Rare (Vampire Knight)

Chapter 22

Shane was sat on Charlotte's bed as she flitted around her room, shoving outfits into a small suitcase. He leafed through her copy of Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. He hummed quietly as he read her book and lifted his feet when she instructed and put them back down when she said he was fine. "Do I have to go with you on holiday to your family's villa?"

She sighed exasperatedly, "Yes. All of us have to leave. You can't go back to your family, so you'll have to come with us... plus I'm supposed to be keeping an eye on you and I've been doing a very shit job of it so far, as a lot of things had come up... so, you have to come. Stop whining and suck it up." He groaned, annoyance was clear in his reaction and he sighed, closing the book and setting it down on her bed beside him to watch the girl, a compelling need to observe her as she moved. She stopped suddenly, stopped mid-way into putting a pair of dark red trousers into her suitcase. Charlotte looked over at him with a strange look in her dark blue eyes. "Hey, Shane. Do me a favour, yeah?"

"Uh..." he trailed off, tilted his head to the side at her sudden question, a wariness taking over him as she walked closer to him. "Sure, what is it?" She stood still for a few seconds, looking at him with her blue eyes, an unreadable emotion in them before she walked towards him, climbing on her bed and crawling across to sit in front of him, an almost childish look in her eyes. "Why are you looking at me like that? I'm a bit scared, honestly."

She held out her wrist, a bright smile on her face, "Take my blood. You're a bit pale and I'm afraid the tablets won't give you what you need, as you're a bit too malnourished at the moment. I'm supposed to be taking care of you, aren't I?" He looked at her in silence for several seconds, not quite understanding why she would be doing such a thing, even for him. The past fortnight since he had arrived, people either didn't pay attention to him─which he didn't mind─or were a bit cold to him, almost demanding why he got Charlotte's attention rather than them, why an ex-human got the attention of a powerful vampire a lot quicker than an aristocrat, someone who was born into vampirism.

"I... uh... are you sure...? I'm fine, actually..." He didn't know what to do. He could see the veins in her arm as she presented it, hear her heart beating softly and her blood rushing through her veins the moment she presented her pale wrist to him. There were two parts of him, one he sometimes felt wasn't his own but the other was strikingly his own, both were screaming at him, one to drink her blood and the other cursing at him and demanding he not. The one yelling at him to not drink her blood was far stronger than his own voice that was telling him to, making it known to him that he was, in fact, hungry. He wanted to reach out and grab her wrist, but the voice that wasn't his own was suddenly in control of him and he found himself shaking his head with a fake smile, "No thank you, I'm not hungry."

Charlotte narrowed her eyes at him and she scooted forward, "It wasn't a question, Shane. I was informing you to be nice, you're going to drink my blood. I need you at your peak health. Let's hope you don't hate me after this, yeah?" She brought her own wrist to her mouth, feeling her fangs elongate on their own and she bit into her wrist, right into the most visible vein. She lurched forward and placed her wrist in his open mouth as he was about to cry out in surprise. She was a bit glad that ex-humans had a more instinctual reaction to blood than aristocrats. Ex-humans were able to fight off the scent of blood─as long as they weren't Level E's─but once it was in their mouths they were like sharks, unable to let go as the blood touched their tongues.

Charlotte made a sturgeon face at the feeling of Shane's fangs fitting almost perfectly into the wounds she had made with her own. The only thing was his fangs were a tad longer than hers and she felt them slide farther into her wrist, further puncturing her vein, allowing him to get better access. She sat there quietly with her eyes closed at the feeling of someone drinking her blood, but she hoped it had the effect on him like she guessed it would. She could feel his mind touching hers as he drank her blood, feeling him witnessing her memories and it took a bit of effort to shut the portion of herself off to him, so he couldn't see, so whoever had controlled him before couldn't see in the possibility that they were still in his head.