A/N – This is another side-fic for my fanonized TB universe. Seeing as Isaak is never clearly defined, not even in the notes Yoshida left, I've taken some liberty on the idea. Canon William and Isaak attending university together. Fanon just about everything else. This may seem a bit disconnected in places, as I had several drafts and ended up piecing it together.

PG13 for implications, language. William POV. William x Isaak shounen-ai. Present tense. (someday I will stop writing in the point of view of the seme…yea right.)

Rituals and Masquerades

By PikaCheeka

I had thought I had known Isaak drunk. It never occurred to me that all those times he was only pretending, afraid to let me see his true intoxicated side. I still don't know what made him drink himself to madness that day, as he was clearly always so careful to keep from doing that normally.

But at that point I didn't know what to do with him. "Isaak."

"Rot in Sheol." He snarled. It was the third time he had said it that night and I strongly suspected it was what his father had told him, what had caused him to return to the dorm and drink himself gone. I had found him nearly half an hour ago and I was starting to get nervous. He was wild, raging, inconsolable. You can't be Isaak's best friend and room-mate without dealing with half a dozen emotional meltdowns a month, but this was unusual, frightening even.

"You're really drunk, aren't you?"

"Brilliant deduction, asshole."

I ignored the language. He rarely swore, so that was proof enough for me. Which only left the question of why he bothered pretending to be drunk all those other times. But no, that wasn't so important now. I was more concerned with making sure he didn't hurt himself. Or hurt me, which was growing more and more likely as the minutes passed. "What happened?"

"I hate him." He smiled suddenly, his too-white teeth showing too much and his eyes over-bright.

"Isaak." I said again; normally hearing me call his name calmed him when he was in a rage, but now it seemed to only irritate him further. I saw the bottle on the floor. He had downed an entire bottle of Parisian absinthe, which meant that in a few hours I would be the one holding his hair back while he threw everything up again. Not that I minded. I knew he would do the same for me, if I actually had the hair to hold back.

"It's none of your god-damned business what happened. It's not as if you could ever know what it's like." he laughed quietly and tilted his head up, looking at nothing.

"I've listened to your family problems often enough." It came out quite a bit more pleasant than how I felt at the moment. How many times had I comforted him when his father threatened to disown him or his mother made advances on him? How many times had I let him stay at my house on holiday just so he wouldn't have to go home to that?

"As if you could understand them." He tosses his head airily, obnoxiously.

"You're not the only one with family problems." I snap back, fighting the urge to lash out at him. At least his family can afford food. At least he didn't have to scrape and beg for loans to even get to school.

"You don't have the impossible expected of you." The words disturb me, but what really gives me pause is the look on his face. He is baring his teeth at me in a distinctly inhuman manner, and suddenly I realize how utterly foreign, his bizarre, this little habit of his is.

With this single motion of his, it all makes sense. It explains his strength, his eccentricities, his alienation, his fake name, his arrogance, his insecurities. It is his impossible expectation. It explains Isaak in his entirety, who was so surprised the first time he took me out in a fight, who is distant and awkward, aloof to humanity, whose alias is just covering up another alias.

"How old are you then?" I ask after too long a moment. I know it shows in my face.

He doesn't hesitate, doesn't know why I'm asking, or doesn't care. Or maybe he just assumes I know the answer, because I do. "Twenty."

Twenty is too old. If he hasn't shown any signs of awakening by now, he isn't going to. Twenty-five is the traditional cut-off point, though some may go as far as thirty years before awakening. But there are signs, ones that begin the long process, ones he should have begun experiencing five or six years ago. The body continues to mature a year or two after the actual awakening, but if Isaak has shown no signs at this late age, there's something drastically wrong. "You're a Methuselah." I say softly.

The look in his eyes is enough for me to want to take it back, but it is too late and I know it will never be the same. At once he is surprised, hurt, confused, and for the first time in the year and a half I'd known him, he is at a loss for words. "There's something wrong with my bacilli. The doctors said I would never awaken. I retain most of the characteristics, but… I was a disgrace to the family name. We were driven out of the Empire into Germanicus. All I ever hear about is how they should have killed me like the Empress ordered. That's what normally happens to Methuselah like me."

Killed him. They normally killed off the unnatural ones, as if they were broken bits in an assembly line? That was simple vile, grotesque. But I don't dare mock his homeland. "You're not even Von Kampfer."

He smiles coldly, his eyes that have slowly been losing their color over the years glinting. "No." He does not offer his real name. I don't expect him to. It took him a year to even admit he wasn't Isaak Butler, though everyone knew damn well he wasn't English.

"Are you…" I don't know what to say. There is nothing I can say. He has been rejected by his entire race; he is doomed to be forever an outsider to the world. I had once thought he had enjoyed being aloof and distant from humanity, but as the months passed a sense of his discomfort and loneliness had begun to creep into our friendship. I couldn't understand it.

"Miserable?" he answers it for me, his teeth showing. It is so obvious. I wonder how nobody else has never noticed, how I never noticed.

""That isn't quite what I was getting at."

"I know you better than that. You're concerned." There is a hint of triumph in his voice despite everything.

I ignore this comment and change the subject. "Are you a Methuselah in all other aspects?" It is an awkward question, but it is an awkward situation. I'm curious, but I know treating my closest friend like a scientific specimen is dangerous, especially if it's Isaak, who is apt to explode at any given moment for no real reason even in ordinary circumstances.

"Yes. I am simply a very weak one." He replies after a long moment. "But you already knew that." He tilts his head up and closes his eyes. "How long have you known?"

I don't know how long I have known. I have long suspected, but the idea had just seemed absurd, impossible, to me. "I didn't think you were normal, right from the start." It was the wrong word, I realize dully the moment I say it, and I regret it immediately.

"Normal." He laughs harshly. "I hear that one a lot, I suppose. But I should be grateful you never told anyone. I could hardly stand being expelled."

"Why would you be expelled?" A falsely naïve question. I know he would be expelled in a second. Methuselah aren't allowed to attend human universities, especially not in Albion, which prides itself in being free of Methuselah.

"I'm a danger." He shrugs.

I suspect Isaak is a danger regardless of what he is, but I don't say this. "But you don't…drink."

"What do you know?" he snaps. "Haven't you ever wondered what all that medicine I'm on is?"

Yes. I have wondered a lot. I've even gone through your things and looked at it. And I realize how ugly this conversation is turning, how hidden everything is, because right now it is farcical, both of us dancing around what we want to say. I wonder what is going on in his head that he doesn't dare speak. "You're on blood tablets."

"I don't just like them. They're not a drug," He sounds irritated.

"So when you give me one you're giving up your supply?" I do not know how many I have taken. How many I have stolen when I was bored or angry at him, when I wanted some of his stash and he wasn't around for me to ask. I had no idea I was taking from him something he needed to survive. I had no idea that what to me was a drug was to him life.

He shrugs. "It's not…that big a deal. I'll die without them, but I don't need nearly as much as an awakened Methuselah. I don't go mental without them. I just get really sick. Happened once, a long time ago. I tried to stop, thinking if I couldn't be a Methuselah I might as well be a human. My parents ended up having to sneak me into an underground hospital in the Empire. Nobody else would have treated me." The longing in his voice was nearly unbearable. Why had I never confronted him on this before? It was all coming out in a rush, an incoherent babble, and not just because he was drunk. This was the secret of Isaak, the story behind his madness. I am the first person he's ever told, and I have an ugly feeling I am the only one he will ever have to tell. There is something so very…doomed about him. He is not meant to be happy.

I want to ask if he has ever drank from someone. It is crude, senseless, stupid, but I want to know. A jealousy is creeping over me and I cannot describe it, cannot even begin to wonder at where it came from or whom it is toward. What does it matter if he ever drank another person's blood? He's still Isaak. I know he's done things no man should do, and I've done those things right alongside him.

"I've never told anyone." He says suddenly. "I never…showed anyone either." He does know me, so well I am almost disturbed at his uncanny ability to see what I am thinking. Am I really so transparent? I don't know how to respond so I say nothing, and after a moment he speaks again. "You can leave now. I can't expect you to still be my room-mate, my…" he trails off.

Friend. He is too arrogant to say it.

Hi right index finger is moving, making that odd scratching movement he makes when he is about to completely break down. I know without knowing how hard it is to suddenly admit to all of this, to suddenly have to confront the misery of your life by making it vocal. When nobody else knows, you can pretend none of it is happening. You can turn a blind eye to it and continue living your artificial life with those around you, no one ever knowing everything you try so desperately to avoid. And now he will never be able to face me normally again, as I am the one who has made it manifest for him. It will either strengthen or destroy our friendship, though I suspect it is the former, regardless of how he feels. I pray it is the former. Because I love Isaak, whether he realizes it or not, whether or not it is the type of love he wants or needs.

"I keep hoping the doctors were wrong." He suddenly whispers. "And I will be able to go home, or at least be accepted as a Methuselah. I feel as if I'm only half of what I should be. I can't ever reach what I am meant to be. I can't keep masquerading as a human either; something's going to break." His smile turns cold, ugly, at this.

"You don't have to be one or the other. It doesn't matter."

"How democratic of you." There is nothing behind his words. "I'm neither. That's what the problem is."

There is nothing I can say to this. There was never anything I could say, not really. And without even realizing it, I stretch my arms out and gently pull Isaak towards me, Isaak who for the first time seems so small, so helpless and insignificant. He doesn't resist; he is already shaking with the tears he refuses to cry. And he collapses fully against me, thin and vulnerable against my chest. I want to protect him, save him, but I know that what is now against him is nothing other than himself. I wait until his breathing steadies before gently touching the back of his head, letting his arm go around my shoulders as he buries his face in my neck.

I knew it was going to happen when I did it. But now as I feel the sharpness of his teeth against my throat, there is a dull moment of panic.

But at the last instant he hesitates.

"Go on." It comes out unbidden but I don't regret it.

He obeys. A rarity. It only proves how badly he wants it, as normally he purposely disobeys anything I ask of him, just to be difficult. Just to be Isaak.

The pain is more than I expected and I gasp out. He does not have real fangs, and this lack makes the process far more painful than is normal. Instead his are only half-formed, useless unless he gnashes his teeth. His canines are sharp, foreign enough that he frightens people when he smiles, but not nearly sharp enough to pierce skin easily. And I can feel his other hand snake up behind my neck, pushing me closer to him, holding me still so I can't pull away. A shudder rips through my body and I close my eyes, fighting back the wave of dizziness I suddenly feel. He is strong, far too strong to be any normal human, and I can feel it in the way he crushes me to him, the way he forces the blood out by grinding his teeth down. I realize dully I can't fight him off now even if I want to, and if he loses control here he is quite capable of killing me. And then there is this bothersome rush of noise pounding in my ears, my heart frantically trying to make amends for this bizarrely passive loss of blood. It irritates me and I almost want to laugh, but instead I find myself focusing on this sensation that is Isaak.

He has a particular scent. It is beautiful, on the verge of intoxicating, and I can smell it even under the layers of musk and cologne he wears. I have never understood it, but I know now that it is his Methuselah blood. He is very nearly a different specie, but his scent alone gives him away. Why did I not realize that before? The predator always need have some allure. Strange, really, that I hold in my arms my own undoing, for that is what he is. I have always known it, right from the start, but I could not, and can not, resist him. He is charming, seductive, unwittingly loyal, and I would do anything for him. I am already. His hand slips down my back now and he pushes himself further onto me. He is surprisingly solid and I find myself longing to touch him as he is now touching me. Somehow it makes perfect sense to not make sense, to just be, and I wonder if now we are somehow attaining that which we have always wanted. I am already wavering between states of consciousness, unsure of whether I want to push him back or succumb completely. It is nothing, nothing like those strange, bizarre rituals we played in from time to time, unsure of what we were doing and not quite caring. This is no obscene mockery of the sacred. This is the sacred.

He knows when it is too much, which is more than I can say for myself, and all too soon he lowers his head and presses his fingers against the wound. He is shaking again, though this time in a nervous manner, and I can't tell if he is blushing or if his face is merely flushed. I myself struggle between embarrassment and an inborn longing I have never known or felt before. We had tasted the blood of one another before, in our pseudo-occultic ceremonies, but never like this. Never from the throat, and he had always been careful to avoid using his fangs, hiding from me the truth he has just now revealed to me. I half wonder now if that is part, if not all, of the reason behind his obsession with said rituals. He wanted that blood, needed it, but knew there was no way of getting it without appealing to the darker side of my nature.

As I sit there, cradling him, something else dawns on me. This scenario is familiar. This is how Isaak's drunken escapades normally ended, with him leaning on me, begging to be held, but I know now he never was drunk. It is as if he knows his cover is blown then, for he reaches out and delicately touches my face. And when I meet his eyes he smiles, my blood still showing on his teeth. "You're going to be wearing high collars for a long time now." I start to laugh but he cuts me off, sitting up fully for a moment to bump his lower jaw against mine. Again I act of my own volition, grabbing the back of his neck and pulling him back to me, and somehow my tongue is in his mouth and his in mine. I am as surprised as he is, especially by the startling heat I feel when he moans in satisfaction. He is flushed and quivering against me, the two of us with our backs to his bed. I see his eyes dart to the side and I know what he is thinking, know he is feeling the same overwhelming heat and desire I suddenly am, and I kiss him again, savoring the taste of my own blood on his teeth.

No. He had never been drunk. He had been simply too afraid to do what he had longed to do unless under such a guise. So much of his life was a guise. I alone know the real Isaak, now shuddering and gasping as I uncover him.

I never knew that I myself was hiding in his masquerade.