Thread by @discokonomi

Because I am a simple man who wants simple things
#TadaAi vampire fic
Tadashi becomes a vampire; nothing really changes.
Adam finds out and suddenly everything does.

M, cw: blood, biting, usual vampire nonsense, weird mind powers

Note: Tadashi drinks a blood substitute that's basically seitan for vampires. I just think it's funny.

It happens, finally, the night before a press conference.
Adam's sitting in front of his vanity, finishing off his skincare routine, the intricate rituals of serums and moisturizers so foreign to Tadashi.
Tadashi's waiting in an armchair, reviewing the schedule for tomorrow.

"Oh, puppy," Adam sighs, "youth is wasted on the young." He's waiting for his serum to dry, investigating the corners of his eyes.
Tadashi hums, absently.
"I might be getting wrinkles," he says. "Crow's feet!" He despairs. "Laugh lines!" He mourns.

"Your skin is soft and smooth, sir," Tadashi replies.
"You look healthy, and your face commands respect. I'd even say you look younger than you are; people are at risk of underestimating you," he says, hint of a smile.

Adam sighs. "I didn't ask for you to flatter me, though I do so appreciate it, pet."
"My apologies, sir."
"Now, now. To err is human."
And Tadashi, well.
He can't help but laugh a little.
He's only human after all.

The serum dries, the moisturizer goes on, and Adam leans back in his seat.
"It's not like you'd understand anyway," he says.
"Understand what, sir?"
"The struggles of constantly seeking perfection by finding and combating imperfections."

He turns toward Tadashi then, his dewy skin glistening in the dim light of his bedroom, deep blue robe wrapped around him, like he's the night sky.
"I don't think you've had a wrinkle in your life."
Tadashi gulps.

Adam is right, of course; Tadashi's been, well, ageless for almost a decade now.
And even before then he was practiced in the art of keeping a straight face, no room for worry lines to cross his forehead.

"In fact," Adam says, peering over at Tadashi, who is grateful suddenly for the half light. He's never been fearful of the night, not till now.
"It's almost like you haven't aged at all."

"Lucky genetics," Tadashi hedges. His dad went grey by 27 and his mom's wrinkles had wrinkles at their wedding. Surely they cancel each other out.
"Hmm," Adam says, and turns back to the vanity.

It's not that he thought Adam wouldn't notice forever; it's just that well, it's taken an awfully long time.
There's an inflection point where Tadashi's endless youth would become noticeable against Adam's age, but that was so far afield he hadn't begun planning for it.

There have been /so many/ little things in the meantime though; incongruous details that form one barely logical whole.
A connect the dots that spells out Vampire.

Tadashi can't remember the last time he ate in front of Adam; he drinks weird blood smoothies once a month - a grass blend recommended by his sire - and protects that section of the garden in the budget ledgers with his life.

The one time he’d been forced to eat - where it would have been the height of rudeness to refuse - he excused himself immediately after, claiming an allergic reaction over a cookie.
A shortbread cookie, the blandest thing imaginable.

When he emerged from a 12 hour anaphylactic nightmare, Adam asked if he'd developed a gluten intolerance. Gluten!

He avoids mirrors, the tinted windows of their car, standing awkwardly away from the car door when he opens it for Adam.

At a fundraiser in a garlic-ridden Italian restaurant, he'd spend the whole time wiping away the venomous tears leaking from his eyes with handkerchiefs that burned from the poison escaping him.

He's been blessed by the ability to walk in daylight - thank all the gods - which baffled his sire, a short and nervous man named Jun who was pushing 200 years and lived in quiet isolation in a dark apartment in Tokyo.

They'd met when Jun love-tapped him with his motorcycle one night when he had been running a late errand for Aiichiro; he'd only been a little bit unconscious, but Jun has been inconsolable and turned him immediately.

"Can you imagine how I'd suffer" he'd said, "if I let someone die when I knew I could save them?"

"Right," Tadashi had replied, bitter about the suit Jun had torn in his haste and the deep bite marks in his wrist. "But I don't think I even broke a single bone."

"And besides," Tadashi continued. "You had to kill me to turn me anyway."
And Jun, already a nervous wreck, had cried tears of venom, burning more and more of Tadashi's suit as they soaked into the fabric.

He wasn't the greatest sire either, sending Tadashi texts at 3 am about random American reality shows, leading Adam to seethe with quiet jealousy at his "/new friend/" until he'd muted the thread.

Jun hadn't even explained the whole thing about powers until Tadashi had called him, panicked, a week into his new life, when people's eyes would glaze over and walk away from him when they were in the middle of conversation.

"It sounds like you're easily forgettable," he'd said.
"What does that mean?" Tadashi hissed.
What it meant was this - every vampire had some weird, low level power, unique to their personality and circumstances.

Besides the "really confusing; I'd ask other vamps about it but they make me nervous" daywalking, Tadashi was able to make himself be forgotten, ignored. A fly on the wall of any conversation.
Jun, meanwhile, could read people's emotions. "So I know when they're tired of me."

The only real blessing, besides the money Tadashi saves on never needing a haircut again, is that this all happened whole Adam was in America, so there was no need to explain away his week's absence to a man who knew him too well.

And besides, Tadashi had thought. Adam's sharp. He'll catch on pretty quickly, and I won't ever half to say it.

It's been over seven years now that Tadashi's been a creature of the night, and Adam hasn't said a single thing about it.

It's a tense wire to be balanced on; does Adam know? Does he dare hint at it, test the waters? Is Adam truly oblivious?
But Tadashi's never been good at circus acts - Adam was the ringmaster, and Tadashi drove the train.

Tadashi let out a breath he didn't need to hold; if Adam's dance with vanity didn't settle the matter, he's not sure what would.
His death cold skin could be written off as fear; his uncanny silence as training.

The way he can slip into and out of a room unnoticed, deliver messages to Adam that no one else seems to hear? The mark of a good secretary.
His steadfast devotion to Ainosuke? That's for him, and him alone.

He's so lost in a sea of relief that he doesn't notice Adam adjust a panel of his mirror to fit the two of them in frame; the household is run perfectly, and the hinge is well oiled. Not a hint of a sqeak.

When he looks up, it's only Adam's face that is staring back at him in the mirror, only his eyes that can greet the reflection.
His irises are crimson and dark, pupils wide in the half light.

"Puppy," he says, hint of a snarl on his tongue. "Care to explain what's going on here?"

Tadashi gulps; the tie and collar floating in the mirror, headless and uncanny, shake with him.

"There's no reasonable explanation for this," Adam says; voice dark, a warning.

Somehow Adam's eyes meet his through the mirror, even with his own lack of reflection.

He feels pinned - to the chair, to this room, to Adam. The power of his gaze; the inky darkness of his eyes, black pools in firey magna, sear him from the inside out.

Tadashi is a creature of the night; he should feel no fear in the darkness, gain power by starlight.

But the same power that grants him protection from the sun's rays denies him the strength he can leech from the night sky.

The false blood inside him hums. For the first time in a long time he is aware of hunger.
That's what he sees in Adam's eyes. Hunger.

Tadashi has never been powered by blood-lust, only service; but in the way he's been twined to Ainosuke since their childhood, since their gazes met in the rose bushes of their own Eden, he can see in eyes that aren't his own the hunger he's kept hidden all these years.

There's a way that the quiet moment between the spark and the flame can seem to stretch out and span eternity.

Tadashi can feel, in that immortal pause, the way Adam's heartbeat burns inside of him, reaches out to his own false-blood which yearns to answer the call.

That fragile tattoo, that proof of life.

And then, the way a candle's flame burns through old letters, he pounces.

He crosses the room in an instant. Fast enough to weave one hand into the threads of Adam's hair, to press down on his shoulder with the other, to pull and expose the cord of muscle, the delicate heat, the shivery pulse of the neck.

Fast enough for his fangs to extend, for him to lean in so the very tips of them just barely rest against the skin, dripping with venom.

Fast enough for his eyes to cloud over with this feeling so foreign, so timeless.

But not fast enough to register the upturn of Adam's lips as he approaches, to consider the allure of Adam's warmth - the very same call he'd been trying to stress for years.

The heat is what registers first. The blood below Adam's skin, the warmth emanating from his neck, the way the venom sizzles when it dribbles onto flesh.
The way it spreads through Tadashi, burning his lips.

It cuts through the fog of his mind, clears a path from his eyes to the mirror - he looks, he sees.
Adam, neck red with Tadashi's wanting, eyes still dark, his smile long and lean.

In the mirror, without the grace of his reflection, it looks like Adam is extending his own neck to him; an offering, so sweet. The freely given illusion.

That's what snaps Tadashi out of it - the phantom of this false gift.
Tadashi is the one who gives; grants Adam the freedom to take.
But when he tries to pull back, retract the fangs, stop leeching the warmth, that's when Adam reacts.

Like a snake, his arm reaches up and back and he has Tadashi's head, just like that.
Fingers entangled in his hair, a grip pulling tight.

Tadashi releases his own hands, lets his head hang there, suspended only by Adam.
Adam drops his head more, lets his smile grow.
His eyes meet Tadashi's through the mirror, uncanny aim to an invisible target.

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