Post #2468993 in Vampire Knight: Bonds of Fate, a roleplay on RPG

The Spider dreams of the workings of its web, as things turn out. He was not so gifted as to be able to escape the magnitude of his sins in his dreams, but at least they were things he was willing to let go. The mantra of his entire life had been: the lesser evil in service of the greater good. That was what he had become, and he had done so willingly. So sometimes, when he dreamed of the things he’d had to do and to be in service of that greater good, it troubled him with startling clarity. The times he’d ripped information straight from an unprepared mind. The times he’d used his abilities to inflict subtle psychological torment on Pantheon agents or mercenary assassins. Far fewer attempts had actually been made on his family’s lives than were ever planned. The Spider preferred to nip such problems in the bud, so to speak.

And then there were the times when more subtle methods had been necessary, when simply taking the information he desired was not the best way to go about things. He’d slept his way to the top of more than one alliance, and secretly murdered his way up other hierarchies. Through them all, he’d worn countless faces, played countless characters, and none of them were him.

Or perhaps it was more accurate to say that all of them were him.

They were what he had become, for their sake. All the things he would continue to do but never speak of. All his ghosts and his demons and the little pieces of his soul he’d left behind on the way. But it was worth it, every time, for those times when he could go home and see his mother and his siblings and his family, and allow himself to be cocooned in their warmth and their light for a while. He could forget, for just a moment, that he still wore a face with nothing underneath. He had given all that up, because it was necessary to pay the toll in something, and Alden had only shreds of his soul to give. He paid and he paid and he paid some more, and somehow, there was always just enough to keep him putting one foot in front of another. To track the next lead, worm into the next alliance by whatever means necessary, wear the next face. Spin one more thread for his web.

It was obvious when he woke that his mother had been giving him transfusions, because he could tell that it had been at least a couple of weeks, and he wasn’t dead yet. He was, however, ravenous, and he could smell someone enticingly-familiar not too far away. Cracking open one eye, Alden laid an arm over his abdomen and turned his head to face his cousin. “So what’s your excuse? Could have moved in with someone else by now, wouldn’t have had to worry about the cobwebs getting out of hand.” His eyes were a tad redder than normal, but, razor’s edge or not, he was still in control of himself. He just really hoped Emrys didn’t start bleeding. It wasn’t as though he’d lost much himself, it was just that his metabolism was insane and essentially unslakeable. Sucked to be him, sometimes.

Emrys had been flipping through a book, bored, when Alden awoke. It had been almost three weeks since he'd nearly died helping their uncle and Yuki. While Emrys was sincerely glad that his cousin was alright, he was also going to miss the solitude. He rose an eyebrow slightly at his question.

"I like the cobwebs, actually. They're a nice touch. Besides, with you out of it, it was almost like having a room to myself again. Z snores and is usually with Yuki anyway, and I'd die before I shared a room with Bal, Keir, or Ary. Plus, I'm lazy and didn't feel like being bothered to move anything when I was already here." He'd returned to the book while he was speaking, but then paused and set it down. He looked over at Alden again. "It would seem our roles are quite reversed. I can give you your blood back, if you wanted it."

Alden snorted, the half-smile cracking his face anyway. And he was sure all four of his other brothers were unsuitable for various reasons also. He could sense them nearby; clearly, everyone was returned for the annual circus... or Christmas, as his mother liked to call it. “Glad to know I could be of convenience,” he said dryly, pushing himself up so that he was sitting with his back to the headboard. An extra bed had indeed been moved in here, but other than that, the décor was unchanged. There were not actually any cobwebs, of course, though sunlight did stream in through a window. Violet didn’t need to ask how long he’d been out, because Emrys had thought about it, which meant he’d heard it as clearly as if it had been spoken.

He pretended to ponder the question for a moment, running a hand through his purple hair and trailing the gesture into working the knot out of the back of his neck. Alden could be pretty lazy when he wanted to be, but he did not make a habit of sleeping in the same spot for three damn weeks. Then again, he’d contained Uncle Jasper’s power to Yuki’s head. He was surprised it hadn’t killed him. It probably would have, if it had been Balthasar making the attempt, or any lesser telepath trying to do the containing. He wasn’t surprised his brain had needed so long to repair itself.

But the mischief in his smile had nothing to do with any of that, really. “My own back? Hm… I think not. Yours, though…” He arched an eyebrow and raised one of his arms slightly to make a beckoning motion with one of his index fingers. “Yours, I’ll take.”

Emrys raised his eyebrow a little higher. "My own, huh? And what is so special about my own blood?" Despite the question, he did move over to the bed, sliding in next to his cousin. He had to wonder why when he'd been the one to drink from Alden, it had bothered him, yet now, when it was Alden drinking from him, it was perfectly fine. He didn't know. A part of him didn't want to.

He cocked his head at his cousin for a second before leaning his head over, exposing the smooth ivory arch of his neck for him. The last time he'd seen Alden, he'd been blonde, his hair cropped very close to his head. "You know, I kinda like you in purple. It suits you." He didn't even bother to take the time to wonder why he'd felt the need to say that.

Even if he weren’t a mindreader, it would have been relatively obvious to Alden just how hilariously-confused his cousin was about this whole thing. Growing up, they perhaps hadn’t interacted as much as Alden had with Aryan or Emrys with Zero, because they were closest in age that way, but then… it wasn’t like they were the same people as they’d been back then. More than perhaps any other members of their generation, this war had changed them, deeply and irrevocably. They’d both been paying the tolls since they were old enough to know how, and had run into each other only sporadically since then. It was, in a way, a lot like meeting a new person.

A new person who had absolutely no idea what he was up against.

Shifting, Alden hovered over his cousin for just a moment, that secretive half-smile still adorning his face, even as his eyeteeth extended below the line of his bottom lip. “Does it?” he inquired playfully, making his voice a little breathier than usual and leaning down so that he was within a few inches of Em’s face. “I happen to think that red is a very good color on you.” He referred of course, to the hue that Emrys’s pale face took on when he blushed. Inching closer, he diverted his course at the last moment, running his tongue along the juncture of Em’s throat and shoulder.

He sank his teeth into the same spot, adjusting a little so that he moved a leg over his cousin’s waist for a better angle. The taste was interesting—a mixture of the sweet and the spicy, like dark chocolate with chilis in it. Violet’s eyes slid closed for a moment, and he hummed a note of contentedness before extracting his teeth, licking the last drop from the corner of his mouth. “Just as I suspected,” he murmured, rising onto his knees and removing himself from Em’s person. He swiped a finger along his own lip and then over his tongue, making sure the rest was gone as well. His eyes narrowed, and the wicked smirk returned to him. “You’re delicious.”

When blood is offered instead of taken by force, there is something rather intimate about the whole ordeal. With Emrys, it was no different, even if he did not understand it. Had he not twisted his fingers into the sheets, he would have wrapped his arm around Alden's shoulders to prevent him from pulling away. As it were, he simply blushed and allowed him to do as he would, acutely aware of his body positioning.

When he did pull away, Emrys swung his legs over the edge of the bed, sitting up with his back to Alden. Al's comment about his taste sent a shiver down his spine. "Yeah, yeah. Just don't get too attached." He said gruffly.

Alden chuckled, shaking his head, but he did not immediately say anything in response, simply climbing off his bed with a sort of easy grace that seemed to come naturally to felines and vampires alike. As he’d suspected, he was quite capable of moving about now, as his injuries had mostly been to his brain and then his metabolism, and both of those were now in quite well-functioning order. “I shall do my very best, cousin,” he said, laying a hand over his heart in a mocking gesture of sincerity, “but it could be said that my family is predisposed to both ends of addiction, after all.”

Snippet #2468993

located in Cross Academy, a part of Vampire Knight: Bonds of Fate, one of the many universes on RPG.

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