#kanazero

If time had grown still, Kaname’s arrival must have hastened its pace. The moonlit tension slipped away and left behind a vacuum the pureblood occupied like a birthright. Pale, gleaming, casting light through the forest, Kaname brought with him the specter of a king as he stood by the edge of the small clearing Zero was sequestered in. The distance between them cooled like the temperature on a mountain hike, its trail speckled with bodies frozen into landmarks; Kaname’s stiff and starched uniform shone as white as snow on the mountain’s peak. He crossed his arms and leaned against a tree, upright and regal in the middle of Cross Academy’s woods without a speck of dirt on his crisp lapels, an inverse reflection of Zero who felt like a mangy, groveling peasant on the grass. Then Kaname raised his brow. It was a mild shift in his mask, a ripple on the surface of still water.

“You’re not out here for a nightly stroll,” he said. An unspoken demand hung on the wind: Explain yourself.

Zero yanked the gun out, spit glistening on the muzzle. He trembled to his feet. It took little to point Bloody Rose at Kaname, grip firm the way Yagari had taught him, because years at the shooting range and in the field had trained him to brave death with a steady aim. His silent threat shoved against Kaname’s demand: I’ll shoot you. Threats had no bearing on a creature like Kaname, but Zero would rather play their futile game of cat and mouse than explain his decisions; the only people he owed explanations to were long gone.

“What I’m doing is none of your concern. Get lost,” he said.

“I’ll ask Yuki or Cross then.”

Zero snarled around his fangs. “Is this all you know how to do? Meddle in other people’s lives? You have no fucking right.”

“But Yuki has a right to know,” Kaname said sharply. Disgust clung to his words like frost creeping along a windowpane. “She deserves at least that much from you.”

Zero didn’t respond. He had nothing to say to Kaname about his choices, nothing that the pureblood needed to know, so he said nothing. And then he let the bullet speak for him.

The quiet of the night shattered. A bang crashed down on the clearing like thunder after a lightning strike. The bullet had missed Kaname’s porcelain skin and instead gouged into the tree because Kaname no longer leaned against it; now, the pureblood was less than a foot from Zero, one hand pinning Zero’s wrist to the birch and the other wrapped around his throat.

“Figured I should do the world a favor and get rid of you before I go,” Zero wheezed.

Kaname squeezed Zero’s throat until he couldn’t breathe, until his windpipe was on the brink of collapse, before the pureblood loosened his hand. Zero had closed his eyes and gone slack in the bruising hold, but he opened them when Kaname eased off, forced to meet the other vampire’s gaze. Zero kept his emotions close to his chest, but the irritation in Kaname’s cold look melted away upon stumbling across some realization.

Softly, in a voice he often used to soothe Yuki, he said, “You truly want to die. You’d even let me kill you. Why?”

All Zero could really do was laugh in Kaname’s face. So he did; he chuckled, thin and raspy, throat sore from Kaname’s chokehold, humored by the notion that the only obstacle between himself and his grave was a pureblood vampire he’d tried to kill upon first meeting. He laughed, and Kaname looked bemused, his brows scrunched and eyes narrowed, gauging how far Zero had fallen from sanity.

It did remind Zero of the night they’d met, when he had only been eight years old. The loss of his family had warped him into an angry, reclusive child who hardly smiled; more than that, his body had been twisted into an alien, unrecognizable form. At night, as Yuki and Cross slept, Zero could count their heartbeats from across the hall, could draw a breath and smell the blood beneath their skin, and he could do so with the certainty that their blood would taste better than any meal he’d ever eaten. When Yuki began to gush about the boy who saved her from a vampire, Zero could only listen with quiet envy because he would’ve given anything for a savior before Shizuka damned him to a living hell.

Once Kaname visited as a guest days later, Zero didn’t have time to feel disappointed. The pureblood had triggered every survival instinct in Zero’s body and sparked his endless rage toward the monsters that ruined his life; it all coalesced around the presence of a threat, around a creature that could flatten the house and kill them in a blink, and his terrified rage had gripped the handle of a kitchen knife and pierced Kaname’s hand before he could muster a hello.

The look Kaname had given him then was the look he gave him now: miffed, like he’d seen a fish climb a tree. Zero’s laughter faded as he tested the grip Kaname had on his shooting hand. He sighed, resigned.

“I’m a danger to every human around me. I’m a danger to Yuki. Isn’t that reason enough?”

“You haven’t fallen yet,” Kaname said. “It’s not inevitable.”

Zero bared his teeth. “Don’t make jokes, Kuran. It doesn’t suit you.”

Kaname’s brow furrowed again, out of annoyance this time; his range of expressions must’ve expanded when Zero wasn’t looking. The pureblood finally dropped his hand from Zero’s throat, only to reach for the collar around his own.

“Oh, fuck off. I don’t need your blood.”

“Might I remind you, Zero,” Kaname began. He undid the buttons of his blazer, his long fingers teasing the soft fabric as it spilled open. Tone smooth as silk, he continued, “…that I found you here about to kill yourself?” Kaname hooked a finger through his tie and tugged it loose until it dangled on his shoulders, followed by the slow unbuttoning of his dress shirt to the middle of his chest. The blazer was placed gently on the grass, and then his brown eyes snapped to Zero with penetrating focus. “It’s my blood or involuntary commitment.”

“Involuntary commitment,” Zero said.

The words were rendered meaningless by the hypnotic pull of an exposed neck. Hunger bubbled in him, and he languished like the frog in a boiling pot, convincing himself that the situation could be salvaged while glaring at Kaname’s chest as if it had offended him. He refused to admit the humiliating fact that his eyes were stuck.