「Encantamiento Inútil」4; La Salle de Bain
Title: Encantamiento Inútil
Author: 148km
Fandom: alice nine. with a cameo by Sugimoto Yoshinori!
Pairing: Tora/Shou
Rating: PG-13 for now, for "adult themes" *_*b
Genre: AU
Warnings: Vampires, RPS, male/male, violence, failure to secure a beta reader, uhhh spoilers for Moulin Rouge? o_o
Chapter: 4 [ archive ]
Summary: He needed an ally. One of his kind, strong enough to hold off the upstart Hiroto and whatever followers of Saga's he could muster, but not one of his own coven. Someone who owed Tora a favor...
Despite having worked an exceptionally late shift the night before, Nao was up before the sun to start his morning shift. To Shou, who only worked five days a week, this notion had always been ludicrous (he'd explained it to Tora as being "hardcore").
Tora, of course, was still awake.
For a moment, there was an awkward standoff in the living room, the owner of the apartment stopping to stare at the stranger propped solicitously against the couch upon which Shou was still sleeping. Tora shot him a warning look; don't wake him.
"You care about him a lot, don't you," Nao asked quietly, arms folded. Tora squinted up at him wearily, mouth set in a grim line. "You'd better. It's cute to be protective, but this is a little bit creepy."
Tora frowned. Creepy? It was a matter of life and death! "It's necessary."
"We'll see about that..." Nao scuffed his foot on the floor. "I don't mean to start off on the wrong foot, or anything, but..."
"I understand." Shou was important to more people than just him. There were probably people Shou cared about besides him, too. It made sense. It irked him to think about it, but Tora knew it made sense.
"Right, well... Nice to meet you."
"Same to you."
```
When Shou woke up, he found Tora asleep, sitting up against the sofa with his head on his knees. It reminded him distinctly of the morning before--how did Tora manage to sleep so late? Granted, he'd had a tough night, but Shou was past the point of sleeping and didn't have work on Fridays.
"Tora-shi..." The dark-haired man hardly stirred. Shou pouted; the least Tora could do was sleep in a more comfortable position. Just looking at him was making Shou's neck hurt. He touched his shoulder, just to make sure. "Tora-shi?"
Nothing. Shou slid off the couch with a sigh, bringing the blanket with him. He sat down cross-legged next to Tora, easing the sleeping figure over to rest in his lap. This elicited a response; Tora automatically shifted to accept this new pillow. Shou smoothed the sleeper's black hair tentatively, the way he would pet a skittish horse.
"'Morning," Tora murmured into Shou's thigh, voice thick with sleep.
"I'm sorry!" the blond said frantically, jerking his hand away. "I didn't mean to wake you up. You just looked so uncomfortable..."
"It's okay," Tora assured him, rolling over onto his back to stare up into the boy's face. "I expected to be woken up early again."
"Are you still tired?" Shou asked coyly, suddenly shy with those not-quite-brown eyes on him.
"No," he lied, reluctant to pick himself up out of the human's lap. Truth be told, Tora was tired--but it was more out of habit than necessity. Sleeping every night (or day, in Tora's case) was a luxury. As it was with feeding, he only needed to sleep every few nights or so. If necessity called for it, he could stay awake for about ten days before it started to impact his body. The sleepiness would wear off the longer he stayed awake, though his kind were not meant to be active while the sun was up. "Your friend left for work already, so I guess it's just us."
Shou nodded dumbly, still cowed by Tora's stare. This was the appropriate reaction, one that the boy hadn't shown until now. It was somewhat reassuring that, although he was considerably softened around this particular human, Tora hadn't lost his touch completely. There was no substitute for pure instinct.
"Are you alright?"
"What? Oh, yeah, sorry, I'm fine!" The blond shook himself out of his stupor, smiling brightly to dispel any notion that something was wrong.
"As I was saying, we're alone. Is there anything you wanted to do...?" Tora lifted himself from the makeshift pillow and twisted to face Shou, expectant.
```
"How can this be your favorite movie?" Tora asked, vaguely horrified. "She dies in the end, they told us that at the beginning." The short-livedness of this fictitious romance struck a little too close to home for him; the lovers had fallen in love early on and, for all their subterfuge and aspirations, the untimely demise of the lead actress spoiled all their efforts. So much for love.
"It's romantic!" Shou insisted, never taking his eyes from the screen, although he had clearly seen the movie enough times to understand the plot without the aid of the Japanese subtitles. Tora had even noticed him singing along under his breath to every number in the musical.
"But she died. They wasted so much time and effort."
That drew Shou's attention. He turned to Tora in disbelief, expression reproachful. "It wasn't a waste. They lived and loved and were happy, even if it was for a short time."
"But then the guy went into a major depression," Tora reasoned.
"Of course he did!" the blond exclaimed, frustrated. The ending credits were rolling to the sound of an emotional bolero. "Anyone would be sad if their lover died. But you weren't paying attention, Tora-shi. The point is that their love never died."
"I guess so." After mulling it over a bit, he could see Shou's point. But he was already too close to being the mourning lover to take much heart to the idea. Whether Hiroto got to him or not, Shou was only human. Time or disease would take him, then, if not another wretched human.
Tora stiffened as the realization sunk in. Shou would die long before he did, and to Tora, the time would seem so short, even if the human lived out his entire natural lifespan. According to his own philosophy, was this impetuous romance not a huge waste of time? A useless enchantment?
But that was not how he felt.
"No, you're right," he amended, barely audible over the bolero. "I get it now."
Shou smiled, encouraged, and turned back to the screen, watching the unfamiliar and hopelessly foreign names scroll by. "Thank you for watching this with me," he said as the television screen faded to black. "It really means a lot."
"No imposition. Anyway, I think I learned something," Tora replied, raising an eyebrow.
"Yeah?"
"You like sappy musicals."
"Tora-shi!" Shou lobbed a throw pillow at his head.
Tora caught the pillow and laughed, pouncing on the blond and pressing him against the cushions with his body. "No really. I did."
Shou peered up at him owlishly, only now understanding what Tora had meant earlier when he'd asked about something to do. "Nao-san gets off at 4:00 today," he breathed.
"Plenty of time," Tora murmured.
```
As the day went on, Tora became more and more acclimated to being awake during daylight hours. His drowsiness wore off and his mood improved, although it might have had something to do with Shou putting out for him. The human, too, had perked up since morning; he'd been so preoccupied with Tora that he didn't realize until past noon that his stomach was growling louder than a jackhammer.
"Oh! I didn't realize it got so late, and we didn't even eat breakfast! Is there anything in particular you want to eat, Tora-shi?" Shou patted his stomach as if to quiet it and started going through Nao's tidy stack of take-out menus.
"Oh... No, anything is fine by me," Tora replied carefully. He did not generally eat human food, because he had no need of it. Occasionally, he enjoyed the taste, and it was sometimes necessary to keep up appearances, but he tended to stay away from the stuff. "Just a little bit of anything is fine. I don't need much."
Shou paused in his searching and stared. "Aren't you starving, though? It must have been forever since you last ate! Is that how you stay so skinny?"
"I smoke," Tora volunteered. His last kill had been a fat housecat the morning before, when he'd wandered home from Shou's apartment half delirious with thirst and exhaustion--if things continued the way they were going, a proper meal might elude him for another few days. The prospect was not a pleasant one, and Tora was loath to think about it.
"That's unhealthy," Shou muttered, momentarily abandoning the stack of menus to peruse the refrigerator. He helped himself to a carton of soymilk, making a mental note to take Nao out for coffee to make up for it. He poked the straw through the carton, took a sip, swallowed, and glared pointedly at Tora before slamming the carton down on the kitchen counter. "Now, what do you want to eat?"
"So threatening," Tora remarked. He'd had no idea the blond could be so forceful--maybe the human would give Hiroto a run for his money. But for now, he needed to focus on the matter at hand. What constituted as human breakfast? "Toast?"
Shou made a sour face, clearly showing what he thought of his choice of breakfast. "It's the afternoon, you know. You don't have to have a breakfast food."
"I'm just not that hungry," Tora replied with a shrug.
The blond watched him reproachfully for a moment before deciding that Tora wasn't a normal human being and telling him so. Tora, for his part, could only agree.
```
Shou, Tora decided, would make someone an excellent spouse one day. Considering the boy's disapproval and his own general lack of hunger, he had been taken completely by surprise when the blond had handed him a delicately arranged platter of two pieces of toast, three types of jam, an artful dab of softened butter, and a parsley garnish. That pink uniform he wore to work was seeming more and more becoming...
"You're amazing," he told the blond earnestly, taking a dainty bite of the human food. The taste wasn't bad, he supposed; he could stand to keep pretenses and eat more solid food.
"It's just toast."
"Amazing toast," Tora corrected, doing everything in his power to make Shou's face turn the same color as that scintillating uniform he couldn't help but imagine. He'd been flirting with humans for hundreds of years, and flattery had never failed him yet. Of course, it sounded all the more convincing when he was being sincere.
The boy's lips curved upward in a charming little smile, which somehow affected Tora's esteem of the toast. It went from amazing to... what was a stronger adjective than that? Incredible? The description became immaterial, as Tora suspected that it had more to do with Shou and less to do with the actual taste. Actually, the thought of it was a little nauseating; he couldn't remember feeling like that since he was fifteen or so, and that more than ten years before meeting Saga, before he'd been changed.
Human attraction was a ridiculous thing.
All the more so when one was not actually human.
```
When Shou began to nuzzle him, Tora's veins invariably complained of thirst and he was again afraid that he would accidentally take the blond's life. He needed to hunt, but it was still daylight--a death wish. He knew from experience (and more than one close call) that hunting was best done at night, yet it was at night that Shou was most at risk; when Hiroto and the others of his and other covens would be out hunting, when Tora could not leave him alone to be happened upon by one of them.
He needed an ally. One of his kind, strong enough to hold off the upstart Hiroto and whatever followers of Saga's he could muster, but not one of his own coven. Someone who owed Tora a favor... Suddenly, it occurred to him, and he wondered why he hadn't thought of it sooner. The old nonpartisan--old, even by his standards--who was almost 300 years Saga's senior. Though old and powerful enough to rival him as a coven leader, the hermit did not, whether it was out of apathy or good, old-fashioned nihilism.
Yoshinori.
And he owed Tora, didn't he? At the time, Tora had been too young and lawless to demand any kind of payment for taking care of those vermin...
Luckily, it was summer and the daylight hours were long. While the sun was still out, he could leave Shou in relative safety while he sought Yoshinori out.
In the meantime, there were still a good two hours to kill until Nao came home; Tora didn't want to leave the blond by himself, nor did Shou want Tora to leave him--if he was in such apparent danger. He would wait until Nao came home before setting off.
Denied fresh blood, Tora's body urged him to sleep.
"Tora-shi, you're drooping."
"My kingdom for a nap," he muttered languidly, eyes already closed. "Come here, Princess."
Shou frowned. "Why am I the princess?"
"You're the one who wears the little pink skirt to work."
Fair enough. Shou squirmed among the sheets of his makeshift bed, still messy with their lovemaking, and tried to find a comfortable place to sleep. It would be difficult; Tora was taller than he was, and the couch was small, in keeping with the tiny apartment.
But they would manage.
```
Today is a day that in particular
I seem to be smiling and laughing quite a lot
I just had a dream and in it you had died
And I had no choice then but to love you
Don't think to abandon or ever leave me
```
It was daylight and people were walking by the house with surprising frequency; Tora couldn't enter the ancient vampire's home the way he would have liked. He had to settle for a more human method of demanding entry; incessant knocking.
"Oy... Decent people are asleep this time of day!" That Yoshinori could tell it was another of his own kind at the door was unsurprising. The door opened on a slightly unkempt man of about Tora's height, dressed in a T-shirt and some embarrassing shorts (presumably for sleeping in). Dark, blackish eyes accused him from behind the pink frames of his eyeglasses. "State your business."
"It's been a while, you probably--"
"I remember you, you're that kid of Saga's," Yoshinori interrupted irritably. "What do you want?"
"Then you'll remember that service I did for you so many years ago--without payment."
"Come to collect?" A cat darted through Yoshinori's legs and meowed up at Tora. "Fine, fine... Come in, I guess."
The inside of the house was dim and smelled a bit like cat pee and cigarettes. Yoshinori plopped himself down on a weathered couch and gestured that Tora do the same, but given the setting, he preferred to stand.
"Suit yourself," the older vampire said with a shrug. He held a cigarette to his lips and lit it, inhaling and exhaling once before continuing. "So what is it you wanted?"
"There's a human I need help protecting." Yoshinori's expression was neutral; continue. "There wouldn't be a problem, normally; he's my Feeder. But there's a stupid upstart fledgling trying to--I don't even know what he's trying to do. But he's after my human, and I won't stand for it."
"You can't take care of this fledgling on your own?" Yoshinori asked, one eyebrow cocked. "You took care of all those youngsters by yourself, and that was at least a hundred---"
"This is different." Tora's eyes burned with the secret, and subtle Yoshinori understood what had never occurred to Saga.
"That's dangerous business, Tora." He flicked some ash off the end of his cigarette.
"You say that like I can help it."
"You don't have to indulge him," Yoshinori murmured, lifting the cat into his lap.
"I am indulging myself."
Yoshinori sighed and set the burning cigarette down in an ash tray. "So what you mean to say is... he's not really your Feeder."
Tora said nothing; the admission was embarrassing, even though the elder of the two had figured it out on his own.
"Alright, I'll babysit for you," he agreed, crushing the cigarette with his palm and shooing the cat away. "But what if I take a bite of my own while you're out hunting?" Yoshinori grinned wolfishly, showing off the sharp, tapered points of his canines.
"You won't," said Tora, suddenly very, very tired. "Because when I came back, I would kill you slowly and feed your remains to your cat--if there were any remains."
Yoshinori laughed and got up from the couch. "I see how it is. This is a nighttime job, right?" Tora nodded. The older of the two procured a pink Sony Ericsson from the pocket of his embarrassing shorts. "Then let's exchange phone numbers and you give me a call. Contract is void when your Upstart Fledgling is dead."
"Thank you," Tora said tersely, too drained to be polite.
```
Yoshinori's first call came later that night, in the form of a text message containing the human's address. He let himself in through the unlocked door (what kind of careless human was this?), half shouting in a lilting sing-song, "'Evening, Sweetcakes!"
Nao, who had long since come home from work (and asked whether or not he needed to replace his couch), stared open-mouthed at the intruder. Strange men appearing in his apartment was becoming commonplace, it seemed. Shou, ever the mouse, inched away from the door ever so slightly.
"You didn't tell me there were two of them, Tora," Yoshinori said once the door was closed, considerably more boisterous than he had been earlier.
"You're so loud..."
Nao looked at Tora in accusation. "This! What is this! What are all these people doing here!"
Yoshinori squinted. "Wait, so... Which one of you two lovelies is Shou-kun?" The blond snapped to attention, eyes large and deerlike. Yoshinori noticed his reaction and grinned amiably. "Nice to meet you, Sweetcakes. I'm Tora-chu's buddy, so you don't need to look so freaked out."
Tora stared at the floor; maybe this had been a bad idea.
"Tora-shi...?" Shou asked weakly.
"He's alright," Tora conceded, feeling the blond's distress. "I asked him to take care of you while I go out for a while."
"Think of me as a bodyguard!" Yoshinori piped in unhelpfully. "Or a babysitter! Or even as a super-cool senpai!"
"I don't need a babysitter," Shou insisted. But with his brow furrowed like that, he only looked more juvenile. "Tora-shi, you left me with Nao-san before. Isn't that okay?"
"One crucial difference, Sweetcakes! That was when the sun was up. If anyone's going to, say, come for your life, they'll probably do it at night."
"Yoshinori--!"
"If anyone's listening to me--" Which they weren't, Nao was unsurprised to discover. "--I think this whole arrangement is going a bit overboard. And my poor apartment can only hold so many--"
"I know," Tora spoke up. "I know. I'm sorry. But that's why he's here; we're going back to my place." He bowed low to the proprietor, hands flat on his thighs. "Thank you very much."
Nao was momentarily stunned into silence. When he spoke up again, it was to Shou. "I was right, I was right! He is a catch."
```
"Tora-sama? But he's..."
"He attacked me!" Hiroto snapped, hand flying to his throat. "And he's breaking Saga-sama's laws. He's a traitor to the coven."
"But he's killed fledglings before, we can't possibly--"
"You idiots, that's why he's trying to rally us," piped up one of Saga's few female fledglings. "There's only so much one fledgling can do against a swarm."
"Exactly," Hiroto said gruffly. "Tora is harboring a human, though I'm not sure why. What I do know is that he threatened me on account of that human; wouldn't he be broken if we killed him? I saw him, I smelled him. I want a taste." More than that, he wanted Tora to suffer in recompense for his still-tender throat. And if Tora's threats had been any indication, the way to make him suffer was through the human.
You were wrong to mess with me, Tora.
```
Notes
• This one is named for a Shiina Ringo song; la salle de bain. The lyric insert is also from that song.
• Aha, and now we have a cameo by my favorite person in the world, Sugimoto Yoshinori. I figured he would be perfect for this role because not a lot of people have heard of him, and he lists his age as 786 on his profile. XD And well... he's pretty eccentric. As far as his personal habits go, I'm actually not sure whether he smokes or not. But he definitely has a cat! At least one... So it turns out I was wrong, he actually doesn't smoke. Oh~ well~ 9ω9;;
• I still don't have a beta reader, so... ah, why do I even bother.
Author: 148km
Fandom: alice nine. with a cameo by Sugimoto Yoshinori!
Pairing: Tora/Shou
Rating: PG-13 for now, for "adult themes" *_*b
Genre: AU
Warnings: Vampires, RPS, male/male, violence, failure to secure a beta reader, uhhh spoilers for Moulin Rouge? o_o
Chapter: 4 [ archive ]
Summary: He needed an ally. One of his kind, strong enough to hold off the upstart Hiroto and whatever followers of Saga's he could muster, but not one of his own coven. Someone who owed Tora a favor...
Despite having worked an exceptionally late shift the night before, Nao was up before the sun to start his morning shift. To Shou, who only worked five days a week, this notion had always been ludicrous (he'd explained it to Tora as being "hardcore").
Tora, of course, was still awake.
For a moment, there was an awkward standoff in the living room, the owner of the apartment stopping to stare at the stranger propped solicitously against the couch upon which Shou was still sleeping. Tora shot him a warning look; don't wake him.
"You care about him a lot, don't you," Nao asked quietly, arms folded. Tora squinted up at him wearily, mouth set in a grim line. "You'd better. It's cute to be protective, but this is a little bit creepy."
Tora frowned. Creepy? It was a matter of life and death! "It's necessary."
"We'll see about that..." Nao scuffed his foot on the floor. "I don't mean to start off on the wrong foot, or anything, but..."
"I understand." Shou was important to more people than just him. There were probably people Shou cared about besides him, too. It made sense. It irked him to think about it, but Tora knew it made sense.
"Right, well... Nice to meet you."
"Same to you."
```
When Shou woke up, he found Tora asleep, sitting up against the sofa with his head on his knees. It reminded him distinctly of the morning before--how did Tora manage to sleep so late? Granted, he'd had a tough night, but Shou was past the point of sleeping and didn't have work on Fridays.
"Tora-shi..." The dark-haired man hardly stirred. Shou pouted; the least Tora could do was sleep in a more comfortable position. Just looking at him was making Shou's neck hurt. He touched his shoulder, just to make sure. "Tora-shi?"
Nothing. Shou slid off the couch with a sigh, bringing the blanket with him. He sat down cross-legged next to Tora, easing the sleeping figure over to rest in his lap. This elicited a response; Tora automatically shifted to accept this new pillow. Shou smoothed the sleeper's black hair tentatively, the way he would pet a skittish horse.
"'Morning," Tora murmured into Shou's thigh, voice thick with sleep.
"I'm sorry!" the blond said frantically, jerking his hand away. "I didn't mean to wake you up. You just looked so uncomfortable..."
"It's okay," Tora assured him, rolling over onto his back to stare up into the boy's face. "I expected to be woken up early again."
"Are you still tired?" Shou asked coyly, suddenly shy with those not-quite-brown eyes on him.
"No," he lied, reluctant to pick himself up out of the human's lap. Truth be told, Tora was tired--but it was more out of habit than necessity. Sleeping every night (or day, in Tora's case) was a luxury. As it was with feeding, he only needed to sleep every few nights or so. If necessity called for it, he could stay awake for about ten days before it started to impact his body. The sleepiness would wear off the longer he stayed awake, though his kind were not meant to be active while the sun was up. "Your friend left for work already, so I guess it's just us."
Shou nodded dumbly, still cowed by Tora's stare. This was the appropriate reaction, one that the boy hadn't shown until now. It was somewhat reassuring that, although he was considerably softened around this particular human, Tora hadn't lost his touch completely. There was no substitute for pure instinct.
"Are you alright?"
"What? Oh, yeah, sorry, I'm fine!" The blond shook himself out of his stupor, smiling brightly to dispel any notion that something was wrong.
"As I was saying, we're alone. Is there anything you wanted to do...?" Tora lifted himself from the makeshift pillow and twisted to face Shou, expectant.
```
"How can this be your favorite movie?" Tora asked, vaguely horrified. "She dies in the end, they told us that at the beginning." The short-livedness of this fictitious romance struck a little too close to home for him; the lovers had fallen in love early on and, for all their subterfuge and aspirations, the untimely demise of the lead actress spoiled all their efforts. So much for love.
"It's romantic!" Shou insisted, never taking his eyes from the screen, although he had clearly seen the movie enough times to understand the plot without the aid of the Japanese subtitles. Tora had even noticed him singing along under his breath to every number in the musical.
"But she died. They wasted so much time and effort."
That drew Shou's attention. He turned to Tora in disbelief, expression reproachful. "It wasn't a waste. They lived and loved and were happy, even if it was for a short time."
"But then the guy went into a major depression," Tora reasoned.
"Of course he did!" the blond exclaimed, frustrated. The ending credits were rolling to the sound of an emotional bolero. "Anyone would be sad if their lover died. But you weren't paying attention, Tora-shi. The point is that their love never died."
"I guess so." After mulling it over a bit, he could see Shou's point. But he was already too close to being the mourning lover to take much heart to the idea. Whether Hiroto got to him or not, Shou was only human. Time or disease would take him, then, if not another wretched human.
Tora stiffened as the realization sunk in. Shou would die long before he did, and to Tora, the time would seem so short, even if the human lived out his entire natural lifespan. According to his own philosophy, was this impetuous romance not a huge waste of time? A useless enchantment?
But that was not how he felt.
"No, you're right," he amended, barely audible over the bolero. "I get it now."
Shou smiled, encouraged, and turned back to the screen, watching the unfamiliar and hopelessly foreign names scroll by. "Thank you for watching this with me," he said as the television screen faded to black. "It really means a lot."
"No imposition. Anyway, I think I learned something," Tora replied, raising an eyebrow.
"Yeah?"
"You like sappy musicals."
"Tora-shi!" Shou lobbed a throw pillow at his head.
Tora caught the pillow and laughed, pouncing on the blond and pressing him against the cushions with his body. "No really. I did."
Shou peered up at him owlishly, only now understanding what Tora had meant earlier when he'd asked about something to do. "Nao-san gets off at 4:00 today," he breathed.
"Plenty of time," Tora murmured.
```
As the day went on, Tora became more and more acclimated to being awake during daylight hours. His drowsiness wore off and his mood improved, although it might have had something to do with Shou putting out for him. The human, too, had perked up since morning; he'd been so preoccupied with Tora that he didn't realize until past noon that his stomach was growling louder than a jackhammer.
"Oh! I didn't realize it got so late, and we didn't even eat breakfast! Is there anything in particular you want to eat, Tora-shi?" Shou patted his stomach as if to quiet it and started going through Nao's tidy stack of take-out menus.
"Oh... No, anything is fine by me," Tora replied carefully. He did not generally eat human food, because he had no need of it. Occasionally, he enjoyed the taste, and it was sometimes necessary to keep up appearances, but he tended to stay away from the stuff. "Just a little bit of anything is fine. I don't need much."
Shou paused in his searching and stared. "Aren't you starving, though? It must have been forever since you last ate! Is that how you stay so skinny?"
"I smoke," Tora volunteered. His last kill had been a fat housecat the morning before, when he'd wandered home from Shou's apartment half delirious with thirst and exhaustion--if things continued the way they were going, a proper meal might elude him for another few days. The prospect was not a pleasant one, and Tora was loath to think about it.
"That's unhealthy," Shou muttered, momentarily abandoning the stack of menus to peruse the refrigerator. He helped himself to a carton of soymilk, making a mental note to take Nao out for coffee to make up for it. He poked the straw through the carton, took a sip, swallowed, and glared pointedly at Tora before slamming the carton down on the kitchen counter. "Now, what do you want to eat?"
"So threatening," Tora remarked. He'd had no idea the blond could be so forceful--maybe the human would give Hiroto a run for his money. But for now, he needed to focus on the matter at hand. What constituted as human breakfast? "Toast?"
Shou made a sour face, clearly showing what he thought of his choice of breakfast. "It's the afternoon, you know. You don't have to have a breakfast food."
"I'm just not that hungry," Tora replied with a shrug.
The blond watched him reproachfully for a moment before deciding that Tora wasn't a normal human being and telling him so. Tora, for his part, could only agree.
```
Shou, Tora decided, would make someone an excellent spouse one day. Considering the boy's disapproval and his own general lack of hunger, he had been taken completely by surprise when the blond had handed him a delicately arranged platter of two pieces of toast, three types of jam, an artful dab of softened butter, and a parsley garnish. That pink uniform he wore to work was seeming more and more becoming...
"You're amazing," he told the blond earnestly, taking a dainty bite of the human food. The taste wasn't bad, he supposed; he could stand to keep pretenses and eat more solid food.
"It's just toast."
"Amazing toast," Tora corrected, doing everything in his power to make Shou's face turn the same color as that scintillating uniform he couldn't help but imagine. He'd been flirting with humans for hundreds of years, and flattery had never failed him yet. Of course, it sounded all the more convincing when he was being sincere.
The boy's lips curved upward in a charming little smile, which somehow affected Tora's esteem of the toast. It went from amazing to... what was a stronger adjective than that? Incredible? The description became immaterial, as Tora suspected that it had more to do with Shou and less to do with the actual taste. Actually, the thought of it was a little nauseating; he couldn't remember feeling like that since he was fifteen or so, and that more than ten years before meeting Saga, before he'd been changed.
Human attraction was a ridiculous thing.
All the more so when one was not actually human.
```
When Shou began to nuzzle him, Tora's veins invariably complained of thirst and he was again afraid that he would accidentally take the blond's life. He needed to hunt, but it was still daylight--a death wish. He knew from experience (and more than one close call) that hunting was best done at night, yet it was at night that Shou was most at risk; when Hiroto and the others of his and other covens would be out hunting, when Tora could not leave him alone to be happened upon by one of them.
He needed an ally. One of his kind, strong enough to hold off the upstart Hiroto and whatever followers of Saga's he could muster, but not one of his own coven. Someone who owed Tora a favor... Suddenly, it occurred to him, and he wondered why he hadn't thought of it sooner. The old nonpartisan--old, even by his standards--who was almost 300 years Saga's senior. Though old and powerful enough to rival him as a coven leader, the hermit did not, whether it was out of apathy or good, old-fashioned nihilism.
Yoshinori.
And he owed Tora, didn't he? At the time, Tora had been too young and lawless to demand any kind of payment for taking care of those vermin...
Luckily, it was summer and the daylight hours were long. While the sun was still out, he could leave Shou in relative safety while he sought Yoshinori out.
In the meantime, there were still a good two hours to kill until Nao came home; Tora didn't want to leave the blond by himself, nor did Shou want Tora to leave him--if he was in such apparent danger. He would wait until Nao came home before setting off.
Denied fresh blood, Tora's body urged him to sleep.
"Tora-shi, you're drooping."
"My kingdom for a nap," he muttered languidly, eyes already closed. "Come here, Princess."
Shou frowned. "Why am I the princess?"
"You're the one who wears the little pink skirt to work."
Fair enough. Shou squirmed among the sheets of his makeshift bed, still messy with their lovemaking, and tried to find a comfortable place to sleep. It would be difficult; Tora was taller than he was, and the couch was small, in keeping with the tiny apartment.
But they would manage.
```
Today is a day that in particular
I seem to be smiling and laughing quite a lot
I just had a dream and in it you had died
And I had no choice then but to love you
Don't think to abandon or ever leave me
```
It was daylight and people were walking by the house with surprising frequency; Tora couldn't enter the ancient vampire's home the way he would have liked. He had to settle for a more human method of demanding entry; incessant knocking.
"Oy... Decent people are asleep this time of day!" That Yoshinori could tell it was another of his own kind at the door was unsurprising. The door opened on a slightly unkempt man of about Tora's height, dressed in a T-shirt and some embarrassing shorts (presumably for sleeping in). Dark, blackish eyes accused him from behind the pink frames of his eyeglasses. "State your business."
"It's been a while, you probably--"
"I remember you, you're that kid of Saga's," Yoshinori interrupted irritably. "What do you want?"
"Then you'll remember that service I did for you so many years ago--without payment."
"Come to collect?" A cat darted through Yoshinori's legs and meowed up at Tora. "Fine, fine... Come in, I guess."
The inside of the house was dim and smelled a bit like cat pee and cigarettes. Yoshinori plopped himself down on a weathered couch and gestured that Tora do the same, but given the setting, he preferred to stand.
"Suit yourself," the older vampire said with a shrug. He held a cigarette to his lips and lit it, inhaling and exhaling once before continuing. "So what is it you wanted?"
"There's a human I need help protecting." Yoshinori's expression was neutral; continue. "There wouldn't be a problem, normally; he's my Feeder. But there's a stupid upstart fledgling trying to--I don't even know what he's trying to do. But he's after my human, and I won't stand for it."
"You can't take care of this fledgling on your own?" Yoshinori asked, one eyebrow cocked. "You took care of all those youngsters by yourself, and that was at least a hundred---"
"This is different." Tora's eyes burned with the secret, and subtle Yoshinori understood what had never occurred to Saga.
"That's dangerous business, Tora." He flicked some ash off the end of his cigarette.
"You say that like I can help it."
"You don't have to indulge him," Yoshinori murmured, lifting the cat into his lap.
"I am indulging myself."
Yoshinori sighed and set the burning cigarette down in an ash tray. "So what you mean to say is... he's not really your Feeder."
Tora said nothing; the admission was embarrassing, even though the elder of the two had figured it out on his own.
"Alright, I'll babysit for you," he agreed, crushing the cigarette with his palm and shooing the cat away. "But what if I take a bite of my own while you're out hunting?" Yoshinori grinned wolfishly, showing off the sharp, tapered points of his canines.
"You won't," said Tora, suddenly very, very tired. "Because when I came back, I would kill you slowly and feed your remains to your cat--if there were any remains."
Yoshinori laughed and got up from the couch. "I see how it is. This is a nighttime job, right?" Tora nodded. The older of the two procured a pink Sony Ericsson from the pocket of his embarrassing shorts. "Then let's exchange phone numbers and you give me a call. Contract is void when your Upstart Fledgling is dead."
"Thank you," Tora said tersely, too drained to be polite.
```
Yoshinori's first call came later that night, in the form of a text message containing the human's address. He let himself in through the unlocked door (what kind of careless human was this?), half shouting in a lilting sing-song, "'Evening, Sweetcakes!"
Nao, who had long since come home from work (and asked whether or not he needed to replace his couch), stared open-mouthed at the intruder. Strange men appearing in his apartment was becoming commonplace, it seemed. Shou, ever the mouse, inched away from the door ever so slightly.
"You didn't tell me there were two of them, Tora," Yoshinori said once the door was closed, considerably more boisterous than he had been earlier.
"You're so loud..."
Nao looked at Tora in accusation. "This! What is this! What are all these people doing here!"
Yoshinori squinted. "Wait, so... Which one of you two lovelies is Shou-kun?" The blond snapped to attention, eyes large and deerlike. Yoshinori noticed his reaction and grinned amiably. "Nice to meet you, Sweetcakes. I'm Tora-chu's buddy, so you don't need to look so freaked out."
Tora stared at the floor; maybe this had been a bad idea.
"Tora-shi...?" Shou asked weakly.
"He's alright," Tora conceded, feeling the blond's distress. "I asked him to take care of you while I go out for a while."
"Think of me as a bodyguard!" Yoshinori piped in unhelpfully. "Or a babysitter! Or even as a super-cool senpai!"
"I don't need a babysitter," Shou insisted. But with his brow furrowed like that, he only looked more juvenile. "Tora-shi, you left me with Nao-san before. Isn't that okay?"
"One crucial difference, Sweetcakes! That was when the sun was up. If anyone's going to, say, come for your life, they'll probably do it at night."
"Yoshinori--!"
"If anyone's listening to me--" Which they weren't, Nao was unsurprised to discover. "--I think this whole arrangement is going a bit overboard. And my poor apartment can only hold so many--"
"I know," Tora spoke up. "I know. I'm sorry. But that's why he's here; we're going back to my place." He bowed low to the proprietor, hands flat on his thighs. "Thank you very much."
Nao was momentarily stunned into silence. When he spoke up again, it was to Shou. "I was right, I was right! He is a catch."
```
"Tora-sama? But he's..."
"He attacked me!" Hiroto snapped, hand flying to his throat. "And he's breaking Saga-sama's laws. He's a traitor to the coven."
"But he's killed fledglings before, we can't possibly--"
"You idiots, that's why he's trying to rally us," piped up one of Saga's few female fledglings. "There's only so much one fledgling can do against a swarm."
"Exactly," Hiroto said gruffly. "Tora is harboring a human, though I'm not sure why. What I do know is that he threatened me on account of that human; wouldn't he be broken if we killed him? I saw him, I smelled him. I want a taste." More than that, he wanted Tora to suffer in recompense for his still-tender throat. And if Tora's threats had been any indication, the way to make him suffer was through the human.
You were wrong to mess with me, Tora.
```
Notes
• This one is named for a Shiina Ringo song; la salle de bain. The lyric insert is also from that song.
• Aha, and now we have a cameo by my favorite person in the world, Sugimoto Yoshinori. I figured he would be perfect for this role because not a lot of people have heard of him, and he lists his age as 786 on his profile. XD And well... he's pretty eccentric. As far as his personal habits go, I'm actually not sure whether he smokes or not. But he definitely has a cat! At least one... So it turns out I was wrong, he actually doesn't smoke. Oh~ well~ 9ω9;;
• I still don't have a beta reader, so... ah, why do I even bother.