The Vampire Knight
Rating: T (coarse language, profanity, ideas generally unsuitable for those not open-minded enough to accept them)
Genre: Romance/Adventure
Plot Summary: Zero retired from being a Vampire Knight because of his agonizing, headache-causing visions. And now, he's being blackmailed into guarding the heir of the Kuran family, Kuran Kaname.
Thanks to all who are reading, reviewed, alerted, and favorited.
A/N Title: I'm a fucker.
But the guilt of not updating for two months aside, I feel extremely fucking awesome right now! I just updated two of my—only *cough*—major stories with respectable chapters. At least, I think they're respectable chapters. I hope they are. I'm so sorry that I had to put The Vampire Knight on hiatus, but this one little chapter spoke to the deep wells of my heart. I hope there's more KanamexZero action in this.
And to the response of when the 'scene' is going to come…to be honest, when I decided to write this story, I wasn't sure if I wanted to write lemon with it, because then it would be my first time, and well…my finger-ginity is at stake here, though I'd be willing to hint at it. Like, totally cut you guys off right when things get heated…but then people would hate the shit out of me. :P So I hope you like the actual fifth chapter! (excluding the prologue)
Sorry for any typos in advance!
And I have no idea if The Vampire Knight will be off hiatus yet. It's still on, for all I know, since a new school year's starting which makes me feel all the more like shit. T_T WHY SCHOOL WHY
Disclaimer: I do not own Vampire Knight.
~o~
"To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else." - Emily Dickinson
~o~
They were lost.
It wasn't that hard to believe, since Zero knew that Kaname's sense of direction was, in fact, severely warped, but the situation was just a little hard to comprehend for Zero because he, at least, should have kept them on the right track. They lost the map a while back, with an incident where Kaname tried to cross a river, and Zero followed after him—and then a rogue E appeared, and the bag fell into the water...followed promptly by Kaname and Zero. Zero still couldn't get the scene out of his mind, of the map floating down the river, the paper becoming soggy and then dissolving at the creases, coming apart right in the river.
Thinking about it made him pissed. If Kaname had crossed sooner instead of contemplating for a full five minutes… He shook his head, stared at the two paths in front of them, pivoted on his heel to survey the path that they had just took, and then turned back to look at Kaname. Unfortunately, Kaname was contemplating the right path, staring at it with a dark intensity.
Oh no.
"Kuran," Zero said impatiently, tugging the sleeve of his shirt. "Even if you have some sort of partiality for paths with menacing appearances, I stand firmly by the decision to go this way." He gestured to the nicer looking path with green grass, an open sky above, enveloped in living, breathing trees, the path that looked safe, and attempted to give Kaname what he hoped was a convincing, winning—and charming, because what the hey, when did a little bit of charisma hurt?—smile. "Besides, all of the…thorns," he continued, looking at the other road with a scowl, "could possibly prick your blood, and you never know if there's some sort of bloodthirsty animal out there."
Kaname rolled his eyes, but said nothing, crossing his arms over his chest.
"Are you really going to make me beg you not to take the dangerous road?"
"My way or the highway," Kaname replied.
Zero groaned. "Your way is the wrong way, goddammit! It doesn't look anything like the right road would look like!"
To his surprise and annoyance, Kaname chuckled and tugged Zero along the unpleasant path. "And what is your ideal 'right' road?"
Zero was busy trying to tug his hand from Kaname's. "No, no, no, damn it!"
Kaname grinned. "You're my Knight, Zero. You have to do what I say."
"You manipulative bastard! And technically, I'm not your Knight."
The pureblood raised an eyebrow. "If you hadn't have been so stubborn to refuse my blood, that ordeal would have been over with. It's much more dangerous to allow you to be unbound to a pureblood, you know. People will be willing to kill rogue Knights just as they kill rogue vampires. Especially since your…" He cleared his throat, pondering how to put this in the most innocuous possible. "Since your little…escapade with the Association. They weren't happy with you after that."
"The Association can stick another rod up their ass to join the first one," Zero retorted. "Meanwhile, with the more important matter at hand, I still think we're going the wrong way."
"Ask to borrow a rod from the Association, Zero," Kaname said to him calmly, with a playful smile. "We're taking this road."
At first, Zero didn't get it. He stared at Kaname blankly. Ask to…borrow a rod? What? He should have been the master of euphemisms. The master of retorts. Comebacks. Insults. But as comprehension dawned on him like the sun gracing the sky with its presence, his face twisted into a scowl. He tugged Kaname back, stopping them in the middle of the road. It wasn't too late to turn back, and if Zero could convince Kaname to not be a bull-headed, suicidal maniac… Maybe if he pointed the .22 at Kaname—oh wait. They lost that too.
He glowered at Kaname. "I'm not going to borrow any fucking rod, Kuran." He irritably turned away, pulling Kaname back out of the thorny path with the abundance of dead, gnarled trees mixed in between living ones.
"Oh, so you have a preference?"
"No, bastard, I'm not going to borrow a rod at all!"
"The safer paths are sometimes the more dangerous ones," Kaname warned as they now continued under the glory of the sun.
"I'd like to see my enemies in plain daylight, thank you very much," Zero informed him, pulling Bloody Rose out of its holster at his hip. He would have had the other gun in his hand for enemies that weren't vampires, but thanks to Kaname and that damn E, it was probably serving as a place for fish to piss on… "Unlike that other path, where there were shadows darker than the ones under your eyes…"
"Oh, very funny, Zero."
Zero shot him a grin. "And anyway, how are you going to defend yourself? If I get picked off by your enemies, I'm pretty sure there will be no one else to protect you."
He glanced over Kaname, stepped in front of him, and started to walk backwards, keeping in pace with him as he scrutinized Kaname carefully. He sure didn't look very strong, though he was muscular somewhat. His shoulders were broad, filling out his shirt nicely, and his legs were long, strong like the haunches of a lion. His fingers, spindly and spidery, could have easily strangled someone's neck as they could have weaved with a loom. Honestly, Kaname didn't look athletic, though he could run like hell when he wanted.
Kaname smirked, placed his fingers on the gun, lacing them over Zero's, and pulled the trigger.
Zero jumped. "What the fuck?"
To Zero's relief, Kaname had shot into the air.
He smiled devilishly at the Knight. "Why, there is always a place to find a weapon. Use your enemy's weapons against them."
"If the enemy has no weapons…?"
"Strengths, then. Their entire arsenal."
Zero shook his head. "I think you're going to get yourself killed one day. I hope you know that."
"Well, everybody's got to die at some point."
"You sound so laidback about your own death."
"What, are you going to deliver it to me?"
Zero huffed and turned away. "No. I swore to protect you."
"Technically, those vows are null and v—"
"Don't say vows," Zero interjected, finally walking forward like a normal person, side-by-side with Kaname. His face was twisted into an embarrassed scowl as he stared at the road in front of him. "It sounds like we're married or something."
He should have known this was the wrong thing to say, because then, Kaname smiled wickedly, leaned close to Zero, and blew into his ear. Zero jumped away, extremely creeped out, and swatted at Kaname.
"What the fuck are you doing?"
"Don't you want to be married to me?"
"—Like hell!"
~o~
They had stopped by a small creek, under the speckled canopy of tall trees. Zero leaned against the comfortable bed of a tree trunk after he splashed his face with water. Then he looked across the creek, trying to locate Kaname. They had split up a while ago—Kaname said something about 'inspecting the source of the water', and Zero had merely shrugged and drank the water anyway. There were fish swimming in it. And if it was poisonous, well, Zero had encountered all sorts of poisons out in the wilderness—he would have developed antibodies to it and gained immunity. He didn't worry too much about being poisoned, but it was understandable that Kaname would…
The pureblood still wasn't back, even after Zero counted to a thousand in his head. With annoyance, he got up from his comfy resting place and tried to trace Kaname's scent. He pressed his nose to the grass for one minute and looked up.
The scent was fading, decreasing as the feel of humidity increased. Rapidly.
Shit.
It was going to rain soon, and if Zero couldn't find Kaname before then…
Hurriedly, he tried to follow the scent, trying to desperately recall what Kaname smelled like.
Cinnamon.
Oh god, why was he thinking about that? He started to run, jumping over fallen branches and trees, following the stream. His stomach felt tormented as he took in the sight of trees thinning out right at the stream. Suddenly, there were fallen trees all over, damming up a great river, seven hundred meters from where he had rested. And on either side of the river, there were dead trees, dead animals, and dead plants. Grass was unhealthy grey and brown. Zero swallowed.
He drank the water that went through that place.
Zero felt panicky. There were so many things wrong. Kaname was missing, he had just poisoned himself stupidly, and he was in a wood of dead things. There was no telling where Kaname went.
"Shit."
He knelt down and placed his head between his knees. His breath came in short gasps. His gut felt like it had been run over by a fucking horse, and then a fifty ton truck decided to skid all over it. He raised his head with a groan, closing his eyes. Goddammit, this was… this was… horrible. Fucking horrible. He stared up at the smiling sky and scowled, half in annoyance, half in pain. At this rate, if he didn't find Kaname, he was probably going to die, or Kaname was probably going to die—or both of them were most likely on the road to hell. If only he had gone with Kaname…
And to make it worse, the smell of cinnamon was sharp and sickening…
Cinnamon?
Zero quickly got up, almost falling over again—black dots swayed before his eyes, obscuring his vision for a single second—and ran.
He stopped as the trees started to mend their barricade again. He stopped before a particularly thick tree and placed his hand against it, gasping. His head was swimming, and if he didn't sit down, he was going to fall down.
Where the fuck was Kaname anyway?
"Kaname!" he yelled tiredly, his voice hoarse. "Goddammit, where are you?" He didn't get a response, though he should have expected it. His lungs were tired and traitorous—they locked as soon as he tried to inhale deeply and ached with a burning fire as he tried to exhale shallowly. No surprise that his voice was weak and barely made it past a hearing distance of twenty yards.
He forced himself to keep walking. Even if he was weak, his pride would be severely compromised if Kaname found him instead, weak, stumbling, and gasping for breath. He had to have walked at least five hundred meters until he came into another clearing with trees and plants and a cascading waterfall.
And there the bastard was, sitting calmly by the riverbank, staring at the towering promontory and the water that spilled over it. He looked to his left at the sound of Zero's footsteps.
Zero gritted his teeth. "You. bastard."
"You know that you drank the taint of the dead, right?" Kaname asked, smiling.
"Oh fuck you," he replied, clenching Bloody Rose's pistol grip with a death grasp, and collapsed.
~o~
He was delirious. He must have been. Because as soon as he realized what he was doing—as soon as he came to a state of awareness even though he was already conscious—he clamped his hands over his mouth, staring wide-eyed at Kaname. Slowly, he removed his mouth, flexed his fingers, and said slowly, "Did I really just tell you about that time I stuffed gunpowder into a tortoise shell?"
Kaname smiled darkly, stowing this away for blackmail. "You told me how you were sorry you killed the tortoise too."
Zero was never going to live this down. "Well, anyway… I don't know how the hell we got on the topic of my adventures as a child, but… why the fuck did you stay here? If I had died from the poisoning, what would you have done? There wouldn't have been a Vampire Knight to protect you then, Kuran. In fact—" He was cut off by a sigh.
The pureblood waved his hand irritably. "Don't call me 'Kuran', Zero. We've already slept together—"
"—in the same bed, nothing more!" Zero interrupted.
"—in the same bed," Kaname conceded, but then continued as if Zero hadn't even voiced his protest, "and we've been in more compromising situations that I would actually care to count. But even so, you won't desist to address me with that cold, formal name."
"Don't tell me you're actually bothered by this?"
Kaname looked at him seriously. "I am."
There wasn't a hint of humor in his voice. He had to be kidding.
Zero stared him down. "…Are you serious?"
"One hundred percent."
"Well, okay, Kaname, if you insist. I just find it odd that we're…addressing each other so casually. Since when were we on a first-name basis? We've barely even known each other for a month, but we talk to each other like it's been years."
"You're my Knight. Get used to it."
"I'm not your Knight."
"Yet."
Zero sighed. "Yet," he allowed grudgingly, grumbling. "Anyway, you didn't answer my question. Did something captivate you to the point of immobility? You stayed here for over fifteen minutes."
"Were you worried?"
"No. Well, yes. But that's beside the point. What kept you here?"
"Didn't you see, Zero? The middle of the river is filled with taint. Contagion. I came here to find out why. What is killing the plants?"
"Do we really have time for that? Nine days. Nine days to find and kill Rido."
"I know," Kaname replied, sighing. He glanced over Zero again. "Are you sure you're all right?"
Zero waved him off. "Sure. I'm fine." He looked up at the sky. Vision, vision, any time now, come on… He closed his eyes. "I wish I had them at will…"
"Had what at will?"
"These little visions of mine." Zero smiled faintly. "My mind tingles. It's either the water I drank or it's a vision, waiting to give me a pain in the skull. I sure wish it's a vision—I might as well get it over with."
"You know, Zero… If you drank my blood—"
"Oh goodness, not again." They had already discussed this topic after Zero regained consciousness. After collapsing. Like a girl. In front of Kaname. "I told you; I refuse to drink your blood. I don't like the idea of it at all."
"The poison will be gone."
"I told you, Kaname, I'm fine. My body will recover, and I'll be immune to that particular poison from then on forth."
Kaname looked at him austerely. "It's my uncle's poison."
…
"Whoa whoa whoa, back the fuck up. Your uncle's poison? How the hell does he get around so quickly?"
Ignoring Zero's outburst, he tilted his head to the side, pulling back thin strands of dark brown hair and baring his neck. "Drink. Or else you'll die."
Zero crossed his arms over his chest and turned away, scowling. "I refuse."
"Stop being a stubborn mule."
"Stop prostituting your neck!"
Kaname held his gaze with a firm, smoldering conviction. "Zero, if you don't, you will die."
As soon as that sentence was out for the world to hear, Zero sighed, leaned back against the enveloping trunk of a tree, and let out a shaky breath. He threw his arm over his eyes and turned his head towards Kaname. "You know, Kaname… Other vampires would kill to drink your blood. Other vampires who will kill me for even daring to suggest drinking your blood. It's only worse if you offer it to me willingly. I'm not supposed to drink your blood more than once."
"You haven't even drunk it once."
"Well, if I do it once, that 'one time' would become two, and two will become three—and who knows. Three could become forever. And they'll probably think I put you under some voodoo spell." Zero laughed at his own little wisecrack. "I mean, I already have visions, why not add some salt to the wou—"
And just fucking then, a vision came.
Zero couldn't see anything but darkness now.
The only thing visible was a foot, sticking out limply in the framed moonlight.
"Drink my blood," a voice rasped. "Drink it…"
"Aghh…no… Let go…of me, d-damn you—ah!"
The sound of cracking, and then a bloodcurdling shriek.
The next thing Zero felt was Kaname shaking him, one hand on his shoulder, one hand strangling him with his own collar.
"Zero!"
And then hitting him.
"Ow! What the fuck!" Zero exclaimed, catching Kaname's wrist in one hand and cupping his jaw with the other. "You don't hit a sickperson!"
"My apologies," Kaname said wryly. "Next time you start screaming, I'll try my best to disregard it. I don't suppose you'll want to tell me what it was, so I'll refrain from asking as well."
Zero leaned back, feeling the tree trunk through his thin, worn clothing. He sighed.
Then it hit him that they were in another compromising position. Kaname sat on his torso, gripping the collar of his shirt as he stared down at him wordlessly. Zero stared back up at him, defiantly, feeling his neck heat with embarrassment.
"Get off, please."
Kaname looked down. Then he looked back up at Zero with a smirk. "No."
Zero slumped back even further, if that was possible. "Fine. I'm tired anyway. I'll just sleep the poison off and get better later." He tried to make himself comfortable in the space he was actually allowed. He couldn't extend his elbows further, since they were blocked by Kaname's legs. He squirmed for a while.
And then he gave up, linking his fingers behind his head and staring up at Kaname.
"I'm going to sleep with my eyes open," he informed Kaname.
Kaname shrugged. "Go ahead."
Zero stared past Kaname's head, thinking faintly that the weight against his torso didn't feel too bad. At least, when Kaname didn't move every other second. But as he continued to stare with his eyes wide open, unblinkingly, at the clouds, his mind went back to the vision. He suppressed a shudder and glanced sparingly at Kaname.
Just how far would that pureblood go to bind his Knight to him?
