Bittersweet - ENHYPEN

Fill The Empty Me {-} Part Four

When Niki bites down, he sees stars.

No more blistering red assaulting his sight like a headache, no more suffocating pressure in the pit of his stomach, no more tantalizing memories flooding his mind.

The ache in his gums subsided, the burn in his throat was soothed, the heat in his palms settled into a tender warmth.

It's not your fault, Jake would say. It's not your fault that you need this.

Did he really need this? Objectively, no. He was stable enough now to do something rational, like find a stray cat, or even venture over to the swine field, but Jake was always...here. He offered himself so willingly that Niki didn't know how to say no.

That explains, poorly, why right now Niki's fangs were so compliantly sunk into the soft skin of Jake's wrist, and why the expression that lined the human's face was something terribly close to adoration, while half his body weight rested against the wall.

It was his right arm today, being leeched off like Niki's own personal lifeline. A bandage wrapped tenderly across Jake's left wrist, and he had already prepared a matching one to use once this feeding was done. They alternated, like this was the most normal thing in the world, just enough time between each unquenchable thirst to have one of the bites heal.

This victory tasted far too sweet to just give up, and Niki's self control certainly agreed.

It was only when Jake winced that Niki regained a conscious thought, and subsided, detaching his fangs with a twinge of sorrow he couldn't mask.

"I'm sorry," he mutters, even though he isn't. Not enough.

"Stop apologizing, Niki," Jake pulls himself properly upright, pawing around for the bandages, still clearly suffering the effects of the vampiric daze. His speech was slightly slurred, and his eyelids were heavy. A portion of Niki's brain, a much too powerful one, told him to prey on this evident weakness, to nip the defenseless life at the bud while he could, but he felt gutted at the thought of any harm coming Jake's way. "You're so caught up with thinking I'm against you. I'm not."

An unbandaged arm, streak of red still trailing along the length of his skin, comes up to hold Niki's hands, and his eyes are pulled up to meet Jake's gaze like they belonged there. "I promise."

"Everything is against me," Niki mutters again, gently retracting his hands. "It makes no difference."

At that, Jake looks genuinely upset. Niki avoids his eyes.

"You can tell yourself that all you want," Jake says, voice still soft, but there was a distinct tone of hurt biting into each word. "That doesn't change my mind."

Niki wasn't entirely sure what he was supposed to pull from that. A grumbling pity stirs in his stomach, the delight of human blood quarreling with the restless guilt that pooled and stuck to every portion of his insides, and right now the guilt was winning.

If he closed his eyes, he could see flickers of red behind his eyelids, and still flinches when he relives the teeth baring into his arm. Claws blistering the skin around it. His eyes.

"I'm not trying to change your mind," he bitterly mutters, head hung, hands falling idly against the warped floorboards. Your own doing, his brain reminded him. You've been the culprit this entire time.

"Good, because it's not working," Jake finished wrapping his wrist, and the satiated pulse of his veins beginning to work at healing the wound made Niki's gums ache all over again. "You just—"

He sighs, dropping his hovering hands, furrowed expression gliding to Niki's brooding form with a heavy breath of pity washing over the room. "I don't want to argue with you, Niki. I just want you to listen to me." He reaches out for Niki's hand again. "Can you do that for me?"