Work Text:
Giyuu looked across the table to find Shinobu tinkering with test tubes and different substances that made Giyuu's nose twitch, just like she had been for the past hour. He looked at the papers by his right hand, which he had yet to read past the first two paragraphs. His gaze went back to Shinobu, far more interesting than anything written on the uncountable reports about the latest supernatural sightings.
With all the flasks in her hand and all around her, Shinobu could easily pass for a witch working on a potion, but she was more an alchemist to their group than someone with magical power (that was her whole thing, after all; Giyuu never ceased to be impressed by how much Shinobu rose through the ranks in a group made almost entirely of people with occult powers, with no magic of her own). He was almost sure that if he said so out loud, Shinobu wouldn’t take kindly to the comparison: she was very proud of her status as the only human in the highest rank, after all.
Plus, whenever Shinbou gave one of her too sweet smiles, her blood rushed in the way that only anger and adrenaline could, and the sharp scent of it never failed to make Giyuu zone everything out except for it. Not the best of situations for a vampire, and one that angered Shinobu further.
She had let him feed on her before, which didn’t make things any easier on him: remembering the taste of her blood on his tongue never did anything for his self-control.The memories of holding Shinbou’s face still as he leaned into the curve of her neck, or the weight of her on his lap when she would allow them to be so close to make things easier on the both of them, all of it was stark in his mind, bright colored compared to everyone else. Giyuu would sometimes catch himself licking his fangs as he thought of it, and have to physically stop himself from doing it before someone gave him a weird look (they would end up giving weird looks anyway, but at least then Giyuu knew he had tried).
His eyes fell on Shinobu’s neck, where he knew he had left a puncture mark on her skin, under the high collar of her lab coat. The wound had healed into scars, becoming only two darker dots that could easily be mistaken for a birthmark. The mark shouldn’t have been made in the first place, and Giyuu hadn’t intend to make it happen at the time, but it was there nevertheless (and since a mark couldn’t happen without at least some intent behind a bite, there were lots of implications those two dots brought along with them). Shinobu had yet to say anything about it since it happened two weeks prior, but Giyuu had caught her pressing her fingertips to it many times, to the point where it had become a habit of hers.
Like now, for example: Shinobu’s attention was entirely on her work, but as soon as her left hand was free, it reached up to her neck, index and middle finger pressing against her pulse point, then dragging down to where the mark was, staying there as she rubbed at it in an absent motion. Either of them liking it or not, Giyuu was connected to the mark, and Shinobu touching it made his own neck tingle with pin pricks, then shiver violently as his skin broke out in goosebumps.
Shinobu shuffled as her eyes narrowed, and though her gaze never wavered, Giyuu just knew the motion was directed at him. He picked up his papers again and stared at it for another long few minutes of blank reading.
Next time Giyuu got sidetracked from the reports, it was because Shinobu had come over to his side of the table—if it weren’t for her approaching heartbeat, he wouldn’t have heard her light footsteps at all. Giyuu looked over at her, and she quirked an eyebrow and showed the syringe in her hand, directing a pointed look to Giyuu’s arm.
“What?” Giyuu asked, genuinely confused on what she wanted.
“I need your blood to run tests on for the new drug. We need something that will knock out vampires, but not immediately kill them, so we can deal with the young vampires causing trouble in the East.” Shinobu reached for Giyuu’s stack of paper, holding the edge of a report with her fingertips to dangle it in front of his face. “Which you would know if you were paying attention to the reports. Why else did you think I called you here for, Tomioka-san?” Her smile stretched without showing teeth or reaching her eyes. Giyuu shrunk a bit at the sight of it.
Everyone knew that Shinobu’s lab was her sanctuary, and she rarely allowed others in it, especially when she was working on a new project. Giyuu gave her shelves of mysterious bottles a guilty look, but held out his arm and pushed his sleeve up to his elbow, baring one of his veins for Shinobu to take a sample from.
Shinobu, efficient as always, got to it without a second thought.
“Don’t worry, this won’t hurt…” Shinobu started saying in a gentle voice, but paused when she realized what she was doing. She shook her head. “Sorry, force of habit, I suppose.”
Giyuu smiled in response, grateful that Shinobu had her head down so she wouldn’t catch him doing it. He barely felt the needle, distracted as he was looking at the top of Shinobu’s head, more specifically at the division of her hair. Guided by some uncontrolled urge, Giyuu reached to press a finger to it, but Shinobu raised her head at the same time, and he ended up poking her in the forehead. Shinobu smiled tightly.
“Tomioka-san?”
“Hm?”
“What are you doing?”
Giyuu looked at his own finger, still on Shinobu’s forehead. “Nothing.”
They stared at each other.
“Your finger is still there,” Shinobu said, eerily calm. Giyuu didn’t miss her brief glance to the area where he knew she kept the stock of holy silver.
Giyuu lowered his hand almost hesitantly, unbothered by the fact that Shinobu still had a needle in his arm. When it didn’t seem like Giyuu would poke her again, Shinobu carefully removed it, but with the looks of someone who wanted to stab someone (Giyuu) with it instead. When she walked back to her work station, Giyuu heaved a relieved sigh.
“By the way, I still expect you to know at least some of what those reports say,” Shinobu said as she held a sample of Giyuu’s blood to the light. “And I mean past what’s written in the first paragraph.”
Giyuu nodded, but made no moves to pick up his work again. Now that Shinobu had been in his space, he was even more intently attuned to her presence in the room. He had failed to touch her hairline, but his fingers still twitched with the desire to touch her hair (maybe he could convince her to let it down from her usual hairstyle… If he offered to bring her food later, she’d probably agree?). Her floral scent had stayed behind where she had stood, and Giyuu felt himself leaning slightly to the side, closer to it, going as far as slipping a bit on his chair doing it. Shinobu actually turned to glare at him this time.
His fangs ached at the sight of her, the furrow in her eyebrow more endearing than it probably should be. Her small but capable hands holding delicate glass, the way her hair framed the round shape of her face. The subtle lipstick that she often wore, which never failed to catch his attention and make his eyes linger on her lips—on the permanent quirk to the corner of them, the pink tongue that would sometimes peek out as she concentrated on a task.
Giyuu stood up, walking over to Shinobu, who followed his movements with suspicious eyes. Seeing that one of her hands was unoccupied, Giyuu caught it in his palm, always amazed by how his fingers could envelop the entirety of her wrist. Since Shinobu didn’t immediately tug her hand back to herself, he took it as encouragement, turning her palm up and pressing the inside of her wrist to his lips. Her pulse beat there, steady at first, but quicker once he kissed lower on her wrist.
“Aren’t we supposed to be working, Tomioka-san?” Shinobu asked, fully intending to go back to her research, but her voice hitched when Giyuu pushed her sleeves up and dragged his lips to the groove of her arm, where her vein was most visible.
When Giyuu tugged her closer, Shinobu fully turned so her body was facing him. As she did so, Giyuu let her arm go, but dropped to his knees. Shinobu still spared a look to her work before falling back on Giyuu. Frowning, he slipped his hands under one of her knees, the other hand placing itself on her shin. He lifted her leg, fingertips sliding under her pants to pull it out of the way, showing her shin and the bone of it. Giyuu kissed that, feeling how fragile the skin there was. Shinobu twitched as he did it. When he continued to slide her leg pant further up to reach her calf, Shinobu sharply moved her leg so it slipped from his grip.
Giyuu looked up, only to find Shinobu smiling menacingly at him.
“Tell me, Tomioka-san,” she said, every syllable of his name emphasized. “Did you think you could just do whatever you want without asking me first? I was busy, you know. Actually, you were too.”
With the leg she still had raised in the air, Shinobu touched the point of her shoe under Giyuu’s chin, then pressed it hard, forcing him to tilt his head up.
“You’re always so inconsiderate. By now, my samples are no good and I’ll have to start over from the beginning…”
Shinobu tilted his head to the side, and Giyuu continued to look at her from the corner of his eyes. She stood up, careful not to lose her balance on her one leg. The other one, she lowered it down to Giyuu’s chest, then pushed him down harshly. Giyuu only had a split second to brace himself to the impact of his upper body against the hard floor. He winced a bit, and Shinobu’s smile seemed to grow in response.
“Well, but you’ll provide more samples, isn’t that right, Tomioka-san?” Giyuu nodded. “I might need to prick your arm a few times, but you don’t mind, right?” He shook his head. “Wonderful.”
Shinobu hummed to herself, raising a hand to her chin. “Now, what to do about this…?” Shinobu pressed her foot down harder to Giyuu’s chest, right over his sternum and the start of his ribs. Natural instinct told him to bend away from it, to shield himself from the pain, but he made no move to do so. “You did interrupt me, after all,” Shinobu continued.
She put increased the pressure, enough to make Giyuu hiss, but immediately stepped away. “Oh, well.” She planted her feet on each side of his hips, then lowered herself to his stomach, where she settled down without much fuss. Her weight over him was light, and even if it wasn’t, Giyuu didn’t mind having her there at all. “So, what is it you want?”
Giyuu looked over Shinobu’s body, but settled on her neck. Shinobu tilted her head. “Oh, are you hungry? Here, I’ll let you get a little.” Shinobu placed her index finger on his bottom lip, and Giyuu, unquestioningly, opened his mouth. He sucked at Shinobu’s finger as she pressed the edge of her nail to his tongue, then gnawed on it with his fangs, letting it break the skin to get a trickle of Shinobu’s blood in his mouth.
He lapped at it eagerly, but it was nowhere near enough, and he couldn’t get more of it from a finger without doing serious damage to the skin and the muscles under it. With her finger still in his mouth, Giyuu looked up and frowned.
“Kochou,” Giyuu slurred.
“What is it? I won’t know what you want if you don’t use your words.”
Giyuu put a hand on Shinobu’s waist, scowling at the buttons and the fact that her shirt was tucked into her pants. He lifted a corner of the black shirt, getting access to the skin underneath, where he could settle his cold fingers to her warm skin and squeeze. Shinobu gasped at the contact.
“I said words , remember?” Shinobu asked, sounding exasperated.
Giyuu lapped at the last drop of blood from the finger in his mouth before letting go of it. “I want to bite you.”
“Oh, that’s so forward!” Shinobu laughed as she slipped her arms out of her lab coat, letting it fall and pool around her thighs. Next, her hands went to the buttons of her own shirt, undoing the ones at the top. Giyuu had swallow at the sight of the shirt falling over one shoulder and revealing her collarbones, along with the curve of her chest. “Just don’t take too much.”
Giyuu nodded and sat up, clinging to Shinobu as he settled against her shoulder. For awhile, he made no move to bite her, instead just hugging her close, taking in her scent. Even if he already had it memorized by now, his memory never lived up to being next to the source. He already felt himself relaxing, going limp in the embrace Shinobu had enveloped him in. He breathed her in, eyes closed and feeling at home.
He searched for the bite mark on her neck, and when he found it, Giyuu kissed it chastely, once, twice, three times. Shinobu softly shivered against him. He kissed her jaw next, and the curve of her ear. Shinobu pressed her cheek to his head, murmuring his name under her breath. Giyuu licked at the mark, and only then opened his mouth to bite into it. There was the normal flinch Shinobu always did the first moment Giyuu broke the skin of her neck, but she went right back to rubbing hands and cheeks to any parts of his body she could reach.
Drinking was always mind numbing, but when it was Shinobu’s blood he was drinking, his mind went completely blank, focusing only on her taste, her scent, her touch. He became unaware of his surroundings, eyes squeezed shut as his grip tightened on her waist, traveled up her body to find the edge of her bra. He leaned more heavily on Shinobu, and she supported his weight as much as she could. Shinobu would always whisper into his ear, making him tremble with it, but he never heard the words, only the tone of her whisper, secretive and adoring.
Knowing the threshold of how much he could take from Shinobu without affecting her body, Giyuu stopped way before she could go from light-headed to faint. When he did, he heard Shinobu panting, her chest heaving as her heart beat wildly.
“Kochou,” he whispered. She looked up at him, hands pausing—he hadn’t noticed right away, but she had been running her fingers through his hair with the gentleness that she liked to pretend she didn’t possess. Giyuu already missed her touch. “Kochou,” he said again.
“What is it?”
Giyuu touched her cheek and leaned his forehead to Shinobu’s, eyes still closed. With her so close, he let himself look, to see her pink cheeks, see her bright eyes, her genuine smile. Some of her hair had come undone, too. Giyuu bit the inside of his cheek. She looked lovely. Alive and energetic and there , with him. Giyuu wanted to tell her that, but no words came out.
“Shinobu.”
Shinobu inhaled a sharp breath, but didn’t oppose to the use of her given name. Quite the contrary, as soon they were kissing, with the remaining blood on their tongue, with Shinobu’s legs firmly wrapped around him, with Giyuu’s arms so tight around her.
“Shinobu,” he whispered again, against her lips.
She kissed him harder.