It was no secret the kind of man Reiji is.

Punishments - whips and chains, or as others could have said, bruises and bitemarks. He was a perfect student, almost too perfect for the way he was rarely in classes for his lectures. The way his cold gaze would be enough to scare a grown man into a corner was horrifying. There were rumors that softness and kind eyes were something the purple-haired man was simply not capable of.

It would be no shocker to admit that the boy truly had never been able to express such a fondness. Forced to study his life away as a child - become what his older half-brother never could. Surpass him and become everything, that was all he knew. He knew cruelty was a reward, and kindness was his punishment. He simply could not handle the way his mothers normally tough eyes would downturn at him with sympathy when he failed, whispering gentle cooing of how he’d do better next time.

It made him feel sick.

That’s how he learned to… love. Cruelty over affection, harsh words over gentle reassurance. Mocking gazes that could send anyone sobbing away from him than the same eyes his mother taunted him with. But soon, the same way he loved became the way he punished those he cared about. There was never a real difference between them, right? Which hand coddled and which hand smited. It didn’t matter because they were the same. One was just meant for the weak, while the other was meant for those that were perfection.

Oh, and you were his perfection, his beautiful masterpiece of a sacrificial bride - but you were like porcelain with glossed over scratches and scars. You were what he wanted all along - you were dainty, delicate, and weak but only in appearance. You were anything but that behind closed doors, and it enthralled him.

He was like a kitchen fork and you were the meal, he’d imagined it so many times - the way his fangs would snag around your neck and rip and tear at the flesh until it became so taught against his mouth that it would fall off seamlessly.

But a part of him couldn’t help but feel sick at the idea of brutalizing you, just as it felt sick with the same way he wanted to cradle you, and hold you deeply to his chest at night just so for once in his millennia of living, he could sleep peacefully at night. Away from the horrors of the night, away from the ghosts (which he would never admit to being scared of) that haunted the halls of the Sakamaki manor.

But all he had ever known was cruelty over affection. He didn’t know how to let himself go to unlearn such an ingrained way of life.