Warnings: Incest. AU. Not your typical vampires.
(Edited by Kyarei.)
O
"She's coming again."
Through split jalousie parallels, Sasuke watched the clumsy figure of a dark-haired woman crossing their humble yard with gasping steps, trying not to drop the heavy pile of five thick books, that her thin arms could barely support, on the ground.
"Predictably."
In the same division his brother had just took a bottle of almost frozen water out of the fridge to serve himself a glass, meanwhile wondering if the thermostat wasn't broken. It wouldn't be a bad idea to buy a new fridge though, now with these new environment-friendly and money saving offers.
"Here it comes." Sasuke grunted, still observing through the window. He still didn't like her, not the slightest bit. "Three…two…"
And within the next couple of seconds three hard knocks that threatened the kitchen door's joints made Itachi put down his glass to let the self-proclaimed guest in, all breathless, tousled and charming as usual.
"You'll never guess what I've just found out!" She practically screamed as her books fell soundly on the IKEA pine-colored kitchen table, that matched the four pine-colored ergonomic stools and the living room floor tiles.
"Breathe, please. May I offer you a glass of freezing water?" Itachi said, with his stamped social-labeled gentle smile. Sasuke rolled his eyes back to the inside of his skull.
"Yeah, I'll accept one, thanks!"
While Shizune, the weekly (sometimes daily) intruder, drank hungrily from the offered glass, coughing here and so when she choked, Sasuke came to sit on one stool, fashionably moody as ever. He picked up one of the books and lazily opened it, only to scan through the pages uncaringly. He couldn't tell which language the text was written, but he kept turning around the pages hoping to find some pictures.
"Canines! The answer is in the canines!"
Sasuke's grimace before Shizune's shout went unnoticeable, yet he was used to being ignored when that woman was in their house.
"Hasn't it always been in the canines?" Itachi remarked, mockingly, with a polite smile.
As Shizune was still killing her thirst and controlling her natural born enthusiasm, the older brother had decided to walk to the counter and pull a knife out of the drawer. He resumed to slicing the vegetables to be used in their dinner, with clean cuts graced by his natural perfectionism.
Shizune swallowed the last bit of water, apparently not bothered with the unpleasant temperature of the liquid; then she put down the glass on the table in her typical ungraceful manner. Her brown eyes turned to the books she brought, spread in disorder all over the table, and she meticulously scanned over the covers as if looking for a specific one. The desired book was rapidly found at the hands of the younger Uchiha, and she skirted around the table to snatch it from him. Sasuke glared at her and suppressed a growl, but he was surprised when he saw her removing a small quadrangular X-Ray film out of the last pages of the book.
Itachi stopped chopping the carrot to look at the picture Shizune was holding, while her other hand was searching for something inside her jeans pockets. From where he was sitting, Sasuke could see that the transparent sheet was plainly an X-Ray scan of someone's dental structure, though nothing special at first sight.
"See the size of these roots?" Shizune had drawn a magnifying glass from her jeans' pocket, amplifying around the area that she wanted Itachi to see.
"They're not roots," she answered. Itachi took a step closer, noticing that the X-rayed canines had really big 'roots', compared to the rest of the teeth. "They're the prolongation of the canine. See this grey area, above the canines and these molars? It's a bundle of nerves inside the jaw structure, it forces the teeth down when he's hungry. See? They hide the real length of their canines inside the gum!"
She was super excited, that's for sure. Sasuke could almost see her missing molar in her wide grin.
Frowning, Itachi grabbed the film to analyze closely the fake roots. On the other side of the table Sasuke sighed boringly. He had been more attentive to the fact that Itachi was really close to her neck.
"Where did you get this?"
"Oh, you won't believe that! A friend of mine discovered that during an autopsy of a nameless dead guy she received. Guess what, the feds came in the next time to reclaim the body and any evidence collected. But she managed to mail me that before they came. It's a fact now, Itachi."
Her grin widened. Her missing molar was still missing.
"What?" Itachi asked nonchalantly.
"The Roswell's incident was not about extraterrestrials, but about vampires! The CIA is not just only hiding their existence, they're forging evidences to keep people away from the truth. And you know what? I bet they have vampires captured in their base for experiments. That's why vampires don't come out either, they're afraid to get caught- It makes total sense, they erase their evidences…"
Shizune always talked of three things at the same time. Young girl in her late twenties, master degree in IT, she discovered her reason to live when she mistakenly hacked into the personal computer of a CIA member, and found much more than she bargained for. Curiosity quickly turned into obsession, and now it was fair to state that she will not die in peace until she meets a real vampire.
She met Itachi and Sasuke right on the first day they moved into that little town, in the middle of nowhere, with a humble count of 1.100 of population. And even if Itachi was 7 years considerably younger than her, his refined nature and striking appearance only stimulated her growing attraction towards the older Uchiha. That, together with the boring fate forced on her in that no one's town, plus her secret fascination about vampires, made her irresolutely slipping out CIA's top secret information to him in one coffee morning. And what a surprise, Itachi didn't call her a lunatic. More surprising even was when he invited her to his home to hear about her findings on the subject, and of course, she couldn't be happier to delight this charming man with everything she knew.
It vaguely crossed her mind that Itachi could be from CIA, but she quickly dismissed that option (had it been true, she was already dead, right?). No, Itachi just shared her interest on vampires – he believed in them, and that's what it counts. The same couldn't be said about his younger brother, who not only didn't share their enthusiasm, but also didn't like her, obviously.
"See these tiny lines in the canines? They're vessels, and they're connected to the grey mass. I think it's to pass a secreted chemical to mobilize the victims when they attack."
Itachi focused his vision through the magnifying lens, trying to find the lines the girl was speaking of. "A secreted chemical?" He repeated.
"A harmless poison, maybe? Some animal species have that too – when they bite, they segregate a chemical to calm down the prey, so they can eat it, slowly."
Shizune could hardly contain the euphoria of her new findings, and Itachi found himself unable to conceal an amused laugh. Then she halted, feeling her cheeks burning with that little tickling in her stomach and all the things a girl feels when a beautiful man smiles like that.
"Wow, you have pointy canines!" She exclaimed, and quickly wished she hadn't said something so idiotic.
So what, it wasn't like she was familiarized with the rules of attraction. And the fact that she was able to say the most stupid remarks in the most special occasions, could be also seen as a quality. At least she hoped so.
"Perhaps I'm a vampire." He said, jokingly, and she laughed.
What was this feeling? They were so close now, he was smiling. It felt like they were closer-
Splash! – of course the sound of a broken glass in the floor had to ruin the moment.
"Sorry."
Sasuke abandoned his seat to cross through the kitchen and pick the broom and the shovel. Two pair of eyes followed the young boy's movements, and an awkward silence rapidly installed in the kitchen. Sasuke cleaned the shattered pieces of glasses quickly and wordlessly, while next to Itachi Shizune was feeling somewhat guilty for angering the younger Uchiha, even though she really didn't know why he acted like that.
"Be careful not to cut yourself." Itachi warned.
"Hfm…" Murmuring, Sasuke dropped the glass fragments in the shovel into the garbage can, while his older brother watched his every movement with meticulous attention.
Sasuke was a really strange kid, Shizune thought. Seventeen and already owner of the town's young adolescents' broken hearts, he seemed to prefer the solitary company of his brother than chasing after short skirts like a healthy teenager. The amount of time he spent locked in their recondite house left Shizune to conclude that the kid had an unnatural clinginess to his older brother. She had good eye: that flick in his eyes whenever she tried to close the space between her and Itachi, was jealousy. What was that called..? oh yes, 'brother complex'.
Lots of hours she wasted with her lonely thoughts, wondering the story behind those two – wondering what created that tight bond between them. Wondering what made those boys move into that town, so far away from the world-
"Shizune."
Itachi's deep voice called her back to the kitchen, where Sasuke was again sitting in the stool skimming through her books, and the floor was freed from pointy glass.
"Oh, sorry. What?"
"I asked you about the blood."
Perhaps she should ask Sasuke for forgiveness, for not being able to prevent herself from being so drawn to Itachi when he looked at her like that. Everything about the older Uchiha was just an attractive mystery, and sometimes, her vampires' obsession led her to other fantasies…
"What about the blood?"
"You told me, yesterday morning at the café, something interesting about the blood."
It's the way he talked to her. To Sasuke. To people. She wasn't one to get hormonal at the sight of any attractive man – God, she was almost thirty and definitely not innocent when it comes to men! – but you see, Itachi talked in such a way… like he was making love with his own voice.
'I want to make love to your voice too.'
Oh please control yourself. She mentally slapped her face.
"Oh yes, I remember! Yeah…" She cleared her throat, and hoped the warmth in her cheeks was just her impression. "I have a theory on why vampires need human blood."
Itachi was ready to listen to her, having his black eyes intensely fixed on her face. It was a rather powerful feeling, to have a man of such caliber so interested in what she had to say.
"It's the antigens in the blood." She continued, sort-of-seductively pulling a hair lock behind her ear. "I think that's what the CIA is studying. Of all vampire-relate cases, there were no Type O victims. I don't think it's a coincidence, you see, Type O blood doesn't have the A and B antigens, and that's what they need, because the antigens have the proteins and carbohydrates they need to survive. It makes sense, you see!"
Then she stopped rambling for a minute, and her face saddened a bit. Her head bowed gently, and her eyes fell on her feet. "Maybe that has something to do with their short life-span…"
"This is bullshit." Sasuke grunted, interrupting the serene flow between the pair.
"Sasuke, go to the grocery." Itachi uttered with a firm voice. "We need vegetables."
Itachi seemed a bit irritated, but it was probably just an impression. Shizune always wondered how Itachi felt about Sasuke's obvious emotional dependency on him, but she figured that it shouldn't be easy, to have a brother that hanged on him all the time. Yet, family comes first no matter what, and she understood that Itachi's priority was Sasuke, not love (much to her disappointment).
"Huh? The fridge is still loaded!"
"The fridge burned the lettuce and the spinach. I have to fix it, meanwhile go buy some more."
The younger eyed the older angrily.
"I'll go later."
"Go now." Itachi hissed.
Sasuke flinched. He hated when his brother glared at him like that. Shrugging nonchalantly, he stood up, scraping the legs of the stool soundly against the floor. With resigned steps he passed through the female intruder with a scowl, heading to grab his jacket near the door.
"Oh, is that a hickey?" She commented before a reddened mark on Sasuke's pale neck. "Wow, who's the lucky girl, Sasuke?"
"Shut up." He grunted, and banged the door soundly after him.
O
Winter's grey sky and whispering naked branches couldn't even match his mood, but kept him company during the lonely walk to the only grocery shop of the town. The path to the grocery shop was deserted, as it was usual, leaving him enough room for his thoughts and his inner demons.
His brother's actions unnerved him sometimes, like, this sudden interest in Shizune. What could a hysterical woman possibly have so interestingly new to say about what they already knew? Low life span? It was just her theory! She made these stupid assumptions about vampires when she didn't have the slightest clue of what she was talking about!
-Of what they had to go through in the past.
Their parents shouldn't have died. It wasn't their fault. It wasn't Itachi's fault. But they didn't understand, mom and dad didn't realize what it would be like to be separated from Itachi-
-damn-
Itachi didn't know, but he still mourned their deaths. The sky looked unhappy too – should he have brought an umbrella? Itachi said it wouldn't be raining that day. He's usually right about meteorology and trivial things like that.
And he may be right about that town, but Sasuke still hated it.
Like the grocery shop. Owned by one hypocritically nice old hag that loved to turn guiltless gossips into overly exaggerated mindfuck stories, only because that stupid town didn't have decent antennas to transmit enough soap operas to entertain her rotten brain.
"Good day young prince! Have you found already a worthy princess in this humble town of your liking?" She says, with her usual charming grin of three rotten teeth, four missing, one golden tooth and the remaining ones in different shades of yellow.
Instinctively Sasuke rubbed the mark on his neck, mentally cursing Itachi for being such an animal sometimes. Unfortunately, the unforgiving old hag's eyes caught the red mark too, and the next day that stupid town will be granted with a new sensationalist rumor about the younger Uchiha's apparently existent romantic activity.
Her shop was poor in variety, which also seemed to be the common trait of that town. Quickly he picked a nice-looking aqua green lettuce and some nice-looking dark green spinach, paid in loosened coins and exited the shop before she decided to talk about the sixth grand-daughter of the town's butcher, which would be a better choice over the banker's popular daughter, that, according to her rotten brain, was not a virgin.
As he began to walk back the path to his house, he wondered if Shizune was still infecting Itachi's mind with her crazy theories about vampires. And he allowed himself to clench his teeth and tighten the grip on the plastic bag, while the wind spit particles of dust in his face.
-the wooden bench, in the middle of the naked trees, there at his left – looked somehow inviting-
It's not that he hated this town, really. It was okay, considering the options they had. The cultural retardation and the century of delay in relation to modern civilization were very frustrating indeed, but he figured he could get used to it. Of course it was still depressing when the local video club only had beta tapes, and cable TV – was a myth. Heck, the most modern thing existing in that town was probably the IKEA kitchen table in their house, a note that the previous owners were rather avant-garde people. Probably that's why they left.
He let his body fall on the bench, taking a secret delight on the rustling sounds of a nature that waits for the ending of the day.
So what, he was selfish. Spoiled. He knew that. He liked comfort. He missed his life in Tokyo. And it's not that he didn't have other options. They were given to him once, other options.
But the other options didn't include Itachi. If there was one thing Sasuke came to realize, was that he was more dependent on his older brother than Itachi was ever on him.
That scares him also. What if something happens to Itachi? Or…what if Itachi leaves him? What if Itachi gets bored of their monotony, and wants to enjoy the life that he had always deserved?
Sasuke would have no right to stop him, if that were to happen. Not that Sasuke would ever let him go; if Itachi left him, he would follow him. Perhaps sensibility and respect for other's wishes was something his parents simply forgot to teach him.
As they forgot to teach him how one survives if he lost the only thing he's dependent on. Because, there was no life without Itachi. No cable TVs, king-sized beds, Wireless, loving family, videogames, could ever replace a day without Itachi.
He realized that long time ago, when their parents were still alive.
O
"He still hates me."
Shizune sighed, staring at the recently banged door.
"He hates everybody." Itachi smiled, in a somehow attempt to comfort her worries. "Please, continue. Your findings on this subject amuse me sincerely."
"Ooh…thanks.." She knew she was blushing now, but since the day was announcing the nightfall, she hoped the dissipating light didn't reveal her obvious crush stamped on her burning cheeks. "Where was I?"
"Vampires' life span. Please elucidate me, where would you find this information?"
Itachi had his arms crossed over his chest, and for the first time, Shizune noticed how pale he really was. His skin was a perfect contrast to the black wool, high collar sweater, that seized his elegant torso perfectly. The pastel thin lips, straight nose and sharp black eyes were enough to make women turn their heads, but what Shizune found more attractive on him was really, his smooth-looking pale skin.
And his long hair. Beautiful long black hair and pale skin, he was almost like her dreamy vampire-
"Well, I hacked into the CIA's…" She cleared her throat, again, trying to prevent herself to be swallow by her fantasy and drool in front of him. "…didn't I tell you I had to move to here? This town is the perfect refuge. I think everybody here is a refugee or a son of a refugee. That reminds me, you still didn't tell me why you two moved here!"
He smirked. "Perhaps another time. But, you were talking about the life span…"
"Oh sorry, I rambled away. I do that a lot, ha ha. But yeah, the CIA has data reports of vampires around the world, at least the ones they could track. I don't know how they track them. Unfortunately, I only managed to get my hands on four of them, all died at early thirties, due to heart failure. It's kind of sad. I don't know why that happens."
"I see…"
It was as if Itachi imposed the silence now, as he gazed pensively at the half sliced carrot on the kitchen counter. Wordlessly, he turned on his heels and reached for the kitchen knife, resuming the slicing activity, and Shizune took a moment to sit down and think of a good way to re-open the conversation.
"I think it's the way Nature found to maintain the balance of the species." She began, after a couple of uncomfortable minutes. Itachi had finished slicing the carrot, and had now moved to the onion. "Predators in nature are attributed a lot of limitations to keep the equilibrium of the eco-system. Imagine if vampires were immortal and could turn anyone into a vampire like the myths say. We would be all vampires now! Right?"
Itachi sighed, and looked at the wall clock. He hoped Sasuke didn't take too long. It seemed that in that town time ran always faster than he perceived, and now it was getting near the dinner hour.
"I suppose."
"Actually, some of the myths about vampires have their reasons. Like, the myth of the immortal vampire is paired with the assumption that vampires are always young and don't age, because people only came in contact with young-looking vampires. They never met old vampires, hence the immortality theory and- ah, well, assuming that people had ever come in touch with vampires."
"Nosferatu was an old-looking vampire, if I recall."
Itachi's voice sounded rather serious, strangely. Shizune forced an optimistic laugh, feeling that the conversion was turning in a somehow depressive way.
"Well, yeah…maybe he found the cure of his condition. That is, if a character like him ever existed. Nosferatu is just a Romanian word for vampire anyway. Don't forget that myths are more about people's fruitful imagination than reality-"
"How do you think vampires are, Shizune?"
He left the sliced vegetables on the counter and came to sit next to her, landing a cotton-clad elbow on the table. She jolted silently, definitely not expecting this sudden closeness from a man that always kept his distance. His knees were touching hers and his eyes never before looked so intimately invasive, swallowing every expression of her face in an almost disturbing manner – she could almost smell his breath.
They had never been so close. So physically close.
Her body was getting hot. The grip on the table's edge tensed. And she hoped that Sasuke took a lot of time in the grocery shop.
"I…well…I think they must be smart…to survive, you know."
She gulped, feeling somewhat uncomfortable with Itachi's penetrating gaze. He kept his stoic features, only to utter "Yes…" incentivizing her to proceed.
"Well…they need blood, but not great amounts of blood. Ugh, unless they're very hungry I guess. Maybe, if they drink a bit each day they don't need to kill people. I guess that an intelligent vampire would probably seduce a prey to be his daily provider…"
"A prey?" Itachi allowed himself a slight smirk, and his eyebrow lifted.
(She loved it when he did that.)
"Yes. Someone innocent, young, full of health..." She was feeling a drop of sweat forming on her temple, and mentally cursed herself for having that hot sweater clad.
Slowly, she began to close the small distance between them. His lips were only a few inches away, and her knee was crawling its way up to his thigh. "Someone…easily infatuated…" An inch away. Their lips were almost touching "…that would do anything to…" Almost…
He stood up abruptly, and her face almost fell on the table.
"Would you try to save him more years of life?" He asked, walking away to the kitchen counter, again.
Still somewhat stupefied and feeling incredibly pathetic, she mumbled one "I guess…" while she adjusted herself on the stool and wondered if she was really foolish enough to try to kiss him.
She looked at him, observing his long fingers bordering a sliced piece of celery, pensively. Was he thinking about what (almost) happened? God, she felt so stupid.
"Don't you think it would be dangerous?" He uttered another question, with his back still facing her. "He could make more victims…"
"Maybe yes, maybe not. But I still want to find out why they die so young." She carefully stood up, and slowly, she walked towards him. She added. "Maybe, if I found the explanation of the heart failures, I could find… a way to prevent it."
He raised his head to eye her, and for the first time, she saw a truly genuine smile in his face.
"You do that."
He was truly beautiful.
Behind the window glass the sky had darkened. Itachi took a quick look outside, before he said "It's getting late, don't you think?"
"Y-yeah, I better get going…"
Shuttering and stumbling on the way, feeling again like a loser, she collected her heavy books from the table, waved a goodbye to the man that made her heart beat out of rhythm and her thoughts assume the most idealistic theories-
And she exited the house.
On her way home, she tried to get some sense of everything strange that happened in that kitchen. Why did Itachi say that he wanted her to find a cure of vampires' heart failures? Was he…you know… a vampire?
'No, he can't be', she thought to herself. He couldn't. She would've already found it by now, right? Itachi was so kind, gentle, sociable. Everybody in the town loved him. She loved him. He couldn't be…
But then again, looks can be deceiving.
O
Sasuke arrived about half an hour after Shizune left, bringing a light sack of lettuce and spinach. He placed the items on the table, and crossed the kitchen to turn on the lights. Through the corner of his eye he saw one kitchen table already set with dinnerware, and in the middle a big plate with a very attractive variety of onigiri. Unable to resist, he picked one, selectively, and graced himself with a mouthful bite.
Onigiri in one hand, he stepped through the division to find his brother waiting for him in the living room, sitting sinisterly in the middle of the sofa, eyeing the empty screen of a turned off television. Shadows flickered on his stoic face, as the incandescent lamp struggled to illuminate the room.
The wind whispered against the window; dancing trees somewhere in the darkness outside came to punctuate the deadly silence in the house.
"It's a seven-minute walk to the grocery shop."
Itachi was using an austere tone in his voice, denoting his palpable discontent. Sasuke recoiled, but optioned not to respond. It's not like he intentionally fell asleep on the bench anyway.
The older Uchiha stood up from the couch in reflected motion, and walked a few –slow, decisive- steps towards Sasuke's stilled figure, until he halted before the teenager with arms crossed against the chest.
"Care to explain why it took you forty nine minutes to buy a couple of vegetables?"
Sasuke diverted his eyes from Itachi's glare, taking interest instead in the flickering lights projected on the TV screen.
"Didn't you want to be alone with Shizune?"
He didn't mean to sound like that, he didn't. It wasn't about his brother; it was about her, and the bullshit and worries she put in his head. He didn't like the attention Itachi gave to her.
Yet Itachi decided to ignore his comment.
"It's dark outside," he had said "and it's past dinner hour. Are you trying to get me worried, Sasuke?"
He darted his eyes to face his brother again, unable to control his defiant self. "What could possibly happen in this town?"
Itachi's glare only thickened and Sasuke felt like withdrawing his childish remark. Coyly, he mumbled one "Fine, sorry..." and collected his hands inside his pockets.
The other sighed, feeling again –oh he felt like that so many times- that it was his fault that things got a little out of balance between them. Until this time he wasn't still sure about the choice of town, as he observed how difficult the experience was being for Sasuke.
"Dinner time." He asserted, and rolled on his heels to walk to the kitchen.
O
They ate the onigiris in silence. Twenty minutes of quiet chewing were plenty enough to make the young Uchiha regret for making his brother worry.
(But it's Itachi's fault too, for making everything feel so ambiguous for him)
After dinner Itachi piled the dishes on the wash-stand and passed by Sasuke towards their shared bedroom, uttering one "Come".
Guilty head down, Sasuke followed him to the room with eyes fixed on the wooden tiles of the floor. He never liked the color of pine wood, though it did match half of furniture of that stupid house. He preferred oak.
Even though they did this so many times, he still didn't get used to it. Itachi made it look easy, but it was hard and painful and Sasuke knew that.
Inside the bedroom, he watched Itachi removing his high collar sweater and the undershirt, leaving the items on the ground while he sat on their shared bed. Nudging to Sasuke, the boy reluctantly stepped forward, unable to remove his stare off his brother's naked torso.
It was sad, seeing it. Itachi's torso was covered with bite marks from the neck to the hips, some scarred, some fresh. Some of them were still purple and swollen even though they had days of age. It seemed that-
"-The bites aren't healing so fast anymore." Sasuke concluded, as he touched the painful marks on the end of Itachi's neck.
He hated this part. Itachi's body was so beautiful, and Sasuke had to abuse it with his ugly condition. 'You have to do it', Itachi always said. 'To survive'. Hurt him, abuse him, to live.
"Don't worry about it. I'll try a new ointment tomorrow."
He smiled in consolation, and Sasuke wondered if his brother really liked to pretend that everything was okay.
Itachi lied down on the bed, and Sasuke crawled onto him, preparing for the daily ritual. Scrutinizing the exposed skin, he searched for a spot that hadn't been bitten recently. Itachi's neck was impossibly full; any more bites and not even high collars could cover that. The arms, the armpits, the stomach and every part that had more blood flux were mercilessly covered too.
The older was feeling a bit uncomfortable with Sasuke's indecision.
"What?"
"I don't want to bite you twice…"
Itachi sighed and lifted his body with an arm, to meet Sasuke's lips. He kissed him softly, whispering "It's okay…"
Sasuke halted the kiss, diverting his eye to whatever was on his left, again. He felt hungry. He wanted blood. He didn't want to hurt Itachi.
Being born with that condition was not the colorful fantasy Shizune liked to paint. It was painful, monstrous, and Sasuke bore the notion that no matter what, his very existence will always hurt his brother. It took years for him to control his urges and schedule the needs in small daily amounts, in order to prevent more victims – and that would be impossible without Itachi.
But the biting itself, it really hurt. Sasuke knew it hurt. Like madly. It's still human canines trying to rip through flesh, muscles, veins. It's slow and ugly, not clean like sharp knives. He could feel by the way Itachi's muscles tensed, and his cardiac rhythm increased, and his teeth clenched fiercely, that it really, really hurt.
(He could almost hear him scream, inside)
And for that, he didn't want to make Itachi go through the pain of being beaten twice, again. The human body doesn't encompass a homogenous distribution of blood; some areas offered too little blood to satiate his being. And Itachi knew how imperative it was for Sasuke to be fed with a minimum blood dose amount, for he still remembered the time when a half-conscious Sasuke attacked his sleeping neck in the middle of the night, drawing so much blood that it almost drained him into a comatose.
Seeing Sasuke's worried expression, Itachi decided to undress his pants, exposing his long pale, unmarked legs to the surprised eyes of his lover.
"I believe near the groin, there is enough blood." And he opened his legs to give him more space.
Unconsciously Sasuke licked his lips, taking in silent delight the arousing image of the naked pale flesh, revealed under the elastic fabric of the tight black boxers. He automatically leaned down, until his nose touched the skin of the inner right tight, and inhaled the mixed scent of his brother's blood and sex pleasantly. He then placed his lips on the warm flesh and moistened the spot with his tongue, hearing a faint moan escaping from Itachi's lips.
His canines were down. With one hand on Itachi's hip, and the other on the leg to prevent it from jerking instinctively, his teeth ripped through the flesh in one act, quickly and skillfully. Throughout the years he perfected the art of biting in slick effort, having no longer to put his brother through unnecessary pain while he tried to tear the muscle in amateur attempts. During the first stages of his condition, Itachi would usually make cuts in his arms to render the process easy, but he soon advised him that cuts took much more time to heal than bites. Itachi said that cutting scars were more noticeable. Incited by his own brother, Sasuke gradually learned how to bite flesh in the less painful way.
It took seven dragged minutes for him to feed: suck the blood, swallow, wait for more blood to fill the dried area, suck it, swallow, wait… Itachi didn't make a sound, remaining still on the bed with the patient of a saint. Even though his hunger wasn't fully satiated, he decided that it should be enough. He could deal with a little hunger. And he suspected that biting near the groin was even more painful than the torso and the neck. Itachi didn't deserve that torture.
He eyed the ugly bruise he left on his brother's tight. How long will it take to heal, he wondered.
"Will it always be like this?" He thought, but he didn't realize, his thoughts were aloud.
"Sasuke…"
Itachi's faint voice, punctuated by a hand gesture of calling, made him crawl over his body and lay beside him, burying his head into the crook of Itachi's neck. Between dissimulated breaths, and the slow beating of his heart reclaiming for the lost blood; there was it again, the last sensation.
Pleasure.
It was something he had never understood why until now. After the dolorous season of Sasuke feeding on him, he would always feel a soothing sensation coupled with an erogenous stir; it was weird and wonderful, but he was aroused. Again.
'Vessels in canines…'
Sleepy, and aroused. His eyelids demanded rest, but he wanted to feel Sasuke's heat on him. Was it the mysterious secreted chemical Shizune was talking about? The 'harmless poison' to control the victims was, in fact, an aphrodisiac solution with a sedative component?
He smiled to himself, amused to know more about Sasuke. Perhaps that was also the reason why scars from biting seemed to heal faster.
Or why he was addicted to it. Sasuke's heat. Sasuke's teeth on him. The sound of his own blood being sucked, eaten away.
The sensation afterwards. It was wonderful.
It was wonderful that Sasuke never left him, and would never abandon him, or trade him for a younger body with thick veins full of pumping blood. It would be more reasonable after all; even Shizune concluded it. Sometimes, as he learned more about Sasuke's condition thanks to Shizune's convenient knowledge, he felt horribly impotent. His veins weren't thick as they used to be. His body was losing the ability of replacing the lost blood fast. He feared that Sasuke would notice it. He feared that Sasuke would stop…
"Come here."
He pulled Sasuke to him, gathered his arm around him and kept him tight against his body, waiting to fall asleep on Sasuke's scent. Was he getting addicted to this sensation?
(-No, he had always been addicted to Sasuke.)
Perhaps like all dangerous addictions, this will be the death of him. Perhaps Fugaku was not entirely wrong, when he screamed that he was being foolish for being so attached to Sasuke, and that the CIA had a good program for Sasuke, and that that it will be the best for the family, and then-
Bang-bang!
And then they were dead, finally. Perhaps the gun fired accidentally, as Sasuke reasoned out. Itachi knew it was no accident, but he also knew that reality facts were what kept Sasuke close to him, even if they were illusionary.
(Because he knew, that he had always needed Sasuke more than he ever needed him.)
It didn't matter though. The day Sasuke's heart stop beating, his shall follow the same fate.
O