Wow, I finished that fast...;P I'm really excited about this fic!\o/ I hope you guys are too!

Love Bite II

I'd had plans for the next day to check out a few places I suspected to be the daytime resting places of some of my vampire prey. I had to put that on hold though, when my cursed phone tore me from my sweet, dreamless slumber a mere two hours after I'd finally fallen asleep.

I groaned when the first screeching ring ripped through the silence of the room. Obito stirred and lifted his head from my chest to look around in confusion.

"I'm sorry," I whispered, scrabbling for the wretched piece of technology vibrating and screaming on my bedside, next to the still open bottle of lube.

When I finally got a hold of the damned thing, I turned it over to glance at the front screen and see who the hell was calling me at 4:45 in the fucking morning. I knew who it was though, even before I saw Sarutobi's name written in glowing letters. Who else would have any reason to call at such an ungodly hour?

"Sarutobi, there'd better be bodies on the ground or there very soon will be," I growled unhappily into the phone, bypassing any sort of greeting—pleasant or otherwise. I'd had about five hours too little of sleep for such niceties.

"Just one, actually," the older man replied, "A nurse."

I sighed loudly into the phone, wanting the Sergeant to know just how displeased I was with him. Sarutobi Hiruzen was the one who always called me in for any investigations Konoha's All Nether-worldly Bastards Unit—the ANBU—needed help with. I'm pretty sure that's not what ANBU officially stands for, but that's what all the members of the Unit fondly joke it means, and I don't care enough to find out its real representation.

I was an unofficial member of the Unit assigned to protecting Konoha from all the less than human threats out there. I'd worked with them for six years as a supernatural consultant. And as much as I liked helping catch criminals and solving mysteries—not to mention having connections with the police—I still hated getting phone calls to come look at gruesome crime scenes at all hours of the night.

"Just one? Do you really need me to come down there?" I asked, hoping against hope that Sarutobi would see the folly of his ways and leave me to rest in peace. That wouldn't happen, of course, because by the time Sarutobi called, the shit had pretty much clogged the toilet, and he needed me to break out the plunger.

"If she was the first one to turn up dead like this…no, but she's the eighth one, and we've got no leads."

I sighed again, more resigned than before, and rolled over to grab one the pads of post-it notes I kept by all the phones in my house for just such a call. "Where?" I asked, and wrote down the directions he listed off on the neon green piece of paper.

"How long?" Sarutobi asked.

"Mmm…half-hour drive, at least."

"Hurry up. Forensics and everyone is done with the body and we all want to go home."

"Yeah, yeah…" I muttered into the phone, but he'd already hung up. Sarutobi wasn't much for goodbyes, especially when he was impatient.

I pushed the covers off me and sat up on the edge of the bed, trying to force my mind and body to wake up. I needed a shower; that would help.

Obito crawled to me from the other side of the bed to hug me from behind, his forehead resting on my shoulder. "Where you going?" he asked.

"Gotta go look at a crime scene."

"But it's so early. Can't it wait?"

"Haven't you heard?" I asked, just a bit slap happy, "Crime never sleeps."

I pulled into the hospital parking lot forty minutes later and parked in a space as close to the colorful blinking lights and bright yellow caution tape as possible, which wasn't very close at all considering all the Press and police cars. The sun was just starting to peek over the horizon when I slipped out of my car.

Rather than go through the whole ordeal of trying to explain to one of the uniform cops that I was allowed on the scene, despite the fact that I had no written permission from anyone, OR any sort of badge to flash, and then have to wait another twenty minutes for Sarutobi to get his wrinkly ass over to us to let me in…I paid one of the spectators—a woman who claimed to be my biggest fan—to distract the guard barring my way so I could just sneak in and find Sarutobi myself.

In order to distract the cop, my fan simply walked up to him, and before the man could tell her to step back, she grabbed his head and shoved her tongue down his throat. Needless to say, with all the Press and other people around, the scandalous act caught not only the Uniform's attention, but everyone else's too. I had to hand it to the woman; she'd done an ever better job that I'd anticipated.

With everyone's attention on the developing spectacle, I easily slipped under the caution tape and through most of the other Uniforms unnoticed. By the time anyone realized I was there, I'd already caught sight of Sarutobi with his back to me.

"Excuse me, sir; you don't have permission to be back here. I'm going to have to ask you to leave," I was told by a young uniform cop with a Beatles haircut and eyebrows so bushy it was amazing he didn't have a uni-brow. He was very polite, but his strong hold on my left arm left no room for argument.

Not that that was about to stop me.

"Actually, yes, I do," I said, looking behind him at Sarutobi, who was talking to some other plain clothes Detective. "Sarutobi!" I called to him, not fighting the Uniform holding me in place, but still acting like he didn't even exist.

Sarutobi turned around at the sound of my voice. He glanced at me and then at the officer holding me captive. "Lee, let him go," he ordered, and the boy promptly obeyed without a fuss.

"I'm sorry, sir! I was unaware of your clearance!" he said to me before saluting me stiffly and marching off.

I drifted over to Sarutobi. "He ex-military?" I asked. The salute the boy had given me was much too formal for the police.

"Yeah, but they kicked him out after he hurt his leg. It's fine now, but apparently the risk of re-injury makes him unfit to join again."

I grunted my understanding and shrugged it off.

"To be honest, I'm kinda glad he can't go back to the army. He does the work of six men all by himself. It's impressive, but frightening at the same time. I don't know where he finds the energy…"

"He's young."

Sarutobi nodded in agreement and silently began leading me towards the body without another word.

Although the caution tape spanned out into the street of the parking lot, the actual crime scene was in a small courtyard created by all the hospital buildings. The courtyard was apparently used for storing dumpsters. I could smell them reeking long before I actually caught sight of them.

The body was covered up by a large black tarp. It was situated between two amazingly clean-looking, green dumpsters with the words, "RECYCLEABLES ONLY," written across the fronts.

"How long has she been dead?" I asked absently as I scanned the surrounding vicinity to see if I could spot anything the cops hadn't.

Sarutobi pulled out his trusty little notebook that he kept somewhere on his person at all times and flipped through its sheets. "Forensics believes the time of death to be somewhere between seven and nine o' clock," he read from one of the wrinkled pages.

I hummed in response, not really caring all that much. I finished my search of the premises and settled my gaze on the tarp, waiting for Sarutobi to finish barking orders at someone to come over and remove the thing.

Several moments later, two Officers came over to lift the tarp and take it somewhere to be washed and stored; they'd remove the body when I was done with it, so there was no need to re-cover it.

The body underneath was rather clean, especially compared to most of the others I'd seen helping the ANBU. There was very little blood other than the drying drops oozing from the two puncture wounds on the right side of the girl's neck.

She was a pretty little thing. Pink hair, shapely hips, not much up top, but then I was betting her aquamarine eyes would have made up for that…if she was still alive and they weren't turning milky white like she was blind.

I knelt by her side and checked the bite mark. It was neat, no bruising or torn flesh. She hadn't struggled. She must have known the vampire and trusted him, or possibly her.

She was wearing navy blue scrubs and a light, unzipped, black jacket. I used a pencil, borrowed from Sarutobi, to lift the jacket and peek underneath. She had a name tag. "Haruno Sakura," it said next to a bad driver's license-type photo of the girl smiling for all she was worth, as if that'd make the picture better somehow. Smiling in driver's license pictures usually made them worse, but hers wasn't all too bad. I was right about her eyes, too.

"Haruno Sakura," I said mostly to myself. The name sounded familiar.

"She was an RN in the cardiac unit."

I looked up from the body. Jiraiya was standing next to Sarutobi with his hands in his pockets, looking more grim than usual. Normally, with such a pretty woman, he'd be making jokes about accidentally fucking her to death, or something equally stupid, to lighten the mood. But since he wasn't, I was guessing he might have known the girl.

"You knew her?" I asked.

He nodded. "Tsunade worked with her. Called her, her apprentice. Come over for dinner sometimes…parties…" He gave me a weak smile that quickly disappeared. He ran his hand through his whitening hair, "I don't know how I'm going to tell her…"

That's why the name was familiar. I must have heard Tsunade talking about her.

I turned back to the body. "Get her drunk first." Tsunade would be much less violent when she was drunk. She could very well kill Jiraiya in her grief if he wasn't careful. It was rare for Tsunade to get attached to anyone, especially someone she worked with, so Jiraiya was right to be afraid to tell his wife about Sakura's death. She wouldn't take it well. Even drunk.

"I wonder if she'd just get angry at me for getting her drunk before telling her. Maybe I should just tell her and then run away? Leave her alone for a while."

I shrugged—my attention back on the corpse. I put my hands over her breasts, feeling for a bra. That was something Jiraiya would usually joke about, but he said nothing. She was wearing one, and it was firmly in place. I lifted the waistband of her scrubs and found her wearing underwear as well. The vampire hadn't tried to rape her, further proving she'd known the parasite and trusted it.

"What is it, Hatake?" Sarutobi prompted.

"She knew him," I said simply, still poking around the body, but pretty sure I'd seen all there was to see.

"And?"

"And…I don't understand why he killed her. She didn't struggle. Why didn't he just feed and leave?"

"He did," Sarutobi said.

I sent him a glare, "You know what I mean."

"What's even weirder is he didn't have sex with her," Jiraiya put in, seriously.

He was right. Most vampires usually like to play with their food. "Play" can mean any number of things from torturing their victim to making love to them. Usually for such a willing victim, they'd probably have sex with them, or at least make it pleasurable to them in some way. Or if they were planning on killing her from the start, she'd be at least cut up a little. But this girl was completely untouched.

There'd been other vampire victims that had died without being tortured, but those were only when they were jumped by several vampires and drained of all their blood. And even those people were usually raped.

But Sakura only had one bite on her, which obviously meant only one vampire. And a single vampire didn't need so much blood to survive that they would kill a human in one sitting. I hadn't even known a single vampire could drink that much blood at once.

And if you had a willing donor that would feed you whenever you wanted, what was the point in killing her? That only made your life harder. Because not only would you have to find a new donor, but you'd also have to deal with the whole being wanted for murder thing. And for a willing victim? It just seemed too much of a hassle. It would have made sense to kill her if she'd struggled and would have gone to the cops if he'd left her alive, but she wouldn't have. It just didn't make sense.

Then again, vampires are cruel and heartless, so even if it made no sense to me to kill her, maybe it would to them. Some vampires kill their food just for the hell of it, even if they're willing. But that's rare…

I stood up and moved away from the body. "You said there were seven others like this?" I said to no one in particular.

Jiraiya nodded. "All women. No signs of struggle."

"And the only thing that seems to connect them is how they were killed," Sarutobi added.

"Why'd you wait until the seventh one to call me?" I asked.

"He killed the first seven all at once, but it took us a couple days to find them all. We hadn't even thought they were related to each other until this one." Sarutobi frowned, "Give me something, Hatake."

I just shook my head. There was nothing to tell him that he didn't already know. "I'll ask around and let you know if I find anything," I said.

He nodded, disappointed.

I went to the station after that. Since I was going to be part of the case now, I wanted to know more about it, which meant I was going to have to read the piles and boxes of reports on the seven prior murders, as well as look at all the high-definition pictures of dead bodies.

I walked in the front door and the secretary behind the big desk taking up half the room looked up at me. She smiled, genuinely happy to see me, but then again, Mizuki was happy to see pretty much anyone. She was eerily happy, ALL THE TIME. It freaked me out sometimes. But she was nice and didn't give me a hard time about having permission and other such nonsense to look at files and records.

"Kakashi-kun!" she said, clapping her hands together and sitting up straighter in her chair. Her face lit up; her smile showing off her perfect, white teeth; and her short, dark hair bringing out how incredibly green her eyes were. I'd only ever seen eyes that green on a cat. For a while I'd been sure she was some sort of feline lycanthrope, but the police—especially the ANBU—had to take all kinds of medical tests to work there, including a blood test to determine if you were human or not. As it was, I was guess she either wore color contacts, or else she was just a freak of nature who had cat eyes.

Since she was a freak of nature even despite the cat eyes, I guess they weren't all that odd.

"What can I do for you today, Kakashi-kun?" she asked, leaning forward in her chair like I was about to tell her some sort of secret. She always got way too excited about everything. It was like she'd just taken a shot of pure caffeine. Surely even Mizuki worked harder than that Lee kid…

"I just need to see the files for the seven recent vampire murders," I said calmly, smiling at the woman. Her cheerfulness was contagious sometimes.

"Sure thing, Kakashi-kun! Would you like to take them home, or look at them here?"

"Better take 'em home. I'm sure there's going to be a lot to go through…"

"Yes indeedy, it is! Seven murders! That's a lot of paperwork! A LOT!" she said, happily pulling out and handing me the form I'd have to fill out to take the files home before bouncing away to find them.

Really…that woman liked this job way too much. But as annoying as Mizuki could be, you couldn't help but like her. She was just too…I don't even know. She was just likeable. Maybe it was some sort of pheromone that she let off? Yeah…that had to be it…

She came back with a box in her hands and set the thing on the desk before going back into the records room for more.

I groaned inwardly. Reading all those files was probably going to take days.

Three boxes later, Mizuki finally sat back down in her chair to look over the form I'd filled out. She circled some things, checked some boxes, and signed a few lines before smashing a big red stamp on the top that said, "APPROVED." She slid the form into one of her many perfectly organized paper trays and turned back to me, her smile still firmly in place. "Is there anything else I can do for you, Kakashi-kun?"

"Ah, no, that's all for today, Mizuki-chan. Thank you."

Her smile widened, "Of course! No problem, Kakashi-kun! I'm always happy to help! It's my job!"

"Actually, come to think of it, I do have a question for you," I said, succumbing to her cheerfulness and needing to act on it.

"Ask away, Kakashi-kun! I'm here to help!"

"You smile an awful lot, Mizuki-chan. Does it ever make your face hurt?"I asked with a grin.

She burst out laughing, her laughter sounding like a wind chime tinkling in a breeze. "Of course not, Kakashi-kun! Did you know it takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile? As much as you frown, Kakashi-kun, I should think your face hurts!"

That wasn't actually true, but I laughed anyway. It actually takes more muscles to smile—twelve to be precise. Frowning only takes eleven. Unless it's a fake smile, of course, then it only takes two.

I carried the boxes out to my car two at a time and thanked Mizuki again before leaving.

My stomach growled loudly when I finally got back into the car, so I stopped to get some fast food. I couldn't believe it was already noon. I'd been at the crime scene longer than I'd thought.

Later, I searched through my glove compartment to find the piece of paper I'd written down all the address of the possible daytime resting places on. There were fifteen different places, and they were spread out all over the city. I figured I'd better check them out before the sun went down.

To my great irritation, the first fourteen places were empty. I'd spent five hours driving all over town to check these places out and the damned vampires didn't even have the decency to be there so I could kill them.

God, I hated vampires.

When I arrived at the last place, it looked much less promising than all the others had been combined, which just put me in a fouler mood. Unlike the other places—abandoned warehouses and dilapidated apartment buildings—this place was an actual inhabited apartment complex with other people living in the specific building. Granted, it was an old, rundown apartment complex in probably the worst part of town imaginable, but still…it was odd for a renegade vampire to live so close to people and no one know about it.

For the fifteenth time that day, I checked my trusty Smith & Wesson to make sure the magazine had all sixteen rounds in it. I probably wouldn't need it, and even if I did, I probably wouldn't need all sixteen rounds, but just in case. If there was ever a time I needed more than sixteen bullets, I was probably screwed.

I pet my gun affectionately before sliding it into its holster at my hip. My gun saved my life on a regular basis, so I treated it like my baby. I bathed it on a regularly, cleaning it with only the best oils; I slept with it at night; I fed it bullets whenever it was hungry; oftentimes I had to clean up after it; and sometimes I even had to take it to the doctor if it started firing funny.

I had other guns, but my semi-automatic was the elder sibling of the bunch, and by far my favorite.

Sighing with annoyance, I entered the apartment building. Apartment 4B would be on the fourth floor, obviously, and there was no elevator, so I got to take the stairs.
I tried not to notice the mice—and was that a sewer rat?—scrambling by along the walls, or the terrible water stains blossoming across the ceiling and walls, and especially not the gagging scent of marijuana, tobacco, and God only knows what other burning drugs there were all mixed together.

I finally got the fourth floor and stared at the knob I'd have to turn to get onto the actual floor. It was covered in some sort of…serum…and I was regretting throwing away those latex gloves I'd had at the crime scene.

Maybe it wasn't so odd that the vampire was hiding here. This place was an utter shithole. The only people that could possibly live here were junkies and crack whores—no one who would notice an undead monster feeding on them.

Sighing, I pulled my t-shirt out of my pants and grabbed the handle with it, turning it open. I stalked down the hallway, impatient to get out of there. The sun would be setting soon, and if there were vampires, I wanted them to be dead before they woke up and could fight back.

The door, thankfully, wasn't locked, so I pushed my way in rather easily. I searched the living room and bedroom of the apartment quickly, wanting out of there as soon as possible. The whole rest of the apartment was clear, except for the bathroom. I'd saved it for last since I was sure it'd be the dirtiest room of all.

When I saw the rough-looking vampire lounging in the empty tub, I wasn't sure if I was glad I'd found my quarry, or pissed off that I was going to have to stay in the reeking apartment longer. I gave the sleeping vampire my best death glare as if that was going to curb my annoyance.

I shook my head to clear away all the gruesome ways I felt like killing the vampire for putting me through all this shit. I had a job to do, and the sooner I got it done the better. The sun would set soon.

I reached for my gun.

As soon as my hand touched its cool steel, the vampire's eyes flicked open.

Fuck.

My gun was only half-drawn when the thing slammed into me, sending us both flying backwards. Unfortunately for me, I was on the bottom and suffered all the damage from smashing into the bathroom doorjamb.

The vampire had his hands on my throat and was squeezing for all he was worth. He would rip my whole throat out if I didn't kill him soon.

I was a little dazed though, from hitting the wall. I wasn't sure if I still had my gun in my hand or not. I was confused and disoriented.

The thing snarled in my face, spittle dripping from his extended fangs.

My head cleared.

The gun was still in my hand. I pulled it up, aimed it at his chest, and fired.

I must have missed his heart, because the vampire screamed and stumbled backwards instead of just dying. It didn't matter though; I had a clear shot now.

As it scrabbled at its chest, I aimed the gun, cupped in two hands, at his head and squeezed off two bullets, successfully taking out most of its head and spewing bits of it blood, brain, and thicker things all over the tiny room.

It crumpled to the ground and went still.

I struggled to my feet, leaning most of my weight on the filthy sink. I shuffled over to the corpse, kicked it onto its back and shot it twice more in the heart, just to be sure.
"Dammit…" I whispered to myself, going to my knees, not caring if the blood pouring from the body soaked into my jeans and stained them.

My back was killing me. I was sure I'd broken a couple bones, and there would definitely be extensive bruising. I probably had a concussion too; my head was swimming, aching slightly under a creeping numbness.

I leaned against the toilet to my right and pulled out my phone. I suppose the damn thing was useful sometimes. I held the three button down and the phone speed dialed the police station.

Mizuki answered, "Hello, Konoha Police Station, how may I be of service today?"

"Mizuki, it's Kakashi," I panted out. I was going to pass out any second.

"Is something wrong, Kakashi-kun? You sound funny," she said, concern lacing through her sunny voice.

"I got Bateman," that was the vampire's name, "He woke up early though."

"Oh my goodness! Are you alright, Kakashi-kun?!" she screeched.

I held the phone away from my ear for a moment while Mizuki freaked out, screaming into the phone. The sound of her voice was making my headache worse. Finally she calmed down enough for me to get a word in.

I managed to give the address to the apartment building and ask her to send an ambulance before I passed out in the vampire's cooling blood.

I woke up again on a stretcher outside the building. There was an IV hooked up to my right wrist, an ice pack on my head, and a pair of handcuffs holding me to the stretcher. The cuffs weren't really necessary, but they were standard procedure when dealing with a murderer. I had a license to hunt and kill vampires with court orders of execution, but whoever these cops were, they apparently didn't know that.

I groaned. Why hadn't Mizuki sent the ANBU?

The blue and red lights flashed all around me. People were gathered around outside a perimeter of yellow caution tape, and cops were once again milling about in a crime scene around me. There were always way too cops people at crime scenes, especially when there were bodies on the ground.

I tried to sit up on the stretcher, but my back screamed at me to stay the hell put, so I listened; sitting up wasn't worth the pain.

"Hatake-san, glad to see you awake," a plain's clothes cop with a bushy, porno mustache said to me.

I just grunted at him, my earlier irritation coming back as my body remembered how to feel pain again after being unconscious.

"Would you like to tell me what happened?" he asked politely.

I glared at him. "How about you tell me who the fuck you are first?" Cursing and being demanding of cops is not usually a good idea when trying to deal with them, especially in my delicate position, but I was in no mood for all this pleasant attitude bullshit. I would have rather he'd been an asshole. At least then I could be an asshole to him and not feel so bad about it later.

His smile waned a bit before brightening again with an apologetic look accompanying it. "My apologies. I'm Detective Yamamoto. I'm in charge of this investigation."

"Why aren't the ANBU here? That's a vampire up there."

The man's eye twitched slightly, "The ANBU couldn't be bothered to come, because the case wasn't important enough to warrant their attention," he said disapprovingly.

I rolled my eyes. "It's not. That vampire up there is Derek Bateman. He was wanted for rape and murder. I have a court order for him somewhere in my car…" somewhere in the glove box of doom… It's always a bitch to find anything in that damned contraption. It's a miracle I found that list of addresses before. I should really clean that thing out.

I say that, but I never will.

"There's no need for any of you to be here." Seriously, I'd just asked Mizuki to send an ambulance. What's with this whole police squad and forensics team?

"I'll be the judge of that, sir," Yamamoto informed me.

What an ass. Thank God…

"Look, I don't care if you don't believe me, and I don't care if you want to be here all night investigating the damned crime scene. Investigate the hell out of it; I don't give a shit, but I want to go home." I lifted up my handcuffed wrist, "So un-fucking-do these. I'm not sitting here all night while you waste time and tax-payers money."

Yamamoto's face collapsed as he dropped his good cop act. "I'm afraid I can't do that, Hatake-san. You're not going anywhere until I'm sure this was a lawful killing."

"I told you I had a court order," I growled.

"Let me see it then."

"I can't, because you've got me handcuffed to a fucking stretcher!"

"You don't have it on you? Aren't you supposed to keep it on you?"

"Like I told you five seconds ago, it's in my car."

"Convenient," he said.

I turned away from the man to keep myself from punching him in the face.

"Sir, forensics is finished with the scene, sir," a familiar voice said loudly to the asshole detective.

"Good. Why don't you stay here and continue questioning Hatake-san, Lee?"

"Yes, sir!"

The shitty detective walked away, leaving me with Lee. That was probably a good thing. Lee knew me—sort of, and I was less likely to punch him in the face.

"Hatake-san, we meet again," Lee said, forcing me to shake his hand. He had a strong, overbearing grip, rattling my whole body as he shook my hand.

"Indeed," I said. "Can you un-cuff me?" I asked hopefully.

"No, sir, sorry, sir. Detective Yamamoto-sama has strict orders to keep you cuffed until he says otherwise."

I sighed. Of course he did. "Do you know where my phone is then?" I asked, realizing I was without phone and gun.

"Yes, sir. It's right here," Lee said, bending over to pick the little black thing up from the back of the EMS truck. He handed it to me.

"Thank you," I said almost as an afterthought as I dialed Sarutobi's number, noting the time before dialing—half past six. I hadn't been out long, and the sun would set in about an hour. I wasn't expecting any vampire attacks, but I always pay attention to such things. It's just habit after all these years of hunting the vermin.

"What is it, Hatake? You got something?" he answered grumpily.

"Actually, I'm handcuffed to a stretcher, and Detective Yamamoto is being an ass and thinks I'm a murderer. Think you can do something about that?"

"How the fu—never mind. I'll see what I can do." He hung up.

"Lee, where's my gun? I want it back." I asked the boy when my phone call was finished.

"I'm not sure, sir, but it's part of the evidence, so you won't get it back until the investigation is over anyway, sir."

"You've gotta be fucking kidding me…This investigation is bullshit! I want my fucking gun back!" I said, my irritation turning to anger.

"I'm sorry, sir. There's nothing I can do."

Lee proceeded to ask me all the basic questions, "What happened?" "Why'd you kill him?" Blah, blah, blah…I answered as vaguely as possible, waiting for whatever Sarutobi was going to do to happen.

Fifteen minutes later, Detective Yamamoto came back over to Lee and me in a huff, scowling at me like I'd just had an affair with his wife. He un-cuffed my wrist, growling, "I'm sorry to have inconvenienced you, Hatake-san. Sergeant Sarutobi informed me of your relationship with the Force and of your job description. This won't happen again."

I couldn't help but smirk at the man as I rubbed my wrist. It was good to have friends in high places. Maybe Sergeant wasn't that high, but it was higher than Detective, which was all that mattered in that situation.

"I will be needing that courter order though," he added, reluctantly handing me my gun.

"No problem, Detective," I said, grinding my teeth together as I forced myself to ignore my body's protesting and get up from the stretcher. "Lee, come with me."

"Yes, sir!"

I walked away from the Detective, Lee at my side, and slowly made my way through the crime scene to my car, almost collapsing when I had to bend over a little to get under the caution tape. Lee told me the EMS guys said there weren't any broken bones, but there were some sprained ones, and the bruises themselves were bad enough.

It took me almost ten minutes to find the damned court order. I handed the thing to Lee after signing the attached affidavit that said I'd executed the man. Lee took it with a salute and marched away, probably to give it to his superior.

I sat behind the wheel of my car for a few minutes. Today had been nothing less than shitty. And it didn't help that I'd had almost no sleep the night before.

The night before…

I wondered if Obito was still at my house. Surely it was bad form to stick around at a near stranger's house that long…Then again, in my book, spending the night at your one-night-stand's place was bad form to begin with.

Oddly enough, I found myself hoping he was still there though. I wanted to see him again—those queer eyes of his especially. It wasn't even that I just wanted to fuck him again. I was in no mood to fuck, and my body was in no condition either, for that matter. I just wanted to talk to him, get to know him. Something about him attracted me to him.

If he was still there, maybe I'd make him dinner?

The idea of having a meal with the man sounded nice, but I quickly tossed it away. What the fuck was I thinking?

"You don't date your one-night-stands, Kakashi. You don't date anyone," I told myself, resting my head against the steering wheel.

Getting close to people meant attachments—weaknesses. I couldn't afford those in my field. Vampires could be vindictive bastards. They wouldn't hesitate to kill someone I cared about just to get at me. That's why I didn't go on dates or make friends. I'd made the mistake of allowing myself the luxury of a boyfriend once, and that didn't end well, especially for him.

I sighed to myself and started the car, pulling out of the parking lot to head home.

Logically, I wanted Obito to not be there. I shouldn't ever see him again. He was too alluring. But in reality, I was seriously hoping he'd be there, that'd I get to talk to him one last time, even if it was only for a minute. I found myself missing the sound of his voice, the feel of his smooth, pale skin. I wanted to caress it again…

My mind wandered, reliving the night before after I'd met him. I wished I'd been a little more gentle with him--that I'd taken my time memorizing his body...

I scowled at the road in front of me when I realized what I was doing. What the fuck was wrong with me? Since when do I think such tender thoughts about anyone? This kind of thinking would only make it harder when I told him we couldn't ever see each other again.

God, I hope he isn't there…