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Chapter Text

Subaru’s footsteps pound against the cobblestones. The trail he leaves behind is so obvious that even a child could track him down, but he doesn’t have time to worry about that now. His already slick-bottomed boot hits a patch of ice and his unnatural speed, usually such an advantage, yields him only an unnaturally hard fall onto the snow-covered stones.

He doesn’t have time to rest his bruises or nurse his pains. He has to keep going. He has to-

He can feel the pounding. The rush of blood through Seishiro’s veins.

He’s so hungry.

He gets up. Staggers forward.

The hunger in his gut cries out like a wounded animal, clawing at his ribs. It feels like it’s going to climb out of his throat at any moment. It is a beast and it will consume him. He tries to reach out. Senses for Kamui, but he is far away and all he can read is distress. There is not much room for perception beyond the blood.

He can feel it. Hot. Warm. Alive. Precious. Powerful.

And getting closer.

The alley! Some of the buildings had ladders leading up to the roofs. If he can get the high ground, he’ll have a better chance of slipping away over the-

But he’s made a mistake. This isn’t an alley. It’s a dead end. There are no ladders.

He turns to retreat but it’s already too late. His prey stands looming at the entrance. The flame of the lamplight flickers down on him from above, giving the disconcerting illusion of movement where there isn’t any.

“Seishiro.” Subaru’s voice is breaking.

“I found you.”

Subaru furrows his brow and closes his eyes. He doesn’t let the tears fall. He’s so cold, they’d probably freeze to his cheek. He can’t feel his feet anymore. A human would have surrendered to hypothermia by now. “Please!” He begs. “Seishiro…” He backs up so far and  flinches when his shoulders hit brick, all the while Seishiro advances on him calmly. “Please! I don’t want-“

But a finger falls to his lips, silencing him. “Subaru,” Seishiro grins. “You’re so cute when you get like this.”

And Subaru can’t fight anymore. Seishiro’s hand is like fire against his mouth after so many months growing colder and colder. And the blood is so close. He can feel it, rushing through the veins in his finger, flooding his capillaries. The monster in his chest is taking over. Against his will, his body is responding: the claws, the fangs, and the eyes.

“Please.” He whispers, one last time against Seishiro’s skin. But it’s a desolate thing. He already knows the answer.

Seishiro pushes past his lips, crowding him as he drags the pad of his thumb across Subaru’s soft tongue. Green eyes go wide and golden and he struggles to breathe. The blood is right there and he is starving. He’s felt it since Seishiro arrived in this world, but now here it is, warm and pounding, and in a way, already within him. The hunger rips away at his insides and still he does not bite. He stares up at the man who has trapped him with a mix of fear and resignation.

Seishiro just grins all the wider.

“Oh, Subaru…” He croons as he draws his thumb across a newly sharpened fang.

The iron hits his tongue like magma and the hunger is calling out in triumph. Everything else falls away. The chase. This man. His control. The chill. He can’t even feel Kamui’s panic anymore.

There is only blood.

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Seishiro gasps as he watches Subaru’s eyes transform, golden and slitted. He’d thought they couldn’t get any more beautiful, but he’d been wrong. Watching Subaru become this thing… so powerful. So deadly. He groans as Subaru’s frigid cheeks hollow around his bleeding digit and the blood bond begins.

Predator and prey.

He can always sense Subaru a little. It’s his blood in the boy’s veins and his body calls out to it. It grows weaker the longer he goes without feeding (at first he’d worried it might wither to the point that Subaru might escape him), but just as the bond grows weaker, so does Subaru’s strength. He gets clumsy. He makes mistakes. And Seishiro always, always catches up.

But the bond right now… The connection as his wounds are open and the blood flows freely between them…

Nothing compares.

It can’t be natural. Seishiro feels the pain, every tear in his flesh, but the sensation is somehow so delicious.

And the desire…

He knows Subaru can feel it too. For these short minutes they are one and the emotions flow between them just as the life force does.

The excitement is his own. And the satisfaction. He’ll even claim the arousal. But the hunger and desperation are Subaru’s. Seishiro feels all of the want but does not have the biology to suffer the hunger. It’s intoxicating. Like no other feeling in existence. Sometimes he’ll let Subaru keep going, tiring himself out long after he has cornered him in one world or anther just for the sake of this feeling.

But that’s not all there is. He can feel Subaru’s fear as well. His panic. His resentment. Under all of that there is a basis of warmth. Affection. Something entirely alien that he only feels in these moments.

Fuuma says it’s love. How fascinating if he’s right.

Subaru is growing stronger, but the blood just isn’t coming fast enough. He feels the vampire’s frustration break just before Subaru pivots them, slamming his back into the wall, and ripping through his shirt with vampiric claws, exposing a long line of neck and shoulder to the chill. Sometimes Subaru will lick his wounds away when he is finished, but there is no time for that now and his hand is left to bleed messily into the snow. He groans as a supernatural strength drags him to his knees and teeth sink into the tender skin of his neck. Again, the pain is just so good.

He can feel Subaru pressing against him, his own satisfaction written across that face and his own arousal pressing at his stomach. Unless that was Subaru’s? He can’t tell. The feelings are too muddled by now. Besides, it doesn’t matter anymore. They both feel everything. His own body would be reacting in kind if not for the increasingly dire lack of blood.

In fact, his vision is already darkening at the edges, and he has to lean against Subaru for support. All the while, the vampire shows no sign of slowing down or stopping. The hunger is controlling everything and he wants nothing more than to satisfy it. He laughs as the last of his strength leaves his body and he collapses, only not hitting the ground because Subaru has his chest clutched so tightly.

His last thought before the darkness washes over him is that maybe this will be the time Subaru finally kills him.

Chapter Text

Awareness returns all at once.

One moment there is blood flowing across his tongue, heat searing through his icy veins and torturous pleasure as he grinds into the body laid out beneath him.

The next the blood-lust is sated and he pulls away with a gasp, blood covering his mouth and dripping off his chin. The fangs and the golden eyes go nowhere. There’s nothing he can do to change his body back so quickly, but at least his mind is again his own.

Seishiro-

He’s not moving. Subaru checks frantically for a pulse and sobs out a breath of relief when it is still there fluttering under his fingertips. He cradles the man’s head and shoulder carefully as he gently licks along the wounds, urging the skin to knit back together with a biological bond only the two of them share.

“Please!” He whispers desperately into the skin. Please be ok. Please survive. Please don’t hate him. Please stop chasing. Please don’t leave. “Please.”

Perhaps if he were braver, he would put a stop to this, let himself starve somewhere where even Seishiro couldn’t find him. They could find the Dimensional Witch. She could help, if they could pay the price.

But it’s only a fantasy. One look down at the man lying blood stained and bruised beneath him, and he knows, as he always has, that he could never bear to do it. Seishiro is significantly taller than he is, but now he has fresh blood coursing through his body. Subaru is strong, vital, renewed. It’s no strain at all to gather his victim into his lap, keeping him warm with his own borrowed heat as he recovers. Gloved fingers run through his hair, setting it back in order.

Letting himself die would mean Seishiro losing the long life span of Prey. They’re tied together now, even when worlds apart. He knows in theory that leaving Seishiro to live a normal lifespan is not the same as killing him, but he gazes upon the deathly pallor of his love and he can’t see a difference.

And his twin. He could never leave Kamui to try and live without him.

It is with a deep shame he acknowledges that again, in the heat of the moment, his own brother is only an after thought. He reaches out his mind again and senses his faint panic. He thinks his thought as loud as he can.

It’s over. Please stop fighting.

There is anger. Grief. Subaru has to pull his mind away before it hurts him too badly.

He hugs Seishiro tightly, much more for his own comfort than the unconscious man’s.

He needs to find somewhere to take him. He doesn’t want to be there when Seishiro wakes up, but he can't leave him out here in the snow either. Sometimes in worlds like these there are places of worship dedicated to helping those less fortunate. If that isn’t Seishiro right now, he’s not sure who would be.

He rises unsteadily to his feet, dragging the body up with him.

Subaru might not be able to protect Seishiro from their bond of brutality, but for tonight at least he’ll find him sanctuary.