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Vanitas flinched and swore as he twisted wrong and pulled his gash open further, sending the suture needle tumbling from his hand.
It was late in the evening, not long after Vanitas and Noé’s return to their hotel room. They’d spent the day tracking down and healing a curse bearer that had been wreaking havoc across Paris all week, and the fight had been nasty.
The bastard had claws of steel.
Now Vanitas was in his hotel bathroom, trying and failing to stitch up the newest scar for his collection. He’d been scratched badly across the lower back, and though only one of the multiple claw marks was deep enough to require stitches, the location and depth of the wound made doctoring himself far more difficult than it should have been.
The needle he’d been trying to use, after catching on his pants for a moment, fell to the floor with an audible clink as Vanitas reached for it, and he swore again as he realized he’d have to start from scratch and re-sterilize. Then, as if summoned by the opportunity to make things even worse, Noé came knocking on the bathroom door.
“Vanitas,” he called. “Are you alright in there?”
“I’m fine.” Vanitas turned to face the door on impulse, wincing as the movement pulled and twisted the cuts on his back. “Go lick your own wounds or something while I deal with mine.”
“Are you sure? It still really smells like blood in there.”
Vanitas ignored him for a moment, focusing on trying to bend down to find his needle and thread without further aggravating his wounds. This quickly proved impossible.
“Vanitas?”
Vanitas sighed, forcing himself to consider whether it was wise to continue rejecting Noé on impulse. He didn’t want anyone else poking around his injuries—he knew he was more than capable as his own doctor, but dealing with things alone was proving to be more trouble than it was worth. He could at least, he thought as he straightened up, make Noé help him avoid so much bending and twisting.
He unlocked the door.
Noé appeared in the doorway a moment later, looking every bit as bedraggled as Vanitas felt. He’d stripped away his bloody clothes already, his clean black shirt now a strange contrast to the scrapes and scratches visible on his face and around his collar. His hair was loose, one patch of it stained dark red with blood, and exhaustion was visible around his eyes. He didn’t look unhappy, though, but rather relieved that Vanitas had let him in after all.
“If I let you help me with something, will you stop fussing?”
“I might.” Noé craned his head, obviously trying to get a good look at Vanitas’s wounds, which Vanitas turned to avoid. “What do you need me to do?”
Vanitas pointed at where his needle and thread had fallen to the ground.
“I shouldn’t be bending around until I’ve done stitches. Get that for me?”
“You can’t even bend over, but you’ve been insisting you’re fine?”
“Just get the damn needle.”
Noé made a face, but just as requested, he retrieved the thread and needle from the floor. Then, when Vanitas held out his hand to take it, he smirked at him, stepping back without returning the needle.
Vanitas looked at him, incredulous.
“Do you want me to bleed out?”
“No, which is why I’m going to help you.”
“This is the opposite of helping me.”
“You dropped your needle and can’t move around well enough to pick it up again. How are you supposed to put stitches in your own back?”
Vanitas made a grab for the needle, wincing again in pain as Noé easily avoided him.
“How do you know it’s my back that needs stitches?”
“Because I’m the one that caught you after that curse-bearer clawed you out of the air.”
Vanitas paused for a moment to glare at him, considering what to do. He was in no mood to fight Noé about staying, but the alternative was borderline unthinkable. The thought of letting another person, any other person mess around with a needle in his skin while his back was turned—it was unacceptable. It was enough to send a cold spear of disgust and dread down his spine just thinking about it. But that didn’t change the fact that he had already failed once to do this himself. The claw mark really was at the worst possible angle to self-apply stitches, and he didn’t think Noé had much cause to try and further hurt him.
Could he possibly leave himself open like that? Was it worth doing the unthinkable to avoid further injuring himself?
He supposed he could rationalize that working through Noé wouldn’t actually be surrendering more than a tiny amount of control. He’d be too damn anxious about hurting him to do anything but follow Vanitas’s every command.
“If I let you near me, are you going to get all vampire about my blood? I will kill you if you start licking it off your fingers when you’re done.”
Noé blinked, seemingly caught off-guard by either the acceptance of help or the reminder that Vanitas’s blood would be involved in stitch-giving. After a moment, though, he smiled.
“The whole room already smells like you. I don’t think anything at this point could make it worse.”
“And you haven’t pounced on me yet.”
“I haven’t.” Noé gestured to the suture needle still in his hand. “So will you let me do this?”
Vanitas could not believe what he was about to say.
“Fine, but give it here first so I can re-sterilize it.”
Noé nodded, handing over the needle and touching Vanitas’s arm as he circled around to look at the wound on his back. Vanitas pointedly ignored him as he began cleaning his supplies and readying himself for a second attempt at stitches, but the force of Noé’s presence was too much to actually put out of his head for more than a second. He could feel the way he looked at him, eyes heavy on his bloody back with the mix of deep concern and forceful repression of that godawful thirst of his.
Vanitas almost surprised himself with how little he worried about Noé trying to steal a taste of blood. He’d had his chances in the past and never taken them.
Finally, when everything was ready, Vanitas stood in front of the sink, his medical supplies lined along the rim. He explained to Noé what the process of giving stitches would be—how to start and end them, how to angle the needle, how to space them, and how to keep his hand steady, and Noé took it all in wide-eyed. How awful the world of human medicine must be to someone who needed stitches exactly once in his life, the time Vanitas reattached his fully severed hand.
Noé brightened the light in the room as much as he could, cleaned his hands, and circled around to Vanitas’s back, examining him again. Tall bastard that he was, he had to bend over awkwardly to get near the wound, and after a moment, he dropped down to his knees behind Vanitas.
Vanitas resolutely ignored and refused to examine the reaction that provoked in him.
Then Noé pressed a steadying hand to his waist, just above the line of his belt, and he had to repress a visceral shudder. Surrendering his control and being poked and prodded by Noé armed with a needle was quite possibly the least sexy thing in the known universe, but Noé had hands on his bare skin in a place no one ever touched him, and he handled him too delicately. He couldn’t help the natural reaction to being felt up.
He was grateful to be broken out of that unpleasant line of thinking by Noé asking for approval and guidance on beginning his stitches. Focusing on ordering Noé around was an excellent way to switch his attention, and the sensation of a clumsy intrusion into his skin with a needle was more than enough to banish away the shivers and sink into a familiar bitter annoyance.
It was a miracle they were able to get his wound closed up, but they managed it somehow. Vanitas even managed to catch half a glimpse of it in the mirror without hurting himself further, and as far as he could tell, the stitches looked okay. They were messier than he would have liked, of course, but given Noé’s—everything, that was about what he expected.
Then it was time for bandages, which Vanitas was more than capable of doing for himself, but much to his annoyance, Noé refused to leave when his task was done. He lingered in the small bathroom instead, hovering off to the side and looking far too much like he had something to say. His presence grated on Vanitas’s nerves, making his hands twitchy as he secured the last of his gauze.
Finally, he had to ask, and he fixed his eyes on Noé.
“Why are you still here?”
“Should I not be?”
Vanitas didn’t dignify that with a verbal response, shooting him a glare instead, and Noé made a sour face.
“You let me in and told me to help you out.”
“And now we’re done with the thing I wanted help with, yet here you are.”
Noé’s face shifted as he seemed to sort through several emotions at once, finally landing on a familiar air of hard-headed, childlike defiance. It was his poor attempt at picking a fight when it was obvious he was, in truth, emotional about some new round of nonsense.
“I’m not leaving,” he said.
“Fine.” Vanitas waved his arm dismissively, then turned to swipe his medical kit back into his bag with practiced speed. “If you want to stay here and pout alone in the bathroom, be my guest.” He brushed past Noé on his way out the door, pretending not to care as Noé processed in surprise behind him, then came following after.
He took up a position lurking against the wall again, still in the corner by the bathroom door, and watched Vanitas as he put away his medical bag and found clean clothes. Vanitas intended to ignore him, but the push of his gaze proved annoying far too quickly, and he had to give up the effort.
Instead, he groaned, allowed himself one moment of soaking in pure irritation, and turned to face Noé.
“What’s wrong?”
Noé opened his mouth, presumably to say “nothing’s wrong,” then seemed to think better of it, and Vanitas watched as he gathered up his thoughts.
“I don’t want to trouble you,” he finally said.
"That's a first."
Noé, destroyer of diversions, had the gall to look genuinely apologetic in response. He once again made Vanitas wait as he decided what to say.
This time, what he landed on was. “I don’t like how breakable you are.”
“If this turns into another lecture about how weak and vulnerable us humans are, I’m leaving.”
Noé shook his head.
“You get hurt more easily than me, and you take a lot longer to heal, but that’s not the only thing.” He met Vanitas’s eye for a long moment, then looked off toward the window. “Sometimes I feel like, if I look away from you, I’ll turn back around only to find you’ve disappeared.”
This was not a subject that Vanitas intended to engage with.
“I’m right here, Noé.”
“But when you’re upset, you sneak away. And when you’re mad, you throw yourself into danger.”
This was really not a subject that Vanitas intended to engage with.
He cocked his head, letting his voice go velvet.
“You’re not some maidenly lover, you know. What’s got you so worried about losing me?”
Noé’s head jerked back over to face him, a genuine anger flashing in his eyes.
“You don’t get to try to get rid of me anymore,” he said.
Vanitas felt an unexpected pang of guilt at his expression, an uncomfortable realization unfolding in ripples. He didn’t want Noé to think he was still trying to get him to go away. But he also didn’t want him acting like he was supposed to be some long term, permanent thing.
He was going to have to engage with the goddamn subject.
“We both know what saving more curse bearers will do to me.”
“That’s exactly the problem!”
Vanitas glowered.
“If you try to talk me out of seeking revenge, I really will disappear.”
Noé’s right hand tightened into a fist, and Vanitas imagined he was fantasizing about throwing him. Then his fingers slowly unfurled, and Noé breathed in deeply.
“I know I can’t convince you. That’s why I was trying not to bring it up.”
So that explained the uncharacteristic reticence.
Vanitas took his own breath, trying to decide how to end this conversation. He didn’t want to leave Noé stewing in frustration like this over him, but he also couldn’t tell him what he wanted to hear. Was there a compromise that would calm Noé down without making some unkeepable pledge? Some way to distract him off of this topic? “I’ll bake for you if you shut up” was tempting, but there was no way that would solve the issue long term.
“I’m not going to leave you,” he said.
Noé looked dubious, and Vanitas rolled his eyes.
“Seriously. How do I get you off of this?”
Noé once again seemed to test his words and hesitate. It was a terrible look on him.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t want you to be gone.”
Vanitas looked away, scanning their hotel room in search of some kind of solution. What could he do to get Noé to calm down? What could he do for him? What would he want if Noé was going to die tomorrow, and he could only have one thing?
There was still a bloody stain in Noé’s hair, his own blood from when he had been injured earlier in their fight with the curse-bearer, but his hands had been neatly washed clean of Vanitas’s blood, not a drop snuck out of place. And before he could even process the words, Vanitas found himself speaking.
“Do you want my memories?”
The phrase hung heavy in the air for a cavernous moment.
“What?”
“One time offer,” Vanitas said, and oh this was a terrible idea. “I give you a part of me you can’t ever lose.”
“I—” Noé gaped, disbelieving. “You tried to kill me to protect them.”
He wasn’t wrong, and a significant part of Vanitas was, in that very moment, blowing up with outraged horror at the idea. The fear of sharing his memories was very, very well ingrained, but his old self-hypnosis had already been taken care of. He technically didn’t have to kill Noé at the threat of his biting him now, even if it was the best protection.
Furthermore, in the midst of his own instant regret as the words caught up to him, there was a rush of unexpected adrenaline. The concept of offering Noé his blood was viscerally horrifying and wrong, but the thought of being able to… The half of himself that didn’t want to kill Noé to make him unhear those words was flaring up with a manic kind of thrill. How good would it feel? Was it really an option? How long had he gone trying to convince himself that a bite from Noé wasn’t something he wanted?
Even the thought of sharing his memories—something dark and long-buried shifted in the pit of his stomach at the thought of doing that. It wasn’t a nauseous shift, but the stirring of something Vanitas was not allowed to think about.
Breaking taboos could be very sexy, once you got past the sheer disgust and horror.
“One time offer,” Vanitas said again.
He wasn’t sure how long it would be before his impulse shifted the other way again, and he found the urge to kill to protect his memories back in total control. He had to ride the wave of his rash decision if he wanted this to happen.
Noé looked uncertain, looked conflicted, and Vanitas leveled a stare at him, daring him to accept. He enjoyed watching Noé grow frazzled.
When Noé spoke, his voice was in an unfamiliar cadence.
“Are you sure?”
“For now,” Vanitas said. “That’s why we have to do this before I change my mind.”
“I’m not going to bite you if you aren’t sure.”
Vanitas narrowed his eyes at him.
“You want my consent in writing or something? I’m telling you it’s fine.”
He watched Noé hesitate again, face changing as he thought things through and came to some kind of decision, and then Noé took a hesitant step towards him.
“Why now?”
“Because you won’t shut up about missing me. I thought—” Vanitas caught himself mid sentence. I thought you might want a part of me to hold onto after I die was what he'd thought, but he was better than that. There was no reason to say such a sappy thing out loud. “You can get an exclusive offer to know the real me in full. Doesn’t that make it better?”
“No,” Noé said, but he didn’t look uninterested. “What do you get out of this?”
“Aren’t you blood suckers supposed to feel good?” Vanitas spoke with a wave of his hand, and Noé’s eyes widened before he nodded, as though he’d somehow forgotten his own biology.
“And you’re really sure you want me to do this?”
“Yes.”
Noé closed the distance between them quickly, stopping hard a foot away, and Vanitas sucked in a breath. Noé was looming over him, intense and stormy. He looked like he was about to say something, and then his eyes landed on his bandages, and his face changed again.
“You’ve lost a lot of blood already,” he said.
“That’s right. It’s your job to pace yourself and try not to kill me.”
Vanitas felt a little bolt of satisfaction as he watched Noé’s eye twitch at the joke. Then Noé circled behind him again, examining his bandages, and Vanitas tilted his head to expose his neck.
Suddenly, Noé’s arm’s wrapped around his torso, pulling him close, and the top of his back pressed into Noé’s chest. Vanitas let out an undignified squawk at the sudden move, resisting the urge to shove Noé away.
“What are you doing? ” he hissed.
Noé didn’t respond right away. He leaned forward, resting his chin on Vanitas’s shoulder, and lingered.
“Give me a minute,” he said.
“Don’t make me wait forever, you ass.”
This had gotten uncomfortably real. Vanitas knew he’d more or less volunteered for close contact when he offered his blood, but the weight of Noé looming over him was making him itch. He could feel the buttons of his shirt pressing into his skin, and he could feel the way he’d carefully angled himself so as not to touch the lower part of his back that had been injured. He did not want the forced touchiness of an extended hug.
Finally, after a too-long minute of waiting and pointedly not thinking about their position, Vanitas felt Noé move. He felt his head shift, lifting and angling forward until his mouth had to be nearly on his neck. He felt the warmth of him, breath hot against his jugular, and a sudden shock of emotion fired through him.
Despite himself, he did feel a bolt of fear—an instinct for survival at the thought of a predator’s fangs piercing his neck. An instinct to shove away the Archiviste, to lash out and draw his knives and protect his precious memories. This was all too much too fast and there was no way this was a good idea. But he’d grown stronger than that programming with time. The instinct for protection wasn’t the worst part.
He wanted this. He had to remind himself he wanted this to fight down the worst impulses. And that meant the awful confrontation with why.
He wanted Noé to understand him. He wanted Noé to have his memories and keep them with him in the hopes that they might cheer him up after Vanitas’s inevitable death. He wanted to be part of Noé, in his mouth and in his mind and fully devoured from the world. And part of him, in that long moment alone with Noé’s breath, was hit with a newfound layer of want as well. It was bad enough that he liked Noé, bad enough that he cared if he got hurt, that coming back to him, back to this room and his cat and his messy, overbearing, stubborn love had begun to feel like a homecoming. But now he felt the spark of something physical. Now he was poised under Noé’s fangs, under his mouth , and he was welling up with a truly uncomfortable amount of physical want.
Noé had said so many times before that his blood smelled good, and didn’t physical chemistry tend to go both ways? If he could just get past the mental blocks, this could feel incredible.
Vanitas craned his neck, thinking and trying not to think about about Noé’s mouth watering at the sight of him. How darkly thrilling that was—to be so wanted. He took a breath, slow and deep, and braced himself for the inevitable sting of contact.
It never came.
After a long moment, he opened his eyes.
“Noé,” he hissed, “I’m getting stiff here.”
“I’m sorry,” came the muffled reply, and Noé’s face pressed into the crook of his neck in a distinctly non-predatory way.
“It’s not polite to keep a lover waiting, you know. You’ve been drooling at me for months, and now I’ve laid myself out on a dinner plate. What’s the issue?”
“I’m not your lover.”
A quip came quickly to Vanitas’s tongue, something about that being a bold claim from the man that was currently clutching his bare torso, mouth to neck, but he bit it back. They didn’t need an argument right now, not when he knew that if this uncertainty stretched on much longer, one of them was going to lose their nerve or spiral into irrational fury.
Instead, he reached a hand up to tangle in the mess of Noé’s hair, tilting his head to press against the side of his partner’s, almost affectionate, and let out a sigh.
"What’s wrong Noé?”
He was silent for a beat before he spoke.
“I don’t know if I should be doing this.”
Noé’s arms shifted in their place around Vanitas’s middle.
“What,” Vanitas crooned, “you don’t trust my judgement?”
“I know you, Vanitas, and this is important to me. I don’t want to do this if you’re just hurting yourself somehow, or if you’re doing this as a way to shut me up.”
Again with his constant habit of diving headlong into unwanted topics.
“What’s so important about a little blood between friends? You do this all the time with your Dominique.”
Noé tilted his head, pressing against the weight of Vanitas’s.
“Domi’s different. I’ve wanted to know about your past for a long time, and I’ve wanted to drink your blood for a long time too. I don’t want to be part of some weird impulse that you’ll yell at me for tomorrow.”
“Why am I supposed to offer you my blood, if not an impulse?”
The next answer was a long time coming.
“I need to know you’re doing this out of trust.”
Vanitas opened his mouth to tell Noé off, to remind him that this was a one time offer and he shouldn’t ruin things by dreaming after the sappy and impossible, but something stopped him short. Did he trust Noé? He wasn’t actually sure if a yes would be a lie. Or a complete one, anyway. If another Archiviste rose up out of the woodwork and asked to drink his blood, Vanitas would sooner slit their throat than entertain the idea of saying yes. So what did that mean for Noé?
“You really are an idiot, aren’t you?” he said.
“What?”
Vanitas leaned his head away from Noé’s, twisting around to look at him as best he could in such close proximity. His eyes were violet, the outline of his nose strong in the moonlit gloom. It was a crime that someone so annoying could look so beautiful.
“I trust you, Noé.”
Despite himself, Vanitas’s voice came out tender and soft.
“I want you to have my past now, and I want you to drink my blood.”
He turned away again before Noé could respond, once more craning his head to the side in an invitation to drink, and tried not to think too hard about the glimpse of something deep and tender and wanting that he’d caught in Noé’s eyes as he’d finished his words.
“Thank you,” Noé whispered, and his head was already shifting.
Once more, Vanitas braced himself, feeling the brush of Noé’s breath, too close for comfort, on the skin at the crook of his neck. He felt that awful rattling pang of desire. There was a beat of silence, not too long this time, as they both held still, readying themselves, and though he shouldn’t have been able to, he could swear that he sensed the moment Noé opened his mouth.
Something pressed against his skin, then, and Vanitas couldn’t hide the way he half-gasped in surprise at the feeling of Noé licking him, just once. Jeanne had never done that before a bite. The sensation sent a shudder down his spine.
“Oi,” he began to complain, “what are you—”
Ah.
There it was.
For the briefest moment, his neck was cold and damp as Noé pulled away, and then the warmth returned to him with a vengeance. And then there was pain. Two knife-sharp points of hurt burst into life in the skin of his neck as Noé bit down, a white hot instant that quickly ebbed to a manageable ache. He felt a thrill of adrenaline, a shudder of that fear reserved for animals of prey, and then he felt Noé swallow against him as he began to drink, and in the same instant, the ecstasy kicked in. And oh, what an ecstasy it was.
He could feel the chemical in him, spreading like a river from his neck as the sensation filled his skin, his muscles, his heart and veins, flooding every nerve ending in his body all at once. It was a sweet, rich, overwhelming kind of pleasure that spilled into him, melting his body into syrup in an instant, and he was putty in Noé’s hands. The bite felt hot, so hot it should have been unbearable, but it was perfect. It was just a hair shy of sensory overload, pleasure spilling into something like euphoria. Golden sins of the flesh.
A sound escaped him—some soft, vulnerable thing from the back of his throat, and he hardly had the wherewithal to care. There was a part of him, always proud, in the back of his mind, that urged him to cover his mouth, to bite back the awful possibility of moaning in the arms of Noé Archiviste, but he didn’t think he really had it in him. Even as he slowly began adjusting to the intensity, his wits bubbling back up to the surface, the act of holding anything back sounded like a cruel slight against the bliss that had overtaken him. He wasn’t built to be engaging with shame when he felt this good.
Instead, he brought his arms to his middle, crossing them around to reach for Noé’s hands where they held him. He wanted skin on skin contact, anything to deepen the comfort and warmth, but he’d been getting dressed when Noé’s mopey aura had forced this confrontation, and he already had his gloves on. He placed his gloved hands on the backs of Noé’s anyway, intertwining their fingers and trying to let skin on leather be enough. Leather gloves against bare hands against the hot skin of his abdomen. The rational part of his mind justified that Noé was probably going to collapse soon, and a proper hold of his hands and arms would make it easier to hold him up if and when he did.
Noé breathed a quiet, throaty sound into Vanitas’s neck, the vibration of it rattling across them both, and tightened his hold around his middle as he shifted to allow Vanitas to hold his hands. He was holding them both up as they drank, whatever pleasure or misery he found in Vanitas’s blood apparently not yet enough to weaken his knees, and for that beautiful infinite moment, Vanitas was liquid.
He hated that this was true, how vulnerable it made him, but he trusted Noé not to over-drink. He trusted Noé not to put him in danger.
He only let his wits return when the connection between them broke, Noé’s tongue, oh god, swirling around the bite wound as he pulled away, as if trying to catch every last drop of leaking blood. It was no good, of course—he’d keep bleeding for longer than he was willing to let Noé continue the action, but he couldn’t deny the way it made him shiver. It hurt, yes, shocks of faint pain erupting from the wound at the feeling of pressure, but at the same time, Noé was pressed against him from head to toe, and was licking his neck. In any other context, the gesture would have been obscene. If Vanitas didn’t know Noé so well, didn’t know the bizarre way he treated physical intimacy and blood, he would have assumed it was meant to be obscene in this context as well.
As it was, he could feel Noé moving behind him, mouth pulling away as his weight shifted and, all at once, Vanitas was holding him up, rather than the other way around. Noé pressed his forehead into the crook of Vanitas’s neck, further back than the bite wound, and he could feel his breath on his skin again, no longer sexy and dangerous, but unstable. A clutch for air, as though he was starting to cry.
Vanitas had expected this, of course he had, but that didn’t mean he was actually prepared for Noé shaking against him with borrowed misery. It was hard to speak or think as his body still swam with afterblooms of pleasure from the bite.
“Noé,” he finally managed, “stop crying into my shoulder.”
“M’sorry,” came Noé’s reply, barely more than a mumble.
Vanitas almost managed to groan convincingly as he hesitated, weighing his desire to maintain the last of his dignity against the infuriatingly strong desire to not see Noé break down.
His concern for Noé won out.
“You,” he said, pulling himself free at last from Noé’s arms to turn around. “Come with me.”
He kept a grip on one of Noé’s hands from where they’d been clutching him, and Noé, head still bowed, made no move to resist as Vanitas pulled him along. He meant to urge him to the nearest bed and make him sit, but the movement was hard to manage when he was going backwards and his head was full of fog. He miscalculated the distance, running the back of his knee into the edge of the bed, and fell, pulling Noé down with him. He dropped onto his back with a whump, Noé stumbling after him, and though he let go of Vanitas’s hand soon enough to catch himself at least a little, it wasn’t soon enough to keep from falling.
One of Noé’s knees made it onto the bed in his clutch for balance, the other leg sprawled out behind him, and he had caught himself late enough that, though he hadn’t crushed Vanitas under him, he was still sprawled out above his chest. He looked down and away, uncharacteristically sheepish, but Vanitas could still see the welling tears that clouded his eyes.
“Sorry,” he mumbled again, unclear as to whether he meant the tears, the falling, or both.
Vanitas could only stare, caught playing catch-up with himself in this sudden turn of events and positioning. He was almost angry, irritation bubbling at the sight of somebody, of Noé, crying over him. He did not take well to pity. But all the same, he knew that Noé probably wasn’t crying out of pity. He had always had an empathetic bent, and he had quite likely just seen something horrible in the infinite sea of his past. There were a million reasons he could be crying, and he knew that Noé wasn’t the pitying sort.
But tears born of empathetic understanding brought up a wave of disgust in him all their own. The thought of another person that knew him, that understood his past without his having to explain—it was incomprehensible. It was awful. It was everything he had never wanted or dared to let himself want. He wanted to run as far away as he could and never see Noé Archiviste again. He wanted to strangle him then and there just to ensure he never spoke of this aloud. He wanted to hold him close and never let him go. He thought he might love him a little, or at least be fascinated and entranced by the concept that Noé could probably love him back, if he tried.
He knew him well enough already to apologize for crying, and wasn’t that close to love? And wasn’t that love disgusting? Such a miracle? Such a waste?
How was he supposed to deal with that?
“Oi,” he finally said, reaching up to tangle a hand in Noé’s hair, “didn’t I tell you to stop crying onto me?”
Noé sniffed, shifting his weight to lift an arm and wipe his eyes.
“I know, I just…”
His voice shook just a little as he spoke, and Vanitas groaned internally, half in disbelief of what he was about to do.
He’d seen Noé cry a hundred times over a hundred ridiculous things, always unabashed in the way he let his tears run down his cheeks in joy or sympathy or pain, but now he was subdued. Now he seemed almost ashamed. There were teardrops clinging to his eyelashes, only just visible as he bowed his head and wiped his face, and he made misery look unfairly beautiful.
With the hand in Noé’s hair, he guided his head down, making him rest in the crook of his neck. He almost raised his other arm to hold him properly, but thought better of it, opting instead to softly stroke the back of his head with his thumb. It was the closest thing to an apology he could manage.
“What’s got you so worked up now, Noé? You knew about Moreau already.”
Noé seemed to deflate, strength fading out as he slowly crumpled into Vanitas.
“That’s not—it’s not the doctor.”
Noé’s body was heavy, too heavy, really, but Vanitas didn’t dare tell him to move. He knew that this, perhaps moreso than the bite itself, was where they’d both have to be careful. He didn’t want to do something rash and let his bitter anger ruin things. He didn’t want to untangle his hand from his hair.
He played casual.
“Is this about Mikhail and that woman, then? Or maybe laughing at my real name?” He paused a moment, forcing a thin smile that Noé probably couldn’t see. “Or has my flavor just moved you to tears?”
“I think it’s everything.”
Vanitas’s breath caught in his throat.
“I know it’s selfish of me, but I can’t stop thinking about how much you’ve had to suffer in the past, and how upset I am that I didn’t know you and couldn’t have tried to help.”
Oh.
There was nothing he knew how to say in response to that. His mouth filled up with death threats and declarations of fealty, but neither could find purchase between his teeth.
He spiraled. Mouthed words he couldn’t finish.
“Vanitas.”
Noé’s voice wrenched him back to reality.
“What can you possibly need?”
The question came out testier than he meant it to.
“It’s cruel of you to hold me here like this. There’s blood on your neck.”
Vanitas froze. Noé’s words cut through the maelstrom of conflicted wants in an instant, bringing all the sweet pain and ecstasy of earlier cascading back into his mind. He hadn’t really processed the fact that he was holding Noé so close to the blood that had trickled from his bite wound, caught up as he was in conflicted emotion and impulses toward comfort, but suddenly it filled his head. Noé had bitten him, and it was the best thing he’d ever felt, and now that the first time was over, there was no risk to it ever again. Noé Archiviste was in his bed, on top of him. Noé Archiviste could drink from him any time he wanted, no trauma-strings attached. Those things, at least, were clear. He didn’t know what he wanted from the future, didn’t know how to deal with his partner whispering through tears that he wanted to save him from his past, but at least the want for blood drinking was physical.
He was strangely proud of the fact that even through this mess of teary eyes and impossible regret, the scent of his blood was still so compelling to Noé.
“I know you don’t want to give me more blood, so please just let me up already. I can stand.”
Just to be spiteful, Vanitas tightened his grip on the back of Noé’s head, holding him down a little harder.
“When did I say I wouldn’t give you more?”
Noé’s head shot up at that, overriding Vanitas’s grip, and he stared at him in surprise.
“But I thought—”
“What? Thought I was mad at you for crying?”
“I— yes.” Noé looked at him, incredulous. “Aren’t you?”
Vanitas smiled, cool and wry, finally finding a foothold in their conversation.
“I am,” he said, “but I’ll let you make that up to me next time.”
“Next time?”
“I don’t share my memories for cheap, Archiviste. If we’ve got chemistry, then I expect you to help me make the most of it.”
“Chemistry?” Noé stared down at him in confusion for a moment, and then a look of realization flashed across his face. And then he looked pleased, and maybe almost a little smug.
“Oh!” he said, “did that feel good for you?”
Vanitas’s face flushed traitorously.
“I’m not dignifying that with a response.”
“Sorry.” Noé looked the happiest he’d been all night. “I didn’t think you’d liked that.”
“I hate you prodding around in my head, but I can’t say it didn’t feel good.” He lifted his free hand, making some vague gesture as a flourish. “Chemistry.”
“I’m glad! Your blood was incredible, Vanitas.”
Vanitas resented the way that made his cheeks grow even warmer.
“Even with all that misery in it?”
“Yes.”
It was truly incredible how blunt Noé could be in such a circumstance.
“Make it up to me, then. I’m all yours.”
Noé nodded, looking down at him wide-eyed and excited, and seemed almost overwhelmed. Vanitas supposed that he’d never thought he’d find himself with such an opportunity.
“I probably shouldn’t bite you right after you’ve lost so much blood.”
Right. Godawful curse-bearer.
“But,” Noé continued, still staring down, “there’s blood on your neck.”
Vanitas processed that for a moment. He couldn’t bite him again, but he could—what? Lick the drying blood off his neck? Good lord. That was an objectively awful idea for several reasons, and probably also not very sanitary, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t see the appeal. It wasn’t like he had to be losing blood to want a mouth against his neck. But that crossed over every already tentative boundary in what should be the clean professional (maybe friendlike) line of their relationship.
But Noé had never seemed to care much about proper boundaries.
Swallowing all of his pride, Vanitas nodded, and Noé grinned at him. Then he bent his head down to his neck again, and Vanitas let himself fall into the shudder of the strange sensation.
In the light of day, when he was no longer light-headed from blood loss, he was probably going to regret this. He was probably going to regret a lot of things. He was probably going to sleep on the roof for a week as he reassessed how he felt about being known. But he had chosen to give in to the long-held hunger of Noé Archiviste, and as long as he could keep his damned head from clouding his pleasure, the reward was hot and sweet.