Warning: Sexual content. Nothing too explicit, but definitely contains mature themes.

Infinity Nights

1. Sex and Alcohol

"Ooooooh... Faster, yes! You're so good!"

The feminine voice coming from underneath him was lost to Fai's ears. It was a shame considering the beauty of the black-haired busty girl who was moaning passionately in pleasure, whether genuinely or not. He barely felt the pain when long fingernails dug into the skin of his arms as yet another girl reached her climax by his hand, or rather, sex. Even as she reached her peak, he kept thrusting at his own pace, seeking only his own pleasure. The vampire mage merely gasped at his release.

"Thank you, Alcyone-san," Fai murmured as he peeled the used condom off of him, knotting the open end so its contents wouldn't spill. The whole thing, he tossed into the trash without ceremony. His seed was worth nothing. He should never have children, else they might end up as wretched as he was. He didn't think to clean himself up before he put his clothes on. He was far dirtier than this girl ever would be.

"I had fun, too," Alcyone replied a little more sincerely than she normally would. She dressed herself up in her complicated leather outfit with efficiency that came with years of doing so several times a night. For her, the blond beauty was just another client; even if, according to the other girls, he never paused to rest before leaving, much less fall asleep. She paused when she saw one blue eye watching her distantly. "I'm sorry, I thought we were done."

Fai dug into his pants pocket and pulled out more than enough to pay the prostitute with him. He handed her the money, not even bothering to count as he knew how much money he had and had already memorized the going rate of women in those parts. "Thank you," he murmured after paying and began to leave.

Alcyone nodded towards the black-clad man as he left her room. Even if she felt the hurt he radiated, she didn't try to stop him and she didn't try to comfort him any more than she already had. That wasn't part of her job. She thought about praying for his safety or for him to find solace in sleep, but she didn't believe in any god so there was no point in praying.

The mage walked back to their shared apartment. After the heat of sex, the night seemed so much colder to Fai. Yet, it was all he had to ward of the chill of this country, whose darkness was somehow reminiscent of the world he was born in. The cold air made Fai want; made Fai need warmth that Mokona could not provide. He was a man, after all. Sometimes, heat, to him, meant more than a cuddle.

-

"Where have you been?"

The ice-blue eye did not show any surprise when it clashed with the very alert and scrutinizing red stare coming from the angry ninja on the receiving room sofa. There was even some amount of triumph in that lonesome eye. "You know where I've been. You've done it before, Kurogane."

Kurogane frowned for several reasons. Fai smelled of perfume, the type that whores used. The ninja knew that the blond had been going out for that reason after every chess game, which meant that the blond picked-up hookers at least four times a week. That was one of the reasons that Kurogane was irked. More than the fact that the visits were actually occurring, the frequency of Fai's visits to brothels bothered the ninja. What was piquing Kurogane's mind was that Fai was absolving himself of this sin of trying to screw every other loose girl in town by pointing out that Kurogane himself had, on more than one occasion, gone to those pleasure houses himself. A third reason was the one the ninja chose to mention, because it was probably the only one the magician would listen to, "The girl was looking for you. She seemed upset that she couldn't find you."

At that, some of the ice around Fai's blue eye melted to soften his gaze, "I thought Sakura-chan was already asleep when I left."

"She woke up," Kurogane explained tersely as he upended the bottle of sake he had been nursing over his sake cup. The bottle was already empty, which wasn't strange considering that daylight was about to break and he had been drinking from that bottle all night. "And she'll only talk to you, so I don't know why she did," the ninja added the last sentence as an afterthought in place of the reprimand that had been formulating itself in his head. What the mage did in his own time was none of Kurogane's business, anyway.

Fai merely nodded in acknowledgment. His silence ended their conversation. When he made his way to the room that he shared with Kurogane, he didn't even glance back at his prey. As he stripped off his clothes to get ready for bed, he felt Kurogane enter the room. The ninja dropped heavily on his own bed without a word leaving Fai even more alone than before.

Neither could sleep away the scant remainder of that night. What they both desired kept them both awake.

There was a burning hunger in Fai. He hadn't fed in days and their chess battles and his nightly activities were taking at toll on him physically. He didn't want to, and yet he needed to, so he waited for the other to invite him. Even if he hated the invitation to drink and live, seeing it as unnecessary, he also treasured the sacrifice and longed for it. And that longing made him hate it even more.

Kurogane, on the other hand, was concerned with both the wizard's actions and the reason behind them. Not only for the consequences that the self-destructive nature of the vampire's behavior would bring about in their quest, but also because Fai was someone he cared about, there was a gnawing need in Kurogane to know what was going on.

The unnamable tension between the two of them was so thick that you could use every other cliché and more to describe it.

"You haven't drunk in days," Kurogane's voice rumbled into Fai's consciousness. There was a rustling of covers as the prey rose from his bed and reached for his sword as he always did during feeding.

Fai, for his part, didn't resist or say anything. He sat up on his bed, as well. As the ninja cut his left arm, the blond turned his head away. Those cuts must hurt, and yet Kurogane never seemed to flinch. Blood, in general, didn't make him squeamish, but Kurogane's blood did.

"There will be a game tomorrow, if you don't drink now, it will be dangerous for all of us."

With a justification for his feeding in place, Fai reluctantly rose from his seat and crossed the small distance between his bed and the ninja's. He knelt by the other man's feet; that was the only action that was done of his own accord. As the bleeding arm was presented to him, the intoxicating scent of blood overtook him and instinct possessed him. Fai's lips landed on the wound created for his survival and caressed it lovingly, almost reverently.

When Fai's eye changed, Kurogane knew that the slighter man was not in control anymore. He mused that the mage was like a kite, seemingly free, but was in fact only following the opposing forces of the wind and its string. In the short time that the ninja made up that analogy, Fai's self had recovered and the feeding was over. The wizard never took more than the bare minimum to live. Even as a human, he ate only enough to satisfy his stomach, slept only enough to ward off exhaustion, and drank only enough either to remember or to forget (Kurogane couldn't tell and Fai wouldn't tell). Needless to say, Fai drank excessively. And that was the realization that struck the dark-haired man, as Fai began to wrap up the already clotting wound 'so the kids don't have to see'. It had taken only one night for them to realize that the vampire could no longer drink alcohol. The taste was intolerable at the least.

Perhaps Fai replaced alcohol with sex.

As Fai rose from the floor to head back to his bed, Kurogane watched. He understood now, somewhat. But that didn't mean he liked it.