+.+.+.+.+.+
The satanic communion of two bodies,
two souls,
two minds ---
perfection,
unity,
nightmares.
+.+.+.+.+.+
Zero
His heart jumps, his eyes snap open. Suddenly, despite the heavy curtains and the sheets draped all over him, he feels naked. As if someone
or something
had taken him by the arm and stripped him of his very skin.
"It's a nuisance..."
Zero
Someone was calling him. His blood flows thick and fast through his veins, making his fingers twitch and reach out; his mouth is dry and there is a hollowness in his chest. Like a hand curling inside him, around him, searching, searching--
"Come to me, Zero..."
(he would always follow)
+.+.+.+.+.+
Everyday, it's the same. He would be standing with his classmates or looking out of the window from his seat in class, maybe even just walking down the stairs to go to the Home Ec. room, and then he would feel it.
That odd prickling at his nape, as if a pair of eyes were boring into him from behind-- but there's never anyone there, rather, he never caught anyone. Because he was pretty sure that someone
he
had been looking at him. He would turn away, move on, but then there would be that whisper of a laugh carried by the
still and unmoving
wind, the sound that would tickle his ears and make him take another look. But there would be no one there.
If he was alone, in the library or on his way home, he'd feel a gust of wind
a light touch
from seemingly nowhere and it would suddenly become too hot
suffocating
in that area, and he'd hear it, the wind, or a voice, that grew louder and louder all around him, as if someone was approaching him, step by step and he'd turn around to look-- surprise, surprise, none ever came.
Or maybe there would really be a hand on his shoulder, his arm, on his waist, flitting down his thighs and he'd feel as if that thing
that person
had somehow gotten through whatever layer of clothing he happened to have on.
He knows someone is there, he's sure of it.
But whenever he looked back, there was no one.
+.+.+.+.+.+
Come
He is already awake, even before that voice
that force
called his name. He does not know how, or why. But he sits up, nonetheless, and faces the window.
Tonight was the night of the new moon...
...but in the sky was the unmistakable form of the full moon, edged with red and drowning everything in its light.
Come to me
The window panes shiver, and then suddenly open with an audible snap. But no one is there to hear it.
A hand
"Come, love..."
He stands, and it is that same feeling
he's naked, vulnerable, easy prey
(you're mine)
falling from that moonlit stranger's hand.
Zero
(he places his hand in his)
+.+.+.+.+.+
Ichiru frowns at him, again, and checks for a fever for the seventh time that morning. He is seriously considering telling his brother to skip class, something which he rarely did, even if he was sick.
"Zero, you look horrible. You're paler than normal, and you're shivering. You don't have a fever, and I don't think it's something as trivial as a cold."
Always perceptive, Zero thinks. He scoots closer and presses their foreheads together, and it is with this that Zero knows he has been stripped of his ability to lie, and to lie well at that. He cringes inwardly, but his eyes are too expressive anyway, so Ichiru simply smirks, confident with the knowledge that he's gained the upper hand.
"Spill, brother mine. You don't have a choice-- what in the world is bothering you?" Ichiru's tone is edged with concern, so Zero deflects it with a playful one, "The fact that you're extremely incestuous?"
He bats his eye lashes, which gets him a laugh and a kiss on his lips, good-natured and utterly Ichiru.
"We both know it's not that."
"...The fact that you don't have a girlfriend and or a proper boyfriend yet?"
A disgruntled 'che' and pinching fingers on his cheek.
"Stuff it. Spill," Zero rolls his eyes at the statement, but Ichiru plows on determinedly. "You're bothered sick by whatever it is you're not telling me, and we all know what happens when one of us gets sick when the other is perfectly fine."
The thought of Ichiru going through the same thing he'd been experiencing effectively chilled the older Kiryuu twin's amusement. For some reason, he didn't like that thought-- not at all.
Oh, Zero
He wouldn't speak a word.
+.+.+.+.+.+
Precious
Hands, all over him-- on his neck, his chest, down his sides, his thighs, everywhere. Fingers, too, intertwined with his and dipping into his navel and tracing every curve on his body like a painter does when he creates his masterpiece.
Darling
Lips, on his, on his cheeks, his eyelids, his forehead, on his jaw line, on his pulse --longer there, a smirk-- and on his bare skin. On his wrists, his hips, his ankles and on the small of his back, going up at first and then slowly going lower.
Mine
When he opened his eyes, he was gone.
You're mine, Zero
(and he knew this to be the truth)
+.+.+.+.+.+
Even Ka-san had noticed.
"Zero-rin, are you sure you should be going to your classes today? You look positively ill, and you haven't even finished your breakfast, let alone the dinner that I left for you last night." his eyes are filled with concern, and Zero feels just the slightest bit of guilt at the sight, but he nods quietly, murmuring that he had a lot of school work to finish.
"But surely you could afford to stay home for a while? If you faint in the middle of your classes it would be useless--"
"Ka-san, I'm fine. I'm just a bit tired, that's all. Homura-san's always telling me that I could go to the clinic if I really didn't feel up to it, and you know how he likes to follow through with his advice." he offers him a wan smile that makes the older man sigh resignedly.
"Alright, but you won't be walking to school, and you can't say no to that."
He tries to protest, but Ichiru is already dialing a number on the wall phone, a happy little grin on his face.
"I'm calling To-san! It's his day-off today, anyway... Hello, To-san?"
Kaien Cross smiles and begins to pack their lunches, all the while quite oblivious to the fact that while Zero did indeed look a little worse for wear, there was a certain gleam in his eyes.
A certain peace
+.+.+.+.+.+
Hello, love
In his mind, which is hazy and terribly foggy as of late, he wants to laugh, "Oh, so now you dole out the pleasantries?"
There is a sound that comes close to a laugh, a deep, throaty one that makes him shiver-- with anticipation.
My apologies... it's just that...
Those hands again, coming from the edges of his vision -he's never able to actually see them, only feel them- and going to every conceivable part of his body like some demented manifestation of lust and adoration.
I haven't been with you for so long
This time, his shirt is torn in half with a long and loud rip, as if one of the hands had come up and raked its extremely long nails down on the fabric, ignoring the buttons and the fact that the material fell to the ground in ribbons.
I just...
On his pants now, a quick motion that does not have a need for any being's physical assistance. Those were shredded as well, coming to rest on the ground as mere tatters.
Couldn't help myself
Petulantly, like a child bringing his logic onto the adults' table. Selfish, he scolds, though it is tempered with some form of tenderness that is foreign to the silver haired boy.
Another laugh, like a bell this time, pleasant and pure. He smiles, even as the hands find deeper places to be in, secret places that would now be cast into their malevolent light. He gasps and moans, and he feels as if he drowning, yet again.
Zero, Zero, Zero
Call my name, love
He opens his mouth.
(but does not speak)
+.+.+.+.+.+
"Kiryuu? What are you doing here? I thought you'd already checked out the books you needed for your term paper..." Hanabusa Aidou narrows his ice blue eyes at him, that intelligent, hawk-like gaze that was so mistakenly placed upon a child. He raises an eyebrow, and continues to walk into the ancient library.
"This place isn't your exclusive territory, Aidou. I have my reasons, which you don't really need to know." he replies casually, if not a bit arrogantly. The blonde frowns, but leaves him to his business anyway. At the very least, Zero concedes, Aidou knew better than to bother him too much.
He walks on, having been through these shelves enough times to save him the trouble of hunting, or worse, asking Aidou. The books he was looking for were somewhere between the last two shelves, hidden quite fittingly in the shadows. He scans the spines quickly, finding one in the shelf that faced him, and finding the others just above it, between two greater tomes.
He pulls them out and takes out the flash light he brought with him, settling down in the dim corner to read.
~+.+.+.+.+.+~
"Come now, love, it's just a silly little party. I'll be gone as soon as I see how Takuma's doing."
A sigh, and his eyes open to see an auburn haired boy sitting beside him on a bed, a smile on his lips and his hand on the side of his face, stroking his fingers gently over his skin.
"That could take hours, and you know it. Your cousin absolutely detests you... Why don't you just invite them here? Just don't leave..."
He's begging, and that boy knows it. He sits up, keeping his hand on his face by covering it with one of his own, looking at him tenderly, pleadingly. He doesn't want him to leave, not now.
"Love, you of all people know I can't do that. I'd love to, and usually I wouldn't even consider leaving you here, but..."
His heart sinks, but he does not show it
(it seems, in this lifetime, he is more capable of lying, even when they are staring straight into each other's eyes)
and instead gives a dramatic sigh and falls back down on the bed. He turns away from his crimson gaze and draws the covers up to his shoulders.
"Very well. Go, since you so sorely must. Don't expect me to greet you when you return, I'll sleep the damned night away."
"Darling..."
A hand reaches out, but he moves away from it, bitter and horrid and knowing that he shouldn't be behaving this way.
(but why did it have to be tonight?)
The other boy is quiet, even as he stands up and walks towards the door. He opens it, but there is a short pause before he leaves and fixes the lock on the outside. Then, there is silence.
(why tonight?)
He lied. He wouldn't be sleeping. Not tonight, at any rate.
He clutches at the sheets, trying to keep his fears at bay. Maybe he'd read the signs incorrectly, maybe nothing would happen, maybe this time they wouldn't have to be ripped apart--
When he opens his eyes, he sees the shadows getting ready to devour him and he does not even have the chance to scream
As his voice dies when the shadows creep up towards him, coming from all sides, terrifying and hungry and quick because he was stupid enough to just sit there
like he always has
in one of the darkest corners of the library. They aren't hands, aren't claws, aren't anything but then again a force that strong didn't need an actual container, now did it? But it was pure black darkness, covering the window where the night lent a hand by hiding the full moon
the real full moon
with thick clouds, and it came over the shelves and the books and his backpack that sat there, just like him,
unmoving
because there's no escape
and if Zero Kiryuu's eyes had been open when the shadows reached him, his life would have flashed before his eyes
all six hundred years of them
--and then there was nothing.
The library doors closed with an ancient and final click, and the man who stood at its steps minutes later witnessed this, and he screamed.
(too late again,)
+.+.+.+.+.+
They weren't hands, but they were all around him, running over his skin, every inch they could reach, and if he was really awake during those times that the hands were on him, he would have felt sick-- which was what he was feeling now.
If not for that other feeling dominating his senses, that feeling of utter
revulsion
disgust and
anger
fear, and as he was reminded yet again of what those hands felt like but weren't, he felt that cold weight in his chest and his lips -numb and dry- lifted into a smirk.
In a drawling voice, the being inside Zero Kiryuu spoke,
"So now you come... Figures."
The doors
veils
slammed open
were ripped apart
and there stood a man with auburn colored hair that fell to his shoulders, and a pair of crimson eyes that gleamed in spite of the light
presence
in the room. Those eyes narrowed in a gaze of pure hatred, and 'Zero' laughed.
"Took you long enough, darling..." the last word is dripping with disdain, and maybe bitterness. Zero doesn't know who's speaking, but he does know that the words fit his mouth perfectly, although the tone is all wrong. He struggles against the haze in his mind, but even if the other in his head is otherwise preoccupied, the shadows do not stop, fixed were they on their task and nothing else. Their master could handle himself.
His lips lift into a snarl, and then the boy's pale body doubles over as if he has been hit, even as the shadows scramble to protect him, covering his body like many a great familiar, but his face is a mask of arrogance that would not break.
"Let go of Zero."
The auburn haired man growls, his eyes now a bleeding, murdering red. He had fangs, and claws, and strangely enough, that dreaming part of Zero Kiryuu thinks they suit him.
But 'Zero' only laughs again, and places a hand on his chest in a gesture of mock surprise.
"But love, can't you see? I am Zero, or has it been so long that you've forgotten me already?"
His reply was an earth-shattering display of power that almost broke the room in half, if it were really a room at all. The shadows scream and shriek, and cower around their master, and the man smirks triumphantly.
"Hmm... not bad. But come, do you honestly think I'd give the boy up as easily as that? Especially since..." here those lilac eyes turned into liquid gold, splendid honey, mercilessly shining and speaking of great pleasures and greater evils
eyes of the demon of souls
and 'Zero' smirked.
"...I've tasted him."
Crimson eyes flash dangerously, and there is an explosion of white light that blinds the being in Zero Kiryuu's body, and he can hear him screaming, writhing, terror and agony contorting his features, and slowly, slowly, dying inside the boy.
The shadows are howling, trying to draw themselves closer to their master's body, only to be sent flying
disintegrating
away by an odd aura that surrounded their host.
And then, the demon was in front of him, kneeling and not wholly there, but this was enough for the man with vengeance in his eyes.
"You dare lay your hands on what is mine by eternal right... you dare attempt to break our pact... your punishment is death."
He screamed, he shattered into pieces as demons of his kind do, and the man would look on calmly, and walk towards his battered and spent body, and he would lift him up and hold him, and kiss him, and cry, but Zero Kiryuu would see none of that.
+.+.+.+.+.+
"Hanabusa Aidou, you have just proven to me and the man who holds your grades in his hands that you are one stupid idiot."
Ichiru Kiryuu is not one to mince words, Aidou knows, and the fact that it's Tohya Hirai who's driving the boy's 'Stang because the owner is too emotionally worked up is not at all helping his chances at educational (and perhaps social) survival. But he will try.
"I only saw him once! How was I supposed to know that Shiki didn't check before locking up?"
"Shiki never checks." Tohya reminds them unhelpfully, and parks the car neatly on the other side of the road. "Shiki hollers into the library, and if someone shouts back, he waits for them."
"Never mind that, my brother is stuck in the library and I want him out and your head on a silver platter by tomorrow, Aidou, because God knows To-san and Ka-san have other things in mind for it." the younger Kiryuu twin snaps, leaping over the car door and all but running towards the steps that led to the library's large double doors.
Except that there are people there already.
He skids to a halt, and blinks at them, and Aidou thanks his lucky stars. Tohya voices their reactions with his somewhat bemused question, "What are you guys doing here?"
Takuma Ichijou smiles and tugs on Senri Shiki's ear, saying in an all-too cheery tone, "Senri came home a bit too early, and when I got there Akatsuki was getting ready to drive him here. It seems that he'd left someone inside without knowing it."
The younger boy whimpers quietly, tugging pitifully on the blonde's sleeve. "'Kuma, it hurts... I'm sorry already..."
"But when we got here, he was here already, and he'd gotten Zero out as well." Akatsuki Kain jerks a thumb over at the person sitting on the steps behind them, a certain silver haired boy on his lap. He smiles at them quite pleasantly, and is just a bit startled when Ichiru suddenly drops to his knees in front of him and grabs the boy's prone form.
"Zero!"
Tohya shakes his head and sends an apologetic look to the stranger, who, upon closer inspection, was smiling quite thinly now.
"My apologies. 'Ru is quite attached to his twin, and he'd been worried sick ever since Toga-sensei told us that he hadn't seen Zero-nii-sama in school." he extends his hand and places the other on Ichiru's head, a motion that caused the younger twin to look up at them.
"My name is Tohya Hirai, and this is Ichiru Kiryuu. We'd like to thank you for rescuing Zero-nii-sama over there, and it would be great if you'd come over to the house and show yourself to To-san and Ka-san. They'd want to thank you as well."
The stranger grasps his hand with his, and he replies, "That won't be necessary, it was no trouble at all. I just arrived from a long vacation overseas, and thought I'd pick up my little cousin on the way home. I wasn't sure if Senri was still working part-time at the library, but it seems that it's lucky that I passed by to check."
Ichiru smiles brilliantly at him, and holds Zero closer to him. "Thank you, anyway. My brother has a bad habit of going 'Lone Wolf' on us, so we were really worried about him. You should really stop by, I mean it."
Amidst another round of excuses, Zero began to regain consciousness, and this fact did not go unnoticed by the people crowded around him.
"Hey, he's waking up!" Aidou exclaims, peering down from his cousin's shoulder. Murmurs of assent floated and Ichiru moved his face away from his twin's to give him some air. The stranger holds out his arms again, and asks, "May I?" and strangely, Ichiru hands him his brother's body just like that.
Zero Kiryuu's eyes fluttered open, and the first face he sees is the face of the man who had saved his life.
And he knows his name.
"Kaname Kuran."
+.+.+.+.+.+
"Will you stay with me forever?"
"I will... but how?"
"That's easy, we'll make a pact with Fate and Death, to stay together for all of time. Our bodies may die, but that's just temporary, and souls never die anyway. So we'll just be reborn, again and again, and each time, we'll find each other, and we'll stay each other until we have to do it all over again."
"But... I don't want you to leave."
"But we'll be together forever..."
He holds his hands in his, and their eyes meet. Children they may be, but they were also something far more meaningful.
The boy with lilac eyes sighs and leans forward to rest his head on his companion's shoulder.
"Alright, just promise me one thing."
He with the eyes the color of blood looks on gravely, as gravely as a child could, and nods.
"Anything."
He looks up at him, and as the sun sets behind them, he says,
"Never let go."
+.+.+.+.+.+
"Kaname Kuran."
"It's a pleasure to finally meet you... Zero."
and it begins, all over again.
+.+.+.+.+.+
Author's Notes: Ripped from SACRIFICE, one of the truly complete fics that I happened to stick in there out of sheer brain-numb-ness. Edited, as this is a re-post. Now, here be explanations for this AU monster:
+Setting: As I've said, it's an AU monster. Hence, only the guys exist. Could take place in Cross Academy-like grounds, sans vampires, sans Hunters, sans Yuuki and sans bloodgoremindfuck-angst.
+Characters: Our beloved Night Class guys, Zero & Ichiru Kiryuu, Toga Yagari (To-san) & Kaien Cross (Ka-san) -- they're pretty much in the same age as they are in the manga.
++Original Characters: Tohya Hirai, who has midnight colored hair and forest green eyes. Two years older than the Kiryuu twins. Ichiru's boyfriend. Featured in other stories as Ichiru's love interest. Created by Et Cete Ra Corp.
The demon: Otherwise known as Hypocrite Collins, from my original story 'Pull/Push'. A demon who feasts on souls, and who uses his thus attained power to control the remains of the souls he's eaten. He appears as the nameless presence in Zero's head, also as the shadows that attack him in the italicized flashback. In the original story, he cannot be killed by 'light', but I set that fact aside to accommodate Kaname's ego. :D
+The Pact: Another facet of my original story, that is, the deal with Fate & Death and the binding of life spans.
+The quote: from 'ForkHouse', another original story in the works.
Hope you enjoyed this re-hashed tale. R&R.