Light (2025)

Light Mode

“...Can I?’ Viktor asks, head cocked to the side. Eilhart raises an eyebrow, cigarette carefully perched between fanged teeth as he speaks. “It’s, uh, my last one.” He hopes the blonde doesn’t notice.

“I’d probably end up wasting a whole stick if you did,” Viktor muses, taking the opportunity to inch closer to the Toreador. Eilhart pretends not to notice. “Mind sharing that one?”

There’s a coy smile on the blonde’s face.

Too easy, the hunger at the back of his mind reminds him, but a different part of him wants to see how this would all play out. Ever since the start of his undeath he had never been the one to be hunted down, after all. Always the hunter, never the prey. Cursed to want, but never to be wanted in return.

So, he hesitates for a moment. Sucks a tar-tinged breath in, weighing if another night or two of hunger was worth whatever curiosity he’d thought about indulging.

Surely curiosity would bring him back, no?

“...Knock yourself out,” he sighs, letting the smoke filter through his teeth before taking the stick from his mouth and handing it over to the blonde.

Viktor takes the cigarette offered to him, letting his fingers linger against the kindred’s own a few milliseconds too long, before placing the filter gingerly between his lips. With a smile and a wink, he promptly takes a drag, only to send himself into a coughing fit afterwards.

“S-sorry,” He says after a moment, still coughing, while handing over the barely-depleted stub to Eilhart, who could only stand and watch in concern. “Haven’t had one in — cough — ages.”

“...It’s alright.” Eilhart toys with the cigarette for a bit, tapping the ashes off before placing it back between his own lips. He can see the blonde glancing at his lips for a second too long before he raises a hand to his hair, combing his fingers through bleached strands in between a cough or two. “You didn’t look like the type to smoke, to be honest.”

“Definitely not!” Viktor says, laughing. It’s a boisterous laugh, cutting through the silence of the relatively lonely alley that the two had found themselves in. He leans against the dark brick of the adjacent wall right next to Eilhart, barely illuminated by the little light that had seeped into the alley.

“Must’ve looked pathetic, though,” Even in the dim lighting Eilhart can see the whites of his teeth as he gives him a toothy smile, the edges of his eyes crinkling. “Even though I’m the one who invited you out here, heh.”

…He tries to not stare. Even harder when the blonde opens his eyes and he could see the faint embers from his cigarette reflected in the blues of his irises, staring directly into his own. It takes a few seconds for him to pull his own eyes away from the other man, only to be interrupted by a pale hand reaching for his face, pulling the two together. He lets it happen.

He pretends to hold his breath as he watches as the blonde pluck the cigarette from his lips with his other hand, letting it fall onto the pavement unceremoniously. He should’ve been more worried about the embers, a distant thought reminds him, but he finds himself frozen in place instead.

Viktor is distractingly warm, Eilhart thinks.

It’s all his mind can focus on until he feels lips against his own, tinged with what he recognizes as alcohol and mint and want. So, he tries to reciprocate. Cracked lips pressing back awkwardly, almost too chaste against the blonde’s more insistent motions.

It earns him a laugh as Viktor pulls back ever-so-slightly to get a good look at the kindred, the scent of tobacco lingering between the two. Eilhart finds himself leaning into his hand.

“Relax,” the blonde says, smiling, before dragging the hand on the kindred’s cheek down until his fingers find his chin, fingers scratching against the greying stubble. He tilts his head up ever so slightly, “Just follow me, yeah?”

The kindred nods, swallowing nothing. The hunger can wait another night, he thinks.