Archive of Our Own ^beta

Shouyou gets the call on a Monday morning, which is unusual. Given the nature of his work, most of his cases happen during night hours. Shouyou works in Vampire Crimes; vampire crimes disproportionately occur at night. But not this one. This crime occurs around five a.m.⁠—⁠before sunrise, but only just barely. Shouyou is one of the few people in the precinct, pulled away from his desk by an anxious-looking superior⁠—⁠Hoshino Aiko (45), head of Miyagi Prefecture’s Vampire Crimes Division.

“Could be a homicide,” Hoshino-san says.

It’s the tail end of his shift and Shouyou is just tired enough that he can’t help himself. “It could be?”

The stare Hoshino-san fixes Shouyou with could kill. “The local precinct called us in,” she explains. “Two of theirs answered the call, and according to their reports, the vampire who called 119 was the only person at the scene. There isn’t a body⁠—⁠only a hell of a lot of blood⁠—⁠but the vampire who called is absolutely covered in it.”

This is all important information, but it doesn’t explain why Hoshino-san still looks like someone stole her coffee. Shouyou can only guess at the reason.

“Who’s the victim?”

Service ace. Hoshino-san’s mouth purses. “Apartment belongs to Oikawa Tooru,” she says evenly. “Call came in from a Kageyama Tobio⁠—⁠official records list him as one of his children.”

Shouyou isn’t tired anymore. He pushes in his chair with a quiet skid, then bows gravely to Hoshino-san so that he can take his leave.

“You’re good to go alone?”

“Of course.” Shouyou’s got his gun holstered at his hip and a spare clip of silver bullets. He’s got the standard set of three silver stakes strapped to his lower back and two instant-trigger sun spells⁠—⁠one police issued and one that’s his own. “He’s only one vampire, after all.”

Hoshino-san sighs. “Hinata,” she says. “Be careful.”

Shouyou nods.

On his way to the crime scene, Shouyou reviews everything he knows about Oikawa Tooru and comes up woefully short. Not in terms of information on the vampire himself, but in terms of anything relevant to him turning up sun-killed. Oikawa Tooru is one of the more public vampires. Estimates put him at around a thousand years old; it differs from one interview to the next. He’s got an unnamed sire and three longsuffering “siblings:” Iwaizumi Hajime, Matsukawa Issei, and Hanamaki Takahiro. As he drives, Shouyou rules all of them out entirely⁠—⁠Matsukawa and Hanamaki are currently abroad in Singapore and Iwaizumi is only a known quantity because Oikawa kept getting caught with his tongue down the other vampire’s throat. Though Shouyou supposes that ought to be more of a motive⁠—⁠it’s the ones you know, and crimes of passion, etc.⁠—⁠but he’s seen enough photos of the two of them to know that they’re in love. In love in love. The kind of thing Shouyou has always wanted for himself and only ever felt for volleyball.

Oikawa’s children aren’t nearly as infamous, but Shouyou knows all four of them by name and some of them by picture⁠—⁠Kageyama Tobio, unfortunately only by the former. The most public of Oikawa’s line is Miya Osamu of Onigiri Miya franchise fame, but Shouyou entertains him as a suspect for all of two seconds. Miya Osamu is currently abroad as well, vacationing in France with Suna Rintarou and spending much of his time tempting fate by sunbathing on a beach.

Shouyou watches a video of Oikawa telling childhood stories about Kageyama at a red light, and then looks for photos of him as he slows to a crawl at the block that houses Oikawa’s apartment. By the time Shouyou is being ushered up to the crime scene he’s starting to put together a picture of what he’s dealing with: Kageyama Tobio, just barely last 100 years old, reclusive to the point of being an online ghost, and prime suspect in the murder of Oikawa Tooru. Of course knowing vampires, Kageyama will probably deny everything the moment Shouyou steps through the doors.

Kageyama Tobio is sitting on a sofa inside the apartment when Shouyou gets there. Immediately he stands, speaking in a panic. “Are you the one with the fang police? Please arrest me! I killed Oikawa-san!”

Shouyou gapes at him. Kageyama Tobio is beautiful, but then all vampires are beautiful. He’s tall, dark-haired, and thin. His Wikipedia article lists him as physically twenty, making him younger than Shouyou by six years. But he was born a full century before Shouyou was, which makes him a hundred years Shouyou’s senior. The pale skin and dark circles underneath Kageyama’s dark blue eyes lend themselves to the recluse image, but the panicked look in them ruins the prime suspect aspect. Shouyou knows firsthand that vampires⁠—⁠like people⁠—⁠lie, but the unbridled fear wafting off Kageyama isn’t something fake. He’s terrified.

He also just confessed to a murder.

Shouyou stares up at the entire pretty picture of him and gets distracted from the use of the words “fang police” for way too long. Then he gets it together. “Hinata Shouyou,” he introduces, flashing his badge. “And we prefer Vampire Crimes.”

“Whatever,” Kageyama says, still sounding panicked. He even shrugs his shoulders prettily. “I did it. I killed Oikawa-san. I . . . I must have . . .” He trails off, his brow furrowing. “Hinata Shouyou?”

Shouyou shakes off his stupor and glances at the other officers at the scene, noting that forensics is already here to poke and prod everything, before ushering Kageyama back over to the sofa to take a seat.

“I hear you,” Shouyou says. “But why don’t you explain to me what happened. Walk me through the scene.” He pulls out his pen and notebook.

Kageyama scowls at him, an expression that doesn’t make him any less pretty but does reveal the points of his very sharp canine teeth. “As I told the other officers, I don’t remember,” he says. “But I must have killed him. I woke up covered in Oikawa-san’s blood alone in the apartment next to his⁠—⁠to that.”

Here Kageyama gestures, and Shouyou turns his gaze towards where one of the techs is examining a frighteningly large pool of blood on the floor. Shouyou shouldn’t, but he almost wishes there were a body⁠—⁠or at least ash remains. Vampire ash⁠—⁠like a vampire, period⁠—⁠is pretty much impossible to get rid of, even when the sun is the cause of death. In fact, Shouyou doesn’t know if there is a way to destroy vampire ash. Most of the time when he has to deal with it, he’s just glad to have a pile to analyze. Death lingers, and vampire death most of all, but people respond better to physical evidence of a death than they do to testimony about the after signature. And you can’t bring a jury to a crime scene so that they can feel it themselves.

But Shouyou has gotten ahead of himself. He looks back at Kageyama. He’s got a chain around his neck with a small glass bottle hung from it. As Shouyou stares he keeps touching it with one hand.

“Oikawa-san had a sun spell,” the vampire says. “He kept it in a little bottle around his neck. I . . . don’t know why I have it.”

Sun magic is a hot commodity in the vampire world, and anyone who can manufacture jewelry to counter the sun’s effects is in high demand. Shouyou’s seen vampires with anti-solar rings, earrings, necklaces⁠—⁠even silver-based, anti-solar tattoos. He’s intimately familiar with sun spells⁠—⁠pockets of sunlight to be used in self-defense during the night⁠—⁠but he hadn’t thought a vampire as old as Oikawa would risk putting one around his neck. Shouyou wears the one his sister bought him when he graduated from the police academy there, but Shouyou is human. He wouldn’t be risking death if he accidentally triggered it while pulling on a shirt.

Kageyama is looking at Shouyou as if waiting for a response, so Shouyou says, “Okay,” and nods. “A sun spell. That’s useful to have for protection at night.”

Kageyama frowns sourly at him. “How young are you?” he says. “How long have you been with the fang⁠—⁠with Vampire Crimes?”

“What time did you wake up?” Shouyou asks, ignoring him. “You called us around five fifteen a.m.”

“Five ten,” replies Kageyama, prompt and with the certainty of a vampire⁠—⁠they’re better than any other clock. “The last time I remember seeing Oikawa-san was yesterday. Around four p.m.”

Shouyou notes all that down diligently. He’ll pull security footage from the apartment complex to verify, of course. The patrol cops are already interviewing neighbors. When he finishes writing he finds Kageyama staring at him once more, an unreadable look in his dark blue eyes. “I graduated from college in 2019 and did my full six months at the academy right after,” Shouyou tells him, trying to be kind. He realizes that this information means nothing to a vampire⁠—⁠even one as young as Kageyama⁠—⁠and adds, “I’m twenty-six.”

Kageyama appears to take that all in stride. “Oh.” He doesn’t apologize, but Shouyou can tell he wants to.

Shouyou makes a dot on his page. “Explain the blood,” he says. “You’re covered in it.”

Kageyama glances down at himself as if he’d somehow managed to forget as much, and then he hunches as if embarrassed. “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t remember. I⁠—⁠I must have died? Oikawa-san would have had to give me blood to bring me back, and maybe in the resulting tussle . . . I killed him,” he says. “I must have. You need to arrest me.”

Shouyou’s never heard that one before, but the urgency of the situation washes over him like a wave. He does need to arrest Kageyama, though he is also curious. Even with three years’ experience working in Vampire Crimes, Shouyou’s been fighting an uphill battle this whole time. Humans don’t understand why the Vampire Crimes Division is even necessary; vampires are still so caught up in their ie-based society that their default state is willfully obtuse. Some days it feels like only Shouyou recognizes that when the Japanese government outlawed the existence of the ie they did so for a reason, and not even immortal, nigh impossible to kill creatures should be exempt. But Shouyou has firsthand experience, having worked his share of child abuse cases and carried out more than enough forever-ten-year-olds⁠—⁠which is to say, more than none. Things are a little better now⁠—⁠Shouyou usually gets answers when questioning undead victims and suspects⁠—⁠but he’s never gotten anything like this before.

How vampires die, how vampires are made? These are both questions the entire species seems uniformly committed to taking with them to their first and second graves.

Kageyama Tobio seems to remember all that in the time it takes Shouyou to think about it, and he folds further in on himself. Doing so must make the blood covering him more apparent, because his pupils dilate and his face further pales. “Can I change my clothes?”

Shouyou feels really bad. “At the precinct,” he explains. He closes the notebook and hooks the pen through the loop attached to the front cover. “They’ll want to take them for evidence and get pictures⁠—⁠the works.”

Kageyama manages to look even paler. “Right. Okay. I don’t suppose I can at least grab something to change into?”

Shouyou shakes his head. “No, sorry. Come on. I’ll drive you over.” He stands and Kageyama does as well. “I’ll need to cuff you.” Kageyama shifts as Shouyou does, taking care to wrap his wrists in cloth first. “Silver based alloy,” Shouyou adds unnecessarily. “Sorry.” He reads Kageyama his rights.

Kageyama wilts even more with his hands shackled, though he keeps fixing his gaze on the bloodstain. Shouyou chews on his bottom lip, then takes a moment before they leave to pull aside a tech. “Put a rush on the DNA for that, yeah?” he says quietly, though he knows Kageyama can still hear him. Then he walks the vampire out the front door to his waiting police car and drives in silence back to the station.

Hoshino-san is not happy that Shouyou has turned up with Kageyama in cuffs. In fact Shouyou would go so far as to say that she looks thunderous.

“So it’s a missing persons?” she barks upon seeing them⁠—⁠and reviewing the evidence.

Shouyou swallows but nods. “Well, yes⁠—⁠”

“So why have you brought him here?” Hoshino-san jabs an angry finger in Kageyama’s direction. The vampire is still dressed in his blood-covered clothes because Shouyou didn’t get so far as to give him prison scrubs. His hands are still cuffed together in front of him, the impromptu wrapping Shouyou put around his wrists to keep from burning his flesh off with the silver still intact. One of the junior officers, Yamaguchi Akari, is standing with him and holding onto one of Kageyama’s arms.

Shouyou swallows again. “Well⁠—⁠” He flounders. He doesn’t know, is the problem.

“Never mind. I don’t want to hear it. Get him out of here.” Shouyou opens his mouth and Hoshino-san halts with a hand pressed directly to the middle of her forehead. “Take his clothes for evidence and give him something to wear so he doesn’t have to walk around naked, but get him out of here. And apologize to him for the inconvenience. Make it very clear that we’re not charging him for anything⁠—⁠”

“He insisted,” Shouyou says. “He confessed.”

His boss stops talking but doesn’t open her eyes for a long moment. When she does, her expression is inscrutable as ice, but Shouyou feels no less afraid for his life. “Did he,” she says. “Confessed to the not-murder?”

Shouyou fidgets uncomfortably. Now that he’s no longer eye-to-eye with Kageyama, his actions in Oikawa’s apartment are starting to make a little less sense. It’s disconcerting, but Shouyou decides just to attribute it to general vampire charisma instead of looking at it further. “Yes,” he says. “He said he killed Oikawa-san.”

“I killed Oikawa-san,” Kageyama says helpfully, though he’s far enough away and Shouyou and Hoshino-san are being quiet enough that he should not have been able to hear.

Hoshino-san presses her fingers harder to her forehead. “You know what⁠—⁠whatever,” she says. “If he wants to be ‘arrested’ he can be ‘arrested.’ Put him in general holding with silver⁠—⁠but still take his clothes.” She gestures and Akari brings Kageyama forward for Shouyou to take hold of. Shouyou tries not to notice how warm he is, despite being a vampire. Kageyama’s arm almost feels alive in Shouyou’s grip.

“It’s going to be a shitshow if Oikawa is really dead once the public finds out,” continues Hoshino-san, apparently done with the situation and back to ignoring Kageyama’s presence. “It’s past sunrise, so I’m going to be in my office reviewing the security footage from the apartment building. Call me if you learn anything.”

Shouyou nods in affirmative. “Yes, Ma’am.” He’s too busy watching Kageyama as Hoshino-san leaves.

Kageyama is quiet when Shouyou takes his clothes and gives him prison scrubs to wear instead. He’s remarkably shameless too, something Shouyou has come to expect from most vampires, but something he hadn’t been expecting from this one; the confidence seems off. Akari is the one who disappears with the bagged, bloody clothes. Shouyou just keeps watching Kageayama, observing his actions within the cell. Kageyama looks no less otherworldly dressed only in thin, green fabric, but the lack of breathing is a little more apparent now that he’s lost the bulk.

Shouyou stares at him, and Kageyama stares back.

After a moment, Shouyou settles into a chair and pulls out his phone. There was a MSBY-Adlers game yesterday evening, and Shouyou has been trying to find enough downtime to watch the fourth and fifth sets. He doesn’t have his headphones, though.

Kageyama is still standing immobile in the middle of his cell. Shouyou clears his throat. “Uh . . . do you mind.” He gestures at his phone, then at his ears.

Kageyama stares at him like he’s gone mad. “I’m in jail,” he says. “I’m your prisoner. Why would it matter if I minded?”

Shouyou nervously laughs. “Just seems rude,” he says. He clicks around on his web browser until he finds the coverage from the match, hitting full screen without pause. “I can just watch without sound. Or lower the volume⁠—⁠”

“I’m a vampire,” says Kageyama. “Low volume for you is high volume for me.”

Shouyou laughs some more. “Ah, well. I hope you like volleyball⁠—⁠”

“Volleyball?” Kageyama’s entire tone changes. “What⁠—⁠what match?”

“MSBY versus the Adlers from yesterday,” Shouyou says promptly. “It went to five sets, and I’ve only watched the first three⁠—⁠don’t tell me who wins, you’ll spoil it.”

“I⁠—⁠don’t remember who wins.” Kageyama sounds annoyed about it. Shouyou hides a smile.

“Do you want to watch?” He goes to move the chair, ignoring the giant line painted along the floor letting everyone know they’re not to get within striking distance of those in the cells. “I could⁠—⁠”

“I don’t want to get you in trouble,” Kageyama says. “I’ll just listen. I can infer.” His lips quirk and his fingers shift in a move that looks like a perfectly serviceable set, and Shouyou remembers stepping into the empty gym for the first time at Karasuno, and how painfully hard he and the team had fought to make it to center court. They’d never done it. Even with the third years there was always Ushiwaka, and once they were gone, not even Shouyou, Tsukishima, and Yamaguchi had been enough to carry the team that far.

“You like volleyball,” Shouyou says. That hadn’t been covered in Kageyama’s admittedly sparse Wikipedia article. Shouyou debates updating it, adding in an addendum that Kageyama Tobio likes volleyball, a fact no doubt to be overshadowed by the fact that he’s killed his sire. The thought is sobering.

“I do,” says Kageyama. “I’ve never played.” There’s a yearning in his voice. There are teenage vampires, whether they be the product of a different time or something else, but they obviously don’t play in human sports competitions. And there are a limited number of all-vampire sports competitions; all-vampire sports games tend to be too difficult to watch⁠—⁠too precise. Besides, Shouyou never got the sense that vampires cared much for sports.

“Eh, it’s not all that,” Shouyou lies.

He was floundering before Daichi-san pointed him in the direction of the police academy and Vampire Crimes, overshadowed on his college team. He was in the same boat as Tsukishima, but Tsukishima was the first year who stuffed Ushijima; even though Karasuno never made it to nationals, Tsukishima always had that on his side. Shouyou doesn’t have a lot of time, or a team, to play with anymore. He still misses it. But Kageyama doesn’t need to know that.

“I’m glad you like it, though. Means we have something to do.”

“You mean while we wait here to find out if I killed Oikawa-san,” says Kageyama matter-of-factly. He doesn’t say it like he minds waiting, but when Shouyou looks, he can see the fear flickering in his eyes.

“Right . . .” Shouyou falters a little in the suddenly awful silence. He hits play on the video and smiles when he sees Bokuto. “That’s Bokuto Koutarou,” he says. “We went to training camps together my first year of high school. He’s the best.” On the other side are Ushijima Wakatoshi and Hoshiumi Kourai⁠—⁠a player Shouyou only ever saw from the sideline who bested Itachiyama in 2014.

“I like Bokuto,” Kageyama says.

It’s fun watching with him. Shouyou has no shortage of people in his life to watch volleyball with, but even Tsukishima, who also plays for a Division One team, doesn’t always want to humor him. Kageyama offers insightful commentary. They get into it over the coolest position on the team⁠—⁠Shouyou maintains it’s the spikers, Kageyama is insistent that it’s the setter⁠—⁠and Shouyou can tell they’re not rooting for the same team, but it’s fun. More than a few times Shouyou forgets Kageyama is even a vampire, let alone a murder suspect.

At the end of the five sets MSBY wins the game 3:2, earning two points. Shouyou double checks the League standings to make sure they’re still in the top six, then stands, stretching out his legs. He pockets his phone and yawns. “Thanks for watching with me. I should go back to work, though⁠—⁠”

“Wait!” There’s a clang as Kageyama puts both of his hands on the bars, and Shouyou turns in time to watch the flesh of his palms start to sizzle and burn. He expects Kageyama to take his hands off them immediately, but the vampire doesn’t, standing there with his body disintegrating as he stares beseechingly at Shouyou. “Wait,” Kageyama says again.

Shouyou steps closer to the bars, swearing. Kageyama still doesn’t let go, not until Shouyou is well beyond breaking protocol and standing behind the line. He’s within grabbing distance. All Kageyama does is hiss as Shouyou forcibly takes his hands off the bars. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Shouyou starts to ask, then breaks off when he sees Kageyama’s palms. They’re already healing, skin knitting back together like brand new. Shouyou has never seen accelerated healing like that before. He’s never seen a vampire recover from a silver burn that fast.

Kageyama slowly takes back his hands. “I died,” he says again, quietly. “Oikawa-san must have given me quite a lot of blood. He didn’t need to. I’d have woken up on my own in a while.”

Shouyou cannot help himself. He shouldn’t, but that’s the second time Kageyama has said as much, and Shouyou has to ask. “What do you mean by that?”

If he’s bothered by the fact that there are cameras everywhere, Kageyama doesn’t show it. “Oikawa-san is my sire,” he tells Shouyou. “His blood has restorative powers for me.”

Shouyou is already filing that information away for future use. “But what do you mean you died? I thought vampires couldn’t die.”

Kageyama looks at him like Shouyou is a bug⁠—⁠at last something Shouyou is more familiar with after three years with this division. “Vampires can die of plenty of things,” he says. “We just don’t stay dead, unless it’s the sun.” He pauses, smiling ruefully. “Or another vampire.”

So he is aware of the cameras after all. The corners of Shouyou’s mouth pull down without his consent. He hates that part of the job the most. Sometimes he gets cases where someone’s been burned to ash, but sometimes he gets cases where someone’s been killed and there’s a body⁠—⁠an immortal, never-changing, undead twice over body⁠—⁠and in those cases Shouyou has to put the cause of death simply as “vampire.” After any trials the bodies are taken out into the sun and turned to ash like the rest of them, leaving nothing for humanity to unravel. It’s the unwavering, unchanging rule of the game, and Shouyou hates it.

Kageyama is moving on. “Anyway, the only reason I can think of that Oikawa-san would give me his blood is if I’d died⁠—⁠or as good as. Which explains why I woke up without my memory.”

Shouyou is still missing a few pieces. “Right . . .”

“You can’t expect to come back from the brink with perfectly intact memories, dumbass,” Kageyama snaps. His teeth clack together at the end of the sentence, like he’s remembered rather abruptly that Shouyou is a police officer, and Kageyama is currently in a jail.

“Right,” Shouyou says again, hiding a smile. “Well⁠—⁠”

The door to the holding cell rooms opens, and Akari pokes her head in. “Hey, Hinata-kun,” she says, stepping inside holding a stack of papers. She glances briefly at Kageyama like she’s uncertain, but then she says, “The blood’s a match for Oikawa Tooru.” Kageyama hisses so softly that Shouyou almost misses it. But Akari must not hear him, because she just keeps talking. “We also got a hit on some of the prints in the apartment.”

Shouyou whirls away from the bars, reaching for the papers in her hands. He hears Kageyama calling after him with only half an ear, only aware of the fact that he’s grabbed the bars again when Akari starts swearing. “He’s alright.” Shouyou reads the paper with a furrowed brow. He double checks the hiragana for the name, eyeing the ID photo curiously, then frowns. “Kuroki Hiroshi. Do you know a Kuroki Hiroshi?” He turns to face Kageyama, whose hands have once again healed.

“What? No,” Kageyama says. He’s let go of the bars, but he’s still standing incredibly close to them. “No, why?”

“His prints were all over Oikawa’s apartment,” Shouyou says. “He’s got quite the rap sheet. He works as an enforcer for the local yakuza.” He lowers the paper again and gives Kageyama another long look. “Do you know anything about Oikawa being involved with the yakuza?”

Kageyama makes a face like he’s burned his hands again. “Oikawa-san would never get involved with them,” he says. “Maybe he’d eat a few of them⁠—⁠uh⁠—⁠” There’s that remembering-that-Shouyou-works-for-the-police face. “Hypothetically,” Kageyama finishes.

Shouyou decides to let that one slide. He looks down at the photo of Kuroki Hiroshi one last time, before handing it back to Akari. “Go tell Hoshino-san. She’ll want to know.”

Akari bows, leaving the room to do just that. With only a minor pause, Shouyou steps forward to leave the room also.

“Where are you going?” Kageyama says.

“To work the case,” Shouyou tells him. He’ll probably have to squeeze some of his informants in the local yakuza. He’ll definitely have to interview Oikawa’s friends and family. Someone should also determine if the amount of blood on the floor would constitute a fatal loss⁠—⁠can vampires even die from blood loss? Shouyou will have to look into that as well.

He glances at Kageyama, who looks wide-eyed. Shouyou can practically see the thoughts hurrying around in his skull, a horrible realization dawning blatantly on his suddenly open face. “No,” Kageyama says. “You don’t think⁠—⁠someone tried to kill Oikawa-san.”

Someone might have already done so, Shouyou doesn’t say, because he’s not an asshole. He can tell Kageyama is freaked out, and the new information hasn’t done anything to help.

“We’ll find him,” Shouyou tells him. He knows better than to say so but he does it anyway. “I promise.” He turns on his heel.

“Wait,” Kageyama says, almost a hoarse shout. His entire body is pressed up against the bars, and all the pieces of his bare skin are beginning to sizzle and steam. Shouyou twitches just looking at it. “You need my help. I know things⁠—⁠secret things⁠—⁠things Oikawa-san wouldn’t tell anyone who wasn’t family.”

“We’ll interview his family,” Shouyou says diplomatically. It may have to be partly over webcam as so many of them are currently out of the country, but it’ll happen.

“They won’t tell you anything. You’re human.”

Shouyou wishes he could find fault with that statement. Unfortunately, he knows firsthand just how reluctant vampires are to talk to humans, let alone those with the “fang police.” “What would you suggest?”

At that question Kageyama grins at Shouyou, an expression so predatory that Shouyou’s heart immediately tries to leap right out of his chest. “I’ll help you,” Kageyama says. “I bet you don’t even know where to start, and I do.” He’s dressed in prison scrubs, has had all objects that could be weapons taken off of him, and is standing there with only the protection of his anti-solar earrings, twin gold studs both set in the lobe of his left ear. Still, he sets Shouyou’s fight or flight instincts screaming.

“Fine.” Hoshino-san is going to kill Shouyou when she finds out, but hopefully he and Kageyama will have figured out what happened to Oikawa Tooru at that point, so it’ll be moot. Before he can lose his nerve, Shouyou reaches out and unlocks Kageyama’s silver cell door. “Where do we start?”

Kageyama steps free of the doors with supernatural speed, practically teleporting in his haste to get out of the silver cage. He rights Shouyou when he nearly topples over in response, then reaches out to pull the bars shut without concern for his hands. They heal immediately.

“We’ll go visit Atsumu-san, of course,” he tells Shouyou. “He’s always said that he would be the one to kill Oikawa-san.”

By “Atsumu-san,” Kageyama means Miya Atsumu, who Shouyou knows is Oikawa’s . . . vampire grandchild, for lack of a better word. He’s physically twenty-four but actually six-hundred-and-ninety; he trended on Twitter for that fact on his birthday two months ago. Unlike his twin, Miya Atsumu doesn’t own a renowned restaurant chain, nor does he appear to have any other business ventures or occupation. He’s still more than famous, however, on account of him being an extremely attractive vampire.

Despite all that, Miya-san is perfectly happy to meet Shouyou and Kageyama alone during daylight, choosing a coffee shop with outdoor seating. He’s just as tall, blond, and charismatic as Shouyou had been expecting, sitting openly in a patch of sunlight sipping a glass of blood. He stands when he sees them, making a show of bowing and pulling out a chair for a grudging Kageyama, who drags Shouyou into the one beside it before Miya-san can do similarly for him as well.

Miya-san sits down. Shouyou realizes he’s shorter than Kageyama, though probably only by a couple of centimeters. “Tobio-kun,” Miya-san greets. “What brings you to my neck of the woods?” Shouyou knew he had an accent, but it still feels odd to hear the Kansai-ben. By point of fact, Miya Atsumu and his twin brother are older than Hyogo Prefecture itself, yet they both sound perfectly native to the area. Like Oikawa Tooru’s age, this is another thing that is never answered the same way from interview to interview.

Kageyama looks at Miya-san like he wishes they were attempting to solve his murder. “Miya-san,” he says.

Miya-san’s lips turn down into an overdone pout. “Tobio-kun, I keep telling you not to call me that. You could mean Samu. I might get confused.”

Kageyama flashes his fangs at him in an ugly smile. “I don’t think Osamu-san would have any trouble knowing who I was talking to . . . Miya-san.” He takes his own drink, which was ordered for him by Miya-san, and sips. Then he makes a face.

Miya-san toasts him with his own glass. “What? Is that not your favorite blood type anymore?”

Kageyama doesn’t answer, just takes another larger sip.

Feeling a little uncomfortable, Shouyou searches for something else to comment on. His eyes land on Miya Atsumu’s chest. Not because his shirt is rather open⁠—⁠it is⁠—⁠or his chest is rather impressive⁠—⁠it is⁠—⁠but instead because there is a red dot lighting up the front of it, juttering around as it comes to a rest atop the spot which houses Miya-san’s unbeating heart. Shouyou blinks, then subtly casts his gaze about the surrounding buildings for the source of the dot. He finds his target frighteningly fast⁠—⁠a man, not even bothering to hide where he’s standing on the neighboring building’s roof, has a sniper rifle pointed at Miya-san.

Shouyou blinks again. “I don’t mean to alarm you, Miya-san, but, uh. There is a man on the building next to us with a sniper rifle pointed at your chest?”

Miya-san glances down at the red dot lighting the front of shirt. “You don’t have to call me ‘Miya-san,’ Shouyou-kun,” he says. “And I know. That’s Omi-kun, my favorite kid.” Here he pauses and barely raises his voice, though he’s clearly speaking to be heard by the person with the rifle. “Now, now, Omi-kun. Is this any way to treat your family? You know we’re in the presence of law enforcement and your granduncle Tobio? Come down and say hi.”

Shouyou riffles through his mental file on Oikawa Tooru, placing this “Omi-kun” as none other than Sakusa Kiyoomi, formerly human and the distant relative of Sakusa Masaru, one of Tokyo’s most elder vampires. Miya-san turned him in the early 1900s after the family (and Japan) was besieged by the Spanish Flu, a move which rocked both the vampire and the human communities. This was back before there was a Vampire Crimes Division⁠—⁠back before there was a police department period⁠—⁠and it was one of the more public instances of vampire on human crime; Shouyou read about it in several of his classes at the academy. The human families of the world’s vampires are highly protected and highly influential and turning one of their own⁠—⁠even for the commendable reason of saving him from death⁠—⁠is unforgivable. Shouyou doesn’t know the logistics of why Miya-san has been allowed to continue existing, but he’s never needed to. At least not before this moment.

Shouyou casts a quick, annoyed look in Kageyama’s direction for bringing him into this situation, in time for Sakusa Kiyoomi to vault himself off the roof and land unharmed at the front of the building. He comes striding over to their table⁠—⁠thankfully sans sniper rifle⁠—⁠and settles into the seat that Shouyou is only just now realizing that Miya⁠—⁠that Atsumu-san had set aside for him.

“Stop calling me that, Miya,” says Sakusa-san. He has a low, pretty voice, dark, curly hair, and eyes so black that Shouyou can’t differentiate between his pupils and irises. He doesn’t even glance at Shouyou, but Kageyama gets the barest of nods. “Tobio.”

Atsumu pouts. “Not you too.” Then he grins. “Would you rather I called you son?”

Sakusa-san is wearing a black facemask, but Shouyou can tell he’s baring his fangs. “Ew.”

“If we could return to the matter at hand,” interrupts Kageyama, drawing everyone’s attention.

Sakusa-san doesn’t ask to be brought up to speed, and neither of the other vampires open their mouths to do so; since Atsumu-san called him down here simply by speaking, Shouyou assumes he’s overheard. A waiter arrives with a third glass of blood for Sakusa-san, who takes it⁠—⁠and pulls down his mask to drain it⁠—⁠all while flipping Atsumu-san off. He’s a neat enough drinker, but there’s still several spots of blood around his mouth when he’s done. Sakusa-san frowns and fingers at his mask.

“You know you’re immune to all diseases now and don’t need to always wear that, yeah?” Atsumu-san says. Kageyama makes another noise, and he sobers. “Right, yes. Oikawa.”

Shouyou is a little surprised he already knows. He was in the car when Kageyama called him, and nothing had been said out loud.

“Tobio-kun texted me. Also, I don’t live under a rock.” Atsumu-san shifts in his seat so that he can hand Sakusa-san a handkerchief. “I heard you got arrested for his murder.” He’s being surprisingly surreptitious in what he says, yet still Sakusa-san pokes at him.

“Why don’t you announce that fact to the entire world, Miya?”

Atsumu-san ignores this. “I didn’t kill him, if that’s why you’re here,” he says. “If I had, Samu’d kill me, and then he’d probably find a way to kill himself, and I can’t have that.” He shoots Shouyou a little look, like imparting a great secret. “I didn’t go to all this trouble just to make sure he didn’t end up alone only for the both of us to go out at the hands of Oikawa.” Here something ugly comes into his eyes.

“Tsumu,” Sakusa-san chides.

Shouyou realizes he doesn’t understand their relationship at all. Sakusa-san is the same age as Kageyama down to their year of birth, and they were turned around the same time too. But where Oikawa talks about Kageyama like a mildly eccentric parent would, Atsumu-san never mentions Sakusa-san. It’s always his other children, or his brother. Shouyou has three years’ experience with Vampire Crimes, though; he can tell that Sakusa-san is watching Atsumu-san’s back just as much as Atsumu-san is watching Sakusa-san’s.

But that’s not important. Shouyou puts the thought to the back of his mind. He pulls up Kuroki Hiroshi’s mug shot on his phone, before holding it out to Atsumu-san. “This is the person whose fingerprints we found in Oikawa’s apartment,” he says. “He’s an enforcer for the local yakuza.”

Atsumu-san’s eyes flick across the screen. “This appears to be a phone call from a . . . Hoshino Aiko?” he says, getting the pronunciation correct on his first try. “Your boss, I’d assume?”

Flushing, Shouyou yanks the phone back, hitting ignore call with a small bit of panic. Immediately the phone starts ringing again, and Shouyou very quickly puts his phone in Do Not Disturb mode. “Sorry.” He clicks back into his photos and finds the mug shot. “Here.”

Atsumu-san reaches for Shouyou’s phone with clear glee, but Sakusa-san stops him before Kageyama can, and Shouyou keeps hold of his phone with no small amount of wariness. “You’re no fun.” Atsumu-san sighs. He looks at the photo. “Was,” he says. “He was an enforcer for the local yakuza. He’s one of Ushijima’s now. And he’s a vampire.”

Shouyou blinks. “What?”

Atsumu-san gazes at him. “It’s perfectly legal,” he says.

Shouyou chews on his automatic response. The legal process behind human to vampire conversions is something Shouyou wants to address once Vampire Crimes is a little less generally scorned⁠—⁠a pet project, almost. At present, new vampires can show up to any governmental office and be issued a proper death certificate with minimal investigation into the circumstances of their death. The way the government sees it they’re not really dead, and as long as they’re legally of age, what they choose to do with their bodies is no business of theirs. Shouyou thinks it should be. People who become vampires have to die; they’re literal undead.

Neither Kageyama nor Sakusa-san have moved an inch.

“Ushijima Wakatoshi?” asks Shouyou finally, because he can in fact do his job. “Like . . . the volleyball player? Opposite hitter for the Schweiden Adlers?”

“The family.” Atsumu-san rolls his eyes. “But Oikawa and Ushiwaka do have some sort of grudge going on, so you might as well check him out. ‘The volleyball player.’” He makes air quotes and looks particularly annoyed.

Sakusa-san pulls down his mask again and steals Atsumu-san’s glass of blood this time, drinking from it while it’s still in Atsumu-san’s hand. “Don’t be mad that he’s better than you.”

“He’s a human.” Atsumu-san looks livid, but his hand is gentle and careful as he holds the glass to Sakusa-san’s lips. “I’m a vampire.”

“He’s a southpaw,” Sakusa-san replies. “You weren’t expecting it. I’m sure everyone will be willing to forget it happened in a couple of years . . .” He pauses. “Or a hundred.”

Atsumu-san sticks his tongue out at Sakusa-san. Shouyou notices that it’s pierced, and given his lack of other jewelry, the stud is probably anti-solar. He flounders⁠—⁠he’s never met a vampire with an anti-solar tongue piercing before⁠—⁠but Kageyama at least doesn’t seem lost.

“Ushijima-san,” he says, standing. He bows. “Thank you, Atsumu-san.”

Atsumu-san lets out an over dramatic gasp, then scrambles as Sakusa-san shoves his arm and the glass away from him. Somehow, he manages not to spill a drop of blood on his white shirt. “Tobio-kun,” he says. “You do care after all!”

“If you hear from Oikawa-san, call me,” says Kageyama. “Hinata. Come on.”

At the sound of his name, Shouyou stands as well, feeling a little bit like a dog. “You know I’m in charge, right?” he says, as they start walking back towards the police car. “And I’m older than you by six years?”

Kageyama rolls his eyes. “I’m older than your grandparents,” he says. “And I was made a vampire in 1917.”

Shouyou punches him in the arm, unimpressed. “Big deal,” he says. “I have the keys to the car and the silver bullets and the silver stakes.”

Kageyama quirks a brow at him.

“I can put you in the backseat like a common criminal, Kageyama,” Shouyou tells him happily, unlocking the car doors. “So, you better watch yourself.”

Kageyama laughs.

Luckily for them, Ushijima Wakatoshi, opposite hitter for the Schweiden Adlers, is in Miyagi. He’s come home to visit his family for the winter break, which only started today. Shouyou has no doubt Kageyama has the resources to get them to Tokyo without any trouble, but they’d still have been limited by geography, and given that his phone is now a turned-off deadweight in his back pocket, Shouyou is thankful for any expediency they’re afforded.

Instead, Kageyama uses his resources to get them right to Ushijima’s front door. They’re met there by an eccentric, red-headed vampire, who Kageyama greets as, “Tendou-san.”

“Tobio,” this Tendou-san says. He pulls Kageyama into a very aggressive hug. “It’s so good to see you. Come in.”

Shouyou follows hesitantly, taking off his shoes.

“And . . . Hinata, is it? Hinata-san?” Tendou-san bows politely to Shouyou as well. “Tendou Satori. Pleased to meet you.”

The name doesn’t ring a bell. Shouyou bows back. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Wakatoshi is just in the kitchen. We were eating lunch when you called.”

Shouyou can’t help but blink at him, given that Tendou-san is definitely a vampire.

Tendou-san laughs. “Wakatoshi was eating,” he amends. “I was watching⁠—⁠and making him test some of my new confections.” He eyes Tobio. “Would you mind you tasting a few? I’m a blood chocolatier,” he informs Shouyou. “Wakatoshi’s a real trooper, but nothing beats an undead palate.”

“Of course,” says Shouyou. He’s starting to get the sense that the façade of normalcy of the Ushijima family estate is just that⁠—⁠a façade. “I hope you don’t mind me asking. But how do you know Ushijima-san? And Kageyama-kun⁠—⁠”

“Satori is my boyfriend,” says Ushijima Wakatoshi, opposite hitter for the Schweiden Adlers.

He comes walking through one of the doorways wiping his hands on a towel and looks just as tall and imposing as he had in the game Shouyou and Kageyama watched not even two hours prior. Shouyou finds himself standing straight-backed upon seeing him, the memories of having challenged him directly⁠—⁠of Tsukishima managing to block him and that still not being enough⁠—⁠racing through his mind. Shouyou maintains a friendship with Bokuto, but he doubts that Ushijima Wakatoshi, opposite hitter for the Schweiden Adlers, would remember the likes of Hinata Shouyou, who never once made it to nationals and who ended up following his former captain to the police academy, only to end up in the least desirable subsection of the Miyagi Prefectural police.

“Hinata Shouyou,” greets Ushijima Wakatoshi. “Kageyama Tobio.” To Kageyama, he bows.

Kageyama dips his head right back, clearly uncomfortable. “Ushijima-san.” He pauses. “Is your grandmother home⁠—⁠”

“She is out,” says Ushijima-san. “Do not worry. I will not tell her you were here.”

Kageyama looks relieved. “Thank you. I would hate to start something on behalf of Oikawa-san.”

Shouyou glances between the two of them with confusion.

“We’re here because of Oikawa-san, actually,” says Kageyama, not explaining.

Tendou-san is the one who responds. “Tooru?” He crosses the room to stand beside Ushijima-san, and Shouyou would call it casual, if it weren’t for the way Kageyama is doing something similar with Shouyou. Both humans end up in the shadow of the two vampires. The aura of the room isn’t dangerous, but it is still quite charged.

“Yes,” says Kageyama. “He’s missing. And someone was in his apartment last night. Someone Atsumu-san said was one of yours.”

Tendou-san’s mouth rounds into a small “o.”

Shouyou produces a paper copy of the mugshot, which he luckily had in the car. “Kuroki Hiroshi,” he says. “According to records he’s former yakuza. Apparently he’s a vampire, but there’s no official death certificate on file.” Shouyou had Akari check for him in the car on their drive over, promising to take her out to dinner at her favorite expensive restaurant in payment for the grief their boss was causing in his absence.

“My grandmother employs all sorts of people,” says Ushijima-san diplomatically. “Some of them ask my cousin to be turned.”

His cousin the vampire. Shouyou swallows his words.

“It’s all very legal,” Tendou-san says, a repetition of Atsumu-san earlier before. “If he’s not been issued a death certificate yet he must be very brand new. Wakatoshi.” Tendou-san turns very seriously to Ushijima-san. “Did you accidentally say something about Tooru and confuse some of the new ones again?”

He looks at Shouyou with a smile that he probably means to be reassuring, unfortunately ruined by the blood red color of his eyes, the blood red color of his close-cropped hair, and the fact that he’s a self-professed blood chocolatier.

“Wakatoshi and Tooru have been enemies since Wakatoshi was old enough to walk,” Tendou-san says. “No one knows why except for Wakatoshi and Tooru, of course.”

“I’ve explained it to you many times,” says Ushijima-san, sounding honestly confused. “He is mad at me because I do not think Iwaizumi-san is more attractive than you.”

Tendou-san looks at Ushijima-san like he’s a precious, perfect example of a human, and also like he needs to be protected from the entire world. “See, it doesn’t make sense when you explain it. It probably doesn’t make sense to anyone but Tooru.” Tendou-san smiles at Kageyama now. “You know how your sire is.”

“Yes . . .” Kageyama does not sound thrilled to be agreeing with Tendou-san, but he clearly doesn’t want to ruffle any of the other vampire’s feathers.

“Anyway.” Tendou-san switches his attention back to Shouyou with supernatural quickness, making Shouyou’s heart jump in his chest. “Ooh, that’s exhilarating. Listen to the sound of your heart go.” Tendou-san’s expression doesn’t change at all, but his voice does, climbing several octaves as he speaks.

Shouyou is a trained officer with more than a few weapons, yet he feels no shame at all when Kageyama steps pointedly in front of him and he feels instant relief.

“Tendou-san,” says Kageyama.

“Wakatoshi,” says Tendou-san. “Did you accidentally put a hit out on Tooru again?”

Ushijima-san blinks. “Did I?” he says, at the same time all the windows cave in, no fewer than three masked men swinging into the building, guns blazing.

Shouyou has only enough time to hear Ushijima-san say, “I guess I did,” before he notices that all the guns are pointed at Kageyama.

“Look out!” Shouyou steps into the path of one of the men, managing to get out two silver stakes and hitting one of the others. It won’t kill them, but it’ll momentarily put them down. The impact of the bullet hitting him takes his breath away, forcing Shouyou to his knees.

“Hinata!” shouts Kageyama. “Tendou-san!”

“Now, now, don’t panic. I’ve got him!” replies Tendou-san. Shouyou is peripherally aware of the other vampire subduing their attackers, and of Ushijima-san very seriously inquiring as to if they’re working for him, and then telling them they should stop trying to kill Oikawa-san, and Tobio by association.

Most of Shouyou’s attention is on Kageyama, whose worried face swims into focus as he grabs hold of Shouyou and carefully lowers him to the floor. Shouyou’s got his hand pressed to where the bullet entered him, but soon that becomes too much for him. His fingers come away wet with blood.

“I⁠—⁠”

“You absolute dumbass, I’m a vampire,” Kageyama snaps at him. “Why the fuck did you do that? I can’t die from bullets.”

“Silver,” Shouyou manages. “Would have hurt. And it’s my job. Gotta . . . protect civilians.”

“I’m not a civilian,” Kageyama says. “And I’m practically chock full of Oikawa-san’s blood right now. I’d have been fine.” He raises his voice and shouts once more. “Tendou-san!”

Tendou-san appears next to Shouyou so fast his head hurts. “You smell delicious, Hinata-kun,” he says. “You have to let me use your blood in my next chocolate cake. I’ll make a fortune.”

“Heal him,” says Kageyama, through gritted teeth. “Please.”

There’s something otherworldly in his voice⁠—⁠persuasion, Shouyou’s training manages to inform him. It doesn’t work on everyone⁠—⁠only from sire to child and sometimes from vampire to unique human anomalies⁠—⁠but Shouyou is having trouble remembering why. A memory is unlocking in his brain. A memory of standing on the steps of the Kanmei Arena before that was its new name, being fifteen, shouting angrily at the sky. Not at the sky. At a vampire. At Kageyama Tobio⁠—⁠

“Now, Kageyama-kun. You know that won’t work on me.”

“Please,” repeats Kageyama.

“I don’t know . . .” Tendou-san’s voice hurts.

“He’s only hurt because of you. Ushijima-san. Please⁠—⁠”

“Satori.” That’s all Ushijima-san has to say.

“Fine, alright. Calm down. Get the bullet out of him but be gentle. Ow, that really fucking hurts. Guess there’s no reason the fang police wouldn’t have real silver.” Tendou-san’s voice is suddenly closer. “Shouyou-kun, this may feel weird.”

And that’s all the warning Shouyou gets before Tendou-san is forcing his mouth open and something hot is being poured down his throat. Shouyou has no choice but to swallow or else choke. It’s thick and cloying and makes him want to gag, but the more he drinks of it the less he hurts and the more his brain churns.

He’s fifteen, standing on the steps leading up to the Sendai City Gymnasium. Izumin and Kouji are behind him. Shouyou is ready to cry. They just faced a nameless wall of students from Kitagawa Daichi, none of them standout at all. They lost. Shouyou leapt so high, and it amounted to nothing.

A vampire is standing there looking at him. Tall, with dark hair and blue eyes. Shouyou marches right up to him and says, “What are you looking at?”

Kouji and Izumin chitter behind him nervously. “Shou-chan, that’s⁠—⁠a vampire⁠—⁠”

“You’re in middle school. You love volleyball,” the vampire says. Shouyou can only nod. “And you’re only this good? What have you been doing for the last three years?”

Shouyou takes another step closer. “I⁠—⁠”

“Only people who are strong get to . . . continue,” the vampire says. “Get to stay on the court.” His eyes meet Shouyou’s and they’re the color of the night sky. Shouyou wants to look away from them, but suddenly he finds that he cannot. “What’s happening?” says the vampire. “What’s wrong with you? Stop looking at me. Forget you even saw me.” The voice is suddenly Kageyama’s, but Shouyou thinks it might have always been. “What’s happening? Tendou-san, it’s not working!”

Shouyou comes back into his twenty-six-year-old body with a wet gasp, throat feeling like it’s on fire.

“It’s not working⁠—⁠”

“Shh, Kageyama-kun. It’s working fine, see,” says Tendou-san. He presses a hand to the hole in Shouyou’s stomach. Shouyou waits for the stab of pain, but it doesn’t come.

Startled, Shouyou sits up enough to look down at himself, popping the buttons off of his shirt so that he can see. The blood from the bullet wound is still everywhere, but the injury itself is completely gone, Shouyou’s skin healed shut. There’s not even a scar, not even a twinge. Not only that, but the room feels brighter than before, the overhead lights hurting Shouyou’s eyes. His senses feel like they’re on overdrive; every little sound reaches his ears. “What?” Shouyou begins, but his voice is far too loud.

Tendou-san simply smiles. “Should wear off in maybe an hour, depending on your metabolism,” he says. “It wasn’t that bad of a bullet wound, but Kageyama made it worse by getting the slug out of you.”

Shouyou casts his eyes on a bloody hunk of silver, thrown down on the ground beside him. He casts his eyes towards Kageyama Tobio, who steadfastly refuses to meet Shouyou’s eyes. “Vampire blood has healing properties,” he says.

“Within reason,” says Tendou-san. “And we very much do not advertise that. Don’t worry. It can’t cure cancer, or anything, so it’s not like we’re holding out on you.”

This is all way too much information for Shouyou’s brain, which is still circling the elephant in the room in something of a haze. Kageyama⁠—⁠Tobio still won’t look at him.

“Tobio,” Shouyou says to him. “Why won’t you look at me?”

Tobio’s eyes flick towards Shouyou guiltily. “I never gave you permission to use my first name.”

“Yeah, well I never gave you permission to mess with my mind⁠—⁠”

Tendou-san interrupts with a startled noise, yet it’s Ushijima-san who speaks. “Kageyama used compulsion on you? But you’re human.”

“And I was human at the time.”

Tendou-san makes another gleeful little noise. Ushijima-san glances at Tobio. Tobio stands. If he’s uncertain of his welcome he doesn’t show it, reaching out to take hold of Shouyou’s right hand.

“We’re leaving,” he says. He still feels warm from Oikawa-san’s blood, and it’s disconcerting, messing with Shouyou’s expectations. Especially since Tendou-san was so cold.

Shouyou wants to yell at him. But he’s exhausted, so he follows silently instead.

Tobio takes Shouyou to Oikawa’s apartment, which feels odd, since they’re returning to what was once a scene of a crime. The techs and police are done and gone but they haven’t sent the official cleaners, so there’s still a huge mess. Tobio unlocks the door and kicks off his shoes and doesn’t seem bothered. They were lucky to have the police car, otherwise they’d have gotten any number of looks on the subway. Shouyou is fine, uninjured, but his shirt is ruined and Tobio’s is too.

The first thing Tobio does is point Shouyou in the direction of the bathrooms. “You should shower. I can wait.”

“Tobio,” Shouyou says. They need to talk about this.

Tobio keeps his back to Shouyou.

“Tobio,” Shouyou says again.

“After,” Tobio says. “Hinata . . . Shouyou . . . Please.”

Something funny slithers about Shouyou’s belly. A headache throbs behind his eyes. The more he thinks about the only competition he made it to in middle school the angrier he gets. Tobio had been there, in the crowd, watching. He’d spoken to Shouyou. He’d . . . messed with Shouyou’s mind. Shouyou is trained for this. He takes all the necessary pills. Vampire compulsion is hyper-specific. The only times it works outside the sire bond are with people who are genetically predisposed to do well as vampires⁠—⁠that’s the official human explanation, at least. Shouyou doesn’t know the vampire one.

“I’ll take the first shower,” says Shouyou. “After that, we’ll talk about this. Look at me, please.”

Tobio turns to face him and nods. “I promise.”

The shower helps. Shouyou feels stuffed into a new body, though when he looks in the mirror, he remains the same as he’s ever been. He half expects to see himself at fifteen. But he’s taller than he used to be at fifteen (though still not as tall as Tsukishima had been at fifteen) and tanned from long days in short sleeves. He has new scars, badges of honor from his time at the academy and as a cop. His hair is getting long. His mother keeps telling him to get it cut. Yet Shouyou looks at the face that’s stared back at him for the past twenty-six years and feels entirely alien.

But the shower helps.

Afterwards Shouyou finds clothes left out for him⁠—⁠a pair of ludicrously expensive sweatpants with the tags still on them and a surprisingly soft t-shirt, both of them black and sporting a tiny white pair of fangs with two red blood droplets for an embroidered logo. Oikawa’s brand. Shouyou puts the clothes on even though the fact that Tobio came in when he was showering (and Shouyou didn’t even notice) makes him uncomfortable. But when he pulls the shirt over his head he can smell the ingredients of the laundry detergent used to clean it, a pleasant mix of plants and chemicals that makes Shouyou’s brain buzz. The bathroom lights seem too bright. Whatever calm he’d amassed in the shower quickly fades away.

Shouyou keeps looking at himself in the mirror as if to confirm that he can still see something, even as Tobio knocks politely on the door. Shouyou opens it still looking; Tobio comes into view behind him there too.

Tobio has a reflection too.

Vampires have reflections too.

It’s just the silver mirrors where things get weird.

Shouyou knows that. He still stares. Tobio has changed out of his outfit too, no longer wearing his prison scrubs and instead dressed almost identically to Shouyou down to the embroidered fangs and blood. As Shouyou stares at his reflection, Tobio’s eyes drop down to Shouyou’s legs, and Shouyou turns to face him so that he’s not ogling his ass.

“Oh good,” says Tobio. “They fit.”

That’s Shouyou’s cue to get his shit together. He finds the tag and rips it off the pants, then winces when the plastic loudly cracks.

Tobio winces too. “That really will wear off once Tendou-san’s blood is all the way out of your system,” he says. “He didn’t give you a lot, so it should be soon.”

“Did you buy me pants just now?” Shouyou interrupts, because even talking about his temporary enhancements makes his skin buzz. Of course, saying it out loud seems silly. Unless vampires have some sort of magic (besides the fact that their very existence is magic) Shouyou wasn’t in the shower long enough for Tobio to have bought the pants.

Tobio answers anyway. “No.” He looks awkward and uncomfortable and Shouyou feels a tiny stab of vindictive joy. “No, those are mine. Oikawa-san bought them in a child’s size by accident.”

He doesn’t mean it as a height dig but the urge to respond is too strong. Besides all the sensory shit, Shouyou thinks the vampire blood in his system is messing with his feelings. Automatic responses the academy helped train out of him seem all too eager to rush to the surface now. “Rude,” Shouyou says. “I’m perfectly tall.”

“You are,” Tobio replies. Immediately he looks like he regrets speaking, but he doubles down. “You’re perfect sized.”

Shouyou has been told that before, yet for some reason hearing it from Kageyama Tobio is different. It makes something shudder inside of Shouyou, that same thing that made him bring up the subject of height to begin with. It wiggles about his stomach and chest. Shouyou shoves it down and away. Of the two of them, Shouyou is the physical adult. And very little research has been done into the development of vampire brains. They’re too powerful and intolerant of any sort of scientific study; Shouyou, like all law enforcement, takes pills to prevent compulsion, but the companies who manufacture them aren’t human, and he takes it on faith that they’ll work and be safe.

Which brings Shouyou to the reason they’re standing here. “You messed with my mind,” he says.

Tobio flinches again. “Not on purpose,” he replies.

Shouyou wants to shake him. “That doesn’t matter⁠—⁠”

Tobio curls in on himself. “I know,” he says, voice loud in the apartment. “I know⁠—⁠I⁠—⁠I’m trying to explain.”

Shouyou owes him that. He likes him too much not to. “Well. Explain?”

Tobio sucks air in through his mouth that he doesn’t need. “Compulsion works only between a sire and any of their children,” he says quickly, tone brisk and to the point. He sounds like he’s reciting from a textbook and Shouyou opens his mouth to comment because he’s read it before, then Tobio adds, “But that’s not true. Even humans know that’s not true. Sometimes vampires can compel humans⁠—⁠not very well, and not for very long⁠—⁠but they can. We. We can.” Shouyou still knows that much, but he’s willing to wait because he’s kind. “It’s . . . it’s supposed to be because that person is . . . our soulmate.”

Shouyou blinks. “What?”

Tobio seems apologetic as he continues. “I can’t explain it to you without explaining turning and Oikawa-san⁠—⁠”

“May be dead,” Shouyou says. “You messed with my mind.” You owe me, he doesn’t say.

Tobio chews his lower lip bloody, though almost immediately it heals. “The only way to kill a vampire is the way they died originally,” he says quickly, like ripping a knife out of a wound. “The exact same way. For example, if I had been killed by a poison⁠—⁠”

“That same poison could kill you today,” Shouyou finishes. The information is world-changing, but he doesn’t see the connection, and he’s starting to feel a little insane.

“The only way to turn someone into a vampire is to drink their blood after they’ve died,” Tobio says. “All of it. Until there is nothing more.”

Shouyou had somewhat been expecting that. “Okay.”

“In doing so you consume the soul.”

“The soul.”

“It’s said that compulsion works on humans whose souls . . . already speak to us,” Tobio says.

Shouyou is still stuck on the part where vampires don’t have a soul. “You don’t have a soul?”

Tobio curls his lips back to show off his fangs. “Hinata, I’m not really alive.”

It’s not an invitation but Shouyou takes it as one anyway, stepping across the bathroom floor until he’s close enough to touch, holding out a hand before he can stop himself. Tobio doesn’t flinch away, though he does close his mouth. Shouyou must make some sort of noise or face because he parts his lips again seconds after, revealing the pointed tips of his fangs. Shouyou doesn’t quite know what has possessed him as he traces his fingertips along the line of Tobio’s jaw. He doesn’t know if it’s Tendou-san’s blood or something else that has him keeping his hand there, feeling the heat from Tobio’s skin. He still feels so human, even as Shouyou gazes at the teeth that set him apart. This close, Shouyou notices that Tobio’s anti-solar earrings are in the shape of volleyballs.

“I own the Schweiden Adlers,” Tobio says quickly, catching Shouyou looking. “Oikawa-san is . . . strange.”

Shouyou has absolutely no idea what to do with the earrings, but he’s suddenly very tired. He takes his hand away from Tobio’s face and then he stumbles. Tobio goes to steady him and Shouyou lets him. “What?”

“Tendou-san’s blood,” Tobio says. “It’s probably out of your system.”

Shouyou blinks up at him. “It’s been that long? I thought it was like . . . a one shot, one hour sort of thing.”

Tobio begins steering Shouyou out of the bathroom, turning off the lights as he goes. “I think that’s for alcohol.”

Shouyou lets Tobio guide him to the couch, which he sits on. “Is it?” Tobio seems to hesitate, pausing, before he disappears and then reappears so fast it’s like nothing has changed, except he’s now holding out a glass of water. Shouyou takes it and drinks a large sip. “Isn’t drinking water something you do for alcohol too?”

Tobio frowns at him. “Humans don’t drink enough water generally,” he mutters, which is cute, but also makes him sound distinctly inhuman. “Vampire blood is not alcohol,” he adds. “Though it does burn.”

“You mean in the sun?”

“No⁠—⁠well yes⁠—⁠but I mean it’s flammable.”

Shouyou pauses with his mouth on the edge of his cup. “What?”

Tobio tilts his head at him. “What?”

Shouyou needs not be distracted by less important things so that he can figure out how he feels about having met Tobio prior⁠—⁠and them being vampire soulmates, or whatever. (And then when he has time, he needs to visit the morgue and do a lot of tests.)

“Cool, so . . . you compelled me.”

“It really was an accident,” Tobio says. He hovers over Shouyou on the couch. Shouyou sighs and scoots over so that the vampire has no choice but to sit down. Then they both sit there, thigh to thigh not looking at each other, as Shouyou guzzles from his glass like it’s more than water, and Tobio . . . wilts. That’s cute too. “I didn’t mean to,” Tobio continues. “You started shouting at me and I panicked.” He chews on his lip some more, fangs sharp and what should be frightening. Again, his lip near-instantly heals.

Shouyou tries to remember how much of Oikawa’s blood they’d found at the scene and can’t. He weighs his best guess against his own experience and doesn’t have enough information to come to any sort of conclusion.

“I tried to explain,” Tobio continues. “At your school⁠—⁠your friends saw me and came over and you didn’t remember me, and I didn’t want to cause you any more trouble. I went to all of your games. You were . . . good.”

Well, that’s embarrassing to think about. Shouyou knows he was good⁠—⁠great even⁠—⁠but Ushijima had been greater.

“My friends,” Shouyou says instead. “What, Izumin and Kouji? Or someone from Karasuno.”

“The ones who were with you at the Sendai Gymnasium.”

“The Kanmei Arena,” Shouyou can’t help but correct.

Tobio pulls a face. “I wish you’d stop renaming things.”

Shouyou smiles. “Careful, Kageyama. People will realize you’re ancient.”

“I’m only a little past a hundred,” mutters Tobio. “Humans could live this long.”

“Maybe.” Some of them do, actually. One of the best things to come about when the vampires did was longer average lifespans. Now that Shouyou knows what he knows about vampire blood, he supposes he understands.

“So . . . we’re soulmates,” he finally says. His glass is essentially empty, but he keeps holding it near his mouth like he’ll be able to take another sip.

Beside him, Tobio fidgets cutely, ducking his head quickly in a nod. “That’s what Oikawa-san says, at least.” He hesitates. “And I suppose . . . Atsumu-san. Tendou-san.”

Shouyou thinks of Tendou-san’s reaction⁠—⁠the way he’d gasped and looked almost gleeful⁠—⁠and fights back a groan. “What’s the likelihood of every vampire in Miyagi knowing about this by sundown?” he unfortunately has to ask.

Tobio chews his lips bloody again, and this time Shouyou can’t help but reach out with one hand. Tobio goes unnaturally still when they touch, but he pulls his teeth out of his own flesh when Shouyou carefully exhales.

“Hey, stop that,” Shouyou tells him quietly. “You can still hurt.” He keeps the pads of his fingers on Tobio’s bottom lip, and after five long seconds, the vampire also exhales.

“Alright,” he agrees.

Shouyou leaves his fingers there a little while longer, watching as Tobio shakily⁠—⁠and unnecessarily⁠—⁠continues to breathe. He hadn’t noticed before, but Shouyou thinks that between the two of them, Tobio is more affected, less composed.

“So . . . soulmates,” Shouyou says for the third time. “I guess that’s why I immediately liked you so much.”

Tobio closes his eyes as if he’s in pain. Shouyou slowly lets down his hand. He’s barely so much as done so before Tobio’s eyes flick back open, not even attempting to mask his emotions, but they’re so unfathomable to Shouyou regardless that he might as well have.

“I take it you like me too?” Shouyou asks him quietly.

“Terribly,” Tobio replies. Almost too quickly, he hurries to add, “Everyone else has someone to stay with them and I’m all⁠—⁠”

“Alone,” Shouyou finishes for him, watching Tobio’s jaw clench like he’d said the word instead.

“The baby,” Tobio spits out acidly, expression like storm clouds in a clear sky. He twitches like he wants to chew on his mouth some more, but with a guilty look at Shouyou, he changes his mind. It makes Shouyou painfully aware of how young he is, in all the ways that really count.

“When did you . . .”

“In January,” Tobio says, tone still sharp. “Oikawa-san and Iwaizumi-san were talking like they were going to try to give me⁠—⁠to give me back.”

Shouyou simply nods, though it’s not like he understands.

“I met Oikawa-san when I was five years old,” Tobio continues in an attempted explanation. “My . . . entire family had just died.”

“I’m sorry.”

Tobio smiles but it isn’t very pretty. “I don’t really remember them anymore,” he says painfully. “My parents. My sister, Miwa. My . . . my grandfather, Kazuyo.” The names come out raw.

Shouyou shifts closer to him on the sofa, knocking their sides together in an attempt at comfort. Tobio leans into him gratefully⁠—⁠still feeling unnaturally warm.

“It was bandits,” Tobio says. “They slaughtered everyone. I’m not sure why I was saved.” His jaw works, then he adds almost silently, “That’s a lie. My grandfather covered me, shielded me from them as they were killing him, and I was too stunned to even cry.”

Shouyou can picture it⁠—⁠not Kageyama Kazuyo, but Kageyama Tobio, tiny, dark-haired, dark-blue-eyed. He imagines these same features only smaller, the same vacant, haunted stare.

Tobio sits beside Shouyou on the couch looking at nothing. “They left. And he told me . . . I needed to get stronger. To get better. So that someone even stronger⁠—⁠someone even better⁠—⁠would come and find me and we⁠—⁠I wouldn’t be alone.”

Only the people who are strong get to stay on the court.

Shouyou’s heart begins to pound.

“Then Oikawa-san found me,” Tobio says. “And he was going to walk right past me, but I didn’t say anything and that . . . caught his attention.” The way Tobio talks about his sire, Shouyou wonders if he’s less disillusioned about their relationship than he’d originally assumed. “After that he looked after me⁠—⁠he and Iwaizumi-san? I⁠—⁠I was happy. I was loved.” Here, Tobio’s smile goes self-deprecating. “When I turned twenty things got strange. Kunimi is twenty-one,” he continues. “Kindaichi is twenty-two. I thought”⁠—⁠he swallows⁠—⁠“it was time.”

Shouyou nods because he’s not sure if he can find the words to answer him, and Tobio takes that easily without pause.

“But then I overheard Oikawa-san and Iwaizumi-san fighting. Oikawa-san was alone when he found me, and once Kunimi told him Iwaizumi-san was so mad.” Here Tobio laughs, and Shouyou finds himself smiling as well. “He always says Oikawa-san had no idea how to raise himself, let alone a human child.”

“You turned out okay.”

“Only on account of Iwaizumi-san,” counters Tobio. “No . . . Oikawa-san was⁠—⁠is⁠—⁠was good. He was what I needed, at the time.”

Shouyou bites back the protest that what five-year-old Tobio had probably needed was the family that were murdered in front of him, since he realizes the statement would only be reductive. What’s been done has been done, and nothing Shouyou says can make it change.

“I ran off,” says Tobio. “Oikawa-san said he didn’t plan on ever turning me, so I ran off, and I⁠—⁠got myself killed. Forced his hand.” Once again Tobio smiles⁠—⁠less painfully now, almost seeming fully amused. “He was so mad.” Abruptly he sobers, turning to face Shouyou fervently. “I don’t regret it,” he hurries to say. “Making that choice. Becoming this. It⁠—⁠it means I got to meet you. And you’re⁠—⁠” Mine, he has the wherewithal not to say out loud.

Shouyou hears the word regardless. “Your vampire soulmate,” he says seriously. “If you believe in all that, I guess.”

Tobio’s eyes are twin pools of a starless night sky. “I do,” he breathes, his words a sigh.

“Maybe you should test the theory,” Shouyou tells him quietly. “May 2011 was a long time ago. Nearly twelve years.”

Tobio continues to stare at him. “What would you like me to order you to do?”

Something shivers its way down Shouyou’s spine, and he’d be lying if he said it were only unpleasant. Tobio has posed a very loaded question. Shouyou’s automatic thought had been indecent; unfortunately, he’s only human and he can’t keep his gaze from darting to Tobio’s lips. It’s strange. There’s all this distance between them, a hundred years or maybe only six, but Shouyou thinks of the entire messy day spent with Tobio and doesn’t feel afraid. And it would be hilariously inaccurate to suggest that Shouyou is the one with all the cards. Tobio is a vampire. Shouyou’s weapons are the silver handcuffs, his silver bullets and stakes, and the piece of sunlight still hanging around his neck. Tobio’s weapons are the power of his own hands, the sharpness of his own fangs, and the compulsion in his own voice.

The compulsion that works on Shouyou.

Because they’re vampire soulmates.

If you believe that sort of thing.

(Shouyou does.)

“Tell me to get you another glass of water,” Shouyou decides quickly.

“Go get me another glass of water,” Tobio immediately replies.

The best way Shouyou can describe it is that Tobio’s request bypasses his brain. It goes straight to his brainstem; ordering Shouyou into the kitchen like it does for his breathing and his heart rate, unchecked. His legs are standing before he can so much as think about it, walking Shouyou quickly across the room with the glass still in his hand. The fridge beeps as Shouyou fills the glass with filtered water, and the noise seems to loosen Tobio’s hold.

Shouyou supposes this is what Tobio had meant when he said that compulsion on humans wasn’t very good and wouldn’t work for very wrong. He brings the glass back to Tobio because he wants to go back to Tobio. As he crosses the room, he feels almost back to being a hundred percent back in charge of his own limbs and body. But maybe not entirely his mind.

Tobio takes the glass easily, gulping it frantically down.

“So, it worked,” Shouyou says, watching Tobio’s throat swallowing and trying not to imagine other things involving that action and that mouth. “You compelling me.”

Tobio pulls off of the empty glass with a gasp, panting a little for air. His mouth is wide enough now that Shouyou can see the shiny sharp tips of his fangs. He tries hard not to imagine other things involving those as well.

“I guess so,” says Tobio.

“Try it again,” Shouyou prompts. “At the end there I thought I could fight it⁠—⁠”

“Tell me your favorite volleyball player.”

“Nicollas Romero, but Hoshiumi Kourai is a close second because he makes me so jealous sometimes that I can’t stand it⁠—⁠fuck,” Shouyou curses as he regains control of his mouth. “That is unfair⁠—⁠”

“My favorite volleyball player is Oikawa Tooru,” Tobio tells him while grinning. “But if we’re limiting ourselves to professionals . . . I think Ushijima-san is pretty cool.”

Shouyou cannot help but scowl. “He’s not all that.”

“Would you prefer I’d said Tsukishima Kei?”

Shouyou pulls a face. “Ugh, I wish you’d erase my memory of that.”

Tobio’s good humor vanishes with the speed of a service ace. “No,” he says. “I’m not going to do that ever again.”

He sounds so serious Shouyou can only nod. “Thank you.”

They continue to look at each other, Tobio holding the empty glass like Shouyou had done before.

“So do you think⁠—⁠”

“Come sit beside me on the couch.”

Shouyou doesn’t fight the automatic motion of his body this time, grinning when he finds himself seated beside Tobio after a small pause. “I don’t think you’re very good at this,” he says. “I don’t know why anyone thought you were a criminal. ‘Go get me a glass of water.’ ‘Tell me your favorite volleyball player.’ ‘Come sit beside me on the couch.’ Tobio, you’re so tame.”

Tobio’s eyes widen.

Shouyou pauses waiting.

“Say that again?”

Shouyou feels his brow furrow. “You’re so tame? I don’t⁠—⁠that wasn’t compulsion⁠—⁠”

“Say my name again,” Tobio commands.

“Kageyama Tobio,” Shouyou’s mouth replies. He doesn’t really get it, but he doesn’t need to, since the compulsion means he speaks before he thinks.

Tobio shivers. “Hinata Shouyou,” he says.

Oh, maybe Shouyou gets it after all.

“Kiss me,” Tobio says.

Shouyou waits for the automatic movement that never comes⁠—⁠waits to curve into the vampire and press their mouths together⁠—⁠waits to share the same air. It never comes. “But that wasn’t⁠—⁠”

“Kiss me,” Tobio says again⁠—⁠asks for again.

With a shiver, Shouyou does.

Kissing a vampire is not that different from kissing another human. And then . . . it is. When Shouyou tries to slink his tongue into Tobio’s mouth, Tobio protests⁠—⁠not moving his mouth away, but twisting, twitching, a noise of protest coming up his throat instead. He puts icy hands on Shouyou’s shoulders and holds them apart, and no matter how much Shouyou strains against him, he cannot be moved. That’s different too⁠—⁠none of the humans Shouyou had ever kissed had been quite this strong. But that only makes Shouyou’s head spin harder, his blood rush south faster, and he pushes even more eagerly forward with a whine.

“Hinata⁠—⁠stop⁠—⁠please⁠—⁠” There’s something desperate in Tobio’s voice. More than just raw desire. Something that sounds almost like fear. That freezes Shouyou, pulling him back from the edge. His eyes don’t want to cooperate, but Shouyou forces them to, stopping his shoving forward and trying instead to catch Tobio’s gaze. The vampire doesn’t want to let him, but when Shouyou puts a hand on his chin he goes still. He turns as Shouyou directs. He doesn’t have to, but he does regardless, following Shouyou’s orders not because he’s not strong enough to fight him, but instead because it’s what Shouyou wills.

Shouyou’s insides fill with liquid fire. He doesn’t think he’s even breathing. The next few seconds go very hazy.

“Hi-Hinata?” When Shouyou comes back to himself, Tobio sounds worried.

Shouyou doesn’t want him to be that. Ever. Perhaps that should worry Shouyou. It doesn’t. “Kiss me again,” he says. He says it like he’s the one with the compulsion. But given the way Tobio shivers and leans automatically into him, Shouyou may.

Vampire soulmates.

They’re vampire soulmates.

Tobio is⁠—⁠in all the ways that count⁠—⁠barely twenty years old. He’d died in January. He’d been born in December. He may have existed on this earth for a hundred years more than Shouyou, but his body had stopped changing before it was fully formed. Or at least that’s what the scientists were saying, changing their minds every other day. Human brains stopped growing at age twenty-five. Human people were considered legally of age at twenty⁠—⁠or eighteen, now. Vampires didn’t have to abide by rules like that. There were fifteen-year-old immortals being allowed into adult only clubs. All the simple rules have been too muddied by the supernatural.

But Tobio looks twenty, like this. Not a century. Not ancient. Young.

Shouyou should be the adult. “Tobio?” he says.

Tobio shudders again, but his eyes focus a little more. “I’m⁠—⁠afraid,” he says, sentence stunted into several smaller pieces. “That I’ll⁠—⁠hurt you.” He licks his lips in an involuntary little gesture that distracts Shouyou terribly. “That I’ll bite you . . . and then lose control.”

“Have you done that before?” Maybe Shouyou is the adult after all because he doesn’t even address that bit about Tobio biting him. Shouyou took classes on this sort of thing. He’d been bitten once in a controlled, laboratory setting so that he’d know. (All police officers had to know, but Vampire Crimes detectives most of all.) He’d had the wryly apologetic Saito Tsukumo sink her teeth into his neck⁠—⁠he knew what it would feel like, had already felt that loss of control. It had terrified him. He and his classmates had left the lecture that day on shaky feet, and Shouyou had added a sun spell to his birthday wishlist that very evening. It still terrifies him, but less because of the loss of control. Shouyou remembers how nice it had felt.

By design.

Vampires are the perfect human predator by design. Their bite⁠—⁠the aphrodisiac in their saliva, perhaps produced within their fangs and gums themselves⁠—⁠of course it would make humans feel . . . nice. Shouyou shudders at the memory. Perhaps his question could have been about the biting after all. If Tobio had bitten someone else . . . Shouyou doesn’t know what he’d do.

Tobio doesn’t appear to have realized the direction of Shouyou’s thoughts, thankfully. “Have I ever lost control?” he asks.

Somehow Shouyou manages to nod.

“I mean at the beginning Oikawa-san was always having to discipline me,” he says. “New vampires don’t have a lot of control⁠—⁠it’s because they don’t⁠—⁠” He breaks off, chewing on his sentence and breaking the skin of his lip once again. This time, it doesn’t seem to heal as quickly as it had all the other times before.

Shouyou zeros in on that fact. If he asks about anything else, he runs the risk of distracting himself from the important things. He may never get to kiss Kageyama Tobio ever again. “Do you need blood?” Shouyou says.

Tobio’s eyes flash with some unnamed emotion. When Shouyou tries to lean closer to him again, he finds the vampire even more impossible to move against.

Tobio frowns. “I’m not going to bite you, Hinata. Shouyou,” he says.

Shouyou pauses. “Oh.” He tries to keep the disappointment out of his voice and fails.

Tobio’s eyes flash. “You’re not one of those people⁠—⁠” he begins distastefully.

“There’s nothing wrong with any wholly consensual act,” Shouyou interrupts him. “But no,” he concedes. “It’s just . . . you.” Tobio is silent, cheeks turning illogically pink. “And if you need blood⁠—⁠”

“I don’t need blood,” Tobio interrupts, still flushing.

Shouyou lets it go, nodding. “Okay.” He continues to push against Tobio’s iron hold, and this time Tobio softens enough to let him. He can’t seem to stop looking down at Shouyou’s mouth, but he does still seem shy. Shouyou manages to stop moving again. “We don’t have to,” he says.

“I want to,” Tobio interrupts, hands disappearing so quickly Shouyou falls practically across the couch onto him. He puts an arm out to catch himself, breathing shakily. Tobio’s fingers smooth down Shouyou’s biceps. “I want to,” he repeats, gaze now fixed earnestly on Shouyou’s mouth.

Shouyou swallows heavily. He nods. “I want to too,” he says.

“Then kiss me,” Tobio commands. Shouyou dips his head down and does.

They end up sprawled across the sofa with Tobio on his back, Shouyou pressed entirely against him. Tobio is still warm⁠—⁠unnaturally so⁠—⁠and firm, hard all over with lithe muscle. His legs part automatically to let Shouyou lie between them, and his head falls back, neck exposed, but his mouth is still chaste, lips sealed shut. When Shouyou licks his bottom lip he shivers, fingers flexing where they’ve ended up buried in the shirt bunched at Shouyou’s back. But his mouth remains closed.

Between the two of them only Shouyou needs oxygen. He pulls back and gasps for air for a few seconds. Then says, “Why won’t you let me kiss you for real?”

Tobio’s chin lifts stubbornly. “I have.”

Shouyou licks his lips just to watch him stare. “You know what I mean.”

It’s going to be terribly disappointing when Tobio is no longer capable of blushing. “I’m worried that I’ll hurt you,” Tobio says.

Shouyou’s mouth rounds with realization. “Oh. You won’t,” he says. He’s talking out of his ass, and clearly Tobio knows. The vampire narrows his eyes. “I’ll be careful,” Shouyou amends. “Between the two of us I’m sure I’ve got more experience kissing people, so I’ll just avoid getting nicked on one of your fangs.” His voice is totally composed and doesn’t break at all. Tobio still frowns.

Though that may be more on account of what Shouyou has said, rather than because Shouyou hasn’t been suitably convincing. Shouyou ought to test that theory⁠—⁠like any good cop. “Then again, you’re a hundred and twenty-six years old⁠—⁠”

“Two⁠—⁠people,” Tobio says. “Vampires.” He doesn’t elaborate. Shouyou himself had a serious boyfriend all through college and made out with plenty of co-eds the rest of the time, and he was the one who brought it up, yet still a green monster tries to climb out of his chest at the thought. That’s kind of startling. They’ve known each other for around twenty-four hours. But then also . . . they’re soulmates.

Besides, Shouyou’s had casual sex several times before.

He still wants to stake the vampires in question. Even if he can’t help but wonder if they’re any of the ones he and Tobio met with today. Atsumu-san, maybe? He’d called Tobio “Tobio-kun,” after all. Though immediately Shouyou pictures Sakusa-san . . . and there’s no way Sakusa-san would have let anyone else near Atsumu-san, let alone kiss him. And Tobio had seemed too wary of Tendou-san for that to be an option.

“You’re thinking something stupid,” Tobio says a little meanly.

“Which vampires, and how illegal it would be to have them murdered,” Shouyou replies instantly, his tone flippant and honest and calm. Then he grins. “Now come on. I promise I’ll be good.” He bats his eyelashes. Tobio shoves at him.

“Fine.” He tips his head up like a prince and Shouyou kisses him like a willing servant because he wants to. This time when Shouyou licks at the seam of Tobio’s mouth his lips part.

And kissing a vampire is very suddenly nothing like kissing a human after all. Tobio’s mouth tastes like a mouth should, but more, somehow. There’s the ever-present tang of iron that Shouyou associates with blood, but also Tobio’s saliva itself, filled to the brim with its cocktail of anticoagulants and euphoria-inducing chemicals. There had been a quiz where Shouyou had had to name them all. He tries to produce them now, mapping them from the front view, but he gets too distracted, his mouth starting to tingle the longer he kisses Tobio.

Again Shouyou pulls back to gasp in much needed oxygen, finding that when he looks at Tobio, his eyes feel unnaturally wide. He’s panting, and not just because he’d been unable to breathe. “I see,” he tells Tobio. “I understand now.” Tobio’s eyes glint with his own anxiety and Shouyou pecks him quickly on the nose. “I’m still fine.”

Tobio makes a growling noise low in his throat. “I’ll show you fine.” He flips them, using vampire strength and vampire speed. Shouyou goes breathless with his back against the couch, staring up at the vampire on top of him with a heaving chest.

Tobio falters. Maybe those two vampires had just been kisses after all. “I don’t have stuff,” Tobio says. “Condoms. Lube.” Or maybe not. Shouyou shouldn’t use his authority as an officer over this. Tobio’s lips curl up and his fangs peek out of his mouth; he’s showing them to Shouyou, not trying to make them hide. “You’re jealous again.”

“I like you, Kageyama Tobio,” Shouyou tells him seriously. “Let me be jealous over you. Though I’ll stop if you don’t find it fun.”

Tobio is the one dipping down to kiss Shouyou carefully, chaste and without any slip of tongue. “Only if I’m allowed to be the same for you,” he says.

Shouyou nods enthusiastically, back to feeling a little dizzy solely on account of Tobio’s unnecessary breath. (Maybe vampire breath is euphoric too⁠—⁠after this Shouyou should probably update the division’s field guide.) “I’ll send you an annotated list of everyone. I’ll even include Tsukishima, though we both promised never to speak of it again.”

Tobio’s reaction to that is suitably sour.

Shouyou cannot help but laugh.

“No, but condoms and lube are important,” says Tobio seriously, recovering quickly enough.

Shouyou wonders how to phrase this delicately. “Oikawa’s got to have some,” he says. It’s not very delicate. Tobio’s expression is a brief rictus of horror. Then he gathers himself, peels off of Shouyou’s abdomen, and disappears. Never one to be out done, Shouyou rises to his feet, wincing as his cock bobs uncomfortably within the unrestrictive, borrowed sweatpants. “Which is your bedroom?” he calls. He’s already heading toward the room he assumes has to be the right one. Pushing the door open reveals he was correct⁠—⁠the decoration is sparse to the point of looking unlived in, but the color palette matches Tobio’s eyes. The one item of decoration is a piece of paper hanging on the wall above the decently sized bed. When Shouyou steps closer he realizes it’s this season’s V.League standing. He steps towards the desk and grabs a pen. “I’m updating the score!”

Tobio appears behind him as he’s finished crowning MSBY in third place as they head into the end of the second leg.

“I love that you love volleyball⁠—⁠”

“Oh my God,” Shouyou swears. “Don’t do that. You need to be less swoosh and more . . . loud.” He looks between the lube and condoms and the numbers on the wall. “Same,” he adds.

“Swoosh,” Tobio says.

Shouyou pushes his lips out and blows out the necessary air. “Swoosh.”

Tobio⁠—⁠the asshole⁠—⁠swooshes his way silently towards the bed. He puts down his loot on the pillows. He stares at Shouyou with half lidded eyes. “I expect you to come make this up to me.”

“Make what?”

Tobio gestures at the condoms and the lube.

Shouyou blinks, wondering if he means the brand. But they’re generic⁠—⁠pretty good options, actually, Shouyou has to admit. He’s never bought flavored lube before, but he likes the taste of strawberry just fine.

“They’re Oikawa-san’s,” Tobio says, as if this explains everything.

Shouyou blinks some more. “So?”

“So next time we do this we’re doing it in your childhood home and you have to raid your parents’ bedside table for condoms.”

Shouyou takes psychic damage only hearing the words. “Hold on. You didn’t grow up here⁠—⁠”

“It’s still the same⁠—⁠”

“Does this make Oikawa your vampire . . . mom?”

For some reason that makes Tobio smile. “No,” he says. But he’s definitely laughing now.

Shouyou glares at him. “What?”

Tobio manages to compose himself. “I’ll tell you later.” He smiles and it’s a radiant, lovely, shy thing. “Please come back and kiss me? I’ve got things.”

“Things,” Shouyou mutters, crossing the room to touch him on the hips. “Remind me that you’re only nineteen.”

“Twenty,” corrects Tobio. “But really I’m a hundred and twenty-six. Between the two of us, I’m the one with more life experience.”

Shouyou slots a thigh between Tobio’s legs, pressing against the hardness that he finds there until the vampire hisses, eyes going crossed. “Sorry, what was it you were saying, Ojiisan?”

“God, shut up.”

“Just ‘Shouyou’ is fine,” Shouyou manages to tell him before the command forces his teeth together. He doesn’t bite off his own tongue. Instead, his words hang trapped within his mouth for several seconds until the moment passes. “Interesting,” Shouyou mumbles, slipping his hands underneath Tobio’s shirt to touch the bare skin of his hips so that he won’t get too prissy. “So it’s less about the exact words and more about the intent⁠—⁠I assume you wanted me to shut up for⁠—⁠what⁠—⁠only a couple of seconds?”

“Shut up until I tell you not to,” Tobio snaps.

Shouyou’s mouth closes with another click. This time he does catch his tongue between his teeth. “Ow,” he tries to say to no avail. All that comes out is a sore groan.

Tobio’s eyes widen. “Shit, sorry. You can talk like normal now. You’re bleeding⁠—⁠”

“I’m guessing it’d be a bad idea to kiss you now, huh?” says Shouyou. His leg is still between Tobio’s. His fingers are still splayed on Tobio’s bare hipbones. Tobio hisses out a painful breath.

“Terribly,” he says.

Shouyou goes up on his tiptoes and kisses him.

And kissing a vampire is so different from kissing a human that Shouyou was an idiot to have even suggested it was similar. There’s nothing chaste about kissing Kageyama Tobio. Shouyou licks into his mouth and Tobio moans. The hold he suddenly has on Shouyou’s shoulders is suddenly powerful and demanding. Shouyou wasn’t even really bleeding⁠—⁠it would have taken quite a lot more bite pressure to manage that⁠—⁠but the superficial damage he’s done to his tongue is enough to feed the frenzy, apparently. Tobio doesn’t even protest when Shouyou works his tongue along the tips of his fangs.

“Don’t,” he says into Shouyou’s mouth, but his eyes are closed and he’s still kissing, darting immediately in. His dick is a hard line against Shouyou’s thigh, and Shouyou isn’t the one with an inhuman sense of smell, but he swears he can taste Tobio’s arousal.

He breaks away from the kiss enough to spot the bed, tumbling Tobio down onto it with practiced ease. Tobio goes, head tipping back, and the look he gazes up at Shouyou with could set Shouyou on fire. The look is an entire celestial event⁠—⁠a sun spell in midnight-sky eyes.

Tobio falters. “What?”

“Nothing.” Shouyou puts his hands on the hem of his borrowed t-shirt and tugs the thing over his head, mussing his hair as he goes. “I was just thinking you were amazing.”

Tobio’s gaze had been fixed on Shouyou’s abdomen, which is not as ripped as he’d have liked but serves him well chasing criminals and vampires. He looks up when he hears Shouyou’s words. He flushes again, paradoxical and adorably shy. “What? Shut up,” he says.

Shouyou barely manages not to laugh at him. He kneels on the bed, walking his way up so that he’s seated across Tobio’s lap. He feels powerful and in control. Tobio’s grip on the bedsheets is so tight Shouyou hears the sound of fabric ripping. Grimacing, Tobio lets go. “Awesome,” Shouyou says again.

“Shut up,” says Tobio.

“Make me.”

More kissing, with no hesitance now. Shouyou nicks himself on a fang on purpose and Tobio only groans, dragging Shouyou down on top of him and holding him by the back of the head tight. “You taste . . .” he says. He doesn’t finish.

“What do I taste like?” Shouyou can’t help but pull back and ask. “Oranges? Tsukishima used to call me a human-sized tangerine. Do I taste like a tangerine?”

“You taste like blood,” Tobio snaps, trying to recapture Shouyou’s mouth and failing. “And blood tastes like blood.”

Shouyou doesn’t kiss him, staring down both their noses at him. “Oh I see,” he says. “Thank you for that enlightening explanation, Scholaryama.”

Tobio’s cheeks turn that mesmerizing shade of pink that doesn’t make sense, given he’s a vampire. “Scholaryama?”

“Or do you prefer Professoryama?”

Tobio scowls.

“Teacheryama. Vampire Expertyama. Vampire Expertyama-sama. Yama-sama.”

“I’ve changed my mind about having sex with you⁠—⁠”

Shouyou gasps, fake horrified. “Yama-sama, no!” He draws the protest out as long as he can, stopping only when his lungs begin to ache.

Tobio glares at him like a prickly hedgehog, but he softens when Shouyou leans in and kisses him on the cheeks and the tip of his nose. Shouyou is still the only one of them not wearing a shirt; Tobio is still dressed head to toe. He’s barefooted, but that doesn’t count.

“Off,” Shouyou says, tugging on the hem.

Tobio doesn’t hesitate, peeling off the article of clothing and tossing it aimlessly across the room. He probably has to work at it not to throw it superhumanly fast. Shouyou is too distracted by his superhumanly beautiful chest to think much about it. Vampire musculature was something Shouyou had studied at school. The paradoxes of the undead were things he was intimately familiar with. No shortage of the more personable vampires had been asked the incredibly invasive trifecta: “Can you orgasm?”, “Can you increase muscle mass?”, “What happens when you eat food?”.

Shouyou still pets a hand down Tobio’s abdomen, breath punched out of his lungs by the sight. He chews on his own automatic question but fails to keep it inside. “Were you this hot before you died?”

Tobio’s cheeks flush pink again, but even less strongly this time. Soon even those reactions will be no more, and Shouyou’s vampire will be as statuesque as the rest of them. “Do you blush after drinking from humans?”

“I will not bite you, Hinata Shouyou,” Tobio snaps, an odd formality slipping over his words. He lisps due to his fangs.

Shouyou feels his dick throb like a pulse of his heart. Like he can feel it too⁠—⁠and he probably can; Shouyou should be realistic⁠—⁠Tobio falls back against the bed with wide eyes. Yet he says nothing. It will have to be Shouyou who breaks the silence. “Okay, rude,” he says. “Bold of you to think you get to make any decisions for me⁠—⁠not counting if you fuck me . . . or I fuck you?” Shouyou feels himself go hazy just imagining either option and he shakes his head, not interested in being distracted. “Of course those are two-person decisions⁠—⁠you decide for you, and I decide for me, and hopefully we’re in agreement and everyone goes home with an orgasm. Consent is important, Kageyama-kun⁠—⁠”

“You’re so fucking strange.” Tobio interrupts Shouyou’s mandatory-training-inspired ramblings, his voice coming out a whine. After a pause he offers, “I blush when I’ve had all types of blood. Even animal⁠—⁠which I don’t drink much of.”

Shouyou nods, understanding. There’s controversy around that⁠—⁠whether or not vampires drinking only from animals is humane. He supposes it’s to be expected that the subject of Tobio’s diet would eventually come up, but he’d hoped it wouldn’t have been prior to those promised orgasms. It does make him unfortunately curious. “What do you drink?” Shouyou blurts out, and immediately feels guilty for asking. “Not that it matters,” he hurries to say. “Sorry. I know that’s horribly inappropriate like . . . asking if your body produces semen. I could just go through the crime scene reports for what was in your fridge. Hell, I could get up and go and see what’s in your fridge right now. I should stop talking. Please, do something to make me to stop talking⁠—⁠”

“Shouyou, you’re ruining the mood,” Tobio says. He doesn’t command or kiss or do anything else, simply gazes up at Shouyou with too-large eyes. Shouyou falls silent like he’d done those things after all; it makes something fluttery beat in Shouyou’s chest when Tobio says his first name.

“Right,” Shouyou says. “I’m just going to kiss you, now.”

Tobio huffs against the seam of Shouyou’s mouth and shifts against the bed at his back. “And take off my pants?”

“And take off your pants,” Shouyou says. When he does that he finds that Tobio has gone commando, and his entire body breaks out into a nervous⁠—⁠but not unpleasant⁠—⁠sweat. “And my pants,” he adds, to even the playing field. “Wouldn’t want you to feel left out.” He isn’t making any sense, but Tobio still kisses him, sliding cooling hands up Shouyou’s bare back to trace the ridges of his spine. He seems to find all of Shouyou’s scars on first try⁠—⁠but maybe his fingers are more sensitive; maybe his touch receptors are more refined. Vampire, Shouyou thinks, and kisses him harder, thrusting their bodies together on the bed.

Tobio whines, the sound forced from his between his lips. His fingers grip almost painfully tight, but they retreat just as instantly. “Sorry⁠—⁠”

Shouyou doesn’t have time for his apologies, sliding his lips down the length of Tobio’s throat and finding purchase in the hollow there so that he can bite⁠—⁠hard and pointless. Vampire skin is nigh impervious. It’s what makes it so hard for them to get anything less than silver based tattoos. He wonders how they maintain the holes for anti-solar earrings, and wonders if they’re silver as well.

“What are you thinking?” Tobio asks disjointedly, as Shouyou lifts off his chest and touches his left ear hesitantly, sliding his thumb and forefinger to touch the studs there and roll them between.

“Do you have to re-pierce your ears every single time you take them out?”

Tobio’s eyes roll. “I’m starting to think you’re the one who’s a virgin after all⁠—⁠or this is some sort of terrible research paper and Yahaba-san is going to have to put the fear of God in you.” Shouyou’s eyebrows must climb and Tobio grins, mouth softening into something that for once is very beautiful, not just strange. “All of my uncles are terrifying,” he says. “But my adopted uncle is the most of all.”

Shouyou decides to let that go. His dick⁠—⁠finally starting to ache to the point of distraction⁠—⁠thanks him for that.

“I don’t have to re-pierce my ears.” Tobio continues to grin. “And I didn’t have to involve magic⁠—⁠I had my ears pierced already as a human.” He sobers suddenly, expression going wistful.

Shouyou slaps a palm over his mouth preemptively. “No talking about your vampire parents in bed,” he says. “God, we must be soulmates. My dick is still really hard.”

Tobio gazes up at him, gone silent under Shouyou’s palm. With a sinuous slide, he grinds up until their dicks line up perfectly, stealing all the breath from Shouyou’s lungs. “Yes,” he says into the muffle of Shouyou’s hand. “You are.”

And Shouyou has to put his other hand on Tobio’s cock, at that. Tobio hisses automatically. Shouyou holds him more solidly with both hands, pressing down on Tobio’s mouth to see what reaction that gets and then gliding the tight circle of his fingers up and down his cock in response. He’s almost disappointed not to know which one is what makes Tobio’s eyes roll back.

“Do you even need to breathe⁠—⁠”

“Shouyou!” Tobio growls.

Shouyou feels himself blush, though he doesn’t let go of either end of Tobio. “Forgive me for trying to make it good for you⁠—⁠”

One of Tobio’s cool hands circles Shouyou’s wrist, pulling his hand away from Tobio’s mouth with an unfair amount of ease. “It is,” he says. “You are.”

“Oh my God.” Shouyou abandons his sad attempt at a hand job and hides his entire face in Tobio’s neck. “You can’t just say that.” He lifts his head long enough to spot the condoms and lube, still on the pillow to the right behind Tobio’s head. He reaches for them. “Whose dick is going where?”

Tobio just stares at him, mouth fallen open.

“What?”

“Nothing. You’re⁠—⁠” Tobio breaks off.

Shouyou flutters the condom nervously between two fingers. “Well?”

Tobio’s eyes are almost unreadable. “I want you to fuck me,” he says.

Shouyou’s breath leaves his lungs once again. “You’re sure?” Not that he’s opposed. Not that he should be arguing. Not that it matters. But there’s something almost exposing about it, no matter which of them is the immortal, unkillable vampire. And Kageyama Tobio is barely twenty years old.

“Yes,” says Kageyama Tobio, with eyes that have lived more than an entire century. “Don’t be an idiot.” He flips the two of them before Shouyou can so much as parse the movement, ending on his knees down by Shouyou’s cock on the bed. The condom is in his hands as well, the lube disappeared. Shouyou is willing to let that go until it comes time to prepare him, because he’s always found fingering his favorite sexual pastime of them all. There’s something so humbling about bringing someone to competition on his hand alone; Shouyou would hate to be deprived of getting to make Kageyama Tobio sing.

Kageyama Tobio the vampire.

Kageyama Tobio Shouyou’s vampire.

Kageyama Tobio, Shouyou’s vampire . . . who is opening a condom with his fangs. He has to touch Shouyou’s dick to get it into the correct position and Shouyou hisses, mouth going dry in anticipation like he’s the one about to give the blowjob. “You’re not⁠—⁠”

“Oikawa-san only buys vampire-proof condoms,” says Tobio, and then he uses only his mouth⁠—⁠and too sharp teeth⁠—⁠to roll the thing on.

“No vampire parents⁠—⁠in bed⁠—⁠” gasps out Shouyou, words slicing neatly in two because there is no build up, no easing down. Tobio swallows Shouyou’s cock like he doesn’t have a gag reflex⁠—⁠and maybe he doesn’t, maybe all vampires don’t. Why would they? They certainly don’t need to breathe. Tobio’s nose ends up in Shouyou’s pubic hair and Shouyou imagines he can feel his fangs, even though Tobio’s mouth is soft and warm and not-dangerous.

Though of course it is. It always is. It’s the most dangerous thing in this room, barring Tobio’s hands, which have molded themselves around Shouyou’s hips, holding him down. Shouyou can fuck and thrust and squirm all he wants, and it will do nothing. The speed of Tobio’s lips is entirely on Tobio’s whim alone.

“Kage”⁠—⁠Shouyou swallows a mouthful of spit and hopefully some much needed oxygen⁠—⁠“yama.”

Tobio pulls off of Shouyou’s cock so that he can talk to him, and Shouyou manages enough concentration to look down and see all the saliva leaking around his mouth. Spit and eagerness and none of Shouyou’s own spunk⁠—⁠fuck condoms and their necessity.

“You probably can’t even contract STIs.”

“No, but you could,” says Tobio. He seems to be testing out a smirk, but despite the calmness of his actions, Shouyou realizes he’s just as affected. Just as shy.

“I haven’t been with anyone but my right hand in months,” says Shouyou. “You probably could smell if that were a lie.”

Tobio’s mouth quirks on one side. “Yes, we can.” He hollows his mouth again and sinks unfairly quickly right back down.

Shouyou does his best not to lose track of the conversation. “So then why the condoms⁠—⁠fuck⁠—⁠”

Tobio can’t deepthroat cock and talk to Shouyou at the same time, and it’s unfortunate, really. Humanity should get on that. Come up with some sort of telepathic spell. It would be great for all sorts of things, like police raids, blowjobs, and volleyball. “It’s not enough that you’re going to get your dick in me, but you need to mark up my mouth as well?”

Shouyou’s not going to touch on how Tobio knew that was even the issue. He’s too busy being distracted by the other piece of news. He had asked, before. Whose dick was going where? Tobio had answered. Shouyou had felt his words like a punch. This is a blow to the same spot. Shouyou is just as affected.

Tobio’s expression falters again, his physical age showing behind his eyes. “Unless you don’t want⁠—⁠”

“No!” Shouyou pulls himself upright and reaches for him, hauling him close enough to hug and kiss and soothe. “No. I’d love⁠—⁠I mean that’s great⁠—⁠” A thought occurs to him. “Have you ever⁠—⁠”

Tobio shakes his head, a little subdued. “No, just . . . fingers.” He pauses, even more hesitantly. “And . . . Iwaizumi-san.”

Shouyou’s brain stalls for a second. “Iwaizumi?” he manages. The thought is simultaneously arousing and jealousy-inducing. “Iwaizumi Hajime . . . Are we sure you weren’t the one Oikawa was trying to kill after all?”

Tobio makes a face. “I thought you said not to mention them?” he mumbles. “He was there,” he adds. “At the time.”

Shouyou’s brain further glitches. In fact, Shouyou’s brain may never be the same ever again. “He was there,” he repeats slowly. “He was . . . Those were your two vampires?” His voice comes out like a high-pitched squeak.

Tobio is starting to look distinctly uncomfortable.

“It’s”⁠—⁠not fine, but hell if Shouyou is going to say any of that; jealousy is not attractive unless mutually agreed upon and certainly not on the first date⁠—⁠“okay,” Shouyou finishes.

Tobio looks dubious.

“I mean it makes me not want to solve his murder,” Shouyou continues honestly. “But I get it, really. They’re . . . attractive.”

Now Tobio is pulling an even worse face.

Shouyou has to laugh at him. His dick hasn’t softened much in the interim and he’s still wearing the condom but Tobio’s face is just. Hilarious. “You’re not jealous⁠—⁠”

“You’re mine,” Tobio says. Immediately afterwards his expression goes flinty, like he knows he should feel bad about saying that but doesn’t. Like he doesn’t care that it’s possessive and mean and not attractive unless mutually agreed upon⁠—⁠not for the first date.

Shouyou’s belly warms. “Guess so,” he says. “Now are you going to let me open you up, or would you rather do that yourself?”

Tobio inhales, an unnecessary gesture, and aggressively nods his head. “You,” he says, in case that were not clear. “Please.”

That does something fluttery to Shouyou too. “Alright, come here.”

Tobio slides further up the bed on his knees.

A few minutes in, Shouyou determines Tobio was not lying about having experimented with his own fingers. Shouyou doesn’t think about how this means he probably wasn’t lying about having experimented with Iwaizumi Hajime’s fingers. Instead he focuses on Tobio’s eyes, blown wide and dark like the galaxy, as his legs shake apart wider and wider the longer Shouyou spears him open on two fingers alone. He keeps trying to stay upright, slipping and sliding against Shouyou’s own thighs every time he crests down, cock bobbing and leaking in the air between them. It’s like he’s too prideful not to be polite, incapable of simply slumping against Shouyou and taking his pleasure like Shouyou so desperately wants him to.

Shouyou takes up a running commentary, first because he can’t help himself, and then because Tobio tightens up on his fingers after the very first “good boy,” scrabbling uselessly for purchase in the sweat-soaked sheets. Shouyou’s never been with someone with a praise kink before, but the compliments only seem to make Tobio fly higher and higher, dark wings in a clear sky. Shouyou watches him and imagines a world where they both attended Karasuno, where Tobio was human, and they stood on center court at nationals.

Then Tobio moans out a rasped, “Hinata,” and Shouyou stops daydreaming, dragging free his fingers and reaching for his own aching dick with ease. Tobio moans louder when Shouyou sinks him down onto it, so boneless that he’s willing to let gravity do most of the work. He makes hiccupping, shaking breaths in between, until they’re nose to nose, ass to thighs. Shouyou fucks his hips up tentatively just to see what happens. Tobio throws his head back and snaps at the empty air.

He has fangs, Shouyou abruptly remembers. Fangs and superhuman strength.

“Try not to break the bed,” Shouyou tells him.

Tobio slits open one angry eye. “Asshole,” he mutters. All other complaints are swallowed when Shouyou plants his heels on the bed and fucks his hips up hard. A gasp, fluttering eyelashes, the sound of fabric tearing.

Shouyou looks to the side and watches Tobio shred the bed sheets. “You were saying⁠—⁠”

“This is my bed.” Tobio grapples his hands about and manhandles Shouyou with inhuman ease, slamming him around so that he ends up against the headboard with Tobio still in his lap on his cock, but with his eyes narrowed and some of the fucked-out haze gone. “You’ll play by my rules.”

“If you say so,” Shouyou replies, touching Tobio’s hips just to ground him, then sinking his fingernails hard into Tobio’s skin. It’s not to mark him up⁠—⁠that much is impossible for someone human like Shouyou, at least not without silver or the sun. Shouyou does it because Tobio likes it. He’ll worry about how in sync the two of them feel later.

Tobio has let go of Shouyou in favor of holding onto the metal headboard, which creaks under his hands. It’s very hot. So is Tobio, both in the metaphorical sense and the literal. Shouyou is still and unmoving. Tobio is the one unstill, muscles twitching and hips rotating⁠—⁠not full on riding, but shifting enough to make Shouyou hiss.

“Oh,” Tobio says. “So that’s what that feels like.”

The monster in Shouyou’s chest rumbles with pleasure. Tobio smirks⁠—⁠like calling to like. “What?” Shouyou can’t help but say.

“Nothing.” No one should be that smug with their ass right up against Shouyou’s thighs, their ass filled tight with Shouyou’s dick. “You like that you’re the first.”

“I’ve never been with a vampire before,” Shouyou tells him.

Tobio’s words stop with a sharp sounding click⁠—⁠teeth on teeth, or maybe flesh. Flesh that will heal inhumanly fast.

“What?” Shouyou repeats quietly. “You like that you’re the first?”

Tobio growls at him, baring glistening fangs. Shouyou lunges forward and kisses him, arching his back so that he can reach. Tobio’s hands are still on the headboard. The metal groans as Shouyou sucks on his tongue. Shouyou smiles once more.

“Come on. Ride me. Show me how you like to move.”

Tobio lets go of the headboard. Cups Shouyou’s cheeks. Raises up on his knees. Sinks back down. Moans.

He does it again

And again.

Again.

Shouyou reaches for his cock. Tobio bats his hand away. “No,” he says. “Just.” He doesn’t say more, but Shouyou understands. He lets Tobio try to work himself to coming for a few minutes.

“Need some help?” he finally says.

Tobio opens his eyes with a growl. Competition sparks there, like glowing embers. Shouyou’s monster hums. The one on his dick responds. “You’re going to regret that.”

“Oh, am I?”

“You are,” Tobio says. Then he begins to move. Whatever cheap parody he’d been doing prior had been just that: parody. This is the real thing. A million-yen, museum worthy, twenty-four karat gold. Shouyou’s jaw hurts from how hard his teeth clench to keep the noises inside. Sweat beads his brow, the backs of his knees, under his arms. Tobio’s skin is getting colder the longer they’re together in this bed, but instead of making Shouyou shudder, it only makes him warmer. Everything is warm. Hot and fire and good. Shouyou kisses Tobio and it’s sharp and painful and numbing in turn. It’s not a bite rush, but it’s almost as good as. Next time, Shouyou thinks.

“I’m going to come,” Shouyou realizes, after only a few minutes of this, or maybe years. He’s lost the ability to understand time. But once the words find their way out of his mouth, it’s all he can think about, how they’re so fucking true. The fire in his stomach builds, his hands starting to shake like the rest of him. “Tobio, I’m going to come.” Somewhat frantically, Shouyou fumbles for what part of the vampire he can reach and starts to bat at him. It’s the back of his shoulders, so not too bad. It’s still a little bit like hitting stone.

Tobio blinks his eyes open lazily to look down at Shouyou. “Shouyou?”

“Tobio, tell me not to come.”

Tobio blinks some more, hips still moving, and Shouyou sucks in a panicked breath. “Tobio!”

“Don’t come? What?”

“Command me⁠—⁠”

“Don’t come?” It’s definitely a question, but the effects are not hindered by that fact. Shouyou’s muscles lock into place but his body halts almost magically on the edge. It should be impossible. It makes Shouyou’s police brain think about if vampires could order human soulmates to stop breathing⁠—⁠tell their hearts to fucking stop, if they wanted. But Tobio tells Shouyou not to orgasm, and the words are like a steel cage wrapping around the base of his dick.

Shouyou stops fucking his hips with a shocked, broken-sounding barrage of moaning, balls aching right on the edge. They feel swollen and heavy and sore and Tobio tilts his head at Shouyou, no longer moving his body, only his eyes. Shouyou feels him reach down almost as if in slow motion, fluttering teasing fingers down the weeping length of Shouyou’s erection, circling the base of his cock curiously, and then reaching under to touch his balls. He begins gentle and probing and curious but when Shouyou pants down at him his touch sharpens, turns almost painful; Shouyou howls.

If it were any other person. If it were any other circumstance. If the strings of the universe didn’t tie Shouyou’s still-living soul to Tobio’s undead one, Shouyou knows he’d have had the orgasm of his life at that moment. As it stands, he does not.

It still feels like he has. His vision goes spotty. His ears throb with phantom sirens. When Shouyou comes back to himself, he’s still not nearly wet enough within the condom, and Tobio is watching him with predatory eyes.

“Huh,” he says. “No one else is allowed to turn you⁠—⁠I’m not giving that up.”

Shouyou’s wires went all crisscrossed in that cruel attempt at competition, but somehow, he manages to find his words, though they’re mostly hoarse gasps. “What makes you think . . . I’d let you?”

Tobio smiles at him, expression like the sunlight he can’t see without magic. “I guess I’ll have to get you to come around,” he says.

Shouyou’s chin juts stubbornly. “Try me,” he says. It’s a stupid thing to say⁠—⁠he physically can’t come, not until Tobio says. But Shouyou is practically hardwired to fight Kageyama Tobio, or at least hardwired to . . . something, Kageyama Tobio. Match him? Love him? All those things feel too big for less than twenty-four hours. But maybe not for a lifetime. Shouyou has never had any interest in eternity, but maybe he’ll feel differently when he’s thirty and Tobio is, as ever, barely a month past twenty.

Yet that’s a thought for later.

Now Shouyou forces himself to watch, breathless, as Kageyama Tobio comes, untouched and sighing the entire time, on the fuck of Shouyou’s dick within him alone. Shouyou almost feels bad⁠—⁠he’d been doing very little to help the process besides staying hard⁠—⁠but Tobio is too pretty for that feeling to last long. Instead Shouyou watches him, reaching out for his still-spurting cock so that he can feel the orgasm firsthand. His own dick throbs painfully with phantom desire, but the noises Tobio makes in overstimulation are distraction enough.

“Hinata,” he sighs out. “Shouyou. Shouyou. Shouyou.”

He doesn’t tell Shouyou to stop, is the thing. Even as he whimpers, whines, twists and clenches on Shouyou’s still-trapped hard cock. Even as Shouyou wraps his fingers just below the head and strokes, up-down, up-down. Tobio cries, the sliver of tears leaking from the corners of his eyes when Shouyou’s fingers find the slit of dick and press ever so slightly in just to feel the flutter of a now spent orgasm there. But he doesn’t say stop. Just gasps, breathless, and goes even tighter around Shouyou’s cock.

“Please.” Shouyou is the first to break, to beg. “Please, Tobio, can I come?”

For a second he worries that Tobio won’t let him. That he’ll say, “Give me another, first.”

But then the vampire nods, limbs still shaky. “You can come, Shouyou,” he says. It’s not a command. Shouyou still goes over instantly like it had been. His last coherent thought, before the onslaught, is that he wonders if he could, on command. If Tobio reached inside his chest and commanded him, could Shouyou come a second time, too fast. Thankfully, the euphoria wipes away the rest of his thoughts; his body might not have ever forgiven him.

And . . . later, of course.

When Shouyou finally comes back into his body, Tobio doesn’t even bother to properly get off of him, simply sinks to the side until he halfway slides off of Shouyou’s dick, lying beside him with their limbs and bodies still partly intertwined. Both of them are breathing hard, though only one of them needs to be.

Finally Tobio says, “So? How was it?” like some sort of terrible asshole.

Shouyou warms inwardly at the hesitance he can hear under the words. “Fantastic,” he says. “Ten out of ten. Service ace.” Suddenly shy, he turns to look at Tobio’s head.

He finds the vampire staring back. “Service ace,” he says.

Shouyou’s cheeks warm despite himself. “What? You don’t know what that means?”

“A serve the opponent doesn’t ever touch,” Tobio recites perfectly. “We should play volleyball, sometime,” he adds, matching Shouyou’s shyness.

Shouyou feels giddy⁠—⁠almost like the sentence was better than the mind-blowing sex. “Deal,” he says. He holds out a hand for Tobio to shake; Tobio takes it, smiling. When he sees Shouyou look, the expression smooths away.

“Sorry⁠—⁠”

“Who told you you couldn’t smile?” Shouyou says.

Tobio’s expression wilts further. He mumbles under his breath.

“What’s that?”

“Oikawa-san,” he says. “And . . . others.”

Shouyou doesn’t have to be a cop to know that those others probably included Atsumu-san. “I’ll stake them both,” he says.

That makes Tobio laugh. He finally slides all the way off Shouyou’s dick, grabbing the condom and tying it off. He tosses it. Shouyou doesn’t have to look to know it lands in the trashcan first shot.

“I’ll probably have to handicap you,” he says. “If we play volleyball.”

Tobio settles back onto the bed, snuggling into Shouyou like an oversized cat. He’s colder still, but Shouyou doesn’t mind. The apartment seems to run hot. Their difference in temperature feels nice. “When,” Tobio says.

That’s even nicer. “When,” Shouyou agrees. They’ll need more people to form teams. Shouyou could convince Bokuto, Tsukishima, other assorted players from MSBY and the Frogs. Tobio could easily get most of the Adlers⁠—⁠also an assortment of vampires. Maybe if Shouyou had vampires on his team things would be fair. “What position does Atsumu-san play?”

Tobio is silent for a long time. “Setter,” he finally says.

“Perfect,” Shouyou replies.

Tobio actually growls. “You don’t need Atsumu-san,” he says. “I’ll set for you⁠—⁠what?”

Shouyou smiles happily at him. “You want to set for me!”

Tobio scowls. “No,” he says⁠—⁠a lie if Shouyou ever saw one. “I only toss to people who don’t suck.”

“I don’t suck,” Shouyou says. “I played all through high school and college. You’re the one who probably sucks.”

“I’m a vampire.”

“Big whoop.” Before he can banter more, Shouyou’s jaw splits on an embarrassingly loud yawn. “What time is it?” he says. Because Tobio is a vampire, he produces it. Again, Shouyou yawns. “I should turn on my phone. Go back to work.”

“You’re no good to Oikawa-san if you’re tired,” Tobio says.

“That’s true.”

Shouyou does eventually go and turn on his phone. Of course, immediately afterwards he climbs back into bed with Tobio and falls into a near death like sleep.

Shouyou is woken an unknown amount of time later by the sound of his phone ringing, and ringing, and ringing, to the point where he can no longer ignore it, no matter how hard he tries. To his credit, he does try, burying his head into Tobio’s chest, and then, when that does nothing, attempting to hide underneath the pillows, and then under Tobio himself. It’s useless. The phone rings and rings and rings, and when it goes to voicemail, the reprieve doesn’t last long enough for whoever it is to have left a message.

Resigned to his fate, Shouyou pries himself free of the vampire still sleeping in the bed beside him⁠—⁠his vampire, he can’t help but think a little gleefully as he does so, despite the exhaustion⁠—⁠and fumbles for his phone. He shouldn’t have turned it back on before going to sleep. But then, he really should have⁠—⁠since he wanted to keep his job.

The phone is lit up with the kanji for Hoshino Aiko on the screen. Waking up further due to fear, Shouyou hits the button to answer the call. His extremely professional and by the book superior officer opens the call by swearing.

“Hinata Shouyou,” she says afterwards with deadly seriousness. “Give me one reason why I should not fire you on the spot.”

Shouyou doesn’t have a reason. He and Tobio aren’t any closer to solving Oikawa’s maybe-murder, despite having what should be all of the pieces. “Erm.”

“Never mind,” Hoshino-san continues. She sounds exhausted underneath the barely chained anger, and Shouyou’s chest pangs with guilt on top of the anxiety. “You want to tell me why Miya Atsumu let slip to the press this evening that Oikawa Tooru might be dead, Shouyou?”

She used his first name. Shouyou winces. “Erm,” he says again.

“The next time I see you had better be with an alive Oikawa Tooru in custody, or with his killers in silver chains.” She hangs up without saying anything else.

Shouyou lowers the phone like she’s going to come through the device and shout at him some more. Beside him on the bed, Tobio remains dead to the world. It softens something in Shouyou. He can’t help himself.

He yawns.

You’re no good to Oikawa-san if you’re too tired to function, Tobio had said.

“At least I know if my boss kills me, you’ll bring me back,” Shouyou says. He lays back down on the bed and closes his eyes.

Sometime later than that, Shouyou wakes to the sounds of someone unlocking the apartment door, making their way inside without any attempts at subterfuge. It’s a product of him being a cop; the sleeping vampire wrapped around him doesn’t so much as stir, at most seeming vaguely grumbly when Shouyou untangles enough to grab a weapon.

“Shou?” Tobio mumbles⁠—⁠not a nickname, but instead a muffled attempt at Shouyou’s full name that’s been ruined by where his face is still shoved mostly into the pillow.

“Don’t get up,” Shouyou whispers, more air than anything else. Tobio could probably hear, but he clearly doesn’t, back to snoring softly. Shouyou wastes precious time marveling at the fact that vampires really do sleep⁠—⁠and how deeply Tobio seems to do it⁠—⁠before more noise from the person breaking into the apartment has him slipping as silently as he can out of the bed. He collects his gun, wasting precious time debating if he ought to put on clothes. He’s not a complete idiot⁠—⁠his finger stays off the trigger and the safety is still on⁠—⁠but he still feels like he’s tempting fate by holding a loaded weapon with his dick out.

“Tobio-chan!” says the other person in the apartment⁠—⁠loud enough to startle Shouyou into action. He abandons his clothing, settling both hands onto the gun, and lets the weapon lead him around the corner through the bedroom doorway. “Why the fuck is someone having sex in my apartment?” Whoever it is turns towards the bedrooms.

“Don’t move!” Shouyou says.

Oikawa Tooru freezes at the opposite end of the muzzle, staring down the barrel of Shouyou’s M60. He looks like he had in all the photos and videos, though he seems taller in person. He seems haggard around the edges and that slumps his shoulders. Shouyou can see dark bruising underneath his eyes, notices a feverish wideness to his massive pupils, and takes in the odd sheen covering his skin. Oikawa Tooru gazes at Shouyou with large brown eyes, which shift quickly to the spot behind Shouyou. Shouyou doesn’t have to turn to know that Tobio has emerged from the guestroom to stand behind him⁠—⁠it would be no one else.

He knows he’s also naked because Oikawa Tooru says, “Really, Tobio-chan? Of all of my children you’re the one of them slumming it with a human?” There’s a pause, where Oikawa’s eyes drift down Shouyou’s body in a move that makes Shouyou want to lower the weapon to put on clothes. “Granted a very attractive human, but still.” Oikawa pouts, his incredibly pink lips puckering into a show of displeasure. “This is my home, Tobio-chan.”

It’s starting to feel a little unnecessary to be holding the other vampire at gunpoint. Shouyou lets his weapon fall. “Wait,” he says. “Hold on. You’re alive?”

Oikawa sniffs. “Yes,” he says. “The rumors of my death have been grossly exaggerated. Do not worry. I will be having words with Tsumu-chan about that.” He smiles, showing both fangs, and Shouyou’s gun comes back up automatically. This only makes Oikawa smile wider. “Now, now, Omawari-chan. None of that.” Oikawa doesn’t move, but Shouyou still gets the sense that he’s risking the integrity of his weapon the longer he holds it.

He doesn’t know what to do with it, however, and he’s not about to use it to cover his dick; he’s not that much of an idiot.

Luckily Tobio takes pity on him. He disappears with nothing more than a brief rush of wind, returning to Shouyou’s side holding an oversized, zip-up sweatshirt⁠—⁠for Shouyou⁠—⁠and dressed himself in a pair of well-worn sweatpants. Shouyou puts his gun down on the floor with a sigh, careful to keep the safety on and step well out of shooting-off-his-own-foot distance. Then he puts both arms through the sleeves and zips the sweatshirt up to his throat. The difference in length of his and Tobio’s torsos means that the jacket hits Shouyou high on the thigh, covering everything necessary. It’s incredibly domestic.

Oikawa has disappeared from Shouyou’s immediate view. Before Shouyou can panic too much about it, he hears the sounds of the vampire rummaging through Tobio’s room. “At least you had the decency to do this in your own bed,” he calls. Shouyou should really go into the room to see what he’s looking through⁠—⁠make sure he’s not touching any of Shouyou’s official police stuff⁠—⁠but he really doesn’t want to. He wants to stay in the hallway staring at Tobio, the two of them looking like teenagers caught out by one of their parents. Which . . . unfortunately . . . is not at all far from reality.

“You realize this does mean you need to move out ASAP, Tobio-chan,” Oikawa continues speaking, voice now coming from the other room⁠—⁠the main bedroom, Shouyou remembers.

The rooms don’t conjoin, but Shouyou hadn’t even seen him move past them in the hallway. He takes an automatic step closer to his M60 before he can help himself. Tobio puts a hand on his wrist, linking their fingers together when Shouyou pauses. He shakes his head.

“I’ve only been telling you this much for forever⁠—⁠”

“Twenty-years,” Tobio mouths helpfully at Shouyou, holding up a flash of five fingers on his free hand the necessary four times.

“⁠—⁠but I refuse to be held hostage in my own home.”

Finally Oikawa emerges from his bedroom, dressed in a whole new set of clothes, and looking a little less affected by the night’s . . . whatever.

Shouyou manages to find his words⁠—⁠and his badge. “What happened to you?” he says. “We thought you were dead.”

“Obviously.” Oikawa shoots the rest of the apartment a disgusted look, almost like he can tell where all the forensic techs and cleaning team had been. He probably can. “A couple of new ones ambushed me and Tobio-chan,” he says. “Amateurs. Probably sent by Ushiwaka⁠—⁠that’s Ushijima Wakatoshi. I can write it down if you need it. Please go arrest him incredibly publicly, Omawari-chan.”

“Shouyou,” Tobio says, the first thing he’s managed since his sire came into the apartment.

Shouyou twitches at the sound of his name. Oikawa seems to notice.

“Hinata Shouyou,” he says. He’s got Shouyou’s wallet, opened it so that he can flash around Shouyou’s drivers license.

Shouyou squawks, pulling free of Tobio so that he can go collect his things. “Give me that⁠—⁠”

Oikawa is like the river in his last name⁠—⁠as impossible as water to catch and hold. Shouyou still tries, ignoring the discrepancy in their states of dress.

“He’s . . . the one,” Tobio says suddenly, as this is going on. “From Sendai Arena.” He doesn’t need to say anything else.

Oikawa stops fighting Shouyou, giving over the wallet with a terrible amount of ease. He steps even closer once Shouyou has his ID back in his possession, bending so that Shouyou has no choice but to stare deep into his eyes. “From Sendai Arena,” he says.

The sentence crawls down Shouyou’s spine like some sort of prehistoric animal, awakening fight or flight instincts leftover from when Shouyou’s ancestors might have had tails and swam in the ocean. Somehow, Shouyou doesn’t shiver.

“Yes,” he says.

Oikawa continues to stare. Then he laughs. “Oh, I like him, Tobio-chan,” he says. “Anyway, I scared off all our would-be assassins.” The change in subject is jarring, but Shouyou keeps up regardless; it’s just like a particularly awful jump serve. With enough practice, Shouyou could learn to receive it⁠—⁠bump it to perfect tossing height with ease. “Unfortunately, Tobio-chan was extremely damaged in the process⁠—⁠dead, even.” His eyes glitter like he’s expecting Shouyou to be surprised, and he laughs again when Shouyou isn’t. “So, I gave him my blood.” He finally steps away from Shouyou. “Tobio-chan is greedy. Iwa-chan and I had to leave so that I could find Blanco,” he finishes.

“Blanco,” repeats Shouyou.

“Iwaizumi-san,” repeats Tobio.

Like some sort of . . . monster out of all the media-enhanced lore, Iwaizumi Hajime steps uncomfortably out of the shadows in the center of the living room, near the couch. Shouyou hadn’t even heard him enter the apartment, let alone realized he’d been there the entire time. From the somewhat dazed, discomforted expression on Tobio’s face, he hadn’t either. Without needing to communicate, the two of them step closer and closer together until Shouyou can feel the misleading heat of Tobio’s back against his own.

Oikawa laughs once more. He crosses the room to stand beside Iwaizumi. “Blanco is my sire,” he says, alarmingly flippant about the incredibly valuable information.

Shouyou shifts to look at the two of them, losing Tobio at his back, but unwilling to have anyone else there, either.

Iwaizumi looks like all of his pictures had too⁠—⁠standing slightly shorter than both Oikawa and Tobio with close cropped dark hair and dark brown eyes. He’s tanner than Shouyou had expected. His face is pulled into a frown; the closer Oikawa gets to him, the deeper the lines furrow on either side of his mouth.

Abruptly, Shouyou remembers that Tobio slept with them⁠—⁠with both of them⁠—⁠possibly at the same time.

“Oikawa,” Iwaizumi says. His voice is a rough warning⁠—⁠a growl. It sounds like he hasn’t spoken in years. If he ever says Shouyou’s name in that tone, Shouyou thinks he might move to a different continent.

But Oikawa is unbothered. “Who is it I need to call⁠—⁠Ai-chan? Your boss is Ai-chan?”

Shouyou is going to get a neck injury from the change in subject. “Hoshino Aiko-san is my boss, yes,” he says.

Oikawa’s lips pull up at the corners again, but he doesn’t show his fangs. That’s almost more disarming than his sharper smiles. “Ai-chan,” he says for the third time. “I’ll give her a call.” His eyes flick to Tobio again before going back to Shouyou. “You take care of my Tobio-chan,” he says. “If not, I now know where you live. Iwa-chan.” He gives an exaggerated flourish, and with a snort, Iwaizumi reaches out and takes hold of him by the back of the neck. He holds him like Shouyou imagines a wolf might a cub, and between one breath and the next, the two vampires are gone. The door doesn’t even close after them; it’s like it was never opened to begin with.

Shouyou doesn’t relax for a long time, left standing in the middle of the hallway with his shoulders almost touching Tobio’s. What feels like hours pass, and Shouyou finally lets out a gasping breath, slumping so that Tobio takes most of his weight. Aside from that too-loud exhale, neither of the two of them breathe.

“So when am I meeting your parents?” Tobio finally says, breaking the silence. He grins, sloppy and inhuman.

Shouyou cannot help but laugh and laugh. “I love you,” he says breathlessly, then regrets it⁠—⁠shit. It’s too soon.

But Tobio just smiles, shy now. “I love you too.”

Shouyou thinks they might as well go back to bed and relearn each other intimately. The world will still probably be just as on fire in the morning. Tobio clearly agrees.

“ . . . beloved vampire, Oikawa Tooru, held a fan meeting today. The event exceeded expected turnout with nearly three hundred fans in attendance . . .”

Shouyou sits idly behind his desk resting his chin in his palm, one eye on the television, which is showing footage of Oikawa Tooru basking in the attention of⁠—⁠per the newscaster’s words⁠—⁠three hundred fans. Ever since he (and Tobio) had officially closed the Oikawa case, Shouyou has been on desk duty. A rather minor punishment, to hear Hoshino-san tell it. Shouyou had just been glad not to have been fired; he wasn’t about to look the gift horse in the mouth.

But he is rather bored. Desk duty⁠—⁠even at Vampire Crimes⁠—⁠is boring, tedious work. Mostly Shouyou does research for his fellow detectives and answers the phones. In his down time, he watches the television, which is brand new. If Shouyou were interested in extending his time behind the desk, he’d say that Hoshino-san had the thing put in especially for Shouyou’s torment. Part of his report included mention of his new relationship. There seems to be no end of media coverage of Oikawa Tooru. Every time Shouyou is forced to see the vampire who is now his pseudo-in-law on screen, he swears years are shaved off of his life.

On screen, Oikawa is holding the microphone and speaking to one of the fans⁠—⁠a sobbing businessman in what Shouyou thinks is a very nice suit, company ID still looped around his neck. Shouyou checks his phone for the time. He sighs. The man must have come straight to the fan meeting after work. Shouyou wishes that were him. Instead, Shouyou swears that the stack of papers on his desk are self-replicating like bacteria.

He shifts his cheek in his palm and continues to watch Oikawa speak. “⁠—⁠but it’s okay now!” he says, on the tail end of a speech about his little excursion with Ushijima-san’s accidental assassins⁠—⁠highly sanitized to avoid any of the important details. “Because I am not dead!” Oikawa says happily.

The man holding the microphone sobs even louder.

There is a noise from beside Shouyou. “Ugh,” says Tobio. “Could you turn that off?”

Shouyou whirls to face him, upsetting his neat stack of papers in his haste. Before he can do more than groan Tobio is right there, bending to pick them up with superhuman speed. He sets them down on Shouyou’s desk with cool, pale hands. Shouyou feels them touch his own and does his best not to shiver too obviously. “Kageyama,” he says. “What are you doing here?”

Tobio’s dark blue eyes flicker. “Tobio,” he says. It’s a pout⁠—⁠one eerily reminiscent of the vampire on the television behind him. Tobio sees the direction of Shouyou’s eyes and frowns.

Shouyou reaches for the remote and shuts it off, something he’s never dared to do before. He waits with bated breath for Hoshino-san to come storming out of her office to actually fire him. She doesn’t.

“Tobio,” Shouyou breathlessly amends. “What are you doing here?”

Tobio’s lips quirk into something like a smile. It’s still unbearably clumsy and kind of a little scary⁠—⁠nothing like the suave, supposed-to-be-smooth vampires of Shouyou’s imagination. Shouyou’s heart skips a beat in spite of all that. “There’s been a crime,” Tobio says.

Shouyou blinks. “You’re here to report a crime?” he begins.

“No.” Tobio stills Shouyou with only that one muttered word. “There’s been a vampire-related crime, and you’re⁠—⁠we’re⁠—⁠going to respond.” He grins once more after speaking, and this smile is almost normal.

Shouyou stares. “Wh-what?”

“I decided I should get some sort of job,” he says. “Oikawa-san . . . pulled some strings.” He pauses to frown, clearly displeased by this, but the expression doesn’t last very long; clearly his excitement outweighs everything else. “You’re looking at the brand new vampire consultant for the Vampire Crimes Division,” Tobio finishes. Shouyou almost expects there to be some sort of explosion of confetti following the announcement.

Instead there’s just Kageyama Tobio⁠—⁠Shouyou’s vampire boyfriend⁠—⁠telling him how they’re going to be working together as partners from now.

“Vampire consultant?” says Shouyou.

“Vampire consultant,” Tobio affirms. He hesitates. “It’s on a probationary basis right now, but if it works out . . .”

“Partners,” Shouyou says.

“Partners,” Tobio agrees.

For a while they just look at each other.

“Hinata! Kageyama! Are you planning on standing around with your thumbs up your asses all day or are you going to actually go to work?” snaps Hoshino-san, disembodied voice emerging from somewhere else in the building and making Shouyou snap to military parade rest.

He grins immediately after, ruining the effect, but it’s not like she can see. He abandons his desk, grabbing for his gun and stakes and for Tobio.

It’s only once they’re halfway out the door looking for Shouyou’s police car that Shouyou pauses. “But after work we can play volleyball together?” he asks.

Tobio doesn’t even bat a very pretty eyelash. “Yeah, of course,” he says. “Dumbass.”

Shouyou smiles.