Chapter Text
Before he showed up, the graveyard shift didn’t feel so bad. In fact, it was perfect; nobody but me and the cats and dogs for twelve hours straight. I didn’t even need to clock-watch. I could watch TV, read my books and my comics and my magazines, even just watch the dogs sleep. Every once in a while, I actually had to answer the phone, and once in a blue moon I would actually have to save a furry little life because the on-call veterinarian would take too long to show up.
It was a good job. My boss – one of those sticklers for protocol, who had only hired me because of the state’s super-secret vampire rehabilitation program that meant they got a considerable grant for taking one of us runts on – hated that I was good at it. She didn’t know why I was good at it, not really, but she had her suspicions. The protocol dictated that she didn’t know what I was, only that I was some kind of undesirable that had to have a job or else wind up in some kind of facility. When I first started, she thought I was mentally ill, but quickly changed her mind to assume that I was just some kind of convict, I think just because of the tattoos. But she couldn’t fire me, because then the state would pull her funding and the dogs would stage a coup.
See, I can calm them down. Same way I can calm people down. I know what you’re thinking; if my boss is such a bitch why don’t I just calm her down, too? I don’t know. I guess allowing my boss to be a bitch ties into the whole ‘playing the part’ thing. And I never see her much anymore, anyway. I’m under strict instructions to behave myself otherwise someone will come and haul me into the back of a van and take me out to an undisclosed location to stake me.
I don’t know if they actually stake us. Just what I’ve heard.
The cats like me, sure, and my little gift comes in handy when I’m trying to stick them with a needle or, god forbid, take their temperature. I think they still know what I am, even when I’m soothing the hell out of them. Cats are spiteful. Still, they don’t hiss at me. Everybody thinks I’m a god for that.
But the dogs? Oh, boy. Nothing could get me to quit this job.
Except maybe him.
See, I miss him. I’m clock-watching. I’m concerned about him, too, but I think what I’m most afraid of is him going snooping around in the house while I’m not there.
It was a close enough call with the fridge. I know he’s already been in my room but there’s nothing incriminating in there. This afternoon after he left I had to clear all the blood bags out of the fridge and stash them in the back of the cupboard under my bathroom sink. Yeah, the house is nice and everything, but there’s fucking mould in there. If my blood goes bad I’m blaming him. I need it, now that he’s around. I’m getting through it quicker and quicker because even just being around him for five minutes makes my throat raw. The bags of O-Neg take the edge off; the problem is, is that the edge is getting sharper and sharper.
I wouldn’t be in this mess if he hadn’t cut himself, the idiot. I was holding my breath as best I could and the smell of him was getting tolerable, which, to my credit, is kinda impressive. But Christ, what else was I supposed to do? I’d say I’m only human but it’s worse than that, I’m only a stupid blood-sucking sex monster.
Now that I’ve tasted him I can’t go back. I can’t. It took everything I had to give him that fucking key and actually give him permission to leave without me. I’m terrified that he won’t come back and that I won’t be able to track him down. I’ve not hunted in years, I doubt I’d get very far. So I can’t believe I’m here. There’s no way I can let him leave but there’s also no way, no fucking way I can keep this up. I’m going to have to go to the blood bank and make up some dumbass excuse as to why I need more rations and of course they won’t believe anything I say so they’ll send me away. If I tell them it’s because I’ve got the most undeniably and insufferably delicious human I’ve ever encountered just staying, blissfully unaware, in my house, they’ll stake me for sure.
It’s not allowed. I mean, sure, we’re allowed to be around humans in a practical sense, for the sake of our jobs and for all the government experiments and all that, but we’re not allowed to hang out with them. We’re not allowed to live with them and we’re certainly not allowed to sleep with them. There’s a whole specialist wing at Riker’s reserved for those poor bastards, the ones that either fucked a human or fell in love with a human or whatever.
Relax, I’m not in love with him. I’m not even going to sleep with him, mainly because he’s so wound tight it would be like trying to get into a fucking bank vault just to get his jeans unzipped. That doesn’t necessarily mean he isn’t worth a shot, but he’s definitely not worth my life. I like my life, thank you very much. He is pretty, though. And cool. Maybe a bit of a loser but I guess that isn’t his fault; when you take away my superpowers I’m a bit of a loser too. We could be losers together. I could chain him to a radiator. I could just feed on him every once in a while. Maybe he’d come to love me.
Jesus, Frank, will you give it a rest?
I don’t have anybody to talk to about this. Even if I told Toro, he’d just get his panties in a bunch because I’ve got a human in my house and convince himself that the feds are coming to get me and that they’re going to get him too, just by association. Maybe he’d be worried that they’d torture me and I’d let slip about the pot he’s growing in his loft. Fat chance. Snitches get stitches.
I clock off at six AM and right now it’s two; over halfway there. I have another cup of coffee not because it does anything for me (it doesn’t – man, you should have been there when I figured that out) but because it’s habit and sometimes, on nights like tonight, I can just about manage to get the tiniest bit of a placebo effect. Nothing kicks you into productive overdrive like boredom and coffee on the night shift, whether you’re a vampire or not. Might as well; I’ve already eaten, sunk my half-pint of life juice. For all the good it’s done me.
I need to figure out what the hell to do with this guy. I start brainstorming ways in which I can get him a job so that he’s not stinking out my house all the time, but I quickly abandon that idea because anything I can come up with feels like I’m selling him short. I don’t know much about the human world anymore aside from how badly they’re trying to screw me over but I know for a fact that there aren’t any jobs. Probably because the vamps have them all. I don’t know. I scan back over my incoherent scrawl on my notepad and sigh. I can’t even get him delivering pizzas because then he’d need to borrow my car. I don’t need him stinking that out, too. When I got to work I had to leave the windows cracked open just a little in the hopes that I don’t start drooling when I get back in because it still reeks from when I took him to pick up his things. They should make car air fresheners specifically designed for getting the human smell out. Breathing him in is like huffing fucking lighter fluid. It hurts. It feels good, but it hurts.
Before I turned, I’d never really encountered enough blood to know what it smelled like; all I knew was that it tasted like pennies and I kinda liked it. My rations just smell like bad meat which would be off-putting to anybody, let alone me. I have to put all kinds of shit in with it to make it even halfway drinkable. Fresh blood – and like I said, I’ve only been there a couple times – just smells good, not even necessarily animal at all but warm, sweet, dark. It tastes like it, too. But when I first caught Gerard’s scent on the air I realised that maybe all those pretentious wine guys really do know what they’re talking about when they prattle on about base notes and head notes and shit.
Gerard tastes like grenadine. His blood looks like grenadine. Even leaves the same sticky, slick coating on my tongue. I definitely didn’t hide in my room and lay there letting my mouth pool with saliva in an attempt to dredge up whatever was left of the taste, just to make it last a little longer. I definitely didn’t jerk off and I definitely didn’t almost swallow my tongue and I definitely didn’t cuff myself to the bed during just so that if I did feel the urge to go back and murder him I’d have to break another pair of handcuffs first. I’m surprised it worked.
I don’t know how to go back and face him. The little clock in the corner of the computer screen is making fun of me. I really don’t have long to figure this out.
I figure I could go and stay with Toro, make up some excuse to hang out behind his blackout curtains after sunrise and get stoned (but not really stoned, because again, placebos). But Ray knows me, he’d know there’s something up. Knowing my luck he’d be able to smell Gerard on me. What then? Assume I killed him, grill me to pieces about why I would be that stupid, ask me over and over whether I wanted to get myself staked. I could ask him if I could bum a blood bag or two, though, I guess. I don’t know how he does it; one ration a fortnight. He doesn’t even look miserable. I’ve gotten through two bags in as many days.
I give up and I go into the back so that I can watch the animals sleep and maybe steal some of their calm for myself. I already checked on them a half-hour ago and none of the monitors have gone off so I know I can at least in some way relax. I sit cross-legged on the floor and lean my head against Samson’s cage, inhaling deeply so that I can work out whether his meds are working or not. It seems like it. Samson the Chihuahua is my favourite. I close my eyes and I can feel his breath on my face, his little wet nose snuffling around in my hair. I stay there for a while, hang another bag of fluids, and go back out to the desk, back to killing time.
The next three-and-a-bit hours don’t exactly fly by. I play my fair share of solitaire and minesweeper on the computer and I get through almost an entire book of crossword puzzles (I have them stockpiled) and I use up maybe two-thirds of an entire stack of Post-Its just by drawing dicks. I decorate the computer screen with them, a butter-yellow wreath of cum and hairy balls.
“Something on your mind, Frank?”
I blink and look up and it’s 6AM and Jamia is there smirking at me. I’m relieved that it’s her and not my boss because I was so not paying attention. I glance over my shoulder toward the kennels but everything is quiet, normal; I didn’t miss anything. I like Jamia. She’s not worked here for too long and that means that she’s nice to me, talking to me even though nobody else does. Sometimes, she brings me breakfast from home that she makes herself; breakfast that I can’t eat and that I always throw away once I’m home so that she doesn’t come across it in the trash can and think I’m being a dick. Today is one of those days.
She gestures to the Post-It notes on the computer screen and it feels like I’m blushing even though I know I’m not. I shrug and try and play it off and I tell her it’s been a long night. I always say that regardless of the state she finds me in. Usually, I’d be a little more upbeat and she knows it.
“Made your favourite,” she chirps at me, sliding over a steaming egg and facon sandwich that I can smell through the grease paper while I scramble to de-phallus-ify the computer. There are so many scrunched up pieces of yellow paper in the trash that it looks like a large bucket of popcorn. God, I wish you could go to the movies at 6AM, I think to myself as I smile at Jamia and feel my stomach flip from the guilt, I could go to a movie instead of going back to Gerard.
I hate that Jamia remembers that I’m vegetarian just because the first time she brought me breakfast it was from McDonald’s and she didn’t know what I liked and it was the easiest way to reject her. I hate that she goes out of her way to make me facon sandwiches. I hate that I can’t eat them. I hate that I have to pretend to be a dick to her when, if I was the normal guy she thought I was, I’d probably like to hang out with her. I saw her at a show a few weeks ago and I had to dip before she realised I was there.
You could just tell her, the insidious voice in my head says, the one that’s been getting louder and louder since Gerard showed up.
Tell her what? That I’m gay or that I’m a government-registered lethal weapon that’s not even technically allowed to talk to her?
I make my usual excuses to get out of there as quick as I can but I’m not being as subtle as I usually am. She knows something’s off.
In my car I stare at the facon sandwich that’s getting cold and soggy in the passenger seat and it almost moves me to tears. Being a vampire is fucking ridiculous. Can’t piss or shit anymore but I can still cry? What kind of sick world is this? It still smells like Gerard in here so I smoke until I can’t smell him quite so much anymore and I drive home with the windows rolled all the way down.
On the way, I pass by the spot on the bridge where I found Gerard and my hands twitch on the steering wheel and I seriously want to drive over the edge of the thing, just for a second. I hate this. I need my peace and quiet. I need my hunger satisfied.
I guess I could tell him that I’m moving out.
I could tell him that my ‘friend’ is coming back from Philly and he needs to get lost.
I don’t need to tell him that there is no friend and the house belongs to that guy I picked up at a dungeon and very, very much accidentally killed because I was still new to all this and I was a fucking idiot.
I’ll tell him I changed my mind.
The only way I can think to do it is to tell him something that freaks him out so bad that he has no choice but to leave. I could tell him that the drains are full of spiders. I could come onto him. That might do it. I replay the events of the night before as I drive, remembering the way Gerard’s blood pressure stuttered when he saw what I was doing and how terrified he looked – but then I remember how long it took him to pull away. I think about the way he leaned into my metaphysical touch when he was dreaming and I was all up in his head and my stomach lurches.
Can’t be sure that will work. Guy’s definitely fruity. Might not know it yet, but we don’t need to find out.
No, I most definitely do need to find out.
To what end? What are you gonna do, Frank, huh? Bite his dick off?
I park up with a sigh and I cut the engine and I rest my head against the steering wheel. I’m starving and I’m bordering on drooling all over the place and I’ve got a boner and I’m just fucking confused. I have another cigarette, and another. I look up at the house and my stomach sinks when I notice the kitchen light is on. Motherfucker.
When I finally do pluck up the courage to go inside, though, it’s clear that something is off. As I climb the stairs I can feel the air shifting, clouding, like I’m physically walking into Gerard’s head. There’s no ignoring it; he’s miserable. He’s miserable, and he smells like grenadine and cigarettes.
“Frank?”
He’s half-asleep on the couch with a cigarette burning away between his fingers and another half-dozen smouldering in the ashtray on the coffee table. His face is pink and glazed with tears in the light from the television. He’s watching Coppola’s ‘Dracula’ and he’s covered in snot and starting to look really happy to see me and I’m just standing there like a chump.
Marvellous.
Like a dumbass, I ask him what he’s still doing up even though it’s pretty damn clear. I inch closer to him and that’s when I can smell the liquor. My ancient bottle of vodka – which isn’t even mine – is unstoppered on the coffee table and it’s only got a couple shots left in it. My nose is burning to the point of severe headache, like I’ve just inhaled Listerine. Vodka. Grenadine. Jesus H Christ he smells like a fucking cocktail.
“Couldn’t sleep,” Gerard mumbles at me, shifting his body around against the couch cushions until he’s sitting up and visibly dizzy. I’m still just standing there, fiddling with my lighter in my pocket and wondering how easy it would be to set myself on fire. No need; it feels like I already have.
“You alright?”
“Mmf.” He shrugs and rubs at his forehead and he’s embarrassed but he’s looking at me all funny, doe eyes, mouth dropped open a little. He melts into the couch and smiles. “You wanna watch Dracula?” His eyes flutter back to the television and for a second he zones out and I can’t bring myself to move. “You know, I always found this movie super romantic.” Give me strength.
“Yeah?” My voice squeaks with unease and I shrug out of my jacket just so I’m not hovering over him like a statue. It’s really warm in here and I don’t know if that’s because I’m teetering on the brink of full-blown frenzy or because of how much Gerard is sweating. The air is sweet.
“Yeah. I dunno.” He sniffles. “Not like, cutesy or anything, I just mean… I dunno. Lindsey never really thought so. Always said Dracula’s a bit of a creep.” He cocks his head to one side and looks up at me through his lashes again, just for a second, before squeezing his eyes closed and rubbing at them furiously to dispel whatever is left of the tears. I sit down as lightly as I can on the arm of the couch and start sucking on a cigarette before I’ve even properly lit it. “Just makes me think about soulmates and stuff, you know?”
I’m really starting to wonder if this could get any worse.
“Vampires can’t have soulmates,” I say around a mouthful of smoke, and I almost choke on it because I hadn’t been meaning to say it out loud. I snap my mouth shut and close my eyes and clench my jaw until my teeth hurt. I know he’s looking at me. I can practically feel the way his brain’s all fired up.
“Sure they can. And don’t start with all that ‘they don’t have souls’ bullshit.”
But we don’t. He doesn’t even sound drunk; I can tell I’ve tapped into some informational black hole and he’s about to tell me twenty reasons why he thinks I’m wrong. I’m going to have to put a stop to it or just listen to him and be chomping at the bit to tell him exactly why I’m fucking right. I really don’t need this right now. I don’t need to be confronted with how fucking lonely I am. Not now. Not by him of all people. It’s bad enough when Toro does it.
“Like, I know they don’t have souls and whatever, sure, but I don’t think you have to have a soul to have a soulmate. You know? Anyone can fall in love, can’t they?”
Inside, I’m screaming. I’m actually fucking screaming.
“I guess,” I mumble, glaring at the insides of my eyelids. I have to get ahead of this. Make him shut up. “But — Dracula dies. And Mina doesn’t even love him, right? So—“
“Oh that is so not the point,” Gerard moans, cackling out some triumphant and ridiculous laughter that makes me jump halfway out of my skin. “He loves her. For like, a lifetime, dude. For him there’s nobody else, you know?” I glance over at him and he’s pouting, sighing, unblinking as he looks at the television. There’s a palpable anxiety to him and it’s like an atom bomb is about to go off. He smells like petrichor. Like a storm. “Frank, what’s wrong with me?”
“Huh?”
“Lindsey. I mean — why did she do that? Is there something wrong with me?” We’re staring at each other and I don’t know what I’m supposed to say. Comfort him? Blow him off? What? He looks away.
“You don’t believe that.” God, shut up. I clear my throat and I suck down as much of my cigarette as I can. “I mean – there’s nothing wrong with you, man. That’s all her.”
“I guess.” He’s nibbling at his nails and I can tell he doesn’t believe it. That’s not my problem. He looks like he’s going to cry again. “I just… I guess I don’t know what to do now. Where to go from here. I really thought she was it.” He looks back at the television screen and I can see the reflection of Keanu Reeves in his eyes. I think I’m about to break out in hives.
“You can do whatever you want,” I say, as loosely as I can manage, blowing smoke up to the ceiling. Gerard’s sinking further and further into the couch and he’s got his sleeves all balled up around his fists, against his face, and all I can see of him is his eyes. I need to try and play it cool. We don’t need to have a heart-to-heart. “I mean – think of it this way. It’s not like you have to answer to anybody right now. You’ve got no girlfriend, no boss. No gods, no masters, dude.” He snickers, nodding slowly.
“No gods, no masters,” he repeats, like he likes the sound of it, rolling the words around in his mouth the way I did with his blood.
I could be your god.
“Totally,” I say instead, and I get up off the couch, heading straight for the fridge before realising that my blood isn’t there, that it’s upstairs in my bathroom. God, he makes me hungry. I have to force myself to keep talking, talking over his thoughts because they’re getting louder and more insistent. “I mean, I don’t know, maybe it’s a good excuse to make a change, do something you’ve always wanted to do, I don’t know.”
It’s subtle, but I can’t ignore it, the sudden flicker of excitement and adrenaline I get off him. Like he’s licked a battery. It evaporates almost immediately. I snap back to reality and for some reason I’m making coffee, for lack of something else to do with my hands.
“Hey, you mind making me one?” I look over my shoulder and he’s straightened himself back up on the couch and the movie is paused and it’s silent again. I nod, reluctantly. I’d rather he just went to sleep. Sleeping Gerard is better than sober Gerard which is better than drunk Gerard. Drunk Gerard is making me nervous. “You wanna watch the rest of the movie with me?”
“I think I’m gonna crash, actually,” I mumble, and he laughs.
“Then why are you making coffee?” Fair point. Stupid.
I end up crammed as hard against the other end of the couch as I can manage without drawing any attention to myself. Gerard’s already pounded his coffee and he’s talking a mile a minute about how sexy Gary Oldman is and I’d be laughing if I didn’t want to slam my head in the refrigerator door over and over again until I pass out or it decapitates me, whichever comes first. I can still smell the vodka on him but it’s finally starting to ease up. Now it’s nothing but caffeine and grenadine and all I can think about is slurping him up through a straw.
“Frank?”
“Hm?”
“I said, do you have a girlfriend?”
Coffee comes shooting out of my nose and all over front and he’s laughing at me while I’m sputtering and muttering every cuss under the sun.
“No,” I mutter, looking down at myself with dismay because there’s coffee on my pants and all down my shirt. The material is clinging to me and obviously it goes cold almost straight away so it feels vile. Gerard hums, unfazed.
“Boyfriend?”
“No,” I answer, quicker than the crack of a whip. “Again with the third degree, man.”
“Sorry,” he mumbles, fixing his eyes back to the screen. He’s still thinking about it, trying to figure me out, as much as he can figure me out after that much vodka. I can hear Jamia’s words like a broken record in my head as I look at him, the curve of his jaw and his tiny teeth worrying at his bottom lip, the flicker of his tongue just hovering slightly behind. Vodka. Grenadine. Syrup. Honey. Nectar. Bliss. Something on your mind, Frank?
Might as well tell him. The way this is going, he’ll be dead before midday.
“Have you ever been in love, though?”
He’s caught me staring at his mouth, because when I blink I have to snap my eyes up to meet his.
“No,” I mumble, without my lips even moving. I try a smile but he doesn’t smile back. It’s the clearest his eyes have looked since I met him, save for the way that he looked at me when he was dreaming. This is the real him. Right here. My heart, stone cold and dead as it is, plummets to the pit of my stomach and I know it’s over, I can feel that it’s over. The instincts have kicked in and I’m scared. I’m moving before I can register it’s happening.
The second that I lean in to go for his throat, his palm catches my jaw and, so smoothly and so gently that it turns me to fucking jelly, guides my mouth to his.