#this thing haunts me bec what if i stayed here eight years too?

[dysphoresque]

Joan Didion, Goodbye to All That

[onsgiftexchange]

Theory of An End - GureShin Vampire AU (R17+)

◈ Pairing: GureShin ◈ Characters: Hiiragi Shinya, Ichinose Guren, Hyakuya Yuuichirou ◈ Genre: Vampire AU ◈ Warnings: Major Character Death, Character Death, Blood, Mild Gore, Heavy Angst, Violence, Injuries, No Happy Ending, Lovers to Enemies ◈ Word Count: 8888 ◈ Summary: 

Not a soul was left alive to forgive him for the sins he wrought. Shinya would have–he saw it in his eyes the moment he opened the door to perchance the only means of reprieve offered to him. He would have been welcomed, loved, and protected for all he was worth had his jealousy over Shinya finding happiness in the comforting familial bond with a blameless child not tinged his perspective red.

Author’s Notes: Hi, Feli here! (´｡• ᵕ •｡`) ♡ I am Renee’s Secret Santa for the ONS Gift Exchange. I hope you enjoy reading GureShin suffering!

Misery was a weighty, burdensome concept best left alone and out of the forethoughts of people; there was no rhyme or reason to it, only the torment of knowing it was inevitable. But who had the time or the energy to think about it?

At the current moment–roughly eighteen minutes past seven in the evening–such burdening thoughts about the absurdity of fate’s infliction of torment were nowhere near the focus of the man’s mind as he ushered his laughing child down from their kitchen counter. The man, Hiiragi Shinya, held onto his son’s tiny frame as he carefully set him down onto the floor, the corners of his eyes crinkling in a mirth he recently allowed himself to feel for the first time in over seven years. 

He felt safe, warm, happy with the family of two he made for himself. All it took was two other failures for him to finally get it right. Shinya knelt next to the boy, using both of his hands to cup the round face full of flour and chopped vegetables.

“How do you expect us to eat dinner when you’re wearing half of it on your face, Yuucchi?” He laughed with the softest, fondest note carrying in his tone across the messy kitchen. It was a sound that surprised and comforted him, especially when he received a whimsical snicker from the child before him.

“It’s not half, papa!” Yuuichirou placed his small hands on the older man’s own cheeks and smeared his grimy fingers across the soft skin to mirror his own face. “Now it’s on you!” 

“Oh, it’s on little man!” With a lively battle cry Shinya began chasing his little bundle of joy around the kitchen, causing bounties of laughter to erupt into the room. It had been ages since Shinya allowed himself to feel so young and free, unburdened by past grievances and forgotten promises. The absolute light of his life never ceased to bring unbridled happiness to their little home of two. 

After several minutes of entertaining his son’s amusement, Shinya swooped in to pull the eight-year-old off his feet and swung him in the air. “Come on Yuucchi, we need to clean up after supper, not make more of a mess you little monster!” The older man blew a raspberry on Yuu’s floured cheek, which caused the child to shriek with laughter and squirm in his grasp. 

“Papa, that tickles!” Yuu grinned widely, showing off his missing front tooth that was lost just the other day. The sight of the absolute purity of his child made Shinya feel so soft and mushy inside, for he knew his little baby boy had him wrapped around his finger.

His heart clenched at Yuu’s innocent little cherub cheeks raising to rosy peaks under the coating of food on his face. Had he not disciplined himself earlier to the power of a child’s smile, he would have continued up until the early hours of the morning playing with Yuu. As it stood, he had work in the morning and Yuu had a strict bedtime that was fast-approaching.

Shinya sighed and rose to his feet, extending his messy hand for Yuu to grasp, another wave of content and bubbly affection making his chest flutter and the need to shower his child in all the love he had to give stronger. “Let’s get you cleaned up. If you do a good job of washing up for the night, I might think about letting you stay up an hour later.”

The tiny gasp of excitement filtered up towards his ear, and Shinya chanced a peak down at the small child looking up at him with wide sparkling eyes and a challenge written all over his face. “Can you do it by the time I finish washing the dishes?”

Yuu nodded. Then nodded again, with a small tug at Shinya’s hand as further affirmation. “I’ll do it before you finish! Way before! I’m going to be the fastest shower-er you’ve ever seen!” The smile on Shinya’s face grew wider before he released Yuu’s hand and ruffled his hair, earning him a soft hey! and small, delicate hands swatting his own away.

“Good boy. I’ll check up on you just to make sure you’re all right. Go get ‘em, tiger!”

Finishing off their usual banter, Yuu hunched his back and hissed, pretending to be one of the big, terrifying jungle cats he and his adopted father loved so much. He pawed at Shinya’s arm like it was his next big meal before dropping the act to give his beloved parent a quick hug and a rushed okay. Almost as fast as he agreed to the challenge of bathing himself, Yuu scampered off to their upstairs bathroom, leaving Shinya alone in their kitchen.

Alone with the empty plates of dinner; alone with the silence of solitude one too many times revisited; alone with the thoughts he told himself he didn’t have time for.

Where did he go?

That was the question that haunted Shinya’s thoughts at night, when Yuu was fast asleep in his arms and he only had his endless trail of thoughts to keep him company in the wee hours of the morning.

Seven years. Seven long years of pain and constant questioning of his adequacy as a lover and future spouse. Seven years of replaying their final moments together before he left in the blink of an eye, with no trace as to where he disappeared into the night. Seven years wishing he could change what he said.

Two young men sat in a small house with only a few candles to light their shelter. One sat hunched in his seat at the dinner table, tightly gripping a mug of coffee, while the other tersely strapped on various weapons to his belt and shoulder holsters.

“I’m going out tonight to do some perimeter scouting, don’t wait up for me to get back.”

The silver-haired man, without turning from his slouched position at the dinner table, waved dismissively to the dark-haired man standing in the open doorway. “Do whatever you want Guren, see if I care.”

The man, Guren, shrugged and fastened his knife to his belt. “If you’re going to be a little bitch about ‘safety protocols’ you should write a damn book.”

The other man visibly tightened in his posture and bit out, “Just fucking leave already. Maybe don’t even bother coming back if you still hold your damn attitude about those protocols that are meant to protect everyone.”

Guren released a grunt of sarcastic amusement while attaching the sheath to his sword to his hip. “I bet you would get a kick out of the irony if I turned up dead. You would finally get to say ‘I told you so’, just like you always wanted, huh Shinya?”

SLAM.

Fists smacked down onto the unsteady wooden table in a moment of unchecked fury. Barely retaining even a sense of control, Shinya started, “OH YOU-”

Before the man could even begin his tirade, the door was slammed shut on his words.

And just like that, he was gone, leaving Shinya with the sound of the slammed door ringing in his ears. Leaving him alone in their small home they built together, never to return, and left with only regrets of words he wishes he could take back.

If only he had known the consequences of letting him go that night. 

Realistically, Shinya knew Guren had to have died then, likely too cocky in his own actions and got caught up in more than he could chew, but the man couldn’t bring himself to believe that he was dead. He spent night after night waiting for him to return, hoping that this feeling of abandonment was only temporary and that he would soon no longer be alone in the reticent, reclusive house. 

Hoping he would have the chance to say he was sorry.

Boy, was he fucking wrong about that.

The first week left him spiralling into an abyss: Shinya couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, couldn’t get out of bed without Guren. The physical ache of losing his other half, his partner, his friend, his lover, his everything burnt gaping holes into his body and heart; it sucked him dry, almost as if a pitiful horde of dirty blood-drinking leeches pried open his neck and had their fill. Every night he screamed for the one man he cared for to return to him. Every morning he wept for the other’s soothing, firm embrace to quiet him like it used to.

The first year left him empty: Shinya threw himself into his work, into dangerous battles against mob upon mob of vampires. He didn’t care what he did, who he hurt, or what happened to him, so as long as he enacted revenge for his fallen lover. That year, while his number and positions rose amongst the vampire slaying corps, his sanity tumbled. He became belligerent; trigger happy–an unfortunate carbon-copy of Guren’s flaws neatly packaged into one desolate bachelor–all-too-ready to drop his responsibilities in order to kill the bastard creatures that ripped his happiness from him in the span of one night. It disgusted him that he became the very thing he despised, but also comforted him in the depths of delusions, where he could pretend that Guren was somehow still with him to keep him company.

Eventually, his willingness to throw his life away for the sake of reprisal came to bite the blue-eyed man in the ass. Tasked with protecting a hospital during an evacuation outside of vampire territory, Shinya failed to defend a handful of patients from a group of nobles. He failed to support his team when they demanded his backup, and he was almost expelled.

Expulsion would have been fine. He accepted it. Then one of his former teammates–one of his and Guren’s long-standing friends–made the heated comment about Guren’s demise being because of Shinya’s lack of vigilance during a dispute on the way back to headquarters for a mission debriefing, and the young Hiiragi lost it. 

Without any further thought, he raised his weapon at the fool with an expression void of emotion and eyes blazing in icy rage.

He was put on compassionate leave immediately following the incident.

Then he met Yuu.

There were very few survivors from that hospital, and tiny, two-year-old Yuu had been one of them. He was picked up from an abandoned experimental cult laboratory and brought to the medical base for treatment, and after Shinya’s failed mission, he was moved to a more secure medical facility. Feeling sorry for himself, the older man proceeded to visit the survivors to reinforce the guilt surrounding his inability to protect them like he should have.

Yuu looked so small and was dwarfed in his hospital bed, extremely malnourished and thin due to his mistreatment from whatever cult he was rescued from. Despite his condition, the smile he gave Shinya when he entered his room was so wide and bright it gave the man whiplash. How could someone so broken and utterly pathetic smile so easily like everything was right with the world, like everything was right in Shinya’s world?

Oh how quickly he changed his mind.

Within a matter of days the silver-haired man was printing his signature on adoption papers and taking his little Yuucchi home to his lonely and empty home. Within a day the place was lit up with warmth and contentment beyond whatever Shinya had seen within the last year.

Yuuichirou and Shinya. They completed each other, like the rice and curry in Yuu’s favourite dinner-time dish. Yuu was the sunshine to Shinya’s rain, and Shinya was the love that Yuu never received. The two of them were a team, and together they healed each other’s ugly wounds left by lost souls and chipped time on their clocks. Without Yuu, there was no meaning to existence, because that tiny child gave Shinya new meaning to the word “life”.

Yuu was his chance to mend a life after he broke another.

Shinya heaved a deep sigh, dropped his arms to hang limply at his sides, and stared blankly across the threshold of their home. The setting sun, whose fleeting rays of light painted the pristine white walls sickly shades of red, cast shadows within the living room and accentuated the loneliness he felt crawling up the pit of his stomach to settle under his sternum. A dull sensation he couldn’t describe caught in his throat, and Shinya forced himself to turn back into the kitchen, away from the front door, and away from the frantic what ifs threatening to break to the surface of his mind.

It was absurd to entertain the possibility that maybe the front door might open and his tiny, misshapen family could be a little bigger; it was foolish to regress back to the weak shell of a man waiting for a corpse to rise from the dead holding a bouquet of roses and an apology card; it was stupid of him to hope and dream, but that’s all he had left of the love shared between him and Guren.

The sound of running bath water added to the white noise of the house, Yuu’s clamouring upstairs setting Shinya’s nerves at ease for a moment or two. Leave it to him to set aside his stormy emotions to ensure the safety of his child. Which reminded him–

“Yuu!” Shinya called out, loud enough for his son to hear him upstairs. While he awaited a response, he rolled up the sleeves of his sweater and turned on the faucet to allow a steady stream of hot water to run over the dirty dishes.

“Yeah?” The child’s voice rang clear against the walls, puzzled at the sudden call of his name.

“Make sure you wash your hair, too! I don’t want to see any breadcrumbs or chicken pieces in there!”

A pause. The silver-haired man, with his hands reaching for the sponge and dish soap, heard the unmistakable titter of amusement, and couldn’t stop the small smile fighting its way back to his lips despite the nature of his thoughts only seconds ago.

Yuu brought out the best in him, and he would not have it any other way. 

Just before Shinya had finished washing and drying their dinnerware, he heard the clambering of heavy footfalls down the stairs before his son burst into the kitchen in his favourite yellow pyjamas, a faint trail of water droplets falling behind him from his still damp hair. 

“Papa, I finished before you, I win!” Yuu’s triumphant grin was contagious as he marched around the kitchen chanting, “I win, I win, I win!”

Setting aside the last plate, Shinya dried his hands and turned to face his child. “Not so fast, Yuucchi, your hair is still wet!” The older man snatched the bath towel from Yuu’s grasp and placed it down on his small head to playfully rub it around. “If anyone won it’s me!”

Yuu pouted and crossed his arms in defiance as his father dried his hair under his gentle hands. Mumbling with an attitude Shinya was sure he hadn’t taught him, he grumbled out, “You never said anything about my hair needing to be dry…”

Arching a sculpted brow and making an exaggerated thinking face, the older man said, “You know, you are right. Guess I forfeit my win! You can stay up an extra hour as your reward.”

Most people would say that Shinya was spoiling Yuu, and that he needs to learn how to discipline the child for his own good, but he could not help it. The smiles and grins and laughter were all worth a little spoiling every now and then, since Shinya had gone so long without any of those things during the worst period of his life. 

Yuu cheered, jumping with a punctuated fist pump into the air. Shinya steadied him, quietly reminding him that his hair was still damp and that he might slip if he wasn’t careful. Regardless of the safety warnings, Yuu began tugging at Shinya’s shirt to encourage the older man to follow him up to their shared bedroom to watch television for the extra hour Yuu could stay awake (even though he was already eight years old, he still insisted Shinya protect him from the nightmares haunting him and the vampires threatening to break apart their family.)

Carefully disentangling the little raveonette’s delicate hands from his clothing, Shinya ran his fingers through Yuu’s hair–full of affection, full of apology.

“Calm down, sweetie. Papa has a few more things to take care of before he calls it a night. You run ahead to bed and I’ll join you in a few minutes, okay?”

“Aww… can I help clean up?” Yuu pouted, evident that being away from his father was not something he liked doing often. Certain memories of Yuu’s separation anxiety flare ups flashed across his mind, throwing him back to four years ago when the child began preschool and the reality that he wouldn’t be attached to Shinya at the hip hit him harder than any of the other children. With that suddenly weighing heavily on his conscience, Shinya took Yuu’s other hand and gave it a comforting squeeze.

“You did a great job cleaning yourself up. Let me finish super-duper quickly–I promise I won’t leave you alone for longer than five minutes.”

“… You promise?”

“Cross my heart.”

The expression on Yuu’s face looked uncertain, anxious, like he sensed something foreboding in the atmosphere, waiting in the shadows for the perfect moment to strike. Shinya figured Yuu was truly averse to being left alone for any period of time, deciding that physical reassurance might ease his strained little nerves. He bent down again, silently hissing when he felt a sharp pain travel up his leg from the unexpected instability in his joints… he was too young for joint pain, but the stupidity of his vanity brought a terse smile to his lips, one that he hoped would work to calm Yuu. Cupping Yuu’s face and pressing tender kisses to his nose and cheeks, he said: “You know I’ll be there in no time. There’s nothing to worry about.”

“What if you don’t? I heard that a lot of vampires are coming and hurting little kids while their parents are gone! They stalk everyone while when no one watches! The kids at school said that it happens really fast, so what if–”

“Shhhhhhh, nothing is going to happen, Yuucchi. Our house has wards all around it to protect us, no big scary vampires can get in if I have anything to say about it,” the man lied. He knew better than to fill Yuu’s head with deceit, given the boy had a knack for always finding out the truth sooner or later. The technical flaws of the wards were too high over his own head to properly understand, much less explain to a child. Yes, their house was safe from a majority of vampires, should they lack potent Noble blood coursing through their veins; No, their house and their very lives were not safe from any vampire with a drop of Nobility. The wards could protect them from a mass of lowly cretins but would be ineffective again a single vampire high enough in the hierarchy–Shinya and Yuu would be at a single monster’s mercy, unable to escape and sentenced to death in the comfort of their own home.

Shinya smoothed the unmanageable tufts of Yuu’s hair and gave him a reassuring squeeze around the shoulders. “Papa won’t be long, go put on your favourite cartoon and I be right there, okay?”

The little raveonette seemed hesitant, but he nodded in affirmation and quietly left the kitchen for their bedroom, but not without sparing an anxious glance to the window.

With the boy now gone, Shinya’s mind began to unfortunately wander again. Yuu’s worrying only reminded him of the cruel and twisted world they live in. It was easy to forget about certain things like the danger of the virus that broke out in major cities or the blood-thirsty creatures that roamed the countryside at night. With the full and bright comfort of home that Shinya stitched together for his misshapen family, it was easy to forget how feeble life was. Shinya’s blood family was torn away from him at an early age, and Guren was taken just as easily by the creatures they both sought to destroy.

It was so easy to forget and try to move on.

Dispersing the intrusive thoughts, Shinya set himself to sorting and putting away the clean dishes in the kitchen cabinets in order to quickly return to Yuu. The poor child never did well on his own, and even Shinya himself had grown so attached to the boy that even a little separation was nerve-wracking.

Just as Shinya put away the last plate, there was a soft knock at the door. The silver-haired man paused and quickly wondered who would be out at this time of night. Only a man with a death wish would be out in the open like this, coming to Shinya’s remote and isolated home.

A second, louder knock echoed throughout the house that added to the confusion plaguing Shinya. Maybe some lost wanderer needed a place to stay for the night, away from the dangers lurking in the shadows was what he thought initially, since it wasn’t an uncommon occurrence for his area. He approached the door, flipping on the switch for the outdoor light to help him better see the madman daring enough to brave the dark.

He unlocked it and opened the door enough to view the person on the other side, not at all prepared to stare into the vibrant red eyes of the man he once loved.

Before Shinya stood an almost identical copy of the man who disappeared from plain sight seven years ago, but there was an alarming, disturbing difference: skin he remembered to have been beautifully tanned and tinged in the warmest pink of life retained no colour besides that of ash; the pallor of his complexion heightened the vacant gleam in his unwavering eyes, as red as the blood rushing away from Shinya’s face.

Despite the differences, the similarities were the most painful, the most overwhelming to acknowledge: the signature down set of his lips, all business and arrogance with just a hint of compromise; the undeniable glow of worry, yearning, and love swimming within the depths of crimson, completely irrelevant to the substantial amount of time Shinya last had the opportunity to gaze into them.

He didn’t realise tears were stinging the corners of his eyes, that one hand–white knuckled and trembling–balled into a fist against his mouth, and the other gripped the door frame for support, because somewhere in his lapse of reality for the short four seconds of processing just who he was face to face with, Shinya’s knees nearly gave out. He didn’t realise the quivering knot in the back of his throat restricting his voice until he tried to whisper a name he didn’t have the luxury of pushing past his tongue in god knows how long.

“G… Guren…? Is–is that…?”

All he received in response was a quiet, resigned, mournful sigh of acknowledgement, and Shinya instinctively reached out to cup his former lover’s cheek in an action full of solace and intimacy. And it stung as his fingertips ghosted over the rock solid skin retaining nothing but a dead chill in it. Guren sighed again, in tortured comfort when the warmth of Shinya’s gentle hand seeped into his body.

“God… what did they do to you?” Shinya whispered in a broken, strained whisper he only used to share with Guren. Just like it used to be.

Amidst the pools of relief and love in the man’s now crimson eyes, there was a deep and dark pit of hatred and resignation from some years of unspoken torture and pain. Those eyes told of agony beyond what Shinya could understand, of misery that no one should ever be subjected to. 

Guren tilted his face into the warmth of Shinya’s hand and spoke vaguely. “You know what they do vampire hunters, Shinya. They torture us and make us their pets.”

Before Shinya could help himself and think further of this unannounced situation, he flung himself at the dark-haired man and embraced him in a flurry of tears and consolation. He sobbed into Guren’s shoulder and let the tidal wave of seven years of abandonment and regret wash over him and be heard in his whimpers and weeping. For what seemed like hours he cried into freshly pressed white button-down shirt that Guren wore and likely stained it with his tears, but he did not care. 

He was home. 

After several minutes however, Shinya backed away from Guren’s unrequited embrace and mustered up a cautious tone. “How… how did you get here? There are wards all around the house and property to… keep vampires away… Unless–oh no, Guren…”

The larger man turned his head and fixed his glare somewhere on the ground, purposefully ignoring the question. Of course… if Guren could get past the wards then he must have been turned by a Noble. What an idiot Shinya was for not realizing it sooner, but then again–imagining Guren still alive after all these years was one of his wildest dreams. Shinya reached out to gently turn his former lover’s face back to meet his, red and blue eyes teeming with so many years’ worth of questions and stories to be told. Above all else, deep sorrow etched into the permanent frown lines on Shinya’s otherwise young face enhanced the regret pooling in his vision, biting the tip of his tongue.

“I-I’m so sorry… Fuck, I’m so stupid. I’m so, so stupid… was it a Noble who–who–” Shinya’s voice caught in his throat as his fingers reflexively curled around Guren’s jaw and his eyes wandered to his neck, like if he stared hard enough he could still see the puncture wounds left by a vicious monster. But it faded the moment Guren stopped walking among the living, and in place of physical scars were scars crafted of shame. Bitterness.

Remorse.

“I–If I just… If I didn’t let you go that night… you wouldn’t have… y-you… You’d have been okay,” he whimpered, low enough for the rush of his laboured breathing to carry his voice away; unstable enough that it crumbled in front of Guren as he lay out all of his self-directed blame in one final display. Shinya opened his mouth to speak again–he knew it, of course it was his fault, of course!–yet all that escaped him bubbled in his mouth as a wet sob and a hysterical rushed string of apologies.

“Guren, I’m–”

“Stop.”

The bite in the vampire’s voice made the silver-haired man visibly flinch and shy away from the other, though the tiny bit of distance was quickly closed as two strong arms wrapped themselves around his frame and pulled him into a crushing hug. “Stop blaming yourself and stop crying. Neither of us can change what happened, so stop. Please.”

Feeling those arms around him again only made the tears flow harder from Shinya’s eyes. After years of forgetting the warmth and strength behind Guren’s embrace, it was like being enveloped in a sweet memory that he refused to accept he so desperately wanted to relive. And so Shinya allowed himself to bask in the hug and shed the physical manifestation of his relief into Guren’s shoulder once more, even though the memory was not as warm as it used to be.

After several more moments of crying, the younger of the two gently pried himself out of the embrace and rubbed away the remnants of tears from his eyes. “Look at me, crying like this… we should get inside, it would be best that we don’t doddle around his time of night.”

The silver-haired man walked back into his kitchen with a heavy but relieved feeling in his steps, contrasted by the heavy, sombre out-of-place footsteps trailing behind. Guren peered sourly at the various decorations around the small house, focusing more intently on ones he didn’t remember being there seven years ago. The plethora of crudely drawn crayon art stuck to the fridge received an especially long and foreign glance–including the newest one drawn by the child, who he’s come to know as “Yuu”, just a few days prior of himself learning how to ride a bike– but Shinya paid no mind to the subtle oddities. It went unnoticed that the door was quietly locked behind Guren’s entrance. 

“We have a lot of catching up to do. I’ll make some tea and maybe heat up some leftovers! You can also meet-”

“Shinya.”

The way in which Guren said his name had the silver-haired man pausing in his excited movements. He turned to meet Guren’s gaze and offered a questioning look.

“I’m afraid I’m not here for the reasons you might hope.” There were implications behind his vague words that Shinya did not understand. This moment should be a celebration, a joyous occasion of a lover returning home to his partner of years past, but Guren appeared as if he were preparing to attend a funeral.

Hesitantly, Shinya asked, “Then why…?”

“I want you to kill me.”

He… he wanted what?

Shinya kept the smile plastered on his face to keep some pseudo-semblance of control over the situation; kept his eyes unfocused to prevent any unwarranted glances at Guren and risk breaking down again. Some awful, heavy lump of dread weighing down the pit of his stomach resonated with the nagging adrenaline spike–that engaging Guren while so emotionally compromised would end terribly.

He knew this, but he was at the point where rationality and forethought came to a screeching halt the second he let his former lover into his house, unprotected and vulnerable.

“… What kind of fucked up joke–”

“I want you to kill me, Shinya,” the vampire repeated, firmer, more urgency in his trembling voice layered with so much anguish. He approached the blue-eyed man then, grasping the hands balled at his sides and bringing them up to press sweet, slow kisses against his knuckles. “I can’t keep living like this. You’re my last option.”

Shinya tried to pull his hands away, the smile on his face dropping to disbelief and fear, but the hold Guren had him in was too tight for him to slip out of unless he didn’t mind breaking a few bones. “Well, I–I’m sorry, but I can’t do that. Guren–you… you left me for seven years, and the first time I get to see you and try to relinquish the blame I put on myself for not protecting you, you ask me to kill you? Do you just really not care about how I feel?”

“Shinya…”

“No… no! No, you don’t get to disappear and then come to me because you’re too much of a coward to kill yourself. If–if you came here…” He turned his head to the side, momentarily shutting out Guren to streamline the frantic, panicked, angry, desolate thoughts hammering away in his mind. “You don’t really want to die–no, you can’t. Maybe you just want me to help… I–I can try to think of something so that we can cha–”

“Shinya.”

The tone of man’s voice vibrated with a heavy plea for the impossible. Shinya could not bear to meet Guren’s eyes and instead screwed his own shut in some in vain effort to avoid committing an atrocity such as ending an undeserving life. There was a resigned sigh, and the cold, lifeless hands of the living corpse in front of Shinya let go of his own warm ones.

The two of them were so engrossed in their conversation that they both failed to hear the quiet sound of a door opening from the upstairs bedroom.

“Papa, are you okay?” The soft timbre of Yuu’s voice echoed off the walls of the house from the bedroom, reminding Shinya that he and his long-lost lover were not alone as they used to be. Quiet thudding followed the voice as Yuu was likely coming down the stairs to check on the commotion. Shinya spared a quick glance towards the sound before he was looking back into Guren’s own lifeless ones, words of appease on his tongue before he nearly choked on a sudden realization.

We’re not alone.

The hairs on the back of Shinya’s neck rose to stand on end, forcing some unseen feeling to make the man meet Guren’s unwavering gaze. Even though it had been seven long years of separation, the vampire hunter still knew how to read Guren’s expressions like the back of his hand.

The crimson darkness in the vampire’s eyes glimmered without a single speck of relenting mercy, brought on by years of suffering in an unforgiving solitude; years of leaving his humanity behind to flesh out the beast he was turned into.

No.

No.

No.

“Guren I swear on all the angels if you–“

“I’m sorry Shinya, but if you won’t kill me, I’ll give you a reason to.”

One second Guren was there in front of Shinya, and in the next he vanished, leaving only the speed of his movements ruffling the ends of Shinya’s silver hair. Before the man could even process what was happening, a blood-curdling scream rang in the recesses of his mind and forced his legs to begin sprinting to the bedroom on autopilot.

Where Yuu should have been standing at the foot of the stairs, there was nothing but a dent in the wall and evidence of something being dragged up the stairs from the small scratches in the wallpaper and the banister. 

In an instant, adrenaline and terror shot down his spine as his legs propelled him up the stairs. Before Shinya could make it to the threshold of his bedroom door, his widened eyes made contact with the teary, petrified ones of his son clutching his shoulder in an apparent gesture of pain and he could taste the vile hatred bubbling up from his stomach as he neared Yuu with an outstretched hand–

“Yuuichirou, run–!!”

And then the door slammed shut with enough force to splinter the doorframe.

From within, Shinya heard the heavy steps of a monster approaching the muffled whimpers of a helpless child. He heard Yuu choke on his breath in startled sob before releasing a scream that made Shinya’s stomach tear; something massive and bulky was thrown against the floor and skidded with almost perfect precision to hit the bedroom door, and it dawned on him too late that Guren was barricading him and his child inside; Yuu’s screams and whimpering grew louder, more frantic, as Shinya made out the disorderly tread of his feet on the tile.

He was scared. Scared for his child. Scared for himself. Guren be damned to the vilest cesspool in Hell if he didn’t get out of his house and away from Yuu. Shinya–breath trembling and vision swimming–braced himself as he threw his body against the hardwood door, hissing in excruciating pain when the bones in his clavicle snapped and his shoulder popped out of its socket from the sheer force he used to try to break the door open. Like an idiot, his weapon was secure and disabled under the bed–exactly how Guren taught him to store it all those years ago–and too far out of his reach to call upon his demon to rescue Yuu.

“Guren–Guren stop! STOP, PLEASE!” Shinya beat his fists against the wood over and over and over and over again in an attempt to get inside and stop the imminent massacre. 

Even if he managed to bust the door open and get the gun, he’d be too late.

From behind the door, glass shattered–presumably from the window–and he heard a shocked grunt so out of place from Yuu; he heard a small body slam against several surfaces–the television which crashed to the ground; the wall that then caved in on itself; the bed which creaked and buckled under the force of the blows over it–and the blood curdling screams and howls of a child being tortured harmonizing with it.

He heard Yuu cry for him, for someone to save him; heard the little eight-year-old put up a struggle and try to defend himself by throwing what he could at Guren. But nothing worked. Those heavy footsteps still padded the floor and stopped suddenly.

For a moment, the silence preceding what Shinya knew and hoped wouldn’t happen made the entire situation feel like some terrible, terrible nightmare.

And then reality dug its barred fangs deeply, mercilessly, into his neck.

The sounds emanating from the other side of the room would plague Shinya for as long as he lived. A shaking breath, weak at first, and then seizing; soft tissue being handled roughly; a steady trickle of liquid flowing into a lethal, unstoppable cascade; and the tiny gurgles of an innocent child choking on his own blood, or what would have been left of it.

Through all of that, the only thing Shinya could focus on in his total inability to save the one thing he cherished was the garbled last words of Yuu before he heard a dull thump on soaked wood:

“…p…pa…a…”

The breath in Shinya’s chest froze as icy terror flooded his lungs. With the strength equal to only a human overdosing on adrenaline in a fight or flight response, the man rammed himself against the wooden door until the frame split and the hinges snapped out of the wall. The force of his heaving shoved the chair locked under the doorknob away, and then the door came crashing to the floor with Shinya lying on top of it, who was in too much pain from broken bones and dislocated joints to mentally prepare himself for the sheer gore in front of him.

There was so much blood. Too much blood. Far too much for an eight-year-old boy to lose and still hope to recover.

When Shinya finally lifted his head from the splintered wood underneath him, his gaze met the dull and glassy ones of his child.

His child.

Despite the stabbing pain in his shoulder, the silver-haired man still pushed himself up and crawled over to the rapidly cooling corpse of Yuu and cradled the small and bloody body to his chest. Muttering incoherently to the deaf body, Shinya felt tears spill out of his eyes and fall down his cheeks in thick waves. “No no no,” his breath hitched in a hiccup as Shinya struggled to speak, begging to the stars above that Yuu might still be able to hear him before he left this world for good. “It’s okay baby it’s okay, papa is here now, you’ll be okay–” He paid no mind to the blood pooling in his sweater and staining his pants, to the lack of warmth he only felt from Yuu some twenty minutes earlier, or to the way his baby’s body was so limp and frightfully pale in his arms.

A soft creak on the other side of the room had Shinya’s head snapping to glare hotter than all the fires in hell at the one responsible.

Guren stood with a blank expression in the corner of Shinya’s bedroom, just in front of the shattered window, soaked to the bone in his child’s innocent blood that which now stained his fingers and coated the edges of his lips. The once pristine white button-down was splattered in crimson red–the red of lost life and tainted dreams.

Everything seemed to shut off in Shinya’s brain. All feeling, all emotion, all rationality was gone. Only the searing heat of anger and revenge coated his insides and filled his body with the overwhelming fury of a parent who lost a child.

Mechanically, Shinya gently set down Yuu’s broken body and slowly stood to his feet, gritting all the way through the pain still throbbing in his shoulder and collarbone. Bracing himself against the burning injuries, the man bit out, “How could you.”

A flicker of satisfaction crossed through the man when Guren visibly flinched against the ferocity of his tone, but he did not back away. 

“How could you!” The emotional and physical agony in Shinya’s voice dripped like molten lava, hot and raw and unending in its depth. Without his knowledge, the man’s eyes watered once more and spilled fresh tears down his face and stained the edges of his shirt when they dropped from his chin. Shinya was physically trembling now with barely restrained fury–born of betrayal–and despair–born of loss.

Hesitantly, Guren said, “I had to-”

“HE WAS ONLY A CHILD AND YOU TOOK HIM AWAY FROM ME!”

Angered by Shinya’s refusal to concede, Guren’s blank expression fell into a harsh furrow of his eyebrows, the savage glint in his odious eyes sending vile, vile shivers throughout Shinya’s arms and legs as the vampire’s mouth bared its fangs. He truly resembled the monster he made himself out to be that evening.

A furious, miserable sob burst through Shinya’s chest as he outstretched his broken arm to call upon his demon gun.

“You talk about how I left you, yet you bring some lowly guinea pig into my house to replace me,” he snarled, letting the full weight of his contempt settle into his voice. It was obvious that he burned with an indescribable feeling of resentment for no longer being the light of his former lover’s life–that there was something else more deserving than him to receive any of Shinya’s love.

It infuriated him. More than anything he’s ever experienced: more than losing his humanity, losing his emotions, losing his happiness, losing his future.

“You could have prevented this–”

Cutting Guren off with an enraged roar, Shinya took aim at Guren’s body, lining the barrel of his demon weapon with the space between the vampire’s eyes before firing. Whether he was truly trying to kill him or not didn’t matter–he was distraught. He wanted to reverse the last three minutes and save his child. He wanted to stop having his shortfalls return to smack him in the face.

You could have prevented this. You could have prevented Guren leaving you. You could have prevented Yuu being ruthlessly killed in the home he was told again and again was the safest place in the world. You could have prevented finding yourself alone, yet again.

The vampire, on instinct, danced out of each bullet’s path, a blurred image of white and red to Shinya’s tearful eyes. Each pass of a bullet into the hard concrete of the wall set a billow of dust into the air, adding to the pure strain of the difficulty of keeping himself composed.

“Shut up! Shut the fuck up!” The silver-haired man screeched, firing blindly against the back wall of the bedroom.

“For all those years, what did that insignificant little rat give you that I couldn’t?!”

“He gave me a new reason to live! I lost that after you disappeared!” Another shot left the gun and implanted itself in the wall just a hair’s breadth away from Guren’s neck. In any other situation Shinya would have been able to precisely take off his head in one clean shot, but he was far too burdened with hatred and grief to think clearly. And perhaps on some level, there was still hesitation to end the life of his former lover.

It was still Guren.

No its not, not anymore.

That monster is not the man you once knew.

Through the flurry of hot tears still streaming from his eyes, Shinya spat out, “I trusted you.”

A soft expression overtook Guren’s face at Shinya’s pained words. “Shin-”

“I TRUSTED YOU!” Taking the dark-haired man completely by surprise, Shinya fired another round of shots to sink directly into the man’s shoulder.

Grunting in pain, Guren clasped his shoulder and became distracted with his injury just long enough for Shinya to find an opening and sprint with the bayonet end of his rifle pointed at his undead chest. 

The sound of sharp steal tearing through cold muscle and tissue should have been satisfying, but it became only white noise in Shinya’s ears. Demonstrating no further hesitation on his part, he drove the two of them back with the momentum of his thrust and pushed Guren out the broken window, dragging Shinya himself with him down two stories.

The momentum flowed to a snail’s trickle as time halted around them. In the air, glass shards looked like the softest rain drops encasing a pair dancing together, suspended in moonlight and darkness. The blade of the bayonet wedged itself to the hilt in Guren’s chest, and his eyes widened fractionally as he felt the resistance of a solid structure give out to force. Above him–through his distorted vision–he watched as Shinya use the last of his strength to give one final shove, releasing the body of the gun to adjust his open position in their dual fall.

Shinya’s eyes, shimmering in a haunting blue that hardened with a wrath the vampire never thought he would live to see, locked with Guren’s as he hissed one final word before gravity took its toll on his fragile human body and the speed of time resumed:

“Suffer.”

The next instant filled the silence of the night with a tremendous thud as two bodies hit the ground, both stiff and immobile. After several seconds, Guren painfully brought himself to sit up, gritting his teeth at the two large wounds in his shoulder and chest. Snapping his head towards the body adjacent to him, he snarled bitterly, “You idiot–!”

But there was no sound from the other man. No movement in his limp limbs, no rush of blood through his veins, no soft breathing through his chest.

Nothing.

Guren stared at the body of the man lying in the cold grass next to him, whose rifle was broken into several parts scattered around them from the impact of their fall. His depthless eyes scanned the area around them to find glass shards protruding from his skin and mirrored against Shinya’s arms and legs, before the smell of fresh blood and the sound of a faltering heart pervaded his hearing.

There, not even a metre away, lay Shinya with an unreadable expression on his face–eyes closed in a serenity that would have warmed the undying flesh underneath the vampire’s skin were it not for the gush of blood seeping through his former lover’s hair and down his face; while his skin glowed beautifully under the moonlight–surrounded by the glimmering reflections given off by the innumerable pieces of glass littering the yard–Guren knew that colour was fast fading and growing duller by the second as the beating of the human’s heart spasmed uncontrollably against his crushed ribs.

The neck he remembered kissing in affection over and over again back when he was human was contorted in a way that only screamed of immediate demise.

And he continued to stare wordlessly as the reality of what just occurred sunk into him, fighting to not accept the truth that his plan to have himself selfishly killed backfired worse than he could have ever imagined. The smell of blood grew stronger as the dull thudding of Shinya’s heart tapered off into its final pulses.

A silence befell the countryside for a moment before it was punctured by a horrified scream bursting with inconceivable guilt, guttural and agonized.

Maybe the proper reaction came only after realizing the conduit through which he’d be able to achieve his goal of escape was currently dead on the ground next to him with a broken neck and a broken heart; maybe the guilt singeing into the depths of his conscience from having stalked the happy family for years on end was finally catching up to him.

Harming the child out of pure spite for simply existing as a vessel of replacement was definitely among his priorities, that much he gleefully admitted to. The well-being of the little rat that stole his lover’s attention manifested into a jealousy he couldn’t contain, and Guren came to the ultimatum that if he couldn’t be blessed with spending the rest of his life happily with Shinya, then no one could.

Yet he didn’t expect Shinya would end up dead.

It was not supposed to end like this.

It was supposed to end with Guren finally being released from ceaseless pain and suffering. He was supposed to be released from the strict grip the thirst for blood had on his dead body, which became the foremost drive of his very being to kill in order to live. He was supposed to be released from the knowledge that his body would no longer provide warmth to the one person he loved more than life itself.

And what had that brought him?

Lost in thought, Guren reflected on earlier when he finally made the decision to approach the little house in the woods and knock on the front door that he had so often just barged into like a barbarian, much to Shinya’s complaint time and time again. He fully expected Shinya to reject his mere presence and hopefully strike him down on the spot with little question, but the worst happened, and Shinya shed tears for him and invited him into the house. He offered to help him and fix a problem that could not be fixed.

A sinking feeling overtook Guren’s posture with the knowledge that Shinya had no intention of turning him away, and most likely expected Guren could fit into the family he created like nothing was wrong with the picture of a dead man walking amongst the living.

Maybe we could have been a family again.

Guren hadn’t shed tears since the night he was turned all those years ago, but now they freely slipped down his cheeks. He was so focused on ending his life for the monster he had become, that he didn’t even considered the idea that he could still be with Shinya, for at least however long they both had together. 

Obviously it was too late for that now, since both halves of his potential family lay in pools of their own blood with inanimate hearts and cold skin.

Blood spilt because of his own self-centred ideology and blinding jealousy.

It now made sense; what Shinya whispered earlier. “Suffer.” It meant now Guren would have to continue to suffer in this demonic afterlife, shackled to the earth with guilt for the lives he was responsible for taking, never being able to be freed for his heinous crimes.

Not a soul was left alive to forgive him for the sins he wrought. Shinya would have–he saw it in his eyes the moment he opened the door to perchance the only means of reprieve offered to him. He would have been welcomed, loved, and protected for all he was worth had his jealousy over Shinya finding happiness in the comforting familial bond with a blameless child not tinged his perspective red.

Guren shuddered, brushing the dirt and glass off his soiled clothing as he carefully crawled towards Shinya’s body. The sluggishness of grief pooled in his muscles mending themselves from injuries only he could recover from. As he shuffled across the grass on his hands and knees, ignoring the way a fresh wave of tears stung his eyes and a rueful whine bubbled in his chest, his memory supplied him with more evidence of Shinya’s enmity:

He never, not once, activated the curse that would end him.

The man he loved took to the grave years of resentment, abandonment that morphed from fallible feelings of love he thought would have persevered due to his disappearance; Shinya was killed for the immediate revenge of Guren murdering Yuu–the child he despised without reason apart from envy–and effectively killed himself for everlasting revenge against Guren for everything he’s put him through.

It was a nasty contradiction to the open heart he first encountered, so happy to see him.

Perhaps that’s where the guilt resided: he managed to corrupt a deep love into a listless figure of hatred. Guren felt his chest constrict painfully then, calling forth the damning glare in Shinya’s eyes before his head hit the ground. Tears quietly sliding along a blade of blood-soaked grass, the vampire collapsed back onto his haunches besides Shinya’s body, a shivering, pitiful noise of a man who lost everything but his life blending into the background of the night.

Doubling over to press his face into the bloodied shirt of a man who chose to escape into the void with someone other than himself, Guren released the first hysterical wail of sorrow in a line of many.

The existence he lived became a little more intolerable and a little more inescapable.