AN: Sorry for updating somewhat later than I hoped I would, but I had a lot of explanations to put into this chapter, and they didn't write smoothly (and may be still not written smoothly right now, but I'm sort of tired of tweaking on them). Hope nobody will kill me for the... hm... content of these explanations. It is just a completely rabid plot bunny of mine that just won't let go.
Edit: You know, I decided to write it after all, because I am sort of more than usually nervous about this chapter: Please, review. You know, if you do not like my non-canon twist at all, there is really little I can do about it, because the whole plot here revolves around this twist, but if my explanation sucks, or seems implausible, or just hard to read and understand - please, tell me, so that I can torture it (and myself) to the point, when it is actually better.
*hopes so much that dear Sagakure doesn't dislike it completely, since this story is for her after all*
The disclaimer still stands, VK still belongs to wonderful Matsuri Hino (and better for it), and all that belongs to me is just this little dumb (and completely non-canon) twist that you find in this chapter.
Many thanks to wonderful YenGirl, who saves my fics from overabundance of typos and just plain mistakes that they would be full of otherwise.
"No, Kaname," he says gently, but firmly, "whatever makes you cry now… and whatever made you smash your precious laptop, and whimper in your sleep… It is most definitely not nothing…"
"I wasn't…"
It sounds childish and petulant, and Zero smiles around the edges of his worry. "Whimpering? You most surely were."
"No," Kaname sighs softly and there is a wealth of tired defeat in this single word, "I meant – sleeping… In fact – I haven't slept or eaten anything but the blood tablets for more than three days…"
He turns around – of his own volition now, shrugging Zero's hands from his shoulders, and stands – with his head hung low and somewhat to the right... For the second time today - Zero gasps – this time quite audibly, "Oh… oh damn… wow!", because the whole left side of Kaname's face looks distorted, the cheek (and even like – the side of his nose as well) puffy and swollen, and tinged with that shade of unhealthy rosiness that speaks of inflammatory heat.
Zero's hand lifts unconsciously to touch the stretched skin (just to assure himself that his perception is correct and the cheek is hot), but before the hand as much as nears its destination, Kaname swats it away – instinctively and with quite a force.
"Sorry…" he mumbles immediately, and Zero finally understands, what seemed so strange to him in the way the pureblood spoke earlier… Not enough to be exactly audible then, it is apparent now in the way that Kaname's lips move, or rather – don't move on the swollen side - resulting in a very faint lisp. "I didn't mean to… I… It hurts…"
His eyes are turned aside, never meeting Zero's directly, and his voice when he continues is full of self-deprecating mockery, "Ridiculous, isn't it?.. How a pureblood could be reduced to such a state by something as mundane as a tooth-ache…"
"Tooth-ache?"
"Uh… more like a fang-ache… please, Zero, don't look…" And it is a little amusing, and well, sad, how he would be insecure of his appearance – of all things! – when it is blatantly obvious to Zero that the pureblood is absolutely at the end of his tether with sleeplessness and pain.
"No, Kaname," he says tenderly, "it's not ridiculous…"
Uh, well… it is ridiculous, in a way, because the tooth-ache seems such a little and unthreatening thing, in comparison to what the pureblood in general can endure and has indeed endured in the past, but it is plain not funny that Kaname was suffering here for days, all alone, while he… he… just accepted the circumstances and didn't even try to find some way and call…
Still shaken with the discovery (and his heart attacked unrelentingly by wave upon wave of worry and shame), Zero sits on the first thing close to him – the john, and tugs on the pureblood's hand, inviting him to come and sit on his lap. He doesn't know what he expects, some resistance, perhaps, but Kaname complies, in fact snuggles close to Zero's chest, lowering his healthy cheek into the crook of Zero's shoulder in silent admission of complete exhaustion.
Close like this, the swelling seems even worse than from afar, and Zero lifts his hand again – now taking all caution to move it extremely slowly, a millimeter at a time, so that the pureblood can see exactly what he's doing, and in the end Kaname just takes it into his own and lays Zero's palm against the burning skin.
A little sigh ghosts across Zero's collarbone, "Ah… it's cool…", and the tense back relaxes the barest little bit, reacting to the temporary lessening of the pain, "can you?.."
Hold it there? Of course, Zero can… shit, he is glad that he can help the pureblood if in such an insignificant way… he only worries – because the angle is somewhat uncomfortable – that his arm will start shaking in a while and he can inadvertently cause Kaname more pain…
His mind is still reeling, a tug of war between guilt, concern, and desperate search for whatever it is that has to be done first… and what he can do that the pureblood hasn't done already himself?… three days… Crap!.. But then again – would Kaname even know what to do, being a pureblood and never ill before in his life… uh?! wait a minute!.. and the true strangeness of the whole situation is…
"Kaname?" Zero asks in confusion. "What's wrong? Why hasn't it… well, you know, healed?"
The pureblood sighs again, and his outer arm circles around Zero's ribs, holding onto his shoulder and simultaneously providing a firm base for Zero's already cramping elbow – a sheer marvel of their instinctive co-operation washing through the hunter in a warm wave.
"It doesn't," and there is a sad resignation in Kaname's voice, "because it's… hm, because it's in a way natural…"
"What do you mean 'natural'?" Zero repeats incredulously, because the state of the pureblood's face… and, damn, the man hadn't slept for three days because he was in pain, and he says it's natural?!
"You see…" the pureblood explains wearily, "apparently they are deciduous…" and seeing the utter lack of understanding on Zero's face, "what you would call the milk teeth… well, fangs in this case…"
"Baby teeth…" Zero corrects absently, and then it hits him, "Uh… wait! Shouldn't those be out already?"
"A quirk of pureblood physiology… all this complete lack of human blood that sets us apart from the other levels… you see… you were human and when you were turned, your body mutated to accommodate for vampire qualities, and so did your teeth, permanent teeth at your age, obviously… though because you were still a child when your transformation occurred, your fangs are now almost as sensitive as if you were born a vampire, and also – grow out fully…" Zero cringes (did Kaname need to make him into an example?)… He (kind of) accepted the fact that he is a vampire, he even learned to enjoy some benefits, and now that the only one that he drinks from (the only one who drinks from him too) is Kaname, he finally thinks that he can live with it… But 'live with it' and 'be reminded of it' are two different things… and the pureblood's next words show that he is completely aware of how the hunter feels, because he continues softly, imploringly, "believe me… it could have been worse… the older one is, when one's bitten, the less do their teeth transform… imagine a level D having to satiate his bloodlust with barely protruding fangs… and yes, if you ever wondered why level Es sometimes rip the whole throat out of their victims… it could be that they don't have the fangs for a proper bite…"
'Was it intended to be encouraging?' Zero wonders. 'If so, it totally wasn't… At times Kaname could be so dense…" And were it under any other circumstances, he wouldn't hesitate to tell him just so…
As it is, it is good that Kaname's switching onto the nobles already, and Zero's interest prickles, unimpeded by the sick feeling that the previous part of the conversation caused… But there is something that worries him more than the unpleasant topic ever could (and it is telling a lot, isn't it?) The pureblood speaks slowly and deliberately, as if delivering a lecture, and yet his composure is all too easy to see through - Kaname's words are slurring together a little, interrupted by little breaths of distress, and the side of his face that is pressed to the hunter's shoulder shifts and rubs along it every now and then – an unconscious indicator of persisting ache…
"Kaname," Zero inserts urgently into the first longish pause, "it's hard for you to speak now… please… really… you can explain it later… it's no rush…"
His answer is a very slight shake of the lowered head.
"It's not hard, Zero… in fact, it is a distraction… and believe me, anything that can take my mind off it… well," and Zero hears a little chuckle that sounds much too close to a sniffle, "take it to a more theoretical realm… is most welcome…"
The slender fingers that rest along the hunter's ribcage, move along it soothingly in a gesture of silent gratitude, in a "let me sit and talk like this for a little longer, I'm more comfortable now than in the last few days"… or something to the same extent… and Zero's arm tightens protectively around the pureblood's shoulders in just as eloquent if silent assurance – "sure, whatever you want"…
Strangely enough, Zero too feels unaccountably comfortable, sitting in the bathroom (on a john, of all things), cradling the ailing pureblood and discussing the exfoliation patterns of vampires… the whole picture is just way too absurd to imagine, and yet – here he is, and there is no other place that he'd rather be now… well, maybe with a healthy Kaname in bed, eh? But one sort of makes do with what one has…
"Now where was I?" The pureblood queries rhetorically. "So… well… the nobles… those obviously have vampire blood right by the start… but human as well… and truth is the… vampire powers, or better to say, vampire qualities do not develop at the same rate as human… meaning, they are largely human, when they are born, and then a likewise transformation occurs… only it is not a sudden thing as when one is bitten, but more a gradual process… for example they can absorb the other person's energy almost from their birth, but the blood-drinking only becomes a need later, approximately at the same age as their true vampiric powers awaken, which is somewhere around five or six… normal time even for a human child to lose some baby teeth, isn't it?.. So when the time comes, they just lose their fangs as well… and instead of pretty much human deciduous ones, they acquire a set of fully vampiric permanents – just in time to draw blood with them… don't look like that, Zero, it is actually a great day for a parent, when his or her child partakes of their blood for the first time in his life…"
"And the purebloods?" Now Zero is actually interested in the extreme. All this information is new to him, outside of the hunter-taught vampire-lore, and he finds it slightly shocking to think of noble babies as mostly human, more human than he is himself now… well, at least it helps explain why the vampires guard their young ones so vigorously before they come of age…
Kaname raises his head, for the first time since they've been sitting like this, leaning back against Zero's arm, so that their eyes meet.
"We are vampires through and through, Zero… yet we too develop in certain stages – both our powers and bodies…" he tells it softly, hesitantly, as if fearing that Zero would not believe him, that Zero would somehow think that the purebloods, like demons from hell, spring whole and grown-up right out of their mothers' wombs… hm, out of thin air then… and Zero smiles at the image, and his fingers, somewhat free to move from where his palm is still cupping Kaname's flushed cheek, brush a stray lock of dark-brown hair from the pureblood's brow, urging him gently to continue.
An answering twinkle of mischief shines at him momentarily out of the pain-dulled red-brown eyes, and Kaname draws the pause out deliberately, before he delivers his next line: "I had no fangs whatsoever before I was five and a half… just two little gaps where they were supposed to grow… otherwise I had a normal set of baby teeth, for biting and chewing the ordinary food, but since I was feeding on energy then and not blood – there was no need for fangs… and not being human at all, I didn't just inherit blindly the kind of residual fangs that the humans sport…"
Zero smiles again (once his first incredulity lessens) at an adorable image of little Kaname that his mind conjures – all brown curls and shy smiles, covering his mouth discreetly so that the other children do not see the gaping holes between the perfectly rowed teeth, even if, huh, who'd dare to laugh at a pureblood?
"They grew in time," Kaname continues, "along with the permanent molars and incisors, and they were vampiric, of course… but well… as I found out… they are not permanent… you see, the pureblood powers grow steadily until the vampire reaches a… uh… fully procreative age at nineteen to twenty one… and that's when those first deciduous – hardly can call them baby fangs anymore, eh? – should come out to be replaced by the permanent ones…"
Now this is new… but there is a word that catches Zero's attention in particular in this whole speech.
"As you found out?"
"I found a book on pureblood physiology in the library, when the ache wouldn't go away… a rare edition and quite old, there are not a lot of books on the subject as you can imagine…" Kaname says it rather matter-of-factly, but Zero knows that it is not so at all.
The library in question is just a huge heap of boxes in an otherwise empty room lined by dark shelves, the only thing that Kaname chose to take from the Kuran estate, when they decided to stay in town. In all the five months that they've been living here, they still haven't found the time to sort it out properly and put the books in place, or even out of the boxes, really. Well, Kaname would wander inside sometimes, with Zero or on his own, and open up a box or two, taking out a book and leafing through it with this soft, cryptic and infinitely nostalgic look on his face, and then Zero would feel just forced to distract him and lure him out of there and into a happier mood.
That's why the very idea of Kaname alone, handling the heavy boxes, ripping into them and searching frantically for a kind of book that – it being so rare – could've well not been there at all… just because his pain won't stop… is enough to tie Zero's guts in a tight and aching knot of desperate… desperate… He fails to find the word for this feeling he's got, his finger running along Kaname's brow softly, incessantly, as he takes in the gentle line of the healthy cheek, the little tragic mouth, the soulful eyes… God, just because this young man before him right now acts so grown-up usually (whether because he had to shoulder the adult responsibilities at an even younger age than Zero himself, or because of this 'ancestor' issue, this other life that he had already lived before his awakening as the Kaname that Zero knows) - it is so easy to forget that nineteen… ('No, twenty already,' he reminds himself, 'Kaname has just turned twenty last month') is so young for a vampire, much more so – for a pureblood…
'A child,' he thinks bitterly, 'he is still a child… procreative age or not… he's meant to be at home with his parents now (hell, that's how most of the Night Class still lives!), surrounded with love and caring… with parents, who would've told him what's happening without him needing to search for some dumb book to find out, who would've known how to help him…' But there are no parents for Kaname, no more than for Zero himself… He was raised by nobles, power-hungry and caring for nothing but the powerful blood they lusted after, and probably not aware of this peculiarly pureblood problem even if they cared enough…
Zero's arm tightens almost convulsively around Kaname, bringing him closer, guiding his head back to the crook of Zero's shoulder, where it belongs… and he gulps and wishes that the lump in his throat would dissipate already, as he strives to ask as lightly and nonchalantly as is only possible for him now, "But surely you have gone through this… uh… exfoliation process… back in the ancient days?"
"Zero…" Kaname's voice sounds faintly amused from somewhere down by Zero's collarbone, "Do you know how many years have passed since I had the same problem back then?"
"Huh… many?" Hundreds of years… no, maybe thousands… it is really the stuff for Zero's nightmares – knowing that to some extent the soul inside this body is so damn old…
"Very many," Kaname chuckles and then continues apologetically, though what in hell is there to apologize about? "I… forgot…"