Chapter 2: Welcome to the Mile High Club (IN PROGRESS)

One thing should be remembered, before you judge Angela Harkins, is that she never wanted kids. She was going places; she had TALENT. And then she had Joseph. At the tender age of 17, Ice Queen Angela of Sacred Heart Preparatory School for girls was a single mother.

It's not as if she hated children, but she never really wanted them to be hers—they just seemed a bit…dirty. To top it all off, she was now slinking back home after yet another country failed to pan out. So, with this understanding, we should probably have forgiven her for the Prozack and lithium cocktail she served herself while the plane was boarding. Unfortunately, on a transatlantic flight, it also meant that Joseph hadn't been changed or fed, and was, for all intents and purposes, unattended in seat 28B. Suffice to say, the noise alone was enough to make man five rows back pale with apprehension as he observed the belly of his pregnant wife.

That was how one Zero Kiryuu found seat 28A approximately 30 minutes later, when one very flustered flight attendant stopped the plane, which had already begun its track down the runway to admit the silver haired hunter.

To the casual observer, Zero's face expressed only mild irritation at the noise. The past year had been nothing f not a test of his ability to control his emotions. However, there was very real panic beginning to come over him. A sharp pang of bloodlust swept over him as he saw the child—the caterwauling fading to white noise amidst the rush of blood in veins; veins under such thin skin, and such a small, delicate heartbeat. A voice that was not his, no, it couldn't be his, shrieked in delight at the easy prey.

Prey. Wasn't that what he accused Kuran of treating the Day Class like?

Zero's hand moved to clutch his chest as if to physically repel the dark red fire burning through him. Calm, steady breaths. He could do this.

"Ma'am, can I switch to a different seat? This is really—"

"Monsieur Kiryuu," the stewardess grated the name out, so each syllable became a cacophony of scorn andbarely suppressed rage. "I cannot do zat. It eez a full airplane. I must ask you to please sit down and allow us to take off."

"Oh yeah? And what about that seat just three rows back?" Screw politeness. Zero had a flash of morbid curiosity at the reactions that would greet a more blunt observation, such as "Unless you want this plane to turn into a blood bath, you will move me away from the goddamn human hors d'oevres." The thought made him smile grimly, and the sheen of perspiration on the stewardess's face kicked up a notch.

Still, she stood firm. "I'm sorry sir, I really can't. Zis seat belongs to anozer passeng—"

"Who's thirty minutes late?"

She just gave him a look, and Kiryuu at least had the grace to look a bit embarrassed at the hypocrisy. But only for a minute.

"Who the heck could be that important?" Zero was fuming—he hated arrogant jerks who were just so damn superior about everything. A voice that was rather alarmingly similar to the Headmaster suddenly reminded him that it wasn't necessarily Kuran he was dealing with—it could be some inspirational world leader, or a famous artist, or it could be

"Kaname Kuran."

Fuck.

& m & e & a & n & w & h & i & l & e &

If Kaname had been a little more alert, he may have sensed the temperamental hunter before his custom made Peugeot even rolled onto the tarmac. Despite his caffeine deprived state, however, there was no way anyone could have missed the silver haired boy trying to leap out of the emergency exit of the plane.

Well, at least it'll be an interesting flight.

"Let go of me! You don't understand! I'll just get a new plane ticket; I can't be on this flight!" Zero thrashed against the three flight attendants currently holding him back from the emergency exit door he had opened.

"Sir, SIT THE FUCK DOWN. We can't let you get off now, it's a security breach." The flight attendant to his left ground out.

Zero cursed Yagari for making him promise not to get himself on the No Fly List. It was the only thing preventing him from detonating one of his more flashy weapons and escaping.

"My, Kiryuu-kun. You really should consider trying to be a bit more helpful. After all, such behavior is so indicative of a lower class, no?"

Lilac eyes widened as Kaname unveiled his presence behind the hunter.

The pureblood allowed himself a smirk as a silver head whipped up so quickly that it seemed to cause even the ex-human a moment of pain. The hunter was so predictable at moments like this that Kaname suddenly felt a wave of nostalgia for their school days. Hadn't he played Kiryuu just like this, with the rude brat hissing at him every step of the way?

The feeling lasted until he got a good look at the younger (and still shorter, he noted) vampire. The past year had seemed almost like a dream for Kaname, but it seemed that it had been anything but unreal for the hunter. There was a line of tension around his mouth and eyes that should not have been there for decades, and his eyes…

The lurking madness sent a pang through Kaname unlike anything he had ever felt before. Even when Zero had been forced into feeding off Yuki, his pale lavender irises held fire, challenge, and while Kaname originally thought nothing irritated him so much as the blatant disrespect that Zero showed him, he found himself far more discomfited by the dead, cloudy glaze that he now saw.

It reminded him of his own reflection, in a past lifetime, centuries and centuries ago.

Suddenly a soft voice, too quiet for the humans to hear reached his ear.

" Switch seats with me Kuran."

Despite knowing the hazards of showing his emotions on his face, Kaname couldn't help freezing for a moment from the shock. This tone was incomprehensibly reverential coming from Kiryuu. He nodded in consent automatically.

As he sat down amidst the protests of the flight attendants, he could not help flashing back to the desperation he had seen in Kiryu, and his own instinctive response to try to make it better. He had no illusions about how Kiryuu felt about him, so why did he consent so readily to his request? It had simply seemed so natural, so instinctive, to help out the younger boy.

Releasing a bit of his aura, Kaname quieted the wailing child. The newfound silence did nothing to prevent him from flashing back to Zero's smile of relief, and the warmth that it filled him with.

&l&a&t&e&r&

Zero could feel Kaname despite the distance between them, and it was driving him crazy. It was as if every beat of the pureblood ever-living heart mocked Zero with flashbacks of the time he took Kaname's blood.

Blood was everywhere. It was rushing down his throat, too pure and too hot to linger on his tongue. It ran on, slippery, sloppily through his body, burning him from the inside even as his skin overheated from the minimal contact it had with the pureblood. It was bliss, and for once, Zero felt at peace.

Zero snapped out of his reverie with the mortifying revelation that both his fangs and something else far more embarrassing had been stimulated by the memory. He cursed and stood up to the bathroom, unaware of another pair of eyes on him.

Kaname didn't mean to watch Zero like a hawk—it just happened that his senses registered the sudden spike in bloodlust, and as he turned backwards to observe the source of the disturbance, he spotted blood red eyes, and a flush that threatened to match on Zero's face. His sense fell into hyper alert as Zero stalked past him on his way to the bathroom, and he saw a young boy ahead of the ex-human.

His eyes widened as he realized the danger that Zero was putting everyone in. Moving with vampire speed, Kaname flew from his seat, grabbing the hunter and dragging him into the lavatory. Grimly, he set himself between the door and Kiryuu. They would have this out, even if he had to kill the owner of half of Yuki's heart.

Zero's instincts went into overdrive the minute Kaname grabbed his wrist.

....

This really isn't the finished product, but I needed to just post something and fuggedaboudit for a bit. Hope you enjoy. Expect about 7,000 words of stuff by Christmas, but I'm in finals right now, and thus it all depends on my ability to procrastinate. Thank you to everyone who reads and puts up with my mania.

Sorry, sorry, sorry about the delays in updating!!! This story had NOT been abandoned, I'm just being slow since I decided to rewrite the plot and have now scrapped all previous notes.