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Drinking blood from the mouth of a bottle never gets romantic, and it’s a relief. Otabek likes his at a sweet 40 degrees Celsius. Not hot, but warm enough to feel and smell. Not alive—because that’s illegal—but a reasonable facsimile of it. At least until his teeth clink against the neck of the bottle, hard enough to be uncomfortable.
Biting. That’s the thing. They all want to bite. The long, slender glass necks of the green bottles get the brunt of it on feeding days.
Otabek’s day is Monday. He’s been doing Monday for a few years, and recognises most of the others who come through the same line every Monday, even though it’s one of the bigger feeding clinics in the middle of the city. Otabek likes the downtown location; he likes watching people, both those trying to make out with the mouths of their bottles, and the ones who stare from the other side of the street, glad they’re not sick.
Otabek takes a few temperate sips. He’s got the timing down. Slow enough to enjoy, fast enough to do it while the blood is still warm. The night is cool and wet, beading on the brick walls enclosing the street and on the glass walls of the bus stop, lit from within. There’s a length of metal railing between the sidewalk and the street in front of the clinic, separating the bike lane.
For a few weeks now, there’s been someone new in the Monday line. Someone who drinks his bottle leaning on the railing, facing across the street with his back to the clinic’s doors. He always wears a face mask and keeps his shoulders hunched, chin tipped down so his hair falls over his eyes, shadowed by a hood. He only pulls down the black mask when he drinks, jaw clenching, trying not to bite.
“What’s your flavour?” Otabek asks, letting his hip make contact with the railing, just a few paces away from the newcomer.
The hooded head jerks up, and there’s the telltale clink of teeth against glass. He removes the neck of the bottle from his mouth and licks his lips. The mask swoops down from his ears and under his chin. “What?”
Otabek holds out his own bottle, showing the label. “Mine’s A+.”
“Oh.” He smooths out the label, already torn half off, smudged in one corner with red. “A-.”
“Nice to meet you, A-,” Otabek says. “Otabek Altin.”
“Yu- Yuri Plisetsky.” The answer is huffed into the bottle. He turns his head away and down, hiding beneath his hood. The shoulders of his jacket have little metal spikes, catching on every light.
“You take yours warm or cold?” Otabek asks. Talking messes up his timing, so he takes a longer drink to coat his mouth and throat with the tacky liquid. It’s soothing, the same way he remembers tea to have been, but it jolts something in him the way alcohol had.
“Cold,” Yuri mutters.
“I prefer warm,” Otabek says, looking up at the sliver of sky between the walls of the tall buildings. “It goes down easier. Makes me feel human.”
The only response he gets is the tink of teeth on glass. Yuri is staring straight ahead across the street, the mouth of the bottle resting against his lower lip. The skin under his eyes is dark, and his cheeks are sunken, giving his cheekbones extra sharpness.
“Warm, huh?” Yuri finally says. “How long-” He puts his face down again, hair falling forwards. Otabek knows what he wants to ask. Everybody wants to ask that.
“About five years,” Otabek says, tipping his bottle up. He has a quarter left, which he usually gulps down in one go because it’s the worst part. The first taste is always the best. “I was infected five years ago.”
“Do you- Do you know how?” Yuri asks, squeezing his bottle with both hands. The clinic is still letting out a few people. Some like to stay inside to drink, not wanting to be seen on the street with one of the clinic’s bottles.
“No.” Otabek tilts his head back and lets the last of the blood come down. He licks around the opening and then inside it, wanting to get all of it, and holds back the desire to bite. “I don’t know who infected me. I don’t know where it happened, or how. Did I touch someone? Did someone sneeze on me?” He shrugs. “I don’t know. Five years of bottled blood.”
Yuri twists off the blood type label and lets it fall to the asphalt, switching his stance against the railing, curling in on himself even more. “Two months,” he mutters.
“So you just got out of the hospital?” Otabek says. “I remember that.” He hopes Yuri takes it for the kindness he means it. “At first it’s painful, and pain like that makes everything frightening. It’s disorienting, and you lose your voice. You could still speak, of course, if you didn’t have a tube down your throat, but even then, no matter what you say, they just follow quarantine protocol. Everything they say is terrifying. Cell death. Auto-feeding syndrome. Blood type rejection. Regeneration disorder. I remember.”
“A-auto-feeding,” Yuri repeats. He stands up, pushing away from the railing, and empties his bottle. The newcomers tend to want to bite more. Yuri swallows over and over again, the mask moving against his throat. The mouth of the bottle slips between his lips and the bites too, teeth ringing loudly against the glass neck. He wrenches it out of his mouth with a snarled sound of frustration, gnawing on his lips instead.
“Don’t throw it on the ground,” Otabek says, when Yuri winds his arm back. “It’s recyclable. Let me.” He grasps the neck of the bottle, left vulnerable by Yuri gripping the bottom. It takes a small tug for Yuri to release it and stagger back.
A bus goes past, a blur of lit windows in the dark. Nobody bikes this late at night, and there are few cars. Yuri paces back and forth on the bike lane, agitated. He claws the mask up over his face, covering himself up to the nose. It just leaves his eyes to burn brighter. Masks are recommended for the infected, especially indoors and especially for six months after infection.
“Auto-feeding is the tough one, right?” Otabek says.
“Does it- Does it stop? Do you stop wanting to-” Yuri claws at the air, at his own chest.
“Have you tried it?”
Yuri flinches, hands dropping.
Otabek stands up too, tucking the bottles into the crook of his arm to adjust his scarf and bring it over his mouth and nose. “Everybody tries it. It doesn’t mean anything. You won’t get sick.”
It’s something nobody had told him. The pamphlets from the hospital and the compulsory counselling hadn’t prepared him for smelling blood on himself, in himself. Auto-feeders are easy to tell apart because they always go for their hands first. Fingers, wrists, inner arms, the easiest places to bite. The need to bite is overwhelming.
There’s something else nobody had told Otabek, or offered to help with. He hopes Yuri takes this as a kindness too. “You can bite me,” he says. “You can’t infect me any more than I already am, and it’ll make it easier for a bit.”
Yuri’s shoulders are up to his ears. “Is that- That’s allowed?”
“Yeah. Consenting adults,” Otabek says.
“You’re- What’re you getting from this?” Yuri’s eyes narrow suspiciously, the mask wrinkling with his face. “Nobody just-” He makes a sharp, chopping gesture with his hand.
Almost any kindness has a selfish heart. “I’d like to bite you back.”
“Sounds gay,” Yuri grunts.
“Not a problem for me,” Otabek says, amused. “Clothes don’t have to come off.” He takes a step towards Yuri, seeking out the embers of his eyes above the sickly pale and thin cheeks. “But I do kinda want to lick your teeth.”
Yuri lifts a hand to his mouth. To his mask. His eyes flick down to Otabek’s mouth, and his brows draw together when he realises he’s been caught doing that—and maybe a little because Otabek’s mouth is covered too.
“You know, you can get gems for your teeth,” Otabek says. Yuri doesn’t back down. “They can look nice.”
“Oh, do you-” Yuri’s fingers are still up, fingertips grazing the cloth of his mask. “Do you have those? Tooth gems?”
“Hmm.” Otabek smiles behind his scarf, enjoying the attention he’s caught. “You’re welcome to check.”
Yuri drops his hand and stuffs it in his jacket pocket. This time he lifts his chin and straightens out his shoulders, taking his own step into Otabek’s space. “Okay, asshole,” he says, the edge in his voice an obvious challenge, a flash of temperament that must’ve ruled him before the virus and the spirit-diminishing quarantine.
It’d taken Otabek the better part of a year to feel anywhere close to himself after the contracting the virus. “Did you drive here?” He asks as he drops the bottles into the clinic’s recycling bin. At Yuri’s muttered negative, he gestures for him to follow. “I did. Come on.”
Yuri’s eyes widen at the sight of his motorbike, but the pupils stay small. His eyes are so pale it’s easy to see. Photosensitivity is part of the package, but on the flipside, so is exponentially better dark vision. Yuri question’s neither the helmet that Otabek hands him nor the destination Otabek intends to take him. Otabek recognises that too. The diagnosis had felt like a death sentence. He’d done a lot of questionable things to get over it.
“So are you some self-appointed virgin biter de-flowerer?” Yuri asks when handing the helmet back in front of Otabek’s building.
“I guess so,” Otabek says.
“Thought you’d at least deny it,” Yuri sighs, looking up the wall. Infected-friendly places tended to be in the cheaper parts of town.
“Didn’t know people still used words like ‘de-flower’,” Otabek says.
“How’s biter fuckboy then?”
“I like you,” Otabek says from the bottom of his withered heart, holding open the door with its chicken-wire-strengthened glass panes. He catches Yuri’s still-wide eyes, forcing him to duck under Otabek’s arm on the way into the lobby. Blushing is difficult with a limited blood supply, but Yuri seems to be doing his best. His shoulders are up again, curving inwards to pull up the studded panels.
“You’re cringe as hell, man.”
Otabek picks the 7th floor in the lift and watches Yuri in the mirror. “I’m just trying to be honest about what I like,” he says. Yuri glares back, but then his brows relax.
“You’re serious, huh?”
“Yeah.” Otabek leans into the corner of the lift. “I mean, when I got infected, I thought I might as well go ahead and die. What kind of life was this going to be anymore?” He describes a circle with his finger, trying to encompass everything. “One-in-ten chance of auto-feeding syndrome. One-in-fifty of regeneration disorder. And the chances just keep climbing, year after year.”
Yuri’s head drops. “Yeah,” he mumbles.
“But then I just…” Otabek inhales, and the lift comes to a stop on his floor. They shuffle out into the grey corridor. “I just thought that maybe I could give back to the community.”
“Oh, fuck off.” Yuri catches onto the change in his tone immediately, lifting his face to scowl. “I almost believed you.”
“I thought that why not just cut the bullshit and be either the worst or the best person I could be. Or at least an honest one.”
Yuri turns away again. “Okay. I get it,” he says.
Otabek holds his door open, letting Yuri in first. He turns on the lights and watches Yuri track his gaze across the open living space. It’s one of the remodelled flats. Not big, but comfortable. One bedroom, one bathroom.
“No kitchen,” Yuri remarks.
“Yeah. Don’t really need it anymore.” Otabek takes off his scarf and jacket, and toes off his boots into the corner by the door. The kitchen-less units are cheaper per square metre. He touches Yuri’s elbow, making him start. “I don’t mind if you want to keep your jacket on, but take off your shoes at least.”
Yuri does so, becoming a few centimetres shorter. He hesitates before taking off his jacket too, his shoulders much narrower without the protective bulk of the leather and spikes. He even takes down his hood, a bundle of blond hair tumbling out. The front of his hoodie has a multichrome picture of a cat with sunglasses on. When he pulls off his mask, his shorter and thinner figure makes him look younger than Otabek had expected.
“Cool,” Yuri says then, gesturing at the drum kit in the corner of the living room. “You play?”
“Yeah. You want more unsolicited advice? Get a hobby. You’re going to spend a lot of time awake.” Otabek hangs up Yuri’s jacket and takes another look at him. “You wanna try the drums?”
Yuri shakes his head, but wanders over to the kit anyway, running his fingers over the surface of the snare drum, tapping it a few times. He spots the guitar in the corner and goes over to it next, testing the strings. Otabek takes a seat on the sofa and watches as Yuri takes in the mixer and laptop combo next, laying his hands over the knobs, but not moving them. When he glances at Otabek, Otabek pats the sofa, which makes Yuri snort. It brings some life into his face again, and he sidles closer, hooks one leg over the arm of the sofa, then slides into a heap onto the cushion, legs folded under himself.
“What’d you do, before?” he asks.
“Music stuff.”
Yuri’s face contorts impatiently. “What kinda music stuff? Playing?”
“A bit of everything. I was in a band. I worked at a production company.”
“Was your band any good?”
Otabek shrugs. “You?”
“I’m a-” Yuri catches himself. “I was a dancer.”
In the silence that follows, Otabek pulls off his long-sleeve shirt, taking himself down to a wide-necked, short-sleeved undershirt. “Where do you want to bite?” he asks.
Yuri sits up so quickly his spine almost snaps. He swallows, throat bobbing. But when he leans forwards, his hands go to Otabek’s mouth instead, pulling up his lip. “You don’t have any fucking tooth gems,” he mutters.
Otabek has to force himself to relax, to unclench his hand from the arm of the sofa. “Please take your fingers away from my mouth if you don’t want to get bitten.”
Yuri drops his hands immediately, fingers twining together. His eyes land on Otabek’s arm, following it up to his shoulder, then back again. “There,” he points on the inside of the forearm, just under the elbow. “I want to bite that part.” Now his pupils are large.
“Not to make it too gay,” Otabek says, pausing to look at Yuri who just frowns, “but it’ll be easiest if you sit here.” He rearranges himself in his seat, spreading his legs and indicating the space between them. “Come on,” he coaxes. “Then I can hold my arm in front of you.”
Yuri fights some inner battle, mouth moving from one shape to another. His glower is furious, but his curiosity and the desire to bite win out, and he shuffles across the sofa and sits between Otabek’s legs, his back to Otabek’s front. He cranes his neck to stare at Otabek, until Otabek curls his left arm around his shoulder, bringing the inner side of his forearm into biting distance. The fingers of his right hand dig into the arm of the sofa again, and he keeps his head back to not lean into that tense neck right in front of himself.
He feels Yuri’s breath on his skin, then the cold tips of Yuri’s fingers grasping his arm, then the brush of his nose and lips, and then the sharp jolt of teeth. The noise that Yuri makes is something between a sob and a moan, reverberating through the teeth sunk into Otabek’s flesh. He bites over and over again, mouthing at the punctures he makes, lapping at them with his tongue. There’s no real bloodflow, but the taste is there, the satisfaction of the instinct that society wants to deny them. The counselling preaches abstinence and adherence to the governmental feeding programme.
Otabek releases his grip on the sofa and curls his other arm around Yuri’s abdomen, pulling him in. “That’s good,” he whispers. He doesn’t know when he’s pulled his head up, his nose now buried in Yuri’s hair behind his ear. “Just like that.”
Yuri trembles, rubbing his legs together, curling into the arm against his face, his nose in the crook of Otabek’s elbow. He pants like there’s not enough air left in the room, like he could breathe blood. Otabek is no better, breathing in gulps into the blond hair.
“Can I- Can I bite you?” Otabek grunts, lips against the back of Yuri’s neck. It’s unfair to ask like this. Yuri probably can’t even hear him. Not the way he mewls into each bite, his enjoyment so visceral that Otabek has trouble keeping clear-headed.
It’s not a given to enjoy being bitten. Otabek has grown to like it, to see the effect it has on his fellow infected. He licks the tendon of Yuri’s neck, ignoring the hair that gets stuck on his tongue. Yuri gasps.
“Bite,” he growls. He leans back, slamming his shoulder into Otabek’s chest and the back of his head almost into Otabek’s nose. The corner of his mouth is red, pursing again as he sucks on Otabek’s arm, but with his head tilted to the side in consent and invitation. Otabek is honest enough to not want to question it.
The skin gives under his teeth, soft and hot. No bloody fruit bursts in his mouth, no sweet cherry tomato, but his tongue chases the taste from the furrow he’s made in Yuri’s neck. It coats his tongue and his brain alike, urging his jaw to clench again. Yuri whines, his bites more pliant now, more sloppy lips than teeth. Otabek clamps his arms tighter around Yuri, pressing them together from shoulder to crotch. He crosses his legs over Yuri’s, stilling his squirms, and drives his teeth into Yuri’s neck, into the soft spot on the side of his jaw until the instinct is satisfied and relief floods his body.
He slumps into the sofa, bringing Yuri with him, teeth still in his neck. He shudders through the release of his clenched jaw, his muscles slowly unwinding. Yuri’s body is lax, but his shoulders rise and fall and his fingers tremble.
“Oh, fuck,” he says against the skin of Otabek’s arm. “Is it- Is it always like that?”
“When you haven’t done it in a while, then yeah,” Otabek says. His mouth is full of hair. His arms are full of Yuri. He moves his jaw from side to side, then sits up to see Yuri’s face. Yuri faces him with a whole new expression.
“Would it- If we did again?” Yuri says slowly. “Would it be like that again?”
“It would still be good.” Otabek leans down, and Yuri doesn’t turn his face down this time. He opens his mouth for Otabek’s tongue and shivers when Otabek curls the tip of his tongue around the sharp teeth. “You want to try again?”
“Ye-ah,” Yuri’s voice cracks. “Please.”