It wasn't that Senri Shiki harbored no love for his cousin. On the contrary, Senri Shiki was probably ready to do anything for his cousin, had he enough backbone to refuse his uncle and mother. But that backbone was not going to grow on him for a long time, and for now, Senri Shiki was mostly content with enjoying school with his cousin. He had been grateful for the invitation to join the Night Class when it was established; he had been down in the rolls for his uncle's boring and isolated boarding school somewhere in Romania, where 'they taught vampire boys to be vampire boys', and when the offer came, Shiki was all too happy to take it, despite giving an arm and a leg just to be able to enroll. His uncle didn't give him money for his tuition, and his modeling salary was already being stretched with having to maintain the house, pay the servants and buy his mother's medicines. It was then that his cousin offered to shoulder his schooling. Shiki could have kissed his cousin's shoes, had he wanted it.

When Senri came to the school, he was all too happy to be away from his mother and uncle, if only for some months every year. His cousin never mentioned about the tuition expenses, though Shiki paid of his own accord, little by little, shedding some part of his salary if he could afford it.

This was before Tooya Rima also joined the school.

He entered Kaname's room without so much as a knock, and had others been present to see his atrocious behavior, he was sure he was going to get a beating. Senri's pureblooded cousin was currently stretched out on the carpeted floor of his dorm room, busy before a black Lenovo laptop. Even as Senri drew level with the other vampire he could already hear the sounds of an MMORPG – he didn't need to look to know Kaname was playing WoW – and that his cousin wasn't looking too pleased about his game.

"What?" said Kaname without looking away from the laptop just as Senri sat down beside him.

"Rima's here," Senri replied, as if that ought to explain everything. "Did you…invite her?"

"No, she wrote to me about wanting to get in the school after she found out you attended."

"Ah."

Silence momentarily froze the conversation in its tracks. But Senri was used to having dangling conversations with his cousin. He'd long known that Kaname wasn't the talkative type. He preferred to talk more with his actions. Like the shouldering of his schooling.

"What do I do?" Senri asked.

"What do you mean what do you do?"

"Well."

"So?"

"But what do I do?"

"How am I supposed to answer?"

"You've been with more girls than I have."

"You say that like I'm a pimp. And those girls were forced upon me."

"But you've been with them. What do you talk about?"

"I don't know. But I start with cheese."

If Senri found something preposterous about starting a conversation about cheese, he didn't show it. One did not eye a pureblood like he had sprouted an extra head. His family taught him that. Though Senri doubted his cousin would mind if he stared. So he stared indeed, like Kaname sprouted an extra head, and a tail.

"Stop staring at me like that," Kaname said, a frown mildly breaking his ageless face. Somewhere on the game his Deathknight got killed. "Tsk. Now you had me killed!" With that he finally turned to Shiki, frowning.

"What did I do?" said Shiki. "I'm not even online."

"Go away, Senri."

"But what do I talk to her about?"

"I don't know. Start with asking her if she likes cheddar or mozzarella. Now go away,"

For the record, he did start the conversation with asking Tooya Rima if she liked cheddar cheese, or mozzarella cheese. This was during the Class Exchange ceremony, where the Day Class turned over the facilities of Cross Academy to the elite Night Class, and when the girls mobbed outside the Moon Dormitory gates. Senri could remember his hands feeling ice cold when he approached Tooya Rima and asked her about cheese.

She stared at him well until they got to the classrooms.

"I…I personally like…white cheese." Senri said, if only to break the awkward silence. "So. Yeah. White cheese is awesome. With…with bread."

"I'm lactose intolerant." Rima replied before going to her chair.

The letdown of that first attempt didn't faze Senri to say the least. Knowing he could not approach his cousin so often about matters like these (and because purebloods consorting with others was a different matter entirely), he tried his own approach by dropping off bookstores and reading romance novels and shoujo manga. He had to sort out the agonizing clichés and cornies from the plain but sweet lines, something that took him hours browsing the books, until the cashier would approach and pointedly look at him, so that he was forced to buy the books and leave the shop.

It irked Senri. Not talking with Rima, no, he loved to talk with Rima about anything – but he was angrier with the apparent effort that seemed to appear out of nowhere, like a wall he'd suddenly have to bang into. It irked him that he had to scan books and end up buying them, which meant that he had to spend another valuable chunk of his modeling salary on useless things instead of saving them up to pay his cousin with. He absolutely hated how he got tongue-tied whenever he tried to sit beside Rima. He'd tried to offer her some pocky the other day, but all he managed was the world 'wantoeat', and in the end Aidou beat him to it. Goddamn.

Another part of the mystery was how easy it was to talk to Kaname. Senri wished it was just as easy to talk with Rima. And everyone else was going on about how hard it was to get Kaname to say more than 'yes' or 'no'. They could talk about anything, Senri and his cousin; they talked best whenever it came to computer and console games; they nerded up at the oddest times and would gladly stay up together well until lunch playing WoW or some other online game that either of them Googled up for that evening. Hell, Senri could talk to Kaname about cheese and Kaname would understand. Kaname could talk to him about processors and PC specs and he would understand.

Even modeling wasn't a good enough topic with Rima, mysteriously. For some reason Senri disliked talking about cosmetics, as he hated dealing with them because they made him itch. Rima loved yammering about lipgloss and nail polish and….the first time Rima actually tried to talk to him, the conversation trailed and slammed into a dead end. Senri was sour with himself when Rima rose and went back to the shoot.

He supposed he should have jumped for joy when Rima purposefully – maybe not, but Senri liked to assure himself that – cornered him in the trailer and made to kiss him. He was confident he could pull it off. How many shots did he have that actually involved touching lips with another person? However, Senri ruled out that this time, there was no camera, and that one could get strangely idiotic when faced with the lips of a girl.

Their noses bumped. His mouth felt hot. His lips started to itch with Rima's lipstick. Worse, he started to drool.

That night back at the Moon Dorms, everybody kept pointedly not looking at him. His right cheek was swollen like a grapefruit, by the way it smarted and stung. In the end Senri chose to lock himself up in the dorm room he shared with Ichijou and skipped class. He spent the night staring at his goldfish bowl well until dawn, until Kaname entered the room and sat down beside him with some freshly-popped popcorn.

"Algebra homework only," Kaname said as he put the bowl beside Senri.

Senri looked up at his cousin. "I hate this."

"Hate what?"

"I can't kiss worth a damn."

"That's rich. A model who doesn't know how to kiss."

"Don't rub it in, will you? You suck at comforting people."

"Hn. It seems you only know how to kiss in front of a camera."

"How do you know?"

Kaname shrugged. "Intuition."

Senri buried his head into his arms. "Go away if you can't teach me how to kiss."

"Senri,"

He looked up, and was startled by the closeness of Kaname's crimson eyes. It was pretty much unnerving to any noble to have a pureblood suddenly jump out at you like that. Senri momentarily lost his balance, and would have fallen flat on his back on the floor if it wasn't for Kaname grabbing his collar and pulling him back up to…a….kiss.

He wasn't sure why he remembered the rules that time. He tilted his head automatically, and their lips touched like the way it was supposed to. Senri could feel the fangs beneath Kaname's lips, and for some reason he didn't start to drool, even when he started responding, if a bit awkwardly. When Kaname drew away, Senri wasn't sure if it was his cheek's fault again, but his face felt hot.

"There. Make sure before you try kissing her, don't black out and forget all the rules for a good kissing."

Kaname stood up without so much as a glance and left him the popcorn bowl.

He was amazed how fast the gossip traveled within the Moon Dormitory. Needless to say, Aidou and Ichijou were not showing any signs that they'd let him live this down. It wasn't his fault that sex with Rima turned out to be sticky. And messy. And when she bit him during what should have been an epic orgasm there things went downward in a spiral to oblivion. The orgasm never came. Instead, to his horror, he started to lose it, until in the end his prick seemed to have gone mad on him. Senri was suddenly scared that something was seriously nuts about him. Sex and fang and bloodplay were supposed to heighten pleasure. What on earth went wrong?

And now it seemed ninety-nine percent of the Moon Dorm suddenly knew what had transpired and were eager to make him the laughing stock for the next fifty years. He was so embarrassed that he couldn't go to the communal baths without anyone sniggering down his neck. He wanted to shrink and die.

Inevitably, he ended up in Kaname's room, lying belly-down on the carpet beside his cousin, their heads and laptops together as they tried to finish a raid in WoW. Senri was fired up what with his foul fortunes, and was soon cursing quietly as he eliminated opponent after opponent.

After the raid they went off to their respective save points. Kaname's huge dorm room was blessedly quiet, a sanctuary from all the teasing and sniggering outside. Senri rolled so that he lay down and looked up at the ceiling. Somewhere he could hear the chink of glass, and soon smelled blood tablets dissolving in water.

"I'm never going to have sex with anyone at this rate," Senri complained.

"Not really," Kaname replied. "There are some hookers who specialize with vampires. And there are vampire hookers. Not that difficult to look for."

"Cousin, did I ever tell you that you suck at comforting people?"

"About five thousand times now. That one included."

He wished he could have the same quiet with Rima. Lounging around, talking randomly, not really having to do any serious blundering or anything. Just like this. Senri rolled to his side and watched his cousin typing on his own laptop.

"Hey, cousin. Have sex with me."

Kaname had been drinking his blood tablet and water tonic when Senri said that, and he had a reaction that no pureblood should have been capable of. There was an ungraceful snort and soon Kaname was coughing and choking into his hand. Worried, Senri crawled over and had to hit his cousin on the back several times before Kaname's nasal passages cleared up.

"Please tell me you were kidding," Kaname said, staring at him.

"No, actually," Senri perked up, sitting. "I mean, you know a lot more than I do, and maybe in the process you could tell me if something's wrong with me. I mean. I know fang and blood play are supposed to heighten pleasure and all, and I know I felt good, but how come when she---"

"Whoah, whoah, good grief," said Kaname, raising his hands. "Spare me the details, I know what exactly happened. Ichijou gave me a blow-by-blow account."

"That motherf---" Senri bit down the curse. "I mean…yeah! Yeah, well, you're the only one who can help me! If you say there's nothing wrong, then perhaps I can work my way out of---"

"Senri, what the hell, listen to yourself!" This was probably the most exasperated Kaname had ever got. "I like women, Senri. Women. I am not about to let you ram up my---"

"Cousin! You're my only chance!"

Senri supposed Kaname would hit him like what he usually did with Aidou when he'd grabbed the pureblood's hands and looked up into Kaname's face in the most convincing expression he ever mustered in his life (which wasn't saying much).

"…Senri, you are aware sex with a girl is different with sex with another guy, right?"

"Yeah? But it's still the same principle, right, you stick an object into a hole, move it up and down, in and out, sideways or whatways, until you both climax."

"…..you are not so seriously that ignorant, are you?"

"Cousin, come on, I need help, not a lecture.."

Kaname was silent for a long while. He put his glass down and continued typing whatever the hell it was for hours. Senri remained sitting, waiting. This really was his only chance. Ichijou would only laugh in his face more if he'd asked him for help. And aside from Ichijou and Kaname, there was practically nobody else.

"Fine." Kaname said afterwards. "Just this once."

"Cousin, you won't regret this, I promise. I'll throw in a year's credit of WoW on me!" That offer came as a rush, and when Senri thought about it much later, his wallet seemed to ache.

They agreed to get the thing over with come that weekend, and outside the Moon Dormitory (one could never really hide an intimate act in the Moon Dorms; the vampires simply smelled everything out). They met up in the nearby city's game district and ended up in one of the Shiki family's nearest out-houses, simply because Kaname refused to have it elsewhere, much less a Kuran house. Soon enough the two of them ended up on the bed in one of the rooms in the second floor, with their clothes off.

Senri was sure it was a lot worse than with Rima the first round. Kaname kept scowling at him, and believe him, having a pureblood glaring a hole through your skull when you're supposed to be finding a good angle was too much of a distraction. That wasn't the last problem. Kaname kept snarling at him, scolding him about going too fast and going too slow, and that his angle was all wrong and that he was rushing and this was starting to hurt and pretty much a hundred things more until Senri was sure he was going to get hit like Aidou anytime now.

There was no biting during the entire struggle of the first round, something Senri was thankful for. He didn't get embarrassed, and soon enough after managing the much-awaited orgasm Kaname didn't voice out any other complaints. During the second round and the next rounds after Kaname simply shut up and let him do the rest. He went by his cousin's expressions to know how he was doing. When Kaname parted his lips soundlessly as his eyelids fluttered Senri knew he was doing things right, and even the orgasm was perfect as he'd imagined.

He yelped, however, when Kaname sank fangs into his neck. But the sudden bite didn't hurt; instead his whole body thrummed with the piercing of his neck, and as he bled he felt this epic sensation of being hurtled backwards in time through a shimmering golden – well, not really, just this awesome sensation like he was going to burst with sheer pleasure, and crying out incoherently Senri felt both of them reach that climax again, in perfect unrehearsed unison.

It turned out that there was nothing wrong with him; just the fact that his fang play had to be placed after the orgasm, or it'd ruin everything. Kaname said he was weird that way.

So Rima stared at him unblinkingly as he drew back, the kiss finally gone right after so many disasters. Her blue eyes searched him for any form of dishonesty maybe, and he didn't let that faze him one bit, even as he held her hand close and opened his mouth to say the words. For the record, he didn't use books or manga as reference for what he was about to do this time. He dug up movies and TV series, and used them as his reference as to how this was going to happen, primarily because asking Kaname to rehearse this with him was already rude. His cousin might tolerate anything else, but this touchy topic was a no-no.

"I love you. And I possibly want to spend the rest of my life with you."

He waited for Rima's answer as the minutes trickled by. After twenty minutes of not blinking away from her blue eyes Rima gently pulled her hand away and looked around at the crew assembling the props for the shoot.

"But that's so generic," said Rima finally. "Like something you get from a book."

Senri wanted to bang his head up against a wall and die. Or provoke a hunter short-tempered enough so he'd get shot and get the idiocy that was his life over with.

"Possibly?" Rima was still talking. "I'm curious with that word. Possibly."

After the shoot Senri asked if he could hunt down some Level E's in the outskirts of town. Kaname went hunting now and then, and Senri decided that they go together. They walked down the streets in quiet, but the silence was always comfortable, and they simply needed to let Kaname's pureblooded presence draw the Level E's in their location. Once the creatures appeared Senri got the chance to stretch his muscles; he'd wound his palm and lash out with his blood whip, granting a quick and painless death. Level E's did not need to suffer further after all.

They went to a burger stand afterwards, and it was so late that they didn't need to deal with a staring human crowd as they ate their very late dinners.

Senri figured he should start talking; all the frustration he bottled up inside just burst out of him when he put his half-finished burger down. The words escaped him in a rush, and he was simply possessed with the idea of talking. He talked and talked – about his crappy family, his godforsaken uncle, his mother, the gossiping servants – he knew he must have sounded like a whiner but Kaname never interrupted him; the pureblood let him have the silence all to himself. When Senri was done yammering an hour later he rested his head against the table and was quiet. Minor shuffles told him Kaname footed the bill for their dinner. Memo: treat his cousin to coffee or dessert next time.

He reached out a hand and gripped Kaname's sleeve.

"What is it, Senri?"

Senri didn't dare lift his head from the table. "Hey….I really love you."

Silence.

"I mean….I mean, it's just." He looked up, his usually sleepy blue eyes wide awake, staring into Kaname's own. "You've always watched out for me even when we were small. You let me stay in the Kuran house when my mother temporarily lost it and tried to drown me and let me have the chance to study in a fun school, and you've always helped me with everything, and you got me this job, and, and I just….I love you. I really love you. I just….I love you. I love you."

If Kaname was affected, or if the words got through him at all, nothing showed on his ageless face. A hand patted Senri on the head.

"You're exhausted, Senri. Why don't we head back to the dorms now?"

They didn't speak again as they returned to Cross Academy. The silence was ruined, the peace shattered, and Senri decided to log in to WoW and talk to Kaname there, but his cousin never got online. He waited until three in the morning until he fell asleep on his own accord, and when he woke up at four in the afternoon the next day the Moon Dorms were mostly empty – vacation had officially started, and the students had already left. Kaname was already gone.

Vacation was mostly quiet, if a bit stressful from the fact that his mother fired servants every weekend when Senri got home. Convincing his mother that the servants were there to help and would not want to kill her was very hard, and in the end Senri let her have his way instead. So during the months of break he was driver slash gardener slash chef slash maid, running around the house from sundown to sunup when he wasn't needed in a shoot.

The shoots were their enjoyable selves again, a chance for Senri to do what he did best – that is, to shine in front of a camera. He and Rima were paired up more, and a kind of comfortable friendship settled between the them. They had breaks together, and the conversation flowed freely and effortlessly when Senri wasn't trying to make himself ridiculous.

When school resumed Senri was the first to be back at the dorms. He helped the maid clean up, and by the time the students of the Night Class came back he was already settled in. Ichijou admired the cleanliness of the room, and Senri told him he'd helped, as he had ample practice back at home.

A week later, just before the start of classes, Senri got his laptop and charger, and went up to the topmost floor of the Moon Dorms. As always he didn't knock, just entered the room and found his cousin already on the floor with his own laptop, with a bag of chips nearby and water and blood tablets. Senri took his place beside his cousin, and logged into WoW, and there Kaname gave him some epic loots from dungeons, and he laughed and asked his cousin if he ever slept, which Kaname replied that of course he did. They went to a raid and smashed everything that stood in their path, and somewhere in the game Senri put his lips on Kaname's cheek, and the pureblood blinked and turned to him, puzzled. Senri simply smiled, and made their lips touch again, and the kiss was perfectly normal or normally perfect, as it should always be.