Chapter Text
Mika’s throat burned.
His fingers fluttered around the column of his neck, probing and pressing gingerly into the flesh. They searched, desperate, for a spot that would soothe the ache—if such a thing even existed. Each drag of the icy, bitter night air through his lungs felt like swallowing sandpaper. Sharp stabs of pain roared through Mika’s jaw.
The forest tilted.
Mika took deep breaths. He paused in his trek, eyes pinned like daggers to one specific tree, its branches spindly-thin and listing sideways in an imaginary wind. His head spun round and round. Mika needed to ground himself, to quell this stupid thirst before it pulled a blanket over his conscious mind.
It was lucky he’d gotten away from the humans when he did. Late-night patrol was the perfect excuse. And Mika couldn’t even begin to put enough distance between himself and all six of their frail, delicate necks, all six sinfully enticing jugular veins.
One in particular gushed sweeter than the rest, so thick and rich that Mika’s dry, dry mouth had started to water. Mika adjusted his grip on the hilt of his blade. He forged on, gaze carefully averted from the viridian-tipped evergreen trees, lest they remind him too keenly of the concern in Yuu’s emerald eyes.
“Drink,” he’d pleaded, collar yawning open, skin flushed and humming, temptation beyond compare.
That was the fuzzy memory projecting into the back of Mika’s brain when he caught the tinny whistle of an arrow slicing through air.
Mika gasped and lunged to the ground. The arrow thunked into dirt, sizzling and reeking with the foul, familiar stench of demon magic. It burned in his nostrils, it was so close. Mika scrambled to his feet.
Treeline, cover in the treeline—!
The thirst made him clumsy. The next two arrows burst out from the dark and hammered twin homes in Mika’s shoulder, spearing the muscle apart with a white hot explosion of pain and a howl that ripped past Mika’s lips in a violent spew of ash.
He smashed down to earth. Mika sputtered and whimpered on the ground. His limbs spasming out of control as the demonic poison sank its rotted claws into his bones.
Five blurred figures descended from the trees.
“That was easy,” muttered a voice from somewhere far off, each syllable laden with revulsion. Mika’s lips peeled back with his own disgust, but his traitorous, unbeating heart stuttered to life. He wished it could be owed to panic.
So much blood, and at such close proximity…
“It went down without a fight.”
“That doesn’t make sense. My demon said that this thing is powerful. Progenitor-level.”
“It’s even weaker than a human, though!”
“Shinji, wait—”
Weakly, Mika reached out until his trembling fingertips skittered along the tip of his dropped sword. A gold-tipped boot came flying out, kicking the sword askew. Mika bit back his cry.
“You fucking bastard. How many humans have you murdered with this weapon, huh? How many children?”
“Shinji, just kill it and let’s go.”
“There are probably more bloodsuckers roaming around.”
“Or maybe you didn’t even use the goddamn blade, did you? You probably prefer to use your fangs. How many innocent people have you sucked dry—”
“Shinji, that is an order.”
“Fine, fine.”
Mika wheezed out a rasped, pained moan. A deep, rolling haze was settling down over his mind, scrambling its signals and turning the world into white noise—but for one, bright exception: the sweet, sweet surge of fresh blood all around him.
Mika shook with hunger. It would be such a simple thing. Such a simple thing to lean over and take a bite out of an unwitting ankle or calf, so simple to slake this wretched, awful thirst, clamoring and boiling his insides—
“Fuck—Shinji, kill it quickly! Squad, get in formation in case it goes feral! Dodomeki!”
Mika sloppily sprung to his feet, arrows still buried and throbbing in his flesh. His vision tunneled down, fangs bared, claws shredding through his gloves like scissors through paper. The human closest to him had hateful eyes and evil pounding through his veins, but rancid blood was blood all the same.
“Blood…” Mika teetered. His throat was raw, far too raw to be speaking, but the words tethered him to reality, so he slurred them out anyway. Mika’s sword lay abandoned in the grass. “Blood…I need blood…!”
The human—Shinji—snarled. He had a youthful face and eyes brimming with hate. “I really can’t stand you damn monsters.”
“Shinji, get in formation—”
“Blood. Blood, I need blood—”
“DIE!”
Mika pounced, Shinji charged, and Mika tasted copper as a thrumming iron slab slipped in between his ribs, skewered him straight through, and rose tall and proud nestled against his spine.
The demon within jittered. Mika’s body rained ash.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO HIM?!”
Yuu’s voice sent Mika careening violently out of the haze. Mika choked wetly, watching with blown, frightened eyes as blood sprayed out into the night, bodies crumpling one by one, rapidfire, like pigs at the slaughter.
Shinji jerked. His boyish features contorted into horror, and down came Yuu’s blade.
Mika looked away. He didn’t need to see to know which vein had been severed.
Jugular.
“Mika,” Yuu breathed in a frantic hush. He threw Asuramaru aside and collapsed to his knees, hands outstretched, wavering as his eyes flickered from the arrows to Mika’s face, to the sword in his chest and back again. Terror cracked his face down the middle. He was deathly pale in the moonlight. “Oh my god. Mika. Mika, I-I’m so sorry—”
Mika tried to speak, but what came up instead was a brutal retch of crimson flaked with ash. Yuu paled even further at the sight.
“Drink. Mika, you have to drink, you just”—Yuu yanked raggedly at his collar, practically ripping the fabric in his haste to expose his neck—“you’re going to die, Mika, please drink, I can’t lose you. Take everything. Take all you need, Mika, please.”
Mika didn’t have anything left in him to protest. He weakly reached up to tug on the pommel of Shinji’s blade. Yuu nodded stiffly, and together they slid the weapons out of Mika’s wounds. Yuu took each horrible squelch and agonized whimper and turned them into pain of his own.
And when Mika tucked his fangs into Yuu’s throat, felt the wounds stitch themselves up, both of them breathed a little easier. Yuu held him like nothing else mattered.
His blood was sweet.