Rating:

Mature

Archive Warnings:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories:

M/M, F/M

Fandoms:

Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander & Ilya Rozanov, David Hollander/Yuna Hollander, David Hollander & Yuna Hollander

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Yuna Hollander, David Hollander

Additional Tags:

tags added as fic updates, Season/Series 01, Supernatural Elements, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Vampires, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Werewolves, Vampire Shane Hollander, half vampire shane, Werewolf Ilya Rozanov, werewolf irina rozanova, Scars, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Sex, First Meetings, Scents & Smells, Alternate Universe, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Biting, eventually, kind of a canon rewrite but there will be new scenes as well because i think that makes it interesting, POV Alternating, POV Third Person Limited, POV Shane Hollander, POV Ilya Rozanov, POV David Hollander, Autistic Yuna Hollander, Developing Relationship, Discrimination, Getting to Know Each Other, Hockey, Vampire David Hollander, Human/Vampire Relationship, Werewolf/Vampire Relationship, Autistic David Hollander, tbh, Pre-Season/Series 01

Language:

English

Series:

Part 1 of bite my neck // suck my blood

Stats:

Published: 2026-03-04 Updated: 2026-03-28 Words: 5,421 Chapters: 2/?

deseos de morderte

Summary

“You are vampire?” Rozanov asked, replacing his cigarette between his lips. He lit the end and took a long drag.

“Uh,” Shane blinked at him. “Half, technically. And you’re… a werewolf.”

Notes

title from pervert pop song by plastillina mosh which has been on my loop playlist all week!!

Chapter 1: Introduction

It was a cold October in Saskatchewan. Shane tugged his beanie down further over his ears as he stepped out the door, eyes trained on the figure leaning against the wall a few meters away.

“Ilya Rozanov?” He called out as he approached. The man looked up from where his hands were cupped around his face, revealing the unlit cigarette perched between his lips. Shane hoped his surprise didn’t show on his face—how could one of the top prospects be so willing to risk his health like that? Still, he offered his hand. “Shane Hollander, I wanted…”

The wind shifted, and Shane trailed off at the mix of scents it brought with it: cigarette smoke, cologne, something sharp and metallic, and a musky sort of fur smell. He stared at Rozanov, shocked. From the knowing smirk that touched the other man’s lips, he’d recognized Shane’s surprise, as well as what it was for. He took the cigarette from his mouth with one hand and shook Shane’s with the other.

“You are vampire?” He asked, replacing his cigarette and pulling his lighter from where he’d stashed it in his pocket when Shane first approached him. He lit the end and took a long drag.

“Uh,” Shane blinked at him. Right, werewolves had good senses of smell, too. Obviously. “Half, technically. And you’re… a werewolf.”

“Mm,” Rozanov said noncommittally. He turned his head away from Shane and exhaled a cloud of smoke.

“You’re an awesome player to watch,” Shane said.

Rozanov turned back to look at him. “Yes.”

Shane wasn’t sure what to make of that. He was still wrapping his head around the fact that there were other inhumans in the sport—he’d never met or heard of any, which made sense regardless of whether there actually were any. He certainly wasn’t forthcoming about his own inheritance, so he could understand others doing the same, but it was still surprising to encounter another inhuman in the same field when it seemed like, for all intents and purposes, he was all alone.

Safe to say he had a lot of questions. But before he could voice any of them, Rozanov had placed his cigarette back between his lips, and all Shane could think to say was: “I don’t think you’re supposed to smoke here.”

“Okay,” Rozanov replied, blowing his smoke off to the side again. Shane’s eyes caught on his jawline, and the way his hair curled out from under his beanie. His body felt too warm, his mouth too dry. The smell of smoke and fur tickled his nose. For a moment, the two of them just stared at each other, the gap between them looming awkwardly—Shane had so much to say, and no idea how to say it.

So he didn’t.

“Anyways, I—I should go,” He glanced back at the door he’d come from. “They’re waiting for me. But, um, good luck,” he added, extending his hand again. Rozanov reached out to take it, again, a smile turning the corners of his mouth upwards. He was very handsome, Shane couldn’t help but notice, and he felt his cheeks flush a little at the thought.

As he turned to leave, Rozanov called out, “You will not be so nice when we beat you.”

“No, that’s—That’s not happening.” Shane retorted, but he was smiling. For some reason, the chirp didn’t feel all that antagonistic—it was almost playful. Rozanov inclined his head slightly in response, akin to a shrug.

“See you in final,” he said.

Shane went back inside. When the door closed behind him, it took the smell of cigarettes and fur with it.

It was hard to smell much of anything on the rink besides the ice itself. To Ilya, who relied a lot on his sense of smell to tell him who and where people were outside of his field of vision, it had been a difficult learning curve when he began to play professionally. Now, he was a bit more used to it, though it was still a little disorienting right at the start of a game.

This was part of why Ilya didn’t love hockey as much as his dad wanted him to. It wasn’t that he disliked it, of course, but Ilya’s love had never been so much for the sport of hockey as it was for the act of playing it. He loved flying across the ice and chasing the puck and getting physical with other players, and he really loved winning. But he got the same enjoyment from roughhousing with Sveta, or running around chasing squirrels in the woods as a wolf. He was just lucky that hockey let him feel that way while also doubling as an extremely well-paying and famous job. Even if it was difficult to coordinate his shifting around his game schedule, especially around full moons, when the line between his humanity and his wolf began to blur.

The International Prospect Cup final, Russia vs. Canada, was intense. Ilya checked Shane Hollander into the boards, a thrill running down his spine at the brief sensation of the other man’s firm muscle under his padding before shooting the puck out from under their skates. They chased it across the ice, skates leaving slashes and shaved snow like open wounds in their wake. Hollander was a fucking incredible opponent, and Ilya hadn’t felt so alive in a very long time.

Russia won. When he got to Hollander in the handshake line, Ilya leaned in partly to tease him and partly for the chance to catch a whiff of him. He hoped to see him again soon—vampire or not, Shane Hollander seemed like easy, naive prey.

After their first meeting, though, they barely interacted with each other beyond chirps and checks and the occasional press conference. So Ilya took it upon himself to make the first move, and arranged a photoshoot for the two of them together, which, based on their interaction in the shower afterwards, seemed to do the trick. Hollander fell hook, line, and sinker, and Ilya was excited for a good fuck and a fun night.

Ilya was used to one night stands—in fact, usually it was an established rule for him to never hook up with the same person more than once. Otherwise, they tended to get attached. Sveta was a rare exception to this rule, obviously, as she had been his closest and dearest friend since as long as he could remember.

So, naturally, he assumed that night with Hollander would be much the same as any other hookup. Of course, there was the added appeal of getting to teach him the ins and outs of how things worked with another guy, because there was no way Hollander had done that before. In that sense, he was technically correct: Hollander was very new to being gay.

What Ilya hadn’t expected was, well… everything else about Shane Hollander. He was visibly nervous, of course, but also so eager, and responsive, and endearingly awkward. The fluttery swooping of Ilya’s stomach when he watched Hollander fold his clothes as he undressed was frankly embarrassing, yet he couldn’t stop a smile from breaking out across his face. He left before Shane could tell him to go, strongly averse, all of a sudden, to hearing even that slight form of rejection.

“Good night,” he said, watching Hollander watch him from where he was still sitting, arms crossed, on the bed.

“Night.” Hollander replied. Ilya breathed in the scent of him that lingered by the door: sweat, cedarwood, ice. And, underneath it all, the copper tang of blood.

Chapter 2: The Beginning: David & Yuna

Chapter Notes

David Hollander came from a long line of “true” vampires. His parents were both vampires by birth, and so were their parents, and so were theirs, and thus so was he. In addition to the whole vampire thing, though, his family was also incredibly Canadian. They had been in the country almost since the first Frenchmen, and had assimilated well. Given that vampires tended to have children few and far between, only a few generations passed between then and when David was born in the mid-20th century. Despite everything, his experience growing up was not unlike human kids his age, albeit with a layer of secrecy unfamiliar to them.

Part of being Canadian was, of course, hockey. David loved hockey, and had ever since he was young. He went to hockey camp over every winter break, joined the little league in primary school and later his high school’s hockey team. In his free time, when it was cold enough that the pond near his house was frozen over, he and some friends would clear out the snow and make the ice smooth for a makeshift rink. He would go out there every day he could, alone or not, rushing through his homework after school to make more time for skating.

It was a Saturday, and David lugged his net along with the rest of his hockey gear to the pond for the purpose of practicing shooting. He started with a few short stretches and got to it, relishing in the sound of his skates cutting into the ice and the slap of his stick against the puck, again and again.

“Your weight is off-balance and it’s affecting your aim.”

David jumped so hard his skates almost slipped out from under him, turning to face whoever it was who had managed to sneak up on him. He was supposed to have much better senses than regular humans, and yet somehow had managed to be so focused on his task that he completely missed someone sneaking up behind him.

The someone in question was, to his surprise, an Asian teenage girl. She had long, dark hair, brown eyes, and a focused frown on her face, and was bundled up in a puffer jacket, a worn-looking hat, and wooly mittens.

David just stared at her, taken off-guard and not sure how to respond. Eventually, he asked, “Who are you?”

The girl’s eyes flicked over his face, then down to his skates, then past him to the net. “My name’s Yuna.”

“Okay,” said David. “Um… what are you doing here?”

Yuna seemed to bristle at that. “I just came across you and wanted to watch. I like to walk around here sometimes. It’s not only your lake, I’m allowed to be here.”

“I—no, yeah, of course.”

“Okay. Good,” Yuna said. She put her hands in her pockets and looked to the side, as if she was thinking of leaving.

“Do you play hockey?” David blurted.

Yuna narrowed her eyes at him. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“I don’t know,” he shrugged. “You were just, you know, giving advice on my shot, so I was wondering.”

“Right,” Yuna said. “Right, well, yeah. I do play, sometimes. Mostly I strategize. But I know how to play. I’m good at it.”

David nodded slowly. He didn’t know too many girls who were all that interested in hockey. “Okay,” he said, tapping his stick aimlessly on the ice. “You said I was off-balance?”

“Oh! Yes, let me show you.” She reached for his stick. Bewildered and more than a little intrigued, David handed it over.

He quickly discovered that Yuna wasn’t just good at hockey. She was really, really good. David was a little ashamed that he’d initially assumed she wasn’t, but that assumption was rectified almost immediately. She was really good at not just identifying issues with his form—that was something his coaches had been doing for years—but also finding clear and easy ways to fix them. They had an almost two year age difference between them, with David being seventeen to her fifteen, but talking to her was refreshing largely because she seemed so much more mature than most of his peers. Though, to be fair, hockey players didn’t exactly have a reputation for being particularly intelligent or mature.

The next time David went out to the pond, just the next day at the same time as the first, it was with the sneaking hope that Yuna would show up again. She did. This time, she brought her own stick, but no skates.

“I usually get rentals when I go to public rinks,” she explained when he asked. “I used to have my own pair but I grew out of them in primary school and never got new ones.”

David didn’t really get it—she clearly still loved hockey; why not just replace the skates? He would have asked more, but she seemed a little standoffish about the whole thing and so the conversation moved on to other things, namely hockey. Since Yuna didn’t have her own skates, they couldn’t really scrimmage or anything like that, so they decided to spend another day practicing shooting. Yuna liked to make a competition out of it, probably because she kept winning.

And so they kept meeting up. To schedule meeting times during the school week, they exchanged landline numbers, which turned into long phone calls where they talked about anything and everything. They went to different schools, and had no friends in common, and it was refreshing to be able to talk to someone so different from the environment David was used to. Once she got comfortable, Yuna was extremely funny, all witty banter and smart comments. She loved to poke fun at the fact that David was always wearing baseball caps or other brimmed hats, and he decidedly didn’t explain that it was to protect his face from the sun that would burn him a lot worse and a lot faster than it did humans.

But besides that, David felt like he could actually talk to her about anything—he barely had any other friends who were girls, let alone ones as close as this. In that way, he was grateful that nobody else in his life knew about Yuna, because he could imagine his friends from school looking at him funny for being so close with a girl he wasn’t even dating.

The first Christmas after they met, David bought her a new pair of hockey skates. His own family wasn’t big on holidays, and he wasn’t super close with them even outside of that, but he assumed she had plans with her own family, so he waited to give her the gift until their first hangout afterwards.

“How was your Christmas and Boxing Day?” David asked when they met on the pond, holding the gift, wrapped in brown parchment paper, under his arm. “Wait, do you do… Christmas and Boxing Day?”

Yuna sent him a brief glare. “Yes.” She said shortly. “I was born and raised in Canada, yes, I do Christmas and Boxing Day.”

“Right,” David said. “Sorry. Um, I got you something.”

He took the gift in both hands and offered it to her. Yuna took it, her expression melting into one of surprise.

“Oh,” She looked up at him. “Thank you. I didn’t… I feel bad, I didn’t get you anything.”

“Don’t worry about it, I’m used to it. Ah, my family doesn’t really do Christmas.” David waved her off. Her brow furrowed a little, but it quickly smoothed out when he gestured to the gift. “Come on, open it.”

Yuna did, methodically unwrapping the (somewhat sloppy) brown paper packaging instead of ripping it apart like most people. Beneath the wrapping was a skate bag, and it was obvious what the bulky shapes within it were when she recognized what it was. Yuna’s eyes snapped up to David’s, shock written all over her face.

Before she could say anything, though, David urged: “Open it!”

She hesitated for only a moment before doing just that, hands trembling a little as she unzipped the bag and pulled out two brand new, sleek black hockey skates. She stared at them, a complex mix of emotions running across her face.

“Do you like them?” David asked, nervous all of a sudden.

Yuna looked at him, eyes glassy. “I can’t accept this, it’s… how much did you spend?”

“It’s not a big deal, I mean, I had the money…” David trailed off, watching Yuna seemingly struggle to find words. It was a little unnerving—he’d never seen her so unsure of what to say. “Look, I just thought, you never got new ones, but you obviously love hockey, and also I thought it would be fun if you had a pair so we could scrimmage or something, you know? I just—”

Yuna almost barrelled him over with the force of her hug. She still wasn’t saying anything, but this was a good sign, right? David brought his arms up to return the embrace, feeling something warm flutter in his chest.

“Thank you,” Yuna said, pulling away and scrubbing at her eyes.

“Yeah, of course.” David returned, smiling. “We can play together for real now!”

Yuna laughed. “Yeah!”

The next time they got together, she gave him an Ottawa Centaurs cap, citing he “needed to represent the home team.”

Canada was known for its cold weather, but it still had seasons, and winter eventually came to a close. David, being in his final year of secondary school, had sent out his share of university applications earlier in the school year and was just waiting on decisions. While school got easier, as he was in the final stretch, the change of seasons always brought David some unique challenges.

Winter was easy because it was cold and often cloudy outside, meaning he had good reason to cover his skin as much as possible and minimize sun exposure, but the warmer the weather got, the harder it was to keep that up. Vampires ran colder than humans, but not so much that it didn’t get stifling to wear long sleeves outside under direct sun. David had a bit of a reputation as a shut-in during the summer for this reason.

At least it was easier to smell things, once the cold-scent of ice and snow stopped being so overpowering. David was quickly fascinated by the faint scent of sweet spice that seemed to follow Yuna around.

“We’re running out of blood,” David’s mom announced one night, rifling through the contents of their blood fridge. She closed the door and looked at her husband. “Do we still have, ah… Augustin’s number? Is he still smuggling from blood banks?”

“Actually,” David piped up from his seat at the kitchen island. “I heard they’re setting up blood donation centres for vampires. Part of the new outreach programs, you know? Trying to make us less scary.”

He shrank under the sudden, sharp weight of his parent’s glares.

“Absolutely not.” His father said. “Could you be any more naive? Do you have any idea how many of us I have seen slaughtered because they dared spill their secret to a human? We’ve been keeping this a secret for centuries, and for good reason. No, letting the government know about us is just putting a target on our backs.”

“They seem honest, though,” David argued. “There’s anti-discrimination laws, and everything. There’s a guy in my English class who’s a selkie, and people are pretty normal about it. And we don’t even have to be open about it like that, you know, we can just… get the blood donation and not tell anybody.”

“No, David. That’s enough.” His mother snapped, firm. “Put the thought out of your mind entirely; you know better than that. Nobody can know. It’s dangerous. Think of what happened to my cousin Alex.”

David shut his mouth. Alex had been killed by Hunters several decades ago, prompting his parents’ move to Ottawa. They didn’t talk about him much outside of his death, but then again, his parents weren’t very close with the rest of their family in general. Something to do with a disagreement over whether it was ethical to hunt humans. His parents didn’t even like humans all that much, and definitely held an antiquated sense of superiority over them, but they respected them enough that they didn’t like hunting them the way other vampires did.

Given all of that, David was a little frustrated that they were open-minded enough for that, but not enough to take advantage of a system that would allow them to not steal from blood banks. But, well, they were both over a century old, and it was difficult to change opinions that had been held as truth for so long.

Ultimately, David ended up at McGill. He tried out for the hockey team, of course, and got in. A few people from his high school were also attending the university, but none that he knew well and they didn’t really talk. He ended up falling out of contact with much of his high school friend group, the distance and difference in schedules making it difficult to consistently communicate, especially when everybody was making new friends at their universities. David did, however, keep up with Yuna, still phoning at least once a week, usually more.

(And, despite his argument with his parents, he didn’t tell anybody about being a vampire. Not yet, anyways. He kept a minifridge tucked under his bed to store blood in, and covered it with a blanket to hide it from anyone who might happen to look.)

A year passed without much fanfare. When Yuna graduated high school, he drove back home to attend her graduation and the radiant smile on her face when she saw him in the crowd made his heart flip over in his chest. After the ceremony, she hugged him and introduced him to her parents, who gave him a knowing once-over that made him feel a little bit like a bug under a microscope.

Yuna had a family dinner that night, which David was understandably not invited to, but they agreed to hang out the next day.

It was nice—spending time together just like they used to. They competed in skipping stones on the surface of the pond for a while, then sat down at a bench off to the side to talk.

“I just feel like there’s so much that I’m interested in, and I can’t decide on just one.” Yuna said, digging the toe of her shoe into the soft dirt.

“Well, you’ve got time to decide. I know a guy who’s changed his major probably five times by now, and we’re only in our second semester!” David replied. “You don’t have to go in knowing exactly what you want to do. I don’t know exactly what kind of job I want right now either.”

“I guess,” Yuna sighed. She was quiet for a bit. Then: “What do you know about vampires? Or just inhumans in general?”

David tensed minutely at the question. “Not… not too much, I don’t think. Why?”

“Ah, nothing much. Just because of the thing with the blood donation place in town.”

David winced. He’d heard about this from his parents—a few weeks ago, a group of humans had raided and torn down the vampire blood donation stand. A few of his classmates had talked about it too, but university culture tended to lean progressive, and the general consensus that he’d seen from the students was of denouncing the event and resounding support for the vampire community.

“Oh, yeah,” he said lamely.

“What do you think of it?” Yuna asked. When he looked over at her, she was staring back with a thoughtful frown on her face.

“I think it was bad,” David said. “Obviously. I, um, I’m… It’s disheartening that people hate inhumans so much. They’re not hurting anybody.”

“Exactly!” Yuna agreed. “I have a friend who’s a witch and she wouldn’t hurt a fly, but everybody’s scared of her at school. There was a group of kids who tried to start a petition to ban her and the other inhumans at school from going to prom. It didn’t get far, thank God, but it sucks that there’s such a loud minority that’s so hateful. It’s… it just makes me so mad—always the same fucking bigotry messing things up for people who haven’t done anything wrong. Do you have any idea how tiring it is to be constantly underestimated or belittled for something you can’t change? It’s fucking exhausting.”

David nodded, words stuck behind his tongue. He thought about his parents insisting that nobody could know, and hunched his shoulders at the way he was beginning to agree. Many people meant well, but the few that didn’t could do so much harm.

“Do you know any inhumans?” Yuna asked. “At McGill? Is it better there? I know universities are pretty good with the whole thing.”

“I know a few,” David answered honestly. He did have a few inhuman friends, though very few of them were open about it to their human friends, just like David himself. “It’s better, for sure, but nobody’s really loud about it either.”

He pursed his lips, thinking. “The team is kind of shitty about it. There’s this one werewolf who tried out this year—a really strong defenceman—and got rejected because everybody thought he’d be a liability near the full moon. Our goalie is a satyr and everybody makes fun of him behind his back.”

“And you don’t say anything?” Yuna asked, judgemental. David sighed and tilted his head back so he was looking up at the cloudy sky.

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.” She insisted. “Nothing changes unless somebody speaks up! Who cares if they like you a little less—you can handle it, you have other friends. You have me.”

“It’s more complicated than that,” David said, heavily.

“How?” Yuna challenged.

He closed his eyes, trying to put all of his words in the right order. “It’s not that I care if they like me or not on a personal level, but if they don’t like me, that affects how we play. And with this kind of thing it’s not like Coach’ll want them to change their views, it’s more likely I’ll just get benched or even kicked off the team entirely. And it’s more than hockey, too, it’s…”

Yuna said nothing, waiting for him to finish the thought. David thought of his parents. He thought of his friends, those who had never told anybody about their real selves, and those who had. He thought of Yuna, of talking with her and skating with her, of her determination and her kindness and the fire in her eyes.

“It would be dangerous for me, too.” David said, lifting his head to meet Yuna’s eyes. “Because I’m a vampire.”

Yuna blinked. “Oh,” she said.

David nodded, and looked off into the distance. The surface of the pond rippled with the touch of the breeze, the reflection of the surrounding trees warping with the motion. Beside him, Yuna shifted in her seat.

“Thank you for telling me,” she said. “I don’t know if this is appropriate to say, I guess, but I never would’ve guessed.”

David laughed and turned to look at her again. “Yeah, well, that’s the idea.”

“You’re very normal,” Yuna told him matter-of-factly, a hint of teasing in her tone. Her face was as open as it ever was to him, and there was a slight smile in the curve of her mouth. David felt a strong rush of relief pulse through his entire body, and let out a softly shuddering breath.

“Thank you,” he said. “For being… okay with this. I know it’s weird.”

“It’s not!” Yuna rushed to correct him. “It’s really not. You’re still the same person, right? I just get to know you a little better now.”

“Yeah,” David replied, a warm, golden sort of happiness pressing up from behind his ribs. He smiled, wide and relieved, and Yuna returned it with a grin that crinkled the corners of her eyes.

After that, well, they were closer than ever. They spent every moment they had together over the summer, and continued their regular calls during the school year at their respective colleges. It was obvious to David from very early in his sophomore year that he was rapidly falling for Yuna. He felt swarms of fireflies in his stomach when she laughed, and a call from her would leave him in a good mood for the entire day. He would catch himself thinking, Yuna would love that, when passing a shop, or Yuna would think this was so funny, when a teammate of his did something stupid. She came to see one of his games, and he played better than he had all year.

Almost as soon as he got home for the summer, David told her he loved her. Yuna kissed him fiercely, and confessed the same. They had their first date that same day, at the best indoor ice rink in town. It was the happiest either of them had ever felt, and David rode that high all the way back to dinner with his parents.

“What has you smiling so much?” His mother asked, twirling her spaghetti around her fork and lifting it to her mouth. The pasta sauce, red and viscous, dripped down onto the plate.

David shrugged. “I told Yuna—you know, my friend from high school? I told her I love her, and she loves me back.”

His mother put down her fork with a sharp clink. “David,” she said, warningly.

“Look, I know you both have your reservations about humans, but I trust her. I love her. And she loves me back! She knows I’m a vampire, and she loves me.” David snapped. Immediately, he wished he hadn’t.

“She knows you’re a vampire.” His father echoed, tone frighteningly blank. “You told her?”

“I did,” David said, clenching his fork hard to keep from trembling. “And I knew I could trust her, because she hasn’t told anybody and she hasn’t treated me any different.”

“You idiot,” his mother grit out. “Do you know what you’ve done?”

“And what happens when you break up?” His father challenged. “When she feels hurt, and betrayed, and lashes out and decides to tell everybody? Or hire a Hunter?”

“What do you mean, when we break up? And—no, besides that, she wouldn’t ever do that. She isn’t that type of person!” David said.

His father scoffed. “My God, you’re even more naive than I thought you were. This has gone too far—you’re going to break up with her.”

“No!”

“You will,” his father emphasized, “or you will never talk to us again.”

“I… what?” David asked, taken aback. “What do you mean?”

“If you insist on letting a human destroy you, so be it,” his father said. “But we value our safety. And if safety means cutting you off completely, then so be it. We will not be associated when the humans inevitably come for you.”

“That’s not going to happen.” David said. “Why can’t you believe me? Yuna’s a good person.”

His mother sighed. “You don’t understand the danger. And it doesn’t matter now that you’ve already told her. We would have to leave you behind anyway.”

“Right,” his father agreed. “It’s a shame.”

“What?” David asked, dread curling deep in his gut. His parents exchanged a look across the table.

Then, his father said, with an air of finality: “You should go.”

“What?”

“Go,” his mother repeated. “Leave. Be with your human. Do what you want, but don’t come near us again. Don’t endanger us like that.”

David was speechless. Of all the reactions he could’ve imagined his parents having, this wasn’t one of them. He looked down at his plate, at the half-eaten noodles and the smears of red on the ceramic, the faint tang of iron rising from it. Despite the sinking feeling in his chest, though, he was almost shocked by how unsurprised he was. He wouldn’t have assumed they would be so quick to basically disown him—naively, he’d hoped that they loved him somewhere deep down—but then again, they had never been all that close. This wasn’t the most outlandish thing that could have happened.

He took a deep breath, and took his plate to the sink. His parents finished their meal, unbothered, while he gathered his things from his bedroom. David left that same night, without another word to or from his parents. He wasn’t theirs anymore, and they weren’t his. Just like that.

David slept in his car. He showed up on Yuna’s doorstep as soon as the sun rose above the horizon, and only let himself cry when he fell into her arms.

Chapter End Notes

sorry for the divergence from the main hollanov plot i did not mean for this to get as long as it did... but hey we love david and yuna here! next chapter all about shane :)