles. “Good. Now tell me what you want me to get while I’m out,” he says, tugging a phone from his jacket pocket and poising his fingers over the keys.
Shiro rattles off a short list that includes soy milk, frozen dinners, soup, and pants. At Keith’s coaxing, he adds a few more indulgent requests: flavored cashews and fresh berries to snack on; steak, shrimp cocktail, and a few protein drinks; the fancy gelato he can rarely afford to treat himself to; and take-out from his favorite Thai place, right around the corner from his apartment.
And then Keith leaves. The cabin quiets.
Shiro wobbles as he makes his way back to the kitchen. He puts the tomato back with the rest— and god, there are a lot of them— and instead grabs the chicken salad sandwich. The bread’s gone a little mushy, but it’s still an acceptable offering to his empty stomach and a body crying out for nutrients.
Strange as it is to wander the house occupied by an immortal vampire, it’s stranger still to explore it alone. Shiro pauses to skim the spines of the books neatly arranged on one tall bookshelf with a ladder that reminds him of something out of Beauty and the Beast. Most are in other languages. A few even look demonic, the symbols etched into leather covers thoroughly alien in nature, glowing faint like the runes on Keith’s dagger.
Upstairs, he wanders until he finds the bedroom he woke in. The en suite bathroom offers both a clawfoot tub and a sleek, wood-and-glass shower. They’re both far more luxurious than what Shiro is used to— an acrylic tub with stubborn stains worn into its bottom, too cramped for him to comfortably use for a bath— and he opts to try the shower first.
It’s a sweet set-up, the envy of any home magazine. Warm water cascades over Shiro like a waterfall, not a stretch of his wet skin left to goosepimple in the cold. Steam billows thick around him as he scrubs off the sweat and exhaustion that cling to his skin like a film of oil. The soap and shampoo smell like nature— herbal, woodsy, piney. Juniper berries and rosemary. It’s not what Shiro’d pick, but he likes the smell of it on his skin and imagines Keith will, too.
He’s scrubbed a bright pink by the time he steps out of the shower, and a dense, steamy fog coats every mirrored surface. Without thinking, he reaches out with his right hand to snag a towel from the nearby rack; it’s still a surprise to glance down and see the abrupt end of his muscle and bone just above where his elbow ought to be. It doesn’t hurt the way he suspects it would if here were still an average human, but… it aches like a reminder, like his mind and body are both grasping for a part of him that is no longer there.
Keith’s towels are thin and a little scratchy, but they leach the water off of his skin with coarse efficiency. Without a clean change of clothes and miserably incapable of winding the towel securely around his waist with just one hand, Shiro gives up and climbs straight into the bed naked. The sheets slip soft against his skin as he slides down under the covers. They’re fresh, clean, and certainly not the same linens he’d soiled with sweat earlier; Keith must have changed them while he slumbered away in front of the fireplace.
It’s comfortable being tucked in the middle of the massive bed. Luxurious. Warm. It smells of the clean, lightly floral detergent he likes best, his stomach lies quiet and sated for the moment, and at last even the lizardy recesses of his brain are open to the possibility that he might be able to relax here.
Shiro still doesn’t sleep. His roaming thoughts won’t allow it. Instead, he takes stock of himself— the missing arm and its fading ache, the uncharacteristic shortness of his breath, the little lancing of pain in his sides that the thinks must stem from badly broken ribs still melding back together. He’s tired, too. Worn out from the simple act of taking a shower. Hungrier than usual as his body works overtime to piece the broken bits of him back into the semblance of a sound fighter.
Under the covers, he points his toes and stretches out his legs, groaning. Nothing out there in the world is stopping for him— not the creeping predation of demonkind or the unwitting innocents who need his protection, not the steady stream of bills, not the demands of his job schedule. It’s gathering out there for him like flotsam caught in the juts and crags of a jagged shore, a compounding mess he’ll eventually have to pick his way through while struggling to keep his head above water.
Give it another day, he tells himself, lying back and trying to enjoy the brief respite for what it is. Be patient. Going off half-cocked never helped anyone.
He’s hovering in that halfway twilight between consciousness and a true nap when Keith returns, silent as the roll of night across the land. He sets a plastic bag brimming with takeout on the bed beside Shiro. “Hope you’re hungry.”
As if on cue, his stomach gurgles. Keith grins, the point of one fang fully exposed. The food smells heavenly, spicy and fragrant, all of it still warm to the touch.
“Very hungry,” he says, popping open the plastic serveware and diving in to a container of coconut soup. “Also, very naked.”
He’s tempted to draw the covers up under his chin as the vampire’s eyes rake down his lumpy form, but that would mean setting aside his food. Instead, Shiro continues to slurp away while Keith fixates on the place where his bare waist disappears under the heavy bedspread.
“I’ll get you something to wear,” Keith says a few moments later, as if coming out of a reverie. He picks something from the top of a nearby dresser drawer and then neatly sets it on the foot of the bed.
Shiro eyes the folded fabric, squinting. “Are those… pants? They are! You withheld pants from me,” he frowns. They look nice, too. He leans down to feel the fabric, which is a soft black with a subtle print of stars and wispy constellations.
“They hadn’t been washed yet,” Keith says, shrugging, but the way he skirts around Shiro’s gaze is cause for doubt.
It’s not enough to make Shiro gripe. Not when he’s warm in a king-sized bed with half the menu of his favorite Thai place spread before him like a one-person buffet. Not when Keith leaves and returns with even more clothes for him: soft knitted sweaters, an oversized hoodie, designer underwear in exactly his size, and plenty of warm, thick socks.
“Thanks, Keith. I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you for all of this,” he says before chomping down on a mass of fried calamari that hits his taste buds so good. As he chews, Shiro reconsiders. “Actually, if it’d help… maybe I could feed you?”
Keith stiffens, the column of his throat working down a swallow. “You’d let me drink from you?”
“A little bit,” Shiro says at once, wondering if maybe he’s made an offer beyond what even Keith’s impressive self-restraint can handle. He sets his half-eaten food aside on the nightstand. “Can you do that? Just take a little?”
Keith is beside him in a moment, and Shiro startles when the vampire takes his hand and draws it up high, his lips brushing over the backs of his fingers and knuckles. His breath is warm and dry over Shiro’s skin. “I can. Just say when.”
“Um, great.” A nervous, breathy little laugh escapes him as Keith turns his hand over, palm up, and leans in.
This close, Shiro can see the threads of red that lace his dark violet irises, the almost-invisibly pale scars that mark his jaw and throat, the dull veins under skin gone somewhat translucent. His eyes water from the sharp smell of flame and char— it’s like standing too close to an inferno, buffeted by heat.
Keith licks a wide band across the underside of his wrist before planting his mouth squarely over the joint. His tongue traces the tinted veins under Shiro’s skin by feel alone. The points of his canines press into soft flesh, testing its give.
Shiro gasps when those fangs finally pierce his skin, though the pain blooms and fades within a single heartbeat. It turns to heat— coursing through him, out of him, flooding him. It’s the first time any vampire has ever actually drunk from him, tapping his veins, and the sensation is like nothing he’s ever known.
It burns, but underneath the sear in his veins as his blood is forcibly drawn lies a trickle of something like pleasure. It tugs at threads that wind down deep into his body, sensual enough to leave him squirming against the mattress. Accompanied by the sight of Keith tooth-deep inside of him, throat flexing as he swallows down mouthfuls of his blood, those red-violet eyes slipped shut in a kind of bliss, it’s all…
Too much.
“Stop, stop,” Shiro murmurs, the word breaking weakly on his tongue, so faint they could go unheard.
But not by Keith. The teeth withdraw at once, heeding the command, but his tongue remains. The flat of it presses over the punctures to stem the bleeding until his blood clots and the tiny wounds begin to stitch back together. His lips linger on Shiro’s wrist, light as smoke over the tender, freshly opened flesh; his eyes close again, and as he twists his head and breathes deep the scent of Shiro’s blood in the air, his nose rubs against the heel of the man’s palm.
At last, Keith draws back and returns Shiro’s hand to its resting place on the bed, atop the covers over his lap. He then runs his thumb along the corner of his own mouth, gathering a bare dribble of blood that had escaped him, and sucks the digit clean. His eyes slip shut as he quietly moans. “I’d forgotten what a strong taste you have.”
“Is that good?” Shiro asks, nose scrunched. If he still had his right hand, he’d be gingerly rubbing his wrist. As it is, he can only stare at the twin marks left on his skin, angry and red and already mostly healed. “Bad?”
“I like it,” Keith answers, casting him a look from under the fringe of long lashes, through a disheveled locks of dark hair. “It’s rich. Not too sweet.”
“Thanks?” It comes out uncertain. “Not many people ever find out what their blood tastes like to a connoisseur, I guess.”
His words leave Keith smiling. “Thank you for feeding me, Slayer. I’m… it’s a big gesture.”
“It feels pretty small compared to rescuing me from an evil witch’s swarm of druids,” Shiro says, shrugging. “And you can call me Shiro, if you want. Going forward. It’s Takashi, technically, but—”
But that’s a name tied to a bleak childhood marked by illness and lost loved ones, to a past he didn’t gain any pleasure in being reminded of. The last person he’d hesitantly let use it was Adam, and that had… taken a rough turn.
“But I prefer Shiro.” He masks the little flicker of uncertainty that flutters through him with a smile.
“Shiro,” Keith says, trying it on for size. Satisfied, he inclines his head toward the human and adds, “I’m technically Yurak, but I prefer to go by Keith.”
“Yurak?” Shiro questions. A demon name if he ever heard one. “I have to say, it does have more of a mysterious, intimidating aura than Keith does. Y’know, for a vampire.”
“Keith was the name my father picked for me,” he explains, busying his hands with straightening out the covers. “Yurak was my mother’s choice.”
“How did they meet?” Shiro asks. A beat later he goes red and adds, “If you don’t mind telling me.”
“I don’t.” Keith settles down along the edge of the bed, a careful distance kept between them, and lays his hands in his lap. “My father found my mother lying in one of his fields after a duel with another Galra. She was injured, so he took her in and cared for her. Slaughtered every goat he had to keep her fed while she recovered,” he says as a point of pride, his smile soft as warm, crumbly ash.
“Wow. That’s some dedication,” Shiro comments, smiling uncertainly. He shifts a little bit against the pillows stacked behind him, wondering what Galra usually looked like and whether he’d ever unwittingly encountered one before.
“They fell in love. My mother decided to stay with him and they had me not too long after. For a little while, we were happy together.” Keith sounds wistful for it, that brief sliver of time some four- or five-hundred years ago. “And then my mother was called back to Daibazaal. It took centuries for her to return, and by then… well. Things had gone to shit.”
Shiro grunts in agreement, thinking of Keith’s earlier mention of his father— burned to death by a mob hunting his half-demon son, afraid of the little boy who couldn’t yet disguise his purple skin or budding horns. “Not many humans would encounter a bloodied demon in their fields and reach first for compassion. I don’t know how many demons would return the kindness with so much affection, either. I’m glad your parents found each other. It sounds like they had something special.”
Keith draws a deep, unneeded breath, jaw working as he stares at Shiro. He nods, lips still pressed tight together, and the slayer worries he's said too much.
“Yeah,” Keith croaks as he stands to leave, patting the bed before he goes. “They did.”