Warnings for angst and bloodplay. Written for clampkink.
Summary: In Infinity, the only constant that burns is the scar tissue on Kurogane's back.
blood red burns
Infinity is black and white and cold like ice shards, cold like the yawning chasm between a family split four ways. Infinity is full of glinting camera eyes and steel collars and smiling knives, hard like the lines separating white tile from black.
Infinity is where they share an apartment and no one speaks to one another. Kurogane shares his booze with the new Syaoran; Fai locks himself up with Sakura, and the silence coming from their room is unnerving.
No one really realizes how noisy they were, how warm, until it dissipates like a foggy winter breath in the breeze. Fai is the coldest of them all. If it weren't for the fact that he still has a life force, albeit a different one because he's no longer really living—Fai is dead in more ways than one—Kurogane would have thought that there's only three of them in the apartment, plus Mokona.
In Infinity, the only constant that burns is the scar tissue on Kurogane's back.
He's looked at it in different mirrors. Through the worlds, the splotches of red are angry and alive, like fire. If the tattoo on Fai's back is a phoenix, then the markings on Kurogane's are the fire that the phoenix is missing. It's bitter irony, that the two of them have markings on their backs now. Wide, consuming markings, red and black.
Kurogane wonders if anything would happen if they were to press their backs together. Nothing, probably, but the thought of skin contact is a comforting one. He hasn't touched Fai since the world with burning rain, can only imagine that Fai is hungry, that he's starving and still waiting to die.
The thought sends an old, familiar heat back through his gut. Kurogane slams his glass of liquor down on the table, ignores the way Syaoran tenses next to him. The glass hasn't shattered yet. Maybe it will if he crushes it hard enough. Maybe he'll bleed, and the damn vampire will come out to finally feed. Fai has refused to feed multiple times, now.
Silence stretches out in the living room (funny name, that) and Kurogane can sense the princess moving towards the door even before she opens it. When she exits from the room, her head is bowed; she doesn't look at any of them.
She infuriates him, just like Fai. He's still raging at the other Syaoran, the one who ripped Fai's eye out, but there's nowhere to leash his anger. Kurogane watches as Sakura slips into the bathroom and locks the door behind herself.
He rises from the couch, glass abandoned, doesn't acknowledge the look that Syaoran throws him. He stalks over to the bedroom door that the princess has left ajar, pushes it open, steps in.
Fai's sitting in a chair next to the bed further from the door, the arch of his back sleek, smooth. He has to know that Kurogane is here. Kurogane is his prey, if nothing, and he should know. Kurogane's read up some on vampires by this point.
The line of Fai's shoulder tightens when Kurogane locks the door. He knows.
Kurogane doesn't care. He stalks over to Fai, watches the way Fai's remaining eye flicks towards his feet. His clothes fit him very well, even if black was never the idiot's color. It looks sinister on him.
He realizes that he doesn't have any idea why he's come in here. All he knows is that it's because Fai is here, and Kurogane is tired of all this. He wants something. Skin contact. Some words. He wants to hear Fai talk. He wants those stupid nicknames back.
He stops next to the chair, close enough that Fai could reach out and claw him to shreds if he wants to.
Fai doesn't. Fai sits and avoids looking at him.
Kurogane snaps suddenly, reaches out to grab Fai's arm, and Fai jerks towards him, limp like a doll.
"Stop this," he says. "This doesn't change anything. You're still alive. Deal with it."
Fai's laugh is low and raw, and his eye is hidden by the fall of dull golden hair. "Is that all you've come in to say, Kurogane?"
His stomach twists. It hurts more than he wants to admit. Fai is barely warm through the thin sleeve of his shirt, and Kurogane's chest is tight with everything. He loves this man. He wants this to stop. He's glad that Fai's alive, but not like this. "Damn you," he hisses.
"I should say the same to you." Fai pushes to his feet. When he looks at Kurogane, his eye is carefully blank. Cold.
Kurogane is burning. He tugs Fai in close and he's shoving his fingers into Fai's hair and tugging his face up, mashing their lips together. Fai is cold. He doesn't feel alive. Kurogane's breath catches; he wonders if there's a way this can be reversed. The witch has said that a dead person cannot be brought back to life. Flesh isn't supposed to be this cold.
Fai stiffens. There is the quiet, slow hiss of nails extending, and Kurogane shoves him away before Fai can swipe out with his claws, every single one of those glinting nails lethal. "Are you trying to prove something?" he asks, all pretense of a lilt left in the dust a long time ago.
"If I am?" he retorts. Kurogane uses anger as a shield. Fai has hidden from him, and Kurogane can do the same. He doesn't actually have anything to prove. He just wants, and it's a hunger that cannot be satiated. It aches.
"Is this what you want, then?" Fai laughs again, and he's in front of Kurogane faster than he can react. This speed makes Kurogane uneasy, but he doesn't have time to think more than that, because Fai flings him roughly backwards onto the bed, calves hitting thick metal frame. His head bounces off a pillow. "Do you need to fuck?"
He doesn't have an answer to that. He wants to, but not like this. Not when there's nothing in Fai's eyes as he pushes his claws out once more, slicing through Kurogane's shirt and pants. His clothes are shreds in moments and Kurogane's focused on the dip of the mattress, the solid weight of Fai as he straddles his hips easily.
He knows that weight, has felt it tens of times before, through the worlds, and it should be welcome but all Kurogane can think about is the coldness in Fai's eyes (and inside, a deep, piercing pain). He gulps. He wants to make things right, somehow. He doesn't know if he can.
Kurogane reaches out, grabs Fai by the collar and pulls him down, kisses him again.
There's nothing in this kiss but wet lips and claws, and Kurogane growls when he cups Fai's face and growls, "Look at me."
Fai doesn't look at him. (Fai has never looked at him when they do this.)
He shakes the idiot, brings his face close so Fai tenses. Kurogane bites hard on his own lip. Skin breaks. Copper wells thick on his tongue; Fai's eye pales into a rich, vivid gold, pupil elongating.
"You can't do this to me," he breathes. The edges of his voice blur, inhuman, and Fai's looking at him now, anger flashing across his face, tempered by a deep hunger. His gaze drops to Kurogane's mouth.
The next kiss isn't exactly one. Fai is shoving him onto the bed and sucking on his lip ravenously, groaning low in his throat. Kurogane lets him. Kurogane bears it when Fai's claws extend and prick into his chest, scratching thin lines of heat across his skin.
The scent overwhelms Fai—he's tensing and whimpering and licking at Kurogane's mouth, and shoving his shirt aside, tongue flicking along wet, red lines. He looks like a cat, lapping like that. It's strange how that hasn't disappeared from him, even with the vampirism. Kurogane tucks the observation away.
Fai scratches and licks all the way down his torso, canine grazing his nipple. Kurogane swallows. He wants this, he realizes suddenly. This is another facet of Fai, one that will not forgive him, but it is still Fai and he's discovering now that he will love the idiot in all the ways he presents himself.
He's the worst idiot, falling in love with an idiot like this.
Fai trails his red scratches all the way down his torso, ripping his pants apart. Kurogane is half-hard and Fai doesn't attempt any cutting words, not when his eye is yellow and he's watching as Kurogane's cock fills up with blood.
It's not the best idea, really, but if it gets Fai to feed—
He watches as Fai struggles to hold himself back, somehow. His eye flickers; his tongue is blood-red and licking at his lip, and Kurogane groans when Fai licks over him, growing harder and fuller yet.
When he's painfully hard and Fai's still only licking at him, Kurogane curls his fingers into fists, wanting to say something. He's afraid of shattering the moment, when it's something this hard to come by, so he bites his tongue, waits until Fai gingerly scrapes over him with a sharp, sharp canine.
There's a bit of pain, not enough to really hurt, and Kurogane groans when Fai takes him into his mouth, sucking hard, tongue flicking across the cut. He pushes deeper into Fai's mouth, needing more, thinking he should stop this and offer Fai his neck instead because there's more blood there. (Fai isn't ripping him to pieces. There's some part of him that still cares.)
Fai sucks and sucks until Kurogane comes, though he pulls away then, turns around and abruptly walks off. Kurogane is left panting on the bed, spilling all over red scratch marks, watching Fai's back as he unlocks the door and walks out, cold once more.
It's a bit of an improvement from the silence. Kurogane isn't fool enough to think this might happen again, but at least Fai has fed some, and there's still a bit of himself left in that shell. He's still alive.
Kurogane is grateful for that.
