Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Europe’s skies hover over every vampire at least once. With enough time, the mere touristic curiosity of seeing the covens there, the ones intertwined with the continent itself (a grapevine, or perhaps a braid) becomes far more attractive than any sunless space could offer. And vampires had not much besides time. So they tour Europe, few ever leaving.

Rin has found that the most entrancing part of the vampire experience in Europe are the hunters. The organizations, disregarding the freelancers, are as old as some of the coven leaders, both sides drenched in blood and death. Rin likes the exception, too, that comes with dealing with a vampire hunter. You can’t kill within 200m of La Seine in France, unless it’s a vampire hunter. You can’t chase your prey within 200m of the AVE (Renfe) train route, unless it’s a hunter. 

There are not a lot of things Rin would say he likes a lot, and of those things, there is none that Rin likes more than a well-trained hunter.

A vampire that mainly hunts its very own hunters– dangerous work, but rewarding in its intensity. And with it comes the title of an antiangel, which Rin finds pretentious in its assumption of divinity. He’d done particularly well in his first few years in his profession, well-versed with the tricks and gimmicks humans would attempt to snare him inside, but over the decades, he’s failed to keep perfectly with the times. The occasional new device, particularly the invention of the sniper, tripped him up on occasion. And yet hunters dare not enter Kamakura.

He visits Spain every now and then. The freshest of hunters, the most ambitious, the ones with the most potential–they always find themselves in Madrid or Barcelona, knives sharp, lurking around the corners, trying to catch a whiff of a vampire, a rumor of a mysterious disappearance. Certain things haven’t changed. 

Madrid is Rin’s common place, its streets tall and wide, its crowds hot. He’s glad that the east asians are well known for their sun aversion; no one questions the umbrella over his head. It has a slightly feathery design, black and beige. Rin finds he cannot recall what its appearance was when it was brand new. Operating in daytime is another one of Rin’s many eccentricities. Even when his flesh was newly ashen and would have disintegrated with a single dash of sunlight, Rin had found himself veiled and covered, but wandering in the light regardless. Rin knows now that it wasn’t the sun that had lured him out, but the temptation of lethality. 

He spins his umbrella in his hand. He’s less of a giant than he was in Japan, but he still holds his sunshield high enough that the turn doesn’t brush a single one of the bumbling humans around him. Stagnancy was never his worst opponent, but that one trait of his (adventure-seeking is what Luna had called it, suicidal ideation, Sae’s preferred term), had clung to him even before vampirism gifted him the perfect opportunities to indulge it. Even as a human, he’d been a vampire hunter, possibly the most dangerous occupation there is. He and his brother had shown up at these very shores, looking for Edith DuTronc, a lady in her thirties who’d vanished without a trace, last seen rushing to a conference meeting through a cold, desolate street. There had been no camera recordings, only her blurred figure in the selfie of someone at a nearby bar. 

Twenty years later, an anonymous user had reported to a newspaper about seeing her, same as ever, in a small canoe, rowing through La Seine. They hadn’t been able to take a proper photo, they claimed, because it had been too dark. The brothers had tracked them to find nothing but a ghost of an individual, like they'd been manually blurred from all spectacles of the world.

A twenty year turned vampire is a fairly ‘easy’ first hunt, as far as killing vampires go. Rin’s memory warps past the point of entering the area of La Seine himself. He remembers a long-haired figure humming an emotionless tune on a moonless night, the area desolate and eerie. He remembers how the ground had sunken beneath his feet, how the waves had lapped at the figure’s canoe. He remembers lifting a weighty camera as his brother beside him loaded a gun, one with a bullet infused with silver– he remembers clicking the camera on the figure, and checking it. He remembers his camera breaking in his hand, his scared reflection in the cracked lens. His memory juts there.

Rin doesn’t remember, but he knows a certain number of things.

Luna had woken him, fangs wide and grinning, with a red-eyed albino crouched behind him. They’d barely given him time to stand before they’d left. Luna had slunk through his shadow, and the albino had leaped out the window. 

When Rin woke up, his heart was no longer beating. It rested in his chest, still as a rock. He’d been carted to Spain while unconscious. His skin felt cold. His head hurt. Still, he stood. He’d looked in the mirror and recognized himself. He’d opened his mouth and fiddled with his teeth. 

Rin knows a few things.

Sae Itoshi is no longer in the world. Rin Itoshi is. He will remain for decades and perhaps even centuries, while Sae is dead ad infinitum. 

Rin finds a quiet hotel by the neutral zone. He could sleep in the nearby locomotives, sure, even though vampires didn’t really need sleep as anything more than a luxury or a pastime, but it was less about rest now and more about having a place to stay. Rin rarely sleeps at all these days, prowling constantly, but he enjoys a mattress and the idea of a base, a location to return to. Kamakura and Suit 394 of Navarra Hoteles Madrid Balboa will do. 

Then he waits.

There are two ways to hunt vampire hunters. There’s the country mouse way of existing until a particularly stupid one finds you, or the city mouse alternative of seeking out one yourself.

He’s in Madrid. Of course, he’s a city mouse.

Rather ironically, vampire hunters also have a tendency to operate during the night. Rin slips into a bar bordering Luna’s district with a startling lack of windows and wrinkles his nose at the strong smell of whisky. Glass clinks. A couple of yellow lights shine at him, bringing some of his paler veins to light. Rin puts on his gloves and orders a glass of water, knowing anything else will taste like liquid ash.

He surveys the area as he sits down on an oak stool and counts three potential hunters and one certainty. As far as bars go, this one's yield is excellent. 

However, Rin’s become a rather picky eater through the years. He’d rather not eat a completely novel angel if he could help it. Spain is the center for new talent to test their luck, but said new talent was usually accompanied by a veteran or two. As Rin has learned, there is no actual way for a junior vampire hunter to kill a vampire over a decade turned without help from a much older worker. 

The first hunter in the room, a potential hunter, that is, Rin’s not sold on him yet– he’s got bright orange hair and is burly as it gets, with slightly sunken eye bags. Strength isn’t the best pick for vampire hunting, since the common practice in killing involves a gun, which doesn’t get much of a bolster by being held by anything more than the base criteria of muscle. He’s not dressed like a hunter either– not enough plating by his arms or wrists, and an exposed neck– if he’s a hunter, he’s a stupid one.

Still, the way his eyes dart around the room, paranoid and suspicious, the way he’s tan and slightly scarred– Rin keeps him on his radar.

Rin hands a couple of dollars to the server, “Whatever that man orders, I’ll pay.”

The second potential hunter is another young man, tall but not nearly as bulky as his friend– they seem to be friends, don’t they? They stand close, and wear similar attire, though this one is much better dressed. His hair is purple. They’re…rather colorful. 

The third is, on a second glance, not a vampire hunter at all. So only two potential hunters. A shame. Actually, Rin squints, he might know this guy. The man looks distinctly gyaru, and despite his tan, when he hops over to Rin’s side, putting his arm around Rin’s head and saying, “What’s up, what’s up?” Rin feels no pulse.

Rin stares again, “Shidou?”

“Bing bong!” Shidou Ryusei gives him the finger guns. Only twelve years turned, he’s as lively as the day he died,  “What’s Kamakura’s prince doing over here?”

“I come here quite often, you’ll find,” Rin swirls the water in his cup and gestures at Shidou to sit down, while observing the way the two other hunters eye them curiously. 

“The bar or the Spain?” The Spain? Rin nearly forgot how stupid this guy is.

“Spain. Europe,” Though he tends to avoid France, “I went to Berlin a couple of years back. I have plenty of time to travel.”

Shidou nods, “Yup. Sounds about right. You saw the angels, didn’t you?”

Ah, so both the men Rin saw earlier are hunters, and new ones too. How disappointing, “In Berlin?” Rin blinks, “It must be a tourist spot. I might have heard of it.” 

“Two of them,” Shidou makes a peace sign, “I wanted them both.”

“You’re a freak,” Rin says, more annoyed about how he’ll have to either drag this vampire outside of neutral zones and temporarily incapacitate him before getting dinner, or let two hunters slip right out of his hands. Other antiangels were always such a pain. 

“I’ve been wanting to see those guys for a while,” Shidou exclaims, “like, I stole them from their homes and brought them here to put up!”

Those angels cannot be worth all the trouble, Rin decides, and he voices as much.

“No, no,” Shidou frowns, “I agree! For the most part. See, I’ve been trying to sculpt them all good, so they’re worth a presentation, you know? But only one of them is molding properly; the others just break.”

Rin remembers the ginger's bleak gaze and shaking hands. What has Shidou been doing to them? He checks them one more time, watching the burly orange-haired man glare daggers into what appears like a flamboyant mess of pink and blonde, and tan. The molding hunter ties his hair up into a ponytail. The clock approaches midnight.

“Good luck with your artistic endeavors then,” Rin accepts this outcome. There’s one more hunter in the bar, after all, who's been watching them the entire time with a bottle of vodka to his mouth and a polite smile. “I hope your angels or whatever end up fitting your vision.”

“Thank you, my good man!” Shidou offers a double high five. Rin turns his back and walks away. He has a feeling they’d be fighting if they weren’t in this area.

The last hunter is good. Rin can sense it in his gaze. He sees how his eye flickers right to everyone's heart before finding the rest of their vital spots. He watches him survey and find all the people in the bar that aren’t actually drinking. Rin knows the man's already found him guilty of vampirism. 

He doesn’t want to just wait around for the man to catch him alone and attempt to mash his heart into dust. He approaches him. 

“Hello,” The man speaks first, his voice coated with something soft. He has the sort of voice that could never irritate someone, even on their worst day, “Have you seen the moon today? It’s truly magnificent.” 

Rin hasn’t seen the moon to be anything worth noting. Instead, his mind maps out the man's irises, their golden hue matching the lights of the bar. “Yes? If you think so.”

“I don’t usually drink here,” The hunter holds a glass of tequila in one hand, swirling it.  His hands are gloved, and he leaves no fingerprints, “but the bartender told me you’d offered to pay, so I couldn’t refuse.” 

“I’m glad it got your attention,” Rin says, honestly. 

“Want to take a walk outside?” He tilts his head. Already trying to get him alone. Rin understands. He’s quite hungry as well. The man fits the bar's environment all too well, dark skin and luminescent lights, a golden earring matching the color of his eyes. He opens his mouth to say yes, when the man adds, “Oh, but where have my manners gone? My name is Julian Loki. Yours?”

The name rings something in the back of Rin’s mind. It’s French, most likely, He replies, “Rin.”

“From Japan then,” Loki nods, “you’ve traveled a long way. Are you finding it a worthy trip?”

Rin steps a bit closer, “That depends.” Depends on Loki, and whether he’ll be worth the hunt. But from the way Rin’s mouth is already slightly wet and by how Loki taps his chin thoughtfully with a fully cuffed and protected wrist, Rin decides, “I think it’ll get much better from here.”

“Really?” Loki’s eyes crinkle, looking and sounding truly pleased, “My congratulations.”

Rin had eaten a couple of days ago, from an older man in his thirties, a vampire hunter who’d recently quit the job after a dispute with his boss. He’d drained him dry and disposed of the body. This morning, he was still a bit full.

He’s starving now. He doesn’t even need to smell Loki’s blood to know he’ll enjoy it. If not the prize, then the journey. But they must vacate neutral grounds first. As much as one is allowed to kill hunters in a public area, it’s a lot of work to explain and prove that the man you’ve broken the skull of was a hunter instead of a particularly passionate cosplayer. 

Luna’s always lenient with this sort of thing. Rin knows he breaks a few coven laws, but he can’t prove it. 

“Where now?” Loki asks, amusement dancing in his face. He holds out a hand. For the sake of the paradox, Rin takes it. The man, too, is wearing gloves, so Rin can’t feel his pulse. The mystery makes it all the more thrilling. Is his pulse racing? Is it beating, steady and slow? Will it speed up later, when they’re neck to neck? 

If Rin can’t feel it in his hand right now, he’ll wait to feel it in his mouth.

“How about a walk around the Bernabéu?” Rin offers. It’s in Luna’s territory, and not a far walk away. 

Loki looks up, staring at the moon. Yes, it is particularly large today, but perhaps Rin has seen too many celestial bodies in his time to consider the notability of this one. 

“That sounds wonderful, Rin,” Loki says, a bit quietly. Rin hears him, naturally, but the way the words don’t carry far in the air, only staging with them, makes it almost intimate, “I love visiting Bernabéu.”

“You do?” 

“Yes, I visited so very often when I was younger.” Loki appears much too young to be reminiscing of his youth, Rin snorts. In his mid-twenties, perhaps. Loki fixes his coat. There’s an annoying collar around his neck, one that Rin can’t wait to tear off. 

“Did you enjoy it?”

“Eh.” Loki says, still in that honey-sweet tone. Rin nearly laughs.

“You watch soccer?” 

Loki frowns for the first time all evening, though it’s a light one, barely affecting his features, “It’s called football, Rin. And yes, I do, now and then.”

Rin lets go of Loki’s hands, “Have you watched games in the stadium we’re headed to?”

“A couple of times,” Wealthy as well. Rin wonders if Loki is the curation of a perfect hunter. “What else would one have dallied near the Bernabéu?”

The hunt, perhaps. To fight. To feed. 

“Oh,” Rin puts his hand on Loki’s shoulder. The man is barely shorter than him, but Rin can still move his head to the crook of his shoulder. Loki doesn’t bite his lips, and his stupid collar prevents Rin from smelling any blood at his position. He draws back, “Who knows?”

Loki smiles his way. There’s no blush in his cheeks as he cups Rin's, no doubt feeling the lack of any heat. He moves his hand to push Rin’s hair back, the entire move precise and gentle.

“Come on,” Rin realizes the corner of his mouth has been creeping up, and he fixes it, “this facade can only go so far.”

Loki drops his hand, but his smile stays, “Okay, alright. So finicky.” He laughs. It’s a delightful laugh. Rin wouldn’t mind killing it. It also seems to be the type of melody to lull one to sleep, and it rises in Rin’s list of sounds he would want to die to.

The moon is rather pretty today, he decides. It’s a wonderful night.

They stroll in silence. There’s no wind tonight, and Loki, though his expression is one that would suit humming, lets the silence stew. He scans the area, eyes alight. 

They’re still in the neutral zone, though they’re quite close to Luna’s slaughter fest at this point, but a scream a little far from the border tears through the night, before it’s carefully muffled. Loki’s eye twitches.

“Luna never knows how to control his dogs,” He says, the statement flooring Rin momentarily. A hunter who knew Luna? Theoretically impossible, “I shouldn’t even be surprised,” Loki continues, “but I am quite disappointed.”

“Luna has a hands off approach to things," Rin replies, though his mind notes a few other things. Since Loki’s had his pulse spots so thoroughly covered, as he should as a hunter– Rin hasn’t been able to feel his pulse at all. Simultaneously, he hasn’t been able to confirm that Loki has a pulse. 

“He’s just lazy,” Loki sighs, leaning close to Rin again, “give me a moment to take care of this.” 

When Loki whips out a gun, a silver-infused bullet, and everything, Rin has an epiphany. 

The one thing antiangels despise more than any other antiangel is probably the archangels. Vampires that prefer their meals to be of their own kind, the equivalent of a cannibal. Julian over here is one of them. 

Rin follows him, and when Loki spots his shadow dancing in his periphery, he smiles. Rin should have gotten used to Loki’s reactions by now, the particular glint he gets in his eye when he’s being genuine, but the smile still gets under his skin. 

“Such a vulgar display,” Loki declares once he spots the victim and the perpetrator. They’re approximately two hundred meters from the area where they can go about dying and feeding, so it’s really the fault of the vampire's lack of restraint, what’s about to happen to them.

The victim’s dead, or going to by the time they get there. Loki is unnervingly fast, even by vampire standards, and he tosses both over his shoulder and throws them towards Luna’s border. Blood sprays over his face, the victim's open wound still active. He wipes it off, not even tasting any of it. 

Rin follows him into Luna’s district, noting the immediate stench of vampire blood mixed with silver.  A scent of smoke and iron. It smells barely tolerable for now, but in a few minutes the whole area will reek. 

The victim lays limp on the floor, their body occasionally convulsing from the blood and the pain. Rin ends their suffering. The vampire is in an even sorrier position, with Loki biting into his neck and feeding on him while he’s still alive. He’s screaming, Rin tunes out, and sits beside Loki and watches the man eat. Rin liked watching people eat, even as a human.

When Loki’s done, the man retracts his fangs, “Pardon me. You could have had the human, you know? I kept her alive for you.” 

“How kind,” Rin deadpans, “this is rather interesting. Seems we were both finding a meal in the other.”

He was right about Loki being a hunter, but of what exactly–

Loki shifts closer to him. Rin smells the other vampire's blood in Loki’s mouth. “Oh, I wasn’t hungry today, but I do what I must.” When Rin makes a face at that, he explains, “It’s quite hard to catch a vampire breaking protocol. I try to trick them into slipping up,” He shoves the vampire's remaining body off of him, “but every so often, a complete fool like this one runs around.”

“So this was just a moment of opportunism?” Rin gets up, “he could work for Luna.”

“All the Madrid law-breakers are Luna’s,” Loki laughs, “don’t worry, I’ve spoken with him about it.”

“I wasn’t worried,” Rin says. Archangels are hard to come by, for the amount that both hunters and vampires despise them. Rin had met exactly one before Loki, and he’d been nothing but trouble.

It’s quite a surprise that the second archangel encounter in Rin’s life would be an equally fascinating gentleman like Julian Loki. He watches the Frenchman pick up his pistol and slip it into his pocket. He offers a hand to lift Rin off the floor, but Rin sits up without it, and Loki accepts that with a smile. 

“This was a rather fruitless endeavor,” Rin turns his heel to leave. He’d never had an appetite for other vampires, ignoring the fact that he’d been drooling a decent amount watching Loki earlier, “I’m off to find other prey.”

“Make sure it’s in a proper hunting area!” Loki calls out. There's some blood, vampires, at the bottom of his eye. “Or don’t!”

He still has quite the appetite, Rin notes.  

Fate had cheated him today, dangling the illusion of a perfect meal or climax before tearing it away, a hollow piñata. The human hunter, or the idea of one, was no longer on Rin’s mind, yet he still found himself absorbed by the hunger that had emerged whilst walking hand in hand with Loki, through the streets of Chamartín. 

Chapter Text

What makes a vampire want to hunt another of its kind?

Rin asks Bachira. They’re perched on a house, watching humans scuttle beneath them. There’s no moon out tonight, so nothing illuminates the streets of Barcelona besides the light-conserving street lamps, and they only point down. The night, even with Rin’s enhanced vision, is colorless compared to day, though every now and then, a human passerby below will walk by a light source with excessively vibrant clothing, and the color will catch both their attention. Then darkness shrouds this passerby the moment after, and the color is gone, diluted by darkness. It’s been a while since Rin Itoshi has worn anything besides funeral colors, but Meguru’s only times without saturation are on nights like these, and for the sole sake of camouflage. They mainly meet at night, but Rin still recalls how Bachira dresses during the day, a large sunhat as a shield being his only constant addition.The world, even with the occasional brilliant human, is not naturally saturated.

Rin’s not here to watch humans,  limited in lifespan and appeal. He’s here to watch paint dry, literally. Bachira Meguru finally dips his brush into a mix of white and yellow on his palette, which sits between the two of them. He’s bad with boundaries, but even he can understand the demand of ‘at least one palette-width of personal space’. The current canvas of his was purely dark in color, nearly blending into the night with its monotonous shades of black and blue. He’s a talented painter, Bachira, one of the few things Rin respects about him. Despite his limited shades, Rin can still identify exactly which parts of the drawing are what. 

If it were anyone else leaving him silent for so long, it would have been suspect that they’d not heard him in the first place. But with Bachira, it was likely that he was thinking. Bachira’s thoughts aren’t unlike his paint strokes, their path seemingly aimless at first– but by the end of their journey, they’ve led and weaved something complete..

A single moon manifests onto the canva’s sky. After a few adjustments, Rin glances up to confirm that Bachira’s going off reference, like he always does. There’s no celestial body watching them tonight, but in his painting, it smiles.

“That’s an odd question,” He finally answers, after finishing the street lights, “are you thinking of it, Rin-chan?”

“No,” Rin replies easily, even with the vision of Loki’s neck skipping by his head space, “no. Don’t be ridiculous, bobcut. You know my appetite."

“You’d be better off asking Yocchan,” Bachira lifted his painting up, trying to observe it under a different light, “I’ve never eaten a fellow vampire, and I’m not going to start. Unless…okay, bad joke.”

“Would I really?” Rin thinks of Isagi, and the annoying amount of times he’s had to explain to angry coven leaders that he hadn’t been the one to consume their members. If anyone can figure out a coven leader's train of thought, it’s Bachira’s beloved ‘Yocchan’, but Isagi’s damn near impossible to find.

“Maybe,” Bachira is, according to Luna, rather gluttonous in his own right, but his hunger never threatens to devour his soul, leading to the possibility of a painting night as peaceful as this, “I don’t know why Isagi eats what he does. He was a hunter too, when he was alive. Maybe the instinct just never left him.” 

“He’s your partner isn’t he?” Rin prodes. After another moment of silence, he summons the canvas into his hand, “what do you think goes through his mind?”

Bachira makes a half-hearted effort to retrieve his canvas, “I don’t know! I can ask my monster, now return thine to me!”

Rin lets go of the canvas as it’s mid air. It drops quickly, gravity wavering for none. Bachira’s monster, which he calls his monster but Rin prefers to refer to as Ghost, (its invisible, occasionally tangible and only Meguru can communicate with it, Rin doesn’t know why Bachira would call it Monster when the Proto-Germanics have gone through all the trouble to make a word that perfectly fits already,) catches it and presents it to its manifester. 

“Hmm,” Bachira taps brains with his monster, thinking. Rin’s aware of how lonely Bachira must have been when he first turned, for his trait to present as pure invisible company, “maybe its ‘cause humans are too easy to hunt? Yocchan’s pretty old, so I guess he’s seen it all– including everything hunters can do, so now he’s after bigger fish! He still eats the occasional hunter– or even a human, if they’re enough of a challenge, so it’s definitely not the taste.“ 

“Don’t vampires taste bad?”

“They taste like anything else,” Bachira replies, and Rin wonders how the hell he knows, “Think about cannibals,” Rin would really rather not, “ alright, my bad. But they taste basically the same as humans, I heard. Some good, some bad.” Yoichi and him really do talk about everything and anything. Bachira turns back to his painting and squints, “It’s so close yet so not done! Why did I choose the cover of a reclusive painter, again? I should have chosen to disguise myself as a brooding young gentleman with a chronic case of its-lukewarm-syndrome.”

“Hey.” Rin frowns, his thoughts circling back to Loki. He’s stuck in a bad roundabout and so far he’s gotten no luck in finding the exit.

“Not that you say it anymore, the term’s fallen off,” Bachira rotates his canvas, peering at it, knowing that something's wrong, but unable to find exactly what. This rigid scrutiny only belongs to painter-Bachira, “a lot of things wilt over time. I heard Noel Noa passed away. I mean, he did. Yocchan went to pay his respects or gloat, and ended up in a big fight with the new head. He’s not going back there anytime soon.” 

“Hasn’t Isagi gotten into a fight with practically every bigshot coven?” Rin asks, hypothetically. 

He recounts.

In 1825, there was a major conflict with one of the big German vampires, which resulted in some tension between him and the coven leader of the country. In England, he’d insulted Chris Prince’s…something, Rin forgets the details– besides the fact that by some fucked up process of association, he’d gotten banned from the UK as a byproduct. It was a stark loss, especially since during the 1940’s, Europe had been the hunting hotspot. Isagi just had to go and ruin it all. There was a moment with Italy, but that had gotten resolved fast enough, bless Marc Snuffy. Some of the altercations hadn’t even taken place in Rin’s lifespan, but he paid the price regardless. Even Isagi and Noel Noa’s relationship had been neutral at best, despite the common rumor that Noel had been the one who’d turned him in the first place. 

“Pretty much, “ Bachira confirms, “but he’s kinda bummed out about this one. They’d loosened a lot of laws around the area, and added some stronger enforcement of the few Yocchan liked, so he was totally looking forward to hunting around there. And getting a scope of the coven leader, but I guess that part got done. Ah, well the Seine is still off-limits, and there's a park that randomly got thrown into the neutral zone category.”

“It’s probably sentimental,” Rin says. Sentimental means weak, “maybe I should visit.”

Bachira’s lived in Spain for around twenty years now, and even though he loiters around some Chiba hunting spots on leap years, he spends most of his time living as the elusive Spanish-Japenese painter, Yuu Bachira, right here, in Barcelona. He takes Berlin-Munich tours every so often, but most of the time Isagi’s visiting him instead of vice versa.

 If Rin goes too long away from Spain, bobcut’s the next best thing to an informant. It helps that he’s such a chatterbox, “Yeah! There’s some other commotion in France about a problematic coven member. Not that he does anything against the few laws we have, but he’s weird, I’ve heard. Yoichi got into a fight with him too, I think.”

Rin has had his share of weirdos. He’d rather avoid this one, “What does he look like?”

“Think you know him, actually.” Bachira uses his thumb to smear the light in his painting, “blonde hair, tan skin. I think his eyes are pink now.”

“Shidou.” Rin groans. The French coven accepted him? “How tepid.”

“Tepid indeed,” Bachira bobs his head. “So, you gonna check it out, or nah?”

“We’ll see.” Rin replies, “it’ll only be worth it if the leader’s any good.”

“You don’t look happy to see me,” Loki comments. Rin’s been in this country for fifty minutes tops. “Is it the earring? I told Chapa it was tacky.”

There’s a lot to take in about this Loki, who looks, frankly, like an entirely separate species of vampire. Paris is clearly his home, while Spain is his adrenaline rush. His neck is still covered, as are most of his pulse points, but this time with a long sleeved cardigan and a simpler and more fashionable collar. They’re not good coverage, by any means of comparison to that night’s, but they keep him unexposed. (Of course, there’s also the earring, which is a single golden triangle, with a triangle etched into it, with another triangle etched onto it– ad infinitum.) His posture is relaxed, and he leans on a little blonde boy accompanying him. Even his eyes are softer, but it could be due to how the sun is burning them alive during this short one-sided exchange.

Only burning him, Rin notes, since Loki’s leaning to block it from touching the child with him.

They do get shade, because they’re not that stupid, and Loki smacks the blonde's head, a startling action, and says, “Come on, don’t be rude.”

“Ugh,” The blonde rat rubs his head, “My name is Charles. Chevalier. Charles Chevailier, and you, good sir?” The last phrase is said with ire, like someone in a play who’d clearly auditioned as a joke.

“Rin.” 

“Can I go?” 

“Go where?” Loki asks, patient but menacing in how he leans down. 

“Uh. Go be an upstanding member of vampire society?”

Loki gives him a long look, “You’re lucky I want to talk to Rin alone.” he ruffles Charles’ hair. ”Now get lost!” 

In a few seconds, Charles is out of sight. Loki shakes his head and sighs. He’s not acting young here, more so like an older brother at his wits end. 

“You two seem close,” Rin says.

Loki laughs lightly. “That’s the conclusion?”

His eyes find Rin’s and crinkle. Underneath an old arc, with few company, Rin finds that Loki’s irises have an iridescent dance to them. He seems truly content, staring silently into Rin, his smile soft enough that Rin can feel it tickling his face. 

“Not a lot of mourning, huh?” Rin breaks the jaded silence. He’d come here for the hunter byproduct of an under-governed powerhouse, and yet the streets were damper in events and sunny in joy. Whiplash isn’t an adequate enough term to describe it.

“Noa didn’t have a lot of friends,” Loki says, but his tone is uneven. He wanders off aimlessly, and foolishly, Rin follows. Loki may have been one of Noel’s few friends, from how it sounds, “and anyone who was his friend, they’ve paid their respects and accepted the new head. Or they’ve died.” He shrugs. 

“Some friends. Have you?”

“Me?” Loki smiles, sending another weird shift through Rin’s guts.“I’m more than pleased.” And what is that? Ecstatic? 

“Do you like the new leader?” Rin asks. It’s a much less romantic conversation compared to their first, and Rin’s far more upset about how he’s disappointed at the fact than the fact itself.

“If it were anyone else, I’d have killed them.” 

“Sounds like you’re a fan,” Rin notes. This leader must be someone quite remarkable, if they have Julian Loki honeying him like so. They better be.

Loki ponders for a moment, his hand finding his chin. His steps have a beat to them, a melody unsuiting to a vampire that has walked for eras. “That wouldn’t be an inaccurate assumption.”

“So it wouldn’t be entirely accurate either.” Rin rubs his temple, “You’re the coven leader, aren’t you?”

“I knew you’d figure it out!” Loki exclaims, his mood soaring, “call it a gut feeling. You’ve yet to disappoint me.”

It’s not a bad trait to be able to put people on a tightrope through pure conversation. Loki uses it unsparingly, and from the rumors of Noe’s stoicism and laissez faire approach, Rin wonders just how much France will change in the next century, “Any new laws to watch out for?”

Loki puts a hand on his chest. A fleeting thought enters Rin’s head, of exactly how long Loki’s had the gesture available to him, how long he’s kept the habit. He pictures human Loki, putting his hand on a beating heart, and now Loki here, imitating what he once was. There is an equally likely chance that Loki had developed this habit as a vampire, for any number of reasons.

“You can catch up with my new laws by asking the local vampires,” Loki evades the questions, “but no trespassing in coven territory, naturally. I’d let you, but my second in command would be after your head in an instant.” 

“Is it the blonde boy you were with?” Loki grabs Rin’s arm and begins to lead him out into the sun. They’re both old enough to withstand a few rays, but Rin fishes out his umbrella regardless and covers them both. Loki admires, what he calls, the inner canopy’s brulee-like colors. 

“You find everything beautiful, to what benefit? It makes you seem weak.” Most coven leaders would have his head for this, but Loki just laughs.

“That’s not logical– blegh, I sounded like Noa there,” Loki fans the air in front of him, like the old head’s name left a bad taste, “no, I don’t think there's anything wrong with liking things. Weakness in enjoying life sounds like a hopeless way to live. My world has become more beautiful because I see it so, and that benefits me. Why’s there a skull on this handle?”

“It’s an owl.” Rin corrects.

“An owl!” Loki beams, walking them towards the Seine. “You see them loitering around at night, no matter the region. I feel a kinship in them, don’t you?”
“Is there anything you hate?” 

Loki takes a beat to think, before replying, “Why would I waste my time talking about such drab things?” 

“It’s hardly necessary to be cheery at all times” Rin comments. It’s like the sun had illuminated Loki, making his mood far lighter and brighter than most vampires. The sun, illuminating a vampire.

“I’m normally quite subdued,” Loki claims, “but I’m pleased to see you, your lovely two feet on my territory, so I suppose my mood is elevated.”

“Considering your diet, that could be both a threat and a flattery,” Rin deadpans. He’s already tired of this archangel nonsense, and mildly jealous of how effectively Loki wields his affection like a sword.

Loki hums. Rin has half a mind to shove him into the sun. Then again, Loki might not even burn, judging by how he’s practically basking in the refracted light of Paris’ 2 o’clock afternoon. A sun vampire.

“I heard you got into an altercation with Yoichi Isagi.” Rin says. He hates bringing up Isagi, the name always floating around in the air, like an annoying pest that Rin can’t seem to get rid off. He does so anyways, over and over again. 

“An altercation is a slight stretch,” Loki’s tone sours. Isagi’s good at this, pissing people off, “we certainly didn’t get along as well as we’d hoped– and it started off so nicely, what a shame.We shook hands, and I was delighted to meet a fellow archangel, but at the end of the day, our view didn’t align. He didn’t like some of my legislative adjustments.” Loki lets out a long, exasperated exhale, his arm around Rin’s tight, “said it ‘killed the spirit of the hunt,’ and so on.”

Rin makes a private reminder to ask for these laws with a less dodgy vampire, later, “And then you banned him from french borders?”

“I was going to let him off with a warning,” Loki says, “he was disrespectful, but that was that, wasn’t it? He’s old as bones, they’re all like that. But my second-in-command insisted I be stricter, since Yoichi’s a vagabound, New reigns need greater enforcement.” 

Rin nods. Japan has its leaders split into prefectures with no active general leader since the Taisho Period, but every so often when a new head changes the prefecture landscape, the first year is their most tyrannical. 

“Your second in command sounds old.”

“Age is inconsequential past a certain era,” Loki says, “but yes, Hugo is on the older side. He’s got wisdom in pools, and he’s big on sustainability. It’s eco-friendly, I value it.”

Despite the topic easing, Rin notes that Loki’s arm is still firmly pulling Rin into his proximity, and Rin has let him so far. 

“If only it were cloudier,” Loki says, to no one in particular. He can’t even see the sky too well, with Rin’s umbrella obscuring his vision, but the comment still floats into the air and buzzes around it before whizzing off somewhere. It’s a pointless phrase.

It’s a pointless walk. La Seine approaches, its waters flowing at an ever constant speed, Eiffel Tower further down its path. This is supposed to be assurance, from the benevolent coven leader to the foreign tresspasser, that they’re headed to Europe's most famous safe spot. 

La Seine looks different at day. The waves are lighter, colored–  they’re not pitch black, any occasional flicker of movement making Rin’s skin jump, his eyes darting to his brothers for a moment to have his worries waved away with a stoney stare. No, la Seine right now is a collection of simple rapids, a controlled rise and fall of water level against the river's concrete confines. The sun shines in its submerged reflection.

Rin starts leading Loki closer to the water. Loki doesn’t resist, an inquisitive quirk of his lips telling Rin too much for comfort. Loki probably wouldn’t struggle with being mute, for all his body’s capability of expression.

Rin would. He can only speak with his tongue, and its a deliberate dance to not fuck that up, “Do you like La Seine?”

“It’s a monument of French history and the peace of Paris.” Notably, it's a pretty bad monument to Rin’s history, but he decides to instead focus on the way Loki enunciates Paris, without the ‘s’, in his perfect accent. 

“It’s a river.” 

“Have you ever been around these parts?” Loki asks. Once again, he carefully avoids answering the question, though this time with far more elegance– he’d practically punched the topic of law away from the conversation.

“A while ago.”

“That’s a broad range,” Loki says. They watch the waves ride in silence for a moment longer.

“Do Luna and the albino visit here often?” Rin wonders aloud. He finds it an intriguing fact that two Spaniards would be wandering a neutral zone flush into hunting hours, outside of their territory.

“Iglesias? No, I chased him and Luna out of here a while ago, they have a bad habit of conversion circumvention– eating a human half-dead in prohibited areas then turning them afterwards. Gets them a private feeding area while violating the law, with the addition of some poor confused vampire running around. The worst part is that most of the new vampires end up turning to ash the next morning, poor things.”

Rin supposes he should avoid mentioning how he’s never spent longer than a single hour patrolling his coven grounds. There aren’t enough neutral zones in Japan for Rin to loiter around and repel law skirmishers anyways. There also weren’t enough law skirmishers– Rin Itoshi didn’t do warnings, it's bad for his reputation. 

“When did you meet Luna and Iglesias, by the way?” A curious note with artificial casualness sneaks into Loki’s tone, making Rin’s hair rise. 

“Back when I was human.” Rin responds, curtly.

Luna and ‘Iglesias’ must only reveal themselves to their prey, Rin gathers, from the way Loki falls dead silent and unlinks his arm to pat Rin’s shoulder. It's assurance Rin doesn’t need, and for the first time of the day, he draws back. 

“We should go somewhere else,” Loki starts walking away. Rin’s still holding his umbrella, so the coven leader gets a faceful of sunlight before Rin steps beside him, “I think you’ll find this place familiar.”

“Oh,” Rin says, once they arrive, “this is the park bobcut was talking about?”

“It’s not a park,” Loki says, sounding closest to the incensed that Rin has heard, second only to when Rin had used the word soccer, “it's the Parc des Princes.”

“You really like soccer. Football, I mean.”

“Right.” Loki relinks their arms. He’s very touchy, Rin notes, but like how Rin might treat a tree branch or a vine, he lets the touch stay, so long as it stays unburdensome, “It’s one of the few good things that have come out of England. Brazil makes the best stars, but credit goes to Spain and Germany as well. I want to play, someday, once I settle it out here.”

“What’s stopping you from kicking a ball around now?” 

 “I meant professionally.”

Rin blinks. Of course Loki knows how long a professional soccer player spends in the sun. He has decided to desire such an occupation in spite of it. “I’m not sure how well clubs would take to their player burning to death throughout the match.”

“Don’t be dramatic,” Loki teases, “once you pass the hundred year mark, the sun's nothing but a singe.” 

“You’ll have to drink lots of blood,” Rin adds, “and your palate is rather niche.” 

“Luna will supply me with plenty of rule-breakers.” Loki resolves, “you should play too, Rin. Football’s only going to get bigger and bigger.” 

“Silence,” Rin says, without bite. 

“I have a feeling you’d be talented.” 

Rin pauses, “It’s a fruitless endeavor.”

“Do you live life to pick fruits? Sounds laborious,” Somewhere in their conversation, Loki’s fingers have found Rin’s neck, and Rin has stayed still throughout. They press down, fingertips weighing against Rin’s jugular, mischievous for now. Loki’s index taps at a pulse-like frequency. Rin doesn’t need to breathe, so he doesn’t. 

“Maybe I do.” Rin says, but in reality, he’s not sure if he’s even alive enough to live for anything at all. He lives to die, like any other creature on this planet filled with immaterial noise. He lives to die in a brilliant way, to bleed out in the palm of an ideal bigger than himself. 

“I disagree.” But he doesn’t argue afterwards. This is Rin’s fight to pick. Loki continues to savor the moment, his hands dancing away from Rin’s neck for a second.

“When I was a human,” Rin thinks his words through, “I collected old books. The kind that were ancient, that looked like they’d fall apart at the wrong touch. Useless, decoratory things that made me feel I was holding history whenever I wiped the dust off their discolored covers. Utterly tepid. Now I’ve become a piece of history myself, and I realize…” Rin doesn’t finish that sentence. What was he going to spout? That he’s realized history was nothing worth holding? And how was Loki supposed to respond? Was he supposed to agree, or disagree? Because Rin has a feeling he knows which Loki would’ve chosen to do.

Loki smiles, “What novel information.” Was that a joke? It was absolutely awful, “If that passion of yours remains, you can check out the old archives of France.”

“I’d rather you bite  me.” 

Loki’s tongue darts out briefly. Rin wonders what he’s just said. He can’t blame it on his heart or a rush of blood to his head, for he has neither of those scapegoats available to him, but he wants to. 

“Was that an invitation, or a catastrophic choice of words?” Rin just stares. That's enough for Loki to assume an answer. “Maybe not here.” Loki manages out, his smile spilling at its edges. 

The walk to one of Loki’s lairs is laden with an atmosphere of unspoken implications, of Rin’s request, of Loki’s hand still around his neck, its playful nature all but gone. The pathway back is a combination of brick and ancient architecture. Bachira should try to paint a daytime landscape, sometime.

It feels like painting, what happens next. 

Loki’s lair is a carefully curated work of art in itself, paintings bought from various auctions dangling from the ceiling, alongside the chandeliers. When Rin says dangling, he means it literally. Thin rope holds up the priceless paintings so that they’re constantly in a slow, anticipated motion. It almost appears that there are dozens of paintings levitating in the air, twirling with the diamonds on the chandeliers. The actual walls are ornate with pictures of Loki– not that he appears in them, but Rin can trace his outline from where the camera blurs. A vampire obsessed with selfies, Rin can’t fathom him in the slightest.

He wishes Loki knew how to handle him, at least, so that they’re not two fools reaching in blind, but the coven leader treats him too cautiously, like he’s newly made porcelain, ready to shatter at the single Newton of pressure past his capacity. Rin watches the coven leader's eyes, concentrated and ().

When Loki wipes his thumb over Rin’s neck, the exact artery that once held his strongest pulse, Rin vacillates over whether his stillness is a cause of numbness (no one has treated him delicately in a long time, but it’d be accurate to say that no one has ever treated him at all,) or anticipation (because as careful as Loki is right now, all he is doing is caressing the skin he plans to stab.) He decides that the answer falls in the middle, though it skews towards the latter.

It gets worse when–

Then Loki bites.

The pain of the puncture is all Rin feels. Then, it becomes barely a sensation at all. It's a cleaner feeding than the one in Madrid, and yet Rin is not quite focused on the cleanliness of it, but rather the way his blood flows for the first time in perhaps decades. And it beats towards a single central point in his neck. 

It is not a notably pleasant feeling. Loki’s head is buried in his neck, and Rin can’t see his mouth, but he can feel what it’s doing.  He’s curious as to how this meal of his looks, how exactly the blood flows from his wound to Loki’s mouth, but he is satiated with the mere sensation for now. 

The dizziness comes a minute later. One moment, it’s absent entirely, the next, asphyxiating him in its intensity. The next thing– Loki’s finished eating, as he takes a lick– the first Rin’s felt of his tongue– and steps back to admire his handiwork. His eyes dance between Rin’s eyes and the gash in his throat while Rin tries to figure out if the room’s spinning, swimming, blurring, or a pure conjuration of his mind. 

The only reason he isn’t falling, Rin reasons, is that Loki’s grabbing him. Holding, even. Loki’s hands have been on Rin’s shoulders since his bite. Rin wonders if Loki finds him to his taste. 

Even as his wound heals, Rin dryly notes that it's too late for Loki’s carpet, which has Rin’s blood sprayed all over it. Rin’s clothes are done for as well, and they’re the only pair he brought to France, since the trip was supposed to be a drop by visit. 

Loki licks his fingers and then uses that to clean the little blood drying around Rin’s throat wound. Rin figures he could just use his mouth directly, considering where it’s just been, but decides that he wouldn’t be able to consolidate the idea of Loki’s mouth on his flesh doing anything besides biting. It’s disturbing. It’s–

Rin is starving right now. The blood loss is still fucking with his head.

After a–

No.

A split second of foresight could have informed Rin Itoshi that trying to bite off a coven leader's mouth, or face, or any anatomical part of theirs while standing in said coven leader's lair and territory would be a poor, poor choice. The split second comes about thirty seconds too late. 

Even Loki seems taken aback by Rin’s stupidity in the moment, despite how, from a certain standpoint, it’s his fault that things have gotten to this point. He should have, perhaps, assessed how drinking Rin half dumb would impact Rin’s cognition in the aftermath. If Loki had a mouth that wasn’t being torn about and eaten by Rin at the moment, he’d probably say something about that.

He tastes ridiculously good, liquid electricity in the form of red viscous. Rin’s never tasted blood that was remotely spicy before, but Loki’s burns his tongue in all the best ways possible, and that too, hinders him from stepping back. 

In his defense, Loki isn’t pushing him away either. Instead, his hands find the back of Rin’s head and pull him closer like an embrace. His eyes seem to be laughing, even as his jaw area is a giant gory mess. 

Their blood is mixing in the carpet below them.

Rin realizes, between a dull haze of electricity and the way Loki fingers knead through his hair, that without the blood and the chunks of flesh missing from Loki’s mouth, whose healing rate has begun to surpass Rin’s feeding, that the scene they’re making looks a lot like a kiss.

That’s what gets him to pull back, of all things.

“Your carpet is done for,” is the first thing that leaves Rin’s mess of a mouth, right as Loki’s tongue and upper lip finish regenerating. 

“My carpet?” Loki repeats, momentarily stunned once again. Of course that’s not the right thing to say, after whatever that was. Rin swears he can feel Loki’s blood burning in his stomach. “Right. Don’t worry about it.” He says, without glancing down. 

His smile, once again, indicates mirth. 

“Our clothes are ruined too,” Loki continues, when Rin opts to use his response time to glare daggers at the air between them, “I have a few spare. I’m sure you’ll be alright too.”

Oh good. Rin was worried he’d offer to help, “Naturally.” 

Would Rin let him? That’s even more worrying.

Loki finally lets go of Rin’s shoulders. 

“I’m leaving tomorrow morning,” He declares, when Loki takes his response time to tilt his head and smile disgustingly softly.

“Will you be staying the night?”

“Not unless I have a reason to.” Rin says. Cryptid and inviting. Great. Rin wonders if his mouth will be more cooperative if he rips it off and regrows it. Loki looks a lot like a fucking reason right now. 

Loki puts his hand on Rin’s arm, holding him right below the bicep, “I have a proposition, then.” 

La Seine has changed massively from when Rin last visited. Decades always curate the strangest discrepancies, but Rin wouldn’t have expected in a million years to find himself in the same shoes (or boat) as Edith DuTronc so many years after. And just like Edith, he’s got company.

Edith’s company wasn’t in her boat though, Rin notes. He glances at Loki, who’s leaned so over their cabin cruiser that everytime Rin glances his direction, he gets startled by how the man isn’t falling overboard. Julian Loki’s been doing this for around five minutes, waving sporadically at something in the distance.

The moon is crescent tonight,  and it's held by the water and Rin’s gaze. 

The moon can only offer so much, so Rin turns to Loki and finds the man two inches away from his face. 

“Hello,” Rin says, which is the most he can manage. He can see the small creases on Julian’s skin, and the smallest specks of freckles, barely noticeable in the dark. 

Loki breaks Rin’s train of thought and procures a camera. Seeing the lens, Rin instinctively shrinks back, before deducing what Loki wants from him. He picks it up nimbly. It’s an older model. 

“You’re brilliant,” Loki says, before leaning back, “make sure you get the moon in it.” 

Of course, Loki doesn’t appear in the photo. The bottom of the moon’s crescent wobbles where his head would have originally covered it, and the empty balcony of the cruiser doesn’t even have his shadow. Yet Rin finds himself staring at the photo for far too long.

Loki offers to let Rin keep the photo, but Rin declines. He doesn’t need a memento. It’s all etched into his soul, either way.