I hope you're planning on reading this, considering you clicked on it.

Warning for cussing and bleeding.

Shikamaru has never had to wait this long to meet up with his team; more accurately, he's never had to wait for his team at all, because if they meet up later than they're supposed to it's always his fault. But, whatever, no one cares, the point is he's been waiting for Ino, Choji and Asuma for at least an hour and he's getting very tired of standing in the same spot while they don't show up for hours. Hour. Actually, since he got here about fifty minutes early, they've only been not showing up for ten minutes, so maybe they aren't that late after all. They're still late, though, and he wishes they weren't, because he's been awake since the night before and he's more tired than he usually says he is. He wants to get whatever Asuma wanted to talk to them about over with as soon as possible so he can go home and pass out for twelve hours. He hadn't been expecting the mission he had been on to last all day and all night, so he had been planning on having, you know, any sleep whatsoever before this. But he returned to the village at three-something in the morning, and trying to get any sleep in before five would have been futile, so he came straight here and he's been leaning against this hard wooden fence ever since, staring at the sky and trying not to close his eyes for more than a minute at a time, considering sitting down and taking a nap and then quickly realizing he doesn't have time anymore and he should have thought of that a long ass time ago.

The sun has only just risen and the streets are scarcely illuminated by the sliver of orange light he can barely see behind the horizon-blocking buildings around him. The light casts a thin glowing outline on the shorter, thinner buildings, so they look like they're pretending they're on fire. Shikamaru blinks at them a few times and yawns with his eyes open. His shoulders hurt, his neck is stiff, his eye won't stop twitching. If none of them show up before the sun's entire circumference is visible, he's going to be really annoyed. Extremely annoyed, in fact. But of course, no one is even awake this early, let alone ready to make good on their promise to be in a specific place by now for no previously established reason.

Besides himself, that is, or anyone like him, who has been awake through the night for whatever reason. And, he supposes, a few other random reasons, to account for the person lurking around the corner who is clearly not asleep.

Shikamaru's hand creeps down to his kunai thigh holster. The lurking person, mostly hidden by the corner of the fence, peeks at him from under an oversized hood, one foot slowly sliding across the pavement and around the corner. Their movements are impressively quiet, but they're doing a terrible job of hiding themselves. Their ninja style is clearly naïve; the only measures they take to reduce their visibility is dressing in black, which they would otherwise know only works in absolute darkness. Their motions are stiff and obtrusive, and Shikamaru has no trouble detecting every small gesture, even with this person mostly obscured by a solid object. Which makes it all the more surprising when they grab him by the throat and throw him to the ground before he has a chance to draw any weapons. His head strikes the concrete sidewalk and he's too dizzy to respond before they open their mouth and clamp down on his neck. With their teeth.

They both stay like this, lying on the floor in an awkward huddle, for a few minutes, until the assailant draws their teeth out of Shikamaru's neck. Their teeth were apparently long enough to have punctured straight through into his trachea, and his veins are enthusiastically emptying themselves into it. He tries to shout in pain but it comes out as a spit bubble of blood instead. The assailant smiles, mouth dripping with the same blood, and adjusts their position so that they're lying on top of him, elbows and knees bookending his arms and legs. He struggles under their weight, but finds he cannot move. He looks up at their face, hovering but an inch above his. No one he recognizes.

"Haha, hello," they say, giggling in a deep, scratchy voice. Drops of Shikamaru's blood fall out of their mouth and splatter on his face. "You're not going to stay unconscious for more than a second or two."

He wants to ask what they're talking about, but instead he just chokes on the blood pouring into his throat until his vision clouds over and he passes out for a second or two.

He wakes up still on the floor and still immobilized under the surprisingly strong body of his assailant. He blinks once or twice, wiggles a bit, tries to pry his arms away from his sides, but nothing happens. The blood flooding his throat is slowing down, and within a minute or two enough of it has drained out of the holes in his neck that he feels like trying to speak might not be completely pointless. Considering how much blood he has, he would have expected it to take a bit longer than that, but he's not one to complain about his injuries healing too quickly.

It doesn't occur to him how weird it is that he can speak so clearly with a gaping wound in his windpipe until after he's already started.

"What the hell, why are you eating me?" he asks, his own voice strained and raspy from his throat being ripped to shreds for no discernible reason. The person laughs at him again, another spray of blood droplets splatters his face.

"My name is Reiji," he titters. "I just bit you."

Reiji is unbelievably giddy; every sentence is interspersed with stupid little giggles. His voice is so hoarse he sounds like a garbage disposal. While his blood was draining his vision was pretty blurry, and only now can he see his face clearly enough to actually describe it. His facial features are pretty boring and indistinct, aside from his pasty complexion, gaunt cheeks, and razor sharp, blood-soaked canines. Shikamaru stares up at him unblinkingly for a while before responding.

"I noticed that much," he says. "I asked you why, not...fuck, I see where this is going."

"Hehehe."

"You've gotta be kidding me."

"You're one of us now."

"Don't say it."

"A creature of the niiiiiiiiight."

"Oh, fuck this."

"A servant of daaaaaarkneeess."

"Can't I just die instead?"

"One of the damned."

"Just tell me I'm a vampire already."

"A vampire!" Reiji hisses before loudly bursting into laughter. Shikamaru rolls his eyes so that he would be looking up if he were upright and groans.

"Ugh, I don't want to be a vampire," he says. "That was completely unnecessary."

Relinquishing his grip on one of Shikamaru's arms, Reiji puts his hand on Shikamaru's face, pulls it to the side by the chin so he can get a better look at the injury he gave him. "I had to, I was hungry," he explains. As if he weren't already invading enough of Shikamaru's personal space, he releases his face so he can reach for his gaping neck wound and poke at it with his fingers instead. "Ooh, this one looks sloppy. I'm always in such a hurry at sunrise."

Conveniently, the arm Reiji chose to use was the one holding Shikamaru's right arm in place. As his dominant hand is his right, this means his kunai holster is on his right leg, giving him the opportunity to draw a weapon. He can just reach the flap with his fingertips, and gets as far as unbuttoning it before Reiji reaches back and grabs his wrist.

"You can't kill me with a kunai, idiot," he laughs. "Don't you know anything about vampires?"

"Not really," Shikamaru grumbles. "Every vampire story is different somehow, how am I supposed to know which one is right?"

Reiji's laugh is a revving lawnmower. "Why don't we find somewhere shady before the sun comes up so I can explain it to you, then?"

"So it's that kind of vampire, huh? What does solar radiation do to you?"

Reiji hoists himself onto his feet in one confusing, stilted motion. He reaches his hand out to Shikamaru, offering to help him up. "It kills you."

Shikamaru ignores his helping hand and stands up on his own. He figures he should follow him, as he has to learn how to deal with this stupid new condition, so he lets Reiji lead him to a windowless tool shed in someone's backyard. They get there before the sunlight overtakes the shadows, then squeeze themselves in between a rack of gardening tools and an upended wheelbarrow so they won't be outside when it does. Reiji pulls a small battery powered lantern out of his coat pocket and turns it on so he can see what he's doing.

"Whose shed is this?" Shikamaru asks.

"If your skin touches sunlight, it boils," Reiji replies. "You can go outside during the day as long as your body is shielded by clothing or shade. So, wear long pants, bring a parasol, all that."

"You don't know whose property you're on, do you."

"Basically the idea is to drink human blood as often as you want or need to, which is usually at least once a week. If you want to turn someone into a vampire, you need to bite them. If not, you have to get the blood without your mouth touching their body."

"You know that solar radiation can penetrate most textiles, right? Is it any sunlight at all, or just a large amount?"

"Also you're immortal."

"So do you live in this shed or what?"

"And those are pretty much the main points of vampirism," Reiji concludes. He sighs, looking at Shikamaru with a wide-eyed sort of pout. "You don't seem very enthusiastic about this."

Shikamaru gapes at him, amazed by how late this observation is. Almost an entire minute passes before he can bring himself to speak again.

"Do I have to be immortal?"

Another lawn mower laugh. "Everyone knows vampires are immortal! Isn't it great?"

"Not really. I don't want to live forever. I'd think it would get boring after a while." Underneath the conversation is the sound of moths battering themselves against the plastic lantern, now resting on an overturned recycling bin. The smell of dirt and rotten leaves emanates from the floor from tracks of mud left by peoples shoes; it also smells, quite strongly, of rotten flesh. Supposedly that smell wasn't here before Reiji walked in a few minutes ago. "Really, I have to go through the process of draining peoples blood? How troublesome."

Reiji shrugs. "Well, you could always just drink it straight out and make a new vampire."

"I don't want to do that. Vampires are really awful, I don't want there to be more of them."

"Hey, I'm not awful!"

Shikamaru rolls his eyes. "Why did you do this to me in the first place? What if I didn't want to be an undead cannibal with a radiation allergy?"

Reiji looks at his feet, scratching his chin ponderously. "I guess I don't know," he admits. "I mean, I thought you'd make a cool vampire, because you're all dark and brooding and stuff, I guess."

"I wasn't brooding, I was just tired."

"Oh."

"You can't just do that without asking first. I mean, it's not like you had to."

Reiji's hand drops away from his chin. He looks away, rubs his upper arm with his hand, frowns. "Uh...well, no one else, uh..." he stammers, barely a trace of laughter left in his chainsaw of a voice. Shikamaru crosses his arms and frowns back at him.

"This is a huge pain in the ass, you know," he says. "I'm supposed to be somewhere right now. You're making me late."

The two of them stare at each other for a prolonged moment; Shikamaru glaring in abject irritation, Reiji sucking in his lip and trying not to look away.

"Well, sorry, I guess..." Reiji murmurs, breaking his eyes away so he can look dejectedly at the floor. "I just...wait a minute, no, being a vampire is awesome!" he shouts, stomping his foot indignantly. "You should be grateful I did this for you, that I took all this time to explain to you what to do. What's your problem?"

Shikamaru looks down at his hands. There's dirt under his nails. "So, what's the benefit to it?" he asks, picking at his dirty nails with his other dirty nails. "I already said, immortality sounds like more trouble than it's worth. I don't want to kill people, I like being outside, I sleep better during the night. I don't think I'm actually breathing right now and it's really confusing." He stops grooming for a moment and points to his neck wound. "This doesn't hurt anymore, but it's still disgusting, and since I'm dead I don't think it's ever going to heal, right?"

"No, it won't," confirms Reiji.

"Right, and it already smells like corpse and I've only had it for half an hour, maybe. You smell like dead people, too."

"I smell fine."

"I mean, I can probably still do my job like this, but it's gonna be real arduous trying to figure out how."

"Well I'm so sorry I made your career less convenient! It's not like I granted you eternal youth or anything!" Reiji yells.

"Oh great, now I'll never have an excuse to retire."

Thoroughly disheartened, warbling in the same sad, whirring tone as an empty food processor, Reiji can only throw his hands up and beg for sympathy. "Oh, come on!" he whirrs, but he is ignored.

Careful not to push too hard, Shikamaru turns the knob and edges the door open just a fraction, so that the tiniest beam of light shines in through the crack. The sun is higher now, and the sky is more blue than orange. The shed is still in the shadows of the surrounding trees, so supposedly he can leave the shed without immediately sublimating and run into the still-dark forest that fringes the yard. He puts his palm flat on the door and lets it swing open. Reiji hisses and shrinks into the wall, hiding his face behind his arms, but the light entering the shed is not bright enough that it does any damage. Shikamaru walks out onto the yard. He doesn't need to run; the shadows are dark enough that he can just stroll into the forest instead.

Halfway across the yard, he pauses for a moment to lift his vest up over his head. He's not in any danger yet, but the light that does exist is hurting his eyes, and anyway you can't be too careful. He won't be in perfect shade for much longer, and the last thing he wants is for his face to suddenly burst into flames because a cloud passed by too quickly for him to react. It doesn't quite make sense that his skin is apparently only sensitive to direct sunlight; but it's not like anything about this is logical anyway, so he ignores it and moves on. Briefly he glances back at the shed. Reiji is leaning out the door, still shielding his face with one arm. "I created you!" he screams. Shikamaru looks away and heads into the forest.

For a moment he considers going back to tell his team, who must be in the designated meeting spot by now, what happened, but rejects the idea in favor of going home. If they need him, they can look for him there. He's not going back outside until he's figured out a good way to avoid boiling to death. Or, not-death. Whatever. This is so annoying.

Yay, you read it! I hope you liked it. It liked you.

If you wanted to like, review, or something like that, no one would stop you.