Sometimes, when his patience snapped, the idiot wasn't the only one to suffer.

The twins had been rather unhelpful when it came to information on the proper care and feeding of a newly created vampire. Purebloods themselves without any practical experience of a single-Prey vampire, they merely told him that the blonde would know when he was hungry and would act accordingly.

But that was exactly what Kurogane was afraid of.

He could accept that fledgling vampires weren't the same as newborns; hungry from the moment of birth. He also theorized that his Predator wouldn't need blood in the same amounts and frequency as he had regular food and drink; otherwise Kurogane was looking at a very short career as Prey. But he didn't know what to look for in terms of signs of hunger, and the vampire was not exactly receptive to his overtures any longer. (Had he ever been?) Kurogane had presumed, and was being punished for it. He understood, and respected the decision and distance though he also hated it with every fiber of his being.

It was a bitter, biting thing to get exactly what he'd so often wished for and find that it was not for his happiness after all. The exact opposite, in fact. The wizard was in a serious frame of mind, respected his personal space and called him by his full name...and Kurogane hated it. He supposed it was an improvement over the laughing pretense that nothing was wrong, but he still found himself missing the bright laughs - there had been some real ones in there, he knew it - and the cheerful, expectant cries of his mangled name.

Wishes were dangerous things. He'd wished the wizard would stop calling him those idiotic nicknames and now would have given much to just hear "Kuro-sama" one more time. He'd wished for the blonde to live so that his hopes for the future - their future - need not die on that stone table and look what it had gotten him. He'd wished to go home. He hadn't known what the journey to get there would be like.

Two weeks after they landed in Infinity, one hour after their first official match, Kurogane snapped. The blonde had been cooly insistent all this time that he wasn't yet hungry, but a shallow cut on Kurogane's left arm had made the wizard's remaining eye flare golden in an instant, and the battle hadn't allowed the man to hide it. There was no opportunity to fake a nap, bury his nose in a book, or even just studiously keep his back turned to the ninja for a while. The fight was over within minutes but Kurogane stuck close to the vampire all the way back to their apartment, even keeping the vampire on his left, near the wound, to press the point and keep that golden eye in view.

He hounded and herded the vampire about the apartment and when the blonde would have escaped into his bedroom Kurogane even followed him in there, bluntly stating that they needed to talk. Or rather, that Kurogane needed to say something and the other was going to listen, like it or not. Probably not.

"Drink," he ordered, and Fai reacted predictably. If the ninja had accused him of thirsting, he might have lied, but he was cornered now in more ways than one and reduced - worn down - to honesty.

"No."

Kurogane growled at him for a stubborn idiot and in a flash of silver, a blade he'd snuck from the kitchen was in his palm. Anyone else would have backed away from what looked like a threat to maim or murder, but the blonde knew and lunged for him with a repetition of his denial, but in a far more panicked tone.

Too late, for all his speed and agility. Kurogane laid his wrist open before Fai could stop him, and the vampire hissed as the coppery-sweet smell of blood hit him. It hit him physically as well; the blood spraying out and flying from the edge of the blade as it flew across the room, the blonde wrenching it out of Kurogane's hand and Kurogane letting him, and the drops spattered and bloomed across the pale skin of the vampire's face and neck like roses.

One fat drop hit high on the lips and then trailed down into the darkness of Fai's open mouth. A soft, hurt, lost-hungry-wanting cry slithered out from between glistening fangs and then the vampire was on him, grabbing him by wrist and shirtfront and slamming him up against the wall hard enough to send books tumbling off a shelf and a small mirror crashing to the floor to shatter into pieces.

Letting the soul escape, Kurogane thought randomly as he tried to get his footing, a superstition from his childhood flitting across his mind as he watched the sparkling shards dance over the floor. Everything that didn't have to do with the vampire seemed a little bit far away; he heard as if across a great distance the bun's voice raised in an anxious query but it was followed by the kid's, and thankfully no one opened up the door to see if everything was all right. Nothing was all right. He could feel his own heart thudding in his chest and his pulse against the blonde's greedy lips and could almost imagine that he felt it thrumming through his Predator's body as well. The vampire drew hungrily at his wrist, worrying at the shallow cut with tooth and tongue, inelegant and crude now in his near-starvation.

It lasted a minute or two before the mouth at his wrist was only passively letting blood flow into it, and after a breath Fai suddenly swept his tongue wetly across the wound and pulled away. Kurogane cut his eyes from that bowed head to his wrist and quirked an eyebrow at seeing the wound already half-sealed, only weeping slightly. From all the gnawing he'd been suffering he'd almost expected to see a gushing, ragged tear. That red-tinged tongue darted out again to give the injury a couple more licks, and he watched in strange fascination as his skin healed itself, slowly but far faster than it ought to have, taking seconds instead of hours to form a fresh scab.

The vampire rose to his feet, neither graceful nor clumsy, rather wavering up like a wisp of smoke or some other insubstantial, ephemeral thing. Kurogane grabbed him, half to convince himself that the wizard was still there and half to keep him from running. He'd force-fed him; now he wanted to talk this thing out. Contact had been re-established, and not the accidental brushes of living together in a small space or the necessary bumps of battle, and he felt that if he could just hold on to this person for a few more minutes, they could bridge that distance between them.

The blonde allowed himself to be dragged in close and even took a heart-stopping half-step closer so that there was hardly a finger's breadth between them. Thoughts of talking fell to the floor and shattered like the mirror. Kurogane leaned away from the wall and bent his head, bringing his hands up to tangle in that blonde hair, exulting within himself over the way the other man reached up to cling to him that the blonde should be allowing this, chasing after it himself, finally admitting what it was that lay between them instead of denying and fighting and fleeing.

"I want more," Fai whispered, and at almost the same instant Kurogane thought to himself, so do I and also saw his mistake in that ferocious golden glittering eye that was suddenly lifted up to him. The vampire surged upward and instead of connecting their lips, sank his teeth hard into the ninja's neck. Kurogane jerked back despite himself but his Predator only followed along, fangs hooked into tense flesh and lean arms locked around the taller's shoulders.

The blonde's lips were hot against his skin, their bodies were locked together, arms and legs and fingers tangling and teeth, and it was what he'd wanted and exactly the opposite. He couldn't pry the suddenly-stronger man off and the last thing he remembered before blacking out was Fai telling him that he hated him, over and over, like a ward to keep away the darkness.