Title: Moonlight and Blood Ties
Genre: Vampire AU, Romance, Drama
Pairing: Tezuka/Fuji (But Fuji OWNS this prologue, so he's the only one headlining in this one), eventual SanaYuki, and maybe even OshiAto
Disclaimers: This fanfic is borne solely from the unique kind of psychosis that inspired it. So yeah, I grabbed the plot bunny, therefore, it is mine. The characters, however, are Konomi-sensei's and he ain't about to sell the rights to them any time soon.
Rating: PG
Summary: Fuji is hunter, Tezuka is prey. But in an existence where there are more questions than answers, in a world where some entities are shrouded in mystery, nothing is ever that simple.
Author's Notes: The idea for this fic came from a convo I had with vierblith where she said that she has yet to read a decent TeFu Vampire AU. So Ekay-chan, until you come upon that TeFu Vampire AU to end all TeFu Vampire AU's, I hope this one tides you over in the meantime. Oh, and yeah, Happy Birthday! ^_^

Prologue

His keen blue eyes looked up at the distant full moon, as gentle winds toyed with his dark honey colored locks. The sound of the waves crashing against the rocks beneath the cliff and the sharp tang of salt in the air surrounded him, and yet, the boy seemed oblivious to it all. His lithe, waif-like figure looked ethereal in its beauty, bathed as it was in silver moonbeams, when viewed against the backdrop of the dark sea with its grayish-white foam.

"Shuusuke," a gentle, lilting voice called out to him.

"Nee-san," he acknowledged without looking.

"Let's go back to the manor and get you ready. You have to feed," Fuji Yumiko entreated her younger brother.

Fuji Shuusuke turned his head to look at his older sister and Yumiko couldn't help but draw in a breath at the sight of her brother. With her wavy russet brown hair, steel grey eyes, and full, sensual lips, Yumiko was by no means ugly; but she still believed that she cannot hold a candle to her brother. The way he was looking at her at that moment, his brooding eyes, so unlike that of any other child's, studying her with an odd mixture of vulnerability and defiance and curiosity and detachment, his hair being playfully tossed about by the wind, his skin appearing almost luminescent under the moonlight, and his stance screaming of loneliness and aloofness, drew in whoever looked upon him.

Yes, Fuji Shuusuke looked like a young pagan god: beautiful, untamed, untouchable. But he was as far from divine as he could get. And they both knew it.

"Come," Yumiko coaxed as she held out her hand to her brother in invitation. He turned around to fully face his older sister, looked at her proffered hand, and hesitated. A familiar frown was settling on his features once again and Yumiko understood. She smiled reassuringly. "Come, Shuusuke. It's alright. It's okay to be different."

"Nee-san," Fuji called out as he suddenly sat up in bed, his hand reaching for the hand that was no longer there.

He sighed in defeat, outstretched hand uselessly dropping back to his side, and bowed his head. It's been a while since he last dreamt of his sister and by rights, he really shouldn't be dwelling on thoughts of her now. His sister would not approve.

He got up from his bed and went to open a window. He breathed in deeply of the evening air, taking in the different scents intermingled with each other, trying to identify each scent individually, as he fought to clear his mind from thoughts of his sister… and the past.

Fuji looked up at the newly risen new moon, so different from the magnificent full moon of that long ago night.

Come, Shuusuke. It's alright. It's okay to be different.

Yes, Fuji Shuusuke was different. He may look like a typical twenty-eight year old, if verging on the baby-faced kind of twenty-eight year old, but he was, in actuality, over a hundred years old. One hundred and six, to be exact.

Fuji Shuusuke was a vampire. But even among vampires, Fuji was an oddity. While other vampires can feed on pretty much anything with warm blood, Fuji had a unique condition that limited his feeding choices considerably. He could only feed on humans that feel intensely for him. Fear verging on terror, extreme hate, infatuation – these are some of the emotions that a human must feel for him before he could feed on their blood. Otherwise, he's displayed varying adverse reactions to taking in "unaffected blood", as he'd come to call them, from mild allergies – rashes and itching – to symptoms of food poisoning, in extreme cases.

When he was much younger, he hated the fact that he couldn't feed normally like the other vampires and thus, refused to feed at all. It was always his sister who sweet-talked him into feeding when she knew he needed to. During those times, Yumiko would dress up her younger brother in adorable little girls' kimonos and then take him to some random town's busy night district where Shuusuke was then instructed to pretend like he was a lost little girl, separated from her parent. Inevitably, there would always be some sympathetic soul who would feel intensely sorry for the "little girl" and would spend the better part of the night listening to Shuusuke's practiced sob story, losing his/her heart to the poor waif with each sentence, and later on, agreeing to go with the blue-eyed boy as he searched down dark alleys for his "parent".

Of course, throughout these night excursions, Yumiko was never far from her brother, always staying to the shadows, silently watchful. There had been times when Shuusuke had been picked up by people with slightly less noble intentions than helping out a poor lost child, after all, and for those times, Yumiko always made sure that those people never got to see daylight ever again.

Through the years, Shuusuke eventually learned to live with his "difference". It even became a bit of a joy when his younger brother, Yuuta, came along. When he was old enough to understand that his older brother's feeding needs were different, Yuuta proposed adding variety to Yumiko and Shuusuke's routine. Those days had been the trial-and-error period when the Fuji siblings found out which sort of intense emotions Shuusuke could feed off of. And those were also the days when the middle Fuji sibling became intimately acquainted with the different reactions his body had to blood that it had no liking for.

One of Fuji's fondest memories of those days was that time when they discovered that the blue-eyed boy could work with intense fear. As per Yuuta's request, Yumiko dressed up Shuusuke in tattered old clothes. Yuuta then shoved a tankard of blood at his older brother and instructed him to gargle with it and then let it all drip out of his mouth and down his clothes. Shuusuke looked at his younger brother as though Yuuta had lost his mind. The youngest Fuji grinned mischievously at his brother and said, "Just trust me on this, aniki!" And then he added, "The messier you make it, the better!"

He looked dubiously at the tankard but did as he was instructed, anyway. Yumiko had a fair idea of what Yuuta had in mind and so stood by quietly as Yuuta ran his hands through his brother's hair, making it as messy as it could get. Later that night, with Shuusuke looking like something that's just been dug out from the cemetery, they chanced upon a pair of young lovers in a secluded area of the woods just beside the sea. The young couple took one look at Shuusuke's appearance and fainted dead away. Yuuta was so proud of the success of his idea that he helped himself to the young man as his brother fed from the young woman.

Those days had been so long ago. And since then, Shuusuke has learned one interesting thing: out of all the emotions that he had tasted, attraction, infatuation had been the best… and it filled him so well that it took much longer than usual before he felt the need to feed again.

Come to think of it, it's about time he went out in search of a prey again. With one last look at the new moon, Fuji pushed himself away from the window and started getting ready for a night of hunting.

TBC
La Fuego
11/13/2008