Shinji woke feeling damn groggy…and damn hungry. He licked at his lips and looked down at Kippei, but wasn’t sure Kippei had enough to spare either. It had been a while since they had fed. And usually Kippei woke up first, being older; Shinji figured it was a sign of how damned hungry he was. So he crawled out of bed and went wandering, walking into three walls dazedly before he spotted his little pet human and then just staring.
Shinji glared at the man. He was not Kippei and he had a sword in his hand. Neither of these things made Shinji particularly like him. Add to that the fact he kept charging at him and slicing at him and Shinji really didn’t like him at all! He glared over at Kippei again and as soon as his shoulder was exposed the sword was grating across it.
Kippei was relieved to finally get home again – almost as relieved as he’d been to leave. It had been a good trip, an excellent trip, but the longer they were out there where Shinji wasn’t safe and had no idea what they were dealing with and no way to defend himself if he found out… well, it started straining his nerves. He hadn’t even known he had nerves.
“Okay,” he told Shinji as they finally reentered the house, “we’re not doing that again.”
Kippei didn’t waste any more time getting their trip arranged; a scouting trip, mostly, visiting several places where he knew there had been a family with a tradition of hunting. More than likely several of them would have a current hunter or two in the family, and all he needed to do was find out which of them were active. Some observation, that was pretty much all for this trip. Maybe see if he could make a few contacts.
The reasons that Kippei had given Shinji for why he wasn’t hunting weren’t all that valid, really. It wasn’t that he didn’t have leads or didn’t know where to start or anything of the sort. He had plenty of ideas, knew exactly where and when and how he would go about it, and really the only thing that was stopping him was Shinji. But Shinji wasn’t, anymore, had said that he wanted Kippei to go, and Kippei would have been more inclined to take him at his word if he hadn’t known exactly how hard it would be to go anywhere and do anything without Shinji. Leaving him behind. That was just slightly more terrifying than the idea of doing absolutely nothing for the rest of eternity.
Kippei didn’t really mind Shinji spending a lot of time in the underground hot springs. Shinji was enjoying them immensely, and Kippei liked seeing him happy, and it was pretty comfortable just lazing around and having lots of sex and relaxing in the hot water and watching naked wet Shinji having the time of his life. He was enjoying it too, he really was, but he was also feeling restless, more and more often lately. It really had very little to do with Shinji or the relative merits of the hot springs as a way to pass the time. Shinji was, in fact, the only reason he wasn’t a hell of a lot more restless, and was making a significant effort not to be and not to show it when he was. But he was still feeling it, the need to be doing something, the sense that there was something he should be out doing and it wasn’t here. He wanted to go hunting again.
Read the rest of this entry »
Shinji woke early for the first time in a long time. Earlier than Kippei, but that might have something to do with the fact Shinji had drunk a lot of Kippei’s blood. He was getting stronger, drinking from Kippei all the time instead of weak humans. He could feel it in himself, the old power in Kippei, spreading through his own veins and it made him feel that much closer to his Sire. Kippei was everything Shinji adored…more, he was simply everything. Father, Brother, Lover, God…all rolled into one neat package. So for a while Shinji just lay there, letting Kippei hold him in a grip he wasn’t sure he could worm his way out of anyway, watching Kippei sleep, like the dead only he wasn’t. But he got fidgity after a while and he wanted to do something, so he slowly managed to extricate himself from Kippei’s hold and fetched a canvas he had prepared the night before, mixing up some paint, and he got to work. Read the rest of this entry »
Shinji was feeling spectacularly lazy. He had gone upstairs, exploring, but at some point in time he couldn’t quite recall he had gone to just lie down on the big four-poster bed, and somehow curled up on the rumpled covers and dozed. He wasn’t asleep, nor awake, just some odd state in between where he couldn’t stop thinking about Kippei, and at the same time couldn’t quite be bothered to go find him. He wasn’t that hungry, and didn’t really want for anything. He remembered all those times Akutsu would lie on a seat for days on end. Shinji had thought he was weird, or sick, or lazy, or being annoying but he thought he might understand a bit better now. Sometimes there just wasn’t any reason to move.
Kippei had done a little more thinking, later, about Shinji’s suggestion of tents for sleeping in the gardens. He was pretty sure there was a better way. He just couldn’t quite remember. So he sat on one of the upstairs balconies, chin in hand, staring out at the tangled mass of overgrowth that used to be the gardens. Actually, he was pretty sure it had never looked exactly well kept, it had always been rather wild, but he knew it was a lot more wild now than it used to be. Hell, it was practically it’s own forest, now. No mere fifty years, but several hundred left untended. Still, there was something…
Read the rest of this entry »
Kippei was so entirely comfortable, in fact, that he ended up falling asleep just like that, at least for a few hours. Maybe longer, since by the time he woke up again, the house was quiet and he could no longer hear anything from overhead, which meant that the partygoers and the cleanup crew had left. He smiled faintly and then yawned, licking his teeth and wondering absently why he hadn’t cleaned up after himself very well. Oh right. Never mind then.
He grinned a little wider and looked down at Shinji beneath him, a soft, satisfied purr starting up in spite of himself. God, that had been some amazing sex. Shinji was absolutely, positively the best thing ever. Ever. And he would know, because ever was a long time for him. In fact, he seemed to recall they’d actually talked about that. Hmm. Whatever, it was still true. Shinji was the best thing ever in the history of forever.