One-shot: Through Young Eyes
Title: Through Young Eyes
Character: Kuran Kaname, Kuran Lyric, Kuran Renji, Kuran Izumi, Kuran Yuuta, Kiryuu Zero, Seiren
Rating: G
Status: One-shot, complete
Notes: Inspired by VK role-plays I've been having. Kuran Lyric is lyricaltrinity 's original character. Renji, Izumi and Yuuta are both ours. Original characters by Hino-sensei.
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Kuran Renji was the third child of four, and had the features of his father. As a little tyke of a year old and three months his shock of dark hair reached his nape, neatly parted at the smack middle of his head and then tapering gently around his angelic, rosy-cheeked face. His eyes were his mother’s, a pair of gentle blue orbs that flashed crimson whenever the need to feed came. As it was with little vampires, little Renji still had no fangs, and whenever he latched onto people’s necks to feed off their spark, all he managed was a little sucking on the skin, which often made his parents laugh.
He had two older brothers, namely Kuran Izumi and Kuran Yuuta. Izumi was over two thousand years old, and was currently helping a team of vampire and human researchers in the Antarctic in finding energy sources in the continent. He dropped by home at every important holiday with a penguin in tow, whom he had named Zero, to spite a certain silver-haired hunter-nanny-family friend.
Yuuta was another matter entirely; a thousand years younger than Renji, he was the most soft-spoken of the boys, taking after the temperament of their father. Of the three Kuran heirs he took more to their mother’s looks - a pale-haired, almost delicate beauty. He traveled around the world extensively, publishing cultural studies papers now and then about every major culture of humans and vampires he encountered. Like Izumi, however, Yuuta never missed a single important holiday, only he came back with souvenirs and not a live clapping penguin.
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The house is vast, and quiet. The cube is multi-colored and a bit too large for Renji’s small hands, and currently the little boy drops it when he senses the silence of the house. He stands up, wobbles and grasps the edges of his crib. Somewhere the sound of a clock chiming alerts him. It is about this time that his mother would come, whispering soft loving words, and she would pick him up for feeding downstairs in the room that smelled of wonderful yummy scents. The clock stops chiming and his mother doesn’t come, and Renji starts to wail. There must be something wrong.
Footsteps sound, and Renji perks up, fat teardrops glistening on his cheeks. It is not his mother who comes, but another dark-haired presence, one that he is equally fond of. The baby squeals and raises his arms in delight, and a pair of strong hands picks him up and wipes his tears away.
“Hey there, buddy…mommy’s gone shopping, so I’ll be feeding you.”
Renji touches his father’s cheeks with his hands, and he peers up into those crimson eyes he knows so well. Daddy’s face crinkles into a smile, and warm lips rest on Renji’s forehead. The baby boy coos in comfort, assured. They go downstairs, where another familiar presence makes Renji laugh.
There is another man there, standing by the stove, who turns when he and his father arrive. The man is holding something silver and long, and it smells yummy. Renji smacks his lips appreciation.
The man is rather tall, with silver hair and an odd marking on one side of his neck. He talks to daddy in rapid words, something Renji could not yet understand. For a moment the baby boy watches them, eyes wide. The silver-haired man fills his baby bowl and hands it to his father. Renji is then seated onto a high chair, and he squeals, eager to eat.
“You are getting along really well, aren’t you?” his father says to him as he stirs the food with a spoon. “You are getting really fat…”
Daddy raises a spoonful of yummy stuff toward his lips, and Renji chomps down on it eagerly. Delicious!
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Little Renji loves sitting on his father’s lap. He especially loves watching the glowing box with the little black squiggly line and some odd shapes, and an arrow that flies where his daddy’s hand directs it to. He especially enjoys it when his father presses something, and more multi-colored boxes appear, flashing before his eyes. He claps his hands whenever his father does this.
That morning, his father works on an extraordinary amount of colorful boxes inside the bigger, glowing box. The flashing, black squiggly line moves so fast that Renji barely has time to watch it. Excited because of this, he stands on daddy’s lap and attempts to catch the little line by clapping a hand toward the surface of the big box.
“Renji!”
Behind him, he senses his father’s chest heave in a sigh. He turns his head and blinks innocently at his father, who gently tries to pry him off the glowing box. Renji wails and tries to struggle. He had to catch the squiggly line! It wouldn’t stay still, so he has to catch it! He really has to!
His father’s hand keeps him down, and Renji cries. The squiggly line, daddy! He had to catch that!
“Just a little bit, son. A bit more and I’ll be done, all right?”
He wails again, but instead twists around to face daddy. His father’s crimson gaze meets his own, and for a moment Renji stands still, unsure of what to do. He wobbles. Left. Right. Left. Right.
“Aiii!” he cries, and latches clumsily onto his father’s neck. Renji’s father shifts, tipping his head back. Little Renji’s lips cover the pulse by instinct, and he tries to chomp down with his little baby teeth. He hasn’t got fangs yet, but what bite he manages leaves soft red welts, and his father’s life force floods into him as energy.
Renji draws back after four mouthfuls of the mysterious, invisible but yummy food, and looks up at his father. His father smiles kindly at him, the kind of smile that mommy uses and that never fails to make him feel warm. He raises his arms again and hugs his daddy.
“I love you too, son.” He hears his father say.
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That peaceful moment was short-lived, and soon Renji finds himself put down upon the floor after he nearly toppled the glowing box by jumping on it. His father looks at him in an odd manner, and for a moment little Renji feels his first taste of fear. He wobbles a bit on the floor, and soon his father is working again. He was sure, however, that he did not want his father to look at him in that way again, so he quietly crawls out of the room.
The silver-haired man with the odd mark on the neck who makes his yummy food finds him and puts him back into his crib, but after a few minutes Renji finds the cubes and balls boring, so he climbs out of his crib and crawls around their massive house. Soon he finds himself in a dark room just beyond the room that smells yummy. Renji sits on the floor and looks around, but everything is gray and cold. His sensitive nose catches a myriad of scents, and he is curious.
He finds a clump of…something near him, and he thinks it resembles the brown yummy food his mommy and daddy love to eat for breakfast. The silver-haired man with the odd mark on the neck makes the brown stuff, and they are yummy. But mommy and daddy could make the brown stuff too. Renji crawls toward the brown stuff and picks it up. He finds that it isn’t warm and soft. It is cold and rough to the touch, and this close, it smells weird.
What is it?
He chomps down on the stuff and finds that it is too hard, unlike the brown stuff they usually eat that are soft. A weird taste floods little Renji’s mouth. He tries biting off a chunk, but his teeth do not have that kind of strength yet, so he contents himself with sucking. It tasted really, really weird. Like some metal…
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Usually, mommy or daddy’s hugs and kisses would make him feel better, but for that day, even with daddy holding him really close, Renji did not feel better. He was crying as badly as his tummy hurt, crying so bad that he could feel his father’s fear and panic. He suddenly tips backward in an anguished wail, and only his father’s hand kept him from toppling out of the arms that held him. His tummy hurt. It spasmed and hurt and his mouth tasted weird. His sob is cut short and he flails, and he spits out lots of stinky stuff down his father’s back. Renji only cries louder.
Somewhere he smells mommy before he actually hears her voice. She speaks, but her voice is different, and as she talks little Renji senses his father waver. Then mommy takes him from daddy’s arms and takes him away from daddy entirely. He sobs into mommy’s shoulder. He sees his daddy standing in the kitchen, looking at a loss and almost…tragic.
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It takes days for Renji to feel better. He had spit a lot of stinky stuff and had to have his diapers changed a lot more frequently than usual before he was better again, and could eat more yummy stuff that mommy made. All the while it was mommy who took care of him. Not that he complained, though, but somewhere in his mind he wondered where daddy was. He could smell daddy nearby, but he couldn’t see him. Was daddy all right?
He doesn’t see daddy, and though he loved playing with mommy, little Renji starts to worry. One afternoon when mommy wasn’t looking, he crawls around their massive house. His nose catches daddy’s scent and he follows it, and soon finds his daddy by the terrace, reading a huge sheet of paper. Little Renji climbs up his daddy’s lap and sits there uncertainly.
Daddy…looks different. There are shadows under daddy’s usually pretty eyes, and he looks so sleepy. He manages to smile, but it is not the kind smile that Renji knows and loves. Even daddy’s hair is a mess.
Renji rests his head on daddy’s chest. Daddy is much too big for him to hug, but somehow Renji hopes this would make him feel a bit better. He senses his father move, and daddy’s warm lips rest on Renji’s head. They stay like that for a while until mommy arrives and picks him up. Renji wails and flails and wants to be put back down on daddy’s lap.
Then mommy looks at daddy, but daddy wouldn’t meet her gaze. Renji watches them, unsure. He sucks on a finger, waiting for what happens next. And then mommy kisses daddy’s cheek, and leaves him on daddy’s lap.
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Renji’s brothers haven’t visited in a while, and when they arrive, the house is suddenly noisy again. The baby boy easily recognizes their smell and their faces, and Izumi-nii carries him around on his back, something that Renji really enjoyed. He gets introduced to Penguin Zero, who claps his flippers and squawks whenever he wants fish. Yuuta-nii reads him some books, and Renji likes their colorful illustrations.
Lunch is a busy affair, and Yuuta-nii feeds him on his high chair as Izumi-nii talks with mommy, daddy, Seiren-nee and Zero-nii. Renji looks at his father and mother, and notes that daddy looks better again.
That evening, Renji is happily put to bed by his mother and father. Mommy sings him some lullabies as daddy reads to him from one of the new books Yuuta-nii brought home, and the last thing Renji sees before he falls asleep are the familiar faces of his mother and father, watching over him with a kind smile. Renji knows that daddy is holding mommy’s hand, and though he could not understand it yet, he liked the idea of that very much.