Clinging to What's Left
Disclaimer: I don't own Blood Plus.
To all my 'How Feelings Change' Readers who had the author alert pop up and got all excited, I'm sorry it's not what you were hoping for, but I can tell you that I've decided to write a sort of Mini-Sequel to my DP fic. It won't be near as large or have a long draw out plot like HFC, but it will be a cuter, lighter kind of look at the outcome of the story that I created. It might be a couple of months before I have it up though, so please be patient.
This was just a vicious plot bunny that grabbed me and wouldn't let go, even though I really should be studying for my genetics test. I hope that y'all enjoy my first foray into the Blood Plus universe.
ZZZ
The smell of burning wood, plastic, and gasoline invaded her nose as well as the pungent scent of salt and blood as she clung desperately to the man next to her to keep from being separated from him in the buffeting waves that were pushing them away from the wreckage of a boat. Her whole body was shaking violently as images of her younger brother flashed before her eyes, and she was faintly aware of the sound of one of the boats gas tanks exploding. Fingers fisted into the front of her companions jacket and she buried her face into his wet chest as they bobbed in the waves. No matter what she did, the images of her brother's naked and crystallized body kept assaulting her.
He was dead, and it was all her fault.
Her entire being was aching with the loss of her younger brother. Her second chevalier. She could feel the sickening tightness in her chest, and the tears pouring soundlessly from her eyes, and yet the worst ache of all was not from her exhausted limbs, but rather from the pit of her stomach. 'It's like I lost my own child,' her mind mused weakly, and part of her agreed fully as the wailing ache became worse.
Solomon had told her that a chiropteran queen was the mother and lover of her chevaliers, but never before had she accepted that he was right. She had lost her own child. Riku had been young when she stopped his time, probably too young, and it had showed. He didn't have the strength and instinct of a chevalier; he had only felt the pull and undeniable attachment to his queen. He had wanted to be constantly in her presence and when he wasn't he was uncomfortable and tense, much as a young child does when separated from its mother. And she had wanted to coddle and protect him, to hug him close to her and chase away what scared him.
"We need to head for shore," she heard Hagi's voice in her ear, and she nodded, her body instinctively following Hagi as he began to pull them towards land. She knew her legs were moving, propelling her forward, and that her hands were still clutching Hagi's jacket tightly, but she wasn't consciously responsible for any of it as she began to sink deeper and deeper into her mind.
The cracking and crumbling form of her brother danced in front of her eyes and she struggled vainly to blink it away. He had needed her to protect him and she hadn't been there, she had failed him, but it wasn't the first time. Riku had needed her since he had awakened from his transformation, but she had pushed him away despite how her heart screamed for her to protect and shelter him. Every time she looked at him it was like her heart was being torn in two. She hated herself for stopping his time, but even more than that she had felt like she had betrayed her first chevalier by creating another, and yet Hagi had never showed that he felt that way. It had made her feel like she was melting watching Hagi with Riku; he had taken the young boy under his wing and took it upon himself to teach Riku the things that she should have showed him how to do.
Hagi had been the one to teach Riku to control his thirst, just as she had done for him all those years ago. He had been teaching him how to feed from a living person without harming them; how he should knock them unconscious, and then how to feed without causing them damage. With the way things happened in their lives there was no guarantee that they wouldn't be separated from the group with no access to the blood packs that Red Shield supplied them with. He had allowed the young boy to practice on him so that he wouldn't hurt anyone if he lost control.
He was teaching Riku, just the way she had taught him.
A shiver shook through her, and she was faintly aware of her legs still kicking in the cold water, as she remembered Julia telling her that she needed to teach Riku to feed properly just incase. It had unnerved her that she needed to teach him this; the only way she knew how would be by example and she didn't know if she could do that. She hadn't fed from anyone but Hagi in over a hundred years, and even then it had only been for a few weeks until Hagi had been able to control his chiropteran bloodlust.
Those few weeks had been some of the worst, and best, weeks of her life. Years of blood treatments with Joel had taught her control, but none of it could have prepared her for actually feeding off a living being. She could still remember the fear in the woman's eyes when she had grabbed her and pulled her into an alley, pinning her against the wall and sinking her teeth into her soft white neck. When the woman passed out she knew that she had almost taken too much, and had carried her light body to the front steps of the town doctor, before knocking on the door and leaving the unconscious woman there before anyone could see her.
It was that woman's eyes that had made her knock out the next person she had been forced to feed upon. None of the others who she had fed upon had stuck in her mind like that first woman, she could still see that woman's fear stricken mismatched eyes, one brown and one green burnt into her mind.
But despite all of that, the thing that had remained stuck in her memories most clearly had been Hagi.
She had never seen so much conflict and pain in anyone. He was fighting within himself, his human mind battling against his now chiropteran body, and she had been the cause of all of it. The way he curled into a ball in the corner of the abandoned cabin that they had found, rocking back and forth whimpering; the way he would sink his teeth into his own arm when the thirst became unbearable. It had been that very sight that had caused her instincts to swell to the surface. He was suffering and something in the back of her mind screamed at her to fix it; images of Diva feeding on Joel sprang into her mind as well as memories of her treatments and just like that her mind filled in the blanks and she knew what she had to do.
The first time that he fed from her was something that she'd never forget. He had been so weak that she had had to force him upright, propping him against the wall for support, and she had tried to explain to him what he had to do. But he resisted vehemently, struggling weakly in her grip, leaving her no choice but to pin him down with her body, sitting astride his lap as she forced his mouth to her neck.
She had had to bite back a moan as he sank his teeth into her.
It had been from then on that feeding was something private between them, and that's probably what had bothered her most about teaching Riku how to feed. The only way that she could figure out how to do it would be to either teach him by showing him how, or by teaching him the same way she had taught Hagi, and both felt like a betrayal to her first chevalier. Either she would share something private between her and Hagi with Riku by allowing him to see her feed upon her elder chevalier, or she would be sharing something even more private by recreating Hagi's tutelage with Riku.
But she supposed that worrying about it now was pretty pointless.
She could still remember how odd the battles between her mind and body had been during those first few weeks after she had stopped Hagi's time. How conflicting emotions and instincts had fought against the proper society behaviors that had been engrained into her. Her upbringing had taught her how men and women were supposed to behave around one another, and she had been told of the things that went on between married couples when she had come of the proper age. But none of that had prepared her for the overwhelming instincts that had rushed to the surface the moment that Hagi had been changed. How intense feedings often caused the line between what was acceptable and what was not to blur in her mind.
The sudden feeling of sand beneath her feet brought her partially back to her senses, as she and Hagi struggled onto the beach. Her Chevalier collapsed onto his back, breathing heavily and she slumped against his chest, her eyes closed as she listened to him breathe. A faint tingling began in the back of her throat, and she inhaled sharply, taking in Hagi's scent. From this single sniff, she instantly knew that he was unharmed from their battle with Diva and Karl and that he had fed shortly before the attack on the Red Shield's headquarters.
He was tired, but unharmed.
The tingling in the back of her throat began to grow into a dull burn and her mind was pulled back to the fact that she had been injured, and had lost an appreciable amount of blood before the wounds had closed. She really didn't want to feed at this particular moment, but she knew that she had to.
Pulling herself up slowly, she straddled Hagi's waist, her nose running along his throat as she breathed in his scent again. He shivered beneath her and turned his head to grant her easier access. She smiled against his neck and nuzzled the delicate flesh, all this thinking about the past had brought back fond memories of a time when feeding had not been thought of as a dreaded painful event.
And in that moment she realized that she wanted that again.
She wanted the breathless anticipation, she wanted the husky moans, she wanted to see his eyes go red with instinct as he took control, she wanted to feel him straining against her as she fed from him, she wanted him to grasp her hips as she ground against him in time with the draws of blood. But most of all she wanted him to know that she wanted it to be no one but him that she fed from, and to have no teeth but his sink into her flesh.
It was embarrassing to recall all the times that she had strained wantonly beneath Hagi, her legs wrapped around his slender waist, wanting beyond anything else the one and only thing that he refused to give her.
"Hagi," she hissed softly into his ear, smiling as she felt his hands come to rest on her hips. "Do you miss the way we used to be?"
She could feel him becoming hard beneath her as he groaned. "I do," he told her, unable to come up with anything else at the moment. At any other time he would have given her the appropriate response, the one that had been drilled into him by the society expectation's of the late 1800's, but at that moment all he could come up with was what he really felt.
But those two little words were all she was concerned about at the moment. Sinking her teeth into his neck she could feel him buck against her and she ground against him in response. A throaty moan ripped from his throat as one of his hands drifted under her shirt to palm one of her breast as the other held her firmly against him. Gasping, she took a deep draw of blood before releasing his neck and licking the wound clean. His fingers found their way underneath the soft cotton of her bra and she ground against him harder, her mouth hanging open in a soundless moan, not even registering the fact that his hand that was previously on her hip slid had down her leg to free the part of her skirt that was caught between them. Her head rolled back with a groan, and before she knew what was going on, he had rolled them over and she found herself staring up into a pair of vibrant red eyes.
Eager hands reached between them as she unfastened the front of his pants, pushing them down with her bare feet, having lost her boots in the ocean. Many times in the past, they had come to this point, and every time she would watch his eyes as he battled with himself. And every time, she would smile as he reached his decision.
He would always choose her.
After a moment, he locked eyes with her and his hand made its way under her skirt, as his sharp claws cut off her underwear. Her smile grew as she pushed his boxers down with her feet, and he pushed himself against her. Like all the times before he refused to enter her, and she felt as though she might cry. Turning her face away from him, as she began to grind against him, she shuddered as he rubbed himself along her wet core. He always got her so wet when they were like this, and he slid against her so easily, it would be so easy for him to just slide into her. He knew by now that she wouldn't stop him, she had begged him to take her often enough, but he always refused. Tears began to spring to her eyes as they continued to grind against one another, his breath hot against her throat as he strained against her.
"Please," she whimpered, tears in her eyes and her voice, "Please." He stilled over her and she waited with baited breath.
"Is this what you truly want?" he asked her, his lips tickling her neck, "Is it truly me that you want?"
It was the first time that their physicality had been labeled as want instead of instinct, and for a moment she felt herself torn. Did she really want him, or was it just instinct dictating her actions?
But then, an unbidden memory from back at the zoo crept into her consciousness. It had been a celebration for Hagi's 17th birthday, his official coming of age. It had been four whole years before she had stopped his time, and she could remember the jealousy that she had felt when one of the young servant girls had given him a kiss on the cheek. She had stormed away nearly in tears and he had followed her.
She had made it all the way to the balcony before she had dissolved in tears, slumping against the railing as she cried. When he had touched her shoulder and asked her what was wrong, she had snapped at him, yelling about the harlot who had put her filthy lips on him and he had laughed as she stood, red-faced and crying. She had lifted her fists to strike out at his chest when he suddenly caught her wrists, pulling her to him and kissing her firmly on the mouth. She had responded ardently, and they only thing that had stopped their fervor had been the sound of Joel approaching in search of them, calling their names loudly as he had wandered the halls of the manor.
A wave of relief crashed into her at the realization that her instincts and wants were in agreement as to her feelings for the man above her.
"Yes," she told him firmly, "This is what I want."
He was inside her before she even finished speaking and she arched into him dramatically. She knew that come morning when emotions and hormones were not running quite so high, things would be awkward. Neither of them were the kind to talk about matters such as these, both would insist to themselves that this was a one time thing until it happened again. And with the end fast approaching, she knew that they'd probably never get around to talking about things. But she knew without a doubt that she loved him, she had perhaps known it for ages and she could only hope that he knew it as well. Writhing and trembling beneath her first Chevalier she knew that despite the perfection of the moment, her entire world was crumbling around her, and that all she could do until it was all over, was cling to what was left of her life and hope that that would be enough.
ZZZ
A/N: Well that was fun. So what do you all think about this little piece of work?
Love y'all,
Dirty Thoughts of Bliss
Please R&R!!