1Summary: I leave my silence bare and quivering, our lips closed without a sign. (No longer do they have their beginning, but it is possible to find their end.)
Disclaimer: I do not own Blood .
Pairings: Karman/Kai/Moses
- - - -
I leave the shadow of my manly groin to those who
write for pay.
I leave to several jealous men a second-rate legend
of my life. -'The Pro', Leonard Cohen
- - - -
The night flutters, nerveless and intact to his heartbeat rhythm. Kai's fists clench by his sides and he hangs his head and bends forward enough until, seated on the bench, his face is pressed through his knees and he feels a little less nauseous, a little more comfortable with himself. He is going to have blisters later that night when he takes off his shoes, but he was glad for the run, for the air flooding past his cheeks, leg muscles pumping his body down the street.
It's not that Kai necessarily senses Moses's presence more than he knows it. He knows it because it is the same as Karman's, the same as Lulu's, the same as Irene's presence used to be before she died and crumbled to nothing in front of all of them and didn't care to smile for them one last time– it is calm and slightly arrogant and composed and isolated, all of these things which settle uncomfortable but familiar in the pit of Kai's stomach, and he brings a hand up to clench the edge of his untucked shirt. Moses, in his own way, is disturbing. He is quiet and manipulative– the type of person who you could be disagreeing with one moment and the next you'd think you still were but you were already agreeing with him.
It makes Kai nervous, flustered. His heart picks up it's rhythm from where it's speed had last left off from the run– once more thumping obnoxiously loud in his chest and when Moses licks his lips absently, Kai is sure it means something. It is a nonsense thought.
They have been supplying the Schiff with blood for weeks now– months, maybe? Years? Centuries? Kai does't know. The time between death to death is uncounted for, not wanted to be known. He doesn't want to know how little of a time period it took for Riku to die after Irene, he doesn't want to know whether Saya's past where she slaughtered everyone is a little too close for comfort, he doesn't want to know if Moses, who stands a little to the side of him at his back, will be dying in the next few hours or days or weeks or months or maybe, just maybe, if he'll never die (but this thought makes you want to laugh, because that is almost as impossible as it would be to bring Riku back from the dead– the Schiff were built to serve and then die, but to mostly die– it is laughingly possible for you to understand this but you chose to not, because you've already understood too much about death).
"What are you doing here?" Kai says, almost a whisper, in a voice that's scratchy and breaks in the middle of his sentences from not speaking for a while. He doesn't know how long he's been out here– but what's time to a clock that always breaks?
Kai chooses not to answer his own question. He would probably just end up with the wrong answer, or end up lying to himself to make himself feel better. Pitiful is the man who gives pity to himself, but he doesn't care. He never does, not except for when it's someone dying.
And it doesn't really matter that Moses is constantly dying– since the moment he was born he has been dying, and maybe they all have, but the Schiff a little bit faster than them. They will catch up. They always do.
"I was taking a walk. I didn't expect to find you here, Kai, if that's what you're asking. Humans are not normally outside at this time of night." Moses pauses, his eyes glued to one spot on the bench Kai's sitting on until Kai glances over, and there's nothing there but wood. Kai just barely snorts.
"I didn't know you'd be here." Moses adds, in a voice more hushed than usual, and his eyes reflect the moon almost uncannily from where they stand out through the darkness of his hood. Kai thinks them momentarily beautiful.
"Aah, well–..." Kai absently rolls his shoulder before rubbing it, and notices that Moses's eyes are following each of his movements. Kai laughs over his discomfort. "You're acting like you've never seen someone move before. I've sworn you guys can move."
Moses blinks, and keeps his gaze on Kai's shoulder even after Kai awkwardly moves his hand back down to his lap. "Yes. But we're not as...at ease, as you are, with your skin." Maybe that was true– they did always move in long, practiced steps, never unnecessary, never nonsensical. 'First true thing he's said all night.' Kai thinks, and maybe it's a lie.
Maybe not.
Moses tries to take a step towards the bench Kai is sitting on and he stumbles, not over anything on the ground noticeably. Kai tries to shrug it off but he's concerned anyway, he cares anyway (because Moses's really dying, isn't he?), and he gets up and puts his hand lightly on Moses's shoulder, and god it feels so cold under his fingertips. "You're cold." he states dryly, obviously. He doesn't really know what to say, know how to tell Moses to fix whatever-the-fuck problem he's having because it's worrying Kai and Kai hates worrying.
"It doesn't matter." Moses responds, and Kai gives a bitter twist of lips that substitutes as a smile. It's good enough, though, because Moses's eyes start to look not-so-empty, and Kai is more comfortable.
"You don't feel well...do you?" Kai asks suddenly, more of a statement than a question, as his hand lies curled still around Moses's shoulder and the weight it puts there is making Moses's knees weak– Kai can tell, by the way Moses flexes his knees, trying to not put pressure on them. Kai has done this many times before in his life, and all relatively in the same general space of time, which is the sad thing (when Riku died, and you had to stand up, because you couldn't look at his crumbling body anymore, you flexed your knees, in and out, in and out, trying to find a purpose, but you just sat there and trembled– and maybe in this Moses is more accomplished than you are, because he knows himself, even though he doesn't know anyone else, and you are the exact opposite, but it's gotten you nowhere).
Moses looks at him, long and hard and penetrating, and Kai shivers but doesn't expect it to have been from the cold night air. "There's nothing wrong. It doesn't matter, I'm fine." he says again. This time Kai doesn't try to force a smile, even a bitter one.
"You need blood, don't you?"
Moses sits there with him in quiet for a moment, before he gives a slight nod of the head which could be passed off as anything else– a twitch, a shifting of the neck. But it is enough for Kai.
- - - -
Moses doesn't need a piggyback ride, not like Irene once did, but he does remain accepting of Kai's arm wrapped around his middle, a little higher than the waist for subtlety and more platonic helpfulness. His cloak is so thick that Kai can hardly feel the shapes and curves of Moses underneath it, and Kai is partly glad for this. That would be something that Kai is simply not supposed to know, just like how Saya and Haji will probably never have a normal relationship, or how Julia would probably admit to David in a heartbeat how she likes him, possibly even loves him, but it would take years and years for him to say it back.
It is like how Riku did not exactly cry for their father when died, even though Saya and Kai did, and yet when he took Kai's blood for that one night, he did cry, and ashamedly sobbed into Kai's neck with bloody lips and teeth and tongue.
There are just things you do and do not do, and Kai will not try to bother doing what he cannot do. Not anymore, not again, not when he has been beaten down and carved up so many times for it, because there are only so many occurrences before he will learn his lesson.
- - - -
Kai can sometimes understand Karman. In a way, they are more like each other than anyone else is similar, and for this, the shiver that runs from the base of Kai's spine up to his neck lets him know that Karman is there with them. He does not bother being subtle, so neither will Kai.
"You...What are you doing with him?" Karman's glasses are sliding down his nose from the quickness of his movements, and before Kai can warn him they are bouncing up twice on the cement of the ground before they still near Moses's foot, and Kai leans down to grab them.
When he hands them back to Karman they are snatched quickly enough that the texture of Karman's hands are lost on him, and he finds himself almost disappointed, until Moses's legs shake underneath his body and then give out completely. Kai's steadying hands are not what catch him, but instead Karman's sudden and solid grip on Moses's shoulders. "Didn't you feed today, Moses?"
Kai thinks that Karman does not sound as angry as he most likely would have with another of his colleagues. It makes Kai smile faintly, for reasons he does not know, and he brings up a hand to hide the upwards curve of his lips which causes Moses to stumble again just as he had been trying to find his footing.
It is an idiotic sort of chain reaction, one that Kai thinks of teasing them for even before his backside is hitting the ground with enough force to make him wince, and the warmth on his chest takes a moment for him to recognize before he understands that Moses is splayed out almost comically across him, fingers clenched into the fabric of Kai's shirt lightly and unsurely, and Karman's legs are somewhere near Kai's, for Kai can feel Karman's thighs pressed into his calves.
When he looks down, he realizes not without some form of sudden laughter (possibly a high-pitched and embarrassing noise that Riku would've described as a giggle, a thing which he would've firmly denied and then maybe shoved Riku playfully in the arm for, and Riku– Riku...), that Karman's face is pressed unceremoniously into Moses's shoulder blade and their bodies are lined up in a particularly compromising position.
"Is this a regular occurrence," Kai asks, as Moses quickly removes himself from his chest and Karman removes himself from Moses's back, "Or was this a one-time thing?"
Karman looks somewhat ready to punch Kai in the face, and or stab him through the chest with his weapon and then avoid the trouble of having to go all the way back to the base for more blood from the supply stores, but Moses shakes it off and faintly grabs Karman's elbow, both to get his attention and to possibly avoid falling into Kai's chest again.
Kai wants to say something like 'I didn't mind that much, really.', but quickly shakes it off and asks himself what in the world (though distinctly less demurely) he was thinking. "Karman, forget it. I will go with Kai to their head quarters for blood, and–"
"And then what, Moses? Stay the night with them? It's almost sunrise, because you stayed out so long talking to him instead of getting what you needed." Karman throws an extra glare at Kai for good measure, and Kai sighs rather over dramatically.
"You'll both have to stay then, I'd suppose. Come on. You don't want to be out here when the sun comes up, do you?" Kai flashes them a smile (that Karman doesn't seem to appreciate nearly as much as Moses, who manages to smile weakly back with an air of exasperation, hesitance, and slight panic), and then leads the way.
It has been a long night. He remembers, once, when he would've slept through it soundly enough that the memory of that now makes him want to scream in frustration.
No rest for the weary, indeed.
- - - -
They manage to make it through the house without any further stumbles, and Kai seats Moses on the left couch cushion to go close the blinds. It is almost sunrise, after all, and Karman looks uneasy by the promise of sun through the windows, the small beginnings of orange sun coating the outside early morning sky.
Kai recognizes that he does not understand.
Moses sags in the couch where Kai has left him, and Kai motions for Karman to sit as well. Awkward, it is so awkward, that the silence could be caught on his tongue and redefined. But instead he breaks it, shatters it under his hand, and says "I'm going to get the blood. I'll be right back."
As he is about to turn the corner of the hallway, he pauses and adds, "Stay there."
It is not like they could, but Moses gives a small nod and Kai thinks he knows why he said it.
They keep the blood packets in a special freezer that Julia had brought, as opposed to their older storing techniques, and Kai removes one, glances at it in his hand. It's something he's used to, but partially it still makes him sick. The container loosely flops in his palm as the blood inside it moves with Kai's pace, and when he reaches Moses he hands it to him though his hand still remains cold from the connection of it to his skin.
He thinks 'How can he put that into his mouth?' but bites the inside of his lower lip to keep from saying anything. Karman glances at him, almost emotionlessly, and it makes Kai want to smile when he realizes that Karman truly believes that no one can understand what he is thinking. Kai is a lot like Karman.
It is so easy to understand the thoughts.
When Moses finishes, he looks distinctly better, and a line of blood drips out from the corner of his mouth mixed with saliva, a light red that drips to the side of a pale chin. Karman leans over to wipe it away with his fingers, and Kai thinks, momentarily, absently, that he should turn away from the oddly intimate situation but he finds his feet will not turn and his neck is frozen.
His hands tremble so he puts them in his pockets. What are Karman and Moses to each other? It is easy to imagine what the solitary lifestyles did to them, how it affected them. The names Kai can faintly remember (as how you'll only faintly remember Riku, a ghost of the life you will one day throw behind you like you have thrown so many life styles before?– it is frightening, so frightening, to think that you will think of him less and less often, but you already are, aren't you?), Gudriff and Guy and Irene, Lulu and Karman and Moses...
It would be lonely. How intimate are they truly with one another? Born together, raised together, escaping and feeding and dying together, one by one as though still individual. There is a need for some form of internal and physical connection, one that surpasses the draining of blood from an unwilling throat or the dug-in claws of a merciless hand into flesh. There is more than that, Kai thinks, so much more, and perhaps the Schiff needed it as well.
Perhaps Kai needs it.
"Thank you, Kai." Moses says, in that calm, uninterrupted voice of his, and Kai thinks perhaps Moses is the one he can't read more than anything. But they are all so obvious together, in a room tight and close enough to lose their breath in, lungs sucking up dryness and bitter heat.
"What? It's not a problem..." Kai says, still so awkward. Karman gives him a searching glance, one that Kai choses not to read, and Kai absently rubs at his neck with a calloused hand. When had he picked up the habit, truly?
"I'd suppose you'll need a place to rest?" Kai asks, looking down at them where they're sitting from where he is standing. He does not feel so minuscule there against them, not half as powerless, but they still look at him with eyes that pierce straight through his empty, beating chest. He can feel his heart beat so quickly against his chest, and he knows they can, too, by the faint hunger in their eyes. It doesn't offend him, not like it frightens him– how it is built into them with a fine-toothed tool, in the same way Kai feels hungry or thirsty or hot or cold or tired.
It is frightening.
"Sleep?" Moses asks, almost tentatively.
"Rest," Kai corrects. "Just...rest. Lie down a bit, you probably need it, you think?" After Moses nods mutely and Karman shifts perhaps a bit awkwardly, uncomfortably, Kai clears his throat and turns his back to them. "I'll go get some of the quilts we have built up around the house."
Karman's hand is still on Moses, having slid down to a cloaked shoulder and stayed there.
- - - -
When Kai walks back, he deposits the blankets he rounded up onto the floor in a pile and smooths some of the bangs back from his face, watching Moses poke at the quilts absently with tentative hands and Karman untangle one of them to lie it on the floor silently. "I hope those'll be enough– they're all I could find around here." Saya takes most of the blankets she encounters, to add them to the ever-growing pile already on her bed– Kai is almost concerned.
"These are fine." Moses pauses, to give a small smile, and follows Karman in rolling out the quilts. "Thank you, Kai, again. For everything you've done tonight."
Kai shrugs absently and rubs at the back of his neck again. It's sore, and for the first time during the night he notices his legs ache from jogging. "No problem. If you need anything..." ('Why', you think, 'Am I so hesitant to leave them?' It is not lack of trust, not really, and it is not from any sense of pity or courtesy.)
Moses nods, meeting his eyes, and then lets his gaze move back to where Karman is sitting across from him, unusually quiet.
Kai gives another, more awkward, less absent, shrug, and a quick smile before he turns around and throws a quiet 'good night' over his shoulder. It is the first time they have heard the phrase, but Moses understands the meaning, and maybe why he said it.
It is also the last time they will hear it.
Kai pauses– turns around.
- - - -
The sun tugs on the beginnings of rising outside of the windows– tentative spurts of light slipping through the cracks in the blinds hung and closed tightly into themselves. It is this that gives him reason to stay– Moses and Karman look uneasy by it– hesitant and unwillingly nervous, so Kai suggests that he could hang some of the spare sheets and they nod unquestioningly.
(Perhaps they are all trying to clutch those remnants of moments in each other's company, perhaps not. Does it truly matter? If it is comforting, then there is no denying it to either them or yourself, and maybe that's the most honest truth during your night.)
It's a thick purple blanket that he hangs on the living room window– which starts at the top and sags down past the window sill to rock lightly with every time there is a breeze or one of them passing by. They sit quietly, watch it for a second; Kai leans down and perches himself half-way onto the arm of the couch and Moses and Karman are curled on the beige carpet, and it is dark again.
Kai clears his throat into the fist he brings up to his mouth and looks down at Karman. He doesn't bother with a warning, and instead finds himself leaning over and pushing Karman's glasses back up his nose from where they have slid down sometime during the early morning's activities, about to fall off.
Karman catches his wrist. Moses's head jerks almost painfully when the sound of skin meets skin resounds into the room and Kai's restless heart goes beating anew– harsh, fresh palpitations.
It is all quiet enough that a pin could drop and they would hear it– quiet enough that Saya or Lewis or Julia would not know, not know that Moses and Karman are here or that Kai is that close from being bitten and drained of blood and tossed aside like a raggedy doll.
He breathes in gasping spurts, rough and panting, through an open mouth, and Moses is suddenly there– hand over Karman's hand, warmth over warmth on top of hotness. A line of static shoots from the backs of Kai's clenched teeth down to the center of his pants, and he tries to jerk away out of reflex.
The following tightening of Karman and Moses's hands over his wrist (out of reflex? Out of something else– that mute, pleasant electricity in the base of your spine and stomach?) causes them to drift closer together, a jerk that drags Kai back into them without any stability because his knees have suddenly gone weak and Karman looks nauseous and Moses looks ashamed.
They sit quietly like that again for a moment– Kai's forehead almost touching the beginning's of Moses's cheek bone, Karman's other hand bracing himself precariously on Kai's shoulder, and both their hands still clutching desperately to Kai's wrist like a life line.
Then he brings his lips to the line of Moses's mouth and kisses him for all it is worth and Karman slides his hand from Kai's shoulder to the hem of his tank top and explores the warmth of his skin, sliding up, up.
- - - -
Karman and Moses's hands are not at a normal heat– are warm, but mostly from the temperature they have stolen from Kai's body, and Kai is not sure if he trembles from that coldness left behind or the tentative nervousness that lights up within the center of his chest. Moses, captivated, animalistic, runs his tongue down the surface of Kai's neck, over his fast-beating pulse, hands exploring the quickness of his heartbeat.
Karman drags gloved fingers over the lines of Kai's face like a blind man, just as desperate, just as lost. His hands run over the curve of Kai's jaw, sharpened over the years, and the rounded cheek bones, the thinned lips that could never be mistaken for femininity, anything but masculine. Kai is far from androgynous, he carries no traits except for the gentility of his touch that could be demure or woman-like, but they caress him like a lover regardless of gender, of race, of situation.
He breathes in quiet, small little gasps and Karman tugs off Kai's tank-top hard and rough enough to rip. Kai doesn't check to see if it did, is too caught up in the way Moses's lips find their way, suddenly, over one of his nipples, and then trail down to the beginnings of ribs, and how Karman nips at his shoulder in such a way that Kai is both frozen with fear and weak with the desire.
They are not human, they are engineered and manufactured like machines, given blood to quench their thirsts and made faces like men– they slide into their skins and do not quite belong in the flesh and yet when they rub themselves against him, when they apply teeth and mouth and tongue, Kai cannot bring it within himself to care. They are attracted by the palpitations of his heart, and Moses rubs his cheek against the spacing of his chest, not-human, not usual or ordinary.
It takes Kai a minute before he realizes somewhere between kisses Moses and Karman have shed their cloaks, and they lie across the floor, motionless. Moses leans back, until he is belly-up on the floor and his hands on Kai's shoulders bring Kai to meet him, flesh lining up with flesh, thigh to thigh, chest to chest, arms exploring.
Kai brings his hips down, slowly, and they both gasp at the contact, feel a choke of breath in the back of their throats. Behind him, Karman aligns himself with Kai's body, and his groin presses into the lines of Kai's back, not oddly graceful like Moses's movements against him but rough and controlling and Kai loves them both for it, he thinks (he knows). They are not the same, they are individuals and opposites, and Karman trails his lips down the column of Kai's spine, leaving almost-tender kisses and almost-hesitant nips, and Moses bites the surface of Kai's nipple, carefully, without teeth.
Karman is not half as careful– Kai gasp-groans as skin breaks along his shoulder line, a small, unimportant cut, and Moses props himself up to lick away the blood that trails down his arm. Karman's breath is hot on Kai's neck, as he buries his face into Kai's pulse, and Kai freezes, nearly panicked, but instead Karman gives a brush of lips on the flesh and Moses tentatively brings up his hips. It is sudden enough that Kai moans, and Karman presses up against the back of him, losing all hesitancy.
Suddenly, the atmosphere changes, and everything is rougher, faster. Kai, in between them, bites at the skin of Moses's neck with his teeth and Karman bucks dryly, still clothed, into Kai, cock pressed against Kai's ass, and Kai slides his fingers down Moses's stomach and hurriedly rubs the palm of one hand against Moses's dick, until Moses gasp-chokes and arches off the floor.
They are like teenagers in the basement of their parent's house, giving quick, careless handjobs to each other with the promise sealed on their parted lips of promising it never happened. But they– Karman, Kai, Moses– kiss, not careless or particularly graceless, and it is these parts of them with keep that gentility that they each long for, even as their handships jerk against each other rough and hard and impatient, with a sort of unspoken, wry desperation.
Moses comes first– and he does not cry out, or moan, or make much of a sound, and Kai notices the way he sinks his teeth into his bottom lip and lets the blood run down his chin. Kai is not bothered by it, finds some odd attraction in it, and slides his mouth against the flesh and laps at the blood.
Kai comes suddenly, pressing his hands over Moses's shoulders and squeezing tightly, finding some comfort there, as he arches back again into Karman and groans and it is possibly this sound which makes Karman jerk his hips up, longingly, and find his own orgasm.
They slowly slip out of position, Karman moving backwards to sit back against the wall, Kai rolling away from Moses and Moses sitting up, slowly, tentatively, and brushing the tuft of his bangs away from his face. Kai meets his eyes and smiles, and in Moses's smile back, feels something deep in his chest that is neither arousal nor fear, and he tastes the remaining after-pang of Moses's blood in the back of his throat, coppery and raw.
He closes his eyes and flops back down the floor, props his head behind his hands, and is startled out of his afterglow by the slamming of the front door, the sun shining through the windows tentatively covered by storm clouds.
- - - -
It's Moses that runs out after Karman first, as Kai tries to find his tanktop only to realize it is ripped straight down and instead he thinks 'screw it', and slides on his jacket shirtless, the fabric cold from night and early morning air.
Moses is gone through the windows, so quick Kai can't follow his movement with his eyes, and Kai looks down outside of it– they're three stories up so Kai curses in his head and shuts the door quietly behind him when he leaves. Any of the remaining bitterness he had over Saya's trying to kill the Schiff disappears completely and he thinks maybe, maybe, he'll put his gun to some good use and shoot a hole through Karman's chest as soon as he sees him.
- - - -
He senses Karman and Moses– in a way that is not similar at all to Chevaliar's ability to find others, is not like Irene's ability to search people out individually– it is not like that. Some part of him, some very small part of him, knows that he needs to turn his head at that moment where he wouldn't have before.
Karman is there, in one of the back alleys of the city (not un-similar to the one you had spoken to Irene in, you think, but that memory is blurred over in a rose-tinted glass type form and you don't want to think about longer than you absolutely have to), struggling against the way Moses pins him to the brick side wall. He stops struggling after a moment, and lays one gloved hand over Moses's wrist and curls his fingers around it. Kai knows the hold, while seemingly lose, is probably strong enough to break something, and he spins on his heel and runs, awkwardly, to where they are.
The sun doesn't hit them at the angle they are in, and the rain-clouds are enough to paint the sky over until the sunlight disappears nearly completely, but Kai gets nervous despite, and Moses looks uncomfortably panicked. "Karman," he says, in a tone disbelievably calm and aware and in control, but Kai reads his expression– the knot of his brow, the pursed thinness of his lips.
"Let me go, Moses," Karman looks, if anything, even angrier at the sound of Moses's voice, and suddenly, Kai gets it.
He understands.
He takes the five and a half steps it takes to reach them, and presses his hand over Karman's on Moses's wrist, and it feels like thirty minutes ago, it does, but it feels fresher, new, not something perversely desperate– but like breathing for the first time after holding your breath. The air smells like rain, and it sprinkles lightly, leaving drops invisible to the faraway eye on their open skin.
Kai laughs. He does not mean to, but it escapes him, suddenly, and Karman and Moses look at him with shocked, not-comprehending eyes that make his mouth twist into a grin. Karman is as uncomfortable as he has been the past few hours, and that, so clearly, that is why and it's so ludicrous and so unexpected even though it should not be because, in a way, it is also so clearly Karman.
Kai understands ('Maybe I cannot read the both of them.', you think, 'Maybe I'm still so unaware of them all-together.').
Moses exhales, and awkwardly presses his forehead to Karman's, and Kai sits there grinning, getting rained on, as their hands remain connected.
('But maybe I'm alright with that.')
- - - -