Second one: Tezuka, in 1,292 words! Same warnings apply as before.
Kiss from a Rose: Tezuka Kunimitsu
[May 2005 :: Posted April 2013]
You remain, my power, my pleasure, my pain
To me you're like a growing addiction that I can't deny.
It was impossible to miss Fuji even in the pitch darkness of the graveyard. Fuji's power radiated outward, filtered through iron restraint as it was, burning like an icy beacon in the night. This was the most powerful vampire he had encountered, the oldest.
If he was honest to himself, Tezuka could admit that he had sorely underestimated the power of Fuji's eyes. When he first looked into those blue eyes speckled with the unnatural gold of the vampire kind, Tezuka, despite not believing in gods or destiny, felt what he could only describe as a meeting with his fate. And he knew then that this would be the most dangerous being he would ever face in his life. That if he lost to this creature, he would lose all and everything that he was.
Surely it was some higher force he never believed in that guided his hand that night: so certain, so sure, in utter contrast to the frozen stillness of his mind. Tezuka had moved faster and surer than he ever had in his long life as a demon hunter. Yet Fuji's right hand firmly grasped his left wrist, easily halting the iron stake scant centimeters from his heart, in a touch so cold it burned. The storm in those blue, blue eyes was so surprising that Tezuka froze, and the rational part of his mind truly believed it was over when Fuji leaned closer. That certainty somehow calmed him, holding him perfectly still. The battle had been fought and lost. His life was forfeit.
And he blinked in surprise as Fuji disappeared, dissolved into the darkness surrounding them. The next time he saw Fuji, he challenged Fuji again, this time a battle of magic as well as a physical combat, and lost. "You'll need to take me a little more seriously," Fuji whispered to him before disappearing. Fuji's cool lips brushed against the side of his neck with the same burning touch and Tezuka had to suppress a shiver, understanding at last the absolute seductive charm the vampire kind wielded over humans. The third time they found each other, they were in the middle of a vast wilderness far from civilization. And Tezuka let loose for the first time and called on all of the power he'd kept bound so tightly under control for so long. The freedom of letting go, that exhilarating rush as raw power swelled and flowed inside him, and feeling Fuji's power match his, was a kind of ecstasy that he could not even begin to understand, let alone explain, and he thought Fuji looked almost as shaken as he was near the end. Their fight had left the entire area within five-mile radius devastated, and it was Fuji who was left standing, obviously still with enough strength left to move. Fuji walked over to where he sat, exhausted and drained in more than just a physical sense, and trailed fingers lightly over his cheek in a touch that might have been more than gentle, might even have been tender. Fuji's fingers were warm for once, and the light in Fuji's face made him look almost alive. And Tezuka would have shuddered in an impossible mixture of terror and anticipation, had he been able to move. But Fuji merely gave him a strange smile before disappearing without a word.
Through the years, Tezuka met Fuji over and over again. Although neither of them had been specifically looking for the other, each encounter brought a sense of expectation and of being expected. Being a long-lived vampire seemed to attract as many enemies as being a demon hunter did. Nevertheless, several times, Fuji helped him and even saved his life once, and Tezuka's sense of honor compelled him to return the favor. And their strange ties of not quite enmity or camaraderie persisted, growing stronger each time they met. Tezuka did not understand why Fuji felt the need to keep him alive, and he must, since Fuji had already had several chances to kill him or simply leave him to die. He knew he was growing stronger as time passed, becoming more of a threat to Fuji, and surely Fuji knew it also. If all this was for amusement, it was an amusement that had stakes much, much higher than their lives.
It was eight score years or more after he first met Fuji that he learned Fuji was actually a companion to another vampire, one older and even more powerful: Yukimura. If Fuji was calm, Yukimura was impossibly serene, observing everything and nothing at once. For all the attention Yukimura paid him, Tezuka might as well have been a speckle of dust floating in the air. Yukimura's dark eyes were severe and kind and ageless, and the power of his presence could almost convince Tezuka that this being was indeed beyond the laws and mores of the mortal realm but belonged to a more ancient, purer kind of justice. But only until he noticed Fuji, who looked strangely younger at Yukimura's side, looking more like the human he must had been once. Or maybe it was that Fuji was standing next to Yukimura, who was too beautiful, too perfect, that there wasn't a shred of humanity left, if there ever had been. Then, a colder and more logical side of his mind whispered, with chilling reason mercilessly untempered by poetry, that vampires were notoriously territorial, and would never travel in company unless related by blood. Vampiric blood, flowing from a sire to a childe.
He charged before his mind consciously thought to attack. Fuji's eyes widened for a fraction of a second in naked horror that nearly brought him up short, and that instant was all Fuji needed. Tezuka struggled in Fuji's grip unthinkingly for a moment, then froze, realizing Yukimura, who never once stirred, was now staring at him. Tezuka felt Fuji's hands spasm around his, and thought for one dizzy moment that Yukimura probably would have had less trouble crushing an ant under his heel stopping Tezuka himself. Fuji didn't need to protect Yukimura, had never once even looked in Yukimura's way since the moment Tezuka moved.
The sudden surge of anger startled him. But it was a directionless thing, uncertain of its target, and he barely reacted when Fuji left with Yukimura, although he felt Yukimura's eyes on him long after the ancient vampire disappeared.
Tezuka was absolutely certain that Yukimura deliberately let him watch them in bed, not long after their first meeting. Allowed him to see Fuji in the kind of wild abandon he had only ever seen in that one memorable battle between them. And the picture of Fuji, head thrown back in release, the muscles of his neck taut, with a single drop of blood making it way down, over his heart, teasing his nipple, was burned into his mind like a red-hot brand, bringing with its memory a phantom pain whenever he recalled it. Yukimura's perfectly shaped lips, stained crimson, had smirked at him knowingly. Yet those dark eyes, glimmering above Fuji's shoulder, were not unkind as they met Tezuka's; they might even have held a question, although what it was Tezuka could not guess.
His world changed, but Fuji did not. Four centuries were time enough for the world to morph into something completely unrecognizable to Tezuka. But throughout it all Fuji remained a constant, their hunt and chase connecting them like a thread through time and space. And sometimes, Tezuka wondered if that was why Fuji did not kill him. Hunted him, but never killed him, because what they had between them - whatever it might be - was the only thing left that bound both of them, however tenuously, to a semblance of life.
