"Yeah hi, do you do BDSM?"
Zero swallowed a sigh.
"Yes, it's extra and depends on what specifically you want to do."
"I, er, yeah, I'll get back to you." The guy hung up.
The downsides of advertising; useless calls and abusive texts.
Zero eyed the run down hotel his new John had specified, weighing the probabilities and doing a quick safety assessment. Cheap hotel could mean low funds (not good) or a desire for anonymity (standard) but coupled with the requested kink (also BDSM) leant towards shame which could end up as very not good.
On the other hand, money.
Well, that settled it. Zero switched his phone to silent, marched in, picked up his key from a distinctly unimpressed receptionist and resigned himself to an unpleasant hour or two.
It got bad quickly.
Zero eyed the man as he fumbled with the handcuffs.
"You're new at this." It was not a question, and the other chap's blushes were answer enough.
"Shut the fuck up," he snapped. "I'm not paying you to talk."
"Hey it's alright," Zero soothed automatically, letting the insult roll off his back. "Want me to walk you through the basics?"
He got a backhand to the face for his efforts. Being a vampire, it wasn't too bad for Zero, the worst bit was that he could see it coming, but was too tied up to dodge.
Humiliating to a Hunter, but what wasn't in this life of his?
"Shut the fuck up!" The new guy screamed in his face. Zero blinked, and stayed quiet as he was roughly fondled and then fucked with a few more hits in for good measure.
Irritating, but not dangerous, and the cash was already on the desk, so…
Throughout it all, the only thing Zero could think of was that Kaname would never have reacted like that.
He was so very fucked.
#
"Zero-kun? Oh Zero-kun? Are you awake?"
Groaning against the sunlight, Zero struggled upright, desperately glad he'd gone to bed – a grand total of forty five minutes ago – fully dressed. He might have collapsed face first into the blankets, but at least Mashiro wasn't getting an eyeful.
"You're early," Zero grunted, blearily locating Mashiro who had once again let himself into Zero's apartment.
"Day or night, it's still the end of the month, and you know what that means."
"Does it mean that you're giving me one less night to work from now on?" Zero asked wryly even as he stumbled upright to pull Mashiro's money out of the cupboard he'd stashed it in when he'd staggered inside.
"I don't know what you mean," Mashiro lied as he counted out the notes. "Well well, four-fifty. Well done, Zero."
"Waiting for the night you can kick me out?"
"I just like my money Zero. If you can't pay, someone else will. See you soon – and you should take better care of yourself. You're looking a bit peaky."
Zero glared at the door.
Kaname hadn't visited this month. He'd scraped together that money in dribs and drabs. Peaky was the least of it – and all for thirty more nights grace.
He sighed, and went back to bed.
#
His luck couldn't hold out forever. As much as Zero hated it, there were plenty of Hunters in Tokyo and they were as human as the next guy.
It would help if Zero had known the man was a Hunter before he was balls deep inside of him, but when was fate ever not a bitch?
Good news; if the Hunter was so weak, Zero couldn't recognise him until they were skin to skin then there was no chance the John knew he was fucking a vampire.
And they'd said he wasn't good enough. Fucking hypocrites.
"You don't seem very into this," the John complained, "am I not hitting the spot?"
Bad news: he was the sort of guy that wanted his whores to like it.
"Bit to the left," Zero replied, knowing that would work far better than the traditional 'oh my god, yes yes yes.'
The John grunted and did in fact shift over so Zero moaned a little in encouragement, gripping onto the John's forearms and rocking into it.
It wasn't bad per se, but he couldn't exactly compare to Kaname… and Zero groaned aloud in frustration ignoring how it made his client thrust faster in favour of cursing himself.
Zero had sworn to himself that he'd stop doing that, but nope, his stupid brain just had to go there.
Fucking pureblood.
Once the John was done, he rolled over and went to sleep. Zero stared in disbelief for a full minute before carefully extracting himself.
What sort of flipping idiot would sleep with a stranger in the house? On the other hand – opportunity.
Zero wasn't a thief, but as this John was supposed to be a Hunter…there would be books.
Maybe he could finally get Kaname out of his freaking mind.
#
There were books. Even better, there was a computer fully loaded with access to the Hunter's secret databases and archives – and this colossal idiot had let the computer save his password.
And then Zero just browsed, keeping an ear out for any change in heartbeat that might suggest his host was waking up.
He looked up incident reports, researched the names of active hunters, safe house locations and history.
He didn't like what he found.
#
Zero could admit when he was wrong. He hated doing it, because Kaname, but it would be worse to stay silent in pride. Who knew? If he kept on that way and lived long enough he'd probably end up like the jerks at the Association.
I'm sorry. He texted. I was wrong.