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Touko awakened with a shudder and a deep, gnawing hunger. It felt as if her stomach had shriveled while she slept. No, not just her stomach, the very flesh off her bones. She didn’t think she’d been sleeping all that long, but the weakness in her limbs and the absolutely ravenous hunger said otherwise. Already, the unease and anxiety were building within her as surely as the hunger, filling all the empty spaces in her disused organs and scorching veins.
She didn’t normally awaken in bed either. More often, she jolted into awareness in the middle of some activity or another, left to hastily get up to speed on whatever Syo had been doing. It wasn’t unheard of for her to decide to take a nap, or for Touko to be the first to wake up at night, but ever since their turning, the arrangement had been that Syo took care of feeding. She delighted in killing anyway, and Touko’s phobia of blood had regrettably not been cured by needing it for sustenance, so it was a win-win situation.
For her to be waking with such a desperate hunger, Syo must not have fed the previous night before they went to sleep at dawn. Maybe not the last couple of nights. Touko had her doubts as to whether the painful desperation she felt could be caused by only a single missed night. Yet Syo hadn’t been absent altogether for that whole time, or Touko would have been in uninterrupted control and would have known perfectly well that she hadn’t fed.
So what was going on? The bloodlust howled inside her, made it hard to think. Her salivary glands prickled, flooding her mouth with wetness, and that alone was enough to elicit an answering sensation from her gums. They prickled as her fangs slid down into place, fully extended. Touko whined low in her throat and leapt from her bed.
No thought was required once she hit the hallway. She only needed to follow the scent of blood, the only substance that could attract and repel her in such equal measure. A low, steady thrumming was underlying the rapid in and out of her own unnecessary breathing. It grew louder the closer she drew to the living room of the home she and Syo shared with Komaru. Touko couldn’t stop herself. An invisible thread had wound itself tightly around her and was pulling her along at the hands of whatever foul spirit proliferated the dark gift.
All she could do was warn her hapless, innocent girlfriend with a sharply hollered, “Omaru!” before she entered the room.
Komaru was on the sofa in Sanrio-printed pajamas, a volume of some trendy shoujo manga in her hands. By the time Touko laid eyes on her, she was sitting up straight, eyes wide in startled confusion, but Touko knew that just seconds earlier, she must have been the picture of languor, maybe fighting a doze as her eyes traced the same panels over and over again. She’d insisted on shifting to a more nocturnal schedule in order to have more time with them, but hadn’t quite adjusted yet, and so Touko often found her yawning or otherwise fighting sleep like she was perpetually jet-lagged.
“Touko-chan? What’s going on? Why’d you just barrel in here like a maniac?” Komaru blinked at her, still all sleepy and mussed despite her alarm. Touko wanted to wrap her up in bubble wrap and keep her locked away until she figured out what Syo’s problem was. She wanted to devour her.
“Isn’t that just my natural state of being?” Touko replied acidly, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “That’s what I am, right? A disgusting, unnatural maniac that you normies are far too well-adjusted to understand or sympathize with. Why don’t you just question my entire existence while you’re at it?”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Komaru put down her manga, on the couch, face down and open in a way that would stretch the spine. Touko would care if it was actual literature, or if she wasn’t so painfully hungry. “Why are you jumping ahead to all that out of nowhere? Didn’t you only just wake up? What’s got you so wound up already?”
“Something’s wrong,” she gritted out. Immediately, she wanted to smack herself for stating the obvious. She gripped the back of the armchair she stood next to instead, letting her claws puncture the upholstery with no regard for how it would look. If she was holding onto that, she couldn’t be ripping into Komaru.
“Yes, but what? Talk to me. Maybe I can help with whatever it is.”
“Syo hasn’t been feeding. I don’t know why. She’s not communicated any issues to me. There… there’s been nothing amiss to you, right? There’s nothing.” She asked more as a formality than anything else. She knew what the answer would be. Komaru would not have been aware of any problems, because if there were any, Syo would have done her utmost to hide them. The struggles of vampires were not for humans to fret over, unless she was deliberately being provocative about it. That was the way Syo thought about it, and Touko could never bring herself to disagree.
“No,” Komaru said, her soft lips drawing down into a frown. Exactly as Touko expected. Touko wrapped her arms tightly around herself, trying and failing to squeeze the anxiety out, or to distract herself from the empty pit of her stomach. “I haven’t noticed anything. But at least for now, the solution should be simple enough, right?”
“Like hell it is. What could be simple about it? Waking her up, if I can even manage to do so, is only half the battle. I have no ability to make sure she goes out and feeds once she’s in front, not even knowing what kind of bizarre hunger strike she’s on. And you?” Touko laughed bitterly. “Just because she’s grown attached to you as I have doesn’t mean you have real influence over her. If she doesn’t want to do something, she won’t.”
“Okay, but I wasn’t suggesting we wake up Syo. Isn’t it way simpler if you take care of it? Feed on me,” Komaru said. Like it was simple. Like Touko could bring herself to do such a repellant thing without a second thought. Like she and Syo hadn’t had a perfectly arranged routine to avoid exactly that, the crimson glisten of others’ life force on her skin, the hot, metallic taste in her mouth. The undeniable reminder of what a monster she was and would always be, until the day the sun found her at last.
“No,” she insisted, stepping more fully behind the armchair. It wouldn’t serve as any kind of functional shield if Komaru decided to storm over and drag her close, but it made Touko feel better to have something between them. She placed both hands on the upholstered back, fussing with the blanket folded there.
“I know you’re scared of it, but I won’t let anything bad happen. You can close your eyes so you don’t have to see, and… and I’ll tell you when you need to stop. Syo’s bitten me before. I know how it feels and how much I can take.”
“She’s…” Touko probably should have known that. Syo was intimate with Komaru just as she was. It was no surprise that, for Syo, that would include pleasurable bites. But still. Touko abandoned her shield of a chair almost as quickly as she’d taken up residence behind it, moving closer so that she could get a proper look at Komaru’s neck through her glasses. It was unmarked, like she thought. There were no scars of twin puncture wounds that she’d overlooked.
Komaru grabbed her arm. Touko flinched and could have torn herself away easily with her vampire strength. Despite that, she toppled onto the couch, landing on top of her girlfriend’s soft curves.
“It’ll be alright. I promise. I’m not gonna let you hurt me, and I know that you wouldn’t let you hurt me either. So just close your eyes and take a drink. You’ll feel so much better afterwards.”
She clenched her eyes shut so tightly that it almost hurt. Her gums tingled, fangs sliding out to do their job. Her face was already pressed so close to Komaru’s neck that she barely had to try. Only a slight tilt of her head and they were piercing her girlfriend’s skin. The blood pounded there, flooded into her mouth with only the slightest effort. Komaru’s arms locked around her. Again, trying to keep her there. If she could think clearly, Touko might have been angry at how she thought she knew what was best for her.
Maybe she did know.
It was disgusting. Horrible. Everything she’d been trying to avoid since she was turned, and even before that. But it tasted like the finest ambrosia. Touko hadn’t tasted anything as a vampire. She made a quiet noise of contentment against Komaru’s throat, drinking deeply until a hand at her shoulder made her stop.
“That’s enough,” Komaru said. “I’m… starting to feel a little faint. You should stop now.”
Touko jerked back almost immediately, eyes still firmly closed. She felt the tear of skin when her fangs retracted. Komaru’s skin, the delicate film keeping everything inside of her. It was several seconds filled only with heavy breathing before she had the courage to open her eyes and check the damage.
“I…” Apologies would never not feel sour on her tongue. “I didn’t mean to,” tripped out instead, close enough.
“It’s okay.” Before her eyes, the wound in Komaru’s neck was already beginning to heal over, spurred on by Touko’s saliva. “It smarts a little, but I’ll be fine. I always am, aren’t I? You didn’t even know that Syo drinks from me sometimes.”
“S-still. I don’t like it. It’s vulgar and disgusting and… it feels like hurting you.” And worse, she had enjoyed it in the moment. She might have kept going if Komaru hadn’t told her to stop. Unacceptable. Touko pulled away, pressing herself against the back of the couch and preparing to atone for her monstrousness. But Komaru followed, pressed to Touko’s chest just as surely as Touko’s back was pressed against the couch, and there was nowhere for her to go.
“If you really hate it that much, we’ll try to make sure you don’t have to do it again. I’ll see if I can get some answers out of Syo the next time she shows up.” That frown was back on Komaru’s face, like they’d time traveled to before the bite. Only with the addition of fang marks on her neck. “But if you did like it, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.”
“I didn’t,” Touko insisted again. Komaru had the gall to wrap her arms around her in a hug. Already flush together, Touko would deny any assertion that she went into it willingly, but… she didn’t fight it.
Komaru stroked her hair. Touko pressed her face into her neck again, that time with her mouth firmly closed. She could hear, feel, smell her girlfriend’s blood in her veins, but the intensity of her desire had abated. Her stomach was full. Sated, but for how long?
Syo needed to come back and take over feeding again. If she didn’t, Touko feared she would drain her sweet, understanding, ordinary girl dry.