A/N- Man, I wrote this a few months ago and just never posted it. Originally it was going to be a multi-chapter AU, but seeing as I'm no longer in the fandom, it's doubtful. If anyone is interested in adoption, just let me know.
Summary: AU Their relationship started over a mutual agreement in a dank alleyway beside a dead body. Zero just wanted to end his guilt; Kaname strived to stop his pain. Somewhere down the line intentions changed; so did they. ZeroxKaname
Walk the Path Blind
When Zero firsts meets him, he has just entered a squalid alleyway in the ghettos of his newest hunting ground, a slightly smaller-than-average, nondescript town where half the population is in poverty and the wealthy few never bat a lash at their poor existence. It is a selfish town with selfish citizens who are either too vain to be missed, or vagabonds that nobody knows enough to notice their disappearance. He imagined that such a town could sustain him for at least a month before people began to grow fearful enough to actually care about any deaths, and this is why he had chosen to come to such a displeasing eyesore of an industrialized place at all. That, and their had been no scent of any other vampire in the area, meaning no territorial clashes, no side-stepping mines to get sustenance, and a more peaceful sleeping environment free from the fear of waking up surrounded.
The alley is a filthy one sandwiched between a rundown flower shop and an Italian Deli that Zero has yet to see a single person enter, lined with several large dumpsters overflowing with trash. The cloyingly sweet smell of decay permeates through the air despite even the rain, which turns the thick blood on the vampire's lips into a pinkish trickle running down his face and throat. It stains the lapels of his drenched white dress shirt faintly, but the vampire doesn't seem to notice, eyes staring fixatedly on the body of the man lying next to his feet and tongue rounding his lips for any stray drops of blood not yet washed away from them. His eyes are a fierce red, glowing like firelight from the afterglow of his latest meal, swirling in misty circles inside of his irises.
At the sight of the body – a bulking monster of a man, arms tattooed to the point no skin seems free of the ink – neck shred to ribbons, head almost entirely disconnected from the rest of him, Zero takes a startled step back, unsure if the sight makes him horrified, or worse; hungry. His back collides with a trashcan, which clatters to the stained asphalt with a cacophony of sound. So much for sneaking away quietly.
The vampire, hearing the noise, snaps out of whatever trance his feeding had left him in, and slowly, he raises his eyes to those of the other. He looks almost lost to the ex-human, hair stuck to his face in dark ringlets and eyes lightly squinted against the rain. If not for the unmistakable waves of raw power pulsing from his being, Zero may have mistaken him for newly turned.
They stare at each other, standing completely still where they are. Truthfully, Zero doesn't know what to do in this sort of situation. He has been alone for a very long time, and is surprised to be in another vampire's company without the immediate threat of death being tossed at him.
"Hey," Zero says, breaking the stillness. He does not step closer to the other, being sure to keep a polite distance so as to not offend the regal-looking being before him and end up in a fight. In the darkness and the veil of rain his normally silvery hair takes on a muted, gray appearance, but nothing can hide the current iridescent red of his eyes that sets their kind apart. "I'm Zero Kiryuu."
An expecting pause takes place, during which time Zero traces over the face of the other before him. High cheeks bones and a straight nose –the face of an aristocrat if he ever saw one- with deep brown hair clinging to skin fair even for a vampire. "Kaname," he greets at last, in a smooth, velvet tenor not uncommon for a vampire, but somehow managing to get across his higher status effortlessly. He makes no indication that he is going to divulge a last name, and Zero allows him his privacy.
Kaname looks him over slowly as his eyes fade back to a deep garnet, as if weighing his value. Normally Zero would react angrily to such a lengthy evaluation, but for some reason or another he does not get the impression Kaname is actually judging him based on his status, but rather by something else entirely.
He shifts, uncomfortable by the pressure those eyes press against him with, but undeniably adjusting all the same. Part of him cannot help but revel in the stare of one who he knows is much like he himself is, knowing it is a vampire as apposed to a human who looks at him, left to wonder the whys instead of fearing the possibility of a human catching onto him somehow or another. After being alone for so long, even momentary company makes him feel, even for just a second, normal.
The vampire nods once, as if assenting his presence worthwhile or without threat to him, and his eyes lose their inspective sharpness. Kaname leans against the brick wall behind him, his lithe body bending into itself slightly at the waist. His eyes wander the alley, face pulled tight for brief flickers in visible disgust for his surroundings. He avoids looking at the body.
Knowing he may be about to ask an extremely touchy question, Zero licks his lips before opening his mouth to reign in his voice, allowing it a decidedly neutral tone. "How did that happen?" He knows, almost instinctively, that Kaname will know exactly what he is referring to without clarification, just as he knows through experience that Kaname will be thinking about this man, ravaged neck, torn muscle, glassy eyes, for a long, long time to come.
"I had not fed for several weeks," Kaname answers after a pregnant silence in which he turns to stare at Zero, passive to the point of blankness. "I fear I had been too…enthusiastic in my hunger. To be honest, I cannot recall how I even got here."
Zero shudders internally as phantom moments of his own inner-beast taking over ripple through him. He knows the strange sensation all too well, blacking out from the intensity of the hunger devouring his very body, only to wake up to a viciously terrorized corpse and no memories as to how it had happened. A blessing in the lack of memories, but a curse in the shape of horrific nightmares, a dirty, clinging shame that never really leaves you.
The sound of footsteps alerts Zero to the fact Kaname is leaving the area. He does not know whether or not he said anything in parting, and he feels at once both irked that the man would be so rude, and embarrassingly lonely at the prospect of him leaving so quickly. Vampires, or at the very least ex-humans, tend to lead such solitary lives, and the prospect of nothing after even only a few minutes of near-normalcy cuts him to the quick. Without thinking, he grabs onto the other's sleeve before he can exit the alleyway.
"What about the body?" he blurts out the first thing he can think of, voice harsh more from his ridiculous worry and his incriminating inner-lecture to himself rather than the body itself. In a way it hides his intentions though, and therefore protects his remaining dignity; for that he cannot help but be thankful.
Kaname looks purposefully away from his victim, his expression so smooth that Zero is left between being envious of his perfect control over himself and disgusted that he may be so callous that he does not care that the one he just killed may have had a family, or loved ones. Such control and lack of discomfort suggests that Kaname is in fact not an ex-human at all, as Zero had once suspected, but rather a vampire by birth. Anxiety begins to settle its claws into his skin.
"If it wasn't for its condition I would dispose of it, but seeing as its neck is practically unrecognizable I see no need." His tone of voice is nonchalant at best, wiped clean of inflection, nothing but carelessness crafted into hollow words. "No one will care that such a man was murdered; any police activity will be stopped in a few days, if an investigation takes place at all."
"How can you say that?" Zero demands angrily, glaring at the figure before him, horrified and enraged that he could care so little about the man, a complete stranger turned by his greedy fangs into a murder victim. Did he not care that this man may have had a family who cared about him, or lifelong friends that would be torn apart to realize he would never step back into their lives? "How the heck do you know he won't be missed? He's a human being; he had feelings, maybe friends or a family! The least you can do is feel a little sorry for him, even if you didn't mean to kill him!"
Zero hates vampires like this, ones who look at humans like they are nothing but food, who slaughter people like cattle and care more about the blood staining their clothes than that forever staining their hands. It is depraved, wrong, more animalistic than sentient, and sometimes the feeling overwhelms him to the point of hating himself as well. Zero's only consolation is the fact that, on those rare hunts when he accidentally kills his prey, he can give the victim some dignity and respect in death.
Kaname's uncaring, monotonous face, the straight lips and vacant eyes, make him sick. Any desire to keep him around is violently expunged by the way he finally settles his eyes on the body, and his face makes no indication of change. Zero hates how, even guilty of murder and so monstrously uncaring he is of his actions, he can still manage to retain a regal beauty, crystalline and falsely pure. Zero finds it drastically unfair that he sticks out so terribly from this alleyway, like he's not meant to be here, even though he's no different than the others living on the rundown streets.
Disgusted with himself for even momentarily trusting Kaname, Zero considers telling the man just this out of spite. While he doubts it will affect the vampire any (the ostentatious are so rarely affected by words given to them from those beneath their status), he almost feels like he deserves to let it out. Maybe if he leaves right afterwards, he can pretend that he made a difference…
Clenched into fists, Zero's hands shake, and he knows it's not from the chilling rain pelting against him. Just before he can say something that he probably would have regretted, Kaname finally offhandedly tells him, "He was a murderer."
Zero can barely stop his eyes from widening at the sudden statement, said so confidently, as if the man caught him in the act. "How would you know?" Zero asks suspiciously, wondering if perhaps Kaname is one of the creeps who stalk their prey before devouring them like some sort of pretentious predator.
"The stench of death is all over him," Kaname explains, looking faintly sick, eyes once again riveted on the man, on his open neck and the way the rain makes the bared bones of his vertebrae pearly white. The blood pooling in the open cavity is a distilled pink. "I could taste it in his blood once I came out of bloodlust; he's killed over thirty women. He raped them, then hacked them to pieces with whatever he could find that was sharp enough to do it."
Like pulling something metallic away from a powerful magnet, his eyes are slowly dragged away from his prey and back to Zero's face. He smiles faintly, a grin free of any amusement or happiness, almost a frown if the sorrow in his eyes is anything to judge by. The look brings pity to Zero's heart even as disbelief attempts to eat away at Kaname's explanation. Zero has never heard of even noble vampires being able to read such things from blood alone. Such power is indicative of only one type of vampire, and surely a pureblood wouldn't be located in such poverty-stricken streets like some sort of stray dog.
"You don't need to try to justify yourself, as long as it was an accident," Zero says, even as part of himself knows he says his words under false pretenses of disbelief. He feels the power in the air, seeping from every pore of the vampire before him, the way he looks like royalty even while wearing worn pants and a torn white dress shirt, the traces of red in his eyes despite the fact he had just fed…
"You don't have to believe me if you don't wish to," Kaname concedes quietly, the polite, false smile never parting from his lips. "An ex-human has every reason to be distrustful of vampires like myself, after all. Purebloods walk on such a thin line. We're different, dangerous." He pauses, as if weighing his next words; they are heavy and tighten the air around them with their strain. "We must kill."
Kaname chuckles, running a hand through his wet, wavy locks, and the sound from his lips is as wet as the ground he treads beneath his feet. "It was a pleasure, Zero Kiryuu, though I do wish we had met under more comfortable circumstances."
"Don't," Zero says before he knows what he's saying, and then he's in front of the exit to the alley, before Kaname. All he knows is that there is something about Kaname that he cannot deny, the chance of companionship, a subtle loneliness that mirrors his own and takes him apart as surely as Zero's causes him to come undone, reflected in his garnet eyes and composing his smile like tiny fragments of regret glued together.
There is a more selfish reason as well, a desire stronger, perhaps, than even his craving for someone to share his meager, empty existence with. He knows that, with the pureblood, he may be able to find refuge from his guilt. If Kaname can instinctively find murderers and other criminals, perhaps Zero won't have to feel so horribly about quenching his thirst, won't have to feel as though with every death he causes part of him is put beneath the dirt as well. Perhaps Kaname can point out better prey for the both of them…
Kaname, perhaps seeing a bit of Zero's revulsion for himself in his face and mistaking it as being directed towards him, begins to pull away. Quickly, Zero tugs on his shirt sleeve again, bringing the man closer to him, away from the exit and the gray void outside of it he may never find him within again. One chance, Zero thinks, and he knows he'd be a fool to not take it.
"Stay," Zero urges, mentally quieting the part of him that still harbors deep revulsion for the man before him and his entire kind, "Stay with me. Maybe…maybe we're not as different as society says we have to be. We can feed off of only people who deserve it, and make our thirst mean something." Zero's so tired of his loneliness, so very tired of his guilty conscience, and he can only hope that with Kaname things may get better for him. He does not think of the possibility of Kaname refusing his offer. For some reason, the thought never crosses his mind.
Kaname looks at him strangely after his offer, like he knew Zero would ask but still surprised by his actions anyway; perhaps he had sensed his desire, but felt Zero wouldn't have scrounged up the courage to do so? The expression fades quickly, receding back to his emotionless default, giving away nothing. Anxiously, Zero waits for any sign of response, a tensing of Kaname's shoulders, and a nod of the head, a twitch of the lips, or even a shift in body weight.
Finally, he gently pulls his arm away from Zero's slackened grip. His sculpted, full lips do not move, corners perpetually parallel with the rest of his mouth, a straight line that tells nothing to no one, indulges no secrets, something equivalent to zero. He nods once, barely perceivable amid the falling rain and the shadows he stands in, and then he outstretches his right hand.
The skin is as pearly white as the rest of him, and within Zero's grasp its entirety seems impossibly smooth but undeniably fortified, carved from marble. Kaname's fingers wrap around Zero's hand easily, long and slender; in his mind's eye Zero can easily see them plunking out cords on a grand piano, an effortless vision that leaves part of his chest momentarily warm. This hand is nothing like his own, which he knows is roughened from his days before becoming a vampire, days playing with sticks as if they were swords and laboring under the sun with chores and training. He wonders if Kaname is disgusted by his calluses, like the way he had been disgusted by the sight of the alley.
Kaname gives him a level stare that seems to span centuries, and Zero tries his best to return it with equal intensity. He refuses to kneel down before this man, pureblood or not; if they are going to be living together, they are going to be on an equal footing, and Zero isn't afraid to demonstrate the fact. He tightens his grip by an almost negligible amount, knowing Kaname will be able to feel it through his heightened senses, trying to tell him through body language that he is not going to give up his self-respect for the sake of Kaname's pride.
They disengage when the feeling of the rain seeping into their clothes ceases, the fabric so saturated it is no longer capable of taking anything into it. Kaname smiles at him politely while attempting to wring out one of the corners of his shirt. It is a useless effort. "I'm sure spending time with you will be a pleasure, Kiryuu."
"Whatever." Zero does not smile back; he had never been one for insincere pleasantries. The plastic expression on Kaname's face makes his skin crawl, reminding him exactly why he never had indulged his mother's wish to polish his manners. Did being brought up as a pureblood do this to him, or was it merely being born as one that took away so much of his humanity?
Truly, they are from two entirely different worlds.
Yet despite their differences, Zero quickly finds that the more time he spends with Kaname, the more comfortable his life seems to become. It is hard, of course, because they really are different, and more often than not they either keep silent but for a few polite words or end up arguing, which tends to conclude with one of them (almost always Kaname) storming away for a few days. But it cannot be denied that when it comes down to it, they always come back to each other. Something in the awkward silence between them settles Zero much like his mother's voice had when he was just a young boy shaking with fright at the familiar sight of his brother, pale with fever, sputtering with dry, wheezy coughs. Their arguments tend to cut deeply enough to draw metaphorical blood, but they also make his blood flow hot and strong in his veins, a sensation he had been denied since becoming a vampire.
Zero cannot be sure if it is merely the company or Kaname himself, but around the pureblood he can almost feel normal, despite the fact he definitely isn't. Things seems less tense, less serious; at some point the pressure of his changed existence began to lessen, became an easier burden to carry.
But even purebloods cannot change everything. The feelings of disgust in himself –for becoming a vampire, for betraying his family by running away from them and his future as a hunter, for not being strong enough to prevent his past and present actions, and on those rare, horrific moments, for breathing- may not be as prominent, but they still linger, a dirt washed away superficially but hidden inside of his very pores, too deep to ever cleanse.
Zero comes to learn that even though he may be preying on people who do not deserve to live, the fact remains that he is still killing them, extinguishing their very lives. Their sins mean little to his conscience, lost somewhere amidst the steady decline of heartbeats against his lips. No amount of murder or assault seems capable of taking away the bitter, drowning sensation that sears its way through his chest every time he finds himself having to draw in draughts of blood more powerfully because his newest victim's heart has begun to fail.
The taste on his tongue, too, is the same as any innocent's, and at times he finds himself incapable of rationalizing his actions; how is he, he finds some part of himself questioning, any different than the man weakly struggling in his grasp, desperate to get to the next day? He still cannot bear to look at their eyes, knows that the instinctive fight to survive slowly bleeding away with Zero's every gulp will only aggravate him, knows he will sympathize too much, maybe let him go, and that, he knows, would be cruel. Kaname has no such option. Even if the death of these criminals does not seem to faze him the way they sometimes do Zero, he cannot help but try to keep things even, keep things fair.
His guilt, though, has always been a part of his feeding process, and Zero has also come to find that while it has not fled from him, Kaname's presence and companionship seems to be lessening it, as if they are sharing the blame. There is something comforting in being able to share the experience –horrible though it may be- with another, and knowing that the one beside you feels the same sensation of skin growing gradually cooler beneath their lips, or that initial sinking feeling that comes once adrenalin has run its course and no longer lingers in the mind. While Kaname may be more capable of rationalizing with himself that what he's doing is okay, Zero has begun to realize that this may only be a façade. Kaname too never looks his victims in the eyes.
Perhaps Zero's merely trying to trick himself into believing Kaname's a better person than he really is to justify himself, attempting to bring solace to his troubled thoughts of the pureblood who spirits away lives like a shadow and never looks back. But it helps, makes sitting beside the man so much easier than hating him from across the room as he sometimes does when he simply hates everything. He cannot bring himself to destroy that peace of mind, however false it may be.