Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I really wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

The words cut through me like a smoke alarm in the middle of the night, slicing clean through the biting wind and weaving around the cars to find their way to me.

In an instant, I was forced to confront where I was; halfway across the Brooklyn bridge, one foot up on the railings and my hands nearly frozen to the rusted metal, my upper body leaned over and facing the rolling blackness below. I had been thinking about the water, the bottomless dark embrace of it, how in just a few moments I wouldn’t have to worry about a damn thing anymore. In the water, none of it would matter; not the job, not the affair, not the apartment.  

The wind against my face was like being slapped with a cold rag, over and over again, my cheeks growing raw. My hair was in my mouth and in my eyes. I was thirsty, my throat backed up with snot from the cold. Where had that voice come from?

Upon turning my head, slowly and stiffly against the cold, there was a man standing beside me, close enough that I could hit him if I wanted to. He had an elbow on the railings, his body poised toward me but his face turned away over the bridge, toward the night, toward the blackness.

“What?” My voice was thin, cracking and hoarse. I couldn’t remember the last time I had spoken. He chuckled, turning to face me. He was devastating, considering the circumstances. The closest streetlight was far away, on the other side of the bridge; I had to rely on the headlights of all the passing cars to see him clearly and yet, the flecks of green in his eyes lit up like the fourth of July. He wore a small, easy smile like we had met a dozen times before, a lip ring tugging softly at one side. He wasn’t dressed for the cold — not like me. There wasn’t so much as a whisper of redness in his cheeks. I wondered if he was a model.

“Jumping in there,” he said plainly, nodding pointedly over the railing. Without even realising it, I had stepped back down onto the pavement, my feet starting to go numb. If he hadn’t interrupted, they would be more than numb by now. “I wouldn’t do that.” He definitely couldn’t be a model; models are supposed to be tall. Models don’t have tattoos on their neck.

“I wasn’t going to.” That could even have been true. My tone, though, was desperately unconvincing, so much so that it drew out another wry chuckle.

“Sure you were.” I flexed my fingers around the railing, releasing my vice grip.

“I don’t think it’s any of your business,” I hissed around a wet sniffle, the cold biting at my fingers, settling beneath my nails, starting to make them feel as though they were about to fall off. With one shoulder the stranger shrugged, peering down at the river, tilting his head to one side and then straightening back up.

“The water would be cold,” he mused, a little sardonic but somehow still sincere, his hands slipping into his pockets, “but, honestly, from this height I don’t think it would even kill you. Not right away.” He produced a slender pack of cigarettes, taking out one for himself and then offering one to me, one eyebrow arched playfully. I scoffed, looking back out at the river, at the city stretched beyond it. It was so dark. Of course it would kill me. What the hell was he talking about? “Best case scenario, you’d get pulled under the water and hit your head. Worst case? You’d just float along and slowly freeze to death. And you’d have plenty of time to wish you hadn’t jumped. Can you swim?” What an utterly bizarre thing to come out and say.

When I said nothing, growing irritated by his presence and scolding myself in my mind for not having just done it already, I felt the sleeve of his jacket brush mine. He was leaning against the railings now, mirroring me, looking out over what could be seen of the skyline.

“I’m just saying, I wouldn’t bother,” he murmured nonchalantly around the cigarette in his mouth, followed by the click of a lighter and the crackle of its flame, the smoke drifting across my face. It hadn’t even been too long since my last cigarette, but I had never really considered that it might not have been my last cigarette after all. 

“Thanks for the advice,” I muttered back, looking down at my hands, how mottled with poor circulation they were. I gripped onto the railing again, tighter and tighter, my knuckles growing white just to have something to hold onto. I was hoping he would just leave. I knew that, even if he did, that would be it for me. There was no way I would be able to carry on with it. The embarrassment was already reaching painful levels. Still, I sighed. “Are you still here?”

“I guess I am.” From the corner of my eye, I saw that he was smiling again. What on earth was there to smile about? “Can’t exactly leave you here, can I?”

“So you’re the good Samaritan in this situation?”

“Hardly.” Between the wind, the cars and the faraway hum of the city, all I could hear was the way his cigarette crackled as he inhaled. I drew back my hands and peeled back my hair from my face, tucking it behind my numb ears, feeling the tangles and knots. Faced with reality and the awareness of my own body, the cold ceased to be poetic and cinematic; it was starting to hurt.

“What’s your name?” He asked me, smoke billowing from between his lips as he said it. He was eyeing me with a strange fondness I didn’t understand.

“Gerard.” I cringed at it. “Or, you know, Gee. Everybody calls me Gee.” That wasn’t true – only my brother called me Gee. At this point, I guess he was my everybody.

“Gerard.” It sounded nice, the way he said it. He smiled around it, crossing his right hand across his chest and toward me, cigarette between his fingers. “Pleasure.” I gingerly took his hand, barely even shaking it. He didn’t seem to register how cold my hands were.

“You didn’t tell me yours,” I said as he retracted his hand, drawing the cigarette back to his lips and allowing me another flame-bathed peek at his face. There were tattoos on his fingers, lettering I couldn’t make out. When he dashed his cigarette over the railing I watched as it tumbled toward the water, the wind carrying it along, until I lost sight of it. That could have been me.

“Frank,” he said softly, hunching over the railing a little and just looking over his shoulder at me.

“I don’t think I’ve ever met a Frank. At least, you know, under fifty.” He let out a dry chuckle, drawing himself back away from the railing and straightening back up.

“Happy to be your first,” he said coolly, his smile flashing teeth, bright in the passing lights. It almost felt like flirting; something that would have been offensive if I wasn’t so damn miserable. I wondered, for a second, if he was one of those serial killers, the ones that like guys. But serial killers are supposed to be tall, too. You’d almost deserve it if you let yourself get lured to your doom by some tattooed pipsqueak who’s barely pushing five-seven. He was harmless. He looked around, hands back in his pockets, the hint of a grimace on his face as he inhaled. “What do you say we get a cup of coffee? You can tell me all about what got you up here.” The grimace disappeared, as quickly as it had come.

“It’s late,” I protested, my default rejection line for any and all come-ons, last-minute plans and spontaneous decisions. I delivered it with much less conviction than I usually would. He hummed.

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right. All the good places will be closed by now.” He moved behind me and started to walk away, calling over his shoulder, “and, besides, you’re busy, right?” I stayed where I was, watching as he slowly strolled away. I felt a pull to go with him, a pull I couldn’t identify. There was a desperate ache in my chest, either from my ceaseless crying all night, or the freezing air in my lungs that was beginning to claw at me, begging for a cigarette. But the ache went with him. “Come on,” he called over his shoulder, and this time my feet found movement, going with him with nothing but a meek, embarrassed smile and a wet, resigned sniffle.

We walked for almost half an hour in silence, save for my mumbled thanks when he finally did offer me a cigarette and again when he lit it for me upon realising that my fingers barely worked. I couldn’t bring myself to ask where we were going, or to come up with some excuse to get out of it altogether. I wanted to ask him about himself, about what could have caused him to come across me in the middle of the night, what he had been doing. I could only manage glances at him, and covert though I thought they were he caught me every time. He was young; younger than me, even, but they way he carried himself was so effortless, so confident, that it was magnetising. He seemed so at ease in our silence that it felt rude to try and find a way to break it.

When we stopped in front of a townhouse, red brick appearing black like blood in the darkness, I dug my hands deeper into my pockets.  

“I was thinking more along the lines of a diner,” I said quietly, and he chuckled, one foot on the bottom step with the toes of his boot extinguishing what must have been his tenth cigarette.

“My coffee’s better.” My smile grew tense, my fingernails scraping at the bottom of my pockets, drawing my lip in between my teeth and beginning to chew on it.

“I appreciate the offer, but—“ He just scoffed, shaking his head.

“It’s just coffee.” I sighed, looking up at the house again, but saying nothing. All of the lights were on, the glow almost red. “And then, I don’t know, you can go on with your life.” That seemed to amuse him. “Or not, you know. But, coffee first, always.” The bare branches of the trees above our heads cast thick shadows across his face, highlighting his soft features. His lip ring glinted at me in the near darkness as he tucked a lock of dark hair behind his ear. A past version of me would have been in the door before he had even had a chance to invite me inside and knowing that made me all the more uneasy. I wasn’t like that anymore. I didn’t do that anymore. I thought about her, whether she had said yes to some inexplicably charismatic stranger and that was why I was in this mess.

“Alright,” I conceded, nodding once. His smile widened and he continued up the steps, my body going with him though my mind was still on the sidewalk.

It was difficult for me to even understand what had made me hesitate about coming inside. The moment the door was closed behind us, I was enveloped in warmth, so much so that it made my face and my neck prickle uncomfortably. Finally freeing my hands from my pockets and flexing my fingers, I started to relax.

I followed Frank down the narrow hallway, the walls painted a deep plum colour and adorned with small paintings in ornate gilt frames. I scanned the pictures as we walked: there was fruit, plums and pomegranates cracked open and weeping into silk tablecloths; there were animals, birds shot through with arrows and deer being gutted; there were women in various states of undress, some of them in repose and some of them self-copulating, some of them bathing, and there were men, being butchered by those same women. I had seen some of these same pieces before, in books.

Frank had shrugged out of his jacket, the leather slung over his shoulders that I now realised were slender and toned beneath his tight, washed-thin black t-shirt. There were more tattoos; on the back of his neck, on his arms, on the thin strip of skin showing between his shirt and his jeans. I tore my eyes away, flustered by the heat rising to my cheeks. He stopped to hang his jacket up and, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, reached out to take mine too. Nervously, willingly, I removed mine. He took it with a smile as I pulled the sleeves of my sweater around my hands, folding my arms tight to my chest, as if guarding it from something.

“This way,” he said lightly, trailing slowly up a flight of spiralling stairs. They were painted a thick, glossy black, so black they looked slick with oil, bottomless like the water I had been staring into before he showed up. The stairs were hung with artwork too, bigger pieces of even wider variety: a woman in the embrace of some kind of faun or satyr; a man stripped naked and self-flagellating, and then at the very top, a massive reimagining of the crucifixion, of Christ carrying his cross. I couldn’t help but stare into his calm, mournful eyes, our gazes locking as blood flowed down between the thorns, over his pallid face.

“Quite a collection,” I murmured, almost to myself, and Frank just hummed, disappearing down another hallway. I found him in a kitchen, a huge, dark kitchen that, even in my dreams, I couldn’t have imagined.

“The art’s not mine,” he said, hands disappearing into a large, deep cupboard and producing two coffee cups, matching and black. I looked around the room – it was almost as large as my apartment just on its own. But the house is? The kitchen was only half of it, the rest a kind of dining room. There was an island in the centre with the sink, large blocks of knives and utensils dotted around. Watching his hands, I noticed the espresso machine, bigger than most I had ever seen a barista use. What was with this guy? Had he won the lotto or something?

“Whose is it?” I asked, lingering half a world away to perch at the very edge of the sofa, the deep black leather warm and buttery to my touch, not cold like I had expected. Looking around a little more as the room was filled with the sound of coffee grinding, trying my best not to stare at him with all my might, I couldn’t help the sigh that escaped. I would give anything to live here. It was unbelievable. The walls in this part of the room were taken up by bookshelves, almost completely up to the ceiling, books stacked on top of each other with not an empty space in sight. In the low lighting, I couldn’t make out any of the titles, but I wondered if I knew them. If perhaps we had read some of the same things. 

“A friend’s,” he said over the screech of steaming milk, my eyes snapping up to look at him. “It’s not really my taste, but, you know, beggars can’t be choosers.” The machine whirred to a stop and I watched as he poured each of us a cup. The air was thick with the smell of coffee now, sweet and bitter at the same time, and warm. When he approached me I took the cup as he offered it, the ceramic delightfully hot to the touch, bringing blood rushing back to my hands. He sat across from me in the matching black leather armchair, easing back into it and crossing one foot over his thigh. He wore scuffed and creased leather boots, like the kind you would wear for riding motorcycles. I wondered if he had one, or maybe five. I resisted an inappropriate laugh — maybe he was Bruce Wayne. I conjured the mental image of when Robin steals the Batmobile and tries to convince the girls that he’s Batman. Like this guy could ever be Batman. He looked out of place, so young and so small and far too much of a degenerate to live somewhere like this, and yet I couldn’t believe I was here to see it.

I didn’t know what to say and so I stared down into my coffee, the white warmth a welcome distraction. It smelled better than anything I had ever smelled before. One sip of the stuff turned into a gulp as the liquid warmed my tongue and left a sharp trail of heat down the back of my throat.

“Are you going to tell me what had you up on that bridge in the middle of the night?” Frank asked gently, his voice growing warmer, warm like the invitation into a warm house on a winter’s night.

“Not much to tell,” I whispered back, once more taking refuge in my coffee, holding it protectively to the centre of my chest and feeling its heat flow through me. My heart rate should have been skyrocketing but I was suddenly so tired, so exhausted that my anxiety was dulled, useless. He scoffed, a soft noise at the back of his throat.

“People don’t find themselves contemplating jumping off a bridge over ‘not much’.”

“I’ve had a bad day.”

“Hm.” There was a dry smile on his face now, almost mocking, but it wasn’t as though I could blame him. Maybe it was ridiculous. It was just a job. It was just an affair. It was just an apartment. His lips twitched, eyes softening at the edges and burning into mine. Here in the lamplight his eyes were almost amber, like honey, like leaves.

“I lost my job,” I started shakily, drawing in a deep breath and dipping my head down before forcing myself to come out with it, to say the words out loud, “and my girlfriend has been having an affair.” My eyebrows flinched. “Ex-girlfriend, I guess. She kicked me out of the apartment.”

 He had a puzzled, measured expression on his face. I could tell, then, that he was weighing up which question to ask me first. I sighed, rubbing at my temple with my thumb. Before I could try and start back-pedalling, making excuses, explaining how bad it really was and giving half a dozen reasons as to why I wasn’t a complete loser and why I was justified in feeling the way I did, he spoke.

“How did you find out?” His voice was level. It was a strange question to ask without so much as an I’m sorry. “Did she tell you?” I answered flatly, robotic, my tongue operating independently from my brain.

“There was a message on the answering machine.”

He hummed.

“It been going on for long?” I shook my head, looking back down at my half empty cup.

“Since last Christmas.”

“And the job?” He reached around into his back pocket for his cigarettes, lighting one and leaving the pack on the table that separated us before settling back into his chair. “What did you do?” Please, don’t hesitate to use the past tense.

“I’m an illustrator.” I grimaced. “I—well, I’d just got this job at Cartoon Network. I’m in the middle of writing—”

“I meant what did you do to get fired,” he said coolly, grinning slightly around the smoke in his mouth, little more than a tease. I glared back at him and the smile didn’t budge, like he was goading me.

“I didn’t get fired,” I mumbled, my voice wavering along with my eyes. I tried to steady myself with more coffee but before I knew it, the cup was empty. I sighed. “They laid me off. Budget cuts, you know. Can I have a cigarette?”

“Sure.” He leaned forward to nudge the pack closer to me just as I went for it, drawing his hand back so quickly and so sharply that I could have imagined he reached out at all. I couldn’t say any more. “I still don’t understand what got you to the bridge,” he said, surprisingly softly. There was that same confused, transfixing expression, doe eyes holding mine as if he was rooting around in my brain himself, slipping inside my head. My voice came out in that same dry monotone, like I was being commanded to speak.

“I couldn’t face starting again. I don’t know, I suppose… I wanted to have some kind of control. Over something.”

“Free falling from the Brooklyn Bridge isn’t exactly my idea of control,” he teased, and I couldn’t help but laugh. I knew exactly what he meant. The same thing had occurred to me. Perhaps that’s why it was taking me so long to just jump. His face softened and he set down his cup, leaning his elbows on his knees. “You know, it takes a lot of guts to make that decision.”

“What decision?”

“Taking your own life. Any life, I guess, but particularly your own.” I had never considered that phrase. It felt warm to me — not detached and clinical like committing suicide. “It takes even more guts to keep going.”

“Yeah. Guts I don’t think I have.” His smile turned a little lopsided around his cigarette.

“Do you want to die?” He asked me then, the words quiet but starkly clear. I would have expected the question to send me spiralling, exploding into tears and beating my fists against the sides of my head.

“I don’t know,” I murmured as the realisation hit. Embarrassed by my quiet revelation, shame overcoming me at having been talked down off the bridge and into this room, I scrambled to make excuses for myself. “I just don’t want to keep going.”

“That’s not the same,” he chuckled out.

“I know that.”

“I think it would be a shame if you killed yourself.”

“Thanks,” I shot back snidely, grimacing when he laughed. Was he intentionally being rude? To what effect? “You don’t know me. How would you know?” He shrugged a shoulder, leaning back in the armchair as he took a long drag on his cigarette.

“Gerard, you don’t want to die.” His voice came out warm, syrupy, like it was dripping out of his mouth. I couldn’t say anything to that. Instead I smiled, embarrassed that he was right, embarrassed at the way he said my name like he had said it a thousand times. I could feel myself growing sad, crushingly sad, as if the temperature was rising and I couldn’t breathe. My head was so foggy and yet, so clear.

“I just want to be happy,” I whispered, my voice cracking under the weight of it all, the weight of the day, the weight of Frank’s eyes on my face. Not even my psychiatrist could have drawn that statement out of me. She would have had better luck drawing it from the mouth of a corpse. And yet, now, it was so easy for the words to come out. I wondered if, maybe, it was because I would never see this guy again. There was a realisation I wasn’t quite comfortable with.

“What makes you happy?” Frank asked, and I realised he was closer to me now, sitting by my side on the sofa. I had not even seen him move, nor feel his weight shifting next to me. “Control?”

“I don’t know.” It was an impossible question. She had made me happy, at least for a time. She was out of my league. I was lucky. I was safe, and comfortable, and just starting to live out a dream. I had some element of control, some sort of hold on my life, finally. I was starting to be somebody. I had a life, people, things. I had a home. “Oh, god,” I moaned suddenly, throwing my head into my hands, ash from the cigarette falling onto my thigh.

“What?”

“I can’t go home,” I groaned, erupting into anxious laughter, shaking my head side to side. “I can’t go home. I was meant to be dead by now. I wasn’t planning on going back.” The irony was hilarious to me, but it started to bring back the pain, the pressure, everything I had been running away from. It was all back in front of me.

“Will she be there?”

“God, I don’t know.” I rubbed my hands over my face and stared, into space, through my legs and through the sofa and through the floor. It was getting hard to breathe. “She’s probably changed the fucking locks already.” I laughed again, at the ridiculousness of it all. There was silence for a little while.

“You can stay here, if you need to.” He stubbed out his cigarette decisively as if that was that and I had no say in the matter. “There’s a few spare bedrooms. You can take your pick.” The invitation didn’t bother me — the alarm bells were silent, or broken, or the batteries had been removed. I did find myself wanting to stay — but why? It wasn’t like he was such incredible company. He was rude, if a little kind and gracious to boot. But mostly rude.

“No. I mean, I can probably just call someone,” I said hesitantly, the words spilling out just as I realised that, in my hazy rage up there on the bridge, I had tossed my cell phone into the water too, sending it hurtling down into the blackness. I sighed, rubbing at my temples and clenching my jaw, my eyes screwing closed.

“You threw your phone in, didn’t you,” Frank murmured, a whisper of humour in it. I just nodded, helpless, tears beginning to spill out in sheer frustration. This was truly my lowest moment. Thinking about suicide is low, I suppose, but not as low as backing out and being left with nothing at all. He didn’t seem bothered by my tears, just watching me carefully. “You can use mine.”

“I don’t know the numbers,” I mumbled around my sleeve as I did my best to wipe at my eyes and my nose all at once, my chest heaving, my face beginning to sting. Number, I thought to myself. There was only one person left who could help me. Realising that you don’t even know your own brother’s phone number is haunting. I was stuck. Frank was watching me patiently, eyes a little cloudy as if he were weighing something up.

“Just stay here,” he sighed, rising off the sofa and picking up our cups, moving back toward the kitchen and saying over his shoulder, “I could use the company.”

Chapter Text

My room for the night was up on the third floor. Frank led me further up the winding staircase, the eyes from the many paintings following us as we went. It should have been eerie to me, like walking past portraits in a supposedly haunted house, but instead I only felt comforted, their presence comforting me that I wasn’t alone here, with him.

Knock it off, I thought to myself. If he had been intending on something nefarious, no doubt he would have done it already.

We stopped in a doorway, Frank flipping on the light and motioning for me to go inside ahead of him. It was a large room, filled to the brim with beautiful, ornate furniture: there was a massive four-poster bed in what must have been mahogany, carved all over with intricate flowers and brocade, climbing up to the ceiling; across from it there was a dresser, dark and glistening, almost dripping with lacquer; there were several mirrors, one on the dresser and several on the walls, and, to my surprise and slight indignation, one above the bed, sprawling and glistening. The décor was dark, a swathe of blacks and deep purples, the sheets a shining black silk that looked wet in the light. It was a beautiful room, and though I sensed something quietly threatening about it, for some reason all I could think of doing was crawling beneath those sheets and feeling the silk against my skin.

“If you don’t like this one, I have more,” Frank chimed from behind me.

“No, this is fine,” I breathed, the wind knocked out of me by the way his eyes appeared to me in this light, almost wholly green and deep. It must have been the purple of the room, bouncing off of them. I cleared my throat and glanced around, looking at nothing in particular, anywhere but at him. “It’s great.”

He leaned a little further into the room and gestured to our left, at a closed door I had somehow missed. “The bathroom’s just through there. There should be everything you need, but…” He trailed off, easing back and stepping back out of the room, nodding his head back the way we had come. “My room is just down the hall, I’ll be in there.”

“Thanks,” was all I could manage, smiling sheepishly and nodding, the two of us just standing there, hands in pockets. He nodded, rocking a little on the balls of his feet. I didn’t move to look and see where his room was; I was afraid that if I knew, I would follow him there.

“Good night,” he said gently, turning to walk away but then spinning back around. “Ah,” he groaned, somewhat pained.

“What is it?” He grimaced, the expression slowly spreading into a tense and uneasy smile, slightly crooked teeth gnawing at his lip ring.

“I didn’t offer you anything to eat.” He looked completely distraught over it. “Are you hungry?” I frowned — I probably was, but I couldn’t tell. There was a comfortable emptiness to my body. I shook my head.

“No,” I whispered, and he relaxed.

“Just lemme know,” he said, rubbing at the back of his neck, “I mean – there’s no food in, but I can order something. So…” He shrugged and straightened up. “Yeah. Lemme know.” He turned abruptly and moved quickly down the hall, disappearing out of my sight. I lingered in the doorway as if waiting for him to return but quickly shook my head, the figurative cobwebs falling away as I stepped inside, closing the door quietly behind me.

I sat unsteadily at the very edge of the colossal bed, spreading my hands out either side of me on the silk comforter. The silence was so thick and so palpable that I started to feel as though I was being buried alive, the walls so dark that they could have been closing in and I wouldn’t have noticed it right away. I closed my eyes and willed myself to breathe. It was the most uneasy I had felt since coming into this house, as if Frank had taken my calm with him. Without him, all I was left with was my common sense. There was no reason for someone like him to take me in like this. We had spoken for a total of ten, maybe fifteen minutes. People were never this nice to me, especially not guys like him. I wondered if perhaps he was going to rob me but I had nothing to steal, not so much as a single in my wallet. Maybe he would come into the room as I slept, molest me and kill me and then molest my corpse. Maybe there was no food in the house for me because his refrigerator was full of body parts and severed heads. I shivered and leapt up to lock the door but, of course, there was no lock. I swallowed and backed away from the door as if that was the thing that would hurt me.

You’re being ridiculous. Why do you always assume people are out to get you?

Because they are, I snapped back at myself inside my head. Paranoia is just healthy mistrust. Can’t be too careful. I’ll stay the night and then I’ll get the hell out of here.

Upon closer inspection, there was a lock, but only on the bathroom door. Spurred on by my newfound safety, I reached around in the dark until I found the light-switch. It certainly wasn’t a bad place to be holed up in for the night if that was the way it was going to be. There was a huge, claw-footed tub with heavy gold taps, more gold dotted around on the sink, the cupboards beneath it, and even the towel rail. The tiling was – unsurprisingly - black, stretching seamlessly from the floor all the way up to the ceiling. There was a shower, too, a huge glass cubicle that could have technically been its own room, and I almost missed it through the glass, the black tile swallowing it. I considered showering but there were priorities. Lock the door first.

I figured I could sleep in the bathtub. It was big enough. I went back into the bedroom and wrenched the massive comforter from the bed, bunching it up against my chest and then grabbing at a fistful of one of the pillows, plush and thick and heavy. I dragged my makeshift bed with me into the bathroom, stopping and feeling my skin jitter and jump and crawl as I peered into the tub.

There was a spider, bigger than my hand with thick, heavy and hairy legs, looking at me. I recoiled, the spider and I locked in some staring contest as it refused to move and I backed away. There was a noise behind me and I jumped violently, a startled and unceremoniously high-pitched yelp coming out of my mouth.

“Sorry, I did knock,” Frank said from the doorway. I turned to look at him, embarrassed to notice the smirk on his face, mischief glinting in his honey-green eyes. “I was just going to ask if you needed a change of clothes or anything.” He cocked his head slightly to one side, studying my face. “Why do you look so spooked? Not that scary, am I?”

He’s not a serial killer if he’s five-six.

His smirk only intensified in the wake of my silence. I sighed, irritated, glowering at him.

“There’s a spider.” Saying it aloud brought me back to my senses and I rolled my eyes. My heart rate had stabilised dramatically. I looked back into the tub and the offending thing didn’t seem quite so massive anymore, but it was still looking at me. Frank peered into the tub with me, looking around my shoulder, and made a loud euck of revulsion.

“Gross.” His eyes flickered up to meet mine before darting back down. “I’d offer to get rid of it but those things freak me the fuck out.”

Serial killers aren’t scared of spiders. Surely.

We stood there looking at it for a minute or so, Frank standing so close that I could feel his breath against my neck.

“Should I kill it?” I whispered, and I felt the air shift as he nodded emphatically. As slowly as I could with the spider’s bazillion beady eyes watching me, I took off one of my shoes, raising it an inch at a time to not arouse suspicion. Frank had ducked behind me, waiting. I brought my shoe down as hard and fast as I could, closing my eyes and wincing at it collided with the tub with an echoing thwack. I opened one eye to see the spider’s legs spread out at odd angles around the toe of my shoe, not so much as twitching. When I pulled back there was no denying that it was dead, its body squished into a blackish splodge against the pristine white of the tub. I sighed and felt Frank’s exhale of relief from behind me and straightened back up.

“Good job,” he breathed, grinning at me as I looked over at him, eyes a little wild with something between fear and exhilaration. I smiled back anxiously, clearing my throat and moving to dispose of the body. When it was gone, bunched up in toilet paper and flushed down the toilet (twice for good measure), I looked back at Frank and saw that same smirk once again plastered on his face.

“What?”

“Why do you, uh…” He gestured to the crumpled heap of pillows and bedding on the bathroom floor. My cheeks flushed red and I scrambled to pick them up.

“Oh! I, uh, I was just—”

“Hey, man, whatever floats your boat.” He grinned, running a tattooed hand back through his hair. “You good for clothes? I’ve got some sweats and some shirts that should fit you.”

“Uh…” I swallowed, disarmed by the soft honesty in his eyes that made me out to feel like the biggest jerk on the planet. “Yeah, that’d be great.” I paused. “Thanks, Frank.”

“No sweat. I’ll be back in a second.”

When he returned I was back on the foot of the bed atop the mess I had made by piling all the sheets back onto it. He laughed softly in the back of his throat and held out a small pile of clothes, complete with underwear and socks. I mumbled my thanks again and he hummed in response.

“You can keep ‘em if you want.” His hand brushed mine as he handed them over and my eyes darted up to meet his, shocked by the coolness of his fingers. He withdrew his hand with a dark, subdued, maybe even sad smile creeping over his face, not wanting to hold my gaze. “I’ll see you in the morning. I’ll… I dunno, I’ll make pancakes or something.” All I caught of his face before he was gone was a grimace, lips and teeth moving quickly as if he was muttering something to himself. Once more, there was silence.

I glared at the stack of clothes, like it was their fault that I once again felt anxious and absurd. I flopped backward on the bed and closed my eyes, sighing heavily and leaning into the soft, downy sheets. I couldn’t think straight. For a moment it was as though I was in a dream, the darkness behind my eyes shot through with a rapid-fire montage of everything that had happened that day. I hadn’t known it was even possible for so much to happen and for it to all go wrong. It was hard to believe that, at the end of it all, I was here. But, I guess, me being me, where else would I be?

I opened my eyes and stared upward, at the canopy above the bed. To my horror, I was met with my reflection gawking back at me. I looked like hell and there was a fucking mirror above the bed. A mirror. I cringed away from my reflection and curled onto my side, pressing my face into the sheets until I could barely breathe, hoping that it would stifle my tears. But none came. My senses felt at once heightened and dulled, the bed and the darkness and the warmth of the room euphoric to my body. My memories quickly got muddled, foggy, soft around the edges like they were years, decades old. Sleep had me in its clutches and I leaned into it, a shiver running down my spine as I remembered the chill of Frank’s fingers and the heat of his eyes.  

There is something inside of me clawing to get out. It doesn’t hurt, but there is a substantial ache to be relieved of it. My body feels at once solid and liquid and deep, like black, molten metal.

I sense a hand against my face and I count the fingers, one, two, three. Feather-light, a settling of dust. My blood rises and draws me closer as if magnetised. The soft pad of a thumb smooths over my mouth, first my top lip and then the bottom, slow like a breath. There seem to be hands all over me now, the gooseflesh of my arms and my neck and my chest prickling to life. My breathing is alien and wistful and quiet. A tongue against my neck draws a flinch from me and settles in the hollow between my collarbones. There is a hand in my hair sweeping it away. The silk sheets are ice hot against my back.

The moan is impossible to ignore and I struggle to discern its origin, the back of my throat wet with need and bated breath. It comes again, louder, lower, as these disembodied fingers drift lower. A tongue against my nipple, first one and then the other, simultaneous and overlapping. The calculated, perfect graze of teeth. The fingers glide over me, around me, into me. It hardly lasts a second.

I find the will to open my eyes and as they flutter, blurry and damp, they catch my reflection in the mirror above the strange bed and I am entirely alone. The darkness finds me again and once more, the ache builds low in my chest. A mouth finds mine and it is tart like berries sat in the sun, warm like cigarette smoke, like blood. My neck stings, an insistent and stomach-churning sharpness. I detect an overwhelming nakedness and my back is no longer touching the sheets as I writhe there in the air like a savaged marionette. The hands trail through my sweat and clutch at me as though they could break me and my head drops back.

Something presses deep inside of me, an overwhelming fullness that sets the ache inside of me free and it comes bubbling out of my throat. My hands find hair and stiff shoulders and my toes are hardly grazing the silk on the bed and my back arches. Everything is spinning as I open my eyes and the familiar eyes catch mine. Lamplight flickers deep inside of them, appearing to me like igneous rock in the sun. There is a flash of teeth and a rush of heat and it is as though I have been plunged underwater. My head is wrenched back and there are hips rocking into mine and dizziness settles into my head. My fingers grapple at biceps and a firm waist and I am shocked my body does not shatter as I am laid down on the sheets again.

In my reflection I am alone. My chest heaves with my breath and my cheeks are flushed and I can hear the surge of my blood beneath my skin, flooding me, rushing downward, only ever downward. There are fingers curled around me though I cannot see them and I continue to press into their weight. There is a mouth on me and I am helpless to it. The mouth kisses my mouth while it kisses elsewhere, lower, and my fingers are balled around the bedding, the silk slippery and my breath desperate and thin. There is an intensity, a heaviness in my stomach and my moans echo over and over again until I cannot breathe. I am contorting in ecstasy and there is nobody there, I am sure of it, yet still my eyes roll back and my fingers search for him though they are glued, it seems, to the bed. His mouth tastes to me now like all good things I have ever tasted, sweet and warm, and he laughs and then his tongue laps at my neck slowly the way a dog might lick a wound, a determinate tenderness. He groans into me and I curl myself around him though there is nobody there and I nod. I bid him to do it again. He takes my hands in his and kisses them and his teeth graze the heels of my palms and the insides of my wrists and he presses into me again, and again. The mirror above me is black as ice, and empty.

Chapter Text

As someone that is physically incapable of sleeping, I’d like to think I’ve come up with a few tricks over the years, things I can do that will take me as close to sleep as I can get, close enough that it feels real. I don’t do it often, except for when I really want to pass the time. Me saying that ‘I can’t sleep’ is a non sequitur and yet, now that he’s here, it feels just like it did back when I was alive, back when I could sleep and something would keep me awake.

I fucked up. I fucked up big.

I don’t really know what I was thinking. I wasn’t, really, but I’d like to see you catch a whiff of something like that in the middle of the night when you’re just minding your own business and not do anything about it. What was I supposed to do? Was I supposed to go about my night, let the idiot throw himself off the bridge? I couldn’t help it, especially not when he looked at me the way that he did.

I’m not proud of it but I like how quick humans are to trust me. I’m not a creep, I don’t take advantage of it or anything; I like to think it helps. They’re always so awkward around me and I don’t know why, because it was never like that when I was alive. I was always the awkward one. I know that we have that kind of effect, the natural pull of the unnatural, something that draws them in. I don’t know how it works. I just know that I can make them feel things if I want to. I can make them feel better.

It wasn’t like that with Gerard, and I wasn’t proud of that, either. Sure, I wanted to make him feel better, but that very quickly turned into background noise. All I could think about was drinking him dry.

There’s no way to admit you wanted to kill somebody without it coming off wrong but I can’t help it. It’s instinctual, no matter how hard I’ve tried to shed it, it won’t go away. Between not being able to get any fucking social interaction and these stupid, measly watered down blood rations that I get, sometimes all you want is a warm body. I’ve been craving the closeness, the intimacy, the sensation of your hunger finally subsiding. The rations are thinned out with saline and peppered with diseases because you know, the government can’t use that shit for anything else. I can’t get sick, obviously, but sometimes they make me all sluggish and when that happens, no blood is still better than bad blood. Getting it straight from the source is unparalleled. I’ve only done it a few times, and it’s been years since the last time. But I don’t like having to kill people. It’s just an existential hazard. I promised myself that if I ever did it again it would have to be for some seriously good, next-level stuff.

He just smelled so good. So good that I couldn’t believe it, coupled with how pretty he was and the way he looked at me, almost as if he had been waiting for me for as long I had been waiting for him but that he didn’t quite know it. If he was into guys I couldn’t tell but it didn’t matter because I was into him and that was enough. If anyone was going to be it, it was him.

I could hardly talk to him. I was reminded then, of how it felt to be human, dumbed down and dry-mouthed around a good-looking guy, except I was less nervous and more starving, my tongue prickling and begging every time I opened my mouth and tasted him in the air. It didn’t matter to me that he was hurting; I just made him feel better so that he would come with me. I gave him enough of an illusion of choice so that I didn’t have to feel guilty for doing it when I finally did.

I guess that was my first major mistake, only twisting his mind around just enough, still letting him be himself. I clammed up when it became clear to me that I actually liked him and that I would have liked him even more if I’d still been alive. I would have liked to talk to him more, ask him out on a date, invite him to a show, anything. But I couldn’t do things like that anymore. I couldn’t have a human experience with this guy if I tried.

So I got up in my head about it and got miserable; big deal. The only option left was to wait until he was asleep and do it then to soften the blow. But the spider spun me the fuck out. It was like being slapped in the face, standing in the bathroom with a hot guy and asking-but-not-quite-asking him to kill a massive fucking spider because I was too chicken to do it. And he did it. I didn’t even have to get up inside his head to make him do it.

Big fucking deal, Frankie, I muttered inside of my head late that night while I rolled the memory around over and over again, romanticising it.

I couldn’t quite hear his thoughts from my room but there was a sort of buzzing, a low hum that thoughts turn into when you’re far enough away. It’s not even that I could hear them at all, really, more just the general feelings. I think it’s more my being able to detect the blood pressure shifts and the chemical dumps; I’ve been doing it long enough that those things turn into thoughts on their own. When someone’s asleep, they go a little quiet, like white noise.

I watched him sleep for a little while. Again, not proud of it. But I’d never had someone sleep at the house before, not a human. I’d lost count of how long it had been since someone had been asleep next to me and, as I watched him, that bummed me out so hard that I almost climbed into the bed next to him. I could smell his blood, I could hear his heart pumping it around, and I could feel the slow thrum of his pulse without even touching him. I only got as close as brushing the side of his neck with my nose before I forced myself to leave. My throat and my tongue and my nostrils were burning and my stomach was crying, weeping, begging, and I still couldn’t do it.

I found myself down in the kitchen, forcing half a ration down my neck and forcing myself to taste it, to find as much enjoyment in it as I could. It tasted like shit, like they always do, but there was an aftertaste of Gerard in the back of my throat, just a whisper of whatever he had left in the air, and I hung onto that. I imagined drinking from him, my eyes closed with my mouth against the glass, and I tried to manipulate myself into believing that the gruesome, beautiful thing in my head was real. But I didn’t like the thought of Gerard covered in blood and dead. Covered in blood and living, I could deal with.

It didn’t take me long to get back inside his head. Humans are rarely so closed off but he was a little different, given everything he had been through. His head was foggy from all my meddling and distraught, restless, panicking. I soothed him as best I could. When his subconscious form rose to my touch, though, I didn’t know what to do. I had never done this before. I hadn’t been expecting him to reach out and touch me, too. I wondered if I had made him do it, if I had pushed too far, until he looked at me, appearing to see me, all of me. It scared the hell of me and I couldn’t stop. It didn’t matter that it was just happening inside his head; he was letting me. He was encouraging me.

All I wanted, from that moment onward, was to feel his touch in real life; awake, unadulterated. I wanted to let him see me. I wanted to let him make me come alive.

Chapter Text

For the first time in a long time, I woke up with no dread, no horrors invading my mind before I had even opened my eyes. I rolled over with a huff and sank my face further into the pillow, breathing in the unfamiliar detergent that smelled like apple blossoms and sandalwood. I blinked my eyes open slowly, my vision dizzy and blurry, and just like being hit by a freight train my memories of the day before hit me hard in the face out of nowhere. I sat upright immediately, head spinning, eyes shifting restlessly around the room. The realisation came to me in broken fragments.

Job. Lindsey. Apartment. Bridge. Frank. Frank. Frank.

I would have slammed my body straight back down onto the bed in despair if it wasn’t for the damp heat making itself known in my underwear. I was afraid to look, refusing at first to believe it at all. How long had it been since the last time I came in my sleep? Nine, ten years? Jesus Christ.

I looked up as I peeled my hair back from my flushed, sweaty face and was met with the disgusting reality of my face in the mirror above my head. There was drool and a strand of hair plastered to my cheek and my hair was sticking up and I looked like I stank. I did. I had no idea what time it was but I felt like I’d slept for days.

The shower must have lasted close to an hour. I had never experienced such a blissful combination of water pressure and heat and just need. My stomach throbbed with the persistent ache of having a hard-on to take care of and there might have never been a better place to do it, but plenty of better times. I pushed it from my mind and tried to pull myself together.

I didn’t know where to start but it had to be with getting out of this house, making myself scarce before Frank noticed I was gone at all. I didn’t want to face the awkward goodbye, the awkward thanks, the shroud of guilt that would follow me long after I stepped out of the front door. I knew that I needed to go home, but I didn’t want to see her. I just needed my things. I needed to find Mikey’s number. I could get a cab to Jersey. I could get a new phone. I could start looking for a job.

With the steam from the shower and the heat of the water I got overwhelmed fast. My stomach growled and my head pulsated with the craving for coffee and my skin crawled with just how badly I needed a cigarette. Coffee first. Cigarette second. Food third, maybe. I was scared to find out where, if, Frank fit into the order of things.

As I washed myself I detected several sore spots dotted about on my body, mostly around my hips and my chest and my neck. Inspecting myself in the mirror afterward I noticed a pale bruise across the base of my throat, but I couldn’t place where it had come from. I rubbed at it with my fingers as if trying to scrub it away, but it just twinged, asking me gently to stop. There was a sharpness to it, as though the skin had been broken, but there was no blood. Like the bruise after a blood draw. Just the thought of it made me shudder and so I got dressed, resisting the urge to worry at it over and over again.

Once I had dressed and stepped out of my room, I noticed that my urgency to leave had mostly disappeared, but I didn’t have the brainpower to think about it any more than that. I thought that, maybe, the stress was just sending me into mood swings. The dark purple carpet of the hallway muffled my footsteps as I made my way to the stairs. There was music playing, something fast-paced and heavy on the guitar, with no clear origin. I looked around, down the hall in the direction of where I guessed Frank’s room would be. The door was ajar. There was a flicker of nervousness inside me as I stepped forward, propelled towards the doorway as if by some invisible force, the paintings on the walls watching me but not appearing to move or mind.

The music wasn’t coming from this room, and so I figured he must be somewhere else but that didn’t stop me from opening the door. I peered inside, my eyes fluttering wider as I took it all in. The room must have been double the size of the one I had stayed in. It was brighter, its huge window facing out onto the street, light flooding in and illuminating the space despite the warm, claret-red paint on the walls. Outside, the sky was pale and darkening, and there were small flurries of snow drifting past the glass.

To the side of the room, extending out from the wall, there was another huge four-poster bed which would have been identical to mine if not for the curtains. It was shrouded all around in heavy burgundy velvet, embossed all over with that same flowery brocade that climbed the bedposts. His sheets were red silk, black thread interwoven with the red and creating an iridescent, otherworldly sheen, like blood under hospital lights. There was a mirror above his bed, too; who the hell had decorated this place?

The walls were less cluttered than the hallway but the artwork was more of the same, only more religious; I counted not one, or two, but three imaginings of the Virgin Mary, the largest of which was set against the opposing wall to the bed. I wondered if Frank looked at it often, staring into her maudlin eyes the way he looked into mine. There was a painting of Saint Sebastian by the window and under it, a full rack of guitars, five by my count. I wondered if he played or whether they were just more props, left behind by this ‘friend’ he said he had.

 Resisting the urge to really and properly pry, I turned back from the room and pulled the door back to where it had been, hardly open and hardly closed. As I wandered closer to my room, to the staircase, the music grew louder, and I realised it must have been coming from the floor below. I once more wondered what time it was — it was disorienting, being in a stranger’s house where there were, seemingly, no fucking clocks.

I followed the oil-black staircase down to the second floor and found Frank in the kitchen, head bobbing along to the now-deafening punk music. The air was heady with the smell of coffee and cigarettes and as I drew closer, my mouth started to water. Frank turned down the music and smiled up at me, cigarette dangling from between his lips as he slid a cup of coffee across the island and into my hands like he had been expecting me at that precise moment. When our eyes met it was like the breath had been knocked clean out of me and it took everything I had not to stagger backward. I recalled something, spotty and hazy like I had dreamed it, the sight of his body moving on top of mine, his mouth moving against me, his hands on my body. My face was hot and I looked away, heart pounding, but not before I caught him smirking. As if he knew. How could he possibly know? It was just a dream. Doesn’t mean shit.

He was dressed in another of those thin, threadbare black t-shirts, clinging to his shoulders and his biceps. His black hair was tucked behind his ear and I caught sight of the tattoo on his neck, a scorpion, black and stark against the paleness of him. I recalled the softness, the cool heat of his tongue against my throat and blinked hard.

“Well, you sure can sleep,” Frank mused, cigarette coming away from his mouth with a soft pop and his mouth spreading into a grin, startling me out of my train of thought. “I checked in on you a couple times but you were like, dead asleep. How do you feel?”

“Fine,” I mumbled, slipping into a chair. “What time is it?”

“Uh, like, seven? PM?” He shrugged and went back to moving around the kitchen, fiddling with things on the stove. I realised then that he was cooking, an alarmingly tall stack of pancakes balanced precariously on a plate by the stove. “Hungry?”

“Yeah,” I breathed, watching as he piled at least half of the pancakes onto a separate plate. He nudged it over to me, pausing for a moment before snapping back to attention and procuring a knife and fork. I swallowed and smiled uneasily at him, unsure how to say it. He looked somewhat embarrassed, caught off guard, and bounced a little on his feet. I cleared my throat. “Have you got any syrup?”

“Oh! Yeah.” He reached into a large brown grocery bag on the counter and took out a new, unopened bottle, handing it to me.

“Thanks,” I mumbled. “Aren’t you gonna eat?” He hadn’t made up a plate for himself. He shrugged.

He watched me eat in silence, leaned over with his elbows on the counter, smoking cigarette after cigarette until he noticed that I was staring at him like a dog waiting for dinner scraps. He chuckled and tossed me his pack, placing his lighter softly down on the counter next to my fork. I must have only eaten a quarter of the food he had given me and I was hopelessly full. When I lit up, to my embarrassment, I groaned, letting the nicotine seep into my brain and clean me up. He chuckled, straightening up and going for the fridge.

“Any plans for today?” He asked me, a little tongue-in-cheek with all things considered, and he laughed when I glared at him. He took a glass from the fridge, half-full of a thick, dark reddish liquid that left a film behind on the glass as he tilted it to his mouth, gulping it down in one go.

“What’s that?” I said around the rim of my coffee cup. He looked up at me through his long eyelashes, slowly wiping at the corners of his mouth with his finger and thumb, his tongue darting out between his lips and glancing over his lip ring. I noticed now, that in the waning daylight coming through the windows, his eyes seemed brighter. He held my gaze a little longer before he answered, turning away to wash the glass instead.

“Juice.”

“What, like, pomegranate juice?” I just heard him hum in agreement, nodding slowly as he turned back around, folding his arms across his chest and leaning back against the counter. At this point, I was just pushing my pancakes around the plate, creating one soggy and syrup-drenched heap. When he didn’t look away, I put down my fork. I drew in a long, anxious breath. “I really appreciate all this,” I said, “but I should probably go.” Frank held my eyes carefully, worrying at the corner of one of his fingernails with his teeth, and shrugged.

“It’s no trouble,” was all he said, his eyes dancing over my face, his tongue once again coming out to wet his lips. They looked rosier than before. Anxiety was settling in into my extremities, like a whisper, slowly making itself known though I could tell there was something stopping it from taking hold completely. There was nothing left now, logically, but to leave. I had had my coffee, my cigarette, my food, and yet I couldn’t make myself move. “You can stay as long as you like,” he murmured, as if reading my mind. “If you need,” he said; an afterthought. I sighed.

“I… I really should go.” His eyebrows pinched together at that and I could see he was hesitating, measuring his words before he said them.

“You gonna go home?”

That made me laugh. I had almost entirely forgotten about my home and everything that went with it. My cheating, now ex-girlfriend, the hastily scribbled and tear-blotted note I had left her, my dressers full of clothes and sentimental ephemera that were useless to me now. My art, all of my studies and sketches for a cartoon that would now never be made. My identical ties and button-downs reserved for the job I no longer had.

“Yeah, I guess,” I sighed, my head collapsing forward into my hands, fingers moving through my hair and down the back of my neck, rubbing at the skin uncertainly.

“I could give you a ride, if it’s far.” Frank spoke so strangely, like nothing was an inconvenience or an impertinence to him. There might even have been a shred of quiet desperation in his voice but it was difficult to tell, always speaking so softly and so level that it was hard to gauge his true feelings about anything at all. I looked up to see him eyeing me carefully.

“I’m going to be honest, I don’t even know where we are right now,” I breathed, and he chuckled.

“I’ll take you.”

“You don’t have to do that,” I protested quietly, but I don’t think I completely meant it. I was comfortable here, oddly, and I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to leave him, his strange house and his sweet-smelling cigarettes, the calm that seemed to take over me whenever he spoke. There was a small, screaming part of me that wanted to know him, that might even have wanted to be his friend. I considered the possibility of someone like him – carefree, pierced, tattooed, punk – ever so much as looking my way under different circumstances and found it minimal, next to none. I knew nothing about him save for his name and he behaved as if he knew me intimately, as if discovering me on the brink of suicide and crisis was enough. For no substantial reason at all, I wanted to say yes to him.

“I’m not doing anything.” I couldn’t shake the feeling, once again, that there were ulterior motives here, but I was hopeless to knowing what on earth they would be. If he was going to kill me he would have already done it. If he was trying to get into my pants then surely he would have already tried that, too. A loose recollection of my dream from the night before gripped me and his eyes flinched as if he could see it too. “Come on, it’s the least I can do.”

I wasn’t sure I agreed. He picked up his keys.

Out on the street, I was relieved to see that his car was a piece of shit and didn’t by any stretch of the imagination match the extravagance of the house he lived in. Beneath the chilly, dusky purple sky his skin was porcelain pale and almost airbrushed-looking, his cheekbones smooth and rounded like the curve of his jaw, the shape of his mouth. I was ashamed to be stood next to him in the street, the state of me versus him. I almost hated him for it. I was certain that this was precisely the kind of guy that a chump like me would get cheated on for. He caught me glaring at him and I didn’t have the time to recover but he just grinned, cocky and at-ease like always, and got into the car.

Come to think of it, he wouldn’t have even looked old enough to drive if it wasn’t for the tattoos. I couldn’t think of a way to ask how old he was that didn’t sound bizarre so I just shut up, thankful for the cigarette when he offered it to me, thankful for having something else to do with my mouth. He asked where we were going and I still didn’t know what part of town we were in, unable to remember which way we had walked off the bridge and not having enough daylight to recognise this part of town.

“Are you sure about this?” I asked him over the thrum of the clearly struggling engine as he drove, and he shrugged again, eyes fixated on the road. He had The Misfits playing on the stereo, hardly audible but familiar enough that it lulled me into security. At least he didn’t drive like the shithead kid that he appeared to be. I wondered where his mom was.

“Like I said, I’m not doing anything.” His eyes flickered up at the rearview mirror and back again. “Besides, you could use the help. You know? Getting back on your feet and all that.” My eyes were fixed on the way his mouth moved around his cigarette, the way the smoke drifted out of his lips and up into his nose. I didn’t really have any way to argue with him.

On the way to my apartment he asked again about my job, this time listening to me with a smile when I talked about my writing and my art and the years I felt that, now, I had wasted at college. I asked if he had been to college and he snorted out a laugh and said no. I lapsed back into silence and, after a few minutes, he came out with something I really hadn’t been expecting.

“This girlfriend of yours,” he said, “do you love her?”

“Dude,” I snapped, unable to help myself, and he held up his hand in peace before letting it fall back against the steering wheel. My heart was hammering away and my chest was getting tight just thinking about her.

“Relax! I’m just… You know, do you think you’re gonna work things out?”

“No,” I muttered indignantly, offended that he would even bother asking. He nodded, taking the hint. For the rest of the drive, his eyebrows were gently pinched together, either mad at himself for asking or upset at my answer, I couldn’t tell which. I messed absentmindedly with the bruise at the base of my neck, smoothing my fingers repeatedly and rhythmically across the groove between my collarbones. I did this over and over until Frank stopped the car and I blinked, peering up out of the window at my apartment building, at the street-facing windows on the third floor that, for a time, had belonged to me. They still did; my name was on the lease. But for how long? I didn’t even know how I was going to get another apartment with no damn job. I made another mental note to call Mikey as soon as I could.

“Well,” I sighed, smoothing my clammy palms against my jeans and swallowing slowly, drumming my fingers against the side of my thigh, “I guess I’ll see you around.” The words made me feel sick. Frank just raised an eyebrow at me, head leaned back against his seat. “What are you looking at me like that for?”

“I’m obviously coming in with you,” he said loftily, as if I was some kind of moron. I wrinkled my nose. He rolled his eyes and cut the engine.

“What?”

He laughed, boyish and musical, more of a snicker than anything else.

“Like you’re gonna schlep all your shit down onto the street by yourself while I just sit here.”

“I thought you were just giving me a ride.” It was his turn to stare at me dumbly, huffing out a small breath of air that sent a loose strand of his hair flying upward just for a moment.

“Jesus, man, it’s a good thing you’re pretty because you’re stupid as hell.”

What?

He jammed his keys into his pocket and opened his door, glancing around. “You’re staying with me for now, alright? Come on, let’s go and get your stuff.”

I scrambled out of the car to follow him, jogging to keep up. How did someone with such short legs move so damn fast?

“I really don’t think you should come in,” I gasped, my face screwing up as we crammed into the elevator together. My muscle memory took over and I pressed the button for the third floor like I had done a thousand times before. He looked unaffected, even a little gleeful, leaned against the wall of the elevator as it shuddered into motion.

“Why not? It’s good to have backup.”

“What, so you’re my entourage now?” I glared at him and he just shrugged with his mouth, tucking his hair away and chewing at his fingernails again. It looked for a moment as if he was holding back a laugh. I glowered at the side of his head, at the scorpion on his neck, at the colourful letters tattooed on his fingers. Fuck this guy.

To my dreaded surprise, my key still fit into the lock. I had thought about knocking, trying to be civil about all this, asking politely if I could come in and get my things. That would have been the sensible thing to do. But no; she had kicked me out. Of my apartment. I could use my own damn key if I wanted to.

Lindsey appeared in the hallway almost immediately, startled and disarmed by the sight of me. All I could do was stare at her, stuck like a deer in headlights and feeling myself starting to melt a little in her presence. But the coldness in her stare quickly got my blood warm again and I tried to stand up a little taller, squaring my shoulders.

“Gerard? What are you doing here?” What gave her the right to be so confrontational? Wasn’t it obvious? Why was she doing this to me? The thoughts evaporated as quickly as they had popped into my head.

“I’m just getting my things,” I snapped at her, more curt than I had been with her yesterday, even. She said nothing, instead looking over my shoulder to where Frank was loitering, somewhat menacingly for someone of his stature, in the doorway.

“Who’s this?”

“Frank,” I said dumbly, like it was obvious, like she should have known. There was no use explaining. From the corner of my eye I saw him tilt his chin in acknowledgement but he said nothing to her. They stared at each other for a moment, and eventually Lindsey moved to one side, letting us pass her into the living room.

“I already packed some of your things,” came Lindsey’s voice from behind me, softer and more amenable, alien. My eyes settled on the garbage bags piled high on our sofa, my sofa, and though I wanted to scoff I couldn’t bring myself to be angry about it at all. Like I had lost all my sense. Like this was perfectly normal, fine, okay.

Wherever I went in the apartment, scooping things into bags and suitcases and boxes, Frank stood close behind me, a solid (if a little short) barrier between myself and Lindsey. I caught her staring at him a great deal, eyes widened as if enchanted, and though it irritated me I was glad in some way that she was distracted. Maybe she was thinking about fucking him. The thought made me slam the wardrobe door harder than I had meant to and Frank just smiled at me meekly as if he was apologising. I looked away. I didn’t want her to look at him like that. I hadn’t wanted her to see him at all. For all intents and purposes he was mine. She was taking everything else from me, she could at least let me have Frank.

When I looked back at him he had his head cocked to the side a little as if to ask me what was wrong and I just huffed, adding another garbage bag to the pile.

“That everything?” He asked me, and I shrugged, before muttering fuck under my breath and rushing into my study.

I swept up as many of my sketches and my paintings as I could, trying not to crease and crumple them as I crammed them into box files and between the pages of books. Frank stood in the doorway, at once deep in thought and watching me intently.

Quickly, though, that was it. My entire life, reduced to a haphazard mountain of bags and boxes. I was going red in the face looking at it all, out of breath from all the rushing around, from the embarrassment of having Lindsey watching me and rubbing uneasily at the tops of her arms.

“Gerard—”

She had been meaning to say more, that much was clear, but when I looked up I saw Frank glaring at her, amber eyes burning into hers. She swallowed and for once, I didn’t find myself aching to hear what she was going to say next. I found that I didn’t care. I unspooled my key from its keyring and placed it on the coffee table – my coffee table – and straightened back up.

I ended up holding the elevator open while Frank moved everything into it, despite my insistence that I could do it myself. No matter how heavy the boxes were, he didn’t seem to be struggling. All he offered me once everything was loaded in and we were sinking back down toward the first floor, was a small, tight smile.

Back in his car, the suspension bogged down by the weight of my miserable existence and my possessions, he handed me a cigarette, but even after a long drag I couldn’t taste it. I turned it over in my fingers as he started the car, sighing.

“You’re not bad, as bodyguards go,” I joked, and he just hummed, or grunted, really. I looked over at him with an attempt at a smile but he didn’t look back. I cleared my throat and looked down at my lap. “Thanks for coming with me,” I mumbled.

“No sweat,” he sighed, flicking on his turn signal and pulling off.

“You know, I think she thought you were cute,” I said without really thinking while we were carrying all my things back into his house. I think I’d said it more to diffuse the strange tension that had sunken in between us, than anything else. Frank stopped in the hall and put down the box he had been carrying with an emphatic thump, folding his arms as he looked at me. By now it was dark and his face was backlit by the light from the hall, his pierced lip glowing.

“I am cute,” he said flatly, and I wrinkled my nose. He huffed. “What? You don’t think so?”

I said nothing. Why had I even brought that up in the first place? Thanks for telling me it’s all in my head, asshole.  

“You know, she might not have dumped your ass if you weren’t so insecure.” I recoiled as if he had physically struck me across the face, not just verbally. He put down another box, grinning up at me breathlessly with his tongue pressed between his teeth.

“Hey, man, fuck you,” I wheezed out, recovering from the metaphorical gut punch. He snickered.

“I’m just saying,” he said gently, “you see your girl looking at another guy and just automatically assume it’s like that?”

“She cheated on me,” I hissed, “I think it’s a fair assumption.”

He pursed his lips, rubbing at his temple for a moment and studying my face. He was doing that more and more. For the first time since meeting Frank, I could feel my resentment bubbling up, everything that I should have reserved for Lindsey but couldn’t, inexplicably, get out when I saw her.

“Well, then maybe she’s just a bitch. But, seriously, you’re a good-looking guy. Can’t be comparing yourself to other guys all the time.”

“I wasn’t comparing myself to you,” I lied, incredulous with my voice climbing up in pitch, and he smiled as if he knew it. Adding insult to injury, he kissed the air in my direction.

“Sure you weren’t.” He reached around me to close the front door, all of my things inside with us now. As the door snapped closed, I detected an air of finality to it, that this was it, that this is where I would remain. He wriggled out of his jacket and, just like the night before, reached for mine without any apparent second thought. In a strangely, alarmingly intimate display, he reached for my scarf at the same time, unfurling it from my neck. What was more alarming was that I let him. His eyes rested, then, on the chain around my neck, the one that hadn’t been there before, the one that I had swiped from the drawer in my nightstand at the apartment.

“Wouldn’t have taken you for a Jesus freak,” Frank remarked, his voice slightly strained, eyes not moving even as he drew his hands away, slowly, carefully. I glanced down, the hall light bouncing off the metal, making the small crucifix appear almost perfectly bright white.

“It was my grandmother’s,” I said, blunt enough that he would know he was being rude, but he just hummed in the back of his throat. The tightness at the corners of his eyes melted away when I tucked the necklace back into my shirt, like it disgusted him and he was glad to be rid of it. Why was I the Jesus freak? He was the one with all the paintings of Mary. Why wouldn’t he just move them, if it all bothered him so damn much?

Begrudgingly, I let him help me take everything up to my room on the third floor. Quickly, it grew cluttered and messy and overwhelming and, despite Frank’s insisting that I could unpack and that he could keep some of the boxes in a different room to give me some space, I refused. The floor was full of junk, my junk, and I was starting to really think that I had made a massive mistake.

When I finally found my address book, I asked Frank if I could use his phone. He just smirked, eyes settled on the small, leatherbound book in my hands.

“How old are you that you have a fuckin’ address book, man?”

“How old are you? Twelve?” I shot back, and he just grinned, unaffected. I obviously wasn’t the first person to make that joke.

“Phone’s in the kitchen, sweetheart,” he drawled mockingly, and I just grumbled, flipping him off before trudging downstairs to finally call Mikey.

But when I had the address book flipped open on the counter and the phone in my hand, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. The phone was slick with my sweat and my throat was getting dry. What the hell was I supposed to even say to him? Where was I supposed to start? My fingers worried once more at the bruise on my neck and for some reason it calmed me, my heart rate slipping back down to normal. Mikey picked up on the fourth ring, quite obviously sleepy and confused.

“Nnnf. Hello?”

“Mikey? It’s Gerard.”

“Gee?” He cleared his throat and I could hear sheets rustling, as though he was sitting up in bed, rifling around for his glasses. “Dude, it’s like, midnight.”

“Were you sleeping?”

“Yeah, believe it or not, people sleep.”

“It’s not even late,” I whispered, embarrassed, already on the verge of tears for reasons that I couldn’t quite uncover. I really needed Frank to invest in a clock. I didn’t understand how I still hadn’t seen one in this labyrinth of a fucking house.

“Yeah, whatever. What’s up? Are you alright? I tried calling you this morning but—”

“Yeah, Mikes, I’m…” I sighed, pinching at the bridge of my nose and letting my shoulders slump, sinking a little harder onto my elbows on the counter, “well, I don’t know. I’ve had a weird couple days.”

“Yeah?” His voice had softened a little, inquisitive, bracing for the bad news. He knew me better than I knew myself.

“Yeah,” I breathed out. I smoothed my hand over my clammy forehead. “Lindsey and I broke up, so there’s that.”

“What?” He squeaked. “What do you mean? What happened?”

“And I got laid off from Cartoon Network.” Two for the price of one. Mikey’s stunned silence caused me to recoil away from the phone a little, biting down on my lip and pulling it hard between my teeth.

“Oh, Jesus, Gee,” he sighed eventually, and I sighed back. “Why the hell didn’t you call me? What happened? Where are you? Are you okay? Do you want me to—”

“I’m alright,” I mumbled, sniffling against the tears that wanted to come out and staring down at the counter until it started to go blurry. “I… Listen, I uh, I kinda lost my phone, and Lindsey kicked me out, so—”

“She did what?” There was more muffled noise on the other end of the phone, Mikey tearing the sheets off and jumping up out of bed, muttering to himself just far enough away from the receiver that I couldn’t hear what he was saying. “Gee, seriously, where are you?”

“I’m…” As if on cue, I looked up to see Frank hovering on the other side of the kitchen island, smiling at me sheepishly, afraid that he was intruding. I had almost entirely forgotten that I was pissed at him, that he was just a rude little shit that was letting me stay here for no good reason. Looking at him made it easy to forget. The fuck has gotten into you? I blinked. He made a loose gesture toward the coffee machine and tilted his head to one side and I nodded, smiling weakly, and he nodded back, moving around me.

“Gee?” Came Mikey’s voice again.

“I’m staying with a friend,” I rushed out, and I swear I could hear him frowning.

“What friend?”

“Frank,” I said, the same way I had said it to Lindsey, like it was so obvious, like it was the only clear answer.

“Who the fuck is Frank?”

“He’s new. I don’t know, don’t worry about it. Listen, what I was trying to say, is that I don’t have a phone right now so if you—”

“Are you sure you’re alright?” It was that same soft tone of voice he used on me when he was frightened, like we were both still kids. I stopped and swallowed, letting my breath go like there was a boot on my chest forcing it all out.

“Yeah, Mikes, I’m alright.” It didn’t even feel like a lie. A cup of coffee appeared in front of me and I looked over my shoulder to see Frank leaned against the counter, lighting a cigarette. “I’m alright,” I said again, and I caught sight of Frank’s mouth tugging upward, gently, just at one corner. My chest hurt. I didn’t even hate it, but very quickly, I did. I convinced myself that I did.

“Can I, I don’t know, can I come and see you? We can get lunch or something?” Mikey sounded so hopeful and so concerned that it broke my heart.

“Tomorrow?”

“I… Ah, shit, I can’t tomorrow, but I can come up there on Friday. Yeah?”

“Sure,” I murmured, though I had no idea when Friday even was. Note to self: tell Frank to get a clock and a calendar. I cleared my throat again and inhaled the smell of my coffee, closing my eyes. “I’ll let you sleep, Mikes.” I paused. “It’s good to hear your voice.”

“You too,” he mumbled back, relieved but stressed all at once. “Gee?”

“Yeah?”

“Be safe.” I smiled, once more looking over my shoulder at Frank like it was the most natural thing in the world. I was safe, wasn’t I?

“Yeah, I will.” 

Chapter Text

“You feel like sleeping?” Frank asked me the moment I got off the phone. Ironic, considering he had just watched me pound my coffee back like it was water and he was getting toward doing the same. I just smiled dryly, fingering a cigarette from his pack. The way he looked at me I thought he might protest, but he didn’t, just smiling in concession.

“Not really.” His eyes lingered on me for a moment before tilting his head back, blowing smoke up toward the ceiling. I watched as it thinned out in the air, rolling around and turning into nothing.

“You wanna watch a movie?” What is this, a sleepover? He sounded so damn nonchalant all the time it was hard to tell if he was being genuine or just trying to be polite. But this kid couldn’t be polite if he tried. He had an edge that I wished would go away. It might be good to have a break from him; just for a little while. Get my head together.

“I might just start organising my stuff.”

“I’ll help you.” My smile tightened, eyes creasing at the corners.

“Really, Frank, it’s alright.” He stared at me like there was something else he wanted to say. Another argument, another insistence.

“Suit yourself.” He looked at me through his lashes for a moment, blinking slowly and fixing his hair. “Hey, you mind if I take a look through some of your comics?” I hadn’t even realised he had noticed the comics at all.

While I unpacked my things, leafing through them only to re-fold them and re-pack them save for the occasional t-shirt or sentimental pair of holey underwear, Frank laid on his stomach on my unmade bed with his feet kicking in the air, chewing on his fingernails as he paged through a Nightwing comic. Sleepover, indeed. He was humming to himself under this breath and I had to tell him to cut it out twice. I wanted to be alone and he knew it, but I couldn’t get the words out. I tried to make conversation just so I wouldn’t have to keep getting self-conscious about breathing too loud.

“How come you live here all by yourself?”

He shrugged and mumbled something around his fingers in his mouth. Fucking oral fixation. When I pressed him on it he looked up at me with his fingers all wet, covered in drool, a loose fingernail wedged between his teeth.

“It was my friend’s place,” he said, “belonged to his dad, but his dad died. And then, you know, he got married, got a new job, moved to Philly. So I’m kinda just housesitting, really. Making sure the boiler doesn’t freeze, or whatever.” He looked back at the comic as if that was the end of it.

“He didn’t want to sell it?”

I caught Frank smirking a little, mouthing something to himself.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Why do you care?” It wasn’t confrontational but I could tell he was getting pissed. I gulped and shrugged and lapsed back into silence until I could come up with a better question.

“What do you do for work?”

“What are you, the Riddler? What’s with the interrogation?”

“It’s a valid question,” I protested. Why was he so fucking touchy?

“Veterinary nurse,” he answered quickly, automatically. I cocked an eyebrow.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, seriously,” he said mockingly as he leaned up a little more on his elbows. “What, you don’t think I’m smart?”

“I didn’t say anything!” I cried out, and he grinned.

“Just yanking your chain, man. But, yeah, seriously. It’s only part time. I do the night shifts. You know, like, for emergencies?” I nodded. That explains the tattoos. Couldn’t have someone like him on the front desk in the cold light of day. He was smirking at me, one eyebrow raised to mimic my own. I hesitated.

“I thought you said you didn’t go to college.”

He snickered. “I did night school. Not really the same thing.” I hummed, unable to argue, going back to what I was doing. Frank whistled. “Woah, dude, did you draw that?” He was watching over my shoulder as I flicked through one of my sketchbooks from college, debating throwing it out altogether. Maybe it was time to take advantage of my fresh start and start downsizing; cutting out the things I didn’t need, the things that reminded me of days not so far in the past, days where I had dreams, ambitions, hope.

“Uh,” I mumbled, looking down at the page in front of me. I could tell that I was blushing a little; of course I would have left it open on something like this. The sketch was of a kind of vampire, cartoonish and not quite fleshed out but still sexy enough that an apparent serial masturbator like him would be drawn to it. Why are you being so mean about him? He saved your ass, idiot. The vampire on the page was drenched in blood, swathes of cherry red and crimson all over its mouth and its bare chest, fangs dripping with the stuff. Thinking about it, it looked a little like Frank, with all of his stupid hair just none of his tattoos. One of my rogue marker lines around its mouth almost looked like the shadow of a lip ring. It was smiling. “Yeah,” I said finally, managing my now-textbook embarrassed smile. Before I could turn the page or, better yet, hide the sketchbook away entirely, Frank whipped it out of my hands in one clean, sharp motion.

“Dude, this is so cool,” he was babbling, just as I yelped and flinched and looked down to see the inch-long papercut on my index finger starting to leak blood.

“Ow,” I mumbled, hardly louder than a whisper. If it had been quiet in the room before, it was silent now. Frank was staring at me, unblinking and frozen in what seemed to be terror, his adam’s apple bobbing heavily in his throat as he gulped and fixed his eyes on the blood on my hand. His nostrils flared a little, lips dropping apart as if allowing breath to escape. He flinched, and by reflex I drew my hand to my chest, shielding it, stopping it from dripping. I looked away from Frank and, blushing scarlet whether from rage or shame, I didn’t know, stepped toward the bathroom.

“Hey,” came Frank’s voice from behind me, having clambered up off the bed after me with my sketchbook going clattering to the floor, his voice soft and crystal-clear, almost magical. “I- I’m sorry, I”—

“It’s fine,” I managed out in the midst of a strangled laugh, keeping my hand cradled to my chest, “I’m just gonna—”

“Lemme see,” he said softly, and without a word I extended my hand to him. The blood had smeared against my palm and my thumb and there was more of it than I had ever seen from such a small cut but I guess that must have been because my blood pressure had been abnormally fucking high for the last few days, it just wanted to shoot out of me. His face was stony and serene as he took me by the wrist, turning my hand over and allowing the blood to glisten in the light, bright red like watered-down craft paint. “It’s not deep,” he mumbled, relieved, breathless.

“Yeah,” I breathed back, wanting to retract my hand but not able to get my brain to compute it. “Don’t worry about—”

Frank’s tongue against my skin severed my voice from my tongue and I instead made a brief, strangled noise of protest. His lips closed around the cut, tugging my finger fully into his mouth, his tongue lapping gentle and warm against my broken skin. His eyelids fluttered closed and he hummed, a quiet and unabashedly contented noise. He inhaled sharply through his nose and I was ashamed, deathly ashamed, to know that sound all too well.

“Dude, what the actual fuck?” I practically screeched as I tore my hand away, my finger clean of blood but shining with Frank’s saliva. My heart was pounding, a sickness twisting deep in my stomach and sending heat bouncing around aimlessly into my limbs. Our eyes met once more and I almost didn’t recognise him; whether it was just the light, or my sudden dizziness, I didn’t know, but his features had shifted, contorted, the colour of his eyes dark like cherries. I blinked and he looked like himself again, hand coming up to brush a stray droplet of blood away from the corner of his mouth, his lip ring tinted pink. He grinned, playful as always, as his tongue darted out to touch his lips, just for a moment.

“What?”

“What do you mean, fucking ‘what’?” Why are you sucking on my fucking fingers, you freak?

“Oh, grow up. See? You’re not bleeding anymore.” He wasn’t wrong. There wasn’t so much as a whisper of it left behind. I just gawked at him, disbelieving, wondering if I had imagined the whole thing. There was no way he could be this fucking nonchalant about that. Could he not see how weird it is to do something like that? To anybody, let alone to some guy you don’t know?

“Jesus, Frank, what’s wrong with you?” What if I had AIDS?

“What’s wrong with you?” He whined back, a singular crease appearing between his eyebrows as he glared at me. “God, you’re so fucking repressed. You’re acting like I grabbed your dick.”

I must have been scarlet – no, violet – in the face by now. And yet, I couldn’t think of anything to say. Not wanting some shithead kid sucking on my fingers isn’t exactly crazy. I’d say that’s a perfectly normal, respectable way of thinking. A healthy, sensible boundary.

“Sorry,” he sighed when I had been silent for maybe a minute, trying to conjure up something to hit back with. In such a short space of time he had turned almost gaunt, going from pale to grey, rubbing at the back of his neck with one hand and nibbling at his nails with the other. “I didn’t mean anything by it. Alright? Just…” He shrugged, defeated, and sighed again. “I’m sorry. I do that when I get cut myself so I just… thought…” He was glowering at the floor, like a kid that was trying not to cry. All I could do was watch him, starting to feel guilty through no fault of my own. He squared his shoulders and stood up straight and I was taken aback once more by just how small he was, blinking up at me with the stupid fucking puppy eyes. “Sorry,” he said one last time, before rushing out of the room, hopping over my boxes as he went.

I looked back down at my hand, at the papercut. Frank’s spit had left behind a tacky, disgusting kind of sheen and yet here I was mesmerised by it, by the fact it still wasn’t bleeding. I wiped it gently against the front of my jeans and slumped down onto the bed, picking up my sketchbook and staring down at the ridiculous sexy vampire that had gotten me into this mess. He stared back at me, mocking me. I looked over at the comic Frank had been reading and Nightwing was mocking me, too.

I could only make myself unpack for another fifteen minutes before giving up. My head was just too messed up and I was distracted by Frank’s abrupt departure, the fact that he was pissed with me and that I was pissed with him. I wasn’t, not really, I just didn’t know how to behave around him. He was so at ease with me that I couldn’t possibly hope to be the same with him. Why didn’t he just talk to me? Why couldn’t I talk to him? Why was it so fucking hard?

I thought about going to apologise to him, leaning my head tentatively around my doorframe and looking in the direction of his room. The door was closed, not ajar like the last time, but it didn’t even slightly muffle the music he was listening to. Dead Kennedys. He was pissed, alright. The volume told me one thing – leave the kid the hell alone.

So I took refuge in my sketchbook. At first, I tried drawing Lindsey, something that might have gotten me sectioned if anyone saw it; a skeleton wearing her clothes in a shallow grave littered with dog shit and condom wrappers. It didn’t turn out so well and that was probably for the best; I didn’t mean it. I tore out the page and screwed it into a tiny ball and started again. I tried drawing my boss from Cartoon Network, a guy I had actually started to like, but he just ended up looking like some kind of rodent-man-insect hybrid and that one didn’t turn out so well either so it ended up on the floor. I must have been at it for hours, but without a clock I didn’t know for sure. All I could draw, each time I started on a new page, was Frank.

There was something about his face that made him unnervingly easy and enjoyable to draw. It must have been his eyes, or the way that his hair fell. I thought back to when I had met him only days before and I had assumed he was a model until noticing his height. I felt a pang of dejection looking down at the dozen sketches I had done of his face, wondering why the life models at college hadn’t been like this. I would have gotten better marks.

You’re so fucking repressed.

His words spiralled around in my head like blood down a shower drain. The moment that the notion arose that I might have a crush on him, I smacked myself swiftly and sharply in the side of the head, hard enough that everything looked scrambled for a second.

I don’t do that anymore, I thought, slamming the sketchbook closed and tossing it behind me. It landed in between my pillows. It’s not repression if I’ve done it before and decided not to do it again. It’s not repression if I’m not fucking gay, if I just tried a few things out just to cross them off, rule them out. It’s not repression if I just don’t like it. I know I don’t like it.

My thoughts were getting away from me. I laid back on the bed and stared up at the stupid, omnipresent mirror. My reflection just made me depressed.

Like he’d even be interested. Like he even swings that way.

He’s just weird. Socially inept or something. Stop reading into everything.  

I trawled my eyes over my face in the mirror and sighed. I needed to cut my hair. I needed to wash these fucking clothes. My hand came up to rub at the bruise that was quickly becoming my new comfort blanket but to my dismay it was almost entirely gone. I pressed in hard until I could feel it again, having to dig deep for the ache, and it was there, just barely. I thought about Frank’s mouth again and closed my eyes.

You’re having a mid-life crisis, I told myself. Get a grip.

But I couldn’t get a grip, because I was hungry. I left it as long as I could, not wanting to come back out of my room in case Frank heard me. Unlikely, over the music, but I didn’t want to take the risk. I tried counting in my head the steps it would take to get to the kitchen and back, trying to recall whether any of the floorboards creaked. I might have been permitted to stay here but it wasn’t like I had free reign of the house.

I decided that sneaking around was still preferable to bothering Frank and so I slunk downstairs, as light-footed and fast as I could without slipping on the shining black stairs. I relaxed a little in the kitchen, realising that Frank’s bedroom was directly above it and so the music would drown out anything I decided to do. I skirted around the kitchen island toward the fridge, the metal handle cool to the touch.

“What are you doing?”

I just about jumped out of my skin. Frank was standing on the other side of the island, arms folded, his eyebrows set into a hard, firm line. I dropped my hand from the refrigerator and swallowed, blood rising to my cheeks. Damn it.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, “I… I’m hungry.”

“Shoulda said.” He managed a split-second, terse smile and motioned with his head for me to get out of his way. When I didn’t move, confused, he rolled his eyes and came and gently shouldered me out of the way, his arm rooting around in the fridge while hardly opening it at all. I stepped backward, my stomach plummeting. Severed head. There’s a severed head in the fridge. There must be. “Grilled cheese?”

“What?” My eyes were wide with terror and he just laughed at me, enough to make me forget. There was a block of cheddar in his tattooed hand and I was acting like he was brandishing a knife at me.

“Do you want a grilled cheese?” He enunciated the words like I was a moron. I nodded, slumping down into my usual chair at the island.

“Dude, do you even eat?” I complained when he slid me my plate, noticing that there was none for him. He had practically cremated the damn thing, the air so thick and dark with smoke that it was a wonder the alarms weren’t going off.

“Not hungry,” he grumbled, going back to the fridge and just staring into it with a stiff frown. It lit up his face to a hopelessly flattering pale gold colour and I couldn’t chew anymore until he closed the door again. He sighed and lit a cigarette. No wonder he’s so small if all he ever does is smoke. He watched me eat until I was done, like being supervised by the cafeteria staff in elementary school, before taking my plate and washing it up without a word.

“Frank,” I said, as gently as I could. He hummed, his chin tilting a little as he glanced over his shoulder at me, cigarette dwindling between his lips. I drew in a shaky breath, the words hovering on the very tip of my tongue. “I’m sorry I kinda blew up at you.”

“It’s cool.” It didn’t sound cool. It wasn’t good enough.

“I was being a jerk.”

“It’s fine,” he said, drying off his hands and turning to face me, “I’d be a dick too if I was going through what you’re going through.” I tried not to glare at him. Whatever happened to, No, Gerard, you’re not a jerk!?

“Well, you know,” I said, shifting a little in my seat, “you’re kinda doing me a solid here, you know? I shouldn’t be taking my crap out on you.” He said nothing. I pushed my hair back from my face. “I’ll make it up to you.”

The way he was looking at me then was strange; I had never quite seen anything like it. It was like he was going to cry, and laugh, and explode at the same time. But the expression evened out into his easy, soft smile, forever making fun of me. It didn’t even bother me anymore; I was already getting used to it.

“What are you gonna do? Give me a big sloppy kiss?” He had cocked an eyebrow, tongue pressed against the tip of one of his incisors. I tried not to balk at that. I should have seen it coming. He was doing it on purpose because he knew it would get under my skin.

“No,” I muttered petulantly, and he snickered, but my blood pressure was already creeping up and I was flustered, lost, fed up. I didn’t want to keep going around in circles like this. I hated that I couldn’t read him, that I couldn’t discern the blurred lines between his being serious and making an idiot out of me. If he wanted me to kiss him maybe I would, if I had to, if it would make him cut it the fuck out. What? Come again? Before I could try and recover, change the subject, anything, Frank shrugged away from the counter and passed me, heading for the door with a twisted, somewhat mournful expression on his face.

“You should get some sleep, Gee,” he said, before disappearing, flicking off the light-switch and leaving me alone in the dark.

Chapter Text

Of course, to no surprise, I didn’t end up getting any sleep whatsoever. I was awake when the sun came up, and I could only tell that it was coming up at all because I spent half the night in the stupid kitchen. Not before going back to my room for my sketchbook, though.

I didn’t run into Frank again, and I was thankful for it. By the time the sun was high in the sky and climbing across the kitchen floor, I had filled almost the entire book with sketches of him, of all his different facial expressions and each subtle variation of his smile. It astounded me that I could draw him so fluidly from my memory. Eventually, my studies of Frank evolved into superheroes, monsters, beasts; it was the most I had drawn in months and, certainly, the most free I had felt while doing it.

I didn’t even feel tired but I knew that I was, because my thoughts were growing dissonant and nonsensical and one thing didn’t quite follow the other. I had had countless cups of coffee but not nearly enough cigarettes, Frank having taken his pack with him when he left me here alone. I would need to get my own if I was going to stay here, that much was certain. The thought of braving the outside world again was a sickly one; I hadn’t even been in this house all that long and already it acted as a kind of protective bubble, a haven from the outside world. From my lack of sleep and my lack of access to a clock, everything was slowly becoming dreamlike.

I had been drawing Frank as some kind of vampiric restaurant maître-d’ with blood all over his white gloves, when I realised I hadn’t moved for hours and I needed to stretch if I didn’t want my hips to seize up completely. I got up to make another cup of coffee and could have cried when I saw it. There was a clock on the fucking microwave. The tiny atomic-green numbers blinked fuzzily at me in the sunlight. Finally. I had never been so happy to see 9AM in my life.

When I did finally call Mikey, it was sometime after ten and there was still no sign of Frank. Mikey was getting the train into the city and he asked if I could meet him at Penn Station. Worst place in the world, Mikes, but alright.

I hated to admit it, but things were finally starting to feel normal. I didn’t quite feel the need to lock the door behind me when I took a shower (but I did anyway, just for good measure) and I got dressed and shaved without glaring too hard at my reflection. I wasn’t thinking about Lindsey. I didn’t miss my apartment because there was no point, having wound up in a place like this. I knew that I still had a couple hundred dollars in my checking account so I wasn’t too worried about that, either. I would just have to get Mikey to pay for lunch. It was the least he could do, right? Seeing as he was the only one between us with a steady fucking paycheck.

I looked better than I had in days, despite not sleeping. The circles under my eyes were deep and heavy but my eyes were full of life. I didn’t want to put it down to the fact I had been drawing all night, drawing Frank, but I knew that was probably it. I had my spark back. I could do anything with my spark back.

As I was getting dressed, or rather battling with my sweater as I tried to get it over my head, there was a knock at the door. I huffed and battled with my sweater a little longer before smoothing it down at the front and fixing my hair, gently tugging the door open.

There was Frank, smiling up at me with that same guarded sadness in his eyes that I had seen the night before. He looked exhausted.

“Hey,” I said dumbly.

“Hey.” He glanced down at my clothes and back up, to my clean-shaven face and my freshly washed hair, and managed a slightly wider smile. “You look good. You sleep alright?”

“Not at all, actually.” I yawned as if to make my point, gracefully dodging the empty compliment. “You?”

“Meh.” He rubbed at the back of his neck and sighed, glancing around. “Listen, I’m probably gonna be at work when you get back. I’ve gotta run some errands today too so I don’t know if I’m gonna have time to swing by the grocery store. You gonna be alright for food?” His voice was unfamiliar to me then, monotone and detached and a little rushed.

“Uh… Yeah. I mean, I can pick something up on my way back.” I paused, watching his face. “Want me to get something for you?” He seemed to bristle at that.

“No. Nah, man, you’re alright. Here.” He fished into the pocket of his jeans and held out his hand to me, a singular silver key in his palm. I didn’t take it. “That’s the spare. I forgot to give it to you before. Figured you’re gonna want to come and go as you please, y’know?” I hesitated, but I took the key when he pressed his hand a little closer to me. He jammed his empty hand straight back into his pocket and I did the same with the key.

“Thanks,” I mumbled, distracted by the way his eyes were moving around, looking at anything but me. For a second I thought that he was making eye contact with one of the depictions of Christ on the wall, but maybe not.

“I’ll see you later,” he said over his shoulder as he walked back down the hall, disappearing back into his room before I had a chance to say it back. I didn’t see him again before I left, just turning the key over and over in my fingers inside my pocket.

*

All through lunch – though it was really an early dinner by the time his dumbass train came in – Mikey was looking at me like I was completely insane.

We were holed up just inside the door of a tiny pizza place not five minutes from the station because it had started to rain and I hadn’t dressed for it; it had been sunny when I left. The door was open and the rain was splashing against the sidewalk, sending tiny, freezing cold ricochets up against my legs that were soaking through my jeans. I had just finished explaining to him what had happened, about the way that my boss had calmly, coldly invited me into his office to let me know I was being let go, effective immediately. I told him about Lindsey, about the seedy message on our fucking answering machine, the way she had cried and begged with me when I started to yell and the way she had turned on me when I started to cry, the way she had screamed, the things she had said to me. I counted them off on my hands like they were items on a grocery list while Mikey gawked at me: pushover, loser, deluded, naïve, suffocating.

I didn’t tell Mikey about the bridge. Whenever I thought back on it now, it just felt so absurd and so overly dramatic that I couldn’t bear him thinking of me that way. I didn’t want the embarrassment. I told him that I’d lost my phone in all the confusion and I told him – and this was as low as I was willing to appear – that Frank had found me crying in the street and took pity on me. It wasn’t a complete lie; I didn’t know so much about the pity. I had only just been crying.

“I’m sorry,” Mikey said, cutting me off mid-spiel about how I had ended up at Frank’s house, “but you’re really freaking me out. Why are you so calm?” I didn’t have a response. “I mean, sure, Gee, it’s great that you have a new friend and all, but aren’t you pissed? Aren’t you even a little bit worried? I mean, Christ, if I was you—”

“It’s not like there’s anything I can do about all this,” I muttered, gesturing loosely with my hands and giving up on my half-eaten pizza slice.

“That really doesn’t sound like you.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “Are you smoking pot?” I sniggered.

“No, Mikes, I’m not.” I smiled, because it was the perfect segue into taking some of the heat off me. “How’s Pete?”

I let Mikey complain for maybe half an hour; about how Pete was a slob and he didn’t know if them moving in together had ever been a good idea because he was driving him nuts with his mess. “It’s like living with you all over again.”

“I’m not that bad.”

“Oh yeah? Well, I feel sorry for whoever this Frank guy is. He doesn’t know what he’s gotten himself into.” There was no use telling him about what I was seemingly getting myself into with Frank. How would he even react to what happened last night? Knowing Mikey, he’d probably tell me I’m being a baby. Maybe I am being a baby.

“Yeah? Well I feel sorry for Pete. You’re insane, you know. You can’t expect everybody to be as much of a neat freak as you are.” He glowered at me, smiling just a little, before sighing hard.

“I miss you.”

“Yeah, I miss you too.” I glanced out at the street, at the rain and the dwindling daylight. God, winter sucked.

“Gee, what are you going to do?” I looked back at him and smiled, caught off-guard by the protectiveness in his eyes that I should have known would be there.

“I don’t know.” He was watching me with palpable unease. “Something’ll come up.”

When Mikey had to leave early, cursing at his flip phone and muttering something about Pete and a death wish, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I hung around the station for a little while, long after the back of Mikey’s head had disappeared and the feeling of his gangly arms around my shoulders had melted away. I sat people watching and wishing I had brought my sketchbook, slumped forward with my elbows on my knees and smiling a little to myself.

Mikey had told me that he would call around to see if he could get me a job anywhere worthwhile, and when I told him not to worry about it he just grimaced. In a small, subtle way, I wished I hadn’t called him at all, or at the very least that I hadn’t told him about any of this. It made me feel stupid guilty, having my kid brother worrying about me. It was supposed to be the other way around and yet, I never had to worry about him. I wasn’t even concerned about him and Pete; Pete just had his work cut out, that’s all. I knew Mikey would whip him back into shape. He had done it with me a dozen times.

On the subway it was more of the same, watching the faces and the bodies moving around me and pondering the state of my life. I found myself smiling at people that I never would have looked at before. I wondered how long this feeling would last for; the purgatorial sensation of complete freedom, the ease of movement that came with having nothing to lose. I wondered what Frank was doing.

But by the time I arrived back at Frank’s house, south of the bridge and burdened with a hazardous armful of frozen pizzas (because what else was I supposed to cook in his fancy ass kitchen?), jamming my shiny new key into the ancient lock, I was starting to feel sour and flustered especially after making about seventeen wrong turns to try and find the damn place.

Here at the house, without passers-by to gawk at or Frank to annoy me, I was properly alone for the first time since everything had gone belly-up. The portraits on the walls frightened me now. The house was an eerie place without him around, full of dark corners and half-noises that made you second-guess whether you had heard them at all. Practically collapsing in the kitchen-slash-living-room, the exhaustion and the misery hit me all at once. The night stretched out before me, the microwave clock not so much my best friend anymore. Finally, I started to cry.

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.

Chapter Text

Not good. Not good. Not good.

It’s been so many years since I’ve kissed somebody that I can barely remember how to do it. You’d think it would be like riding a bike, never quite forgetting, and that would be true if it weren’t for the fact that my nose and my throat and my chest are on fire and I’m so fucking hungry I could massacre an entire dinner party and still end up licking the blood from the floor.

My base animal instinct and my dick are in an active tug-of-war. In the space of one, maybe two seconds, everything happens at once.

I can’t really handle the taste of him because all I can think about is biting his lip open. When my teeth graze him he moans, loudly, like a fucking porn-star moan that has no place whatsoever in my living room. His hand sweeps up into my hair, thumb pressed into the soft spot in front of my ear, and my hand is in his hair trying to wrench his head back so I can get to his neck. I could snap it if I wanted to and I do kind of want to but he’s leaning into me, disarmingly soft and alarmingly eager and deliciously fucking warm. His pulse is so fast I can feel it on my tongue.

He thinks I’m being rough because I want him.

“Stop,” I whisper when his nose nudges mine and I hardly recognise my voice; it’s hoarse and thick and shredded because I can’t breathe. But he doesn’t stop, because every time his mouth collides with mine I’m kissing him back, over and over again. There’s no convincing him without getting up into his head and I can’t because my concentration’s shot. I’m not in control. Because I want this. I mumble his name, half in strangled prayer and half in desperate protest.

Stop, you fucking moron.

I try to pull back again but my mouth has other ideas and my teeth press in. Blood erupts into my mouth and the noise that comes out of me is sinful, it’s so loud. There’s the sweetness, the rush, the instant relief and the overwhelming urge for more, the sense that no amount of it will ever be enough. His blood slides down my throat like the honey it is. Gerard hisses in pain and I know I’ve only got a second before my fangs extend and sink in and if that happens I won’t be able to stop. Nothing, nobody can stop it when the fangs are in. There’s no letting go.

I put my palm on his chest and push him as hard as I can. We can worry about broken ribs later. He yelps and falls back against the couch and there it is: the look.

He’s so pretty. That’s my first, real, identifiable thought as I look at him, the mix of terror and shock and excitement and need so incandescently obvious in his eyes. I’ve busted his lip and there’s blood on his chin, on his teeth, on his nose. He’s breathing so fast he sounds like me in tenth-grade gym but there’s no wheezing or rattling so I know I didn’t break anything when I pushed him. I know there’ll be a bruise and I know it’ll look like it does when you get rear-ended and your seatbelt winds you. But he’s so pretty. At first, I’m angry, and then I’m frustrated and then I’m just completely despondent. I can’t have what I want and he can’t have what he wants.

“I’m sorry,” he squeaks, and for a moment I think my lungs are collapsing because the breath shoots out of me fast. My throat is crying out and for the first time in decades, I’m nauseous.

It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.

It doesn’t even look like he knows he’s bleeding. His head is all muddled and I’m trying to figure out if there’s a way for me to get in there and make all this look like a bad dream. I can’t.

Break his neck.

Shut up.

“Me too,” is all I can manage. Just like that, the spell is broken; Gerard scrambles up off the couch and his feet slip a little on the floor and he almost goes flying over the coffee table. He manages to dodge it and he’s on his way out of the room when I force myself to get my shit together and go after him. I don’t know if it’s because I still want to kill him or whether I’m afraid he’ll get away and he’ll talk or whether I’m actually just afraid he’ll get away and I’ll never see him again. “Gerard,” I call after him, repeatedly, more whiny each time, and I’m taking the stairs two at a time to catch up with him. This is embarrassing. This is ridiculous. “Gerard, listen—“

“I’m sorry,” he says at the top of the stairs, outside his bedroom, one foot already in the door. He’s out of breath and red in the face and his blood is smeared halfway up his cheek and it’s plastered all over the sleeve of his sweater. His eyebrows are all pinched together and his nose is all screwed up and he’s practically panting.

“It’s alright,” I say as softly as I can manage it and it actually sounds genuine. I edge closer and he flinches and I hold my hands up to him, empty palms that may as well be loaded guns, the way he’s looking at me. “Gerard, you’re bleeding.” Even the word makes my throat itch.

“It’s fine,” he mumbles, wiping at his mouth again, lips twitching like he was about to follow up with something about deserving it.

“Look, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to… It’s, I mean, it’s not you, it’s… Listen, it’s alright. I don’t, I mean, I didn’t…” I stare straight into his eyes as I give up on speaking in the hopes that maybe he can read my thoughts or at the very least read halfway in between the lines but he’s practically recoiling from me, inching further and further into his room.

“You don’t have to explain, it’s fine,” he mumbles, pained, “I shouldn’t have done that. I’m really sorry. I don’t know what got into me, I think I just had too much to drink, I don’t—“

“Gerard—“

“Please, don’t,” he whispers, and it’s so tense and so ashamed that anything I could have said turns to dust in my mouth. He gives me one more pleading look, and then the door clicks closed in my face.

I stand there for a minute, in some ways thankful that he’s put a physical barrier between us both but it doesn’t really mean anything because I know there’s not a lock on that door. I can hear him crying but what’s even louder than that is the shame. It’s ironic, considering just how far I’ve already pushed things, but it’s not an intrusion I can stomach. I’ve done enough.

In my bedroom, I sit on the floor in front of the window and take off my shirt, the curtains open and the sun starting to rise. It’s as good a punishment as any, maybe even the closest to penance I can get without outright starving myself.

The sun stings at first. It’s always easiest to handle in the winter, the light so pale and struggling so hard to get through the clouds that it’s practically harmless – but that’s for stupid things, like being dense enough to only realise you’re out of blood when it’s two in the afternoon and you might kill somebody anyway if you wait until sundown. It always used to be funny to me, the idea of having the vampire blood banks open during the day. It’s different, though, when you’re sitting in one place just surrendering to the damn thing.

It takes ten minutes for my skin to start really burning and another ten for the blisters to start forming. In the summer, I’d be dead and crispy in that time. I read up about the science of it once but I’ve long since forgotten.

I sit there until I can’t take it anymore. I’m careful to keep my head down, just letting the sun burn my arms and my shoulders. I bite down on my discarded, coffee-blackened t-shirt to hold back the screams that want to tear their way out of me, clenching my fists and curling my toes and anchoring myself to that one spot. My body is so hot that my tears evaporate moments after leaving my eyes and I’m sobbing, drooling around the clump of fabric in my mouth, willing myself to be quiet.

This is what you get.

He doesn’t deserve this. In the back of my mind I’m sure I don’t necessarily deserve it either, having my body tormented by a human like this, but it’s not about me. I can take it. Can I, take it? The point is, he can’t. He doesn’t need this. If I keep him here with me then I haven’t saved him at all. I’ve doomed him.

Somehow, all the sun and all the horrible realisations in the world still don’t hurt as bad as seeing the look on Gerard’s face, so violently disgusted with himself that he couldn’t even bear to look at me because all I was was a reminder. A mirror. How does that work? Thinking of himself as more of a monster than the real monster in front of him, just because—

I throw myself out of the plume of sunlight that’s burning me alive and I end up in some misshapen heap in the darkest corner of the room. I’m crying without making a sound. I’d howl if I was alone. I’d tear the house down if I was alone. My trifecta of portraits of the Virgin Mary look disappointed. You and me both, girl.

While I’m waiting for the burn to wear off – and it takes hours, by the way, but I deserved it – I try and drown out Gerard’s self-loathing tirade but it’s hard to ignore when every second beat of his pulse screams my name. I only wish he could hear mine.  

Chapter Text

My new bedroom may as well have been the black hole of Calcutta. There was no getting out of it.

I am absurdly, degradingly vulnerable. Sat at the foot of my egregiously gigantic bed, I was trying to come up with a way to blame anything, anybody, other than myself. Of course, in a way, it was all Lindsey’s fault; I could have blamed my boss, too, but even if my career situation had panned out the same, at least I would have something to come home to. I would have had a home. I would have been able to take some small (and, admittedly, wilfully ignorant) comfort in her, in my relationship, in the fact that while some things may be falling apart at least I hadn’t lost everything. I might have been able to spin things around in such a way that I would still be at least a little happy.

But even if things with Lindsey had still gone the same, I tell myself between sobs and muffled howls into the corner of the comedically luxurious silk comforter that doesn’t belong me, I might have been able to salvage things. It could have gone one of two ways; I either would have plunged thoughtlessly and blissfully into the Hudson, or I would have wised up and hiked to the closest payphone and called Mikey and begged him to come and get me. Either of those things, be it watery oblivion or the shame of crying on my baby brother for the millionth time, felt preferable to me in that moment.

Logically speaking, the scapegoat for my shame had to be Frank. The fact that all of this was his fault was on the tip of my tongue, but there was no following through with the thought. My tongue, the wicked and treacherous Judas that it is, worries ceaselessly at the fine, yet deep, flesh wound behind the crest of my bottom lip.

The common denominator, therefore, in this stupid mess, was me.

I’m thankful for the room’s lack of a window. I knew that the sun must have been coming up by now and seeing it would serve as a reminder for all those other nights like this, steeped in vodka and being affronted by my own wretchedness. If there was a window I would have pelted myself out of it. The word defenestration nags at me like a toothache.

I wasn’t quite drunk anymore, but I knew that my motor functions were next to nil ever since I collapsed to the floor and resorted to pulling myself across the deep purple carpet like some wounded beast with broken legs. I couldn’t quite think straight, but the adrenaline and the panic meant that my mind was sharpened, prickly, eager to jump to conclusions; of which there were a few.

First, I was a self-fulling prophecy of destruction and embarrassment.

Second, I can’t hold my liquor.

Third, Frank was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen.

Fourth, I’d never wanted a kiss like that from somebody like him so badly in my life.

In college, I’d done my fair share of experimenting. It’s a tale as old as time, but I’d had some difficulty trying to shed a lot of the habits I’d racked up and the notches on the bedpost that I had accumulated alongside them. Sure, I slept with girls, and I’d never had a problem making that happen, but I’d been more actively, and very quietly, interested in sleeping with guys.

With girls, I had to be in charge. I didn’t like thinking of it that way, necessarily, but they would always wait for me to take the lead and that’s why I had a lot of one-night-stands and very few girlfriends. I was awkward enough, I guess, that they would find me halfway charming enough to sleep with me, but just once. I could smooth talk them and I knew what I was doing, but I wasn’t confident enough to do it well, and that doesn’t exactly cry ‘second date material’. I was incapable of asking for, or even showing, the things that I wanted. I was almost entirely passive.

Being with guys took the pressure off me. They would steer me around in a way that girls just didn’t seem to do. I could be myself with them, taking what I needed and giving some of it back, and I would let them use me as a result. I liked being used; I liked the roughness, the lack of holding back, the praise I would get for being loud and for being well-behaved. I liked being able to make a show of it and I liked being owned, even just for the night, for an hour. I had three long-standing arrangements with guys on campus and I found myself chasing them and their validation more than I did with anybody else. But all of us were too similar, in a way; we were just dabbling, sneaking kisses and disjointed blowjobs in dark corners, sneaking out before the sun came up and not so much as looking at each other in the daytime, never sticking around to talk. We were all each other’s secrets.

I discovered – and this took me well over a year – that almost every guy I had fucked, also had a girlfriend. Where they were my solace, my tender and slim reality, I was their piece on the side. I was undesirable, not something to be kept safe but something to be discarded at the first sign of trouble. By the time I had graduated, the first guy I had ever kissed (and sucked off, and been fucked by) was engaged to a sorority girl and his best friend, my second-time-for-everything boy, was head-over-heels for some actor chick from Wisconsin.

Girlfriend after girlfriend, my down-low boys dropped like flies, becoming little more than faces in the street. I had built a reputation as a whore and no one would touch me.

Lindsey was the first girl that slept with me more than once. No wonder I was thinking about marrying her. I’d thought she might actually stick around.

Boys are a shoebox under the bed. Boys are a photo album full of distant memories that you donate to Goodwill. Boys are the things I hate about myself. Boys are an unmarked grave.

This is why it had to be Frank’s fault. This is what I kept telling myself, inspecting my tender and split lip with my finger and thumb and tongue. Each and every time I blinked, I would see his face, soft and pretty like all the boys before him, the boys that would turn their backs on me and pretend they didn’t know me. The boys that made me feel loved right up until they made me feel vile.

I don’t do that anymore, I had been telling myself, the night that Frank found me and invited me into his house and I was concerned that he would kill me. I don’t let myself fall for this anymore. I don’t like guys anymore. I don’t entertain these feelings anymore. But he wouldn’t let me forget. He wouldn’t let me so much as try.

After a while, I climbed up onto the bed, hoping that in its vastness and its softness it would engulf me and I wouldn’t know a thing about it. As I peeled back the sheets and let them envelop me I thought about drowning, about the Hudson, about Frank telling me that the fall and the impact and the water wouldn’t kill me straight away. My head was foggy but by now I was used to it, blaming the vodka and the closeness of the air in the room.

I’d never been kissed the way that Frank had kissed me. There was no denying that. I’d never had somebody tell me to stop and then not let me. I’d never felt so much raw, unbridled force in someone’s hands. I’d never wanted someone’s hands on me the way I wanted his, never had someone draw blood in trying to keep me close to him, only to push me away.

There was no point me trying to decipher how Frank felt about it. It was crystal clear that he wanted me, even if it was just for a moment.

My self-pity wavers for a moment because this is what I choose to latch onto as I press my face into the pillows in the darkness. You just can’t help yourself, can you? For a moment, his rejecting me to the point of winding me doesn’t matter. I replay in my mind the way my name sounded being carried from his throat, out of his mouth and into mine, sick with desperation; the way he moaned when his teeth clipped me.

But I’ve been here before, in some way. I’ve been wide-awake and uselessly drunk in the early hours of the morning replaying the way a guy looked at me and touched me and wanted me only to have him ignore me. Whether I want to chase this feeling, the good part, the exciting part, that urge doesn’t win anymore. The urge to become invisible, to run far away, to lick my wounds and pretend it never happened only to suffer insurmountable pain and loneliness over and over again, is the victorious one.

Because I’m weak. Pathetic. Hopeless. Lost cause. Pushover. Loser. Deluded. Naïve. Suffocating.

As I rolled over onto my side, something sharp and stiff pressed insistently and uncomfortably into my cheek. Sitting up and going digging about in the sheets, I realised that it was my sketchbook, filled to the brim now with sketches of Frank. There was no use looking at them again. His face would hurt me the way it’s already hurt me a hundred times. He’s not special. He’s no different to the rest of them.

There was a persistent headache clinging to my forehead and so I closed my eyes, giving up on crying, on breathing altogether. Cramming one of my pillows over my face and tossing the sketchbook off the bed so hard that it collided with one of the paintings on the wall, I wonder if I’m capable of suffocating myself. I can’t think at all anymore. All that’s left is the fifth and final conclusion:

I can’t stay here. I can’t let this happen again.

In the morning.

I’ll leave in the morning.

*

Considering all of the avenues of thought that had been grappling for dominance inside my head, when I woke up I was surprised, and then very quickly dismayed, to find out that they were all gone, and that they had been replaced with a violent, earth-shattering hangover.

For what must have been hours, I stayed holed up in my bed, sweating and trembling and trying my damnedest not to move a damn muscle in case one wrong move sent my stomach hurtling toward the bathroom or worse, over the side of the bed and onto the carpet. I might have killed a man for a Tylenol and a cup of coffee but there was no way I’d be able to pull it off without throwing up.

My head was empty, save for the fact it felt like it was stuffed full of cotton wool. It was euphoric, not being able to think; or at least it would have been, if I could even remember what I was thankful to be escaping from in the first place.

“Gerard?”

There was a soft, slow knock on the bedroom door to accompany Frank’s apprehensive voice. Inside my chest, my heart lurched so hard and so fast that it may as well have given me whiplash. I wanted to reply, maybe even to tell him to leave me alone to surrender to my fate (which, of course, was certain death), but my mouth was so dry and so thick with fetid hangover breath that opening it would be a biohazard. Instead, I grumbled, which quickly turned into a low and mournful groan. Frank cleared his throat.

“I, uh, I’m making coffee, do you want some?”

It almost didn’t sound like Frank at all; blunt, but mousy, practically emotionless with just a dusting of hopefulness that I might have been imagining altogether.

I grumbled again, resolving to peel myself free from my silky, sweaty, pillowy prison. I was just about able to hear Frank moving away from the door.

“See you downstairs.”

Downstairs was no mean feat. It took me maybe fifteen minutes to manage it, practically clawing my way from my bed to the stairs, unsteady on my feet with plenty of dizzy spells just to long things out. He must have been able to hear me, shuffling around and groaning like a poorly-costumed Scooby-Doo villain, because when I did finally make it to the kitchen, falling into my usual chair, there was a familiar (and for some reason, relieving) smirk on his face.

Oh, that face.

He slid me my coffee without a word, edging the cup into my eager but uncooperative hands that didn’t quite know how to move yet. The smell of it nearly knocked me over and it kicked my senses into overdrive, instinct taking over and forcing me to drink almost the entire cup in one go. The kitchen was dark, I noticed, nothing but the lights beneath the cabinets and the streetlights outside lighting up Frank’s eyes, eyes that became less blurry to me by the second. He waited a little while before opening his mouth, like he had been waiting for the perfect, serendipitous moment when the caffeine hit and the hangover became background noise, just for a second, like the sun peeking through the clouds only to slink behind them again.

His voice was soft, musical, enchanting — his words careful, almost anxious.

“Listen, I know you feel rough, and I’m sorry, but I really think it’s best we talk about what happened this morning.”

Chapter Text

Frank let his words hang in the air, waiting for me to make something of them, maybe even waiting for me to speak first. As I stared at him there was a shift in my blood pressure, my eyes flitting over his face, to his mouth, to his teeth tugging at his lip ring. Slowly, the fragments of memory from only hours ago came back to me, watery around the edges from all the vodka that, somewhere beneath the coffee, I could still taste. I was hit first by the panic, second by the excitement, and third by the shame.

Oh, fuck.

Frank moved slowly, drawing a cigarette to his mouth and lighting it before sighing, loudly, looking up at the ceiling. The black hoodie he was wearing was too big for him, hands mostly hidden in the washed-out sleeves save for a small flash of colour from his finger tattoos.

“Alright, I’ll go first, then,” he muttered, an irritated plume of smoke coming from the tiny space at the corner of his mouth. I stayed where I was, my stomach clawing at my insides in its craving for a cigarette and its sudden need to projectile vomit. Frank tossed his pack onto the island without a second glance, sighing through his teeth again.

I’m nineteen again.

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled uselessly but quick enough to interrupt him as he opened his mouth to talk. He held up his hand to stop me, almost but not quite glaring at me.

“I really don’t want you feeling bad about anything,” he began carefully, like he had rehearsed it. I scrambled for his cigarettes and he didn’t even notice, continuing to talk as my hands trembled and tried, over and over again, to get the damn thing lit. He’s going to try and let me down gently. “And as far as I’m concerned, you really don’t need to be sorry.” That wasn’t something I could wrap my head around but he paused, like he was giving me time for it to sink in. Independently of my brain, my shoulders slackened and I started to relax, hypnotised, almost, by his eyes darting back and forth between each of mine. The colour of them, honey and autumn leaves and cola bottles, was so sharp and so clear that they twinkled in the light. There was no looking away, not then. “I mean, you know, you’re a good-looking guy, you’d be hard to say no to in any context.”

I’m sorry, what?

“But, you know, you’re staying in my house and you’re going through a hard time so, like, I mean, I’m flattered, really, but for the sake of simplifying things I don’t think we should—“

“Frank,” I breathed out, my face screwing up and blushing and maybe even turning a little green, “please, really, I don’t know what got into me last night. I swear. That wasn’t, I mean, I don’t, you know, I’m not—“

“It’s fine,” he said softly, pointedly enough to shut me up, lips quirking upward at the corners again. “I mean, it’s okay, if you are. I am.”

Oh.

“Oh,” I whispered, eyebrows crinkling together as I was finally able to drop my face away from his. I stared down into the bottom of my empty coffee cup, turning it over in my hands and watching the last few drops pull the tiny black grounds around. I was staring at it so intently that I thought, for a second, that I was going to see my future. My heart was hammering against my ribcage and I was sweating and the nausea was becoming violent but something nagged at me, some tiny and insistent thing tugging at my brain stem that told me to be calm. To be open.

I’d never heard someone admit it before, at least not to me, not in this kind of context. All of the boys I had kissed, fucked, yearned for, had never admitted it. Some of them had even refuted or straight up denied it. I’d never kissed a guy that was okay with being open about it.

That could be you, if you just grew a pair.

“It’s fine,” Frank murmured again, soothing me, encouraging me, almost. When I looked back up at him my brain went quiet. He was leaning forward on the island on his elbows, his head tilted to one side against his palm and staring at me through his long lashes which, to me, didn’t exactly say I don’t wanna make out with you. It said the opposite. He took a long drag on his cigarette and blinked slowly as if to add insult to injury. The moment I realised that I was staring into the face of someone who, surely, had no intention whatsoever of breaking my heart, he lapsed back to normal, and straightened back up. The spell was broken the moment that he cleared his throat.

“All I’m trying to say is that stuff doesn’t need to be weird,” he murmured, one of his eyebrows flinching as if it disagreed. “And we don’t need to talk about it any more than that if you don’t want to.” He nodded to my empty cup, not giving me a chance to respond. “Refill?”

I couldn’t speak. I could barely even move. He took my cup anyway and whisked himself toward the coffee machine, keeping his back to me.

“I was meant to be working tonight but I’ve swapped my shift with somebody. You got any plans?” He half-yelled over the coffee grinder, and it took all I had not to glare at him.

Oh, don’t make fun of me. Don’t act like everything is fine. 

“No,” I mumbled. I didn’t need to be reminded about it, that I had nothing to do and nowhere to go and, now that I had seen Mikey, nobody to see, either.

“You wanna hang out? Maybe watch a movie or something?” The fresh cup of coffee under my nose made my mouth twitch. There was an amused air to his voice as he spoke next, “I mean, you’re practically already nocturnal.”

“Yeah, sure,” I sighed, gulping the coffee down and grimacing as it burned my throat. Why was I sulking? What else was I supposed to do with my time? All I could do was draw more stupid sketches of him or maybe boot up my ancient laptop and try and find myself a job. No, I would just have to watch a movie with him and not kiss him which, as I watched him, taking in his amber eyes and his warm smile and his apparent indifference to my having already done it once, was becoming an impossible concept.

He’s different, I thought to myself. He likes you. He respects you and he’s trying to do right by you.

Only a few days ago I had been so preoccupied with Frank being in some way evil that I hadn’t been willing to entertain the fact he might just be nice, and normal, and sweet. In a way, this was worse. This was so much worse. I didn’t have a way to run from him, a way to convince myself he was bad.

I wanted him. 

And that’s how I ended up back on Frank’s couch, flanked by all manner of cushions and blankets, drinking coffee down like water and waiting for the Tylenol he had given me for my headache to kick in. I felt strangely at ease, my body even more calm than my mind, a gelatinous kind of feeling taking over my limbs as I curled up. Frank asked if maybe he should go out and get some popcorn, and I softly, without trying to let on that I didn’t want him to leave me alone, protested.

He asked, teasing more than anything, if I wanted to watch another vampire movie. I felt guilty, assuming that he was only asking me that because he assumed that was all I liked, after last night. I shrugged, and he pouted, waving a DVD in my face as he crouched by the TV, lit up like a kid on Christmas morning.

“Not even The Lost Boys?”

I couldn’t help but smile. There were few better comfort movies.

“Sure, what the hell,” I mumbled in my blanket that I had pulled up around my face. Frank grinned and slid the disc into the slot before hopping up onto the couch at my side, closer than I had anticipated. So much had changed since I had first sat on this couch.

Oh, will you stop moping.

It quickly turned out that Frank was one of those people that talked through movies and I mean, all the way through. At first it was endearing, his childish comments and his gleeful exclamations at the parts that he really liked (and bouncing on the couch) and his parroting of the lines, even his complaints about what he considered to be vampiric inaccuracies and inconsistencies (which I couldn’t even begin to argue back about), all within the first twenty minutes. But the icing on the cake was his fifth ear-splitting wolf-whistle directed at Kiefer Sutherland.

“Dude,” I groaned, shielding one of my ears in protest and glaring sideways at him. He giggled and slumped down into the blankets, mumbling a sheepish but entirely false apology.

“I can’t help it,” he grumbled, chewing on one of his fingernails and watching the screen without blinking. “I had like, the fattest crush on him when I was a kid. Just the character, you know, not—“

“Do you ever shut up?” It came off a lot weaker than I had intended and I was smiling to myself, raising an eyebrow in his direction as I carefully covered my mouth to disguise it.

“No,” he said back mockingly, his lip ring lit up by the television. “Come on, man, tell me he’s not hot.” His eyes held mine playfully. “Bet you can’t.”

“Just shut up,” I mumbled weakly, giving up, and he just grinned victoriously.

“Yeah, s’what I thought.”

My face was burning, sweating behind all the blankets, and he could see it.

“Look at you, getting all flustered.” He got up and went to the island for his cigarettes, and I was hopeless to watch him as he went. He looked over his shoulder at me, wagging his eyebrows. “Ha, made you look. Pervert.”

The word sent a cold bolt of dread deep into the pit of my stomach and I only managed a half-smile before returning my eyes to the screen. For someone that, not even an hour ago, had been telling me, to the point of it being almost professional, that the two of us getting together was a bad idea, he was flirting an awful lot. I tried to put it down to him just trying to push my buttons, get a reaction out of me, the same way any shithead kid like him would do.

“You’re so grumpy,” Frank complained as he flopped back onto the couch next to me with a sigh, even closer this time. He leaned his head on my shoulder and looked upward, backward, at me, the glow of the television lighting up the sclera of his stupid doe eyes. “You need to talk?”

No.

Yes.

“Sorry,” was all I could muster. He rolled his eyes and then closed them, huffing out a small amount of air that sent a few strands of his hair flying outward only for him to hastily tuck them away. He nestled himself closer, alarmingly close, his arms tucked against my side and nudging at my ribs. Of course I needed to talk. There were so many things that I needed to figure out, like finding a job and finding an apartment, like buying a new phone and a fucking alarm clock for my dark, liminal bedroom, like starting all over again, like finding my place.

“We can talk,” Frank mumbled encouragingly as he looked up at me, chin on my shoulder. I could smell the coffee and the cigarettes and the indeterminable sweetness of his breath, his shampoo, his laundry detergent that was the same as the one my sheets had smelled like. Apple blossoms and sandalwood. God. It frightened me to look at him, to realise that his weight pressing against my side was attached to a very real and a very beautiful person. Not person. Boy. Man. I sighed, rubbing at my temple and looking at the television as if Jason Patric could help me. I thought about maybe asking Frank why he didn’t think Michael was sexier than David but that was kinda obvious and not at all helpful.

“I’m stressed,” I surrendered, eventually, and Frank hummed, pulling his knees to his chest. I was reminded again how small he was, limbs and torso all crammed up against me. I was gangly, basically ridiculous in comparison.

“Well, what are you stressed about?” I squirmed and he chuckled and jabbed softly at my twelfth rib. “Alright, just pick one.”

You. I’m stressed about you.

“I need to get a job.”

“Ah.” He didn’t sound fazed, coupled with the light shrugging of his tiny shoulders. “I wouldn’t stress too hard about that.”

“No?” My voice was little more than an incredulous squeak.

“Nah.” He shifted his weight again and looked back up at me, shrugging with his mouth this time. “I mean, it’s not like I’m charging you rent.” He stopped to consider this, smiled, and carried on. “And, I dunno, if you need money I guess I can lend you some. No big deal.” He felt me cringing at that before I had even noticed I was doing it.

“I think it’s better I get a job,” I eased out, dodging the offer, the gratuitousness of it. “I’m not some charity case, you know.”

“Oh, believe me, I know,” he said with a snicker, leaning his head back against the couch, “but I’m just saying, you know, you’re gonna give yourself an aneurysm putting pressure on yourself.”

You would say that. Free house, cosy little night shifts, stupid pretty mouth. You can have whatever you want.

Frank hummed, half a laugh, and cleared his throat. I could only assume it was a reaction to whatever was happening on the television; I wasn’t paying attention.

“So, alright, whatever, we’ll find you a job. Next?”

I didn’t want to say it anymore. I knew what he was going to say.

“Well, I need to get out of here at some point.”

Just as I expected, he waved one of his hands dismissively and grinned at me.

“Next.”

All I could hear was my pulse, drowning out the movie. He looked at me expectantly, one eyebrow cocked and ready to brush off whatever issue I brought up next. When I didn’t say anything, he leaned a little closer to me and put his chin back on my shoulder, his breath tickling my neck and sending every single hair standing bolt upright.

“You’re fine,” he murmured, easy and gentle and so reassuring I could have cried. He said it the way someone you trust might say it, someone that wants you to know that everything is actually alright. “And things’ll get better.” From the corner of my eye I saw him glance back toward the television, humming softly in the back of his throat. When he spoke I realised that his lips were pressed to my shoulder, muffling his words. “How about we deal with the outside world tomorrow and just chill out, yeah?”

I nodded, lost for anything else to do, feeling myself approaching tears for no good reason; at least, until I realised that nobody had ever been quite so tender with me in such a simple way. Through my shirt, I felt him smile, the stiffness of his lip ring shifting with his mouth. I closed my eyes and tried to breathe deeply but all it did was fill my head with the smell of him and how badly I wanted everything to be instantly, deeply, desperately different.

“How’s your headache?” He murmured, and I shrugged, biting down on the inside of my bottom lip and then wincing at the sharp reminder of it already having been bitten before. Frank’s hand came up and slipped slowly into my hair, trailing up from the back of my neck, and I jumped. He laughed and shushed me, shaking his head a little and pressing it firmly into my shoulder as his fingers dug gently into my scalp, putting enough pressure on that I flinched on purpose just so that I wouldn’t lean into him and fucking moan. “Will you relax,” he quipped, quietly, through his teeth. I did as I was told and we slipped into silence, nothing but the movie playing. I couldn’t open my eyes. Within seconds of Frank touching me I was useless, limp, but nearly vibrating from the tension.

“Better?” He whispered, and I nodded again, slower, pressing into his fingers.

I had never been touched this way in my life. Not even close. The only hands in my hair I had ever had, were when I was giving head. Never this gentle. Never this intentional. I was melting by the second, trying to breathe steady through my nose and ignore my racing pulse at the same time. Frank’s fingers moved rhythmically through my hair before once again reaching the back of my neck, squeezing just enough that my mouth dropped open a little, and through the dull fogginess in my head I heard him laugh. Wind chimes. Strings. Pixie wings.

“See, was that so hard?” He murmured, a tease, light as a feather like this was the most normal thing in the world. Maybe it was. How many guys has he done this to? That train of thought was cut short when he wedged one of his knuckles into the groove at the base of my skull and I groaned. “There you go,” he whispered, less teasing and more praising now. His voice had shifted a little lower, more emphasis and more darkness to it. Magnetising. Commanding.

“Frank?” I whispered, when I could finally get my tongue to move and not loll uselessly in the back of my throat.

“Yeah?” His voice was even softer, close to my neck, his breath steady and deep like he was falling asleep. I swallowed as hard as I could and my thoughts were nothing but a string of cusses that would put the Virgin Mary in his bedroom into a fucking coma; save for one. Don’t do it. As quick as it had come, it was like it had been plucked out altogether.

“Will you kiss me?”

Silence lingered ominously in the wake of my tiny, hopeless voice. It was so out of character for me now that it hadn’t sounded like me at all. Frank’s fingers faltered for a second, enough for me to notice, and then resumed their even, perfect pressure.

“Shouldn’t,” he mumbled, like the word was fighting its way through his teeth. His thumb pressed down hard between my vertebrae and I squeezed my eyes closed even tighter, as if it would make me invisible by doing so. I wanted to say okay. I wanted to give it up and accept it for what it was but there was no shaking it.

“Please?” It tasted bitter. It tasted like every guy I’d ever had on top of me. It tasted like the air that night on the bridge.

“Can’t,” Frank whispered back, strained now and sour. He had pressed himself closer, fingers no longer working at my bones and my muscles but toying loosely instead with my hair, sweeping through it over and over again. His mouth, his breath, was hardly an inch from my neck. His nose was pressed to the space beneath my ear. I could have cried. I could have whimpered and begged and screamed but there wasn’t anything I could do, like I was watching myself from behind a two-way-mirror and beating my fists against the glass, howling, where nobody could hear me.

Frank’s lips brushed the side of my neck, just barely. My stomach caught alight. But then he sighed, withdrawing his hand and his face and his body slow enough that I took it as a taunt, something designed to hurt me, like peeling off a bandaid millimetre by millimetre. Something invisible weighed down on my chest, stopping me from following him. I wanted to. I wanted to reach out and grab him and not let him go.

But he looked at me and smiled, not at all besmirched by shame or chagrin but just weary, as though he’d seen it coming. I had wanted to ask him why, but the urge to do it disappeared. Instead, I smiled back at him, automatically, easily. As his eyes turned back to the television and he crammed his arms around his chest, the outline of his torso blurred by his hoodie, he leaned his mouth against his palm and the smile persevered. My heart was going several miles a minute. On the television there is a spray of blood and there’s that feeling in the back of my head again, twisting, pulling at me.

“C’mere,” he mumbles into his sleeve, and I do as he bids me. His hand moves up into my hair as I lay down against his chest and close my eyes.

Suddenly, the fact that Frank was sensible enough to reject my wanting to take things any further didn’t matter so much. What mattered was that he wanted to kiss me, that he wanted more from me than I was initially willing to give. He just knew better, and he was waiting for me to catch up.

Laying against him felt like a quiet and willing acceptance of the fact that things would never be as they were. It’s a start. Just like that, nothing hurt.

Chapter Text

So, it wasn’t what I had been planning. Not at all, really.

I had wanted things to go something a little like this:

Hey, Gerard, you’re a really nice guy and all, but I really need you to move out before I kill you.

Gerard, I know you just got here, but I’m moving to Alaska. So that I don’t kill you.

Hey, Gerard, I’m scared that if I spend one more minute with you I am going to fall in love with you, and also maybe kill you, and I don’t think you’re necessarily worth the risk of me getting picked up by the feds and staked and ending up dead and hacked to pieces in some government testing centre. I don’t wanna be another vampire autopsy for the top-secret med students, alright? You can’t make me do it. I won’t do it.

My little stunt with the sunlight hadn’t cleared my head the way I thought it would. Sure, it worked for a little while, but when the blisters started to settle down and I couldn’t really feel anything other than warmth I started having stupid ideas and delusions of grandeur again. And then he looked at me.

I shouldn’t have got up inside his head but I couldn’t help it. Alright? The moment he looked at me like that, all dumb and gorgeous and vacant-eyed like he was totally reliving kissing the hell out of me, I was toast. Burnt to a crisp, cremated, fucking toast. I needed to know what he was thinking, what he wanted. I needed to see it for myself. I needed to feel it.

Well, you sure as hell took care of that, didn’t you? Idiot.

It’s somewhere around midnight and Gerard’s fast asleep on top of me, probably drooling on my hoodie, I can’t really see. I haven’t stopped touching his hair even for a second and it didn’t take him long to nod off. For a little while, he was clenching and unclenching his fists around chunks of my hoodie, until I squeezed him a little tighter. That didn’t last long, because I was afraid I was going to crush him. He snores like a fucking puppy.

The urge to clamp my jaws down on his neck has turned into static, like the kind the television is playing now. The smell of him is so all-encompassing and invasive that I’ve given up fighting it. Instead, I’m trying to redirect my hunger elsewhere.

Like you can train yourself out of it. Don’t you think that vamps centuries older than you have tried, and failed?

So I naïvely think I can unlearn my need for food. So what? So what if I’m now completely, one-hundred-percent out of blood?

That’s right, baby. Cold turkey.

I only said what I said to Gerard so that he’d figure himself out on his own. Like I said, he just needed a little push. Supposed ‘good’ ‘nice’ ‘straight’ boys always do. I guess I meant it, in a way; it is true that me and him is a bad fucking idea. It doesn’t mean I don’t want it. It doesn’t mean I’m not holding him to my chest right now wishing I could be human even if it was just for five minutes, nothing controlling me but my dick, free enough that I could give him what he wants and take what I want, too. I press my face to his hair and wonder whether that would even be enough for me.

Of course not. I had it tattooed for a reason; hopeless romantic. There’s nothing more romantic than being doomed for all eternity in the first place, let alone being presented with someone who might have actually been good for you twenty years ago before everything went wrong and now you can’t even have them. This is the kind of thing poets write about. It’s also the kind of thing that poets kill themselves over.

The blisters on my arms are starting to itch but I can’t get to them with Gerard in the way. No way I’m moving him. I distract myself by pushing my limits. I’m just curious; I’m definitely not gauging what I can and can’t handle so that, the next time Gerard asks me to kiss him (and there will be a next time, even if I have to go up inside his head and put the idea there myself), I don’t chicken out. I can at least do that.

I skim my nose along what small part of his forehead I can reach, breathing in hard. It makes me dizzy but my throat is already raw so it can’t get much worse. I try and picture the most violent scene I can conjure Gerard into; throat torn open, head hanging part of the way off, blood pooling on the floor and in my mouth, blood on my hands and in my hair. I think myself deep enough into it that I can taste him and it’s so strong that my teeth hurt, the fangs aching to come out to play. But my grip on him doesn’t tighten, doesn’t even flinch. I’m holding him perfectly steady, like a human would do. Like he trusts me to do.

I feel bad for manipulating him. I do. But he never would have shown his true colours without it. I think I’m justified. I admit – the flirting was cruel, but it’s reassuring to know I’ve still got game.

Yeah, with a fucking human. Humans are stupid. Look at Gerard.

I almost let out a snarl at myself.

This whole time, even as I’m levelling with myself and trying to rationalise my way into sleeping with him or loving him or just caring about him or whatever the fuck it is, I can’t shake the fact that I’ll never be able to be myself around him. Not ever.

I can’t tell Gerard what I am.

I fixate on this as I breathe him in again, my lips brushing against the tail of his eyebrow and making his eyes flutter in his sleep. He can’t know. The possibilities would be endless, if he knew.

The most likely thing is that he would think I was crazy. I reiterate: humans are stupid. They don’t believe things even when they can see them with their own eyes. And I get it, because I was like that right up until the second the fangs came out and sank into me and I felt the single worst pain of my entire (and now, endless) life. But I could show Gerard what I really am and he would go running, not because he’s scared of the monster but because he’s scared of the man that he thinks he can see. He’d be scared for his life for the wrong reasons; the way he would think he would die at my hands, wouldn’t even come close to the reality.

Gerard being Gerard, he’d tell his brother. His brother would tell people. Those people would tell more people. All of it could be traced back to me. Feds would get me. Black van, stake, Area 51, scalpels and bone saws, industrial-sized crematorium. No more Frank.

Another (unlikely) possibility would be that he would pull a Twilight on me and just declare his love for me and demand that I turn him into a vampire too so that we can live out our eternal days of death and damnation together. It doesn’t matter whether I like the idea or not. 

Short version is that he just can’t know, period. I’m no idiot; I can find a workaround for pretty much everything, if he’s going to be a permanent fixture here. He won’t find out on his own and I sure as hell won’t tell him. But soon – when he goes back into the outside world and starts working, starts making friends, starts living – he’ll end up telling people about me. I can get out of endless social engagements if we’re just talking about one human, but several? What if he wants me to meet his brother? What if he invites me to an office party? What if he doesn’t tell me before having a friend or three over? This could so easily get out of hand. This could go fucking supernova.

If I want to stay in control then I have to keep him here or cut him off.

Here we go again.

Alright, so I’m not cutting him off. I can’t. I’ve got decades, centuries, ahead of me and it’ll take me longer than that to get over him, let alone forget him.

The misery-go-round is making me frustrated so I close my eyes again and wriggle myself closer to Gerard as best I can. At this point I’ve got him pretty much scooped up on top of me, one of my legs all tangled up with his in the blankets and both of my hands in his hair. I kiss his forehead just to test the waters. I think about infiltrating his dreams again but it feels crude to do it now. I should never have done it in the first place, but I’m longing to be close to him again, to not have to worry about hurting him, to not have to worry about him seeing me. He never quite remembers in the morning.

Dream sex, I think to myself, like it’s a lightbulb moment. 

Seriously? Forever? That’s no way to live.

There’s no point going round in circles like this. I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to keep him around and I’m going to figure it out later, because I’m stubborn and I’m selfish and I don’t want to let him go. If he wants to go by himself, I’ll let him. That’s the boundary. I’ll just go with what he wants. Passive.

That’s not you.

If I do everything I can to get him to want to stay here, then I’ve done my part. I can’t control him. Well, no — I can control him, I just shouldn’t. I won’t. 

There we go. Making progress.

There’s another problem, though, gnawing at me, and that’s my dumbass job. Whose idea was it for vampires to have jobs, anyway? It’s been two years and I’ve never called out, swapped a shift, anything of the sort. I can’t help but wonder if my boss is suspicious about it, if Jamia is going to quiz me about it the next time she sees me. 

See, the thing is, all of this goes on my record; every absence, every questionable little thing turned into a black mark in the margins of a page, a one-to-one meeting, a phone call to a superior. Really, it’s worse than that; it’s like the equivalent of not signing in with my probation officer.

Gerard shifts in his sleep again and sighs into my neck, catching me by surprise and making me shiver. His breath hits like a shot of liquor and I squeeze my eyes further shut for a moment.

God, I need to go to the fucking blood bank. 

I know, I know, I said I was going cold turkey. Not happening. Can’t do it. 

See, I kinda do have a probation officer, if you think of it like that.

His name is Brian and he’s been doing it for a decade. He’s not all that much older than me, at least in human years, but he’s been a vamp for almost fifty years and he knows things. He can read me like a book, and he’s the one that signs off on my rations and my extra rations. He’ll know straight away that something’s up, because I have to go in and ask him for five fucking bags and I’m already due to see him on Monday but I can’t wait that long. It’s Friday, or it might be Saturday now, I don’t know. If I wait it out, Gerard will be dead, I’ll be miserable, and it’s all for nothing. No more Frank. 

Brian’s going to quiz me about it and he’s going to write it all down in his stupid little file he has on me and he’s also going to ask me why the hell I’m not at work, glaring at my name in his stupid little Google calendar. I can only hope that one of Brian’s other vamps - he’s assigned ten cases, I asked - is giving him more of a headache than I am. 

I try and reason with myself; I’m usually good. In fact, it’s been over a year since my last incident and even then, that wasn’t anything bad. He’ll give me my rations. He’ll be nice. He won’t ask me any impossible questions. 

I shift my weight just enough to start lifting Gerard off me and he whines, softly in his sleep. His fists ball up around my hoodie again and he shoves his face hard into my chest.

“Comfy,” he mumbles, and I feel his eyebrows flinch together. I hold his head to my chest as I sit up and lean back against the couch, fingers moving through his hair again and my lips brushing against his forehead. My heart hurts and I didn’t even think it could do that anymore, but it does. I feel sick. I feel excited, twisted, happy.

“I’ve gotta go,” I whisper into his hair, curling strands of it around my fingers and then letting go, over and over again. Jesus, he’s warm. 

“Nuh-uh,” he sighs, wriggling closer and jamming his face into my neck. I’m smiling like a moron into his hair. 

“Yeah, I do.”

His arms, which had been curled up against my torso, unwind themselves and twist around my waist. I’m going to cry. I’m going to explode. His nose rubs insistently at my adam’s apple and there’s his breath again, warm and steady and not shaking like it had been before. I had been coping with the smell of him well enough but it’s so much worse when he’s like this, touching me like I’m human, holding onto me. I don’t want to move but I need to eat something. I need to eat something yesterday.

“Come on, sleepyhead,” I whisper, my fingers tracing circles on the back of his neck, my other hand trying to lift him. But he lifts his head and blinks up at me, all bleary and squinty and confused, and smiles. I smile back at him, helpless, not yet having let go of his hair. I tuck some of it behind his ear and my thumb smooths over the corner of his jaw because I can’t fucking help myself, and the moment I catch his eyes flitting down toward my mouth it’s fucking game over.

It’s a good thing I’m naturally predisposed to some level of self-control because if I wasn’t, my mouth colliding with his would have broken his jaw. My hand on his jaw tugs him close and his arms that were around my waist are coming up around my neck, into my hair.

Jesus Christ, he tastes fucking good.

He hums gently against my tongue and laps at it with his and I can’t help it - I moan, nodding slowly and pressing the pad of my thumb hard into his cheekbone, the tip of my nose brushing his. My nostrils are on fire, like huffing paint, like drowning in acetone, vodka, grenadine, candy.

Now look what you’ve done, you moron.

I think about stopping, about letting go, but his hands in my hair only encourage me to do anything but that. My hand moves to the side of his throat and I push into it as I take a stiff inhale and he gasps, hardly audible but high-pitched. I’m pressing into his throat with the heel of my palm and he’s kissing me harder, more drawn out and purposeful and, from what I can tell, revelling in it. He puts a hand on my shoulder and squeezes it, not enough to make me flinch but enough to remind me about the blisters that, by now, are deflating into welts, almost bruised. To my shame, I like it. I think about getting up into his head but I don’t need to. He’s being the most obvious he’s never been with me. 

I can’t get enough of his tongue but I need him to stop.

He makes a soft whine of encouragement at my hand on his neck and I push him slightly, gentle to me but forceful to him, it seems, because he falls back against the couch and pulls me with him. I’m knelt between his legs and one of his knees is pressing hard into my ribs and I can’t breathe because the smell, the taste, is too fucking much. His blood is rushing, his pulse deafening in my ears. 

We’re kissing heavy now, my body bearing down on his and him pulling me down. He’s nodding almost frantically, gasping for air around my mouth, clawing at my hair. When I tear myself away - for my own sake - he gasps again and mumbles my name, but I’m hardly listening. My lips connect with his throat and he groans, tilting his head back into the pillows, his breath turning thin. His fingers are locked together in my hair and I’m kissing, sucking, doing everything I can except biting at his neck because I know I’ll puncture a vein and then that’s it for him. My mouth feels like it’s full to the brim with syrup and I realise it’s just my saliva that tastes like him. I’m drooling on his fucking neck and he’s moaning.

“Off,” he mumbles, hiding his face in one of the blankets as he yanks at my hoodie, and I frown and cram myself closer because I can’t do that right now. Just a couple more hours and I’ll be back to normal and he won’t have to see any of it. I can drag this out. I can survive this.

“Later,” I mumble back as my tongue sweeps across the base of his throat, between his collarbones, slick and sticky. But then, my lips and the tip of my tongue collide with something so blindingly ice cold that I whip my head back, eyes wide, saliva drying up.

The fucking crucifix. 

God, it tastes like battery acid. 

Oh, god, I’m going to die.

I’m not going to die, I just need—

“You okay?” His voice is so soft and so gentle and so instantly afraid that it makes me want to cry. He’s worried that he’s fucked up. That it’s his fault.

No, Gerard, don’t worry, I’ll get back to sucking face in a minute, I just feel like I’ve licked an atom bomb. Gimme a sec.  

“Yeah,” I breathe, but it’s more of a hiss and I’m making some nasty screwed up face and it hurts to talk because my tongue is swelling up, or at least it feels that way. Oh, I really can’t breathe. “I’m sorry,” I wheeze, clambering up off him as slow as I can manage that I still look human, when in reality I want to run away from him at supersonic speed. “I’m sorry, just—“ and I bring my hand to my mouth like it’s bleeding or like I’m going to throw up “— I really need to go.” 

My mouth is on fire and Gerard’s staring at me like a kicked fucking puppy. 

One fucking problem at a time. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, and I shake my head violently, rubbing at my face and my eyes and trying to swallow but it just hurts, like there’s something actively eating away at my oesophagus. I clear my throat and it’s like there’s sandpaper wedged in there. My eyes are watering. Jesus, I really hope he doesn’t think I’m crying. 

“No, it’s not that,” I insist, as serious and as light-hearted as I can make it. “I promise you, it’s not that. I just, I have to go.”

”Frank, it’s one in the morning,” he whispers, like I’ve shamed him, insulted him, eyes darting back and forth between my face and the clock on the microwave. He thinks I’m lying. 

“I know, I know,” I rush out, edging closer toward him and holding my hands up in peace like I always have to do with him. His mouth is a millimetre away from being a full-blown pout. Think of something. Anything. “I just, I’ve gotta go to work. Emergency. I’m sorry.” His eyes soften a little and he starts to look a little more like himself. I’m desperate to get away but I can’t leave it this way, either. I take him by the sides of his face and I kiss him, just once on the mouth but hard enough that he immediately melts into my touch. “I’ll be an hour,” I whisper into his mouth around my blistered, burning tongue, “two, max.” 

“Okay,” he whispers back, breath trembling with eagerness and fingers clutching softly at my wrists either side of his face as I pull back. He looks up at me with that delicious kind of dizziness that tells me he wants me bad and there’s nothing left for me to do but grin at him, out of breath and over-excited and more than a little scared. If I was a human I’d be blushing. 

“Okay,” I say, and I kiss him again before getting the hell out of there, swiping my keys off the island and booking it down the stairs, two or maybe three at a time, abandoning all human speed. 

I can do this, I chant inside my head as I start my car. I can absolutely, totally do this. 

It’s been years since I’ve felt quite this possessed by one thing, enough that it takes up all the space in my head and coherent, sensible thoughts disappear. My head is just full of Gerard, the sight and the smell and the taste of him, the feel of his fingers, their lightness and their desperation. I check my reflection in the rearview mirror - thank god for these things not being silver-backed - and when I stick out my tongue to inspect it, there’s a perfect crucifix-shaped burn branded straight into the tip of it, red and orange and weeping and slowly healing up. That’s going to be there forever. 

I’m no longer going out in search of blood simply because I’m hungry and I don’t want to starve or kill Gerard. Sure, that’s part of it. But right now, I’m on a mission to get blood because when I’m full, I might be able to handle him. I might be able to be normal. Just for a little while. Just for long enough. 

Suicide mission, my brain snaps at me. 

I put my foot on the gas to drown it out. 

Chapter Text

It takes me fifteen minutes to get to the blood bank and ten more minutes to even get let in the door. The cops at the door are never the same twice. They’re vampires, of course, because if you left human cops at the door they’d be killed before their shift had even started or, worse, they’d be getting fucking glamoured and manipulated seven ways to Sunday and their brains would turn into scrambled egg. 

I hand over my ID and I’m practically vibrating, bouncing in place and twitching and chewing on my fingernails like a junkie waiting in line for methadone which, I guess, isn’t too far off. The guy looks at my ID, back at me, and back at my ID again. I never saw the point of vamps having photo ID; it’s not like we can change, get older, ever look any different. I look the same now as I did when that photo was taken and that was what, sixteen, seventeen years ago now? And what does the date of birth matter, anyway? I don’t like being reminded that I’m technically in my fifties. Every five years, I have to go upstairs from the blood bank to the DVMV (no, I don’t know if it’s actually called that) and get a new fake ID issued. It’s crazy. I wish I could tell my teenage self that one day, the government is gonna be spitting out fake IDs just to keep people like me a secret. Honestly, the whole conspiracy thing kinda freaks me out. I don’t know how they do it. I guess that’s what keeps us in line, right? 

The vampire cop - Judas, traitor, asshole - smirks at me and hands my ID back and turns his attention to the list he’s got on his little PDA, one hand resting on the mace attached to his hip. They’re always the fucking same, these guys. Oh, look at me with my special-issue garlic and holy water fucking pepper spray. 

“Iero,” he hums, scrolling and scrolling and scrolling, before sighing and looking back up at me. “I don’t have you down for today. Next pick up is Monday.” 

“Yeah, I know.” Dumbass. “Emergency refill.” I resist the urge to rub at the back of my neck. “Had a bag burst on me.” 

Obviously, he doesn’t believe me, the dubious smile telling me everything I need. Still, he steps to one side and scans his keycard, opening the double doors. 

“Schechter’s not in today,” he says as an afterthought, “so you’ll need to wait around for one of the agency guys.” He glances over his shoulder, at the clock on the wall. “Might be here a while.”

Fuck. Jesus Christ, Mary, and fucking Joseph.

“Thanks, man,” I mumble through my teeth, slipping inside and jumping a little when the doors close behind me. 

Shit. Motherfucker. 

The blood bank on a Friday night is carnage at the best of the times but of course, tonight of all nights, the lines are labyrinthine, winding and looping into strange shapes until I can’t tell what line is for which window. There’s all the usual faces but I don’t know their names, of course, because everyone’s always crabby at the blood bank so you have to keep your head down if you don’t want to get it caved in. There are guys strung out on specially synthesised, back-alley vampire smack (equal parts blood, slow-release morphine and Valium) propped up against the walls, moaning and swaying and hissing; guys in suits all greyed-out from their basement office jobs reading papers and clicking their tongues against the roofs of their dry mouths; vampire house-moms here to collect the rations for all the girls that work at their government-sanctioned, vampire-only-but-you-know-it’s-not establishment; newborn vamps crying and lashing out at the caseworkers in the halls; support group rejects trying to get some free therapy in the bottom of a bag. It’s nights like this that make me wonder how the fuck any of this is even a secret at all. 

Because the feds work fast. 

Seeing as Brian isn’t here, I have to sign in with the receptionist and take a number and sit in one of the rows of blackened, once-blue chairs that are nailed to the floor (and for good reason). The window in front of the receptionist, same as the rest of the windows for all the tellers, is two inches thick and bulletproof. 

“Name?” She drones out, same as always. She never remembers me and I don’t blame her. 

“Iero,” I say as I lean forward on the lip of her little window, fingers drumming against the slot through which she’ll eventually hand me my number. Her false nails go click-clacking on the computer. Her face is partially obscured by an A3 poster that says, in four languages, not to touch the glass. 

“Date of birth?”

”October thirty-first, fifty-six.” Ironic that I have to give my real birthday and not the day I got into this stupid mess but I guess it makes no difference because the day would be the same. Killed on my birthday. Man, that never gets old. 

“Classification?”

”Six.” 

Category Six is a fancy, bureaucratic way of saying I’m not listed on the registry as being an outstanding danger to any living thing. It’s how I managed to get a veterinary placement. They don’t need to know that they should probably update that. They don’t need to know that there’s a very pretty and very vulnerable human in my house waiting for me to get back. Fuck, what if they can smell him?

”Here’s your number,” the receptionist huffs out, sliding it through the paper-thin slot and into my hands. Seventeen. Great. “Take a seat.”

I’ve only been sitting down for a half-hour and I’m jonesing to get the fuck out of here. This is what I’m supposed to be good at, passing time and being fucking bored. Eternity is full to the brim with losers like me. Not with Gerard at home. I told him I’d be two hours at most and here I am at more than an hour in, with no end in sight. I debate calling him but I’m scared that someone will hear this voice or smell him through the fucking phone. 

God, this is ridiculous. I’m supposed to be at home getting laid. 

That’s presumptuous. 

Oh, please. He’s so up for it you wouldn’t even need lube. 

I resort to chewing my fingernails down to the quick and balancing my cigarettes on my knee so that there’s less incentive for my leg to bounce up and down incessantly. It makes the chair squeak, nailed to the floor or not. I try and think about anything other than Gerard, than blood, than spit and come and lube and sweat. I don’t need a boner at the blood bank. 

I’m so twitchy that I start worrying that my poor idiot of a caseworker saw me and skipped me, scared that they’re gonna get assaulted. I have a cigarette, and then another and another, leaning my head back and closing my eyes and listening to the numbers as they are called out. We’re a long way from seventeen. 

But when my caseworker for the night finally does show up, long past three AM and therefore long past the timeframe within which I promised Gerard I would be back, I quickly give up all hope. 

He doesn’t look like the other agency dipshits I’ve had in the past. He’s neater, older, infinitely more severe. His eyes have almost the exact same black cherry sheen that mine take on when I’m hungry and pissed off and I immediately know I’m not going to be able to get what I want. His tie is done up to eleven and there’s not a hair out of place. He’s been dealing with jerks like me all night without even breaking a proverbial sweat. There’s no flirting with him, no reasoning with him and certainly no begging him, not the way I beg Brian. 

“Mister Iero?” He sighs, looking over me and making his mind up there and then. I grimace, forcing it into a smile, and I nod, dragging myself out of my seat. He motions with his head for me to follow him and I do, past my fellow degenerates and down a corridor into one of the screening rooms, which is closer to a closet than anything else. I sit down and resolve to control my twitching leg and how hard I’m scratching at my fingernails. He inhales deeply as he sits opposite me, letting out another sigh that’s even more disappointed than the last, but there’s a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth like an invisible fucking fish hook. 

“Need some blood, Frank?” He asks me with a smirk, long fingers poised delicately on top of what I can only assume is my file. I resist the urge to bare my teeth. Obviously. 

“Yeah,” I say as flatly as I can, but his smirk remains. I’m biting down on my tongue, but it’s still burning a little bit and I can’t do that forever. 

“You’re next due for a refill on Monday. Last time you filed for an ‘emergency’ was over six months ago. Seems to me that you’re awfully consistent with your rations, and that leads me to believe that this is out of character for you.” Don’t let on. Don’t let on. Don’t let on.

I rush in a deep breath. 

“Yeah, I know. The thing is, I—“

”Have an accident, Frank?” He’s practically grinning at me with that sarcastic twang in his voice and I’m scared. If it could, my blood would be running cold. He knows. How is it he fucking knows? I stare him down and I clench my fists under the table and I manage my best false, bashful little smile. 

“Well, I kinda burst a bag.” I swallow. “Crammed too many beers in the fridge, popped that sucker wide open.” That’s enough. “You shoulda seen it. Was half tempted to lick it off the shelves.”

I can’t gauge his reaction and this is what I fucking hate about vampires. So stony-faced all the damn time. Why can’t they all be like me? Like Toro? Hell, even like Brian? At least Brian has those little creases at the corners of his eyes that tell me everything I need to know, all the time. He takes a soft, controlled breath. 

“The thing is, Frank, is that if I issue you a bag tonight, that’s going to reflect in your rations for the remainder of the month. Things are pretty tight, you know.”

”Yeah, I get it,” I say without missing a beat. He was expecting me to say that. You agreed to that way too quickly, idiot. Agency guy smiles and folds his hands neatly on top of my file, before tapping at it with one lanky index finger. 

“You didn’t have any bags set aside? In the freezer, perhaps?”

”What?”

He opens my file and pretends to read something. I know he already knows everything he’s going to say. Every exact way he’s going to torture me. I’m done for. Black van. Stake. No more Frank. 

“By my calculations, Frank, with how much you’re given every week, you should have had at the very least one bag to spare if you burst one, maybe even more.” My jaw is all locked up and I can’t argue. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. ”Hungrier than usual lately? Feel the need to eat so you don’t do anything stupid? Anyone, perhaps?”

I force myself to shrug, shrinking back into my chair, struggling to maintain eye contact with this fucking freak. I bet he’s a secret agent. He’s a fucking fed and they know and they’re going to fucking get me. I wonder whether they’ve been to my house yet, whether they’re on their way there right now. Whether they’ll kill Gerard just in case he knows anything. Whether they’ll question him first and then kill him. If I could throw up, I would. He can see it on my face. 

“Frank, do I need to remind you that, in the state of New York, extra-professional relations with a human is punishable by up to twenty-five years in prison?” 

I’m seeing red. 

“The fuck are you on about, man?” I hiss at him, allowing confrontational Frank out to play just for a moment, just in case this is my one and only chance to defend myself. “Give me a little credit, alright?” Now would be a really good time to think of a better lie. I rub my hands over my face and groan and this motherfucker is sitting there grinning at me like he’s enjoying it. “I just, got this new coworker, alright, and she fucking stinks. You know? I feel like I’ve got fucking strep every time I’m in the same room as her.” Great, just jeopardise your job, too, you fucking moron. “It’s not a big deal. I mean, you’ve been there, right? When it just catches you by surprise?” The hopefulness in my voice isn’t even fake. If he doesn’t at least buy this, I’m screwed. 

He sits and watches me for a moment, bemused, smoothing his long fingers back over the front of my file before opening it again and, again, pretending to read. Upside-down, I can see that he’s reading about where I work, about where I’ve worked before and for how long. I wedge my hands beneath my thighs so that I don’t throttle the guy or chew my nails or rub at my hair or anything else that would indicate I’m lying. 

“I can look at having you reassigned,” he says eventually, and I want to scream. 

“Really, that’s alright,” I say as coolly as I can, shifting in my seat, “I mean, I like my job. And, you know, it’s not her fault. My coworker, I mean. And I’m good. Really, I’m good. I just need something to tide me over.” 

It’s like he didn’t hear me at all. 

“Is this the reason that you’re not at work right now?”

God, these fucking people. 

“Yeah,” I sigh, smiling anxiously again though it’s wasted on him. He closes my file. 

“I’ll be right back,” he says brusquely, like he’s bored of me, and gets up to leave the room. Oh, that’s a fucking textbook interrogation tactic. He wants me to sweat. Unravel. I can’t help but whip my hands straight back out from under me and they fly to my mouth, my teeth destroying them in seconds. I calculate the size of the room versus the length of the corridor versus the amount of people in the lobby versus the size of the cops at the door. I don’t know where the back exits or the stairwells are. There’s no way I’d get out of here alive, especially if he comes back with the feds. 

But when my shithead agency guy comes back into the room ten minutes later and I’m getting ready to jump him if I have to, he looks mildly pissed off and he’s holding a bulging, juicy, albeit small, bag of O-Neg. Half the size of a standard ration. It’s enough to get me through the night. It’s tonight that matters. I shove the irritatingly, deliciously omnipresent thought of Gerard from my mind in case this asshole can see it in my eyes. 

“This is as much as I’m comfortable giving you,” he sighs, hesitant to relinquish the bag into my twitchy hands and putting it on the table, instead. I do my best not to stare at it. “When you come in on Monday, I’m going to ask Schechter to book you in for a category evaluation. Just a formality, of course, you understand.” 

I already had an evaluation six months ago, shitstain. I don’t need an evaluation. I don’t need you fucking spying on me. You don’t even work here. You don’t know me. 

I swallow it down. 

“Sure, man, no problem,” I mumble through my teeth, dizzy just at the sight of the blood. Salvation in a fucking bag. He slides something onto the table next to it, a slim silvery business card. 

“If you ever need anything,” the agency guy says, his tone a little off now, softer, delicate, careful, “feel free to call. It’s a secure line.”

The fuck would I need a secure line for? To turn myself in to the F.B.V.I.?

”I deal with a lot of these kinds of cases,” he says, and he’s not smirking anymore. It’s hushed, secretive. I’m staring at him, mute and lifeless and fucking terrified, and he offers me what I can only really interpret as a miserable smile. He straightens up and nods towards the bag. “Put that in your pocket. As far as you’re concerned, you’re leaving here empty-handed tonight.” 

What the fuck?

I don’t move, until he glares a little and I do as I’m told. He opens the door and holds it for me, nodding toward it with that same flat expression of disappointment he had been wearing when I first saw him. 

“Goodnight, Mister Iero,” he drawls, and I leave, clutching my minuscule bag of blood and my weird, secret business card close to my stomach inside the pocket of my hoodie. I’m walking as fast I can without being conspicuous. My body feels like it’s made of lead as I slip out of the blood bank and back to my car. Quickly, though, when I look at my bag of O-Neg on the passenger seat next to me and I finally light up a cigarette, I’m not bothered about what the hell happened in there. I’m not even bothering to think about it hard enough to piece any of it together, the weird agency guy and his creepy smirk and his out-of-the-blue, under-the-table blood bag handover. Secret blood bag. Huh. Weird. 

Maybe he could smell Gerard on me and he felt sorry for me. Maybe he’d been in a similar position, once, and he’d eaten the poor bastard. Maybe he’s a fed and he’s trying to entrap me and thinks I’m dumb enough to fall for it. Who the fuck knows. Doesn’t matter. 

Gerard. Gerard. Gerard. 

That’s what my pulse would sound like if I had one. That’s what the groaning and creaking and sputtering of my car’s engine sounds like. What my feet on the stairs when I get home sound like, two steps at a time in the darkness, not bothering with the lights because I don’t need them, not now. 

I had been half expecting him to be asleep. At this point, it’s gone four in the morning and the streets are quiet, even for New York. Quiet like the night I’d found him on the bridge. 

“Hey,” he croaks from the couch as I come into the room. He clears his throat and I can smell the cigarette he’s smoking before I see it, dangling from his lips. He looks up from the sketchbook in his lap and smiles, tired and red-eyed, tucking a lock of dark hair behind his ear. For a moment, it’s like I’ve been transported back to twenty years ago and I’m human and alive and this is my very real, very brief life. There’s a pang, an ache, an assault, where my heart should be pushing a thousand beats per minute. Instead, there’s just a rock, some huge deformed puck of black and atrophied muscle. Doesn’t mean it’s not real. I smile back at him, fist clenching dangerously around the bag of blood in my pocket. God, he’s fucking beautiful.

“Hey.”

He sits up and sets his sketchbook to one side, shoving his pencil behind his ear and taking a long drag on his cigarette, watching me without even blinking as the smoke shrouds his face for a second. There’s a faint flirtatiousness to his smile as he leans forward with his elbows on his knees, eyes scanning me from head to toe. 

“You said you were gonna be an hour,” he says, like some sexually frustrated fucking housewife, and something in my stomach, in my chest, in my throat, flutters. Smelling him is like feeling how good it is to be home, only it hurts. I need my blood. I can barely open my mouth. 

“I said two,” I ease out, trying to play it as cool as I can. 

“It’s been three.”

”Sorry.” 

“Hm.” He ducks his head down and smiles a little wider and I know he’s going to ask me about work and I’ll have to come up with even more lies. Haven’t I done enough of that tonight already? The blood is warm in my hands, which is offputting, maybe even disgusting. If it’s not straight out of a person it’s just not worth it. Instead, I ask what he’s doing. He shrugs and closes his sketchbook and puts it on the coffee table, resting the pencil on top of it as if to guard it. Then, he laughs, a tiny girlish laugh all to himself that knocks all remaining air out of me. “Are you gonna come back here and finish what you started, or what?”

That’s bold. Even for him. 

As if on command, my dick and my stomach lurch at the same time and it’s not like I can exactly say no but there are priorities. I just spent two hours at the fucking blood bank getting bored half to death and grilled within an inch of my life to top it off. Worth it. If he’s game I’m game. It takes every ounce of remaining strength I have to put on a good front and bite back. Call his bluff, if I have to. No point being all restrained and tortured about it if he’s just going to go ahead and say shit like that. Is he trying to kill me?

“You wanna come over here and get a whiff of dog, or are you gonna let me shower first?”

Bingo. His cheeks go red and he looks down at his burned up, useless cigarette and he smiles a little wider. 

”I guess,” he mumbles, half coy and half annoyed, but with the way his teeth are pressing into his lip I know he’s thinking about what I look like naked and that’s more than good enough for me. I put on my best, softest smile and drop my voice to the back of my throat as I back out of the room, squeezing my bag of blood to my stomach. I’m not thinking. I don’t care. Blood, Gerard, and more blood. In that order. 

“Ten minutes.” I grin at him and he’s looking at me like he wants to eat me. Baby, you’ve got no idea. “See you upstairs.”

Chapter Text

I don’t have ten minutes. Ten minutes is eternity. Ten minutes is torture, time I don’t have, time wasted. 

Frank has done something to me that I didn’t think was possible; hammering a deep fault line into my ridiculously fragile shell and picking off each of the pieces one by one. I never once thought that I would be here again, itching for someone’s touch, a man’s touch, thinking about him to the point of physical pain and delirium. The worst part is that any reservations I did have about it melted away the moment he kissed me, the moment he moved first, the moment he gave me permission. Frank is, in my mind, larger than life. He is taking up every tiny space, every inch of me. Nothing that has happened to me, even the things that led to me being here, exactly where I want to be, matters. All that matters is that I am here, now.

I waited a minute or so before going upstairs, my body wound tight like a tourniquet. I could hear him, moving about in his bathroom with the water running. I didn’t have a choice but to wait by his door, leaning my forehead against the cool, dark wood, already having done everything I could think of to prepare myself for this, for him while I was waiting for him to get back. I couldn’t help but feel I had never had an experience quite like this, a hook-up that I know is coming, with no conversation and no real build up save for the kiss he left me with, the look in his eyes that was promising things I couldn’t even begin to decipher. Before, I had always been drunk, or manhandled into it. I had never been told to wait, never been given the chance to think about it. 

My nerves were so prickly I could have been giving off a static charge and, where before I had been emboldened by the anticipation, now I was just anxious, afraid. I thought about going into his room, to his bed, to wait for him, but I wouldn’t have been able to make it convincing, enticing enough. If anything, it was corny. The longer I waited, the worse I felt, Frank’s influence on me waning as I was taken over my doubt and self-consciousness. Compared to him I was nothing much to look at. I didn’t even know what I could offer him. It had been so long I was starting to think I had forgotten what to even do. I’m going to make an idiot of myself and it’s all his fault.

But when Frank’s door fell open, almost taking me with it, and Frank was there looking up at me with those golden, thick, dark honey eyes, my brain went quiet. His face was a little flushed from the shower, his hair damp and fluffed up from a towel and hanging just right around his cheekbones, blinking up at me and softly, slowly wetting his lips with his tongue. 

“Hey,” he breathed, low and perfect and smooth. He leaned one elbow up on the doorframe, the stiff curve of his bare, tattooed bicep in the warm lighting making my stomach flip. 

“Hey,” I whispered back, my cheeks burning and crimson and stinging. My eyes drifted downward, faltering and widening and giving up all hope as I looked at his bare chest, the smattering of tattoos there and on his stomach, the fine damp hair around his navel clinging to his skin and tugging my eyes further down, resting at the waistband of his sweatpants. They were sitting low, really low on his hips, making it more than obvious that he wasn’t wearing underwear. Jesus. Fucking. Christ. I could have thrown myself at him. 

“My eyes are up here, you know,” he murmured, and when I looked at him with the telltale panic of having been caught he was grinning, lip ring caught between his teeth, eyes glistening, burning into my own. He wasn’t shy. Not even a little bit.  

“You’re so hot,” I mumbled pathetically, almost a complaint, like an idiot, like a fucking teenager in heat, the words tumbling out of me before I had even formed them properly in my mouth. He made my stomach hurt. My awkwardness didn’t seem to faze him and he tilted his head a little so that it was resting against his arm on the doorframe, exposing the tattoo on his neck and the taut skin of his jaw, skin that I could practically taste just by looking at it. 

“Yeah?” He was playing with me. He knew he was hot and he knew what he was doing to me. He must have done, because he reached out with his other hand for the hem of my sweater and tugged me a little closer, excitement bouncing through my body from my head to my toes and straight to my dick. I nodded, insistent and emphatic and borderline cartoonish. 

“Yeah,” I whispered back just as his hand came up into my hair to guide me closer, my lips enveloping his with an obsessive, hungry eagerness, impatient to be rendered useless, thoughtless, senseless by his mouth. 

I didn’t know what to do with my hands. His body was giving off palpable, hot steam, his skin cooler to the touch than I had expected but it was the perfect offset to my nervous sweating, my hands clammy and practically slipping when I grasped his jaw and his neck, his fingers clenching around the back of my hair. His tongue slid effortlessly against mine, a quiet and musical little laugh slipping out of his mouth and into mine when I just couldn’t stop nodding, his lips shifting around mine in that stupid, over-confident grin. He tasted metallic, sweet, an aftermath of toothpaste in there somewhere. He tasted good. 

His hand slipped from my hair down to the side of my throat like he had done the last time, pressing in with his palm, his other hand falling from the door and twisting around the front of my sweater, pulling our chests together and yanking me into the room, the door falling closed behind me as we just kept going, propelled toward the bed in a flurry of lips and tongues and saliva. He pushed me back onto the bed and climbed on top of me, pressing me down into the soft, cold sheets with his weight and going for my mouth once more, so fast and so firm that I was dizzy, struggling to keep up. I reached up to grasp him by the back of his neck but his hand came up instantly, like he had been waiting for it, curling around my wrist and pinning it down to the bed, above my head. I moaned, softly and strangled, feeling my body weakening beneath his, already surrendering to him. God, you’re easy. 

He flashed a smile at me as he pulled away, his wet hair in his eyes, mischief staring back at me. He gently tugged my head back by my hair, putting a little more force down on my wrist as he leaned down to mouth at my neck, sloppy and warm and lazy and yet still calculated enough to get another embarrassing sound out of me. 

“God, where have you been all my life,” I groaned, almost but not quite to myself, once more not thinking and certainly not able to hold it back. Frank laughed again, a dark and almost frightening noise beneath my ear, before I felt his teeth graze my slack and useless jawbone. 

“If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me,” he mumbled against my skin, smushing his nose against my cheek as he kissed me in the same spot over and over again, slower each time. My chest fluttered and I tried to open my eyes but I couldn’t, heat building so quickly and so overwhelmingly in my abdomen that it was all I could concentrate on. His movements and his pressure softened, nudging my face back towards his and kissing me, pressed so close that I couldn’t tell where I ended and Frank began. I hadn’t felt him move but his hands were suddenly moving beneath my sweater, pressing into my hips. To my shame, they bucked upward into his hands. “What about you?” He said, quiet and hoarse and blunt as his thumbs dug into the sensitive space next to my hip bones, “where the hell have you been?” 

The words made my tongue dry even as he lapped at it with his own, and I could have cried.

“I’m sorry,” I breathed, all high-pitched and flustered, and when I had expected him to laugh at my apologies like he had done so many times before, he just hummed, climbing a little higher with his knees either side of one of my legs. 

“You’re damn right you’re sorry.” My stomach lurched and when I looked up at him he wasn’t even smiling, not so much as a smirk. His eyes were burning with need just like I knew that my own were. Magnetised to him, I leaned up and kissed him as he pulled up on my sweater and I just about managed to wriggle free of it, my hands desperate to get back to him, to his hair and his face and his neck, scrambling for him. He tossed it off the edge of the bed, my breath cutting out almost completely when his lips pulled free of mine, eyes moving over my torso. 

There I was, practically gagging for a compliment or a morsel of praise, but he couldn’t seem to come up with anything, at least not for a moment. I felt his fingers brush delicately over my collarbone, downward over my chest and hovering over where my heart was getting away from me and threatening to explode altogether. 

“Hm,” he just about sighed, his fingers lighter than air. I struggled to swallow, just staring up at him and waiting for something, anything. Then, he smiled, his mouth just cocking upward at one side, as he flicked weakly (but purposefully) at the cross hanging around my neck. I flinched. “Take that off,” he said, lips barely moving. I nodded and my fingers flew to it, struggling to unclasp the chain because my fingers were shaking so much. As I did, he ducked his head back down to kiss me, lips slow and deliberate and designed to make me lose all thought and sense. “We can talk about God and how much he’s torturing me with you later.” Another bolt of white heat, from my chest to my stomach. The chain came away from my neck and fell into Frank’s waiting palm. He didn’t even look at it, letting it fall to the floor, the white gold trailing off his fingers like rushing water. 

When he touched me then it was like anything he had been holding back no longer mattered. I arched into any part of him that I could reach, pulling at his hair as he kissed me. His knee between my legs shifted a little closer and I groaned, instantly squirming forward against it, desperate for friction and the tiniest shred of relief from the tightness in my pants. His breath caught when I rubbed up against him and his mouth fell from mine, locking eyes with me and staring at me in bewilderment as I moved. The way his jaw slackened and his eyebrows tugged together told me I didn’t need to be shy about it but I bit down on my lip, stifling the curses that wanted to come out of my mouth, blushing as he watched me. 

“Fuck me, you’re pretty,” he rasped, catching on and pulling my hips closer, looking down at where they met his leg, the slow and firm rhythm with which I was moving against him. The praise only encouraged me and I leaned back on my elbows, letting the lower half of my body do its thing, leaning into the way my dick twitched each time it touched him. He was frowning, that kind of blissed-out and thoughtless expression that I couldn’t get enough of, as he leaned over me and planted slow, trembling kisses to my chest. When his tongue fluttered over my nipple and I moaned, I felt him grin, my hips grinding down frustratedly now. Peering around his shoulder, I could just about see the outline of his hard-on through his black sweats, thick and solid and fucking intimidating, and it was this I fixated on as my hips sped up through no fault of their own. 

“Impatient?” He teased, looking up at me as his tongue circled my nipple over and over again, and I swallowed, nodding, gasping a little when his eyelashes fluttered and the butterflies went off in the pit of my stomach. He chuckled and dragged the tips of his featherlight fingers down the midline of my torso, stopping just beneath my navel. “You want a hand, or do you wanna just keep rutting up against me?”

Jesus Christ. 

I couldn’t get the words out, but I did try. They came out as some kind of unintelligible, garbled moan and he laughed again, fingers slipping just beneath my waistband where the skin was softer, more sensitive. I jumped, nodding, only for my eyes to slip straight back into my skull the moment he wrapped his hand around my dick. 

“Fuu-uck,” I squeaked out, my back arching and my hands scrambling for something to hold onto, his hair, the sheets, anything. His laugh was dark but still a little breathless as he pressed his face into his neck; from what I could feel of him there, I knew he was looking down as he touched me, his wrist moving fluidly, effortlessly, perfectly. 

“Didn’t expect you to be so loud,” he whispered into my ear as he kissed beneath it and I whined from the embarrassment and from the tension, my insides beginning to melt, my centre of gravity shifting to his hand on me, hips thrusting upward to meet it. “I mean, you’re so quiet. So serious all the time.” 

“I’m sorry,” I gasped, automatically, only to groan even fucking louder when he squeezed me tight, tight enough for me to start fucking leaking all over him. 

“Say sorry one more time and I’ll stop,” he said, stern and calm and level, not at all an empty threat. The apology was on the tip of my tongue. I nodded instead, submitting, my eyes spinning in their sockets. When I moaned again he moaned with me, just a little, his hand slowing to the point of torture. “You’re so perfect,” he mumbled against my jaw as he kissed it, up to my mouth where I was breathing so thinly I could have passed out. His kisses were as slow as his hand, lips dragging over mine repeatedly. “You’re actually gonna kill me.” 

I shook my head, a useless protest, my face screwing up in panic as each movement of his hand was suddenly pushing me dangerously close to the edge. He hummed into my mouth, feeling the way my hips were stuttering, taking advantage of it. 

“Already?” He whispered, speeding up, and I couldn’t say anything, couldn’t apologise, couldn’t even comprehend what was happening to me. I nodded, squirming, but he held my hips down with his free hand, looking down and watching me, doing something with his right hand that felt something close to blasphemy, rapture, sin. My mouth fell open and I tried to communicate it but I couldn’t, just panting, writhing, dying. “Use your words,” he drawled, and that was it. 

“Please don’t stop,” I whimpered, and he laughed, pulling back to look at me. The look on his face knocked the breath out of me, eyes practically melting, hard in the centre but tender around the edges, something in there that I couldn’t place. I had seen those eyes before. I didn’t know where. 

“Not on your life,” he said, and as I stared at him my vision went blurry, the burning knot in my stomach reaching critical mass and snapping open. I knew my mouth was moving and sounds, words, were coming out but I couldn’t hear them, just arching upward into Frank’s hand as it pulled the proverbial life out of me, losing any control of my body as the orgasm tore its way through me. I pulled at his hair so hard I thought I would rip it out, my toes curling and my fingers clawing for purchase. “That’s it,” he encouraged, his mouth returning to my neck as my hips twisted and tried to pull away but he wouldn’t let me. I had made a mess; I could feel it, the slick stickiness of his hand moving on me, the heat on my stomach and as far up as my chest. Before the embarrassment could creep in, though, Frank’s lips were on my chest, his hand slowing and eventually pulling away. He kissed me so softly that I had no choice but to lean into him, groaning in surprise when I felt his tongue drag through a thick string of come in the centre of my stomach. 

“Don’t do that,” I whispered, shamefully high-pitched, the feeling eliciting a self-conscious giggle as he ignored me and carried on. I didn’t mean it. It’s just something you say. 

“Mine,” he muttered around his tongue, the heat of it making me flinch as he worked at cleaning me up, soft hums of contentment bubbling out of his throat. He’s just as fucking disgusting as you are. I thought I would have started to come down by now, maybe flop back against the bed and ask Frank, feebly, to hold me; but I didn’t want to come down. Frank didn’t want me to come down. He moaned a little as his tongue swiped over my navel, hands squeezing my hips gently, just enough to keep the fire in me alight. 

“We can keep going,” I breathed out, chest rising and falling rapidly, and he just hummed, nodding, pressing a loud, gratuitous open-mouthed kiss to my over-stimulated dick, swirling his tongue around. I yelped a little and tried to pull away but he looked up at me, smirking, a strand of my come dripping from his lip ring. He’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.  I wasn’t sure how confident I was in my abilities at this point; I was already this lightheaded from a handjob, for crying out loud. He is going to be the death of me.

“Believe me, we’re gonna,” he said, blinking slowly, eating me alive with those gorgeous fucking eyes. My stomach went cold, just for a second. 

“Yeah?” I whispered, disbelieving, and he grinned, his lips coming away from me with a gentle pop and his hand coming up to wipe his mouth. 

“Yeah,” he said, throat a little raw, turning to kiss the inside of my thigh with a slow, shuddering inhale before easing himself up off the bed. “Just gimme a sec.” He straightened up and his eyes moved over me quickly, darkening, hesitating. “Don’t move,” he said, gently and commanding at the same time. I nodded, smiling sheepishly, watching as he ducked away into his bathroom. 

When he came back, even though it had hardly been a minute, I found myself wanting to cry. Looking at him, with his hair that had finally started to dry a little and that was standing up at the back from how I’d been yanking on it, with his lips that were reddened and slightly swollen from kissing me, it was hard to believe I hadn’t been dreaming. I could still see his dick, beckoning me from beneath his sweats, teasing me. Though mine was safely tucked away and, honestly, spent, it may as well not have been. Jesus, I’m never ready to go again that fucking fast. 

“C’mere,” Frank murmured as he stood at the foot of the bed, running a hand back through his hair. I did as he asked, kneeling on the bed in front of him so that I was eye-level with him. He reached up to hold my face, cupping my jaw and tilting my head to where he wanted it, kissing me slowly, deeply, perfectly. I couldn’t get over the taste of him, all metal and sweetness, yet more toothpaste. When was the last time I kissed a guy before him that actually brushed his damn teeth? 

He said my name, so quietly I thought I had imagined it, as he kissed me. I nodded, my palm resting anxiously in the centre of his chest, rigid muscle and tattooed flesh rising to my touch. There was that smile again. When my hand slipped a little lower he inhaled, sharply, and nodded stiffly, like he was clenching his jaw. 

“You okay?” I whispered, my anxiety seeping back through, but he nodded, mumbling a soft yeah as his breath shuddered its way into my mouth. “You sure?” I asked, a little louder, a little more tense, and he conjured up an easy, carefree laugh. 

“Just been a while,” he mumbled, holding my hand to his chest when I moved to retract it, “don’t worry, you’re good.” A soft, deliberate nip at my bottom lip with his own. “Promise.” 

It surprised me, to have even the smallest bit of vulnerability in Frank made obvious to me. Not so much of a shithead kid any more. It scared me. 

“We don’t have to,” I mumbled, and he laughed again, drier this time, his kisses not stopping. 

“Gerard,” he said, syrup-slow, enchanting, hypnotising, “if you don’t touch me, like, right now, I’m gonna fucking explode.” 

“Alright,” I whispered, hurriedly, abandoning whatever was left of the reservations that had started to creep back in. We laughed into each other’s mouths as I dropped my hand and took hold of him, my other hand holding him by the back of his neck as he moaned and leaned into me. He moaned again before I’d even adjusted my grip, before I’d even moved, pressing his nails into my shoulder. I slipped my hand into his sweats instead, following the heat, curling my hand around him and trying not to balk at the sheer size of his cock, the heaviness of it in my hand. 

“Fuck,” he muttered out through his teeth, almost a hiss, his head tumbling forward to lean against my shoulder as I stroked him. “Fuck.” 

“Yeah?” The fuck are you getting so cocky for? 

“Yeah,” he rasped, his forehead crammed against my collarbone, his breath hot against my chest, and I could feel his eyebrows flinching together a little harder with each movement of my hand. “Fuck, yeah.” His voice shifted up in pitch and I couldn’t help but like it, tightening my grip and taking advantage of how loud he was being to gauge exactly what it was that he liked. Turns out, he liked pretty much everything. “Fuck, if you keep doing that I’m gonna fall over,” he mumbled into my chest, pawing at my shoulders with his hands, clawing at me a little with his bitten down nails. 

“Lay down, then,” I mumbled, letting go, and it only took a few seconds for me to be able to pick up where I left off, pushing Frank down into the pillows and straddling his legs, pressing down on his sternum with my palm. He was out of breath, staring at me, leaning up on his elbows despite me pushing him down hard. 

“Come here,” he whispered thinly in protest, motioning upward with his chin, but I liked being in control even if it was only for a minute, only the illusion of control. Frank had me wrapped around his finger and he knew it. 

“In a minute,” I whispered back, as sweetly and as convincingly steady as I could manage it, before scooting down and curling my fingers around his dick again, and following suit with my mouth. Oh he tastes fucking good. His hips shot up off the bed so quickly that it caught me off guard and he almost went slamming straight into the back of my throat, and he was lucky I’ve never had much of a gag reflex in the first place. I tried to ease his hips back down, closing my eyes and melting into the sound of his breathless, desperate moans bouncing off the walls. I had been expecting him to keep spitting cusses, to keep attempting to talk, but he didn’t, just moaning in time with each and every sweep of my tongue and grabbing at my hair, not pulling and not pushing, just holding. When he got louder so did I, allowing him to feel the reverberations of my vocal chords through my tongue, up against his dick. His fingers tightened in my hair until it hurt and I pulled back, blinking up at him, nearly stopping dead at the sight of him. 

He was leaned up on his elbows again, jaw and mouth completely slack and eyes half glazed over, his irises practically black and smooth like glass. It made my head foggy, my limbs losing all their feeling until nothing was left but the pound of my heart and the throbbing of my dick up against the bed. I managed my best, sluttiest, faux-shy smile, and pressed a lingering, wet kiss to the head of his dick. 

“Don’t be a tease,” he said hoarsely, and I grinned, taking the full length of him straight back into my mouth. His head fell back between his shoulders, the hand that wasn’t in my hair balling up around a chunk of the sheets, the noises coming out of him cracking and straining as I sucked him down hard. “Fuck, you’re good at that.” I dragged myself away, saliva dripping out of my mouth and down onto him. 

“You can fuck my throat if you want,” I said, making sure that he could feel my breath all up the length of him, and his mouth flinched at the corners, his tongue coming out to wet his lips. “Don’t need to hold back.”

“I don’t wanna fuck your throat,” he said almost instantly, his voice quiet and warm like it was coming from inside my head, pausing to swallow a moan as I mouthed at him again. He pulled me back by my hair and just like that I didn’t have any control over him at all. “I wanna fuck you.” There wasn’t anything I could say. How many times could I say yes before it lost all its meaning? 

He pulled me up to kiss me again, this time rougher, more teeth, more tongue. I let him push me back down onto my back on the bed and I nodded until my neck hurt when he leaned over me, holding me down firmly by my throat, his thumb smoothing over my adam’s apple. “This okay?” He asked me, lips moving slowly against my throat as he pressed his way between my legs, holding one of my knees tight to his ribs. 

“Yeah,” I gasped the moment he let go of my neck, tilting my hips closer to his in surrender as I watched him spit on his fingers, long sticky strings of it falling down onto my stomach. When he teased them against my entrance I jumped, biting down on my lip to stifle the anxious laughter that wanted to come out, and it came out anyway. He laughed with me, not stopping but not going any further, just working his saliva into me as he kissed my neck. 

“Okay?” He whispered, and I detected a hint of nerves to him, something lingering just behind his voice.

“You don’t need to ask,” I whispered back, catching sight of a wry smile as he pulled back to look at me again.

“Yeah I do,” he said, and I rolled my eyes, thinking about nothing but him, his fingers and his mouth and his dick. Nothing else mattered. 

“Just assume it’s a yes until I start saying no,” I mumbled, tugging him close and kissing him so that he would just get on with it. Around a laugh he eased his fingers into me, starting off with two, still a little impatient even if he was pretending not to be. I moaned loudly into his mouth, my head falling back against the pillows but he went with me, holding onto me as he stretched me open, his breath hot and steady in my mouth. 

“You’re so fucking pretty,” he said, his fingers moving with determination until I was whining, practically fucking keening, pressing down onto them until they hit what I wanted them to. He chuckled, his teeth grazing my bottom lip as he pressed himself deeper, harder. “And greedy,” he whispered, teasing me, mocking me, but I just nodded. For you, how could I not be? 

He worked away at me until I could hardly take it anymore, stretched open and hyperaware of needing more, to be filled, to be whole. Frank knew it, too, deliberately holding me still to make me take it, whether to just slut me out or to make sure I really did actually want it, I wasn’t sure. I was finding it hard to breathe, so overwhelmed with how badly I needed him that I was almost panicking.

“Fuck, will you please just—“

“Oh, I like when you say please,” he breathed against my jaw, curling his fingers just right and drawing a loud groan straight out of my chest. The words came out before I could stop them, before I could keep a shred of my dignity.

“Please,” I moaned, squeezing my eyes closed and frowning hard at the pressure building in my abdomen, my cock leaking against my stomach and fucking betraying me, showing him just how badly I needed him. “Please. Just— oh, my, God, please.”

“Don’t you talk to me about God,” he whispered, harshly and perfectly in my ear, his fingers slipping out of me and his dick easing inside in their place, filling me up beyond any reasonable doubt. I moaned then, possibly the loudest and most uninhibited sound I’d ever made, my hands flying to his shoulders and to his hair. The feeling was something I couldn't describe, not after so long, not after wanting it this badly. But it was familiar to me, like I had been here with him before. Yeah, in your dreams, idiot. When I laughed, practically beside myself, he laughed with me. “What’s so funny, huh?”

“Déjà vu,” I mumbled as I pulled him to me by his hair, desperate for his tongue. I don’t think he heard me. 

As Frank pressed into me, all the way down to the hilt without even the slightest bit of resistance on my part, he groaned and turned his head to bite down on the side of my neck, not hard enough that it hurt but hard enough to have me whimpering, vulnerable, desperate. 

“You’re so fucking good,” he whispered, tonguing at the saliva left behind on my neck that I could feel as he breathed against me, ragged and not so steady any more. He kissed over and over again at the tender slope of my throat until the skin was sore, inhaling hard with each movement of his hips, his moans strangled and deep and fucking insane. “You feel so fucking good, Gee. So fucking good.” He bit down at the curve where my neck met my shoulder and groaned, softer, slower, the sound drawn out as he plunged into me with purpose. His voice was muffled by my flesh in his mouth. “Fuckin' made for me. Fit me like a fucking glove.”

All I could do was hold onto him, shoving my face hard into his shoulder as he moved faster, one of his arms curling around my thigh to keep it up, to keep me spread open, to make it easy. He may as well have been fucking splitting me in half, the noises I was making. 

“Frank,” I mumbled, little more than a rush of breath in between my moans, “shit, will you—“

“Yeah,” he gasped, nodding quickly as his hand, slick now with my sweat, fell between us and gripped my dick, jerking me in time with his thrusts and sending my head falling back against the headboard. He didn’t even need to ask. 

“Jesus, fuck,” I whined, frowning so hard it was giving me a headache and trying not to move, not wanting to throw off his rhythm which, as he growled softly against my neck and pressed closer, was getting me everywhere fast. “Fuck, yeah, right there.”

“Damn straight,” he muttered, only gripping onto me tighter, straight up milking me as I sank my nails into the back of his neck and came all over his hand, all over his chest and mine, my muscles crushing down on him as he pressed as deep as he could into me, not wanting to be pushed back out. 

“Fuck, Frank, don’t stop,” I gasped, trying to pull him by his hair, wanting to kiss him, wanting him to breathe down whatever oxygen was left in my lungs as I rode it out, but he was somewhere else, somewhere else entirely.

“Shit, keep talking,” he said lowly, desperately against my neck, his breath coming out in short, hot bursts. I was running on empty and yet I could barely even feel it, encouraged by the strength and the heaviness of his body over mine. 

“Yeah?”

He nodded and curled one arm around my waist, lifting my back from the bed and arching it into his thrusts, sending a moan tumbling out of me before everything else came spilling out, all the long-lost porno filth I’d been repressing for fucking years.

“Come on, baby,” I whispered, curling my arms around his neck as he squeezed me almost hard enough to snap me in two, “that’s it, keep going. Wanna feel you come for me.” He hissed out another breathless fuck and his other hand came up to hold the headboard, hard enough that I heard and felt it make a dent in the fucking wall. His teeth sank into my neck, hard this time, a blindingly sharp and searing heat spreading out to my shoulder just Frank let out a startlingly lurid moan, guttural and animalistic and nothing short of perfect, so loud that it was fucking trashy. “That’s it,” I whispered, still caught up in him and not putting two and two together, as his hips stuttered and stopped and started again, and I could feel his eyelashes fluttering against my neck, hear the sweat on his hands creaking against the headboard, his back arching into my chest as he worked himself through it.

“Fuck,” he whispered as his lips slipped away from my neck, trailing up to my ear and my jaw and eventually to my mouth, not giving me a chance to talk. He was still inside me, his hips slowing just enough that I could breathe, and though I wanted nothing more than to melt into him and let it be, I could taste blood on his tongue and feel the heat of it trickling down my chest. 

“Frank,” I squeaked, cutting out halfway through the one stupid syllable because my throat was shredded, trying to push him away without freaking him out. He hummed, his tongue rolling around mine, body softening and weighing down on me. I heard him take a breath, and that was when reality kicked back in.

“Oh, no,” he mumbled, wrenching himself away and finally allowing me to see his face which, now, flushed and beautiful and painful as it was, was covered from his nose to his chin in my blood. 

Chapter Text

Okay, so I’m lightheaded.

“Oh, no. No no no no.” Frank thrust his hand against my throat, making me wince at the sting and the suffocating discomfort of the pressure, more than someone of his size should have been able to put on. He wasn’t looking at me, just at his hand on my neck. I could feel blood bubbling around his fingers. Maybe that’s just your imagination. 

Why don’t you go to sleep?

“Gerard,” Frank said tensely, not at all sounding like himself, and I realised I’d closed my eyes. I was unnervingly aware of my pulse, feeling it hammering against Frank’s hand, feeling it in my head, in my stomach. When I opened my eyes he looked terrified, not the same Frank from only a minute ago. I had no fucking idea what was going on. I felt like I was dreaming. 

“What’d you do, Frank?” I whispered, and I realised then that I wasn’t frightened. I was calm. My head was foggy, messy, full of honey, and I was calm. 

Am I dying? 

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” he rushed out, eyebrows pinched so firmly together they may as well have been one, “I promise, it’s not.” He looked so pained, so upset and so fucking miserable that it made me want to cry. “I’m so sorry. I’m, I’m so fucking sorry.” 

“S’okay,” I mumbled, my eyes starting to roll back a little as I lifted my hand and weakly put it on top of his, trying to lace our fingers together. 

What the fuck are you doing?

“I need you to stay awake,” he snapped at me, snapping me out of it and batting my hand away from his, speaking with a tone of voice I’d never heard before. 

“I don’t like blood,” I whined, and Frank’s face turned blurry, watery around the edges. His hand left me for a moment and then I felt something soft - my sweater? - being crammed up against my throat in its place. 

“I need you to hold that,” he said, flatly, urgently, and I did. He practically snarled at me, jamming my hand down harder, enough for me to flinch. “ Harder than that. You need stitches. I need you to hold that until I get back. Alright?” 

When I opened my eyes I saw him stop halfway off the bed, our gazes drawn to one another’s, like always. He was mortified, the anger leaving his eyes just for a second as he stared at me. 

“Please,” he whispered, getting back into his clothes, leaving pinkish bloody handprints all over them. “I’ll only be a minute. I’m gonna stitch that up and you’ll be fine, okay?” I nodded, offering him the closest thing to a smile that I could manage, considering he was scaring the shit out of me. He leaned in and kissed me, just for a second, like he had been compelled to do it, shoved towards me by an invisible force. “I’m sorry,” he croaked out, before he rushed out of the room. 

Well, this is just perfect.

Well done, Gee. Really, impressive. First guy you decide to get under in years and he rips a goddamn hole in your neck.

Not complaining.

*

~

*

~

*

You’ve got this, Frank. You’ve totally, definitely got this. 

Except, I don’t fucking got this. I did exactly what I was trying really fucking hard not to do. 

Plenty of time for panic and self-pity later. Think, Frank, think. 

I’m rooting around for a first aid kit because I know there’s one here somewhere but what I’m not sure about is the sutures. By the size of the bite he needs at least six stitches but I won’t know until I get back there. What I’m really worried about is the blood. Just by the spill - steady, no spitting, no spurting - I know I didn’t nick anything important but I’m still freaking out about him losing too much blood. He’s already dizzy. Knowing my luck I’ll get back up there and he’ll have fucking passed out. 

Call Toro. He’ll know what to do. 

There’s so fucking way I can rope Ray into this. I know he wouldn’t tell but it’s still too risky. 

Better than taking him to the hospital. 

But, I’m fucking hungry. Sure, the secret blood bag - half before, half during - helped for a minute or so but I might as well not have eaten for weeks, the way Gerard makes me feel. How exactly was I supposed to ignore it when I was all wrapped up in him like that? The moment I kissed him it was like any blood I did have in my system evaporated, let alone when I did anything else. I couldn’t help it. I tried, really, but I just couldn’t fucking help myself. 

At least you let go before the fangs came out.

Yeah, big fucking woop. 

Jesus, what the fuck was I thinking? 

In one of the guest bathrooms I finally come across a first-aid kit but it’s ancient and half empty. God knows when the last guy who lived here last replenished it. I rifle through it and, of course, because only I could be this unlucky, there’s everything I need but sutures. So now, I’m running around the house without any consideration for the mortal conventions of velocity trying to find a damn sewing kit, packets of gauze and antiseptic wipes crammed into my bloody pockets. Not ideal, but necessary. My hands are tacky with drying blood and leaving prints on everything. I can come back and lick them later. Doesn’t matter. Damage control now, crime scene clean-up later. 

I don’t know if I’m going to be able to get through this. In the grand scheme of things, when you factor in all the things I’ve seen, it’s not even that much blood. I’m practically a veteran at this point, I should be able to handle it. But it’s his blood. It’s him. 

There’s no way I can do this without eating. 

I need Ray. 

I swipe my phone off the kitchen counter and dial him while I’m disappearing halfway under the sink trying to find what I need. Why would a needle and thread be under the fucking sink? I’m in the third drawer down from the cutlery when Ray picks up.

“Fuck, yes!” I rasp out when my fingers curl around a spool of thread and a pincushion, and Ray’s voice in my ear makes me jump. 

“Didn’t realise you missed me that much.”

“Oh, Ray, Ray, thank fuck. Listen–” and I’m sprinting back up the stairs as I’m speaking, “-I need you to come over and I need you to bring blood.”

“What, you having a party?”

“Shut up, man, I’m serious. I need you to bring me a bag and I need you to come, like, now.”

“In case you didn’t notice, asshole, the sun’s up.” As I get back into the bedroom and I’m assaulted by the sweet, hot stench of Gerard’s blood and the faint aftermath of marginally disgusting and really fucking good sex, I realise that Ray’s right. By now, the sun is just about hitting the corner of my carpet and it’ll be filling the room within the hour. 

“So put your hood up, I don’t know what to tell you,” I mutter, throwing myself back onto the bed and scooping Gerard up from the cushions. He’s unconscious and there’s even more blood because he’s lost the pressure I told him to keep down on his neck. 

Shit. Fuck. Motherfucking, shit, fuck. 

“Yeah, I think I’m gonna pass, man,” Ray sighs out around an unnerved laugh. “What’s gotten into you? Burned through all your bags?”

“Yes,” I growl at him through my teeth, wedging the phone between my ear and my shoulder as I inspect the gaping, pouring wound at the curve of Gerard’s neck, just above his collarbone. Christ. The stuff is all over him and my bedroom is starting to look like that scene from the fucking Godfather. The air is heavy with it and I’m trying to hold my breath but I need to talk at the same time. I tear open one of the gauze packets from the first-aid kit with my teeth and pack it against his neck, pushing down as hard as I can without snapping him, trying to push it into the wound as deep as I can, just in case. 

Ray sighs in my ear and it sounds as though he’s folding his arms, narrowing his eyes. 

“What did you do, Frank?”

“What?” I can’t think straight with all this fucking blood. My hands are shaking and I’m trying to get the thread through the eye of the needle but I can’t. I can barely even speak. I sound like I’ve smoked a hundred cigarettes today. 

“You’re breathing really heavy, man,” he says, gently, still a little stern, “and you sound like shit. What did you do?”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Ray, can you just come over?” I sound like I’m going to cry. Hell, I might be crying already, I don’t know. I let go of Gerard’s neck just long enough to tie the thread into the needle - finally - and then I peel the gauze back, managing just a tiny moment of reprieve as I notice the blood has slowed, almost completely stopped. I can hear Ray hesitating, thinking, weighing it up. I close my eyes and try and get myself together. “Listen,” I say, biting back a sob, “I fucked up, alright, and I really need your help.” He makes an uncomfortable noise. “Ray, please.” 

“Alright,” he huffs out, so hard I can feel it through the phone, “but if you’re gonna make me help you get rid of a body again then–”

“Ray,” I snap, and he growls back at me. 

“Fine.” I don’t even bother thanking him; there’s time for that later. 

“Bring blood,” I remind him, throwing the sheets over Gerard’s waist to preserve whatever’s left of his modesty before I straddle his hips, tilting his unconscious and drooping chin to one side so I can get to his neck, the needle between my teeth. “O-Neg,” I mumble, “It needs to be O-Neg, Ray, okay?” Just in case. I don’t have any of the other stuff, but just in case. 

“Yeah,” Ray mutters before he hangs up, quiet and surrendering, because now he pretty much knows exactly what it is I’ve done. 

Gerard stirs a little beneath me when I press my hands to his neck, peeling a fold of his flesh back so that I can slip the needle into it. Shit, please don’t wake up. Not yet. 

“Ow,” he whines hoarsely as it presses in, his hands flailing up off the bed a little, reaching for my wrists. Shit. I shush him reflexively, putting a little more weight down with my bracing hand. “Fuck, ow.”

“Yeah, I know,” I whisper, surprising myself, my eyes flitting up to his face. His eyes aren’t open but he’s frowning, licking at his lips, wincing. Pretty. 

“What are you doing?” His words are slurred a little and I mentally smack myself upside the head because I should have told Ray to bring candy or at the very least, soda. 

“You need stitches,” I remind him, wincing a little myself when I slip the thread through and press the needle in again, Gerard’s neck twisting minutely in my grasp. 

“Oh, no, no, I don’t like needles,” he moans, like he’s going to cry, and when I tie off the stitch and pull it tight he whines again. His face is going a little green. “Ow. Ow.”

“You’re alright,” I whisper, forcing myself to concentrate, not to breathe so fucking hard. The air smells like nails and grenadine, infiltrating me whether I want it to or not. Nails in my throat. This is my crucifixion. I rush my way through another stitch and Gerard squirms, and I shush him, softer than before, possessed by a fleeting urge to kiss him. Concentrate, Frank. 

“I’m gonna throw up,” Gerard whispers, skin the colour of Roman marble. 

“No you’re not,” I say, only halfway convincing, but my fingers are slick with blood and they slip and my needle - because it’s blunted and I have to push it so fucking hard - presses deeper than I meant it to and he yelps. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“Ow, fuck you,” he spits through clenched teeth as I correct the stitch and pull it tight. Only one left and we should be good. Golden. Safe. 

“Yeah, I know, I said I’m sorry,” I snap back at him, and from the corner of my eye I see his open, just so that he can glare at me. 

“Thought you said you were a nurse,” he grumbles, eyes cramming closed again when I stick him with the sharp end for the penultimate time. “Ow.”

“Sorry, does it look like we’re in a hospital to you?” I loop the needle back through the thread to double-knot it. “And you’re being a bitch, by the way. Dogs sit better than you.” Way to deflect, Frank. It’s not his fault.

“Only because you fucking sedate them,” he hisses, flinching violently away from me when I lean in to bite the thread loose. Done. Safe. 

“Relax, it’s not like I’m gonna bite you,” I mutter without really thinking twice, and he laughs, sputtery and weak and, blissfully, easy. 

“Again,” he mumbles, and my eyes snap up to look at him, expecting fear or even just a glare. Every inch of me turns to jelly when I notice him smiling, staring at me all dizzy and stupid like nothing even happened. I’m a goner. When he starts to laugh I’m laughing too, collapsing against his chest as the tension leaves me so quickly and so violently that I think I’m going to cry for real. “Hm,” Gerard mumbles, pressing his face into my hair. 

Unbelievable. 

“I’m sorry,” I mumble, curling my arms around his waist, my nose skimming thin hair around his nipple. Breathing hurts and my voice is starting to cut out and I’ve got a vicious headache. I need to get up and clean up, him and me and the fucking murder scene of a bedroom, but he hums again and twists his arms around my neck, squeezing gently, and I can’t move. How the fuck am I supposed to explain this to him? And why the fuck isn’t he mad? 

“S’not so bad,” he sighs into my hair, trailing a hand through it, and a shiver prickles its way down my spine. Helpless to it, I press closer to him. Kissing him right now would be like swallowing razorblades and for some reason I really fucking want it. 

“It’s pretty bad.” I can feel him smiling and I reluctantly draw back to look up at him, my chin on his chest. His eyes are reflecting the sunlight that’s starting to inch closer to the bed. Problem for later. His thumb sweeps lightly along the slant of my jaw and suddenly, I’m shy, because he’s looking at me like I’m the best thing in the fucking world. 

“Didn’t feel bad to me,” he sighs, tucking a strand of my hair away, “at least, until you got the needles out.” I snort out a laugh and my head falls forward against his chest, relishing the soft vibrations of his body as he laughs with me. “Best fuck I’ve ever had.” 

Oh, for goodness’ sake, be fucking serious. 

“I don’t know how I feel about that,” I mumble self-effacingly, kissing softly at his side with a considerable amount of restraint. I could have killed you. Are you stupid? 

“I’m just saying.” I peek up at him again and his eyes are closed, his hand moving slowly, perfectly, through my hair. He’s smirking to himself. He’s actually fucking smirking. “You didn’t exactly seem to be having a bad time, either, you know.” 

Yeah, because having your blood in my mouth feels like I’ve been edging myself for a fucking century. Because you’re unholy levels of beautiful. Because you look at me and hold me and kiss me the way you do. Because it hurts and I’m a pathetic, obsessive masochist and I like it. 

“Yeah, I know,” I murmur, and I feel rotten for it because I want nothing more than to tell him exactly how he makes me feel, tell him that, for lack of a bag of blood, I’m pretty much exactly where I want to be. Since when? I don’t know how to get the words out, where I would even start, to explain to him that I want nothing more than to do what we just did every day for the rest of my stupid, wretched life. 

Before I can start crying about it, my phone buzzes from some indeterminate location in the sheets and my stomach flips. Ray. 

Fuck. 

“I’ll be back in a minute,” I whisper to Gerard, who just hums at me, half-asleep, probably still woozy. When I pull away I take a moment to look at him; those moments can’t come frequently enough. He’s smiling into the pillow that’s covered in his dried blood, neck extended and boasting six stitches that are eventually going to give way to a dramatic scar, hair all messed up, his one exposed hip already bruising up from where I’d pressed down on him, sleeping soundly because he thinks he’s safe. 

He’s alright. You fixed it, and he’s alright. He’s not gonna need a transfusion and he’s not even mad at you. He’s alright. 

The relief erupts in my chest and there’s a fleeting, barely fully formed thought nagging at the back of my mind that I might be in love with him. 

No time for love. 

Blood first. 

When I meet Ray at the door, standing in a beam of weak sunlight that, in my ravenous state, hurts my face, it’s clear by the look on his face that I both look and smell like I’ve been on a killing spree. He rushes inside and forces the door closed behind him, pushing me further inside as if there were feds on the street or something when really he probably just wanted to get the fuck out of the sun. 

“What the fuck did you do,” he growls at me before I’ve even managed to look him in the eye, glowering through his unruly hair. 

“Did you bring it?” My eyes scan over him and I can’t see a blood bag or a blood bag shaped bulge underneath his clothes, either. 

“Frank, please tell me I don’t smell what I think I smell,” he groans, his eyes travelling up to the ceiling, following the smell all the way to the third floor. There’d be no way of disguising it even if I’d had time; it would take a week of leaving the windows open just to dull it down the tiniest bit, let alone get rid of it completely. And there’s no use lying to Ray. 

“Yes, alright, fine, but no one’s dead. Don’t worry.” 

He looks me over in bewilderment and grimaces, his nose wrinkling uncomfortably and I feel a pang of guilt. This must be hurting him almost as much as it’s hurting me. But it’s Ray. he can handle it. 

“Don’t worry?” He leans his head back and rubs his hands over his face, inhaling deeply probably so that he doesn’t hit me, only to grimace when he gets a lung full of Gerard. 

Good shit, huh? 

“Frank,” he says, taking on that pleading, reasoning, bargaining school-teacher tone that I can still vaguely remember from when I was alive and I wouldn't stop throwing rocks at boys I liked, “you called me at seven in the morning begging for blood, which is concerning enough as it is, and now that I’m here your house smells like a fucking orgy in the emergency room. Have you seen yourself?” He gestures to my bloody clothes. “How can I not worry?” 

“Yeah, I know, I’m sorry, I just really need–”

“If you don’t tell me what’s going on I’m not giving it to you,” he says, haughty and holier-than-thou and I just glare daggers at him until it becomes crystal clear that he’s serious. I don’t have to tell him. It’s Ray. I can take him. 

You’re not fighting Ray. 

The simple explanation is probably the easiest, for now. Anything for the blood. We can talk about it later. When I’m full. I take a deep, calculated, essence-of-Gerard breath. At least the smell isn’t as bad down here. 

“Fucked a human,” I sigh, forcing myself to shoot Ray the smile that I know wins him over more than half the time, all teeth. His eyes twitch at the corners and are immediately weighed down with disappointment before the spiraling overthinking takes over. “Bit him. He’s fine, though.” 

There it is. 

“Are you fucking crazy?” It’s an octave higher than his usual pitch. He reaches out and smacks me hard in the side of the head, which I’d already braced for. I maintain my smile, hoping that if I make light of it he doesn’t try and kill me. “Seriously, what are you, stupid? Did you hit your head? Are you high?”

“Relax,” I moan, rolling my eyes, my cool waning and disappearing. “He’s fine. I mean, I had to give him stitches, but it’s not like I turned him or anything.” Ray’s eyes are like saucers. Can’t hurt. “He’s sleeping upstairs,” I add, and that’s it, it’s over. 

“Frank!”

“Can I have my blood now?” 

“Can you– no, you cannot have your fucking blood,” he snarls, smacking me on the head another few times until I kick him and he cuts it out, glaring at me. I resort to pouting at him, because at this point I’d do anything bar sucking him off for it, and he starts to laugh. “You’re insane. What’s wrong with you?” I roll my eyes with a frustrated groan. 

“Nothing! I just–” But daddy, I love him! “-- Call it a moment of weakness, alright? It’s not a big deal.”

“Not a big deal.” His tone drops to his scary, freaky monotone and I groan again, rubbing at my face, bouncing a little on my toes. “Not, a big, deal!? Frank, this is not a moment of weakness, alright? Sniffing someone at the supermarket is a moment of weakness. Going into a humans-only bar, is a moment of fucking weakness. This is so fucking beyond–”

“Will you shut up?” I hiss as his voice gets louder and louder, and he winds his head back like I’ve just insulted his mom. 

“Me shut up? Me trying to talk some fucking sense into your stupid ass?”

“I don’t need a lecture, I know I fucked up,” and I’m babbling, “and I know I’m an idiot, alright, you’ve made that clear, but everything’s fine.”

“What if the feds find out?”

“They won’t.”

“Oh, won’t they? Because they’re so famously reliable for not finding things out?” My throat is so dry it feels like I’m swallowing sand. He’s got a point. “And what are you gonna do when your little hook-up leaves, huh? You know you can’t let him leave, right?” 

Wasn’t gonna. 

“He’s not leaving,” I mumble, wincing, flinching, squeezing my eyes closed and waiting for the tirade. 

“Why? Because you actually killed him and that’s why you called me here?”

“No,” I moan, over-frustrated and itching and aching, “Christ, Ray, will you just– can I– ugh.” I rub weakly at my throat and groan, on the brink of tears again. He sighs and slumps back against the wall, watching me carefully. He knows I’m pathetic and I know it, too. “If you’re not gonna give me my blood can I at least have a cigarette?” I whisper, and he narrows his eyes at me before digging into the inside pocket of his jacket, thrusting the half-litre bag of blood into my hands. 

I don’t even bother thanking him, relief flooding my lungs and ebbing outward to my extremities as I scramble to unplug it. Ray is watching me with measured pity and secondhand embarrassment and extreme annoyance. 

“You want a straw?” He mumbles feebly and I shake my head, tearing the thing open and raising it to my mouth, my eyes rolling back as the first gulp of it rolls around my tongue and slides down my throat. Oh, thank fuck for that. I moan, loud, frowning and trying not to squeeze on the bag to get more of it out because I know I’ll burst it and all my lies will have come true. 

“Gross, man,” Ray mumbles, averting his eyes as if that would help with the noises I’m making. 

“Sorry,” I gasp, wet and garbled with my mouthful, drinking to the point of dizziness and sheer gluttonous euphoria. Before I can get too into it, Ray pinches the head of the bag and yanks it out of my hands, a thin dribble of blood coming out the corner of my mouth as I try and go with it.

“Alright, alright, that’s enough,” he snaps at me, and as I lick my lips I realise he’s right. I rub at my mouth with the back of my hand and there’s a whiff of Gerard again, nowhere near as bad as before. I slump back against the wall, gasping for air, letting myself level out. 

“Thank you,” I breathe thinly, leaning my head back, and Ray grumbles. 

“You know you’re in deep shit, right?” He asks me, gently, timidly. I open my eyes to look over at him and his arms are folded, fingers squeezing anxiously at his upper arms. I nod and close my eyes again, suddenly feeling the most exhausted I’ve been in the last twenty years, maybe even ever. My chest aches and I realise that all I want to do is curl myself up around Gerard and sleep, and the thought sinks inside me like an anchor. If only I could sleep. 

But Ray’s right; I really am in deep shit. In more ways than one. 

“You mind if I see him?” Ray asks, softer still than before, and when I look at him with panic and shame and terror, he finally manages a smile. “Should probably make sure he’s still alive, really.”

I choke out a laugh, covering my face with my hands, forcing a weak nod. 

“Don’t know how I got so lucky to get stuck with you, Toro,” I mumble out around my pathetic smile as he claps his hand reassuringly on my shoulder, and he just grunts at me, but I know he’s smiling too. 

He follows me up to my bedroom, staying a couple paces behind. I stop at the door and peer around it to see Gerard curled up and sound asleep and tangled in the sheets, everything covered from the waist down, one of his arms curled around his bloody pillow. He’s snoring and my chest hurts. I nod at Ray and he follows me in, barely making it past the threshold. 

“Well, fuck me sideways,” he mutters, his eyes following the pools of dried blood up from the foot of the bed to Gerard’s face. Even though Ray has seen me at every single one of my lowest points, he’s never seen this. There’s an icky feeling of humiliation unfurling in my abdomen, cringing at Ray standing amidst the aftermath of my first fuck in years. I know that he can smell it, smell him, smell me. 

I watch him take a deep breath and I know from that point on, he’s holding it. 

“What’d you do, slip him morphine?” He laughs out, and I just hum, my chest swelling around the space where my heart would be as I look at Gerard, listening to the snuffles coming out of his nose. Man, I’m so fucked. 

“Nope, just lead,” I whisper back, never able to skip the opportunity for a dirty joke when I'm with him and he knows it, and Ray smacks my arm because, against my better judgement, I’m smirking. 

“Gross,” he mutters, and I snicker, the sound trailing off quickly. There’s a pull inside me, something deep and umbilical and deeply uncomfortable as I cock my head to one side, watching Gerard a little closer, the rise and fall of his chest and the half-smile on his mouth and the bruising around his stitches, and I’m going to cry. The realisation was foggy, at first, but I can’t shake it now. 

I love him, and I’m screwed, and I’m going to jail. 

“You need a hand cleaning up?” Ray asks, and I know he’s only offering because he can see the look on my face, because there’s no way I can do this on my own without breaking down, because he's my designated getaway driver, my one and only failsafe friend. I sniffle and nod and clear my throat, wiping furiously at my glassy eyes. Ray sighs. “Alright. You hold him, I’ll do the sheets.” He glances over at me and half-smiles. “Let’s just hope he doesn’t wake up. Don’t wanna give you another thing to answer for.” 

Chapter Text

When I woke up, my body felt like it had been run through a meat grinder; and that was before I even attempted to move. Upon forcing my eyes open I noticed it was dark, perfectly dark, the kind of dark that makes you wonder whether you’re awake at all. I tried to twist my neck to look around but it hurt, sharpness tugging at my skin and awakening a stiff, aching feeling that could only be attributed to a bruise.  

I could picture it all perfectly, up until a certain point; Frank, touching me and kissing me and fucking the soul out of me, and then Frank biting me, and then Frank freaking the fuck out. After that, things got hazy. I brought my hand up to my neck and touched it, gingerly, flinching minutely as I counted the stitches. That, I remembered, just about; me whining at him and him holding me down. I remembered laughing. I remembered feeling his weight against my chest. 

I smiled to myself and pressed my face a little harder into the pillow, shifting my hips and feeling the throbbing of yet more bruises. There was something satisfying about the dull ache of my body, the juxtaposingly heavy weightlessness of it, the blissful fog inside my head. As I moved to roll over, something stopped me, and I felt around only to find that there was an arm around my waist, on top of the sheets. 

I trailed my fingers weakly over Frank’s wrist, slipping down to find his fingers, where they were waiting to twist into mine. He hummed softly, a thick and low noise against the back of my neck. 

“You awake?” He murmured, his nose brushing against the notches of my spine, and I just made a small noise of acknowledgement, my mouth beyond dry, scratchy and crying out silently for coffee. I felt his lips move against my skin, like he was smiling. “You okay?” Softer, quieter, anxious. 

“Mmf.” I closed my eyes and tried to wriggle closer to him, but there wasn’t much distance between us to begin with. “Sleepy.” I sighed as I felt his other hand in my hair, so gentle it was hardly there at all, his elbow above my head on the pillow. 

“You can go back to sleep.”

”What time is it?”

He chuckled, his nose pressing into the spot beneath my ear, inhaling softly. ”No idea.” He kissed me there once, twice, three times, wicked slow and unnecessarily tender. I melted into him without a second thought, tilting my head as if to say, more, please, but he moved away so that his lips were against my shoulder instead. 

“Are we in my room or yours?” I mumbled. 

“Mine.” He kissed me again absentmindedly, sighing a little and pulling back altogether, his hand moving from my hair as he leaned up on his elbow. I could feel his breath on my face. “You want me to take you back to your room?” Easy, nonchalant, genuine. It hurt. 

“You kicking me out?” I felt a cool exhale against my shoulder and he shook his head, just enough for me to feel it. 

“Nope.”

”Then why are you asking me stupid questions?” God, my voice sounds messed up. 

“Sorry,” he mumbled, laying back down, his hand a little limp in mine now. I squeezed it and he squeezed mine back, but only for a second. I frowned, thinking back to the look he had had in his eyes when he’d pulled back from me, covered in blood and absolutely terrified. The way he’d apologised to me. The way he’d kissed me, just once, before I passed out. I cleared my throat. 

“You good?” 

I could practically hear his eyes rolling. As if to make a point, he pressed a lingering, warm kiss to my shoulderblade. 

“Yeah.” 

“So you’re not sulking?” I could have sworn I felt him stiffen and it wouldn’t have been noticeable to me if he wasn’t so close to me, so obvious with his movements when every part of him was touching every part of me. 

“No, I’m not sulking.” There was a dryness to his voice, something closed-off, something held back. I was too fucking tired and worn out to do the whole debriefing thing right there and then but he was practically forcing me into it. I sighed, giving myself enough space to roll onto my back, my hands searching for him and finding him almost instantly, leaned over me like he was looking at me but there’s no way he could see anything because I couldn’t, either. He rose to my hand against his cheek, his hand that had been holding mine smoothing over my waist and curling around me. 

“Come on, spit it out. Let me have it,” I sighed, and he chuckled again, tilting his head to kiss my palm. My pulse stuttered and he did it again. 

“I’m good,” he whispered, a little hoarse - if I didn’t know better, maybe even a little choked up. 

“You sure? Because it seems to me that you’re moping because you feel bad for getting carried away and biting a chunk out of my neck.” He sighed. 

“Ger—“

”When, really, you should be feeling bad for sulking, because you’re ruining cuddle time.” He hummed. 

“Am I.” 

“Yeah.” God, I wish I could see his face. He made a small noise in his throat and his nose nudged the heel of my hand. 

“So you’re telling me I don’t need to feel bad for taking a chunk out of your neck,” he mumbled into my palm, fingertips tickling at my ribs. 

“Nuh-uh.” He laughed, a sad and thick little laugh.

“Noted.”

“Thank you.”

“You know, you’re really not how I thought you’d be.” He cleared his throat. “Now that I’m getting to know you.”

“Oh yeah?” You either. I couldn’t say I missed the stupid jumped up kid I thought he was. Soft, half-naked Frank inches away from my face was infinitely better. He laughed through his nose.

“Yeah. I mean — that’s not a complaint.”

“I should hope not.”

“I just mean…” He sighed, his hand finding my hair and brushing through it again, his breath a little warmer on my face as he moved closer. “I don’t know. Guess I thought you were all uptight and stuff.”

“Guess you saw to that,” I sighed. Making me jump, he planted a heavy, purposeful kiss to the edge of my jaw, grinning, his arm tightening around me.

“Guess I did,” he murmured, his tongue brushing clean through the stubble that was erupting on my cheek and making my stomach flip. I flinched, snickering, swatting at his shoulder, and his mouth left my skin, speaking against my hair again. “But, you know, I just think that—“

“Oh, god,” I moaned, my skin starting to crawl in sickening anticipation of the rejection I had long stopped thinking about, pulling back from him. Instead of surrendering to it, though, like I had so many times before, I felt I actually had something real to fight for this time. Didn’t I? He was different. He made me feel different. He was the only guy that had ever left a mark and bothered to apologise for it. And he liked me - he must have liked me. You don’t fuck someone like that if you don’t like them, you just don’t. But still, there was the doubt, the belief that I was the problem, that I wasn’t deserving of anything good that could possibly happen to me. “Please don’t say it.”

“Say what?”

I’m going to throw up. 

“That this is a bad idea,” I groaned, flopping back against the pillow and covering my face with my hands and trying to ignore the way my stitches were screaming at me when I moved my head. 

“I wasn’t going to say that,” he said, strained and higher-pitched, protesting. My heart skipped a beat, hopeful, only to stutter almost to the point of flatlining when I caught the tone of his voice on the word that followed: but.

“Don’t say ‘but’,” I whispered, wishing once again that I could see him, that I could look for hints in his eyes or, at the very least, get one last look at them before he kicks me the hell out of here.

“I think we need to talk about it,” he murmured, smooth and enchanting and irresistible, really, but I didn’t want to talk about it. 

“I don’t,” I muttered, and the laugh that came out him disarmed me.

“Does me wanting to talk about it automatically make you think we’re gonna fight?” He made me jump when he kissed the corner of my jaw, his hand coming up to tilt my head in his direction. Fucking hell, Frank, turn on a damn light. The darkness was disorienting me. With his hands on me, though, I felt calmer.

“No,” I whispered, a lie. He kissed me again, his cheek brushing against my jaw, sighing out a soft moan of contentment against my ear as I found his hair with my fingers, brushing through it eagerly, excitedly. 

“I just don’t want you to think I’m taking advantage of you,” he mumbled as I tugged him close by the scruff of his neck, trying to get to his lips, trying to shut him up. He laughed into my mouth when I kissed him, only drawing a moan out of mine when his thumb brushed over my bottom lip, against the tip of my tongue. 

“You can take advantage of me,” I gasped as he kissed me back, deeper than I thought he could, his tongue stirring heat in my thighs almost straight away. You can take as much as you want.

“I’m trying to be serious,” he said, the words more or less meaningless as he reached down and pulled my leg around his waist, fingers pressing into the soft spot in the ditch of my knee.

“So be serious,” I muttered around another one of his hot, heavy kisses, shuddering minutely at the way he squeezed me to him, a reminder of before, the way he had held me so close it was like I was going to fall apart in his arms.

“What’s gotten into you?” He asked around an anxious laugh, and in the darkness I rolled my eyes, one of my hands slipping down along his bare spine and pressing down on his lower back, guiding his hips to mine.

“You.” Real smooth. He pushes up against me the way that I wanted him to, our breath catching at the same time and staying suspended between our mouths, a gentle whimper coming out of Frank as he ground down against me, as if he didn’t quite want to, as if something was making him do it and he liked it anyway.

“Like, yesterday, you were saying you didn’t even like guys,” he rasped as he pinned his hips to my own, mouth moving quickly, eagerly along my jaw, peppering kisses back and forth in what I could only assume was an attempt to avoid my neck. 

“Yeah,” I said, my nails sinking into the soft flesh of his tattooed hip, “I lied. Obviously.” Just shut up and kiss me. Stop making me think about it. It’s your fault, anyway. He whispered my name in feeble protest as I held him by his chin and kissed at his throat, feeling the tightness of his tendons beneath the skin.

“I don’t wanna fuck this up,” he said, softly and clearly and not messing around. If I could have pulled back to look at him to see if he was making fun of me I would have, but there was no hope of doing that. My eagerness melted away to make room for my nerves. 

“What?” 

I leaned my head back and stared up until I could just about make out the outline of his face, but there was nothing more to see than that. As though he could see perfectly fine or that he just knew his way around me already, he leaned his forehead against mine, his grip on me slackening to a careful tenderness that made me want to cry. 

“I know I don’t really know you properly or anything,” he said, and it was so anxious and completely out of character for him that it unnerved me, the only thing keeping me assured that it was even him at all being his voice as it bubbled out of him at breakneck speed, “but I really like you and I kinda care what you think of me and, honestly, if I have any say in this, then I wanna go on record by saying that I’m like, seven shades of shit-scared and I really don’t wanna fuck this up.”

What? 

I didn’t even know where to start. I couldn’t keep up with him - shithead kid, bedroom demon, frightened shithead kid. Where the hell was this even coming from? This was supposed to me. This was supposed to be my crisis, my freakout. 

“Frank-“

“And you’re staying here,” he whispered, his voice thinner, practically dripping with a turmoil I couldn’t place or even begin to attempt to understand, “and I’m supposed to be helping you and—“

“You are helping me,” I said dumbly, and he groaned, his head falling down somewhere at my side, the pillow the next to mine, I could only guess. When he didn’t say anything I rolled closer to him, my hand finding the centre of his bare chest and resting there. After a moment I felt his hand on top of mine, and he sighed.

“Be honest with me,” he mumbled, his thumb moving over my knuckles, and God I wished I could see his face, “do you actually like me? You’re not just, I dunno—“

“Taking advantage of you?” I raised an eyebrow even though he couldn’t see, and he hummed through his nose, his voice thick now.

“Something like that.” I hated when he used his small voice. Regardless, I smiled, rolling a little closer and leaning up so that I could only assume I was close enough to his face that I could kiss him if I wanted. 

“You wanna know something?” 

“Yeah.”

I twisted my hand around so that I could hold his, trying to focus on that instead of the sick fear rolling around in my chest that was making me want to throw up, the disbelief that such words were about to come out of me, 

“I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone be as good to me as you’re being to me right now,” I said, and the way his thumb moved against my hand stuttered slightly, “and, no, I don’t really think I deserve it and, yeah, I kinda don’t want it to stop, like, ever. So, there’s that.” 

He laughed a little, but I wasn’t done. I’d opened the Pandora’s box of human fucking emotion.

“And, I don’t know, I guess I don’t really know you very well and I’m definitely a bit blindsided because I wasn’t expecting… Well, this—“ and he squeezed my hand —“and maybe I’m a little freaked out, because I’m just some loser and you’re like, supermodel pretty, and you’re fucking ridiculous in bed, even if you do bite me, but, I mean, you’re kinda—“

“Yeah, okay, I get it,” he said around a mouthful of laughter, reaching up and not even feeling around for me in the darkness before his hand curled around the back of my neck, pulling me in and kissing me. 

“But you are,” I mumbled as I scrambled to catch up with the way his mouth moved on mine.

“I’m what?” He whispered, an evil, arrogant tease out of nowhere, and an entirely unexpected and wanton moan shot out of me at the poorly-veiled display of dominance when he clenched his fist in my hair.

“Insane,” I moaned, dutifully lapping at his tongue when it made its way into my mouth, and suddenly I was so warm and so possessed with need for him that I couldn’t even remember what we had been talking about. I hadn’t meant to say that. “Fuck, Frank, can you turn the light on?”

“Why?” I almost hated the way he was talking to me, like he owned me, like he’d discovered some salacious secret about me. In a way, that’s true.

“Because I wanna fucking see you,” I practically growled, pawing at his face and his hair and his chest and his arms, wanting all of him at once and not having any idea of how to fucking get it. 

“You don’t need to see anything,” he practically purred, easing my head back gently enough that I could tell he was still trying to be mindful of the stitches and speaking against my ear, his free hand cupping my face and tracing my bottom lip gently with his thumb, humming when I all but dragged it into my mouth with my tongue, “I can see you just fine.” 

The words turned my mind into soup. 

“Hnnh,” I groaned, my eyelids fluttering violently in the dark, tonguing at his fingers in my mouth like my life depended on it.

“Now who’s pretty?” He whispered, and I mumbled something useless, my remaining senses so heightened without my sight that his words felt even more sharp than they would have been in the first place. “Hm? What was that?” 

“You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” I gasped, and I hadn’t been meaning to say it aloud. He should have had to torture that out of me, really, whether it was true or not. Never say vulnerable things to people who have unprecedented sexual power over you. He made a small, flippant noise of disagreement but it didn’t line up at all with what his hand was doing, moving down from my hair to the lowest portion of my stomach he could reach without getting under my clothes. I wasn’t even aware I had been wearing any. 

“That’s your dick talking,” he said, teasing at my waistband with his fingers and curling them around the peak of my hipbone. I shook my head and moaned even louder in surprise when he pressed his nails in, my saliva coating the fingers of his other hand, and it didn’t seem like he minded. He laughed a little, a damp kiss nudging against the tip of my collarbone. “You can’t say that just because I’m a good fuck.”

“Yes I can,” I said obstinately, and he pulled his hand from my mouth, dragging his wet, slick fingers down my chest and making me shiver. 

“If I get you off, are you gonna stop trying to distract me and actually have a grown up conversation with me?” His voice was hot, actually, physically hot against my ear, and it irritated me, nevermind the way my hips squirmed to be closer to him. Fuck you. Grown up conversation, my ass. I’m older than you. I’ve said my bit, I can make my own choices. You’re the one with the problem.

“No,” I spat, around an earth-shattering moan as his hand slipped into my pants and gripped me.

“Okay,” he said lightly, as if he wasn’t doing anything at all, his nose brushing softly against my cheekbone like this was normal, soft, playful. “Well, that’s fine. I’ll just talk.” My eyes rolled back and I mean, all the way back. “You try and pay attention.”

“Frank—“

“Here’s the thing,” he murmured, moving his hand in such a way that I wished I could just fucking watch, holding me so tight and so perfect that I was choking on the air I was breathing in, “if you’re gonna stay here with me then I know I’m not gonna be able to keep my hands off you.”

“Fine by me,” I gasped, bucking upward into his hand enough that he resorted to holding me down again, his thumb pressing into the slit at the head of my dick and making my breath shudder as it came out of me.

“You’re meant to be listening,” he whispered, and I bit down on my lip in submission. “Problem is, is that I don’t know how much good it’ll do you.”

“Yes you do.” I groaned and reached up and tried to get ahold of him, finding nothing but his stiff, muscular forearms. 

“Well, let’s just say you get a job,” he drawled, his movements all melting into one, the stitches in my neck growing tighter and all the more painful as I couldn’t help but lean my head back as far as it would go, arching my back with it. “Let’s say you meet a girl.”

“Oh, will you shut up,” I whined, having to throw one of my arms over my face even though it was so dark he wouldn’t have been able to see the look on my face, regardless of whether he said he could or not. This is quickly approaching the most humiliated I have ever been and I don’t even hate it. 

“Where would that leave me, huh?” From the wetness of his hand I knew I was leaking precum all over him and that only made it worse.

“Shut up, Frank,” I rasped, resisting the urge to bite down on my arm as I crushed it harder against my face, my back arching even harder. 

“It could happen,” he hummed, as if he was oblivious to his hands, to my dick, to the way I was writhing, pinned down underneath him. 

“No chance,” I gasped, almost swallowing my fucking tongue, “no fucking chance.” I’m yours. Don’t make me say it. Don’t make me fucking say it. 

“I don’t wanna just be some funny little anecdote left over from this part of your life,” he said, and for a second it sounded entirely real, genuine, nervous. I shook my head. “I don’t wanna just be the guy that bit your neck open.” You’ll always be the guy that bit my neck open. You’ll always be the guy. “I don’t wanna lose you,” he whispered. Something in my chest fluttered, and I’m surprised I didn’t go limp immediately. 

This is absolutely not how this is going to happen.

“Alright, cut it out.” He slowed, not quite stopping, until I sighed loud enough that it broke whatever spell he’d put on me and he had enough sense to let go. I pulled up my sweats as quickly as he could and I felt Frank move away from me, too far for me to reach, so I didn’t go after him. I bunched up the sheets around me as much as I could, my body going cold from the confusion and the fucking shame. 

Do not cry. Don’t you dare fucking cry.

“Can you turn the light on, please?” I tried to keep it as light and as non-confrontational as I could, but my heart just about snapped in two when I heard him speak.

“Why?” His voice cracked, somewhere at my side.

“Because I can’t talk to you like this.” There was silence for a few seconds, and my head was throbbing with the stress. “Please, Frank?” 

There was movement for a moment or two before he flicked on the lamp on the nightstand, the light warm and dim but still searing my retinas anyway. I winced and clamped my eyes closed, rubbing at them, before opening them and resolving to find Frank. He was crammed at the far edge of the bed, which was so massive he might as well have been half a world away. He was leaned back against the headboard with his head in his hands, elbows on his knees, heels of his palms pressing into his temples. His arms, his neck, his stomach were all tense, the tattoos somewhat distorted from the tightness of the muscles.

“I’m sorry,” he sighed, and I immediately scooted over to him, resting my chin weakly on his bicep.

“You wanna have a grown up conversation?” I asked him, and he sputtered out a laugh, pained enough for it to be obvious that he was crying, nodding weakly. “Alright. I love you. Is that grown up enough for you?” 

His head snapped up from his hands violently, like he’d heard a gunshot, like I’d hit him. What I’d said didn’t feel so crazy when I finally got to see his eyes, glowing like amber in the lamplight, so shiny with tears that I could see the green in them, maybe even more than I’d noticed before. They were so wide, so perfectly round, slowly creasing at the corners as he frowned and his tongue slowly came out against his lips, wetting them and swallowing, teeth tugging anxiously, roughly, at his lip ring until I could hear the scrape of bone on metal. 

“No you don’t,” he said, his eyebrows flinching together once, twice, until the frown solidified itself on his perfect face. The way his voice wavered I immediately guessed that it frightened him, the concept of it, and I couldn’t blame him because it was scaring the hell out of me too. I hadn’t even thought that hard about it; that’s how easy it was for me to accept. 

“Yeah, I think I do,” I sighed back, smiling weakly and pressing a daring, gentle kiss to the crease of his elbow. The way he looked at me was strange, his face contorting slowly as he tried to figure out where the lie was, what kind of trick I was playing on him. That’s your game, not mine. Ignoring the way that my heart was getting dangerously close to bursting out of my chest and leaving me with the need for even more stitches, I kissed him again, letting my lips linger until he finally blinked, a stray tear slipping out from one corner, a tattooed finger coming up to hastily scrub it away. 

“You don’t know me,” he protested, weakly, like I’d expected him to. I’d already been through this with myself in not quite as many words, listening to the way his voice reverberated inside my head after he spoke, the way my skin felt him touch me before he even reached out, the way that thinking about being apart from him made me feel violently, disgustingly sick. Loving him was the simplest, the only, explanation.

“Yeah, well, here’s the thing about being a grown up,” I mumbled against his arm as I reached up to tuck his dark hair behind his ear, paying attention to the way he so microscopically leaned into me, “when you know, you know.” 

“But—“

“Listen,” I pleaded, softly, “do you know how frustrating it is, to spend so much time trying and failing to figure yourself out, only to have some dumb kid show up and do it for you in, like, two fucking days?” 

The laugh shot out of him at the same time as a sob and he rubbed his hands over his face.

“I’m not a fucking kid,” he mumbled, interspersed with his weak and stuttering laughter. I cocked a smile.

“Oh yeah? When’s your birthday?”

“Fuck you,” he snickered, shrugging my face off his arm. I sat back and watched him, my cheeks getting red hot the longer it took him to look up. Even when he did, it only lasted for a second, looking back down at his lap and starting to chew at his fingernails. “You’re just trying to get back in my pants,” he muttered, half-joking, half-smiling, like he was trying to pretend not to be smug about it. You can be smug. You’d be the only guy in the world to be smug about me being in love with him, but you can.

I scoffed.

“Again, how old are you?”

He glanced sideways at me, grinning around his fingers in his mouth, eyes glittering, mouth half-open and hesitating.

“Twenty-five,” he mumbled, and I hummed, that being the top end of what I would have expected. 

“Baby,” I said pointedly, and he flipped me off.

“You don’t love me.”

“Says you.”

“Yeah, says me.” There was that grim expression on his face again, averting his eyes as he rubbed a hand through his hair, making it stick up at the back. 

“Hm.” I was so sure of it, that even his rampant denial couldn’t make a blind bit of a difference. I smirked a little, masking it with my hand. “Yeah, because you know everything. Because you can totally read my thoughts, right?” The sarcasm was cruel enough to make him look at me, almost through me. I was a deer in headlights again, hopeless to him, to the way he did almost seem to be stepping inside my head and rooting around, moving the furniture, looking behind the couch cushions. I smiled and so did he, just a little. You can look as much as you want, it’s all there.

“Guess I can’t,” he sighed, his smile getting shy and thrilled at the same time, slightly crooked teeth pressing into his bottom lip they way they had pressed into me. Thinking about it made me queasy, motion sick, butterflies hammering into my ribcage; that’s the feeling, right there. Something lit up in his eyes as he leaned in to kiss me, hazy confusion and distress. “Gerard—“

“You don’t have to say it back,” I whispered, tilting his face down toward mine and closing the distance. I hadn’t even considered the possibility that he would, now, or ever. In that moment, it didn’t matter to me - so long as he knew. You can break my heart as much as you want. 

Chapter Text

I had adapted to Frank’s nocturnal schedule with relative ease, considering he was close to being the only person who existed to me in the world, with me having nowhere to go and nothing to do. He may as well have been the centre of my universe, my body following him around in a slow, neverending orbit; when he moved, I moved. But what I hadn’t quite realised was that as well as being a creature of the night, he was an incredibly light sleeper. It was a wonder to me that he even functioned. I had always been prone to all-nighters, when inspiration hit me or I had a deadline that I couldn’t miss; but not without copious amounts of coffee and energy drinks to get me through it. Frank didn’t seem to need any of it, as if he was just organically high-energy, a natural-born Energizer bunny. We spent the majority of the day in his bedroom (and I only knew that it was day at all because I had peeled the heavy, opaque black curtains back when I got up to use the bathroom and when a beam of sunlight shot through, dousing the bed in it, Frank had groaned and pulled the sheets up over his face until I closed them again). As day shifted into night again and Frank had only managed brief licks of sleep here and there - only ever when I was sleeping too, it seemed - he surprised me with how effortlessly he got up and told me that he had to go to work. 

Maybe he’s just got ADD. That checks out. 

The concept of the shithead kid once more reared its head as he herded me downstairs for coffee, unfazed by my grumbles of protest and my several - five - unsuccessful attempts to get him back upstairs into bed. 

“You hungry?” He asked me softly after parking me at the island in the kitchen, moving fluidly around me and pressing a loose kiss to the back of my neck as he passed. I hadn’t considered food; at the mention of it my stomach started to growl without any end in sight, loud enough for Frank to hear as he was making our coffee, which amused him. It had been perhaps a full day since I had last eaten anything; it was still hard for me to keep up with the time. The clock on the microwave told me it was past five, the sun already having slipped away. Come to think of it, I wasn’t sure I even knew the day or the date anymore. 

“Do you have to go?” I complained instead, my gaze holding his over my coffee as he passed it to me, and he just smiled, his face blurred a little by the steam rising from the cup. He was so at ease with me now that it was difficult to reconcile it with how things had been a few hours ago. He had - to his credit, gracefully - moved me swiftly on from my ‘I’m in love with you’ monologue and half smothered me with his body on top of mine to get me to sleep, probably just so that I would shut up, and in a way I was glad he had done it because now I knew that he didn’t mind, that he didn’t necessarily think I’d gone insane, that he just needed time to digest it. Overly attached and obsessive as I was, I could live with it. Because it was him . 

“Yeah,” he said gently, sheepishly, “I mean, I already called out and swapped once, so I do kinda have to.” He looked morose about it for a moment but then he smirked, drawing away from the island and starting to root around in the cupboards above the coffee machine. “And I did that purely to spend time with you, by the way. I can’t exactly make that a regular thing.”

He did that for me?

“But they called you in,” I countered, resisting the very real urge to pout, “so that doesn’t count.” He shrugged with his mouth, lip ring tugged upward in that near-perpetual half-smile he would keep to himself, producing a yet-unopened box of Cap’n Crunch from the cupboard and setting it on the island. Shithead kid . 

“I still have to go,” he said, humming as he looked at me. “You gonna wait up?”

Obviously. Are you stupid? 

“I might.” We smiled at one another and he nudged the cereal box toward me, adding a milk carton and a bowl and spoon quickly after. My heart bounced around a little in my chest when he hopped up onto the island, sitting there cross-legged in nothing but his sweats, gulping his coffee down and leaning over to grab his cigarettes. “You not gonna eat?”

“Nah, I’ll eat at work.” He smirked at me when I frowned disapprovingly at him and he tapped at the side of his neck, mimicking where the stitches were still tugged tight at the side of mine. “Kinda already ate, anyway.” 

A laugh snorted its way out of me and I averted my eyes, reaching for the cereal out of nothing but embarrassment and a need to do something with my hands. 

“Asshole,” I muttered, and he hummed, hugging his knees and nudging my elbow with his bare foot. 

“Thought you said I didn’t need to feel bad?” 

“Still stands,” I sighed, trying to act all high-and-mighty about it when in reality, my thighs were getting warm just thinking back to it; when it happened, at least, not the aftermath. “Just might be a bit too soon for jokes. You know, in case you start thinking you’ll get away with it if you do it again.” I looked up around a mouthful of cereal to catch him smirking at me with his cigarette dangling from between his lips, speaking softly around it, 

“I’d totally get away with it.” 

I scoffed to the point of almost choking on milk and rolled my eyes, not wanting to admit that he was likely right, but I didn’t want to be reminded of how fucking weak I was for him that I’d probably let him do it anyway whether he asked or not. 

“Yeah, okay.”

“Why, what are you gonna do, huh?” He was grinning, tilting his head back and blowing smoke up toward the ceiling. “Fight me?”

“Maybe,” I muttered, completely unconvincingly, ducking my head down and scarfing down a few more chunks of Cap’n Crunch so that he couldn’t see me blushing. My cheeks were so hot he could probably feel the heat they were giving off, anyway. No need to worry about that. 

“I’ll believe that when I see it.”  

“You wanna find out?” I cocked an eyebrow and glanced up at him and he just narrowed his eyes as he smiled and took another drag on his cigarette, his tongue brushing against his bottom lip before he let the smoke go again, inhaling the thick mass of it straight back up into his nostrils. He’s the fucking Devil. No one is that hot when they smoke. It’s just not fair. 

“Maybe later.” I grunted at him and he snickered softly, leaning forward to lean his chin against the top of my head for a moment. “What do you wanna do later, anyway?”

Nothing even mildly PG-13, and you know it. 

“I dunno, maybe sleep?” He pulled away and rolled his eyes. 

“Boring.”

“Seriously, do you ever?” 

“Oh, stop being a baby. I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”

“Yeah, that’ll catch up with you when you’re my age,” I grumbled, staring down into my cereal which was getting soggy and I didn’t even feel hungry anymore. Eating felt like time wasted when he was sitting there right in front of me. Frank snickered again and pushed his way off the island, rubbing at his already unruly hair. 

“You’re, like, two years older than me.”

“Yeah, well, life moves pretty fast.” I leaned back in my chair and folded my arms loosely, my stomach panging and aching at the look in his eyes as he stopped and looked at me. 

“I guess,” he murmured, all long lashes and pink lips and stupid puppy eyes that screamed kiss me, fuck me. “I mean, look at us.”

Yeah, look at us. You’re perfect and I’m a mess. 

As if he’d heard me think it, he hummed gently in the back of his throat and leaned in to kiss me softly on the mouth, like it was a response, a confirmation or an argument, warm with cigarette smoke and coffee and hopelessly intoxicating to me like it had been every other time before. I dragged him closer almost immediately, like it was a reflex by now to do so, and he smiled against me, a hand coming up into my hair to hold me to him. 

“You sure you don’t wanna stay?” I mumbled into his mouth, and he chuckled, nose brushing against mine. 

“I don’t think want has anything to do with it,” he breathed back, his tongue encircling mine, inhaling sharply when I tugged him forward by the waistband of his sweats. 

Want has everything to do with it. 

“Call in sick,” I whispered, squeezing at the soft flesh of his hips. 

“Can’t,” he said, not bothering to pull away when he spoke, the word falling straight down my throat. 

“ Quit , then,” I muttered, drawing his bottom lip into my mouth and biting down on it hard enough to make him moan, a laugh following shortly after. I filed the thought away for later, something to make use of; biting in any way, shape, or form, it seems. 

“You were the one complaining about needing to get a job,” he teased, his thumb pressing into the hollow of my cheek, “and now you want me to quit?” 

Shut up. 

“Just a thought.”

“You just wanna stay here all night and get fucked, is that it?” A rough, dark, deliberate whisper. I must have heard him say fuck somewhere around half a million times now and it still wasn’t getting old. I’d die happy if it was the only word I heard from him for the rest of my days. It felt filthy coming out of his mouth, something worth getting dirty for, something that knocked all common sense clean out of me. Something that was infinitely worse (better) when it was about me.

“No,” I lied, and he snickered, tugging playfully at my hair just so that I would moan, so that he could make fun of me. 

“Who’s the grown-up now, huh?” He whispered, and I groaned when he pulled away, effortlessly freeing himself from my clingy and, frankly, shamefully adolescent grasp. He grinned at me, eyes twinkling with disastrous, puckish intent, and it made me want to scream. Every time he looked at me like that was a fucking pinch me moment. How the hell had I landed this fucking guy? He leaned back in and kissed me, quick enough that I couldn’t reestablish my hold on him. “Guess you’re just gonna have to wait, princess.”

Princess? Who’s the fucking princess? 

The one with butterflies for organs, apparently. 

After another half hour of me flirting with the idea of begging him, sobbing on my knees in the middle of the kitchen, to stay with me, he was fully dressed with a cigarette tucked behind his ear and twirling his car keys around his finger, standing on his tiptoes in the adjacent living room scanning through a shelf full of CDs with me glaring at the back of his head. 

I’ve never been this okay with being this pathetic, ever . Worth it .

He turned to me, tattooed hands clutching at some punk album I only halfway recognised, and his face lit up the moment he saw the bitterness on mine. 

“You’re adorable,” he sighed, and I only hardened the stiff line my eyebrows had shifted into. 

“Shut up.” He hummed and moved in to kiss me, his hand resting against the side of my neck, cupped gingerly around the stitches. 

“I’ll be back at eight,” he sighs into my mouth, lingering, not quite wanting to leave and I guess that’s going to have to be good enough. 

“You were late last time,” I point out, and he nods a little, fingertips light and cool against my jaw. 

“ Fluke ,” he teases back, and I nod, willing myself not to get carried away by the darkness in his voice, “not gonna happen again.”

“You’d better mean that.” 

“Hm.” His tongue laps at mine one last time before he stands back down on solid ground from being up on his toes - and he says I’m adorable - and grins. “Scout’s honour.” 

Yeah, right. He’s as much a boy scout as I am a fucking monk.

Chapter Text

Nobody at work knows that I have a human at home who’s in love with me. 

Nobody at work knows that I love him too. 

And by nobody, I mean the cats. Maybe the dogs know - I wouldn’t put it past them - but the cats certainly don’t. 

I repeat these little affirmations inside my head as a way to not only remind myself and play a little with the disbelief and the hilarity of it (because it is, in some way, at least a little bit funny), but as a way to keep myself fucking calm. 

It’s one thing for me to go up to a human and talk to him in any context besides work or to ask him the fucking time. But that’s not what I did. 

I took the human into my house. I moved him into my house. I kissed the hell out of him and if that wasn’t already bad enough, I fucked him quite literally within an inch of his life and bit him. All that’s left to do is confess that I love him and also drop in the bombshell that is the general state of my existence and my eternal damnation, and I’ve got myself a signed, sealed, delivered fucking death warrant. 

Who am I kidding? The death warrant’s coming to me anyway. They’d never put me in Rikers - I wouldn’t survive Rikers. Maybe they would put me in there just to give the poor bastards something to do. 

I’d felt better at home, the reality of everything softened and dulled by Gerard’s presence and of course, his fucking stink. Guy’s got this fucking armpit problem that follows him everywhere he goes and I don’t even hate it because I’m in too fucking deep now. When I’m with him it doesn’t really matter that I’m in deep shit, necessarily, because I'm too wound up by looking at him, but now that I’ve left him and I’m out in the world I feel like I’m fucking tweaking. 

I can’t stop staring at the computer clock, waiting for the minutes to tick over, trying to figure out if I can manipulate the time with my mind. Never tried it before but of course, that doesn’t work. My eyes flicker between that and the door, staring out into the dark, at my reflection. There’s a stab of panic when I think back to the night - day? - before, trying to remember whether Gerard noticed the stupid silverbacked mirror above my bed, whether he noticed my lack of reflection, but he can’t have done. If he had, he’d know. He’d know . 

I really need to get rid of that.

As I’m sitting there mulling over exactly how stupid I’ve been, zoning out and not really seeing much of anything at all, the buzzer for the doors goes off and makes me jump half out of my skin. When I look up, hand already reflexively poised over the intercom, I can remember perfectly how it felt to be human and have your blood run cold. 

There staring back at me with their dead eyes and fake, sneering smiles are two feds; one suit (a woman, blonde, kinda freakishly tall) and one cop (a guy, biceps bigger than my head), both of them holding up badges. Vampire badges, the ones with the little red caution lines around the edges. 

I’m fucked. I’m toast. I’m fucking sashimi. 

In the split second it takes me to press the button that opens the door, my life, or some illusion of it, flashes before my eyes: I see my mom and dad; my high school graduation; my stupid fucking band; my first boyfriend; the asshole that sank his fangs into my wrist; the pain; the decades of partying and indifference that followed; Ray; my first kill; the blood bank; my first vampire boyfriend; my second kill; the bridge; Gerard. Gerard. In the vain hope that this isn’t it, I cling onto that, onto him. Just in case.

“Frank Iero?” The vampire chick asks me the moment the double doors slide closed behind them, the two of them moving in freaky unison towards my reception desk. Beneath the desk, I’m clawing at the legs of my scrubs. Don’t get confrontational.

Can’t help it.

“Who’s asking?” They shoot me a matching sardonic smile and flash their badges again. She’s an interdepartmental liaison for the VFBI and he’s with NYPD, that special division of the homicide department reserved for vampire-on-human cases. It’s funny - humans don’t even realise where their tax dollars are going. 

Shut up and pay attention.

Wait.

Homicide? 

I try and look as scared and confused as would make sense if I was anybody else, manually editing my expression as it crosses over my face; widened eyes, furrowed brows, healthy dose of shock.

“You got any idea why we’re here, Frank?” The chick asks me, and I can tell she’s used to smooth-talking to get everything she wants, flashing teeth. She knows I’m a vamp, why is she trying to fucking glamour me? 

“Got lonely?” I shrug my shoulders partly to keep up appearances and partly to fucking unlock them. My body is turning into cement. She hums, mocking me, like she’d been expecting it.

“We’re investigating a murder, Frank,” the cop says, bluntly, and I try and force my face to stay as open as possible. It’s not hard, because for once, I don’t actually think this is about me. They don’t know about me and Gerard. I’m mixed up in something else but it doesn’t matter because I didn’t do anything wrong. Just a misunderstanding. No stake and no Rikers Island for me. The cop’s lips twist a little in some kind of subtle, private victory. “And, as we understand it, you knew the victim.”

“Doubtful,” I say, seeing as they’re talking about a human murder, and the only humans I know are Gerard and my stupid fucking coworkers. Knowing them, they probably caught me looking at one of the human junkies in the alley down the side of the blood bank and figured hey, why not, we need to fill our quota, bring him in.

“Frank, would you mind telling us where you were between midnight and, say, six o’clock on Saturday morning?” The chick asks me, all business-like and cold with me now, cutting to the chase. 

What the fuck?

Yes, I mind.

“At the blood bank,” I answered almost automatically, the words rushing out of me at the sheer relief of actually having an alibi. I didn’t do it and they know I didn’t do it.

“Yeah, we saw that,” the cop mutters, leafing through his stupid little notebook that he may as well have pulled out of his ass. “You filed for an emergency refill?” 

“Last time I checked, that’s not a crime,” I spit back. Get ahold of yourself, Iero. You didn’t do anything, no point drawing any attention to yourself. The cop shrugs a little with his mouth. 

“Were you at the blood bank all morning, Frank?” The blonde asks me, and I bristle a little, straightening up. Don’t bite your nails. Don’t rub your neck. Don’t even fucking look away. 

“No.” 

“Well, give us a timeframe,” she says, gentle, patronising. 

“I don’t know,” I breathe out, my throat starting to get tight, “like, from, one until around three, three-thirty?” They look at each other like they’re speaking a secret fucking language with their eyes and then back down at the notebook, the woman nudging at something written there with her finger, the cop shaking his head. When they don’t say anything, I can’t help myself. “Who died?” My voice comes out a little wobbly, thinner than I wanted it to be. I might as well not have said it.

“Where did you go after the blood bank, Frank?” The blonde is pissing me off and she knows it. She might even be enjoying it. I don’t like that she’s looking at me like she’s sitting on a fucking goldmine, all smug with the information that I don’t have.

“Home.” I swallow. “Seriously, who’s dead?” Nothing. “If you’re asking me where I was then that means you think I did it, right?” Right? 

“Anyone at home with you that can corroborate that?” The cop’s not looking at me when he says it and for that I’m thankful because I just know my eyes blew a little wider.

Yes.

No, idiot. 

“No.”

“You don’t have a roommate?” The blonde looks at the notebook and flips back a couple pages. “Mighty big house. You live there all by yourself?” What if they go to the house? My tongue clicks hard against the roof of my mouth.

“I like having the space.” Something in my mind clicks and I lean back in my desk chair, folding my arms. “Listen, if you goons are gonna keep asking me questions, don’t I need a lawyer?”

“If you want.” The blonde smirks at me and nods to the cop and my stomach sinks. Oh, no. “But we can sort that out once we’re down at the station.”

I’m not going to the station.

Easy, Frank.

“I can come down when my shift’s over,” I say, steady, managing half a smile as my teeth scrape my lip. Don’t fiddle with your fucking lip ring, moron. “Can’t leave the animals alone, but, you know, happy to help.” I guess.

“Don’t worry about that. We’ve already called your supervisor, she’s on her way.”

What the fuck?

“You arresting me?” I raise an eyebrow, and no one says a word. “I didn’t do anything!” For once in my life, I didn’t. “Why the fuck aren’t you saying anything? Who the fuck died?”

The cop sighs a little and the blonde is fucking grinning and that’s when the reinforced silver and steel handcuffs come out, the cop rounding my desk, toward me.

“Frank Iero, I’m arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Jamia Nestor.”

What?

What?

“ What? ” I practically squeak, whipping my head back, my body not knowing what else to do except scramble away. There’s not a part of me that believes it. There’s no fucking way. But they aren’t paying any attention to me - they know as well as I do that there’s no getting out of this. The cop holds me down to the desk and I’m not even fighting back.

“As part of the Vampire Violent Crimes Against Humans Act, 1992, you will be detained, questioned, and subject to a re-evaluation of your Threat status. A temporary Category Two classification may be issued to your person if you are to be charged with a crime.” He pauses, like this funny to him, as I just gawk at the blonde chick that’s fucking smirking at me still . My body is numb and I can only assume it’s because of the insistent burn in my wrists being so extreme I can’t feel anything else. I didn’t even hear the handcuffs snap. He rushes through the rest of my so-called rights. “If no charges are brought against you, your case is dismissed, or you are found not guilty in a court of vampiric law, your Threat status will be subsequently re-evaluated and a new classification issued at no cost to you. Under this act, you can legally be detained for up to seventy-two hours. During this time, your ration entitlement will be temporarily rescinded.” 

My throat is so fucking dry and it only gets worse when he gets to the Miranda rights. Am I dreaming? How the hell did I get here and why the fuck is Jamia dead? They’re lying. They’ve got to be lying. It’s way too much of a coincidence. I get her to cover my shift so I can stay with Gerard, and now she’s fucking dead? No way. They’ve set me up. 

“Do you understand these rights as I have read them to you?” 

No, and I think I’m gonna fucking pass out. 

I nod, because I’m so fucking shocked that I’m practically empty and there’s no point fighting them on it. No point even bothering to defend myself. I know I didn’t do it and I can’t even do a damn thing about it. 

They’re unnecessarily rough with me when they finally do shove me into the back of the sleek, black unmarked car. They’d left me handcuffed at the desk while waiting for my boss to arrive, talking to each other so damn quietly that even I couldn’t hear it and even though I kept asking them what the hell was going on, what had happened to Jamia, what the hell it had to do with me, they ignored me and I considered slamming my head against the keyboard in front of me just to get their attention. When my boss did show up, she didn’t even look at me. When the feds hauled me up by my wrists and shoved me toward the door, I didn’t protest. When I heard one of the dogs howling from the kennels, I couldn't quite move my feet. 

This is how I die.

I’m on the edge of a panic attack, uselessly scrambling at my palms with my fingertips around the handcuffs. Every technique I’ve ever used to calm myself down - dead or alive - has died inside my head and I can’t get a grip on myself, on my thoughts, on my body. I’m surprised I’m not crying. I can’t make sense of any of this. I try and think ahead, trying to make plans, contingencies, lies — but I can’t piece them together no matter how hard I try. The lights from the street outside beyond the tinted windows are blurry and bright and watery from the rain hammering down on the car as they drive me downtown. Neither of them speak to me, leaving me to completely unravel, considering headbutting the window until it breaks but I know it won’t, because it’s designed specifically with my kind in mind.

I’ve never been inside of this particular vamp police station, and I was really hoping I’d be able to keep it that way, but not anymore. It smells like the blood bank but dirtier, that super specific undertone of metal and florals that we tend to leave behind, the smell that only human doctors and trained cops can pick up on. The smell of corpses. 

While they’re booking me, I’m barely paying attention. I do as I’m told, not even flinching at the flash when they photograph me with their stupid space-age equipment that doesn’t make us vamps look see-through. Yet more human tax dollars. I tell precisely three different people that I want my phone call and of course, I get ignored. It takes an hour of me being holed up alone in an interrogation room before my designated feds come back. The cop tosses me a pack of cigarettes and they land in the middle of the table. It’s my pack that they confiscated from me.

I raise an eyebrow and make a sarcastic attempt to raise my hands from where they are cuffed around my back, to the chair they threw me into. The cop chuckles and moves around to uncuff one of my hands and I barely wait for him to pull away before I’m reaching for the pack, fingering one of the cigarettes out and raising it shakily to my mouth. He leans in to light it for me, while the blonde fed just watches from the corner of the room with her arms folded, face severe.

Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful, honey.

“Thanks for your patience, Frank,” she says a little curtly as she slips into one of the chairs at the opposite side of the table. 

Bite me.

“Phone call,” I say bluntly, stifling the relieved groan that wants to come out of me alongside the warm plume of cigarette smoke. My wrists are limp and stinging from the cuffs but my body is weirdly alert, itching to get out of here and make a run for it. You wouldn’t make it. That may be, but there are stakes - no pun intended - in this now. I have something to lose. I have something that I have to protect.

The cop grimaces and the blonde bristles.

“We can get to that in a moment. What I need to know is—“

“Phone call,” I repeat, just as monotone as before, taking an even longer drag and then leaning my head against my hand. The blonde is frowning and, careful to not make it look too deliberate, I blow my smoke directly into her face.

“Frank,” the cop says gently, resting his elbows on the table and leaning over it slightly, toward me, “if—“

“Listen,” I mumble around the cigarette, not knowing where exactly I got the balls for it, “I’m not saying shit until after I get my phone call. Alright? As far as you’re concerned, my name, is ‘phone call’. My address , is ‘phone call’.” Don’t grab your crotch and say that’s a phone call, too, for god’s sake. 

It takes a few minutes of me having to really repeat myself to keep playing with them and drive it home, but eventually, they escort me out of the room down a few dimly lit hallways, and park me in front of one of the tiny phone booths.

Time to get fucking thinking, Frank.

They’re hovering over me as I dial, obviously, but they quickly start talking amongst themselves, low and hushed and distracted. 

Thank fuck for having Ray’s number memorised for over a damn decade. 

“Hello?”

“Ray, it’s Frank, listen, I don’t have a lot of time and I really need you to pay attention. You listening?”

“What? Frank ? Are you alright?” Always the concerned and mildly angry mother hen. Forever the failsafe friend. 

“Fine. Listen, Ray, I don’t know what the fuck is going on, but I’m in the police station and I need you to do something for me.”

“ What? What the fuck do you mean you’re at the police station? Did you get fucking arrested? Oh, Jesus, you did it, didn’t you? I knew—“

“Ray!” I growl, lower, quieter, cramming myself further toward the phone. “I need you to go over to my place and take care of the dog, alright?” Please, please fucking catch on. I know they’re listening. I know it doesn’t make a blind bit of difference but I have to fucking try. Christ, what if the feds are already there? What if they’re tearing my place apart and Gerard is being wheeled off to some secure location and they’re erasing his memory and I’ll never see him again?

The heart that I don’t have, palpitates.

“The dog ?” The incredulity and confusion would be funny if it wasn’t for the fact that this isn’t funny at all . My leg is bouncing so fast it’s getting fucking blurry.

“Yeah, the dog. Maybe take it to yours for a while, I don’t know.” There’s nothing but Ray’s tense silence in my ear. 

“And then what?” He asks, exasperated, sick of my shit, maybe even a little scared for me, if I was being optimistic. “What am I supposed to do with—“

“Just take care of him, Ray,” I mumble . A finger presses down on the switch hook in front of me and the line goes dead. The cop is standing over my shoulder looking more than a little bemused.

“You know, your phone call is for attorneys , Frank, not personal calls.” 

Then run me my fucking public defender, bitch.

“Fuck you.”

As it happens, vampire cops don’t really give a fuck if you plead the fifth. Technically, vampires are covered by the constitution, but they’re still in the process of dismantling that. Things got real liberal a few years ago, but since the election they’re really starting to strip that back. I can’t say I’ve ever paid that much attention, seeing as I’ve spent the last however many years alone , save for Ray. 

They’re wearing away at me, these two; asking me every vague question under the sun in an attempt to get even the tiniest shred of information out of me. When my asshole public defender does show up - younger-looking than me, way too chirpy for the situation at hand, calling me Mister Iero until I snap at him for the seventeenth time that it’s just fucking Frank - that’s when they cut the crap.

“What can you tell us about Jamia, Frank?” If anyone was gonna ask me questions I’d really rather it wasn’t the fucking blonde chick, but whatever. Never trust a cop, and never trust a broad with a pantsuit and a government ID, period. 

I dunno, that she’s not dead, because you’re bullshitting me? 

That she’s pretty cool? That she goes out of her way to make me facon sandwiches that I can’t eat and that she likes the same music as me and that we’d probably be friends if I wasn’t a piece of shit fucking bloodsucker? 

“Not a lot,” I answer plainly, but only because my stupid lawyer nodded at me. I swallow, and by now my throat is sore because I’ve had too many cigarettes and definitely nowhere near enough blood. “Been working with her for what, two, three months?” 

“You two get on?” She smiles at me, a bewitching smile that might have worked on me if I swung that way. Oh, so that’s what she’s doing now. Different approach. Good luck with that, sister. 

“I guess.” 

“You guess?” She paused. “You care to elaborate on that, Frank?”

“Not really.” There’s a warning look from my lawyer and I roll my eyes. “I get on with her the appropriate amount that I’m allowed to, if that’s what you mean,” I spit out. 

“Were you sleeping with her?” The cop asks me, and I do my best to stab him with my eyes. At least he doesn’t look like he’s enjoying this so much. 

“No, man, I wasn’t,” I say a little softer, partly because it’s insane and mostly because it’s true. 

“Did you want to?” The chick’s mouth is pressed into a thin, less than impressed line. The question disarms me enough that I can smile, letting out a small exhale through my nose and trying not to laugh.

“No.”

“Really.”

“Yeah, really.” I sit back in my chair and squeeze my arms around my chest even though my lawyer told me not to. What difference does it make? “Is that what this is about? You think I wanted to screw her and I got frustrated about it so I killed her?”

“Frank,” my lawyer cautions me.

"I'm fucking gay, dude, why would I want to fuck her?" I hiss at him, and he rolls his eyes. So being gay is fine, but we're not allowed to talk to humans. God Bless America. 

There’s a heavy, crushing silence. 

“Here’s the thing, Frank,” the cop sighs, leaning back and crossing one leg over his lap, “when you went in for your refill- sorry, your emergency refill, at the blood bank, you told your caseworker about a certain new coworker .” Oh, fuck me. “You remember that?” 

I sigh, rubbing weakly at my temple with the tip of my middle finger. Fucking shithead fucking agency guy. Not even my fucking caseworker. Schechter never would have written that down. 

“Yeah,” I mumble. The pieces are starting to fall together for me now and I can’t figure out a way to undo it. Looking at it how they must have been looking at it, I guess it must have been compelling. The only way for me to get out of this was to tell the truth and even then, I wouldn’t be any better off. Rikers . Another black van. Experiments. There’s a small round of nods going around the table, as if they’re all in agreement that I did it, after all. It’s in the wake of that silence that it starts to hit me that Jamia might actually be dead, that nobody is playing with me, that all this is more than a little bit fucking real. 

“What happened to her?” 

My voice is tiny and scratchy and more timid than I’d like in a room full of feds. 

“We were hoping you could tell us that,” the blonde spits at me. I can’t even glare at her. I don’t have the will for it. 

“But, I mean…” I try and get my words in the right order, dropping down to an almost incoherent mumble. “You, like, found her, right?” Silence. My instinct is to ask if she’s alright. Of course she’s not fucking alright. “What happened?” 

The cop sighs and the fed looks sideways at him as if to say get a load of this guy and that’s what sends me hysterical. 

“I didn’t do anything,” I mumble, and my hand slips to the back of my neck and I’m squeezing it, over and over again. I try to swallow, but I can’t. There aren’t any cigarettes left. I squeeze my eyes closed and even then, I’m dizzy. “I didn’t do anything,” I whine as the panic hits, and when I look at them all one by one, my lawyer and the cop and the stupid fucking fed, I realise I’m crying. Everything starts pouring out of me, at the muffled and far-away protest of my lawyer. “I haven’t seen her since Friday ,” I groan, wiping frantically at my eyes, “and, I remember, ‘cause, she brought me this sandwich. She always brings me a sandwich and I always feel like a dick for not eating it so I always throw it away when I’m at home, you know, because I don’t wanna hurt her feelings? ‘Cause, you know, it’s not her fault. She doesn’t know.” I’m weeping into my hands and I’m on the brink of pure hyperventilating even though I was sure I couldn’t even do that anymore. No one says a word. “Why would I hurt her, man? I’m not…” Don’t say that. They know that’s not true. I clear my throat. “I liked her. I, fucking, I called her on Friday night and asked if she could cover me because I just wanted some time away and she sounded fine. She was fine .” 

My fingers clench around clumps of my hair until they’re threatening to tear it out altogether and so I jam my fingers into my mouth instead, trying to find some nails to chew on but they’re practically non-existent because of the last few days. 

“I did the right thing,” I mumbled, shocked at myself that I’m still managing to stick at least somewhat to the version of the story I’m trying to keep watertight, “I did the right fucking thing and I went to the fucking blood bank and put in for my emergency fucking refill because I knew it was making me stupid.” The cop, at least, looks like he halfway believes me, or some element of it anyway. “I was never gonna hurt her. I swear . I wouldn't.” 

“That’s enough, Frank,” my lawyer says, and I clench my fist against my mouth so that I don’t wind it back and punch him. 

There’s another silence that last just long enough for me to start worrying I’ve said something painfully out of place. 

“You didn’t get your refill, though, did you, Frank?” If the blonde wasn’t so fucking full of herself I might actually be able to calm the hell down.

Shit . I can vaguely remember it now; the secret blood bag, the freaky, shiny business card, my head just so fucking full of Gerard that I wasn’t thinking clearly. I never should have taken that. 

As far as you’re concerned, you’re leaving here empty-handed tonight. 

“What?” I rub my hands over my face and take a breath while I’m trying to figure out what the hell to say. What was so secret about that blood bag, anyway? Why is that my secret, my fucking cross to bear? 

“The paperwork we have says that your refill application was rejected.” 

Fuck that guy. If he wants to get me into shit he can damn well get me out of it, and himself, too. 

“No, it wasn’t.” 

“No?”

“No.” I straighten up and I look the fed straight in the eye. “The guy gave me half a ration and told me to get the hell out of there.” 

They look down at their notes and finally, they look confused. I’ve finally given them something . 

“And this was… Your caseworker, Brian Schechter?” The cop looks unsettled, less than impressed. 

“No. No way, man. It was some agency guy.” All of a sudden, it feels like the end is in sight. That I might actually get out of this. If I can prove I wasn’t hungry - or, at least, given the circumstances, hungry enough to kill somebody - they might be willing to accept that I didn’t do anything wrong. Before I can argue with myself in my head about it the words start flying out of me. “They told me that Brian wasn’t in, so I had to wait, like, two fucking hours for the guy, I don’t know. He was real weird.” Don’t say it. You’re in shit if you say it. “He told me to keep it on the DL, you know? The blood, I mean. Said he was just helping me out.” I wipe at my nose and sniffle and a small amount of invisible pressure comes up off my chest. “I mean, I was hungry, you know, so I just took it.” 

“You get his name?” The cop asks me, scribbling something down in the margins of his prissy little notebook. 

“No.” Wouldn’t want to make it easy for me, would he?

“Alright.” The cop scoots away from the table and stands up. “I’m going to go chase this up. In the meantime, Frank, we’re gonna need to take some venom samples from you, couple other bits too, and get you set up for an evaluation. Alright?” Surprisingly soft, coming from a cop. 

“Sure,” I mumble, perhaps a little more relieved than I should be. 

I end up in a holding cell no bigger than a linen closet, waiting for a nurse to come and stick needles in me. Before all this, I could have had a PhD in fucking waiting , but now I’m practically climbing the walls after half an hour. I park myself in the very corner and sit with my knees to my chest, keeping my eyes closed so that the claustrophobia doesn’t kick in. All I need now is a spider to keep me company and I’m in my own personal hell. 

The hungrier I get - because I’m convinced they make this place smell like the blood bank just to blow you off your hinges - the less I can actively avoid thinking about Gerard. The tense, angry part of me wants to blame everything on him, that I wouldn’t be wrapped up in all this bullshit if it wasn’t for him. Things were quiet and easy before he came along. The truly horrible thing about it, though, is once I start really thinking about him, I can’t stop. 

I’m a mess. I took a suicidal human in off the street and didn’t even waste time getting actively involved with him and now I’m in love with him. Just like that. I’m in here being interrogated about a murder, of all things, and even that couldn’t make me give him up. Sure, it’s partly to save my own damn skin, but saving my skin pretty much wholly involves not losing Gerard . Selfish, maybe, entirely, but it’s the truth. If they took him away I don’t know what I’d do. For the first time, I’m with somebody that feels good, somebody that makes me feel good. Somebody that makes me feel like a little less of a monster. I bit a big gaping hole in his neck and not only did he like it, he didn’t hold it against me. 

He’d hold it against you if he knew the reason why . 

It hits me again that any foundation of feeling I have for Gerard is built entirely on quicksand. Lies. Manipulation, even, on my part. He wanted to start getting his life back together and I told him to wait because I liked having him around and now he’s supposedly fucking hooked too. Gerard doesn’t love me, not really. Just an idea of me. He might have loved me twenty years ago when my heart was still beating but certainly not anymore. There’s no way. And there’s no telling him. 

The nurse comes and fetches me and hauls me into another dim, colourless room and doesn’t even look at me before she sticks me in the arm. She takes two vials of venom and swabs my cheek and it looks like she notices the crucifix-shaped burn on the tip of my tongue but she doesn’t say anything. She carts me back to the cell and I don’t even wait for the door to close behind me before I’m curled up on the floor again, plucking my disjointed and horrible thoughts straight back out of the air. 

Let’s say I did tell him. Let’s say he didn’t freak out, didn’t run away screaming, didn’t call the fucking cops and get me landed right back here. Let’s say he pulled a Twilight , pretending everything was normal. It’s not like I could be with him, not properly, given that things are the way they are. He wouldn’t be able to tell anybody. I couldn’t take him anywhere, be seen with him anywhere; no bars, no gigs, no movies, no restaurants, no coffee, not even so much as the fucking grocery store. Either he would be housebound, or I would. I’d have my job - whatever hole they end up moving me into after this, anyway - and maybe he’d have his and he might be able to wax poetic to his coworkers and his friends and even his fucking brother about the wonder that is Frank the Boyfriend , but I’d never be able to meet any of them. Dating him would be a top-secret fucking mission. I’d be undercover even more so than I am already and that’s bad enough. 

Suicide mission , my brain nags at me, again. 

That’s no life. Not for him. It dawns on me, slowly, that I don’t really give a rat’s ass about my life so long as I’m still here . If I’m still up and walking about then there’s always the option of infinite restarts, unlimited do-overs and fresh starts. I have that luxury. Gerard doesn’t. 

I hope he’s okay. 

I hope he figures out what’s good for him and runs for the fucking hills .  

But there aren’t any fresh starts without Gerard and this is what puts me in so much physical pain it’s like someone is driving a stake down my throat. Not an option. It would be like being reincarnated blind; starting life over with one less thing than you had before. He’s actually my chance at something good and I’m already screwing it up.

Chapter Text

I’d spent the better part of the night organising my things, something I had not been able to do since Frank ended up sucking on my fingers and things took a bit of a dramatic turn. Understatement of the year. With each thing that I unpacked, folded and put away, my hands trembled a little more, at the reality of being here for the long term. I toyed with the notion of my unpacking in the guest bedroom being somewhat moot, if me and Frank were a thing . I couldn’t even be sure that we were a thing at all, seeing as I’d made a point of making it clear that it wasn’t necessary for us to talk too much about it. 

I regretted going about it like that; before Frank I had always been so eager to put labels on things, and people, pigeon-holing them to make myself more comfortable, everything in its right place. But there was no pigeon-holing Frank and, considering the state of things, there was no doing it to myself, either. I’d jammed myself straight into an impasse and figured I’d come up with the solution later. But later was now , as it turned out, and I was no better off for it. 

While I was sorting my sketchbooks and being careful to avoid the one full of drawings of Frank, just so that I didn’t get distracted, I tried to carefully take stock of my feelings in bullet-point format in my head. 

Obsessed, consumingly intrigued, and madly in love with Frank. 

Uncharacteristically comfortable with having no functional purpose in the outside world.

Also uncharacteristically optimistic about the future. 

At this point my brain did a sharp hairpin turn and spiraled out in the opposite direction, my own version of self-inflicted emotional whiplash, 

Terrified that I’m nosediving straight into an early mid-life crisis.

Dangerously anxious to know what Lindsey is doing right now. 

Procrastinating and/or straight up ignoring talking to my parents.

Parents probably think I’m dead because Mikey has definitely told them about the apartment and the job and the cheating ex-girlfriend and has a tendency to be overdramatic. 

Does this mean that I have to come out? 

I stopped sharp at this thought and watched it tumble around in my head like a cat fascinated by a washing machine. It quickly transformed into every carnal memory of Frank I could come up with and before I knew it I was blushing and chewing on my nails. It was jarring, the absence of tangible guilt when I thought about him and I together. My teeth slipped into the fading, half-healed papercut on my finger at the same time that the doorbell rang, and I whipped my hand away.

Personal crises aside; one thing about staying in someone else’s house is that you’re never sure what to do when they aren’t there and the doorbell rings. 

It turned out that Frank’s house had an eerie, strained doorbell that reverberates all the way up to the third floor and sounds a little bit like a Furby with a dying battery; it took a moment for me to realise it was even a doorbell at all. At first, I didn’t move, my ears just pricking up like a dog’s and my head whipping round to the door of my bedroom. 

The doorbell was insistent, each ring a little longer than the last. After a solid minute of it ringing, I guessed I could at the very least tell whoever it was that Frank wasn’t here. When I realised, or rather guessed, that it must be some time around eleven or even twelve, I thought that it might even be Frank himself; home early from work, perhaps having misplaced his key. It was this that got me moving. 

I jogged down to the front door, wincing as the ringing got louder and more dissonant, and unbolted the three locks I had never noticed were there before. In the doorway, shrouded in darkness and backlit by a dim street light opposite the house, was a man with the most unruly hair I had ever seen, with friendly and somewhat curious eyes boring directly into mine. 

“Hi,” he said, quiet and strained and almost posed like a question. 

“Can I help you?” I asked him, though I was certain that I couldn’t, my voice hoarse. “If you’re looking for Frank, he’s not here.”

The wild-haired man forced a lopsided smile and for a moment it looked like he had no idea what to say. 

“He sent me, actually.” What? “I’m Ray. I’m sorry, I don’t know your name, but I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Gerard,” I mumble, blindsided and confused, and Ray nods, glancing past me into the hallway. 

“Gerard. Right.” His face twitched. “Listen, can I come in?” 

“Uh…” My heart palpitated a little and I grimaced, my fingers tightening slightly around the edge of the door. “Sorry, uh, how do you know Frank?” 

Ray sighed a little, the corners of his mouth tight and his eyes squinting at me a little, deep and dark in the dim light. It was fucking cold and I was letting all of the warmth out of the damn house. 

“We go way back. High school, you know.” Another frustrated, anxious smile. He exhaled softly, a small, tired whistle. “Look, I’ll level with you, he asked me to come keep an eye on you. He’s gonna be late back.” 

There’s a fucking surprise. Scout’s honour, my ass .

“Thanks, man, but, I mean… I think I’ll be alright,” I ease out, my chest getting a little tight with the nerves. He seems nice and all that, and maybe he does know Frank, but for all I know, Frank owes him money and he’s here to break his kneecaps or something. Ray’s eyes harden a little and he looks up at the sky, muttering something under his breath. What came next was expelled in one hasty rush of air. 

“He got arrested and he asked me to come hang out in case the cops show up so that you’re not by yourself.” What? He shot me another timid, tired smile, but his tone was more severe, more urgent. “That good enough for you?” 

“What do you mean , he got arrested?” Okay, so maybe I’m only a little bit surprised, if I think about it. But cops? Here? What the fuck did he do? “Is he okay ? I mean, I… What?” 

“I mean, he called me from the police station instead of calling a fucking lawyer, and he asked me to come here. So are you gonna let me in?” 

“Why did he—“

“Beats me, man.” He glanced past me again and sighed, rubbing at his forehead and looking at me with a strange kind of pity. “Look, I’m not some weirdo. I’m a friend. I get it if you don’t wanna let me in but I’m gonna stay here anyway, because he asked me to. So, you can either let me in or I can sit in my car, I’m easy.” 

What the hell was I supposed to do? Even if Frank did send him - and why would I need babysitting, anyway? There was no way I would be answering the door ever again after this - how am I supposed to know whether I can trust this guy? What does he expect me to do? Oddly, though, the longer Ray stands there in front of me, staring and not really offering me anything else to go on, the more I start to think he might be telling the truth. 

“No, sure, come in,” I mumbled, catapulted forward by extreme apprehension and the near-paralysing fear of what might happen to me if I close the door in Ray’s face, a smattering of confusion fogging up my head. I stepped to one side and let him in, closing the door slowly as if to not attract any attention to myself. 

“Thanks, man,” he sighs, not bothering to take off his jacket or look at me as he makes for the stairs. “Lock that, will you?” He says, even more exasperated than before, gesturing with his chin to the door behind me. I do as he asks and follow him in silence, mulling over what the hell could be happening. Ray looks like he knows his way around; at least that’s comforting. “I’m sorry about this,” he says as we move into the kitchen, and he sounds a little out of breath. I make an unintelligible noise and he smiles over his shoulder at me, flopping down onto the couch like he’d been here a thousand times before. Maybe he has. Maybe everything’s fine.

“Did Frank really not say—“

“Nope,” Ray sighs, leaning his head back against the couch. “My best guess? Traffic violation or some shit. He flips people off when he’s driving all the time, could have gotten himself into a fight or something, I don’t know.” He grins for a moment like he’s thinking of a fond memory but it wanes quickly. “Or, you know, maybe he tried bringing another dog home from work. That’s happened before.” The shithead kid theory is alive and well.  

“He stole a dog?”

“Well,” Ray says, a little defensively, rubbing at his temples, “no. He tried . In fairness, it was a cute dog, from what I heard. I don’t think his boss knew about it but hey, maybe he got caught this time.” 

This is fucking weird . Frank didn't steal a dog. Maybe he's a serial killer after all. I really should check the fridge. 

Ray digs a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and chucks them onto the coffee table and they land square in the centre without him even looking. He catches me looking at them and smiles a little, rubbing at his temple. “Help yourself. Might be here a while.” 

And so I ended up spending the night with Ray, trapped in an awkward dance of minuscule small-talk and long, seemingly infinite silences until long after the sun came up. He didn’t move from the couch, occasionally asking whether I wanted to watch TV, turning it on, and then quickly turning it back off again. I started to feel like I was on house arrest. He asked me precisely seven times throughout the night whether I would rather sleep, and I shrugged my shoulders exactly the same way each time. It's not like I thought he would kill me in my sleep, but there was no way I was turning my back to him. It was the least I could do, in the event that I wasn't meant to let Ray in. If that's the case, then shit, Frank is gonna be pissed. But I couldn't really follow that train of thought very far; it was like the edge of a video game map. I would go a certain distance and then promptly turn around, like I wasn't even in control of my head at all. 

“So, not to pry,” Ray eventually sighed out like he had been holding it in, after I had sank three anxious coffees and my fingers were drumming incessantly against my thigh, “but, uh, you and Frank?”

I froze, looking up at Ray and immediately back down at my lap, rubbing at the crest of my cheekbone to disguise the sudden burning blush in my cheeks. 

“He told you?”

“Yeah.” When I looked at Ray again he was smirking a little, his face a little more open than it was before, studying my face. “How are those stitches?" My hand clamped down over my neck reflexively and I winced at the accidental pressure, withdrawing my hand slowly in the hopes that Ray hadn’t noticed but he had, letting out a small, muffled laugh.

“Yeah, Frank tells me things,” he sighed, glancing at the window behind me, at the sun starting to break over the horizon, the greying sky mottled with pinks and purples. 

“Not embarrassing at all,” I muttered, eliciting a small shrug from Ray. I was expecting him to at least disagree with me to assuage my nerves, but no. I pick apart at the words forming in my head before I give up on them and just let them out altogether. “Has he been arrested before?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “I mean, if I’m, you know, getting involved with a felon or something then I kinda wanna know.” I tried to make it look like I was making light of it, that I was entirely comfortable, when really my thoughts were starting to spiral out of control again. The little I’m in danger alarm bells that had been almost suspiciously disconnected since getting closer to Frank were starting to wake up again. For what must have been the twentieth time I looked at the door out into the hallway, waiting for the doorbell, waiting for the cops. 

Ray chuckled and shook his head, folding his arms tight around his chest. 

“Nah, man, he’s good.” Another forced smile with pity that I can’t place. “He’s just… You know.” No, Ray, I don’t know. “Scrappy, I guess. Authority problems.” Okay, so maybe I did know. 

“Yeah, I can see that.” 

The microwave clock was blinking seven-oh-three and I slumped in my chair a little, disheartened at how close we were getting to the time Frank had said he would be back by. I was, by then, itching to see him, to get answers out of him, and to get Ray the hell out of the house. There wasn’t even anything necessarily wrong with Ray; it just felt alarmingly similar to being in college and having to awkwardly entertain my roommate’s girlfriend when he wasn’t around, or coming across Pete in the kitchen back home and having to make conversation when Mikey was still asleep. I had no doubts that Ray felt the same. I had no idea what I was supposed to say to him and I had no idea when it would end. 

I had no idea what I was supposed to say to Frank, either - even if he had just tried to steal a damn dog. Doubtful. It might have been funny if it was happening to anybody else; no job, no apartment, big break-up, emotional crisis ensues, meets a guy, fucks the guy and doesn’t immediately leave when the guy bites a hole in his neck that needs stitches, confesses love for said guy, guy immediately gets arrested. Happening to me, it was just plain sad. 

“He likes you, you know,” Ray mumbled, frowning like the words tasted bad, “I can’t even remember the last time he had a boyfriend.” He laughed when I coughed to not-so-subtly cover up the way I had choked on my own breath. I hadn’t even so much as considered boyfriends. The word makes me prickly on the inside; I've never had a boyfriend, regardless of how much I might have been angling for one in college, at times. Hell, I told Frank I love him and I didn't even think that would do it. It feels too official for how fucking messy I've made things. “Just calling it like I see it.” 

Was that really how it looked? My mental agenda was getting messy; ask Frank about why the hell he got arrested, re-evaluate, and if it doesn't scare the shit out of me or piss me off too much then maybe I can ask him what the hell we are. If you're gonna keep getting arrested and make your buddy babysit me then maybe you're a bad idea. 

Can't exactly tell him I love him and then take it back, can I? 

Can always repress it. Lock it away. I'm good at that. 

Cool your fucking jets, Gee. 

“Hm,” I sputtered out, eyebrows flinching together, only to see Ray’s wagging. 

“You must like him a fair amount, considering the state of your neck.” 

I made a pained, indignant and horrendously high-pitched embarrassed noise and opened my mouth to plead with him to shut the hell up about it when the sound of a phone ringing made me sit bolt upright in my seat. It was Ray’s. 

“Huh. Speak of the devil,” he muttered as he dug the phone out of his pocket and glanced at the screen, not bothering to even look at me as he flipped it open to answer it, promptly leaving the room. My heart jittered, panic and excitement and relief all at once. Frank? Is that Frank? He does know Ray after all? Everything's fine? Please, God, let everything be fucking fine. All I heard was a terse, seething hello from between Ray’s teeth before he wandered out of earshot. 

Chapter Text

Vampire threat evaluations are probably the closest thing to a Voight-Kampff test you can get in real-life. For my first one, which was years ago now and they’ve tweaked it a lot since then, I couldn’t sit still because it was so clearly imitating the movie that I thought it was just a really convincing prank. I’ve gotten used to them now, having to have at least one every year depending on how twitchy the government gets about having us roaming around. 

They change the questions every year, to avoid us learning how best to answer them in order to get a low score. Some of them stay the same, like the questions about your mother, your earliest memory of your childhood pet, things like that; they’re good, textbook indicators. 

But I’d never had an evaluation in a police station. I got carted off into an elevator and down two floors, deeper than I thought a police station would go, and shoved down another grimy corridor into what looked like one of the interrogation rooms you get on TV, with the two-way mirrors and everything. Old mirrors; nothing solid visible in the reflection apart from the table and chairs and the test equipment, and of course, my handcuffs, looped around the leg of the table. My reflection in silver mirrors always did fascinate me in the early years, the way I could pass my hand straight through my face or my chest and wave it around, how when I opened my mouth I could see straight through the back of my head. Nowadays, I prefer the new mirrors. I prefer looking solid. Looking real. 

A decade ago or so, they’d sit me across from a stuffy, bored-looking cop with a desk job who would just round off the questions and stare straight into the monitor in front of him, watching my pupil responses and the close-up angle of my mouth, watching for dilation and salivation and incessant lip-licking and throat-rubbing. I don’t know how the test works , exactly, but I never needed to. I’m not the kind of guy that ever had to worry about being perceived as a threat. Until now. 

In the police station, there was no interviewer. There was no monitor. All there was was a camera embedded into the wall, a black, bottomless little sphere like a CCTV camera the size of a bowling ball. I sat there for maybe twenty minutes, trying my best not to wring my hands in the cuffs or blink too much or play with my lip ring with my teeth or anything that might make me look nervous. I already looked peaky, and I was starving; that must have been a tactic. Get the vamps hungry so they’re less likely to get a good evaluation so they can get shoved in the back of a black van. No matter what I did, I couldn’t stop thinking about Gerard, whether he was alright, what the fuck I was going to do with him. The best I could do with Gerard spinning around in my head was let my eyes glaze over as I stared down the terrifyingly large lens in front of me. If anything was going to betray me, it would be Gerard. How was I even supposed to disguise it?

Relax, Frank. It’s a threat evaluation, it’s not the fucking Kobayashi Maru. 

Eventually, in an eerie, slightly nasal automated voice, the sphere started asking me questions. 

The date is December 12th, 2006. Test commencing at 04:00 hours. Subject is Frank Anthony Iero Jr., date of birth October 31st 1956, date of change, October 31st 1981. Please confirm. 

“Confirm.”

You are taking a walk outside late at night. A beautiful woman passes you on the street, riding a bicycle. She smiles at you. 

“I ignore her and keep walking.” Obviously.

  A friend of yours informs you that he has started feeding on stray dogs in an attempt to curb his hunger. 

“I break his face.” No question about that. Good thing Ray is a zen master instead of a psychopath. 

You have just finished your shift and the sun is coming up. You witness a stabbing outside your work place. 

“I call the cops.”

The attacker notices you and approaches. 

The fuck? The evaluations never ask questions in segments. There are never levels to it. 

“I get the hell out of there.”

Your coworker tells you about their new pet. 

“I ask them to show me pictures.” 

You’re watching the news and discover that the stabbing victim is the girl on the bicycle. 

Seriously, the fuck? 

“Not my problem.” 

You meet a man on a bridge, contemplating jumping. 

Oh no. No, no, no.

“I talk him down.” Probably, definitely shouldn’t have said that. 

The man asks you for your name. 

“I lie.”

Describe your relationship with your mother. 

“She was a saint.”

Your friend surprises you on your birthday by taking you to a humans-only bar. 

“I don’t go.” 

The person you love most in the world is on life support. Changing them could save their life. 

What kind of fuckass stupid scenario is that? I wish I could see the monitor. I wish I could see the size of my fucking pupils. Why would they even bring that up? I’m taking way too long to answer.

“Not my call,” I breathe out, and I almost flinch at it because I really shouldn’t have said that. 

And so the test goes, for another fifty-something questions. I can’t even focus on the rest of them; I’ve already fucked it up, beyond my perceived capability for screwing up. Way beyond . When it’s over, I sit around trying not to lose my shit for maybe another half hour before someone comes to get me. I don’t even look up; I’m so busy mourning myself, my future, Gerard, that I can’t bring myself to pay attention to anything. 

Turns out, I wasn’t a match for any of the venom or any of the other DNA left behind on Jamia. The cops had done such a fucking number on me letting me stew in that stupid cupboard of a cell that I was almost surprised when they told me I was free to go. I hadn’t done it, and now they knew I hadn’t done it, but they were so certain I had that they didn’t look happy about uncuffing me. Not even a little bit. 

I could have just stormed out of there without saying another word to anybody, pissed off and insulted as I was, but the second I came face to face with my designated cop again, I couldn’t help asking questions. It wasn’t enough for them to let me go; I needed to know what happened to her, and where, and who was to blame for it. It was obvious enough that another vamp had done it, considering they’d tested my venom; for a second I thought that maybe it wasn’t a vamp at all but they found it easier to pin it on one of us than on a human, and so the venom was both a formality and an excuse for them to plant it in their evidence room, but from the way my cop was all jittery and stressed out I guessed there was no way that could be the case. 

“Did you find them?” I asked my cop while he was steering me back toward the front desk to be handed back my things, his grip on my arm not as tight as it had been before. “The person who did it, I mean? Did you find anything?” 

“Can’t discuss that with you and you know it,” he sneered back at me, giving me a shove and almost sending me flying, “for all I know, it was you, but we don’t have enough to hold you on.” So they had something . 

“Hey, fuck you, man,” I spat, ripping my arm out of his grip and rounding on him. He was easily a head taller than me, hand immediately slipping down to his sacred garlic mace instead of reaching back out to grab me, but it didn’t matter just yet. “You know I didn’t do it.” His eyes flinched a little, betraying him, and I almost wanted to tell him he was in the wrong line of work if he was going to be that obvious about it. He leaned in closer to me, towering over me just a little, but I didn’t back down. 

“You stink of human, Iero,” he hissed, not blinking as he searched my eyes for the panic. I couldn’t be sure whether I was showing it or not. “Maybe we’ve not got anything on you right now, but you bet your ass we’re gonna be keeping a close eye on you.” He shoved me away then and thrust my things into my hands; I was thankful, at least, for the weight of my cell phone, taking the edge off the shiver that was starting to roll down my spine at his threats. “You’re being reissued with a Category Six, by the way, but we’ll see how long that lasts. Might take a couple days for your rations to be reactivated, so we’ll see how hungry you get.” He grinned, and I froze, though I tried really hard not to. “We fuck up when we’re hungry, don’t we?” 

A buzzer sounded overhead and just like that I was being pushed back out onto the street, into broad fucking daylight. I recoiled and almost tried to duck straight back inside but I was able to find an alley down the side of the station that had enough shade for me to catch my breath. 

The fuck did he mean, Category Six? I passed the fucking test? 

Yeah, by the skin of my fucking teeth. 

It took me a little while to get myself back together enough that I could call Ray and ask him to come and get me. I was almost shuddering from all the nerves and adrenaline and while I wanted nothing more than to get the hell home, I had some things to think about. 

First and foremost, I was fucking starving, and unfortunately, the shithead cop was right. We do fuck up when we’re hungry. Not to the extent that he was insinuating, maybe, but I still couldn’t be sure I could trust myself around Gerard. Best case scenario I would just be in pain and I would have to distance myself from him. There would be no point bothering going to the blood bank now; they wouldn’t give me shit, and I didn’t want to run the risk of running into that asshole agency guy again. If I did I’d nail him to the fucking wall for throwing me under the fucking bus like that. For all I know, it’s him that went after Jamia. 

Jamia . I needed to get to the bottom of it, but I didn’t know how. Maybe it was a horrible, twisted coincidence. Maybe somebody was trying to get to me or worse, to Gerard. Maybe she knew something. Fuck, what if it was the fucking feds? 

And then there was Gerard. From everything I’d gone through that night, I couldn’t afford to be naive about him anymore. I couldn’t be around him anymore. It wasn’t safe for me and it definitely wasn’t safe for him. If the cops were going to be watching me then they would find him within the day, if they hadn’t already. I check my phone and see that there’s no missed calls from Ray which means either, he didn’t go to my place at all, or he did go and everything’s fine. A text would have been nice. 

I’m on the verge of tearing out all my hair. I want to cry. I want to scream and I want to launch myself into the Hudson. That wouldn’t do it. I could stay out in the sunlight and wait until I’m crispy but someone would hear me screaming. I could beg the cops to arrest me again just so that I don’t have to deal with any of this. Let Gerard find his own way. 

Same as before, that train of thought hurts me, circling around in my head like something poisonous. 

You could run away, the insidious and irritating part of me says. Skip town. Take him with you. 

The worst thing is that I know he’d say yes. He’s stupid, and he’s got no fucking survival instinct, and he’d go anywhere I asked him to because I’ve been up in his head too much, I know . Don’t I have to protect him? Isn’t that the whole point? Leaving would be best. Leaving would be smartest. 

Or you could tell him. Let him make his own choices . 

“Fuck this,” I mutter to myself, whipping a cigarette to my mouth and lighting it faster than the speed of sound. The nicotine doesn’t even touch me I’m so stressed out. When I call Ray, I don’t sound like myself. 

“You know, you’ve got some fucking nerve,” Ray sneers immediately, venom practically dripping out of the phone by my ear, “making me sit around here all night stuck with a human and getting myself a sore throat. For the love of God , Frank–”

“Can you come and get me?” I mumble, slumping back against the cold and grimy wall of the alley and doing my best not to sink to the floor completely. “Please?” 

When Ray pulls up on the street opposite he doesn’t even bother waiting for me to close the door behind me, pulling off before I’m even fully in my seat. That’s when he starts haranguing me, just like I knew he would. Problem is, I didn’t brace for it. 

“What the fuck did you do,” he yells at me, swiping sideways at me as he drives and catching my arm, my shoulder, the side of my head. The car doesn’t even swerve and I’m flinching more than I normally would be. 

“Nothing,” I screech back at him, batting his hands away, “one of my fucking coworkers got murdered , alright, Ray? And they thought I did it.” He doesn’t even look like this is news to him, he’s so pissed. 

“Well, did you?”

“Fuck you, did I, don’t be fucking ridiculous.” I’m hitting him back and still, the car keeps on going straight, perfectly toeing the speed limit, which doesn’t line up with the stormy look in Ray’s eyes. He looks like he wants to floor it and go headfirst into a building and kill me. “I don’t know what happened to her, man. I have no fucking idea. I mean, it was a vamp, but it wasn’t me. They thought it was me because–”

“Because you’ve got a taste for humans now?” Low blow.

“Fuck you. I… Look, I had to lie at the blood bank, alright, to get my refill, and I blamed being hungry on her, or at least that’s how they took it, so they just assumed–”

“You’re stupid.” Another smack to the side of my head. “You’re so stupid.” To my shock, Ray actually looks frightened. “Did they run your venom?”

“Yeah, obviously, nothing.”

“They do an eval?”

“Yeah.”

“And?”

“Still a six.” Ray manages a sigh of relief. I rub my hands over my face and get a little too into it, the darkness soothing me, the pressure on my eyelids dangerously close to shoving my eyes back into my head and it’s the least I deserve. “But they said they’re gonna be watching me, and–”

“Of course they’re gonna be watching you, you moron ,” he groans, smacking his palm against the steering wheel this time, and I don’t know how it didn’t break. “I warned you about this, didn’t I? About how much of a bad fucking idea it was for you to get involved with–”

“I know!” I cried, the words tearing their way out of me, louder than I would ever get, even with Ray. “I know, alright, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

“Well, don’t fucking ask me,” he snaps. “And, you know, thanks for thanking me, by the way, for potentially saving your fucking ass.” He flips on his turn signal so aggressively the lever almost comes flying off. “I feel so sorry for this guy, Frank. You’ve got him so messed up, do you know that?”

“I know,” I mumble into my palms, pulling down at my lower eyelids with my fingertips until it hurts and staring straight ahead. The sun isn’t too bright yet but it burns all the same. For a moment I wish that we actually would go hurtling into a building. “I know, and I don’t…” The realisation properly hits me and it takes all the oxygen out of my lungs and I just about double over, my forehead against the dash. I start to cry and before I know it I’m sobbing, screaming, weeping into my knees. “I don’t know what to do. ” I know what I have to do, I just don’t want to. 

“Stop crying,” Ray snaps, stopping the car, and I look up to see that we’re outside my house. The dread peaks and I groan and I can’t stop crying. “Frank, stop. You’ve got nobody to blame but yourself here. You need to put a stop to this. You need to or you’re gonna end up dead. You hearing me?” When I look up at him, he looks taken aback by the sight of me, the way I’m snotting and drooling all over myself. His face softens, fractionally. “I love you, dude, you know I do. But I can’t keep watching you fuck everything up over, what, some guy?”

He’s not some guy . 

“I don’t know what’s gotten into you. I don’t. But you need to get it out.”

“I don’t want to,” I whisper, rolling my head around and away from Ray so that I can look up at the house, where I know Gerard is waiting for me, and probably waiting to give me hell, too. I don’t know how much more hell I can take. I don’t know how to talk to him without telling him the truth and I don’t know how to tell him the truth without getting us both killed. 

“Yeah, I know,” Ray says, softly, and the leather of the seat creaks under him as he moves closer to me, “but you’ve gotta. And I’ll do anything I can to make you forget about it, believe me , but it’s on you.”

“He makes me feel like a person, Ray,” I sigh, and I can’t believe I’m saying it. Ray can’t believe I’m saying it. “I can’t just let that go.”

“You have to.” He’s staring me down and there’s pity, sure, maybe even a drop of sympathy, but not enough of it for me to know he’s on my side. “You’re not a person, Frank. And you can’t have him. You can’t have him, you can’t have a normal life, and you can’t have a fucking fairytale, either. You can’t keep chasing something that’s not meant for you.” 

Twenty-five years of bargaining with and trying to accept what I am, trying to just get on with being alive, trying to always adjust, and here I am rejecting it in one fell swoop. There’s a reason so many of us are always inventing new ways to die. There’s a reason there’s so many of us in Rikers. Unwillingness to adapt.  

“It wasn’t my choice,” I whisper. I’ve never said those words out loud, and Ray recoils and screws up his face and looks away because he knows what I’m going to say, knows that for all my screw ups, I’m right. “I wasn’t meant to be stuck like this forever. I was going places, you know? Everything got taken from me, everything, and–”

“It doesn’t matter,” he says gently. “You either accept it for what it is or you blow your brains out.” I scoff. “But you can’t take him with you, either way.”

“Ray–”

“He needs to go,” Ray says bluntly, turning the car back on. “For my own sake, and yours. And, I might not be able to help you if something else goes wrong, you know?” I don’t have anything to say. I can’t agree with him. “And something will go wrong, Frank. It always does.”

“Screw you, man,” I mutter, clambering out of the car. He doesn’t pull away as quickly as I’d expected him to but within a few seconds he’s gone, nothing but taillights in his wake. I stand on the sidewalk for a little too long, my skin getting prickly and electric in the growing sunlight, but I can barely feel the heat now. 

When I step inside, there is a warm thickness to the air, almost damp, womb-like. Sugar, grenadine, cigarettes, coffee. Home. Gerard . 

I find him in his usual place on the couch, knees pulled to his chest, sucking on a cigarette like it’s an oxygen tank on Mount Everest. His eyes are wide, frightened, but tender at the edges. I can feel each of his muscles relaxing at the sight of me, tiny electromagnetic shifts in the air, and I can hear his heartbeat; fast, gentle, hopelessly alive. I can feel it in the tips of my fingers and on my tongue. My knees almost give out when he stands up to come towards me and I take in the features of his face in slow-motion like it’s the last time I’ll see them. His eyes glisten in the sunlight and I can see every colour in them, colours I don’t know if he can even see himself. Air rushes out of me at the curling upwards of his small mouth, the pinkness in his cheeks, the concerned quirks of his eyebrows. My mouth is full of the taste of him and I’m afraid to swallow, like hesitating on pushing the plunger when there’s a syringe in your arm. 

He doesn’t yell. He doesn’t flinch when I touch him.

Chapter Text

Breaking down in front of Gerard was somewhere near the bottom of the list of things I wanted to do, wedged in between killing him and turning myself back in to the cops. I didn’t want to, I didn’t mean to, but when he put his arms around me I couldn’t help it. 

His hands moved quickly over my face, my hair, my arms, trembling and urgent like he was checking to see if I was hurt. I was the one that should have been doing that to him, considering the circumstances, but I couldn’t do anything besides collapse into him. I thought I had gotten all my tears out in the car. He curls his arms around my ribcage and squeezes and my face falls into his neck, releasing my ragged sobs and breathing him in sharper with each inhale, always pressing closer. My nose was pressed hard against the side of his throat, his carotid artery throbbing against my open mouth as I cried and mumbled, unintelligible and ridiculous like a babbling child, that I was sorry, while my throat ached for just the smallest taste of him. He shushed me, a hand fixed against the back of my head and pulling slowly, gently through my hair. His lips moved against my temple, warming me with his breath, as he told me that everything was alright. 

We must have stood there for a while, a dull burn beneath my clothes spreading slowly over my body as the sunlight crept across the floor with the rising sun. I couldn’t bring myself to move, to look at him, any of it. Gerard soothed me into silence, nothing left coming out of me but my sniffling and my empty gasps for air. 

“You hungry?” He murmured against my ear as he kissed beneath it, the tips of his fingers pressing into the spaces between my ribs, and it took every ounce of strength I had not to fucking howl . I shook my head, slowly, manually, carefully, scared that if I spoke I would betray myself. I’m hungrier than I’ve ever been in my life. “You wanna take a shower?” My neck manoeuvred into a slow nod, smearing my snot all over his neck. I can hide in the shower. I can think. I can inhale as much water as I can and maybe it’ll clear his smell out of my head, just for a minute. 

But that wasn’t what Gerard had in mind. He was taking control of me in a way I’d never let him before, because for the first time, I wasn’t rooting around inside his head to stop it. Dead weight though I was, he guided me upstairs to the bedroom, mumbling soft words of encouragement as he slipped me out of my jacket and my shirt. When his hands moved to unfasten my jeans I started to shake my head, wanting to recoil but not having the strength to, panic rising at feeling his hands on my bare skin, he shushed me again and kissed me softly on the cheek. 

“Lemme help,” he whispered, insisting tenderly as though I was afraid of him. I was afraid of him. Instead of pushing him away I clung to him as he got me out of my clothes, his hands returning to my hair as he tugged me into the bathroom. I tried to pay attention to the thrum of the water against the floor of the shower, desperate to drown out the beating of his heart, his breath, the lightness of his voice. “You want me to get in with you?” He whispered, and I flinched, cramming my head hard against his collarbone so that he couldn’t see my face when I screwed it up. 

Please don’t. Please don’t. Please don’t. 

But I nodded, because I couldn’t help myself. Because something inside of me likes the pain of the closeness. Something inside of me needs this. He kisses the top of my head before he gets out of his clothes and I catch myself thinking about before I changed, all those years ago, the kind of person I was. Would I have screwed things up with Gerard back then, too? Not a chance . I would have given him everything. I would have done anything just to have him look my way. 

The water’s hotter than Gerard can handle and so he turns it down. It’s too cold for me but with the warmth coming off his body I barely notice it, clinging to him so tightly I’m probably going to bruise him. He manages to peel away from me just enough to get ahold of my face and he makes me look at him. 

I would have killed to have him look my way. 

“You wanna talk about it?” He asks me, his voice close to angelic through all the water, through the flames licking their way through my insides. His thumbs press into the space beneath the heel of my skull, holding me still, and I can hardly pay attention to anything but his eyes. I can’t remember the last time I blinked and the water’s going straight in my eyes and I can still see him just fine. His skin is flushed from the heat and he’s glistening, water beading on his lips, wet hair clinging to the sides of his face. 

I would have killed to be in the same room as him. 

There isn’t a way I can explain any of this to him. There’s no use even coming up with lies; I’ve already got enough of them, so many that they’re basically a barbed wire fence separating us. It would be pointless adding to it. One more sharp thing to stick him with. My fingers trail over his neck, hovering over his stitches. Man, I did a really shitty job of those . He doesn’t even flinch. 

“Later,” I mumble, and he tells me that that’s okay. Later can fix a lot of things, but not this. He asks if I want him to wash my hair and all I can do is smile at him. With any luck, he can’t tell I’m crying. His hands come out of the steam and back up into my hair, and I close my eyes. 

The darkness takes me for a moment and as Gerard touches me, smoothing his fingertips into my scalp in a way that alerts me to the fact that he and I should be illegal in any lifetime, I think back to the night that everything went wrong for me. It’s just for a second, but I can’t help it. It was my birthday, and I was shit-faced drunk. I had just played a show and I was round the back of the club trying to smoke a cigarette and piss at the same time. No one saw me leave, nobody heard me screaming, and nobody ever saw me again. 

None of this was ever supposed to happen. Even as Gerard holds my head under the water and I can taste my shampoo mingling in my mouth with the tang of his blood, I can’t shake that fact. I was never in control of anything until I met him. 

The words, I need to tell you something hover behind my teeth as he touches me. His fingers shift slowly, almost ritualistically around my body like he’s scrubbing twenty-five years worth of sin away and watching it go straight down the drain. I need to tell you something. I’m not who you think I am. It’s not safe for you to be with me. I need to leave. I need to never see you again . 

I consider slipping the words into his head, wondering if, maybe, that would be enough to have him make up his own mind. With his forehead leaned against mine, I try and force them out. But when he kisses me, slow and heavy and hotter than the sun itself, the words transform into something else. I want you. I want you. I want you. 

I don’t say a word until we get out of the shower. I don’t know whether it took us twenty minutes or two hours; all I had to go on was how many times he had kissed me (sixteen) and how many times he had asked me whether I was alright (four). The way he smiles at me while he rubs a towel through his hair catches me off guard and I’m very aware that I’m just standing there staring at him, naked and dripping and not exactly doing myself any favours. He blushes and looks away and even then, I’m still staring. 

“Why are you looking at me like that?” He mumbles, shy, like a girl in high school. 

Because I’m in love with you. Because in spite of everything I still wanna fuck your brains out and rip your throat open, again. Because I’m in severe, agonising pain. Because all I can do is lie to you. Because I can’t make up my fucking mind . 

“Did you mean what you said?” I ask him, and I can’t even hear myself, it comes out that fucking quiet. His pulse ticks up and I swallow. I’m glad I can’t see my reflection. I don’t need a reminder of the state I’m in. I don’t need a reminder of what I am. 

“About?” He’s speaking just as softly, getting back into his clothes, and I try not to wince. I don’t want to have to say it. I get dressed as quickly as I can, trying not to growl at my clothes, small parts of me still not quite dry. If I’m going to say it I’m not about to say it fucking naked. 

“Loving me.”

I can hear the way his heart beats harder, once, twice, three times. He smiles and nods, cheeks the colour of the blood that came spilling out of him when I bit him. 

“Wouldn’t have said it otherwise,” he mumbles, running a hand back through his hair and making it stick up, small black soggy spikes at the back of his head. 

The next part sticks in my throat, long enough for him to get suspicious though it’s obvious he’s trying hard not to show it. Ray’s words repeat themselves in my head like a scratched CD, jumping back and forth, over and over. You can’t have him. You can’t have a fairytale. In my head, I’m bickering with him, trying to shout over him, drown him out, as if that would make me right. If he actually loves me, he’ll understand. I can’t leave Gerard without telling him why. Call it stupid, call it reckless, call it hopelessly fucking naive, call it selfish, call it whatever the fuck you want, but I can’t do it. If it makes him run, then so be it. If it gets him killed, then I’ll be right behind him. If I get killed, then maybe, just maybe , he’ll be better off. But he has to know. 

Tired of waiting for me to say something, Gerard takes my hand and guides me back downstairs. Without a word, he starts making us coffee, with me slumping down into his usual chair at the island. It gives me a weird kind of déjà vu, our places being switched like this. I look at him the way he looks at me, soft wonder and fondness, something miserable waiting behind the scenes. Like neither of us can believe it. Like neither of us deserve it. Boyfriend Frank and boyfriend Gerard, a vision of the two of us stretching as far into the future as I can comprehend. It’s how things could have been. It’s not how things are. 

Get on with it. 

“A girl I work with got murdered,” I say just as Gerard is handing me my coffee, and he almost drops the cup, eyes snapping up to meet mine. Terror. Shock. I try and hold onto that look in his eyes, readying myself for seeing it again, and again, and again. But I don’t give him time to speak. “And they thought I did it, because, I don’t know, I guess someone thought I had a crush on her or something.” Gerard doesn’t move. “But, you know, I didn’t do anything, and they don’t have anything on me, so.” Slowly, he drops into the seat next to me and stares down at the counter, fingers drumming against the rim of his coffee cup. 

“That’s awful,” he mumbles, eyes darting up anxiously to mine and then back down again, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I–”

No time for this. 

“They’re gonna be watching me and, I can’t– I don’t want to have you mixed up in it. You know? It’s probably best that I leave.” 

“What?” Shock. Incredulity. Bewilderment. Disbelieving. Anger. Insult. His mouth moves soundlessly a few times, eyebrows flinching, lips turning downward. “Why? What? I don’t understand. I mean, I–”

“It’s not safe for me to stick around,” I breathe out, and it hurts, feeling the words hit the air and feeling the chemical shifts throughout his body in response, like feeling him wind back to hit me before he’s even done it. 

“What do you mean, it’s not safe? Frank, I…” He shakes his head and stands back up, taking a step back from me. I can feel my face twisting up and the illusion of bile creeping up my throat as I scramble to calm him down but he talks over me. “You just said you didn’t do anything! Why… Why would it not be safe?” His eyes blow a little wider. “Oh, god, are you in danger? Did someone threaten you? You don’t think–”

“It’s not me I’m worried about,” I say as gently as I can, and his face crumbles a little. I shake my head. “I’m just… It’s a precaution , you know?”

“You’re being ridiculous.” I should have expected this, his stubbornness, the way he’s folding his arms over his chest with his hip cocked out to one side like he’s my fucking mom. “Frank, if the police are harassing you–”

“It doesn’t matter,” I say flatly, unable to help getting riled up, because he has no fucking idea. “It doesn’t matter. I have to go. I can’t have you here if the cops show up.”

“Did you do something?” There it is – the small glimmer of accusation in his eyes, trying to figure me out, trying to work out if I’m the serial killer he thought I might be before I got up in his head and squished it like a fucking bug for both our sakes. It should piss me off, but it doesn’t. It hurts me. Is this it? Is this when I tell him that, while I might not have murdered Jamia, I’m headed straight for the fucking death penalty by being with him, just even by keeping him around? 

“Gerard–”

“What did you do?” He’s on the verge of tears now as well and I can’t do it. I can’t ruin myself for him any more than I already have. He reels backward a little and once more, he looks like he’s terrified of me. Can I live with this, doing this to him, having this be the last memory I have of his face? “Frank, what did you do?”

You’ll never have him back after this. It’s over. 

It’s for his own good. 

“Nothing,” I whisper. A lie. Always a fucking lie. I try to hold my breath; if I breathe too much of him in, I won’t be able to do this. I’ll fold, like I always do. Ray was right. Something will go wrong. The words come out of me like a bullet from a gun. “And that’s my fucking point. I’ve not done anything, yet. And every minute, every second that I spend here with you, you’re in danger and the worst part, Gerard, is that you don’t have a fucking clue about it. And I don’t know what’s wrong with you, really, I don’t, but you need to listen to me and you need to let me leave.” 

His thoughts are so loud that for a moment, they are nothing but static, too thick for me to pick through and work out. He’s looking at me like I’m something perfect being destroyed right before his eyes, something fallen from grace. Somewhere in this godforsaken house there’s an oil painting of Lucifer free-falling straight to Hell. 

“Did you bring me here to hurt me?” Gerard whispers. Everything goes quiet. My voice is cracking and strained and fucking destroyed because I let myself breathe him in. He’s frozen in place but his eyes are screaming that he wants to run, he just doesn’t know how. 

“No,” I croak out, and I’m not even sure if that’s the truth. I can tell he’s sifting back through the last few days, trying to find something. His fingers rub over his neck like that’s the secret, that’s the key to everything. Please just fucking figure it out. 

“Are you going to?” It’s a strange thing to ask. It’s the right thing, in a way, but it doesn’t even sound like him. It almost sounds like he doesn’t care, like he’s already surrendered to the possibility that it was always going to turn out this way. His voice is almost completely flat, demanding the truth and getting ready to ignore whatever it ends up being.

“No,” I whisper back. But they don’t see it that way. They know as well as I do that I can never be sure I won’t hurt you. But I know that they’ll hurt you. First chance they get.

“So why am I safe if you leave?” He raises an eyebrow and even now, he’s blinded by whatever the fuck it is he thinks he feels for me. Same as I am with him. 

“I need you to trust me.” I could have killed you and I didn’t. 

There’s that look on his face that I’ve seen a few times before, when he had barely said a word to me, when I would catch him stealing glances at me, when I would tease him about being repressed. Like he’s found his shame and crawled right back inside of it. He thinks it’s his fault. Don’t make it his fault. 

“It’s not you,” I offer him. An escape. Something to blame. It’s got everything to do with you but it’s not your fault. I never properly considered what me leaving would do to him, given everything I’ve done. I saved his life and I gave him somewhere safe to be himself and someone to pin it on and I’m about to take it all away. “You didn’t do anything wrong.” You didn’t know. It’s not your fault that you still don’t know. 

“You don’t have to leave,” he shoots back, and I lean my head forward into my hands and press my eyelids to the heels of my palms. “If it’s the police you’re worried about, you said it yourself that you didn’t–”

“I do have to!” The words shred my tongue on the way out. I hadn’t meant to yell but the damage is done. I look up and a single tear slips out of each of Gerard’s eyes when he squeezes them shut, his chest juddering with the force of his breath. I anchor myself to where I am, the urge to go to him almost taking over me completely. “I have to,” I say again, softer, but he winces. “And you can stay,” I go on, and he shakes his head, and all I want to do is punch myself in the face, “you can stay here forever if you want. I don’t care. You can just go on like nothing happened and I won’t blame you for it. I won’t.” 

“Don’t,” he snaps, glaring at me hard, but he’s trembling and I can tell his knees are going to give out. His eyes soften under mine and he sobs, just once, shaking his head. I can’t breathe. “Don’t just leave me here, Frank, please. ” I swallow and I watch as he comes toward me, itching to close the distance myself but forcing myself to take a step back. He follows. 

“Gerard–”

“I won’t know what to do if you go,” he whispers, and his hands are on my face, and he’s begging me with his eyes and mine won’t even focus. 

“I’m sorry,” I breathe out just as he kisses me, my hands automatically catching the corners of his jaw as he presses into me, and I permit myself the indulgence just for a moment, of the taste and the smell of him, the warmth of his flesh and blood in my hands, just enough that if I try, I can make it last long after I’m gone. He kisses me eagerly, desperately, begging with his tongue and swallowing my repeated apologies like they mean nothing to him. His fingers clench in my hair like they're twisting a knife and I press my eyes firmly shut and force myself to curl my hands around his wrists to push them away. He fights back and I have to try not to break his arms. 

“I’m sorry,” I say again with his wrists pinned to his chest and my forehead pressed against his, kissing him one more time. Dutiful masochist that I am, I allow myself one more glance at his eyes before I tear myself away for good. As I cross the kitchen to the door, the sunlight laps at my face. Gerard calls after me and I can still hear him when I’m out on the street. I close my eyes and keep walking until I break into a run, the sun burning me so hard that my tears evaporate the moment they touch my cheeks.

Chapter Text

When I met Frank, I was somewhere in the middle of thinking that things couldn’t get any worse for me. I’d lost everything that I had in this city; not quite in the world, but it was enough to make me want to end everything for good. There was a hopeless futility in the idea of starting again that I couldn’t face, that even the bottom of a bottle couldn’t fix. That night, the bottom of the Hudson seemed to me like the best idea I had ever had, a way to wipe everything away, a hard and irreversible reset; not at all like a coward’s way out. Not until I met him. 

I’d lost all of my identity and he’d handed me a new one, a simple one. A get-out-of-jail-free card. He gave me a different sense of self. He gave me something to stick around for. I didn’t necessarily see it at the time, but he was my way off that bridge in more ways than one. 

But if only I’d jumped. 

I was never sure that I was going to jump and Frank was right, that night - I didn’t want to die. But if I’d jumped, I wouldn’t be here. If I’d jumped, I wouldn’t be in Frank’s kitchen, now, curled up into a ball on the floor and sobbing to the point of dry heaving, wishing I had. 

It’s not a pain worth bothering to try and describe. It’s supernatural in the way that it seems to have its claws deep in my chest and its teeth embedded in my neck, but it’s real. It might even be the realest thing I’ve ever felt. I’m a mess - and that’s all I can think about, how this is happening to me again and somehow I care more about this than I ever did all those times before. This time, it’s different. 

Five minutes - that’s all it took for Frank to leave me. 

For Lindsey to leave me it took little over an hour, if we’re talking about the singular poor decision and the assumedly average, adulterous one night stand it took for her to make it official. It took the same amount of time for me to pack up my things and leave. Hell, it must have even taken my boss longer than five fucking minutes to decide to let me go. Conference calls are a minimum of fifteen. 

There was too much to make sense of and yet, it didn’t seem like there was much point making sense of it anyway. It’s simple to understand when pain is gnawing at your throat. I am not something worth sticking around for. I am not something, plain and simple. It’s obvious to me now, how many lies Frank must have spun me, how much he must have manipulated me to get me here without my ever realising it. Maybe he was going to kill me. Maybe I was just a fuck-and-chuck. Maybe he did just feel sorry for me. 

There isn’t an explanation for what happened with the police but for all I know, he lied about that, too. It doesn’t line up as to why Ray was here and I don’t know why Frank would bother lying about something as serious as murder but what does it matter? I don’t know him at all. 

I’m not in love with Frank, I tell myself, in the hopes that it will get the creature to retract its claws and unhinge its jaw and let me go. I was just being stupid. I was doing what I do best. I let him take advantage of me because maybe I wanted to be taken advantage of. Just for a little while. Just so that I didn’t have to think. I just needed a break. 

I can’t think about it beyond that. I can’t think about him without seeing his face; for the first time that night on the bridge, the night I first kissed him, the way he looked at me when he asked me to take off my crucifix and the way he looked at me afterward, with my blood all over his mouth. I can see the way he smiled, when I said that I loved him, and when I teased him about getting home late. The look in his eyes when he told me that I was an idiot for not letting him leave. The perfect, smooth corner of his jaw in the sunlight when he turned and left without so much as looking back. 

I’m not in love with Frank. 

When I do heave myself off the floor, the microwave clock tells me that it’s after midday and I’ve been crying for three hours. I’m still crying, just upright. I’m tired, so tired that it’s made me delirious and I resist telling myself that everything was just a bad dream because what good would that do, anyway? My body aches from the way I’ve been twisting myself up. My eyes and my mouth and my throat are raw and I catch sight of my warped reflection in the microwave door. I look exactly the way I expected myself to look. 

Like my heart has been pulverised into fucking rubble. Like nobody would want me anyway.

There’s a flaccid, flimsy feeling inside my head that maybe Frank will come back, that he’s just cooling off, taking a walk, hell , he could even be with Ray. It would be perfectly plausible if I could even halfway believe it. I push the thought away like I’m beating it back with a stick. Frank isn’t coming back. Maybe physically, back into this house, but not for me. I’m not important. Frank isn’t coming back for me. Frank is lost to me. Frank is unobtainable. 

Frank is the Holy Grail. 

Even looking around the kitchen and the living room feels like I’m biting on the curb with a gun to the back of my head. There’s rage floating somewhere inside me close to the surface but all I can get a handle on is the misery, the rejection, the abandonment, the abject fucking grief. I feel drained, so drained I can’t even bring myself to sink back down to the floor. I stare at the cup of coffee I made for Frank that he didn’t so much as touch and I think I’m going to pass out. I think I’m going to pick it up and launch it across the room as hard as I can. I think I’m going to throw up all over myself. 

I need to get out of this house. You can stay here forever my fucking ass. This is cursed ground. I don’t belong here; I never belonged here in the first place. I was never supposed to come here. I was supposed to be dead. 

Practically blinded by the numbness as it settles in, I climb the stairs to my bedroom like I’m walking to the fucking gallows. The faster I pack, the faster I can get the fuck out of here. 

I don’t know where I’m going to go. The simplest answer is that I call Mikey and get on the first train back to Jersey and figure the rest out later. My spine prickles and shudders at the thought of Mikey seeing me like this, with how worried he was about me the last time I saw him, his disbelief in my foolish optimism. Mikey’s always fucking right. I don’t want to have to tell Mikey about any of this and I don’t want to have to lie, either. It would be even worse with Mom and Dad - that’s not even an option, let alone a last resort. 

My bedroom smells like dust, thick and heady and sneeze-inducing even though it’s only been a day or so. It doesn’t seem enchanting or even terrifying to me anymore, nothing more than a dark room in a dark house, no more mine than it is anybody else’s. My things, my clothes and my sketchbooks and even my fucking hair products don’t look like my things anymore. I can’t bring myself to feel any worldly attachment to them whatsoever, shoving things into a backpack at random and then emptying it out and starting again, twice. 

Sat on the edge of my bed, I erupt back into tears. I have nowhere to go, at least not now. I have three people left in the entire world - three and a half if you count Pete, and I’m not sure that I do - and none of them can help me. None of them can even begin to understand. I have no way of getting out of this house without making things worse for myself; lectures, pity, tirades in which Frank is a jerk and I should have known better, admonishments for me being a fucking queer even though it’s fine for Mikey to do it, empty offerings of money, endless questioning about when I’m going to get another job, when I’m going to try and patch things up with Lindsey (like that wouldn’t be like peeking out over the top of a trench and getting your head blown clean off) - when I’m finally going to get over all of this. 

You’re being such a fucking baby. Get your head back in the real world. 

Frank took the real world away. It might not have been the best idea, but God did I fucking need it. I needed to be alone with somebody, wrapped up in them until they’re the only thing that matters. With Frank I at least felt like I might be able to have some purpose someday, even if it was just my imagination. 

And it took him five fucking minutes to leave you. 

I lay back on the stupidly huge, ridiculously lavish, ornate bed and stare upward at my reflection. It disgusts me, looking at myself and knowing that I got myself into this. I let Frank suck me in and get me hooked. I opened up to him way too fast. I fell for it. I always fucking fall for it. 

This is when I try and really place some heavy blame on Frank. I get points for being naive and he gets points for being a fucking shithead kid with nothing better to do than mess with my head and worm his way into my fucking pants. What the hell was I thinking? He’s a loser. He works the night shift and bums around all day and he doesn’t fucking eat, doesn’t even bother sleeping, like he’s some kind of stupid nocturnal animal. He’s had my blood in my mouth three fucking times like he’s got a fucking vampire kink or something. 

Can’t blame him for that. In that arena, you’re perfect for each other. 

It’s beside the point. I don’t know anything about him bar his mysterious disdain for Christianity and his age and the fact he has a raging crush on Kiefer Sutherland. He tried to steal a dog once. He got arrested. 

It’s also beside the point that I’ve memorised each and every curve of his face, each of his anxious tics, even the way smoke looks like when it’s flowing out of his mouth. I have a complete mental map of his tattoos. If I close my eyes I can perfectly remember the weight of his touch, the temperature of his body, the smell of his breath. 

He left you. 

I can feel the claws sinking in again, hooking themselves hard between the spaces of my ribs until they’re almost pulling me apart, like cracking a chest to autopsy a corpse. I roll onto my side and sob into the mattress and try my hardest to forget the sound of Frank’s laughter, the sound of his tears, the sound of his breath against my ear, the sound of his skin touching mine. 

He left you. 

How am I supposed to leave this behind? Nevermind the fact that he’s left me - how am I supposed to move on from this? Where am I supposed to go? What am I supposed to do? In less than a fortnight, it will be Christmas, and I will be alone. The bedspread doesn’t smell like his detergent anymore - it hardly smells of anything at all. He’s taken it all with him. 

Wedged underneath my pillow is the sketchbook full of the studies I did of Frank. I consider setting it alight and the bed with it, but even in my smudged, graphite bastardisations of his face there’s a level of beauty that I’m not comfortable destroying; at least, not violently. I tear the pages out one by one and leave them in a stack on the dresser; it’s not even that I’m hoping that he’ll find them. I just don’t want to carry them with me when I go.  

Halfway through the afternoon, I finally get enough courage in me to call Mikey but I don’t get through; I can only assume he’s at work, probably rushed off his feet with the holidays and everything, tangled up in tape and glitter and glue trying to put together a halfway decent window display for that stupid corporate book store he’s got himself stuck at. Don’t be a bitch about it. At least someone has a job. Probably for the best that he didn’t answer, anyway; I still didn’t have any idea what to say. 

I revert back to packing and I try and focus this time, but I can only get my backpack halfway full before I end up in Frank’s bedroom. I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t snoop, but what did I owe him, anyway? No matter what I found, it’s not like it would make any difference; either he was a secret serial killer, or he was secretly perfectly fucking normal, or he also had secret sketches of my face buried deep within the folds of his bedding. All unlikely. 

When my grandmother died, I found myself doing something similar to this - ritualistically combing through her things in the hope I would find something I recognised, something to bring me some strange comfort while my mother sifted through the wardrobes for a funeral gown. 

Finding my grandmother’s necklace in the top drawer of Frank’s nightstand wasn’t what I expected. It wasn’t where I had left it, nor somewhere I had ever intended for it to end up, nor somewhere it belonged. It was draped carefully over the top of an old, dog-eared and leather-bound copy of the Holy Bible, the white gold glinting in the sunlight and turning the burgundy leather almost to the shade of blood. For a moment, I second-guessed that it was even mine at all. 

Slowly, Frank’s aversion to God made sense; he must have been penetrated by guilt in the same way I was. Frank, the abrasive and childish punk that wouldn’t fuck me with a crucifix around my neck. Frank, with his bed triangulated by paintings of the mother of Christ. Frank with his washed-out, faded and scarred tattoo of Our Lady of Sorrows on his fucking forearm that looked as though the sun had leeched all colour straight out of it. Frank, with a Bible in his nightstand, half the corners of the pages folded down. 

I shouldn’t have picked up the book, but I did. Even just the weight of it in my hands instilled a kind of fear in me that I hadn’t felt since middle school. My fingers barely brushed the edges of the pages before it fell open, my place dictated by a heavy, crimson silk ribbon; not somewhere near the centre, as I had expected it to be, as physics would have dictated. Circled, aggressively in black ballpoint pen until it had started to tear the page, was a passage from Genesis with parts scratched out and underlined:

Cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. 

Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. 

By the sweat of your face you shall eat, till you return to the ground, 

Because from it you were taken; 

For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

Before I could even begin to try and make sense of why Frank would have paid special, horrific and frankly cryptic attention to God forever cursing mankind with pain and hardship, the phone in the kitchen rang for the first time and made me jump so hard that I dropped the Bible altogether. I returned everything to its rightful place, hesitating for just a moment, the necklace limp and dull between my fingers. 

Chapter Text

"Gerard?” 

“ Mikey? ” 

I had waited until the very last ring to answer the phone, afraid that it was Frank or maybe Ray or, for all I knew, Frank’s fucking parole officer. I was ready to tell whoever it was to fuck off, even more so if it was Frank after all, until Mikey’s voice cut halfway through me. 

“Of course it’s me. You called, remember? Figured it must have been you seeing as you’re the only person I know in Brooklyn.” He paused and I couldn’t say anything, my throat dry and my veins running cold with the fear of having to tell him anything at all. “Gee, why are you still in Brooklyn?”  

I was, for lack of a better word, completely discombobulated. My extremities felt numb and I was starting to dissociate myself from my body, little more than a floating head. I didn’t know what time it was. I could hardly remember where I was at all. 

“Gee?” His voice had softened a little with anxiety. “You alright?” 

I took a deep breath. There was no reason he had to know. I didn’t have to tell him about any of it. If the information was safe with anyone, it would be Mikey, but I still didn’t need him feeling sorry for me, looking after me, taking pity on me . Look how that turned out. 

“Can I come and stay with you and Pete?” The words came out so quickly that they ended up jumbled together and I could almost hear him frowning. 

“What?” 

“Would it be okay if I came to stay with you and Pete for a little while?” I enunciated the best I could around the dropping volume and conviction in my voice, bracing myself for the questions of why and what happened. 

“Well, to be honest , I don’t know why you didn’t just do that in the first place.” I said nothing and he sighed, softly enough that I could feel through the phone the way that a smile curled up at the side of his mouth with relief. He knew not to ask; at least, not yet. He would be waiting to say it to my face. “Of course you can. Next stupid question?”

I thought about asking him to come and get me, but that involved him seeing the house, asking me things about Frank that I either didn’t know how to answer or simply didn’t have the strength to. I didn’t want to have to enlist another person into the seemingly endless, Sisyphean task of moving my damn things. I didn’t want Mikey to have so much as a glimpse of anything that might have happened here. 

I told Mikey that I would be on the next train, and the moment I hung up, started trying to come up with a way to conceal the stitches on my neck and the hopeless, miserable cellophane sheen to my exhausted eyes. 

I would have to leave everything behind. If and when Frank ever did come back, it would be his problem. I couldn’t remember when I became so petty, but part of me felt that he deserved it. He could throw out all my things or he could keep them around, sulking and feeling sorry for himself after coming to terms with how much of an asshole he had been to me. It was weak and it was pointless but it was the only exercise in control that I had. 

The decision to leave had been made so quickly that it hardly felt like I was the one that made it at all. I moved around my bedroom in a blur, prioritising my clothes and the bare essentials of my art supplies. I figured I could manage one suitcase and one over-stuffed backpack and so in the end, the suitcase was crammed half-full with comic books and CDs before I had even so much as registered that it had happened, and when I tried to move it off the bed, my spine almost caved in. Not once in my life did I think I would be forced to part with two-thirds of my comic book collection. One more thing added to the infinite litany of things to blame Frank for. I’d lied to Mikey about being on the first train out of the city; it took me an hour to separate the comics I loved most. I debated hiding the rest, so that Frank couldn’t hope to get any more joy out of my misery, but what was the point? If he was going to turn me into an emotional wreck then he might as well have my fucking Nightwing comics. 

With my things piled by the front door and a scarf carefully draped around my neck to hide my stitches from Mikey later, I stood at the island in Frank’s kitchen attempting to write a note. I knew that really, there was no need; he wouldn’t care. But it was the only thing that felt fair to me. I wasn’t able to yell at him or scream or cry or get up in his face or shake him by his shoulders, so a note would have to do.

There was no putting into words how I felt, let alone what I wanted to say to him . There was no summarising; there was hardly any real understanding. All I wanted to do was cry and write fuck you over and over until it filled the page, like I was fourteen all over again. I considered being the bigger person and thanking him for letting me stay, but that just wasn’t sincere. I thought about leaving a number so that he could call me to say sorry if he ever felt like it, but I still didn’t have a phone and I didn’t want to drag Mikey further into it by volunteering his number, either. I wondered how much worse I would feel if I wrote something heartfelt, to be pathetic right down to the last second. The pen trembled in my hands and I wrote with my eyes half-closed, not even wanting to see the words as I formed them, because despite his abandoning me, they were true. 

You should have stayed. 

And so I left. The eyes of the paintings in the hallways followed me as I went, Christ’s doleful tears shining in the waning sunlight. Outside, it was just starting to snow, the last of the late afternoon sun slipping in and out from the thick, bleak clouds before being consumed entirely. Compared to the dense warmth of Frank’s house the air was stiff and biting and it made me wince as it wore away at my cheeks. Looking up at the house in the cold light of day disarmed me for a moment; it wasn’t as enchanting as it had appeared to me that night after coming down off the bridge. My eyes moved over each of the windows, the one I knew belonged to the kitchen and the one above it, to Frank’s bedroom. The windows were almost black, reflecting nothing but the clouds in the sky. Just a house.

I could forget about it now - at least, that’s what I told myself, like I was granting my own permission to not give a shit about what had turned out to be the worst and weirdest week and a half of my life. 

Jesus. All of this in less than a fortnight. New record. 

When I turned my back on the house there was a tingling in my head, almost like something magnetic; like the iron was being pulled from my blood and up to the surface, burning the inside of my skin.

The key. 

I slipped it through the letterbox without so much as looking at it, the street so bizarrely quiet that I could have sworn I heard it hit the wood floor inside. I thought it would have given me some small reassurance, now that it was over, but my heart plummeted inside me just like the key had; straight to the floor. When I turned back around and made my way down the steps, the unsettling sensation in my head shifted lower, to my neck and my shoulders and my arms. I rubbed at my neck as I kept walking, resisting the tears that tugged at the corners of my eyes, ignoring the way the ache in my head seemed to twist and claw and scream, as if to say, don’t go. 

*

There’s a particular kind of claustrophobic distress that takes over me whenever I’m back in Jersey. New York may not have been very far, but it was a start. It was alive. The ride from the station to Mikey’s new apartment was wordless, seeing as when Mikey had met me on the platform I had erupted into tears the moment I saw him and it had taken ten minutes just for him to calm me down enough that I could walk straight. He had a The Smashing Pumpkins CD playing on the stereo and it was enough to drown out the worst of my thoughts as he drove, paying attention to the music and the sound of his teeth chewing at his cuticles. It was dark, though I had no idea of the time; dark enough to make the streets of Belleville look even seedier than they were. The vacant lots and the liquor stores blurred together and I wished I could have been glad to be some semblance of home. But I wasn’t. 

I was doing my best not to think about Frank, but my best wasn’t even close to good enough. Whenever we passed a group of shithead punk kids I would sit up straight in my seat and my ears would prick up and I would just about press my face against the window to see them better, before I realised what I was doing. In every dark corner I saw him, the way he had appeared to me that night on the bridge. Eventually, I had to close my eyes for the rest of the way. 

Mercifully, Pete wasn’t home when we got there; I could only assume Mikey had deliberately gotten rid of him for the night but I wasn’t about to ask. The apartment was nice; not as nice as Frank’s house, or the apartment I had shared with Lindsey, but for Jersey it might as well have been a five star hotel. When I dragged my bags with me into the living room, automatically setting up camp around the couch, Mikey made an indignant noise of protest and swatted at my arm. 

“There’s two bedrooms, idiot.” 

The routine was becoming too familiar; intruding into people’s homes, being shown to their guest bedroom, being told over and over again that it really wasn’t any kind of imposition. It frustrated me, though, having to do this to Mikey. He looked good; tired, and frazzled and very openly concerned, but he was at home. He had a home. And a boyfriend. Happy.

“Where’s the rest of your stuff?” He asked me, nodding to my ancient suitcase and my dilapidated backpack, and all I could do was shrug. In turn, he glowered at me, trying to hide it behind a sympathetic frown. “You didn’t leave it all at Lindsey’s, did you?” 

“It doesn’t matter, Mikes.” 

I could practically see him biting down on the tip of his tongue, the muscle making a soft, pissed off clicking noise against the roof of his mouth. 

“We can go back and get it at some point,” he sighed, rubbing at the bulb of my shoulder gently, “I’ve been holding off on calling her in case I go apeshit or something, but I guess I can handle that.”

“Mikes,” I whispered, not even meaning to be harsh, squeezing my eyes closed. “Please. It doesn’t matter. It’s not at Lindsey’s, it’s at Frank’s. And it doesn’t matter.” I shouldn’t have even said his fucking name. Why did I have to remind him? 

“Alright,” he said slowly, bemused, and I tried my best to smile at him. Apologetic. Practically fucking grimacing. 

“It’s no big deal. I’ve got more important things to sort out than stuff .”

“Look at that, you’re starting to sound like yourself again.” The smile was more genuine now, the awkward kink at the corners of his mouth that made it obvious he was holding back a grin, nudging his glasses a little further up his nose. “C’mon, let’s do coffee.” He kissed the side of my head. “You look like shit.” I haven’t slept in two days, I snapped back in my head, but I followed him anyway. My head was so foggy that I had to at least try caffeine. 

“So, more trouble in paradise, huh,” Mikey teased when he handed me my coffee, looking down at the way I had curled myself into the smallest possible ball at the furthest end of the couch. When my eyes narrowed and my fingers immediately clenched around the ceramic, Mikey rolled his eyes and slumped down beside me, tilting his head back against the couch. “Seriously, Gee, if you’re not gonna talk to me and you’re not gonna let me crack jokes then you’ve gotta give me something. ” 

My mouth opened, but of course, nothing wanted to come out. I didn’t want to come out. Like Mikey would care. He knows I’ve heard more of him and Pete going at it than he ever has of me. I might as well be a eunuch. After a minute of silence, Mikey nudged at my elbow with his, offering me a shy smile of encouragement. 

“I’m not letting you sleep until you tell me something.”

“You’re such a gossip,” I moaned, not even a complaint, because I knew it was Pete’s fault. He grinned at me but with something held back, that burning desire to know what the hell had really happened to me, what could have possibly gotten me so messed up on top of everything else. I knew him well enough to know that there was a little bit of fear thrown into the mix, too. He looked the same way I did when he told me he was getting picked on in school. 

Except this time, it can’t end with being sent to the principal’s office. 

Out with it. The quicker you get it out the quicker you can just forget about it. Quicker you can move on.  Quicker you can start again.

“You’ll laugh,” I muttered, and he snickered, running a hand back through his hair. I grumbled into my coffee, proven right because only Mikey would find a way to affectionately laugh at my misfortune. Mikey sighed, slowly turning his head in my direction. 

“You rebounded,” he said with a smirk, and when my cheeks went red and my shoulders dipped and I slurped loudly on my coffee so that I wouldn’t scream, he hummed. “Yeah, I figured.” He sipped his coffee as if he was deep in thought but I just knew he was trying not to laugh. “Happens to the best of us, big brother.” It was my turn to roll my eyes. 

“With Frank ,” I mumbled, pointedly, and he just looked at me like I’d told him that two-plus-two equals four. 

“Yeah,” he said, pursing his lips for a second, “that was kinda obvious.”

“How,” I protested, my voice rising in pitch, my hands jerking and almost making me spill my coffee everywhere. All this fucking torturing myself over it and he knew the whole damn time? About everything? About Frank, about me and guys, about… Really? 

“First, because I know things,” he retorted, and he was right, “but second, because you get all twitchy every time he gets brought up. And, hello, obsessed much?” He gestured vaguely in the direction of my puffy, bloodshot eyes and I quickly flicked them away. I am not obsessed with Frank. I am not in love with Frank. My cheeks must have been turning purple by now. “You think you’re all mysterious but you’re really not subtle, Gee.”

“Shut up,” I hissed, unable to follow through with even being angry about it because I was so relieved that I hadn’t had to recount everything, like pulling teeth, like pulling stitches. Thankfully, even without my scarf, he hadn’t noticed them - or, knowing Mikey, maybe he had. 

“So, what, he kicked you out?” Mikey leaned in a little, balancing his coffee cup on his knee like he was settling in to watch a damn movie. I almost wanted to tell him to whip the popcorn out if all of this was so exciting to him. 

“Not exactly.” There I went, getting twitchy again just like he said I would. I fucking wish he’d kicked me out. I wish it had gone any other way than how it had. I wish we’d fought. I wish I’d hit him. Mikey watched me carefully for a moment, the jokes slowly melting away. 

“Listen,” he said gently, “I could give you a lecture, but I’m not gonna, because you know you’re stupid, and I can save it for when you tell me what actually happened.” I smiled apologetically, not wanting to cringe too visibly. “I’m just glad you’re with me and you're okay.” He squeezed my shoulder again. “I’m glad you’re home.”

But home wasn’t here – no matter how good it felt to be back with my brother. No matter how good it felt to have - somewhat reluctantly - admitted to someone other than Frank and myself who I really was, at least in part. No matter how good it felt to be distracted. Mikey was saying something else but my head filled with static, my fingers moving up to the collar of my shirt and feeling at the absence of metal, the lack of the necklace I had forgotten to put back around my neck. There was that magnetic, miserable feeling again; home wasn’t here.

Chapter Text

For the first time in my life, I’m dreadfully and viscerally aware that I’m dreaming. 

I’m in Frank’s bedroom, sat on the very edge of the bed. The room is bright, the bed engulfed in the setting sun as though consumed by flame. The paintings on the walls are glistening as though the paint were still wet, the tears on the face of the Virgin Mary as fresh as the day they were first shed. As the sun darkens, they are almost the colour of blood. 

It is completely silent, like being trapped underwater. I reach out into the sunlight and the motes of dust twinkling in the sun part around my fingers, stirred up into a flurry. The heat is atomic against my skin, warmer than anything I have ever registered feeling and yet I don’t recoil; my hand should be burning and blistered but I feel nothing. 

I’m dreaming. I’m dreaming. I’m dreaming. 

“Can you stay?”

When I look over my shoulder, there is no longer any will to wake up. Breath rushes out of my lungs like I’ve been struck in the solar plexus and Frank smiles at me. It’s not a smile I’ve really seen before; warm, innocent, open. His eyes are framed perfectly in a beam of light, hot and sparkling like beads of condensation on a glass Coke bottle, tired and content around the edges. I want to speak but I can’t. There’s something stuck in my throat. He’s shirtless, the rest of him hidden beneath the sheets, his skin smooth and pristine, the tattoo on his forearm vibrant and not at all mottled with scar tissue like the way I remember it. Around his neck is my grandmother’s crucifix, glowing white like something supernatural, something radioactive. He smiles a little wider and he’s never looked more beautiful to me. 

Don’t let me wake up.

“Please?” He murmurs, his chin resting on my shoulder, eyes making me dizzy. I can’t feel my legs. His arms slip over the slopes of my shoulders and curl gently around my neck, forearms flush to the base of my throat and tugging me backwards, against his body. My chest is about to explode with the force of a dying star. His lips brush against my jaw, soft at first and then heavy, eager, coercive. 

My eyelids flutter and his breath on my face sends a shiver down my spine. I lock eyes with the Madonna and my face mirrors hers, vicious tears rolling down over my cheekbones. A small, soothing noise comes out of Frank’s mouth against my skin and he sets one arm firmly across my chest as though to stop me from moving but there’s no way I ever would. 

“Just a little longer,” he mumbles, tips of his fingers pressing into the space between the ribs that guard my heart, hard enough that I could believe he was about to claw them apart and reach inside. The air smells like sugar, the sweetness of an ancient fire, of burning, willing flesh. I want to speak to him. I want to surrender to him. I want to never leave this place again. I want to do something, anything, that will tell him that he can keep me here. 

Centuries could have passed and I wouldn’t have known. Frank’s fingers pass slowly through my hair, each brush of his hand marking another empty year of my life and yet the sun is still going down. The painting of Saint Sebastian is bleeding profusely. 

Just like me. 

Blood in the setting sun is almost brown. The colour of Frank’s eyes. The colour of Frank’s mouth, of the front of my shirt, of the sheets on the bed. There is so much of it, syrup thick and slow. It’s impossible to think. There’s no part of me that wants to be free of this, not even as he brings my mouth to his and I can taste metal, hot like smelted silver. 

“Don’t leave me here,” he says into my mouth as I choke on my own blood. I don’t know how to tell him that he left me. My hands leave smudged prints on his cheeks and his neck, childlike finger paintings of desperation, as I cling to him and he clings to my life. “Not alone. Not like this.” 

The blood disappears and the sun along with it, sinking beneath the horizon.  

Our places haven’t changed. Frank sighs and his fingers curl around the collar of my shirt, lips quirking upward as they skim against mine one more time. When I reach up to touch him, to draw him closer, my hands appear transparent in the fading light. His thumb smooths over my adam’s apple and he speaks so softly and so strangely that it could have been a different language entirely, his words unfurling like a bouquet of blooming flowers in my abdomen, 

“Not like this.” 

Let me stay. Please, God, let me stay. 

“You can stay as long as you want,” he says. We’re in the kitchen over pancakes and coffee like the first morning I spent here and he’s leaning his elbows on the island and looking up at me like I’m something worth looking at. The necklace is swinging, hanging loose from his neck as he leans over to kiss me. When he draws back his eyes are black as ice and he smiles, pointed teeth tugging at the metal in his lip, sharp enough to leave an indent in the metal. He brings my palm to his mouth and kisses it, just once, a sting of razorblades against my skin. “I’ve got all the time in the world. Don’t you see?” 

*

Mikey finds me crying in the bathroom in the morning because I forgot to lock the door. It’s been almost a week of this, waking from ridiculous dreams covered in sweat and scrubbing at the tears in my eyes and trying to clean up the fresh blood leaking from between the sutures in my neck. I tell myself that I must have clawed at them in my sleep, over and over, and that’s why the wound just won’t heal. But between the open gash and the dreams of Frank, I feel like I’m being tormented. I don’t have a way of getting rid of him, forced to relive it all all over again, forced to carry on cleaning up his mess. The worst of it is that despite all my better judgement, I can’t help but wish I would stay asleep. 

“You should really let me take a look at that,” Mikey says from the door, leaned up against the doorframe with his arms folded over his chest and watching me in the mirror as I scrub the dried blood from my collarbone. “Or, you know, maybe a doctor.” He can see the pink tinge in my exhausted eyes and he can see the tears that have gotten trapped in the creases of my nostrils and he knows not to push too hard, but I haven’t been the most cooperative. I can tell he’s getting more anxious about me with each day that goes by.

”It’s fine,” I croak, betraying myself by wincing when I brush one of the looser stitches and it comes away. Veterinary nurse, my ass. Bullshit fucking half-assed job. 

“You gonna tell me how it happened?” He cocks an eyebrow at me, rubbing at his temple, and I look away. 

“Take a wild guess,” I mutter. I don’t have the capability to bother lying when I’m this tired. Mikey manages a sardonic, pitiful smile and shrugs away from the door, peering over my shoulder and grimacing as though the wound smells but I know it doesn’t. 

“Freaky,” he mumbles, looking at it from a few different angles before I elbow him away. 

“Shut up.” 

“Hm.” His eyes dart up to meet mine in the mirror again and he puts his hands on my shoulders, squeezing softly. “I wish I could say I’m surprised but I’m really not.”

”Did you just come in here to make fun of me?” Comes my retort, and he laughs and briefly ruffles my hair before withdrawing his hand with a small, quickly repressed sound of disgust. 

“No.” He folds his arms again. “You’re gonna talk to me today, Gee. Properly .” I’m already cringing away from him and he pulls out the smile he knows I can’t resist, the one he’s been honing ever since we were kids and he wanted to play with my action figures and I didn’t want him to get them sticky. “I’m happy you’re here, but I still miss you. All you do is stay in your room and I get it, really, but I’m your brother, and we don’t do secrets.”

I told you enough already, are the words loaded and ready to spring out from my mouth, but all I can do is look down at the bloody tissues in the sink. 

“I know you’re hurting,” Mikey whispers, as gentle as he can manage, and I sniffle, not wanting to break down again. “And I know you well enough to know that something happened that you don’t want to tell me about because, I don’t know, you’re embarrassed or you think it’s stupid, but—“

”It is stupid,” I say dumbly, turning around so that I can look up at him, doing my best to hold my ground. I don’t want to do this now. I don’t want to do this here, barefoot in Mikey’s bathroom with blood leaking out of my neck and smelling like I’ve been sleeping under a fucking bridge. I don’t want to tell my kid brother that I got my heart broken twice in as many weeks. I don’t want to tell him that the only reason I’m sleeping as much as I am is because it’s the only place I can be with Frank. 

“Is it?” Mikey sighs and straightens up. “Because as far as I can tell, Gee, nothing stupid would be doing this to you.” His eyes flicker down to the wound on my neck and I can tell that there’s something uncomfortable wanting to fight its way out of him. His eyebrows flinch at the centre and he nudges his glasses further up his nose and I glare at him. 

“Spit it out.”

”Did he hurt you?” I’d never heard such a meek, frightened whisper come out of Mikey’s mouth. His face contorts just as mine does and for a moment it’s like looking into a mirror. “You know, I mean, like, actually —“

“No,” I answer, too fast, whipping my head back like he was about to hit me. The motion tugs at the stitches. 

“Gee—“

“He just ditched me, alright?” Mikey goes blurry in my field of vision and I mutter something under my breath, something along the lines of I can’t fucking believe this. Mikey’s hands are on my shoulders steadying me and I can feel the weight leaving my body, like my bones are collapsing into a heap on the floor. “He fucking, drew me in, and he got up in my head and got me all fucking crazy and then he fucking ditched me .” 

So many low points this month and this might be the one that stands out. The bridge, the bed, and the kitchen floor are nothing compared to this, me sobbing into my baby brother’s chest in his fucking bathroom wishing my heart would stop hurting or stop beating altogether, whichever one comes first. 

“What’s wrong with me?” I moan into his shoulder, and he shushes me, skinny arms tugging at my back and forcing me against his chest. 

“Nothing,” he mumbles into the top of my head, and I whine, and he squeezes me, his voice pitching lower, “aside from maybe stinking a little bit.” I can’t even get my words together enough to complain; I can’t even get my breath level enough to laugh. Snot flies out of my nose and he hugs me tighter, his body vibrating with a soft laugh. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”

When he pulls away, I catch my reflection in the mirror in the corner of my eye and I look as disgusting as I did when I was watching myself in the mirror above the bed at Frank’s house. I can’t remember the last time I looked at myself and didn’t see a mess.

*

Mikey and I never ended up talking much more about it. He managed to manipulate me into taking a shower for the first time in days, but that was the best he could do before I insisted on going back to bed. I couldn’t sleep, guilt and shame tugging at the walls of my chest, forced to listen to Mikey and Pete speaking in not-so-hushed tones in the next room. 

I just don’t get it, Mikey was muttering, the sound of his feet pacing around only slightly muffled by the paper-thin walls. 

What’s to get? Pete shot back, and I could picture him sitting on the bed and watching Mikey tearing his hair halfway out as he walked around, nothing but a ball of anxious energy. He’s just been through it, babe, that’s all. The whole thing’s just done a number on him. 

But this isn’t like him, Mikey moans, and he sighs so loudly I can almost feel his breath through the drywall. He usually talks to me, you know? Like, actually talks to me. He’s been so fucking weird and it’s freaking me out. It’s scaring me. 

Maybe he just needs time. Or, you know, maybe a distraction? I could see if I can get him a job–

In the state he’s in? Are you fucking kidding me? Mikey sounds like he’s about to cry and I pull my pillow around my head, securing myself in darkness, but it doesn’t drown him out. He’ll have a full-blown nervous breakdown if you make him talk to people. 

Sounds like you’re gonna have a nervous breakdown. 

I just… I don’t get it, Mikey repeats, softer, and I’m straining to hear him now despite knowing I shouldn’t. I feel like this would maybe be justified if it was Lindsey he’s crying about but I know it’s not. 

Lindsey didn’t make me feel the way that Frank made me feel. Lindsey never looked at me that way. Lindsey never held me that way. Lindsey never bothered to draw blood. 

So he’s hung up on a guy. Big deal. I mean, shit, Mikey, before we started going out I was–

You know that’s not my point! Mikey cries out, his voice climbing quickly and then dropping to a harsh whisper, this guy came out of nowhere, Pete. Lindsey breaks it off with him and what, all of a sudden, there’s a guy?

You don’t think… 

What?

Well. I can practically hear Pete squirming at the words as they come out. You don’t think he was… You know? Having an affair?

Oh, don’t be fucking ridiculous. 

Yeah, Pete, don’t be fucking ridiculous.

I’m just saying–

This is Gerard, Mikey says flatly, not even bothering to restrain his volume. It’s Gerard, Pete. He’s the most antisocial person on the fucking planet. 

Apparently not. 

I can hear Mikey shooting daggers at him. It almost makes me want to fling my door open and go marching into theirs and laying it all out for them just so they’ll let me sleep, but I can’t move, the weight of my two dozen blankets weighing me down. It’s safer in here. It’s safer that they don’t know how much of an idiot I was to let myself fall for Frank the way I have. 

He’s acting like he was in love with the fucking guy, Mikey mutters, and Pete sighs. I mean, you’ve heard him, right? Talking in his sleep? 

Oh, no. No, no, no. 

Yeah, but–

It’s insane. 

There’s a loaded silence wherein I can tell Pete is trying to come up with some kind of solution and Mikey is wallowing in his everlasting guilt in not being able to fix me. What the hell have I been saying in my sleep? In my dream last night, I can’t ever remember speaking, only ever absorbing Frank’s words as he speaks them into my mouth, letting them float around in my head like smoke. 

Maybe we need to get him out of the house? Pete offers weakly. 

Good luck. 

Maybe he needs to get laid. 

I absolutely, categorically do not . The fact I would willingly sell a kidney just to have Frank touch me again is beside the point. It doesn’t even count. 

Is that seriously all you think about? 

Think about it. You know how many guys I had to sleep with to get over you? The first time? 

And look where that got you, Mikey mutters, fondly, obviously smiling. My brother, in love. My brother, in his big, grown-up relationship. Me, longing to once more be back inside of my dreams. That won’t help him. 

It might. 

You know, I wish I could get my hands on this fucking guy, Mikey grumbles, and there’s a soft oof as he, I assume, flops back onto his bed. 

Yeah. You and me both.

Chapter Text

I’ve got all the time in the world. Don’t you see?

“Frank?”

“Huh?” Leave me alone. 

“You good?” In perfect comedic timing, the ash from the joint falls square in the centre of my chest. I frown down at it with one eye open and flick it away, leaving a thick grey smudge in its place. I close my eyes again, taking another hit and then offering the offending thing vaguely in Ray’s direction. I have to manually calm myself down enough that I don’t chew him out for interrupting. Never fucking interrupt me when I’m astral projecting. 

My mouth is watering and I’ve got a hard-on and the disorientation of being stuck between two places at once gives me the illusion of nausea which wouldn’t be so bad if I wasn’t fucking starving. I rub at my eyelids and inhale sharply and swallow whatever’s been collecting on my tongue and I want to cry . 

“Frank?”

Don’t yell at Ray. 

I don’t have anything to say to him. For a whole week it’s been nothing but silence spliced through with inane, dumbass fucking questions with the occasional, jarring interruption of him waving an open blood bag under my nose. The last time he did that, I batted it away so hard that he dropped it and most of the good stuff went leaking through his floorboards and he shrieked like the gates of Hell were opening. The air is thick with the smell of pot and cigarettes and general degenerate filth, but it still smells like a murder scene thanks to me. He should be grateful I didn’t do worse than that. I’m dreaming, fuckface. Don’t do that shit to me.

Ray doesn’t take the joint, partly because he’s a killjoy that refuses to partake in my self-indulgent misery, and partly because, I can only assume, he’s running out and he figures I need it more than he does. That, and it’s dripping with my slackjawed, famished, pathetically fucking horny saliva. I roll my eyes and stick it back between my lips, inhaling uselessly because it’s not even lit anymore.

“You hungry?” It’s always the same tone of voice with Ray now. Like he’s my dad, or some bored, depressed college girlfriend at a frat party; forever disappointed. 

“Nope,” I mutter around the aftertaste of smoke and Gerard clinging to the back of my throat, resisting the urge to just flip him off, “same as the last, like, fifteen times you asked me.” It’s not true, really. I made myself drunk on the stuff when I first got here, full enough that I figured out it is possible for vampires to throw up, and it’s certainly not pretty when they do. I’ve not touched a bag since, because it’s guaranteed to drive me insane, and also because I can get just enough of the illusion of it when I do finally find Gerard inside my head. 

I wonder if I ever had solid, concrete morals. Probably. Can’t remember. 

“Yeah, because I know you’re lying, douchebag.” That’s when I flip him off, discarding the burned out joint in almost the same motion. “You can’t just keep starving yourself.” 

I’m not. 

I light a cigarette in response, shifting my weight on the couch and wedging myself further down into the stiff leather, cigarette butts stuck to my jeans. “Watch me.” 

“Ugh.” I can hear him walking around and cleaning up after me, same as he’s been doing for days. The only difference is that I’m not complaining about it anymore. I’ve submitted, entirely, to the fact that I am, officially, a fucking bum. No job, no house, no rations, no purpose. No Gerard . The thought of him turns my stomach again and that’s exactly what I was trying to avoid. I’m itching to get back to him but I’ve lost him and it will take me hours to find him again. 

I don’t know how it works – if I had to guess, it would be something to do with blood magic combined with the fact that Gerard has the mental defenses of a tofurkey burger. Can’t complain if it’s the only thing holding me together. Every night, like clockwork. I’ll sit here until the sun explodes, if I have to. If I can find him again. 

Somewhere near my head there’s the crushing of a soda can and it makes me jump. The vision of Gerard in my head disappears along with the smoke out of my mouth. Ray swats at the top of my head. “Get up.”

“Fuck you.”

“You’re laying on like, a mountain of trash, dude.”

“I’m comfy.” I have a semi. 

“You’re becoming one with the trash.”

“Good.” It’s where I belong. I expel a thick plume of cigarette smoke in the direction of his face but it doesn’t make me feel better. No matter how much I lay into him it does nothing for me and he knows it. I guess that’s why he’s putting up with it. 

“Can you stop wallowing for like, five minutes , and let me tidy up in here?” 

“I don’t get you, Toro,” I sigh, cracking open one eye again only to realise that he’s glaring down at me, arms folded tight over his chest, “you sit here and get me stoned and then you ask me to move ?” I run a hand back through my hair which is, admittedly, disgusting, but that’s a problem for later. Showers aren’t important when you’re wretched and doomed for all eternity. It says that in the Bible somewhere, I’m sure of it. “Totally ruining the mood, man.”

“You’re not stoned, Frank, you’re pretending to be stoned so you don’t have to deal with the real world. Or me, for that matter.” 

“Problem?”

“Yes, problem . You’re smoking me out of business, dude. If you were begging me for blood I’d at least be able to make sense of that.” My nostrils flare just at the mere mention of it, but it doesn’t matter. I’m not falling for it. Abstinence, that’s the key . Abstinence and dream-feeding. “Hell, even if you told me you wanted to go out and get fucked up, I could get behind that.”

“So take me out,” I mutter, slinging my arm over my face to shield my eyes even though it’s practically pitch black in here. When you’re hungry everything hurts, and I mean everything . My muscles feel like they’re atrophying. My nerves are so sharp and on edge I might as well be an undead fucking cactus. If Gerard could touch me now - really touch me - I’d melt like fucking wax.

“No,” Ray mumbles, and I snort in the back of my throat in response because I knew he was bluffing. “You’ll start a fight.”

“Untrue.” Actually, perfectly true. The night after I showed up here, I was so miserable that I tried to goad Ray into literally ripping one of my arms off or just finding something to stake me with and be done with it. I said a lot of stuff about his mom, stuff you should never say about anybody’s mom, but he knew better than to bite. He knew I’d regret it. 

I’ve done a lot of shit worth regretting. And I’ve spent every waking moment for the past week trying to forget I ever did any of it, but it catches up with me in small ways. Ray asked me if I wanted to watch The Lost Boys and I welled up and started sobbing and wheezing like an asthmatic toddler. I was on my seventh joint of the day in the middle of the afternoon mindlessly flicking through channels on the TV before I landed on Cartoon Network and almost crushed the remote in my hand. I even tried jerking off, but between being in Ray’s bathroom and being assaulted with every explicit (and completely not explicit) memory I had of Gerard, you can imagine how that went. I tried again, once I figured out I could still get inside his head, but it still made me cry. If that’s not pathetic, I don’t know what is. 

Ray had suggested - multiple times - that I needed to get laid. He had also suggested, hesitantly, moving to a completely different part of the country. He had even mentioned scoring some heroin because apparently, anything was better than what I was doing to myself. Instead, I voted for self-pity and pot and absolutely zero blood. Real blood, anyway.

Hungry or not, I didn’t believe the taste of Gerard would ever go away. It wasn’t just his blood; it was his sweat, his saliva, his skin, even just his breath. No matter how much I smoked, no matter what strain Ray was plying me with, everything still had an undercurrent of invasive, mouthwatering, sickening sweetness. Blood itself was offensive to me, simply because it wasn’t his. With Gerard lingering in my own demented bloodstream, anything I consumed was just a crude imitation. 

It would be easier to get rid of if you stopped fucking biting him in his dreams. 

Can’t. Might die. 

And I looked like shit. I was so grey that I reckon if a human saw me they’d pass out, I looked that fucking unnatural. My tongue was practically white, save for the cruel and unholy burn across the tip of it that glistened purple. I had tried to gnaw it off with my teeth, even went at it with a razor, before Ray stopped me. There was no getting rid of it. Ironic, really. Wasn’t I unholy enough, without the glaring reminder? Any time I looked in the mirror at my, thankfully, solid reflection, I thought about what Gerard must have seen when I left. I could perfectly recall the tandem fear and dejection in his eyes, the realisation that I was slipping away and it was out of his control. When I was in his head, he didn’t look at me that way. 

“You thought about going back to the house?” Ray asked from his faithful spot on the other couch, and again, I scoffed. For the first time in a little while, his voice turned gentle. “He’s not there.”

Coward that I am, I’d asked Ray to check. Of course. He’d let himself in on the third day, when I was jittery and sweating and getting close to gnawing my own fingers clean off at the knuckle because I was so fucking hungry. I knew that if Gerard was gone, if it was confirmed that he was gone, then I didn’t need to be afraid of what I might do when the hunger got too much. I manipulated myself into believing that I had no tracking capabilities whatsoever and I wouldn’t be able to follow his scent. I told myself that once he was gone, that was it. On the other hand, I knew that if he had stayed in the house, then I would have to move to Antarctica. Sure, I could get inside his head, but I couldn’t see where he actually was, because in his dreams he was already in my house. Waiting for me. Does that make it okay? 

When Ray had come back, he said very little aside from letting me know that Gerard was gone and that he’d given back the key. 

Kick in the teeth. 

When I asked him if Gerard had left me a note, he said no. 

“Yeah, Ray, I know.” 

“So? Why not–”

“You kicking me out?”

“No.”

“Then drop it.” Ray sighed loudly and I braced for what I knew was coming. He had done this a few times, too; tried to bargain with me, to be gentle, to nudge me back toward normality even when I was hurtling off the edge of whatever fucking cliff I found myself on that day. 

“You remember when I said I’d get you through this, Frank?”

“Vividly.” 

“Well, I’m sick of it, alright? I meant what I said.” Please don’t make me listen to all this again. “You did the right thing, okay? I mean, you fucked up, but you did what you had to do and you’ve had your time to sulk about it–”

“Ray,” I say softly, sternly, shaking my head as I pinch at the bridge of my nose. It’s been a fucking week. I’d like to see you go through this and not be a fucking wreck. 

“It’s over,” he whispers, and I roll my head in his direction and finally look at him. He gives me a small, non-confrontational smile and I want to snarl at him. “Torturing yourself isn’t going to help. It’s not helping.” 

“I disagree,” I mutter through my teeth, but that’s not true either. Nothing is helping. No amount of me inserting myself into his dreams and touching him, kissing him, tasting him, just for a moment, was ever going to help me cope with this. Nothing could; nothing except going back in time and walking on the other side of the fucking bridge that night. Nothing except telling Gerard to get his ass in my car and figuring the rest out later. 

I’m not sure how much longer I can stay here. Not Ray’s apartment, not quite this immortal coil; but here in this city that, as far as I know, is more or less the vampire capital of the United States. I’m not sure if I can accept returning to normality like Ray so badly wants me to do. I don’t know if I can suffer turning up to the blood bank week in, week out. I don’t know if I can deal with looking Schechter in the eye while he reassigns me to another fucking graveyard shift on the other end of town. I don’t know if I can sit through another threat evaluation and not break down. I don’t know if I can do any of it without resorting to astral fucking projection. 

Is this a new low? 

It was this city that did this to me. Ray might have rescued me, in a sense, but he never saved me. This place is a dead end. My house is a fucking mausoleum and it’s not even mine and for all I know - even though Ray’s not seen anything on his drives past it - there’s feds sniffing around it, probably waiting for the human stink to come back and reveal itself. 

At least if I went back to Belleville, I’d be some kind of safe, even if just from myself. I’d be far enough away from the house that the temptation to go back and huff the bedsheets like some kind of pervert wouldn’t be clawing at my stomach. There wouldn’t be reminders; not of Gerard, at least, but maybe of what came before. It’s been twenty years since I went back and it was awful then, watching my parents from afar and knowing I was dead meat if they saw me, knowing they had halfway given up looking for me. For a month straight I camped out in my car behind a 7-Eleven sipping from a stale blood bag in the dead of winter and suddenly, as I thought back on it, the idea didn’t seem so bad. Nobody there knew me anymore. All my friends were dead, in one way or another. If I went home , I might even not be able to reach Gerard anymore. The thought made me panic, but it was what I needed. It was the last habit that I needed to break. 

I could come back later. I could start again later. 

Wishful fucking thinking. 

Clutching at straws. 

“Hey, Ray,” I mumble, my eyes drifting back to his face after realising I’d zoned out, and he just grunts in response, eyebrows raised expectantly. “Can you lend me a bag?”

He’s looking at me the way he did when I was telling him his mother takes it up the ass and likes it even more than I do. Unlikely, seeing as she’s been dead since I was alive, but I still shouldn’t have said it.  

“ Of ?”

“You know.” 

I light a cigarette to fill the silence while Ray gawked at me. 

“What happened to your little hunger strike?” And for the first time in a week, I smile, because Ray is finally smiling. 

“Just need one for the road.” 

Chapter Text

On the morning of Christmas Eve, while I was trying to creep through the apartment unnoticed to make coffee, Mikey cornered me and insisted that I come to his workplace’s Christmas party with him that night. Bleary-eyed and exhausted and aching to get back to my room where everyone would leave me alone, obviously, I refused.

Sometime around midday, Pete knocked on my door and poked his head around it before I’d said he could come in and said the same thing, something about how it would be good for me to get out of the apartment, get some fresh air, have a drink and let myself loosen up. It was nothing but Mikey’s words coming out of his mouth but I didn’t know Pete anywhere near as well, so I couldn’t tell him to go fuck himself. Politely, I declined, and closed the door in his face. 

When Mikey got home from his shift at the bookstore I was expecting him to be drained and antisocial, considering it was the day before Christmas and he looked physically unwell from how busy it had been and how many assholes he had had to deal with, but he still had the energy to coax me out of my room and force me to eat. I had thought he’d given up on the whole party thing, until he sighed and folded his arms and leaned a hip against the counter. I was in for it. 

“I just think it would be fun,” he complained, his voice taking on the whiny, nasal thing that I know he learned from me. “It’s not even a party, Gee, not really. We’re just going to Lucky’s .”

Mikey knew as well as I did about how many rough nights I’d had at Lucky’s over the years. It was the kind of bar that had a crowd you couldn’t predict; shithead punk kids one night, miserable old trucker guys the next. There was always a shitty band playing, and the pool tables were always crowded and sticky, and the urinals were always clogged. It was the first place Mikey and I went when he turned twenty-one. It was the first place that I got my dick sucked and I still can’t remember who by. Somehow, it was one of the best bars in town, and the worst place I could think of being on Christmas Eve after the worst month of my fucking life. I didn’t want to be surrounded by people. I didn’t even want to drink anymore. I didn’t see the point.

So, I’m not entirely sure how I ended up in the backseat of Mikey’s car in the first place. I’m sure there was plenty of nagging and teasing and pleading on Mikey’s part, but I had tuned most of it out. I didn’t remember showering or getting dressed or even leaving the house, but now all I could think about was how badly I wanted to get back in the house. I wanted to go back to sleep. I wanted to dream. 

“We can even leave early if you want,” Mikey was saying from behind the wheel, “maybe just a couple hours?”

Euck. 

I unstuck my forehead from where it had become glued to the window I was leaning against and looked up front, to Mikey, to the back of Pete’s head. Why are you even making me go. You know I’m going to hate it and I’m going to be shamefully miserable and you’re just going to be babysitting me all damn night anyway. I’m glaring at them both so hard that I might as well be trying to fry them with my laser vision. God, I wish I had laser vision. Pete caught my eyes in the rearview mirror and snickered. 

“You can get wasted if you want,” he said nonchalantly, before turning around to look at me properly, “I’m gonna.” Mikey reached out and swiped at the side of his head. 

“Just because I’m the designated driver doesn’t mean you need to take advantage of me,” Mikey muttered, “I don’t exactly feel like peeling your ass off the sidewalk tonight.”

Yeah, because you’ve got me to worry about. 

It’s snowing, and hard. Maybe if I’m lucky, I’ll slip on the sidewalk and they’ll have to peel me off with a shovel and scoop me into a body bag. 

“Just try and have a good time, Gee,” Mikey sighs, and I close my eyes so that it’s not so obvious I’m rolling them. “You’ll feel better. Trust me.”

I absolutely do not feel better, I repeat to myself as we walk into Lucky’s, slinking behind Mikey and Pete as inconspicuously as I can, but I quickly come to realise that I stick out like a vampire at the fucking beach. The place is packed, bodies smushed together at the bar so tightly that they start to blend into one another, an amalgamation of sweaters and parkas and Santa hats, pencil skirts and sneakers and handbags. Normal people. I’m the only person dressed all in black and judging by the grisly expression on my face blinking back at me from the mirror behind the bar, I might as well be the grim reaper and the Grinch rolled into one. I am here to ruin Christmas. It’s loud, too much laughter and the jarring noise of pool cues and clinking glass, Journey on the jukebox. The air is warm, sticky like Lucky’s always used to be because some things never change. 

I do not feel better. I want to go home. I want to go back to New York. 

Mikey grins and waves at a group lingering at the corners of the room and I guess that must be his coworkers, but he doesn’t leave my side. Pete kisses him on the cheek and goes to take a leak and Mikey steers us towards the bar, wedging our bodies into the sea of drunken, sweaty flesh. For the next two minutes, until Mikey puts a beer in my hand and then an arm around my shoulders, I feel like I can’t breathe. 

It’s just as awful as I expected it to be. There’s the shame of having my baby brother buy me drinks, which shouldn’t even be a real thing, but that doesn’t make it any less humiliating. The shame of being introduced to his friends and his acquaintances is only dulled by the fact that I’ll likely never see them again, until they start asking about what I do for a living, and Mikey has to step in and gracefully redirect the conversation. The shame of watching Pete looking at my brother like he’s the best thing in the world – because he is – and hold his hand while all I have to hold onto is a rapidly warming bottle of beer. 

The shame of going back up to the bar. Once. Twice. Three times. 

Maybe it’s not so bad being back in Jersey after all. 

Maybe I am happy that I’m here with Mikey. Maybe I’m happy that Mikey is happy. Maybe I do like Pete. 

The people aren’t so bad. Work parties at Christmas are always awful but Mikey’s friends are better than mine ever were. Because they like him more than anyone ever liked me. 

More than Cartoon Network ever liked me. 

Before I know it, I’m telling people about where I went to college and how I used to live in New York and how, now, I’m just taking some time out to really work on my art. People always buy that when you tell it to them because everyone loves an artist. Everyone always thinks it’s so noble, so brave, so honourable and just so punk, going against the system and doing something you love instead. They don’t need to know I’m lying. They don’t need to know that if I had a pen I would be drawing deformed sketches of Frank on this soggy beer mat on the table in front of me. They don’t need to know that all I can draw is cartoons and I’m not some kind of fancy, super talented fucking painter. They don’t need to know I’m a washed up queer who’s been dumped twice this month and can’t seem to let the last one go even though it was the first one that should have been important. I’m one drink away from telling the guy I’m talking to – blonde, nose ring, weird hair - that Lindsey divorced me and took my children, just for the hell of it. 

I get up to use the restroom and by some miracle I don’t fall over, just stagger a little for the first couple of steps until Pete - on his way out of the restroom - catches me and laughs and tells me to take it easy. I laugh with him and I tell him I’m fine. Really, I am. I’m sure I am. This might be the best I’ve felt since coming home. Doesn’t matter that it’s a waste of time, doesn’t matter that I’m still thinking about Frank between each made-up anecdote I give one of Mikey’s friends. 

Mikey’s always right. 

On my way back from the restroom, feeling considerably more drunk than I did in the first place, I have to move to one side to make room for some heavy-set guy in a flannel shirt that’s bursting at the seams and I slump a little against the wall, trying to find my balance. Lucky’s is the kind of place that’s plastered with posters and polaroids and hazy gig photography from years gone by, practically from floor to ceiling. From what I can remember of all the nights spent bugging out in this exact hallway, a lot of the gigs didn’t even happen here. The pictures are all blurry with glare and lens flares and most of the posters are faded or half torn down or papered over with a dozen other flyers or scribbled all over with mindless graffiti. 

Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure there’s a picture of me throwing up on this wall somewhere. 

But as this guy pushes past me and I get a whiff of musk steeped in beer and stale urine, the wall opposite me appears to creep closer, my eyes honing in on a photograph that I imagine I’ve never noticed before because it’s right underneath an old Misfits flyer that should probably be in a museum. Or maybe because I never would have been able to recognise anybody in it, until right now. 

The photo isn’t anything special or at least, it shouldn’t have been. It’s just some band, half of the drummer’s face cut off by a ride cymbal, a bassist with a bad haircut, a bleach-blonde guitarist, and some short kid with a lip ring and a scorpion tattooed on his neck, screaming into a microphone with enough force that the stage lights were bouncing off the saliva on his tongue. 

There was nothing I could do but stare at it. At him. In an instant, my insides bounced and backflipped and plummeted straight to my feet, the sensation so intense that for a second I was afraid I’d pissed myself. My breathing picked up and every blood vessel in my body dilated until I was certain I was about to have a heart attack. Like my blood was trying to leap out of my fucking veins. Like my heart was a rat in a cage, looking for a way out. 

Frank. 

For a moment, there’s anger, swiftly followed by a bizarre, sickly sweet feeling of relief. The relief gives way to nausea and my stomach aches so bad that I know I’ll double over if I move. I’ll hurl if I move. 

It can’t be Frank. It can’t be Frank, because that would be cruel, unfair, downright just fucking serendipitously creepy. Did I break a mirror this year? Is that why my luck is so damn bad? It can’t be Frank because that would mean he’s haunting me. 

I try and tell myself that I’m drunk and so I must be just imagining it. But I can’t tear my eyes away. It’s only been a week. Of course it’s him. There must be a thousand kids with the same dumbass tattoo. The same lip ring. The same strand of hair that curls perfectly around the curve of his jaw. 

I feel like I’m being sucked out of an airlock. 

It can’t be Frank, because the date on the photo, scribbled down in solid black marker in the top-left corner, reads 09/27/79. 

In 1979, I was two years old. 

I am going to throw up. 

My feet finally find a neural pathway to my brain and they start to move, spurred on by the urgent swell in my throat that tells me I really am about to make a huge fucking mess. Lucky’s is spinning and where before it was dark, it’s now too bright and my shoes are sticking and slipping on the floor at the same time and why the fuck is there Bon Jovi on the jukebox on fucking Christmas Eve? Fucking New Jersey. I’m in Hell. Somebody grabs my shoulder and I almost scream until I realise - through the tears I didn’t even know were welling in my eyes and making everything all the more blurry - that it’s Mikey and then I move faster, dizzy, sweating, hyperventilating and heaving and already fucking gagging.

I’m standing in two inches of snow, keeled over and emptying the contents of my stomach with one hand steadying myself against the wall, fingers splayed on the grimy, frozen bricks. Me and this alley go way back. I’m shivering and shaking like a dog shitting razorblades and I’m pretty sure there’s puke in my hair but whenever I think it’s over, more comes up. Nothing is making sense to me. I feel like I’m dreaming. I feel like I’m about to die, chucking my guts up in a dingy alleyway that smells like rotting Chinese food and trash and piss. Bon Jovi pulses inside my head like a death knell, muffled by the distance between me and the jukebox but not muffled enough to do my headache any favours. My brain is going to explode. Each fleck of snow that lands on my skin feels like a pin prick and there’s enough of it that my hair and my clothes are soaked and freezing like I’ve just been dredged out of the Hudson. 

That was how this was meant to go. 

Vomiting makes me delirious at the best of times but this is something else. I start wondering whether somebody spiked my beer. It wouldn’t be unheard of at Lucky’s but – really ? That’s one hell of a hallucination. I wouldn’t make that up. I don’t hate myself that much, do I?

1979. I’m trying to think of all the things that happened in 1979, because there’s no way that that photo was one of them. 

‘Alien’ . The Unabomber, I think. ‘Unknown Pleasures’ . Margaret Thatcher. ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’. Something about the IRA. ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’. American Airlines Flight 191. ‘Mad Max’. Iran hostage crisis. Pink Floyd released ‘The Wall’. First ‘Star Trek’ movie. ‘The Warriors’. ‘Apocalypse Now’. Final issue of Marvel’s ‘The Tomb of Dracula’. 

Another retch brings another stream of vomit and my knees buckle because there’s nothing left inside of me and I’m crying my eyes out. I don’t know if it’s because I’d forgotten how much I hate throwing up, or out of frustration because it just won’t stop, or because I’m spending Christmas Eve the same way I did the whole time I lived in this shitty, crusty fucking hellhole of a town, or because Frank just won’t leave me alone, or because I don’t want him to leave me alone, or because there’s a photo of him taped to the wall of the best bar in Belleville that was supposedly taken twenty-seven years ago. The puddle at my feet is highlighter yellow. Don’t eat yellow snow. 

For a second, the laughter and the music from inside the bar - which has now transitioned horrifically from Bon Jovi into Wham!’s ‘Last Christmas’ and I experience a strong flicker of resentment and a severe homicidal urge - gets louder as the door opens and closes, footsteps crunching their way through the snow toward me. 

“Gee?” Mikey’s apprehensive, squeaky voice draws a groan out of me and I slump forward against the wall, my face pressed up against it hard enough that within a minute I’ll likely be stuck to the ice. It’s probably not even ice, just straight up frosted piss. 

“I’m fine,” I moan, not even slightly convincing, but at least I’ve stopped puking for the time being. Mikey makes a small, stressed noise in his throat. I don’t look up at him but I know he’s looking at me, taking in the pathetic picture that is me at one with a disgusting back alley wall with a tsunami of puke at my feet and probably plastered all over my face. It’s not something he hasn’t seen before. I just really didn’t want him to ever have to see it again. 

“I’ll go and get Pete,” he mumbles, frantic, “we’ll take you home.” 

“No, Mikes, I’m fine, I just–”

“Wait here!” And he’s gone, the door to Lucky’s creaking on its hinges in his wake. I don’t want to go home. I want to die in this alleyway. Bury me in the river. 

I try my best to straighten up and my head is swimming but it’s not so bad. I’m startlingly aware of how little I’ve eaten in the last week. I push myself away from the wall and wobble slightly on my feet as I fish around in my pockets for my cigarettes. Sober up, I’m yelling at myself inside my head when my hands are shaking too much to even get so much as a spark out of my lighter. When I do finally get the stupid thing lit, looking up through my soggy, filthy hair, the flame casts light on a shadow just a few feet away from me and I drop it, lighter and cigarette tumbling straight into my vomit. I half expected it to burst into flames. 

Illuminated by the dull beam of a faraway streetlight and smoking a cigarette of his own, Frank takes a step toward me, eyes the colour of brandy and fire, exhausted and relieved and agonised at the same time. 

“Hey,” he breathes, a fast rush of air like something just punctured his lung. 

I recoil mostly because there’s no way I can fucking believe it but also because I can feel bile sifting its way through the panic rising in my throat. I try and swallow it down but I can’t swallow at all, can’t even breathe. I definitely got fucking spiked. There’s no way. The best I can do is blink at him, my shoulders shuddering with the force of trying to breathe. I can’t make sense of it. He shouldn’t be here. He wouldn’t be here. There’s no reason for him to be in front of me right now unless he’s fucking following me. 

“The fuck are you doing here,” I mumble out, the strain of it making it feel like my chest is caving in, and when he smiles at me, pathetic and tortured and maybe even uncomfortable, my heart skips so many beats in quick succession that I wonder if I’m going to die. Instead of answering me he looks me up and down, frowning, lip ring tugged between his teeth for him to chew on as his face darkens slightly in the already useless light. 

“Are you alright?” 

No. And fuck you, by the way. This is your fault. You did this to me. 

“Peachy,” I hiss through my teeth, but as if my body is keen to make a point of betraying me any fucking chance it gets, when I try and take another step to put some distance between us, I slip on the ice and, of course, Frank catches me, hands soft and steady on my shoulders, stronger than he should be for someone so stupidly fucking small. 

“Hey, take it easy,” he murmurs, softly, captivatingly commanding, his breath warm against my ear that’s overly sensitive from the cold, sending an electric shiver catapulting its way straight down my spine and into my legs. Without even realising it, I’ve started fucking weeping. 

“Get off me, Frank,” I moan, miserably, pushing at his chest with weak arms and limp wrists only to let out a frustrated, desperate whine when I feel his hands on my face. 

“It’s okay,” he mumbles, like this is confusing to him, like he can’t imagine why I might want to get the hell away from him, no matter how badly the centre of my chest wants to pull me closer toward him, like he’s the sun and I’m the fucking Earth. 

“Get off ,” I spit, finding enough strength to shove him just enough that he lets me go, and it takes everything I’ve got to stay standing. When I look at him it’s like he’s about to cry, jaw clenched and bottom lip trembling, eyes huge and beautiful. Fuck you. “Why are you here, Frank?” I don’t know if it’s rage or puke swimming around my tongue. Through the tears I can’t even see him. 

“I don’t know,” he mumbles, his voice strange and distant and hopeless, almost like he means it. It’s not enough. 

“You don’t know ?” He’s pleading me for something with his eyes but there’s no use trying to figure out what it is. “What, you just got bored, figured you didn’t already fuck with me enough so it’s time for round two? That it?”

“No,” he groans, taking a step toward me, “ no , Gerard, listen–”

“No, Frank,” I yell back, and his eyes snap wider and maybe he is crying, but I can’t tell in the light. There are snowflakes clinging to his hair and I can’t shake how fucking pretty he is and it sends me spiralling. “Fuck you. Alright? That clear enough for you? You can’t just show up. You’re the one that fucked off and left me, remember?”

“I–”

“And you messed me up bad , by the way. In case you didn’t fucking know.” I don’t understand how I’m still drunk and I don’t understand why I’m still standing here. The words come out too fast. “And I don’t know, maybe that’s on me, for falling for all your bullshit, but I don’t wanna talk to you. I don’t wanna see you.” Yes I do. “I don’t wanna be anywhere fucking near you.” I can’t escape you. I don’t even want to escape you. I just don’t want you to hurt me. 

“Can we just talk?” He asks me, gently, hands up in peace, palms showing. I can still remember the weight of his hand in mine, in reality and in my dreams, the way that our fingers fit together. 

“What do you wanna talk about?” I hiss, batting his hands away when they come for me, every bit of resentment and burning fucking obsession coming spewing out of my mouth before I can try and stop it, before I can think, before I can even try and be sensible and adult about any of this. “You wanna talk about how, after everything you said, after everything you did to me, it took you five fucking minutes to walk out on me? Or do you wanna talk about how this stupid cut on my neck won’t heal? Or, I don’t know, maybe the fact that I’m spending every minute I can, asleep, just so that I can see you in my dreams? Is that pathetic enough for you?” 

He’s staring at me like I’m the one breaking his heart and it only makes things worse. When he opens his mouth to speak I don’t even let him start. 

“No? Okay, how about the fact that it’s Christmas and I’m here puking my guts out because there’s a photo, in there ,” and I gesture wildly at the wall behind me, “of you ? How about the fact that just looking at your face right now makes me feel like I’ve just woken up during fucking open heart surgery?”

“Gerard–”

“I can’t get you out of my head!” I wail, and I can’t move anymore, so cold and so defeated that there’s no point even going anywhere. I feel like I’m going to drop dead. Frank steps closer and I don’t pull away when he puts his hands on my cheeks, cradling my face like it’s something important to him, not something he’s just plucked back out of the trash after realising he wasn’t done with it after all. I’m sobbing so loudly it’s making my ears ring. “I can’t , Frank. I can’t . And it’s driving me crazy, and you’re driving me crazy, and I miss you, and I hate you and nothing makes sense and I–”

“I can explain,” he whispers, thumbs smoothing their way through my tears with his mouth brushing against mine, and my fists are curling, weakly and halfway frostbitten, around the collar of his jacket. 

“I don’t want you to explain,” I moan, and when he kisses me, barely even a kiss at all, it’s like he’s pulled the pin out of a dozen grenades at once. There’s a gnawing, aching, starving silence and he looks up at me, eyes bottomless and lips asking, begging, insisting. 

“Yes you do,” he mumbles, his palm pressing a little harder against my cheekbone and steering my face down toward his, his mouth consuming mine, deeper and darker than I thought a kiss could be. I taste like puke. 

“Frank, don’t,” I stutter out in a harsh, breathless whisper, but he makes a small, eager noise into my mouth that makes me weak at the knees and my hands come up to hold his face as his move up into my hair, curling, twisting, grasping. It’s difficult to care. It’s difficult to even think at all, leaning into him with force, my thumb slipping between our mouths and pressing into his bottom lip, wrenching down at his jaw and drawing a heavy moan from his mouth that sticks to my tongue. 

“I missed you,” he murmurs in between ragged breaths, one hand holding the back of my neck and pressing his nails in.

“Shut up,” I gasp, trying to get him closer. 

His voice is hot, lazy, thick with want, as his mouth dips briefly from mine to my jaw, like he’s trying to cover me in as much of his spit as he can, 

“Can’t stay away from you,” he growls against the corner of my jaw before bringing our lips back together, not giving me a moment to breathe. I don’t want a moment to breathe. “ Can’t. ” His breath catches and he all but lunges forward, voice heavy like molasses, “you’re everything , you know that?” His teeth press into my lip and I moan, high-pitched and trembling. “ Can’t fucking help myself. ”

“Then don’t,” I pant, a pathetically needy sound falling out of me as he puts one hand on my chest and backs me against the wall of the alley hard enough that my shoulder blade clips a jagged brick and I hiss and he just pushes closer to me, one leg in between mine, hand falling from my chest to my hip to pin me in place. 

“Careful what you wish for,” he purrs against the corner of my mouth while I’m trying to catch my breath and get him to kiss me again at the same time, only to choke on what little oxygen I can find when the heel of his palm presses into the sensitive spot next to my hipbone and I feel him rut his hips against my thigh, just once. 

“Frank,” I mumble in feeble protest at I don’t even know what , eyelids fluttering, frowning, mouth hanging open and letting out a groan when he does it again, mouth warm and damp against my cheek. I’m almost certain that we’re standing in everything that I puked up. It’s fucking freezing and yet Frank’s hands on me are burning. I’m so dizzy I can’t even focus on the stars forming behind my eyelids. When his mouth finds mine there are snowflakes on his tongue and my hips buck reflexively, uselessly, into his touch when his fingers skim the buckle of my belt. “Not here,” I whisper, more of an unintelligible moan, eyes jumping and hitting the bone of their sockets when he smooths his palm over the length of me through my jeans.

“Where, then,” he breathes, tongue lapping at the underside of the curve of my jaw, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. In the back of my mind, there’s something about Mikey, something urgent, but I can’t form the thought any further than that. Everything inside my head may as well be liquid, everything melted together. 

“No, I mean– ah, fuck, ” I gasp, nearly swallowing my tongue when he grips me a little harder and licks a clean stripe from the dip of my collarbones to my chin. “We need to- I mean, we can’t-” A groan rips out of my throat in response to his hands and it instantly turns into a whine. 

“You wanna talk first?” He murmurs darkly against my neck, squeezing at my dick, and my breathing stutters. “We can talk.” I can’t think about anything with your fucking hands on me and you know it. You know I want you and you know I need you and you’re taking advantage of me and I don’t even care anymore. I want everything that you’ve got. 

“If we stay here I’m gonna freeze and my dick is gonna fall off,” I mutter against my will, because it’s true, biting down hard on my bottom lip as my eyes roll back again despite how hard I’m trying to ignore what he’s doing to me. He laughs softly against my cheek, the musical, perfect laugh that I missed so much, and twists his body so that he can slip his hand straight into my jeans. 

“I’ll keep you warm,” he whispers as his fingers curl perfectly around my dick, his wrist moving in a way that shouldn’t even be possible at that angle but he’s doing it anyway, my vision going black and then pure white as I tug him closer by his hair, nodding, mumbling useless things under my breath and cursing a hundred times a second until he kisses me again. I’m being so loud it’s bordering on obscene and all he does is encourage me, nodding and cramming his face into my neck so there’s no way I can even try and mask the sounds I’m making. 

“I need you so bad,” he murmurs against where my pulse is jumping and juddering beneath my skin, his hand keeping a perfect rhythm against his uneven breath, and my hands anchor themselves to his hair and his face, trying not to let my feet slip on the snow or the puke on the ground. “ So fucking bad, God, you don’t even know ,” he moans, like it’s hurting him, his fist milking the precum out of me and making me gasp so loudly it sounds like I’m crying. 

“Don’t you start talking to me about fucking God ,” I breathe, spread thin and cracking on every syllable just like he said it to me before, heat flooding my abdomen. You’re my god. There’s not even words for what you are to me. His mouth comes back to mine and his tongue is so warm that it may as well be all over my entire body all at once. His hips move firmly, eagerly, messily against the slope of my thigh and he groans in time with me, speeding up with his hands. “ Fuck ,” I pant, dropping a hand down to grab at his hip and hold him to me, nodding, my mouth searching blindly for his. He looks up at me, pupils huge and lips glistening, grinning, eyelashes peppered with snowflakes and I moan just at the sight of him, a moan that sounds like I love you on the wind, a moan that screams I’m gonna come all over your fucking fingers. 

“I need you,” he whispers up at me as he draws it out of me, as my legs shake and my nails press into his jeans and his scalp, and it’s so innocent and so wrong coming out of him, so sincere that it forces another wave to crash its way through my stomach and I sob , Frank bracing my body against his and kissing me and laughing gently, triumphantly, as he strokes me through it. All I can do is cling to him, hanging off him, moaning weaker and weaker the longer he touches me until he pulls his hand away. 

I lean my head back against the wall and watch him, his eyes blissed out and self-assured as he cleans his hand off with his tongue, grinning when he catches me grimacing. 

“You’re gross,” I pant, mesmerised by the movement of his tongue, the heaviness of the hunger burning in his eyes, the way his teeth shine when they’re sticky. Pretty. His one clean hand spreads out slowly against my hip and he leans in with a gentle hum, kissing me delicately, but warmly, on the mouth. 

“Yeah,” he mumbles, a cocky and breathless concession, his body slumping into mine a little. "Merry Christmas, I guess." I laugh, weakly, and something miserable swells inside of me like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. I can’t help but kiss him again, frowning at the same time, my fingers splayed out against his cheek. 

“I think you’re standing in my puke,” I whisper, and he snickers, his lips meeting mine once, twice, three times, over and over again, 

“Like I care,” he whispers back, and I’m laughing, the blood in my cheeks making a last-ditch effort to warm me up, Frank humming gently against one of them as he curls his arms around my waist. “You’re right, you are freezing.”

“Aren’t you?” Another kiss. Stop kissing him before you die. 

“Not so much,” he mumbles around my tongue, grinning, fingers slipping beneath my sweater and my shirt to press against my bare skin but he’s just as cold as I am, so it doesn’t even make me flinch. 

“ Gee? ” 

Mikey’s voice cuts through me and breaks whatever spell Frank has me under and I whip my head around to see him standing at the end of the alley, his parka zipped up to his chin and his hand holding Pete’s, both of them looking at me and Frank like they’ve walked in on us naked. Not really that far off. I clear my throat and stand up straight and my tongue is moving around uselessly in my mouth trying to come up with something to say. Frank scrambles to unlatch himself from every part of my body he’s curled himself around and less than gracefully sidesteps the vomit we’re standing in. He reaches for his hair, doing a not so great job of neatening it up like that would make anything less obvious, smiling sheepishly at my brother and his boyfriend like this is no big deal. I have come in my fucking jeans. 

“Hey,” I mumble with a shy, somewhat repentant smile, tucking my freezing cold hands into my pockets. This probably looks even worse than it is. 

“Who’s this?” It’s not a tone of voice I’ve really heard from Mikey before; he’s anxious, like he always is, but there’s an edge to it, something protective, aggressive, like he’s about to launch himself at Frank, or me.

“Frank,” Frank and I breathe in perfect unison, and Mikey’s eyes flinch at the corners. Pete looks between the two of us and then up at Mikey, confused, painfully awkward. Slowly, slow enough that I can tell exactly what he’s thinking, Mikey glares at Frank.

“ Really .”

“Uh,” I mumble, swallowing hard, “Frank, this is my brother? Mikey?”

“Hi,” Frank manages out of the corner of his mouth, shoulders hunched like he’s trying to make himself invisible and given what we just did I can’t blame him. He glances sideways at me, eyes frightened and maybe a little pissed off for reasons I can’t figure out. “You told him about me?” He whispers, like he’s offended, and I just stare back at him like an idiot because of course I fucking told him about you. 

“He didn’t, really,” Mikey interrupts, and Pete’s nudging at his elbow saying something that I can’t hear, “just told me enough.” Frank half-nods, smiling awkwardly, feet shuffling a little against the floor. Mikey sighs, looking at me, and I can tell he’s disappointed and confused and blindsided and I shake my head, as if that’s the same as telling him that it’s fine, telling him not to worry when the guy I’ve been crying about in my sleep for almost two weeks straight suddenly shows up and we’re making out in the alley behind Lucky’s on Christmas Eve. I’d be worried too. Why aren’t I worried? The snow is falling a little heavier and Mikey rubs weakly at the lenses of his glasses, his eyes trailing back to Frank’s. 

“What’s your problem, man?” He squeaks out in his direction, gesturing vaguely at me with an air of defeat. Frank just stares back intently, head cocked a little to one side, like he’s the one with the fucking laser vision. “Where do you get off, messing around on my brother like that?”

“ Mikey ,” I beg, but he just rolls his eyes at me. Because I’m always the idiot. Mikey’s always right. 

“I’m not here to cause any trouble,” Frank says softly, calmly, very reminiscent of these aren’t the droids you’re looking for. He glances over at me and the way he smiles at me nearly knocks me on my ass. “Me and Gerard just need to talk.”

“Haven’t you done enough?” Mikey sighs, and Pete frowns and squeezes his hand and says that maybe they should leave us to it but Mikey’s not one for giving up. 

“Maybe,” Frank says back bluntly, but Mikey cuts off whatever else he had been about to say, 

“Gee, come on,” he urges, gesturing backward with his head in the direction of where he had parked the car, “I wanna get you home.” Never in my life did I think I would ever find myself stuck between Frank and my brother. I really didn’t like how that made me feel, looking into Mikey’s eyes and being reminded of all the guilt, all of the embarrassment and the shame for everything that I’ve done and everything that’s happened, for ending up here with him; all of that, and I still wanted to go with Frank. 

“It’s alright, Mikes,” I sighed, forcing a weak, hopeful, useless smile. His mouth faltered. “I need to take care of this. I’m sorry.” Pete smiled back at me, because it was clear enough that he understood, but Mikey didn’t. Maybe he just didn’t want to. The shame resurfaced and I wished that the ground would swallow me whole. 

“I’ll get him home,” Frank said gently, sweetly, the same honey-like tone that had done things to me that I couldn’t even begin to fathom. The same one I had heard in my dreams, begging me to stay a little longer. His eyes bore into Mikey’s for a few moments and Mikey relaxed, just a shred, visible only to me. He looked at me and I nodded, smiling, encouraging, promising. Everything was going to be alright.

Chapter Text

For a minute or so after Mikey and Pete walked away, Frank and I stood at least a foot apart, eyes trailing after them. There was nothing left to be heard but the raucous noise from inside Lucky’s and I noticed Frank’s lips twitch upward at the edges when The Smashing Pumpkins came on on the jukebox. By now, the snow was pouring down and the flakes were getting larger, thicker, fluffier, clinging to Frank’s hair. He didn’t even look cold. 

I reached out for his hand, not quite knowing what had spurred it on, and he jumped slightly when I touched him only to smile when he met my eyes, timid and not at all like himself, a whisper of the man that had balked at my being in love with him, a shadow of the man that had just had me pressed up against a wall with his hand in my fucking pants. 

“You wanna get a drink?” I asked, motioning with my head to the bar, and his smile softened slightly, eyes flickering up to the ancient, half-lit-up Lucky’s sign and sighing. Like he was weighing it up. I didn’t even want a drink. It just seemed like it was the most normal thing I had ever asked him. 

“I’ve got a motel room,” he murmured, shrugging with his mouth and smiling shyly at me. This isn’t the part where you get to be nervous and quiet. “And dry clothes.” What’s the worst that could happen?

“Yeah, okay,” I breathed, watching him lift our intertwined hands slightly to look at them, his pale and tattooed fingers curled around mine that were turning blue. 

Frank was staying at a motel off Main Street, down by the river and only a few blocks away. To my chagrin he dropped my hand from his the moment we started walking and I tried not to look too upset about it. It was a reality check, in a way, because it reminded me that things with Frank were far from fixed; in fact, we’d hardly even made a start. He offered me a cigarette and we smoked in silence for a while as we walked, bodies close together but not quite touching. 

My body was numb and rigid from the cold but my brain was working overtime, allowing for all the repressed anxiety about what Frank had done to creep back, for every single doubt I had considered and not considered to crawl out of the woodwork. There was a very real possibility, maybe even a strong likelihood, that all he wanted to do was get laid because maybe he felt bad about what he did or maybe he just regretted it because it meant he was alone, the same way that I was alone. If that was the case then that meant he would leave, again, and I would have to be ready for it, waiting for it. I would have to leave first as a means of self preservation. 

I couldn’t shake the fact that I didn’t want to leave, though. That, miraculously, we might be able to fix it off the back of one outlandishly chance encounter. 

What if it wasn’t a chance encounter after all? What if he followed me? 

As if he could hear my thoughts, Frank looked up at me as we walked and spoke around a thin exhale of smoke,

“I didn’t follow you, you know.” I didn’t say anything, just glancing over at him, at the way the streetlights bounced off his eyes and the metal in his face. He offered another weak smile, shrugging, wedging his cigarette back into his mouth. “I grew up here.” Absurd odds. I nodded, pursing my lips, looking around us at the run-down houses strewn with Christmas lights, at the snow turning into black slush in the gutters. It’s exactly the kind of place someone like him would grow up, because it’s where I grew up. 

“You visiting your folks?” I asked him, gently, my teeth chattering against the wind. He half-smiled and shook his head, flicking his cigarette away and lighting another one almost immediately. 

“No.” 

“They don’t live here anymore?”

“No.” Softer, more curt, harsh . I tucked my arms tight around my chest in an attempt to preserve some warmth but it was all gone. I’m definitely gonna get sick. Frank cleared his throat and I caught his eyebrows pinching together in the middle, just a little. “I, uh, I just wanted to get out of the city for a while. You know?”

“Yeah.” I didn’t have much of a choice. No thanks to you. 

Frank nodded ahead to the shadow of a motel, nothing but a NO VACANCY sign blinking at me in the near darkness. I had no idea what time it was, which wasn’t unusual now that I was with him. All time and space had a tendency to just slip away. He slowed a little as we got closer to it, just dragging out his smoke or torturing me with the cold, whichever or both. 

“Listen,” he said, anxiously, stopping halfway across the tiny parking lot so that I had to turn and look at him. He wasn’t even looking at me, more like through me. He was starting to scare me now and there was a flicker of annoyance in whatever was left of the boiler that was my chest, the last quiver of the pilot light. He smiled as if he knew. “I didn’t exactly plan any of this,” he sighed, eyes moving slowly across my face. “But there’s some things I’ve gotta tell you and…” He shook his head, muttering something under his breath and tilting his head back, blowing smoke up at the stars, rubbing at his forehead. “I’m really, really gonna need you to hear me out.” 

“Alright,” I said, immediately, blinking against the snow, and he barely reacted. 

“It might take a while.”

“Okay,” I mumbled, clenching my fists in my pockets, shifting from foot to foot on the icy asphalt. Frank nodded, extinguishing his cigarette under his feet as he moved past me, motioning me to follow. 

As motel rooms went, Frank’s was pretty gross, maybe even sub-substandard. It smelled like mold and it was hardly any warmer than outside and the walls were a nicotine-stained coral, the wallpaper peeling away at each and every seam, rings of damp spreading out from the four corners of the ceiling. The bed didn’t even look slept in and no matter how long he’d been here, I couldn’t blame him. When he motioned for me to sit down I hesitated, more because I knew what the bedspread probably looked like under a blacklight, but Frank mumbled a frantic apology and started peeling me out of my soggy clothes, flicking on the ancient heater in the corner that, as it warmed up, smelled like cat piss and burning plastic and, I imagine, uranium. I stood there like an idiot as he fussed over me, blushing when he rubbed a threadbare towel through my hair, bristling at the feel of his fingers on my bare skin as he wrangled me into a hoodie one size too small for me. There was an instant, almost overwhelming sense of relief at breathing in the smell of his detergent. When he pulled away from me, he left a small, hardly-even-there kiss on the top of my arm. 

This is absurd. 

“Coffee?” He mumbled over his shoulder as he stripped out of his clothes so quickly it was nothing but a blur of black fabric and flesh and ink, and I think I said something back but I couldn’t really form a word. “I mean, it tastes like piss, but…” He looked over his shoulder as he got dressed again and smirked, just a little, distracted but obviously not enough to resist cracking a joke. “ Hey .”

“Huh?” I grunted like a fucking caveman, and he snickered, shrugging his way into a sinfully threadbare, thin black t-shirt. 

“Listen, if you can make it through all the things I have to say, you can have whatever you want,” he murmured, taking the towel and scrubbing it through his hair. I blinked. Was that a threat or an invitation or both? He smiled a little wider, looking over my body and my face, and sighed. “Sit down, Gerard, you’re going fucking blue.” 

Frank made us coffee and proclaimed that he was a firm believer that coffee shouldn’t ever come out of a sachet and I was too anxious to disagree with him, just watching him from where I was sat on the itchy carpet, him in the dilapidated armchair with the rat-bite-shaped holes in the upholstery. He waited until I was halfway through my cup and I could feel my fingers again before he said anything else, peeling his soggy cigarette packet out of his discarded jeans. 

“How come you didn’t stay in the house?”

What a fucking bizarre thing to say. 

“It’s Christmas,” I lied. The timing was convenient, sure, but we both knew that wasn’t the reason. Frank smirked, proving me right. 

“So you’re coming back?” He raised an eyebrow as he lit his cigarette, cheeks hollowing out, lips releasing it with a gentle pop as he looked at me expectantly. Waiting for the next lie. He was confusing the hell out of me, teasing me like nothing had fucking changed, expecting me to go along with it. I was weak enough to fall for him in a physical sense and that was awful on its own; I couldn’t let myself fall for this too, not again. 

“You left me ,” I whispered pointedly, looking down into my watery, somewhat grainy coffee. All I could think about was the coffee he made for me that first night I spent in his house, the way he had looked at me then, the gracelessness of the questions he’d asked me. 

“I had to.” I can’t help it, glaring at him, but it doesn’t bother him. His eyes have glazed over slightly, deep in thought. I’ve been waiting for this fight for weeks and now that I have the chance to start it, I can’t think of anything to say. The longer the silence goes on, the worse I feel. I’m ashamed of myself for being here at all. 

“You didn’t have to,” I mumble eventually, setting my coffee to one side and leaning back against the wall, steadying my elbows on top of my knees. Frank took a long drag on his cigarette, nodding slowly, leaning against the arm of the chair with two fingertips rubbing at his temple. 

“I guess. Technically.” Another half-smile. 

“I left you a note, you know.” His eyes snap toward mine a little too quickly and I guess that maybe he didn’t know. I don’t know how he didn’t know, because I left it right there on the fucking countertop. I cleared my throat, trembling a little. “Which said, you should have stayed. And you should have.” His eyes tighten slightly at the edges. “Wouldn’t be in this mess, would we?”

“One way or another, we would be,” Frank sighs, pressing in a little harder at his temple and frowning for a moment. I try and will my muscles into swallowing so that I don’t choke. 

“You gonna tell me what’s going on?” He doesn’t look at me and I wonder if he’s going to cry, eyes sinking down to his lap, to the coffee that he hasn’t touched, moving the cup around a little and sighing shakily. All this does is frustrate me. Don’t bring me here and then not fucking talk to me. Asshole. “Frank, please .” His nose flinches and his lips quiver a little harder and he rubs a hand over his face, jaw clenched, tendons tight beneath the skin of his neck.

“Just give me a minute,” he mumbles into his palm, blinking furiously at the offensive pink wallpaper. I look away because I want to give him what he’s asking me for but I can’t. He’s messed me around enough already. He’s broken my heart already. If he’s going to do it again then it’s on my terms, damn it. 

“Did you do something?” I’ve asked him this before. It’s meant to be open-ended enough that he can give me a yes or no and we can go from there. But even that makes him squirm. “I’m gonna take that as a yes .”

“ Gerard ,” he groans through his teeth, a plea, but I’ve got no choice, unless he starts fucking talking. 

“Are the cops looking for you? Is that why you’re here?” He waits, inhaling noisily against his palm, and then shakes his head. When I open my mouth he interrupts me and his voice is so soft, so calm and so blunt that it renders me speechless. 

“They’re watching me.”

Don’t clam up. This is not the fucking time. 

“Why?” He glances back down at his lap. 

“It’s complicated,” he mumbles. I have to correct my tone before it comes out. 

“Then un complicate it for me, Frank.” 

He laughs, a sarcastic and childish laugh that I would find so perfect and so beautiful if I were hearing it under any other circumstances. “Yeah, okay,” he mutters around his snickers, and I sigh, as loud and irritated and openly passive-aggressive as I can. He glares daggers at me. “If I could uncomplicate it, Gerard, you wouldn’t fucking be here. I’d have already said it and you’d either be running as fast as you can or you’d be fucking dead .” 

Do not react. You are made of stone. You are getting through this and you are not scared of him. 

“Give me the complicated version, then,” I snap, “if it’s so fucking hard for you. If it’s that fucking high stakes that you have to be all fucking cryptic about it like I haven’t been losing my fucking mind .” He sighs again, rubbing repeatedly at his forehead like I’ve woken up a brain tumour. Five minutes of infuriating, hive-inducing, skin-crawling, maddening silence follows and what Frank says next makes my already chilled blood turn to ice in my veins. 

“What have you been dreaming about lately?” 

“What?” He’s watching me with tired, exasperated eyes, something childlike about it, like a frightened, wild animal. He repeats himself, enunciating carefully, deliberately, getting the words to sink in. I can’t make my mouth move, but he cuts me off anyway. 

“Have you been dreaming about me?” Because I miss you. Because I love you. 

I’m aware of my body’s knee-jerk reaction to run trying to kick in, but for some reason it won’t, not all the way. Instead, I’m frozen in place, glued to the disgusting, hairy carpet. My breathing is picking up and my head is foggy and just like all those times before, nothing is making sense. Frank’s voice takes on a familiar airy, almost alchemical quality that turns me weightless and aching all at once. 

“Do you dream about blood?” Because you ripped a hole in my neck. His voice pitches lower, gentler, disembodied and moving like milk and honey in my ears. It flushes me out, rushing against the beat of my pulse like it’s trying to drown it entirely. My head hurts. “How much blood do you see in your dreams, Gerard?” 

The sheets on the bed aren’t white any longer. They’re drenched in so much blood that it’s dripping steadily from the mattress to the floor, puddles soaking into the carpet and starting to congeal. There’s the smell of nails, of slaughterhouse drains, of fountains filled with pennies, thick enough that it coats my tongue. Frank takes a corner of the bedspread and squeezes it gently in his fist, blood flowing through the gaps between his fingers like paint, the sound of it hitting the carpet louder, sharper than it should be, like wringing out a towel on a tile floor. I can’t even be sure that I’m breathing at all. My skin is cold, not from the snow but slick with sweat instead. The blood creeps its way across the floor toward me, tendrils of it furled outward like fingers, like claws, and when I flinch, violently, to pull my feet away from it, it disappears. 

The room is as it was. 

Frank’s hands are as they were, one of them holding a slow-burning cigarette, the other pressed against the side of his head, not a speck of blood in sight. I feel grey. Slowly, he smiles. It’s the same grim smile he’s used before, the one I could never really understand. 

Did I just hallucinate? Am I having a stroke? Am I having a psychotic break? 

Shit, I really did get spiked. 

“You’re not hallucinating,” Frank murmurs through still lips, and my pulse peaks to the point of near cardiac arrest. I glance at the bed once, twice, my breath thin and fast in my nose. I’m half expecting the walls to explode with an avalanche of blood. “Well, you are , but only because I’m making you.”

What?

I can’t speak. My mouth drops open a few times, snapping closed and going slack again, contorting and biting at my bottom lip and pursing back together. I can taste vomit and blood. 

“I was hoping you’d get it if I showed you enough,” Frank sighed, leaning forward in his chair and putting his elbows on his knees, rubbing at the back of his neck. I can no longer see his face. “I wasn’t sure if I could, at least in a way that you’d understand. You’re…” He shakes his head, sighing again. “You don’t exactly catch on fast. And I knew you’d freak out and try and explain it some other way, so…” He shrugged, pushing himself to sit upright and taking one more drag on his cigarette. His eyes soften at the look on my face. I have no fucking idea what is going on. I am going to throw up. Do I need to go to the hospital? 

“You’re just so fucking stupid,” he whispers, head cocked to one side like he feels sorry for me, like the pity to take the edge off the insult is supposed to make me feel better or make everything click into place. I’m inclined to agree. 

What the fuck am I missing? 

“Use your head, Gerard,” he implores, the headache setting in once more, my ears ringing this time. His voice sounds like he’s underwater. “I don’t blame you for not getting it, but please. Think of one thing, just one , that explains this. Please, don’t make me say it.” What are you, the fucking Riddler? 

I’m on drugs. You’re a serial killer. This whole thing is a dream or I slipped in the restroom at Lucky’s and I’m actually dead. 

“Not getting it? No? Okay,” Frank spits out bluntly, and he holds up his empty palm to me and presses his cigarette firmly into it, flinching minutely but otherwise barely reacting, eyes boring directly into mine until I’m sure he can see the inside of my skull. I yelp and cover my mouth because what the fuck is he doing and slowly, the smoke fizzles out, Frank flicking the butt away to reveal a small, blackened circle of flesh in the centre of his palm. Slowly, and so clearly that it looks computer-generated, the blackness folds in on itself and there is nothing left but a pale, purple mark in its place. 

Now I’m definitely hallucinating. 

“Paying attention now?” He asks evenly, eyes black as the sky without any stars, and all I can do is swallow the bile hovering behind my tongue. My hand hasn’t moved from my mouth and I know I look just as frightened and confused as I am. My brain scrambles to come up with a solution, an excuse, a long-winded explanation, sifting through the last month of my life as if there’s anything there that could possibly explain it. 

Blood. Something about blood. Superhuman healing. Visions. Mind control. He doesn’t eat shit. He barely sleeps. He made me take my crucifix off before he fucked me. Bad dreams. Good dreams. Genesis 3:17. He bit a chunk out of my neck and all I can dream about is blood. Empty mirror above the bed. Murdered coworker. Pomegranate juice. Police. The taste of metal on his tongue. Three portraits of the Virgin Mary. A photo on the wall of a bar that was taken twenty-seven years ago even though he told me he was fucking twenty-five. 

The tattoo on his forearm, the one seemingly massacred by burns and missing half its colour, stares back at me like it’s holding a secret I couldn’t possibly uncover but I know I’m about to.

There’s a reason Lindsey never screamed at me when I went to pick up my things. There’s a reason that Mikey walked away and it’s the same reason as to why none of this ever sat right with him. There’s a reason that I’m here right now. There’s a reason I kissed him and there’s a reason I couldn’t let him go. There’s a reason I even went into Frank’s house at all that night. 

There’s a reason I came down off that fucking bridge. 

“Oh, absolutely no fucking way,” is all I can say, words sticking together, my head falling back against the wall as all the air gets knocked clean out of me. One of my hands, moving without purpose, comes to rest over the side of my neck, cupped around the messy stitches that are half picked apart and burning, itching beneath my skin. Frank’s face relaxes and collapses at the exact same time and he looks sick, petrified, vindicated, martyred, everything all at once. 

The whole thing was a complete fucking lie. 

“Gerard,” Frank says, firmly, but his voice is less honey and more blood this time and it makes me recoil so violently that my legs go flailing out as I try to get to my feet, like Bambi on fucking ice. Like an animal in a fucking trap. “ Gerard, listen to me–”

“This is not real,” I moan, and when my legs finally do give out on me that I can’t use them at all I’m trying to claw my way across the carpet, my stomach swelling and sinking with the vertigo as it takes me. My heart is going to burst. I might have pissed myself. This is what it is to fear for my life and there’s not a thing I can do about it. “There’s, no, I mean, no, this is fucking insane–”

A ritual in humiliation like I deserve. 

“I promise you, it’s real,” Frank says, smoothly, and I whine and clutch at my chest and I’m panting for air. “I could get inside your head and calm you down, but I’m not going to. I’m sorry, but I need you to be scared for you to understand, okay?”

“I don’t understand,” I whine, broken sobs coming out instead of breaths, and my vision is going black. I understand some things, like the fact that Frank is going to kill me, that he’s some sort of deranged freak and he’s loaded me up on drugs and he’s going to drink my fucking blood before he dismembers me in the bathtub. I need to leave. I need to leave. 

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Frank says, simultaneously earnest and grave, his voice moving closer but I can’t see him through the blur at the corners of my eyes and the black spots coming and going with my rapid heartbeat. 

Mikey. Mikey knows his face. Mikey won’t give up on me. Mikey wouldn’t leave me here. He’d find me.

“Frank, please ,” I whisper, having no choice but to press my face into the disgusting carpet as I sob and weep and cover it in my snot and my tears, “ please, I don’t, I, please– ” What are you begging for? Your life? Is that all you’ve got? Why aren’t you moving?

“It’s alright,” Frank says, and his hands are suddenly snaking around my wrists, prising my fists from where they lay clenched in front of my face, looking down at me like I’m a child, an animal, a useless and wretched little thing. Like he’s prying my leg out of the trap just to put a bullet in my head. At seeing his face, the face that still remains the most beautiful one I’ve ever seen, the face I fell in love with entirely against my will, I erupt into tears, attempting uselessly to fight him off of me but it does nothing. I can’t feel my limbs and there’s no strength to them anyway.

You’re not fighting him because you still think there’s a chance none of this is true. You still think everything is going to be alright. 

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he whispers again, pulling the dead weight of me against his chest and curling his arms around me, holding my arms tight to my sides so that there’s no way I can get out of it. I sob, a feeble attempt at a protest, as I feel his lips brush through the cold sweat on my forehead, a hand slipping up into my hair to hold my head close to him. “You told me that you loved me, remember?” He murmurs against my skin, warm like the blood that flooded out of my body when he carved a hole in me, and I wail, like the frightened bleat of a sacrificial lamb when it sees the knife. Against my will, against every bone in my body, against every base instinct I have that has since turned completely numb and against God himself, I nod, because he’s right. I did. 

“Then see me,” Frank whispers, drawing his face away enough that I can look at him, at the rich and primal depth of his amber eyes, at the curves of his cheeks and the slant of his jaw, the aching and tormented smile on his pierced mouth that I know tastes like bleeding out on the steps to the gates of Heaven itself. “See me for what I am.” He blinks slowly, eyelashes long and still damp from the snow and his anguished tears, and his palm comes to cup my cheek, where he knows it fits. His breath on my face lingers like the sting of a needle except there’s no numbness to follow it. “Know the monster that loves you.” 

The longer I lay there in his arms staring at him, the further everything sinks in and then I can see him, everything that he tried to show me and everything that he tried to hide. In that singular moment I know exactly what he is but knowing and accepting are separated like a tightrope between the Twin Towers and I’m one wrong step away from plummeting to my death. As he watches the realisation properly take ahold of me his grip loosens on me like he’s giving me permission to leave, relinquishing control of me for the first time since I met him. He loves me? There is no voice inside my head. There is not so much as a whisper. I’ve felt this feeling before, each and every time that he kissed me, laughed with me, held my hand in his. That was real, at least. Wasn’t it? 

“You lied to me,” I mumble, thick with fear and misery and some strangled kind of acceptance of that fact, like bowing your head to welcome the noose as it’s placed around your neck. “You fucked with my head.” Frank’s eyes flinch a little and he smooths his thumb over the dark circle beneath one of my eyes. 

“To protect you,” he murmurs, as if it could ever be that simple. His lips quirk upward slightly as he takes in the disbelief, the refusal on my face. “And I never made you do anything that you didn’t already want to do, I need you to know that.” 

“This isn’t real,” I breathe back. Vampires aren’t real. The word tears through me and I almost laugh because it’s insane. Actually insane. He smiles, just a little, just enough. The smile that says I’m wrong. The smile of a demon before he takes your soul. Why aren’t I scared? “You’re not a–”

“Yeah, I am. And I’m just as real as you are, by the way.”

But you’re not. That’s why there are stories and movies and comic books and TV shows. What’s next? Werewolves? Zombies? Batman? Jesus fucking H Christ, if I’m not dreaming, I want a fucking refund on life. 

“There’s no way you’re being serious,” I sputter out, and I don’t know if I’m laughing or crying, and there’s a flicker of humour in Frank’s face weighed down with something else, something worse. The longer he goes without saying a word the faster my anger and my fear melts, lead transforming into gold, giving way to juvenile curiosity and blind, reckless fucking excitement. I don’t know which way is up or which way is down. I fucked a vampire and all I got was this t-shirt and a fucking embolism. My voice comes out squeaky and high-pitched, a childlike whisper with liquor still hanging on my breath. “ You’re being serious!? ” 

Slowly, Frank nods, a disarmed and hopeless laugh bubbling out of him at the same time as a sigh and there’s a light in his eyes that can only be described as a colour I’ve never seen as long as I’ve been alive. He’s beautiful. He’s so beautiful there’s no way he could ever be fucking human. 

“But,” I breathe, my lungs not able to keep up with me and where the fuck would I even start , “ but –”

“In a minute,” he whispers, urgent and desperate and somehow featherlight, and the look in his eyes implores me to just shut the fuck up . “I’m sorry for what I did to you,” he says slowly, eyes shifting slowly between each of mine, and the apology alone is almost enough. “I’m sorry for everything. Almost everything,” he corrects, gently, thumb pressing in softly against the corner of my mouth, fingers splayed carefully over the wound on my neck. My lips twitch in recognition, muscle memory, almost submission. I’m in love with a vampire? He sighs and leans his forehead against mine, speaking against my cheek, so close that I feel the vibrations of his words as they come out of his throat. “I just…” he shakes his head. “You turned my fucking world upside down.” Then what the hell would you call whatever the fuck it is that you just did to mine? “I didn’t know what to do and things just kept going wrong and…”

“Frank,” I whisper, and he closes his mouth, pulling back so that I can see him again, and I never really want to stop looking at him ever again. My mouth is dry and I know that I look a mess and I can’t believe that this is about to come out of my mouth. “Why didn’t you just tell me?” Why did you leave? Why did you lie? Why would you let me believe that all of this was my fucking fault? For a minute or so, his silence keeps me on tenterhooks and I know that he doesn’t know how to say the rest. Surely there’s not more. Surely this has gotten as bad as it is ever going to get. 

“Because if anyone finds out that you know…” He trails off and his expression is instilled with the fear that should be radiating out of me instead. My adrenaline surges and flatlines and picks back up again so quickly that it’s nauseating and suddenly nothing matters, not the revelation that he’s a real-life blood-sucking vampire, not the fact that he said he loves me too, not the fact that I’m drowning in it, nothing but the terror in his eyes. My brain spins in my skull like the Earth on its axis. He takes a small breath and his fingers press into me tighter. Protective. Possessive. 

“ They’ll kill you, and they’ll kill me .”

Chapter Text

I’d always been expecting Gerard to freak out. 

I had been braced for all the tears, the bordering on throwing up, the panic, the look of veiled terror and foggy, reluctant recognition in his pretty little face when he realised exactly what it is that I am. I had been expecting the self-flagellating pity and the intense shame when he came to understand that he’d been a complete and utter idiot and that the world didn’t just fucking revolve around him; that it wasn’t his fault; that I had reasons for leaving that had nothing to do with the shame he directed at himself; that I had bigger and far more serious things to be worried about that weren’t his miserable, lapsed Catholic, self-centred, perfect, sickly sweet fucking ass – and that everything he thought and assumed I was, wasn’t true at all. 

Sure, it’s all infinitely worse, but that wasn’t the point.  

And I had been so fucking terrified of how he would react, afraid of having to somehow subdue him if things got out of hand. I was more concerned with that instead of the fact that I was exposing one of the most protected, lethal fucking secrets in the world and honestly, if that didn’t say I was deeply, wildly, fatally in love with him then I didn’t know what would. 

When Gerard said the words and the realisation finally hit for him, it didn’t matter to me that just being in this place alone with him would get me sent down for life. It wasn’t important that in telling him what I am, I’m turning to face a firing squad. It wasn’t important because all I cared about was getting him to stay, because I needed him to stay. 

But when it came to telling him the rest; could I really do it, vocalising everything I knew about myself, about Ray, about this country and its batshit fucking government and all the rest of it, all on little more than a fucking whim? I wasn’t even supposed to be here. I was never supposed to see him in the first place, let alone speak to him, let alone touch him and let myself get carried away and lead him fucking here. I should have known there was a reason I felt a pull toward Lucky’s and I should have known that the grenadine I was smelling wasn’t just a coincidence or wishful fucking thinking. 

I should have known that indulging myself in nostalgia was a terrible idea and I never should have come here. Ray should have never let me fucking come here but it’s not his fault. I’ll chew him out for not telling me about the fucking note, though, if I can get out of here alive. 

If I can get both of us out of here alive. 

The fear really started to get to me and before I even knew anything about it I’d not said a word for several minutes, Gerard’s frantic and confused fingers on my face. 

“What do you mean? ” He was babbling, eyes huge and wide and gorgeously, lusciously green and just looking at him almost pulled a sob out of the pit of my starving fucking stomach. “What do you mean, they’ll kill you? Who’s they ? Frank?” I also said they’d kill you, too, you perfect fucking moron. Maybe lead with that. Maybe think about what the hell you might have gotten yourself into before you start getting preoccupied with what they’re going to do to me. 

Was I really doing this? Could I really explain it, the last twenty-five years and where it started, the things I went through just to get back to being halfway normal before he came along? The things that led me to Ray, everything that came afterward? Watching my parents go on to die without me when they never knew what the hell had happened to me in the end? Bouncing from job to job and never being allowed to form attachments, getting shoved around by the cops and fucked in the ass by the government, the guys I had to drown myself with in order to forget, the humiliation of not being able to accept what had happened to me? The humiliation of having to ask Ray for help, time and time again? Waiting for hours in line at the blood bank like I’m waiting for fucking confession, the taste of a human still clinging to the back of my throat like rancid communion wine? 

Would Gerard be able to wrap his stupid head around my being forced to give up everything that I loved, overnight? 

Because here’s the thing – before tonight, I never once went to Lucky’s again. My guitars gathered dust in my teenage bedroom until my poor fucking mom could finally let go and sell them and I had to track them down and buy them back, blood money for birthdays that I would never get to see again. I never showed up for work that morning and I had to watch just how quickly everyone I knew forgot about me. I had to watch the cops look for me and give up too fucking quickly and it was years until I found out the reason why. I could never tell anybody the reason why. My band broke up and reformed and broke up again and as far as I know, those guys don’t even play anymore and why should they, when it’s been twenty-five fucking years and they all think I’m dead? Would Gerard get it, if I told him that even music can’t touch me quite the same anymore, because there’s no soul for it to fucking reach? 

Gerard didn’t need to hear about the intimacy I’d been forced to give up, the tenderness I’d since more than halfway forgotten that was only just starting to come back and felt like pulling fucking teeth anyway. He didn’t need to know, or maybe he did, about the nights spent praying to the point of delirious agony because the words burned my tongue, begging for the softness of skin in my hands or the warmth of a tongue against mine, fingers in my hair, even so much as a smile in my direction. How was I supposed to tell him about the lows I had sunk to, drinking liquor until I was drowning and still not being able to feel the heat? Gerard didn’t need to know about the fact I resorted to dungeons, dank and sweaty and fucking disgusting basement clubs swimming with creatures like me, desperate to feel just a fraction of humanity, eager and pleading for pain, salvation in the sting of a palm, of a blade kissed with fire, of a rope soaked in Holy Water wound around my throat?

There were things that I would let the other vamps do to me so that they could get their kicks in the hopes I would one day be able to feel mine, offering myself up to be used in any and all ways that were - and weren’t - conceivable to me. Gerard didn’t need to know that I flipped, one day, refusing to let myself be touched, reveling in having something to control of another thing, not quite living and never close enough, giving other pathetic monsters like me what they needed and saving nothing for myself, hiding behind a semblance of power, a different kind of slave. 

There was no way I could tell him that once, I let myself get so carried away, so drunk with immortal rage and grief that I killed another vampire just to see if I could, just because he begged me to do it, just because he trusted me enough to put him out of his misery? 

How do you tell the person you love that for a time, all you could do was hurt and be hurt? How could he love me after that? How could he trust that I wouldn’t hurt him, in hearing that? How could he trust me when, in his mind, all I had done was mess with his head? There was the possibility that, given time and enough reassurance, he would understand why I did what I did, the cowardly, mindless selfishness that made me do what I did to him, the choices I drove him to make. 

There was the hope that he would forgive me. Through all this, as I sat there with my eyes glazing over and Gerard pawing at my face begging me to talk, that was constant, gnawing at me like an incubus of my own. But above all else, it wasn’t even his forgiveness that I wanted. It was him that I wanted, and I would spend the rest of my life paying penance to his body because it was as close to God as I could get. 

I wanted to tell Gerard that he was the singular, absolute and unwavering temptation of my life, that I’ll be cursed with him until the end, when it finally does come for me, and I know that it will. He's a rapture incarnate. My personal messiah. On his skin is where I build my bastard church. 

I was never in love before I was turned and so there’s no frame of reference for what it is supposed to be, or what it means for me. The only conviction I have is that I would willingly surrender my body to be a home to the seven fucking plagues for the rest of eternity if it meant I could see his face, feel his touch, hear his laughter, breathe in the fatal sweetness of him. 

Snap the fuck out of it. One thing at a time.

“Frank?” 

The feds would shoot him at best, wheel him away for experiments and swift memory erasure at worst. And no one would ever know about it. It doesn’t even fucking bear thinking about but he’ll never figure it out on his own. There’s so much, too much , to keep him safe from without even starting to think about keeping him safe from myself. He needs to know. He needs to know that something will come for him, whether it has to face me first, or not. 

“Frank? Please ?”

“You’re not meant to know,” I whine, eventually. Obviously. If only I could just fucking leave it there. For a second, I can hardly see. Gerard is knelt in front of me on the floor, palms slowly falling from where they had been gently holding my face. “No one is supposed to know.” 

“I don’t—“

“About us, ” I mumbled through my teeth, rubbing at my temple. If my stomach doesn’t stop screaming that it’s gonna throw up even though it’s physically impossible then I’ll rip it out, I swear to God. “ Vampires. ” I’ve never said that word out loud to a human before. I can’t tell if I can hear sirens or whether it’s just the ringing in my ears. 

“I– I don’t understand.” Of course you don’t fucking understand.

“Think about it, Gerard. Please.” I didn’t mean to snap. “How do you think it would go down if it got out? That we’re everywhere? You think anyone would believe it? You think anyone would be alright with that? Whenever someone talks, they find out . The cops, the feds, anyone. They always find out because they’re always listening, and before you know it, there’s a bag being pulled over your head and you’re in the back of a van and you’re about to die. For every one of me, there’s gotta be one, maybe two, three hundred dead ones, just for talking.”

Just for asking for help. Just for wanting to feel human. Just for falling in love. 

“But, how—“

How do they manage it? How is it that nobody has ever said anything? How is it that nobody has ever fucking noticed? 

Are we speaking the same fucking language? 

“I don’t know how they do it,” I moan, defeated, frustrated, exhausted. “I don’t. It’s, I don’t know, it’s intimidation and it’s fear, and, I don’t even know about the human side of it, the extent of it. I just know they’d kill you for finding out and me for letting you.”

“Are you actually serious?” Yes. You’ve dug your own grave and I gave you the fucking shovel and I’m sorry. 

“Yeah.” The apology wants so badly to come out of me but I just can’t make it. He takes an unsteady breath and just moves on like that’s something worth forgetting about. The fuck have I done to him that he doesn’t even care?

“So, what, the government knows about it, but no one else does?” No. Close enough. We can do semantics another time. 

“Basically.” 

“But that’s impossible.”

“I disagree.” All I can manage is a useless, bleak smile. He bows his head a little and it takes a minute for him to digest it, and I can tell he’s just trying to pick holes in it, still , because that’s what humans do. 

“Okay, but, if there were vampires everywhere, how come more people aren’t being killed? I mean, surely, there’d be murders, right? Vampires killing people?” Trust Gerard to turn himself into Sherlock fucking Holmes about the whole thing when ten minutes ago he couldn’t even do some basic fucking deduction. 

“They are,” I say flatly, because it’s ridiculous, the fact that he would still be naive enough to believe the government would never do anything wrong or that humans, himself included, barely ever notice a single thing. Gerard looks at me like I’ve insulted him. “You seriously think they aren’t on top of all that?”

Because when that happens, it doesn't make it on the news. There’s not a single cop that hasn’t signed a death-clad NDA and received months of training on vampires and how they hunt, how they kill, what it looks like. They’re trained to hide it from the press and they’re trained to pay them off and they paid good fucking money to do it. You wouldn’t think that getting paid off would matter, even just to one reporter out of thousands; but if that’s the difference between whistleblowing and getting shot in the head, everybody always takes the money. 

“ But– ” 

“There’s an infrastructure,” I tell him, gently. “It’s… I don’t know, I guess it’s just how things are. Nothing ever gets out.”

“So it’s like a conspiracy or something?”

“I guess. More like a well-oiled machine, though, really.” He doesn’t smile. Okay, so we’re not ready for jokes. Fine. “They try and keep us docile, for the most part. That’s why we have the rations and the tests—“

“The what ?”

“Blood rations and threat evaluations.”

“Seriously?”

“Well…” I shrug, having forgotten that while it might be normal and obvious and self-explanatory to me, Gerard’s head is going to fucking explode. “ Yeah . They test us to see how much of a threat we are, how much of a risk we are to, I don’t know, the fabric of society , and if the threat is too much then they kill us or they lock us away and if they think we’re miserable enough not to put up a fight, then they hide us in plain sight. They set us up with jobs, socials, ID, all that. And blood, obviously, you know, so we don’t go on a rampage of whatever.”

“ What? ” I force another weak smile and his eyes blow wide, head drawing back to look at me a little better. “What, so there’s just–”

“Vampires everywhere? Yeah.” 

“What the fuck?” Yeah, I know. “So, okay , there’s vampires everywhere, and they kill people, and some of them have jobs, and, what, am I seriously supposed to believe I’ve just been oblivious to this my whole life?” The look on his face screams you’re pranking me and also I’m seeing things no mortal should ever see and I guess this is the part where, in movies, the human goes crazy because he can’t take it. 

“But that’s how it’s meant to be. I mean, that’s how they want it, and it works. That’s not your fault.”

“But that’s crazy!” He screeches, a little louder than I was expecting him to get, and I need to calm him down before he has a heart attack for real. I don’t like how fast his pulse is getting and it was getting away from me anyway. “So, what, I could just run into a fucking vampire on the street? And just get killed, just like that?”

Like Jamia. I don’t even want to pull at that fucking thread yet.  

“I mean, that can happen even without any vampires,” I point out, and Gerard whips his head round to glare at me. 

“ Funny.” 

“We’re not all evil bloodthirsty monsters, you know,” I tease, gently, and there’s a whisper of a smile breaking through his stony expression as he looks right into my eyes, the way I have to stare down the lens for an evaluation. “Most of us are just trying to get on with it. ‘Cause, you know, it sucks.” A pun is a pun, I guess.

“Why?”

“Why does it suck?” I raise an eyebrow and force out a useless laugh. “Because it’s lonely.” Ain’t that the truth. “We’re not allowed to interact with you, really. Can’t be friends or, y’know, anything more than that, at all, because you can’t find out about us. And it… It takes a toll, you know? You get to have a life and do whatever you want and we have to sit back and watch, over and over again, till I don’t know when. That’s why we just take it, because we hate it, but there’s no other option.” 

“Do you?”

“Hate it?” More than anything in the fucking world. “Yeah.”

There’s pity in his eyes, tugging at something in my gut. 

“Why?”

Because someone raped my mortality and killed my fucking soul. Because I’ve been alone for two decades and change with nobody but Toro and I love him, but that’s not enough for anybody. Because I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. Because it wasn’t my choice. Because all I’ve ever wanted is to fucking tell somebody and it doesn’t even feel good to finally do it because I’m too scared of losing you. Because I love you and it hurts. 

“I think you know why.”

His smile hovers on his mouth for a little while until he looks away, his hand twitching restlessly against the carpet like it’s a magnet looking for mine, like he’s a compass and I’m North. My fingers drift minutely in his direction, possessed by the weight of his movements in the air, like electricity, like the pressure before a storm.

“So… All of you are just, dealing with it? The way you’re being treated, I mean. Not being able to say anything, do anything…” He shakes his head as he trails off, brushing his hands through his hair.

“You don’t understand,” I say to him, gently, when he goes quiet and tries his best to pick it apart inside his head. “It’s systematic. I’m talking, like, hundreds of years. Thousands, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter how we feel about it because it’s just the way it is and it’s bigger than just this country, too, you know? Obviously, there’s the Church—“

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Gerard grumbles, rubbing his hands hard over his face and growling a little. “Are you serious? Are you actually being serious?”

“Yeah, because the Church has never covered anything up,” I snap a little too hard, and his eyes slink away from mine because he knows I’m right. “For all I know they fucking made us in the first place, I don’t know. I heard a joke once that apparently they’re using us to practice exorcisms on.” A moment of silence for the fact that might actually be true. “There’s no changing any of it, by the way, in case you’re thinking about getting all revolutionary about it.” 

“But… I just can’t fucking believe it.” 

It’s not that he doesn’t believe it. He does. He just doesn’t want to. He wants to revert back to the normality that, if he sticks with me, he’s not gonna get. I watch as his eyes glaze over, face stuck deep in thought, a heavy dose of shock and bargaining and maybe a little bit of anger, almost every shade of grief. It’s the same look anyone would get when their whole world gets turned upside down and inside out and shaken, violently, like looking for spare change in an old pair of jeans. It’s the same look I had. I don’t want to rush him but I can’t help it. Not when I’ve waited this long. 

“Ask me something,” I prompted gently, after watching him nibble three fingernails right down to the quick, “I know you want to.” But my voice made him jump after staying quiet for so long and he looked at me like a frightened horse after a gunshot. I smiled, cocking my head to one side, taking in his watery lash line and his trembling mouth. I wish I’d never had to tell him. I wish it was easier than this. Anything but this. 

“Can I?” His voice came out broken and afraid and my pinky finger twitched, a subtle indicator of the force I was using to hold myself back from him, to give him space, to not put my hands on him until he wanted them.

“Anything you want.” Seeing as there’s nothing I can tell you that will make this worse for either of us. We’re already goners. 

He worried at his lip between his teeth for a while, fiddling with his fingers and smoothing his palms against his thighs but it didn’t stop the way he was shaking. I didn’t know if I was prepared for anything he could possibly ask me but I knew I had to at the very least tell the truth.

“Have you killed people?” 

“Not for a long time.” I can tell he’s trying not to react but something shifts in his eyes like I knew it would and even though I knew it was coming, eventually, that doesn’t mean I was ready for it. “Nineteen years, I think.” Yeah, that doesn’t make it any better. “I don’t want you to think of me that way,” I sigh, selfishly, like this is something I can just make him forget, something I can brush away like fucking dust. “I don’t do that. I’m not that kinda guy.” Not anymore. I’d do it for you. Gerard nods a little like he’s just accepted it and there’s a tired, ashen look on his face like he’s going to pass out. “Look, if… We don’t have to talk about that. We can, if you want, but I don’t know what good that would do you right now.” He shakes his head and his lips turn down at the corners like he’s swallowing puke. 

“Do you…” He sighed, trailing off and mumbling something around his fingers as he shoved them back into his mouth. I didn’t want to put words in his mouth, didn’t want to suggest anything more than I already had. He closed his eyes when he was finally ready to speak again. “Do you want to kill me?” 

“No,” I whispered, about as soft as concrete. He nodded, the word not seeming to bring him any comfort. 

“Did you? I mean, at first?” His eyes flickered up to my face and I shot him a lopsided smile, letting my breath out steadily. 

“No.” Not really. Not enough. It’s not true but it’s not a lie. If I never would have forgiven myself for it, doesn’t that make it the same? “Never.” Gerard smoothed a hand back through his hair only to let it fall back in front of his face, partially obscuring it from me. There goes my hand, twitching again. As subtly as I could, I curled it into a loose fist, picking at the cuticle of my thumb to distract myself.

“Do you love me?” Quiet like a mouse, self-conscious, afraid, ashamed for even saying it. I knew that tone. He didn’t look at me at all, shoulders shaking with the force of suppressing the way his lungs wanted to hyperventilate and he didn’t want to let them.

“With everything I’ve got.” I caught his eyes squeezing closed, jaw slackening slightly with what I hoped was relief. My angel. My sweet thing. 

“And you’re not lying? Not making fun of me?” His voice pitched upward at the end, twisting, cracking, like he couldn’t believe he was asking it at all. I thought about joking, but that wouldn’t do me or him any good.

“I wish I was,” I said, loudly enough that it was clear that I meant it. 

“So, that thing with the police…” I cringed slightly and rubbed my hand over my face. “What was that actually about?” 

“I still didn’t do anything,” I sighed. “My coworker did get killed and it was a vampire but it wasn’t me. And, well, I gave them a reason to think it was me. It was more of a coincidence, than anything, I think, but–”

“What do you mean?” 

“Well, the way the rations work is that you have to have a reason for needing a refill, you can’t just go and get more. Obviously, you know. And because I was burning through all of mine with you staying in the house–”

“What?”

“Oh.” I smiled sheepishly at him and shrugged. “Well– you know. You smell good.” It took a second for it to sink in and he was squirming a little in his place, tucking his hair behind his ears. I kept going before he got any bright ideas about apologising. “But, obviously, I couldn’t tell anybody that I had you staying with me because I would have gotten arrested, or shot, or something, so I lied and said I was having trouble adapting to there being a new girl at work because, you know, that happens.” I hadn’t thought about that night for a few days and my venom started flowing a little faster, thinking about that shithead agency bastard and the bullshit he’d landed me in. “And they had that on paper, so they thought I’d lost my shit and killed her, but I hadn’t.” 

“ Oh ,” is all Gerard could come up with, his face turning sour and defeated, and I don’t want him feeling sorry for me so I had to come up with something, anything, that would keep him talking. Gentle enough that I wouldn’t make him jump, I nudged at his knee with mine as I leaned back against the foot of the bed, laying my head against it. 

“You wanna ask me some vampire stuff?” A small, anxious and poorly concealed laugh shot out of him along with a bubble of snot that he hastily rubbed away, and when his fingers swept at his eyes I realised I’d triggered his tears, again. 

“Oh, this is fucking ridiculous,” he groaned around them, a whisper of a laugh slipping through, and I allowed myself to smile a little wider, hiding it behind my hand. 

“Yeah, I know,” I sighed, and he was still laughing. “Ask me. C’mon, I’m serious. You know you wanna.” I need to say it as much as you need to hear it. Please.

He waited, trying to work out which thing made the most sense to say first and still coming up short. He sighed loudly and covered his face when he said it. 

“How old are you?” One ragged, reticent breath. “Because…” An audible, dry swallow. “I saw this photo of you in the bar and, and , you just said–”

“Technically, I’m fifty.” I tried to say it with a straight face, just in case he mistook it for me genuinely mocking him, but when he looked at me with thinly veiled horror, I kept my smile, just lightening my voice. “I, uh, well, I died in ‘81, so, also technically still twenty-five.” It was obvious that he wanted to ask me how and there was no way I was ready to have that conversation after all this and so I cleared my throat. “C’mon, another one.”

He twisted uncomfortably where he was, visibly biting back the question he’d had lined up, the one about how this had happened to me, trying to find something else. 

“So you don’t age.”

“Nope.”

“At all?”

“Zilch.” 

He nodded a little, sleeves bunched up around his hands even though the hoodie was too fucking small for him, because it was mine. After another short silence, when he rolled his eyes because whatever he was thinking of asking must have been stupid to him, I chuckled lightly. 

“C’mon, hit me.”

“Fangs?” He asked uneasily, cocking an eyebrow, and I pursed my lips as if to shield them from him and they weren’t even out.

“It’s complicated.” His gaze only hardened and I hummed a little, running a hand back through my hair. “They— well, they kinda just come out once they’re in, I guess.” He wasn’t getting it. “The teeth are sharp enough on their own, they kinda just extend if you don’t let go.” I shrugged; I guess I’d never thought about it too hard. There was a glimmer of something almost playful in Gerard’s eyes, toying with me, like he thought he was going to catch me out. 

“So how come I’m not a vampire if you bit me?”

“Because I didn’t bite you hard enough.” His eyes twitched and widened and I could feel the shift in his blood pressure so I just smiled, anchoring myself where I was. “You have to, uh, kinda…” My stomach shifted at the thought of it, how it would taste to do it to him, how much it would hurt me to not fucking swallow him down. Like I’ve not already fucking thought about it a hundred-and-one fucking times. “You have to want to, if you turn somebody. Because, I don’t know, you have to bite and not drink.” He blinked once, hard. 

“So you actually drank my blood?” The squeaky voice again, high-pitched and anxious even though he knows the answer that’s coming. “You didn’t just bite me?” There’s no point me being shy about it, but I am.

“Yeah.” I pause and study the colour of his face, not quite fully drained out, a little bit of heat left in his cheeks. “I’m sorry.” Small tug at the corner of the mouth. I love you. His tongue hovered just behind his lips as if he was about to tell me it was alright and then thought better of it. I didn’t blame him. But the questions came a little easier after that. Dorky questions that only someone like him would bother asking. 

“So… sunlight?”

“Hurts like a motherfucker.”

“But you can go out in the daylight. I mean, I’ve seen you–”

“It’s easier in the winter.” I don’t tell him about what I did to myself as punishment for letting myself touch him.

“And, uh… garlic?”

I allow myself to laugh a little, nodding, bowing my head a little because this entire thing is insane, hilarious, downright fucking awful. I can’t believe it. 

“Yeah, it sucks.” My mom is turning in her grave. 

“Holy water?”

“Awful.” Doesn’t mean I hate it.  

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I mean, it burns right through you. Melts your skin off if you let it. I mean, it heals, but the scars are pretty gnarly.”

“So… Okay. Crucifixes?” There’s a strange, almost flirtatious smile on his face and I know he’s thinking back to that night, where I had made him take it off to make the both of us feel better, so that I didn’t have to worry about touching it. About it burning me. My stomach lurches.

“Yeah,” I mumble, just as shy about it myself. I’m afraid to show him the welt his crucifix left on my tongue and I figure it can wait for another time, if there ever is one. Gerard smiles a little wider and leans his head back against the wall, like he’s pretending to rack his brain. 

“So, churches are…”

“A no-go, yeah.” I clear my throat. “Can’t say I’ve ever tried, though. Always just assumed. But, uh, praying hurts, so I doubt I’d hold up for mass.” The tension in my abdomen relaxes for a moment, only to stiffen when Gerard cocks an eyebrow at me. 

“You pray? ”

“Not so much anymore.” I shrug a little, shifting my weight around and rubbing at the back of my neck. Even thinking about it makes my skin itch. “I used to, but, I don’t know, I guess He’s abandoned me.” Gerard snickers at the same time that I do. “Ironic for a Catholic, huh.” There’s that pity in his smile again. 

Gerard’s eyes flit to the clouded, rust-flecked mirror on the other side of the room and he grins, like he finally has me in a corner. 

“You’ve got a reflection.”

“Yeah, only sometimes.” I wet my lips gently with my tongue before pulling my lip between my teeth for a moment. Don’t fucking say it, Frank. “You know, if you’d bothered to look up when I fucked you, you might have noticed something a little sooner.” His face went sheet white and then, very quickly, cherry red. I allowed myself to grin. “Silver-backed. You know. Old school.”

He rolls his eyes like he knew it all along, like he’s not embarrassed, like it’ll distract me from the way his heartbeat is sputtering because I know he’s thinking about it, like it’ll make things any better. “Of course.” I hum softly and he looks back over at me. “Shame, don’t you think?” It’s so shockingly forward and perfectly coy at the same time that if I did have a functioning heart it would have cut out there and then. I’ve laid bare every secret I have in the fucking world and he knows I’m a monster and he’s thinking about fucking me. 

So? You’re thinking about fucking him, too.

“Yeah,” I breathe unsteadily, something dark and warm shifting in my stomach. I can’t help it. He knows I can’t help it, right? 

“Can I ask you something?” 

I answer automatically. “Anything.”

“The first night I stayed with you…” He trailed off, throat audibly drying up even as he tried to clear it, frowning slightly. 

“I know,” I whispered, not wanting him to say it out loud, a coy smile of my own crossing my face, and he nods like he knew it all along. “I didn’t… I mean, it wasn’t my intention. I know I shouldn’t have, I think I was just lonely and then–”

“I get it,” he squeaked, smiling tensely, the stiffness of his features slowly melting the longer he looked at me, at the clear glimmer of the memory in my eyes, watching me think back on it, watching me thinking about how long I will have to wait before I can touch him again. “Frank, I wanted to. I did. I wanted to.”

“Yeah?” There’s heat climbing in my stomach, against my will, and my fist clenches until my knuckles are white and I have to manually relax it finger by finger, tendon by tendon. I want you. 

“Yeah.” Breathless, warm, uninhibited. His lips are perfectly parted the way that they were when I first laid a greedy, selfish, intentional hand on him. Please kiss me. 

It hurts me to swallow.

“Do you… I mean, still?” I’m trying to make it playful but even a moron like him could hear the need dripping out of me. 

“What would that make me, if I did?” The internal battle is still being fought but I can tell he wants to lose. He wants to let it go. Because he’s stupid and for some fucking reason after everything I’ve told him the only thing he can think about is me. “Did I… Did you make me do it? Feel this way?”

“No,” I whisper, and it’s the moment that everything comes crashing down. “I could feel what you wanted. I just made it so that you would let it happen.” Gerard sniffles and nods.“I couldn’t help it. I’m sorry, I know that doesn’t make it better, but—“

“You set me free,” he murmurs, like music to my ears, like the breath of fucking God. But that’s not the point. God fucking damn it, Gerard, get a grip. 

“For myself ,” I insist, incredulous - thoughtlessly thankful, triumphant, relieved - that he would see it that way, my words a reckless and necessary clarification. “Not for you.”

“Does it matter?” Not now. 

My throat goes bone dry as I watch him, feel him move closer to me, my gravity shifting to catch him without even having to think. His fingers tremble as he reaches up to touch my cheek.

“ Yeah , it matters,” I rasp, unsteady and unconvincing and caught off guard by his touch and I want to scream, my body on fire with his so close to mine, my mouth pooling with saliva just at the suggestion of his mouth in front of my face. All sense has left me, everything about him that scares me turning into white noise that only makes his pulse louder. I can’t think straight, can’t think about anything that doesn’t end in his name, in his breath against my skin, in his hands moving over my body. 

“You’re not inside my head right now, are you?” He murmurs, low and almost playful, and I mumble a strangled no because I’m utterly overcome with the smell of him and I can’t separate up from down and he leans his forehead against mine. “So it doesn’t matter.” Who the fuck am I to argue? His thumb glides over my cheekbone, fingertips deliciously warm against my jaw, the tip of his nose nudging mine. His breath hitches at the same time that mine does, lips hardly touching. 

“Are you going to hurt me?” He asks, and my eyebrows flinch together, nostrils flaring on my inhale, lips brushing his. A switch flips inside me at the taste of his skin, no longer careful and no longer sensible, all rational thought evaporating. I’m gonna put you through the fucking mattress. 

“Why, you scared?” I whisper back, and against my mouth he grins, laughing breathlessly as he fucking nods , before curling his fingers around a fistful of my hair and wrenching me closer. 

I don’t know how I don’t break his jaw. I don’t know how I don’t crack his head open at the base of his skull, with how hard I grab onto him, clutching at him and throwing myself at him with almost everything I’ve got. A moan ripples out of his mouth and into mine and just like that, it’s over. It’s not a good idea. It’s not a good idea.

“You should have stayed,” he mumbles into my mouth while I’m trying to devour his tongue and I catch myself growling, tugging at the neckline of his hoodie, my hoodie, trying to get it off or pull him around or both, I don’t even know. I don’t know where to go and I don’t know where I am.

“Shut up,” I mutter, words cracking into pieces when his teeth press into my lip, catching me off guard and setting me alight. 

“Should have told me, ” he whines softly as he yanks on my hair with enough force to tilt my head back, and I can’t make sense of him because he’s so desperate and so angry at the same time and I don’t know what the fuck he’s done with Gerard .

“Nnh,” I gasp, not sure what I was trying to say, his thumb pressing into the soft spot next to my ear and his lips trailing downward, over my chin and my throat. Panic. Fear. More panic . “Gerard,” I gasp, like there’s no oxygen left in the room at all, “Gerard, wait , we should— ah.”

“This is your fault,” he mumbles around my adam’s apple in his mouth, tongue lapping at it fiercely like he’s got something to prove and I guess he does. I nod, weakly, eyes rolling back and head spinning and stomach spitting fire in every direction, every nerve suddenly a fucking live wire. When his lips come crashing into mine again I swear that somewhere I can hear the first trumpet warning of apocalypse and sounding my doom. “You did this to me.”

“Yeah,” I breathe thinly because there’s no point denying it. God, the fucking taste. My eyes pull together and my mouth drops open completely, uselessly, when he presses his fingers into my throat, not hard enough but so fucking good because it’s him. “Yeah,” I sigh, slowly, less conviction, more control, as I lean into his hand. He squeezes, like he’s thinking about fending me off, holding me back. Like he ever could. 

“Are you gonna hurt me?” He asks again, taunting this time, and I groan and force him closer, hungry for his mouth and all the searing deliverance it brings, like Hell calling me home. 

“Not unless you want me to,” I mumble thickly, quickly around his tongue, grinning when I feel his breath hitch and his mouth drop open a little wider. Hopeless. Useless. Surrendering. 

“You gonna get up inside my head and make me want you to?” 

“God, shut the fuck up, ” I hiss, resisting the urge to slap him, to bite into him, to straight up wrestle him onto the bed. I tug at the hoodie again until my fist is curled deep inside the fabric, tight enough to tear it clean off. I can make you do anything I want you to. But you already want me to, don’t you? I need to put a stop to this. “Christ, I—“

“Can you read my mind?” He whispers, his kisses coming fast and heavy and messy, and I make a small, uncomfortable, desperate noise at his hand easing my neck against the foot of the mattress, pinning me harder than I thought he could, but still not hard enough to do a damn thing.

“No.” My hands go for his hips and he bucks into them almost immediately. “I don’t- ah- have to.” Because all I can hear is your pulse and it’s screaming for me. 

“No?” He straddles me and I moan and nod, violently, yanking him closer and growling slightly at the way he ruts against me, rigid denim against denim, the shelf of his cock pressing into mine. I don’t wanna fuck you on the floor but I can and I will.

“We shouldn’t,” I whisper, the last shred of protest that I have left in me, my hands working against me and betraying me the more I pull him closer to me, forcing a moan out of his mouth as he grinds down against me. “We need to talk about th—“

He speaks into my mouth, down my throat, muffled by my tongue. “What’s to talk about?” The fact I could kill you doing this and I almost did the last time. You’re not thinking clearly. I don’t want things to start this way. To cut me off, he squeezes my throat hard enough that my vision goes black. “I’m a big boy, I can make my own decisions.” Fuck . “Don’t need you to make them for me.” Fuck. 

“I just—“

“God, Frank, stop talking ,” Gerard whispers, firmly, drawing away from me just enough that I can see the size of his pupils, the red, wet heat of his mouth and the blood in his cheeks, flushed and eager and begging for me. My breath sticks in my throat and I must look like an idiot, just staring at him like an idiot, bewildered and turned on beyond belief and maybe even a little frightened. “For my fucking sanity, just shut up and stop trying to take the vampire sex fantasy away from me,” he teases, and something lurches in my stomach, four horsemen bolting out of the gate. 

“The what ?” I don’t even sound like myself. I almost sound human, timid and squeaky and hoarse, and he grins, forcing whatever false confidence he has left.

“You heard me,” he whispers, hands cupping my jaw again as he kisses me, but I can barely kiss him back, my body turned to jelly and my jaw loose.

“Are you kidding me?” I whisper thinly, uncertain and suddenly completely out of my depth. I did not land the only man in the world that finds me hot and has a fucking vampire kink at the same time. I did not. 

“Are you kidding me?” He slips his hand between our bodies and grips me perfectly, roughly through my jeans and I gasp, fingers grasping at the scruff of his neck. “Fucking mind control , Frank? Like I fucking need it.” I go to apologise or make excuses or explanations by reflex but my tongue dries up at the way he’s touching me and I’m fucking boneless, barely even managing to hump into him enough, my chest so tight it feels like it’s been filled with quick-drying cement. His voice drops, low in the back of his throat and catching on his teeth as he speaks against my mouth, “you still wanna drink my blood?” 

The words are pure sin and they burn me the way his crucifix burned me, the way the sun burns me, the way just breathing burns me. There’s a reason I can’t stomach vampire porn. Because they all say that. Because I can’t think straight save for the urge to completely obliterate him for asking me that. 

“No,” I rasp, and it’s so clear, so devastatingly fucking obvious that it’s a lie. He works his knuckles along the length of me and I jump, gasping, trying to wriggle closer, eager to put my mouth on his so that I can’t be tempted by his neck. He obliges me, his other hand cupping my chin and holding me firmly in place as he kisses me, thumb pressing into my bottom lip.

“ Liar, ” he whispers into my mouth, and there’s no stopping the whimper that comes out of me when his thumb teases the ridge of my bottom teeth, pressing harder than he should. “I can give you a little,” he whispers, breath hot on my tongue as it swipes over the pad of his thumb. God, please don’t. Please do. 

“Nuh-uh,” I breathe, panting , squirming, afraid that I can’t hold myself back if he’s going to do what I— “ Fuck, ” I hiss, at the same time that his breath hitches in his chest and he slices his thumb open on my teeth, blood pooling around my gums and beneath my tongue, a heavy burst of heat and sweetness and complete bliss. Nothing has ever tasted this good. Nothing this good has ever been taken with permission. This is my seventh seal. “Nnh, don’t do that,” I gasp, unconvincing and hungry, as I swallow it down.

“Why? Because it’s good?” Gerard whispers, like the serpent to Eve, voice ragged and alien and beautiful, and I’m convinced that I’m dreaming, that it’s him who’s inside my head, because there’s no way this would ever be real. There’s no way that he would be doing this to me, to himself. There’s no way his blood is in my mouth again. I nod, against my better judgement, parallel to every impulse I have, because there’s no more room for lying, for pretending, or for hiding. He knows what I am. He knows exactly what he’s doing, misguided as it might be. My lips make a seal around his thumb and he moans, exaggerated and cheap and everything that I want to hear. I don’t want it to stop. I frown and moan and whimper and tremble and choke on something not dissimilar from a sob when he curls his other hand tighter around me, my clothes beyond uncomfortable and the heat from his body hotter than the sun. 

“I’m never giving this up for anything ,” he murmurs, as he pulls gently with his wrist and I let his thumb fall from my mouth, slick and sticky with spit, leaving a trail of it along my cheek as he leans in to kiss me. I stop him, staring up and taking him in, something beautiful and awful and something entirely mine, willingly mine. 

“Yeah, me either,” I rush out, bringing his lips back to mine before squeezing, insistently, at his hips. “Get on the fucking bed.” 

“Yeah,” he breathes, clambering off me and almost tripping over me as he launches himself onto the bed and reaches for me, but I’m already there, pressing my way on top of him and forcing my way between his legs. His hand on my face reeks of blood and I lean into it as I kiss him, hands slipping beneath his hoodie and pushing it up. “Mm,” he hums as he circles his tongue around mine, fisting at my hair, “when was the last time somebody fucked you?” It draws a wicked laugh out of me.

“Yeah, not a chance,” I murmur, because there’s no way I could, no way I’m ready for that, no way I could ever—

“But—“

“ No ,” I growl, tugging his hoodie up over his head and letting my hands roam his chest, his waist, his soft, perfectly rounded fucking hips. “ Fuck, look at you.”

“Look at me? You tried looking in the mirror?” He asks, sarcastic and playful as he yanks at my hair, staring up at me through his lashes. “God, you’re insane.”

“Shut up,” I mumble, fighting with my own clothes to get at least some of them off, emboldened by the racing of Gerard’s blood pressure when my shirt comes off, hands meeting my waist eagerly. 

“I knew you were too good to be true,” he gasps, fingertips digging into the tattoos on my hips and I laugh, weakly, working at his jeans.

“Still real,” I mumble. Still a monster. 

“Yeah, thank God,” he spits back into my mouth as his jeans come off and I push him down into the pillows. He deserves better than here. 

“I do.” He hums. “For you. ” 

“Oh, be serious.” 

“Hm.” I grin and slip my hand into his boxers and he groans, still sensitive from before and almost intimidatingly hard, throbbing so hard in my hand that I no longer have to listen. “You’re so pretty.”

“Am I actually pretty? Or do you just wanna— fuck .”

“Do I just wanna fuck?” I raise an eyebrow and squeeze him as I twist my wrist and he moans. “ Yeah .” I lick a thin stripe from the corner of his jaw to his lips. “You’re so fucking pretty I don’t even know what to do with you.” It makes me want to die. 

“What do I taste like?” He whispers, making my wrist falter and my eyes snap up to look at his, the way that they’re half-lidded and just starting to roll back, his breath so fast it’s a wonder he’s getting any air at all. He’s distracted and he’s bucking into my hand but he wants to know. He wants to hear it. 

“Like heaven,” I whisper, tilting my head to mouth at his cheek as I press my body closer. “Not just your blood. All of you.” 

“You say that to all your human boyfriends?” 

“Fuck you.”

“ Please. ” 

A growl comes out of me as I pull one of his legs around my waist, my body hunched over his and kissing the life out of him as I keep my rhythm steady on his dick, my other hand working at getting myself the hell out of my jeans but the best I can do is shove them down. No way I’m letting go of him now. 

“Shoulda known this would be a turn-on for you,” I mutter in his ear as I trail my tongue around the shell of it. I let my teeth clip the cartilage just enough for a guttural moan to fly out of him and I can’t help smiling. I can’t help enjoying it. He’s made for me. “This what you wanted?” 

“Something like that,” he moans, pushing up into my hand as I squeeze at the head of his cock. I pull away just enough to spit a swathe of saliva into my palm before returning it to him. 

“Did you like it?” I murmur against his earlobe as I take it between my teeth, not firmly enough to graze him, trying not to be so distracted that I’m incapable of being gentle and it’s slowly becoming impossible. “When I bit you?” He nods and I can tell he’s ashamed of it because there’s still a part of him that can’t believe any of this. I’m rutting helplessly, mindlessly against the inside of his thigh. The taste of his blood is still curled around my tongue, like smoke, dark and heady. Each sound that comes out of him is confirmation and communion. “ God , you’re perfect. You want me to do it again, don’t you?”

“Get out of my head,” he spits, gasping, choking on air, and I need to slow the fuck down. I can’t get him off twice in one night without anything for myself, it wouldn’t be fair. My hips graze a slow curve at the softest, palest part of his thigh and he jumps, at the way my dick is throbbing in time with his breath. 

“I’m not in your head, baby,” I purr against his ear, letting his hands around my neck steady me as I keep one hand on his dick and reposition the fingers of my other hand, sticky and spit-shined, against his entrance. He shudders so hard I can feel it at my core and my nose nudges his cheekbone, kissing softly, lazily. I don’t need to be in your head, you’re right here . When my fingers press into him he sobs, nodding, fingers scrambling for purchase and hips rocking into my hand. “I can’t bite you again,” I breathe, struggling to get it out because I almost don’t want it to be true. I want to drink you dry. I want to die inside of you with a stomach full of your blood. Gerard whines and I spread my fingers out, slowly, until his head falls back against the pillows. As a tease, to him and to myself, I mouth softly, wetly, at the base of his throat. Heaven fucking help me. “Too dangerous.” 

“Bit late for that,” he gasps, titling his head back and arching up into me, the extension of his neck only making his moans thinner and more strangled, so perfectly fucking loud. 

“Yeah, well it’s different when you’re fucking letting me,” I mumble around a mouthful of flesh between his collarbones, curling my fingers upward and easing his hips down to meet them, letting him roll over them as much as he wants, his cock leaking fiercely in between my fingers. “I’m trying to be careful.” I’m trying not to kill you. 

“Screw careful,” he groans as I push deeper and harder, his mouth dropping open and head falling freely back against the pillows, his hand pushing frantically at the back of my head as if forcing me closer to his neck is going to work on me. It might . I have to turn my head away to breathe, panting, my forehead crammed against his jaw. 

“Stop tempting me.”

“You’re the one leading me into temptation, fucker. You’re the demon here, right?” I let out a frustrated moan and pull my hands away, relishing the whine of complaint that tumbles out of him. 

“You want a demon, I can show you a demon,” I mutter against his ear, allowing just a hint of the glamour tone, just enough that maybe he’ll start questioning what he’s gotten himself into. I need to drive it home and I need to drive myself into him with everything I’ve got. Gerard’s breath catches and surges when I land a sharp, short smack to the inside of his thigh with my wet, disgusting fingers. “Turn over.”

But he comes up on his knees and follows me as I pull away, one hand clutching at my face and the other reaching down for my dick, mouth dangerously messy and wet against mine.

“I wanna look at you,” he whispers, and I want to roll my eyes and shove him down on his stomach but I can’t resist it, disarmed and desperate, so I let him pull me back down again. “ Please.”

“Yeah,” I mumble, hastily making space between us for my dick to press hard up against him and he gasps, fingernails sinking into my biceps as I press in. He’s swallowing me almost immediately, more than ready and just eating me up.

“Oh, shit,” he spits, face screwing up as I prise his legs further apart, lifting his knees and bottoming out. I’m trying to stay in control and I’m trying so hard to be gentle but I can’t help it, forcing myself as close as I can get and letting my head fall back between my shoulders. “I— ah , fuck .”

“God, why did I fucking leave, ” I groan before I’ve even realised I’ve thought it, my hips slumping forth into a rhythm almost immediately, my breath coming thick and fast, louder even than the cusses coming out of Gerard.

“Fucking beats me,” he groans, back arching and fingers clawing, and there’s sweat pooling between his collarbones, where his crucifix should be, and I’m fixated on it, the veins throbbing beneath the surface, crying out to me. His eyes are centred on me, watery and beautiful and green like all the New Jersey summers that stayed with me until I died and I’m so fucking in love that I’m going to Hell. 

I can’t help it. I hold his hips steady as I move, fluid and maybe a little faster than he can handle, getting lost in his moans echoing inside my head as I lean in to mouth at his throat, his sweat salty sweet on my tongue and mixing with the blood in the air, the blood still left on my tongue. Jesus fucking Christ. Gerard moans so softly and so perfect that it’s almost a mewl and his fingers grab urgently at my hair, fixing me in place. When my teeth scrape his clavicle he whines.

“Oh, fuck, I’m fucking a fucking vampire ,” he gasps, and it would be funny if I could even think that hard about it. I pick him up by his hips so that he can’t go anywhere, nowhere but moving back against me. When I angle myself just right, he moans so loudly and for so long with so many cracks and different pitches in between that I know I’m about to unravel him. 

“Hm, no, you’re getting fucked.” Do not fucking bite him . “ By a vampire.”

“Fuck you.”

“Shh,” I tease, driving into him hard enough that he pulls one of the rancid pillows over his face and howls. I tear it away and launch it hard across the room, putting my hand in his hair and pulling his head back so that the skin of his neck is pulled tight like a drum. 

“Oh, fuck, yeah,” he pants, obviously trying to squirm against my hands that are holding him down and he can’t move so much as an inch. I know it’s hurting him and I know he likes it and I don’t know which part is worse. “Fuck. Fuck. Bite me.”

“ Bite me ,” I parrot back with a scoff, lapping hungrily at his neck and the soft spot beneath his jaw, where the jugular opens up and spreads out. “You’re so fucking stupid.”

“You love me.” My stomach flips. Another whine. Another moan. There’s nothing in the room but the sound of my balls against his skin and it’s driving me insane. 

“ Yeah , I fucking love you. God, are you crazy ?” How could I fucking not? I press deliberately into his prostate as hard as I can and he cries out, cheeks flushed pink and sweating and gorgeous, and he nods as he tries to turn his face away into the pillow but I won’t let him. My grip is weakening slightly, distracted by the fact that I do love him and it’s not just fucking dirty talk. Heat climbs up into my throat and the hunger is too much. “Is that what you want?”

“ Frank ,” he gasps, like he’s panicking, like he can’t take it, head rolling around under my grip like he’s about to start speaking in tongues and barking.

“Yeah?” I whisper, a tease, as I curl my hand around his cock, and he whimpers, nodding. “Yeah? You wanna come for me?”

“Not— ah,” he gasps, eyes rolling back, “not until you fucking bite me.”

“Yeah, like you can hold on,” I scoff, pumping my fist harder and in time with my thrusts. 

“Frank, please, ” he whines, and I’m enjoying it, refusing him, channeling all the self-control and restraint I have into fucking the hell out of him. But when he looks up at me, eyes coming into focus and seeing the look on my face, I come undone. “ Please. ”

What am I, your fucking plaything?

Yeah. Maybe.

“Got a fucking deathwish,” I mutter breathlessly as my head falls to his shoulder and I take a chunk of him in my jaws, nowhere dangerous, nothing but skin, and when the blood spills into my mouth and coats my tongue all I can see is nuclear heat and I’m unravelling inside of him, nothing left but the taste and his muscles crushing down on me. I can’t even curse, no breath left in me, nothing coming out of me but a starving, choking groan that sputters around the wetness of his blood as it slides like honey down my throat. 

Somewhere beneath me Gerard is moaning and encouraging me and whispering things that burn the tips of my ears so it must be something deliciously blasphemous but I can’t hear him, not over his pulse, not over the ringing in my ears that marks the coming of the frenzy and my jaws tighten instinctively, and he hisses and puts a hand on my chest and I can’t make myself let go.

“Frank,” he’s panting, voice hot with pain and dripping with desire, and when I force myself to unhinge my jaws he falls away from me. My vision is red at the edges when I open my eyes and my chest is heaving, sinuses and lungs full to the brim of razorblades and ambrosia, and I’m lightheaded. 

“Oh, my God,” Gerard whispers, hands on my jaw as my eyes come back into focus, and he’s looking at me almost like I’m the monster I told him I was and there’s come all over his chest and his stomach and my fucking hands. My tongue brushes against the tips of my fangs and I feel a jolt at the long-forgotten familiarity of their sharpness. “Kiss me. Kiss me right fucking now. ” But I can’t move and so I let him pull me down, tongue grazing the points of my teeth and being cut over and over again, only giving me more to swallow, until my breathing kicks back in and I’m panicking.

“No, no, nonono,” I mumble, whipping my head away from him and slowly feeling the fangs sink back to where they were, hidden again. My breath is so uneven I’m convinced I’ll pass out but I put a hand on his chest anyway, and it slips against the stickiness on his skin. “ Stop it. ” 

“Mmh,” he sighs, tongue sweeping over his bloodied lips, eyes sparkling and cock-drunk and dizzy, and my already aching stomach shudders so hard that the feeling cleaves right through me, burning and cold. 

“Don’t do that,” I gasp, coming back down to earth, and Gerard has the nerve to fucking grin at me. “ Don’t .”

“Didn’t hear you complaining,” he whispered, tilting his head back against the mattress and exposing the blood weeping slowly out of his shoulder. Thank fuck it’s superficial. I didn’t do anything but pierce the skin, but it’s messy. Really messy. 

“Well I am,” I say, and my voice splits in half. He whines in dissent when I pull away from him and leave him empty, reaching for my discarded t-shirt the same way I did the first time and holding it down against the mess I’ve made. I make a point of not looking at his face. “You’re an idiot,” I mutter under my breath, distracted by the way his heart is pounding, the fact that there’s no fear or confusion whatsoever. His adrenaline tastes like gasoline. 

“Yeah, you’re welcome.” He flops back against the bed and pushes a hand through his hair, strands of it clinging to the sweat on his forehead. "And merry Christmas, by the way." Don’t hit him. 

“ I’m welcome? Really?” My voice is seven shades of wrecked. “What about you’re welcome, you freak?” I love you. 

“Big fighting words from the vampire .” Do not take that t-shirt and whip him across the head with it. 

“Shut up,” I mutter, and I’m smiling against my will, wiping his blood away from my mouth with the back of my hand. “We still have to talk, you know. Like, life and death stuff, in case you forgot.” He hums, tongue coming out to taste what’s left of him on his lips, teeth pink with it when he grins. 

“You gonna give me more shitty stitches first?” 

“You gonna stop making me do this ?” I hiss in time with the pressure I put down on his shoulder, bordering on breaking down and bursting out laughing at the same time. He shoots me a lazy, fucked-out smile and pushes my hand away from his arm so that he can sit up and reach me. His fingers are gentle and sure against my face as he kisses me with his blood fresh on his tongue and I want to blow my stupid, blood-sucking brains out. 

“Nope.”

Chapter Text

There was so much to think about that I couldn’t think about any of it. It took me a long time to come down, laying there half-asleep while Frank, somewhat dutifully, even ritualistically, cleaned me up. When the excitement and the adrenaline had worn off, the sight of my blood sent all colour draining from my face and I mumbled something about feeling lightheaded and Frank kissed me on the forehead and told me to close my eyes, so I did. That part didn’t make any sense to me, the blood exciting me during and making me want to throw up afterward, but it was the least of my worries. There were other, more pressing things, like the fact that he was a vampire and I was in love with him and for all intents and purposes there was no way we could actually be together. I was still trying to wrap my head around the fact that there was more than one of him, that I had probably been living around them, maybe even interacting with them, for my entire life. 

Frank tore off a strip of the t-shirt he had been wearing with his teeth and wrapped it delicately around my shoulder and the wound he had made, smiling shyly at me and reaching up to brush my hair back from my face. 

“You’re pretty,” I mumbled shyly into his palm when he cupped my cheek and he hummed a little, looking more tired than I had ever seen his energizer bunny self, and that was when things really did start to sink in for me. Frank’s thumb smoothed over my cheekbone and at the corner of my eye, and when I heard him pull in a shaky breath my chest caved a little along with it. 

How fucking stupid was I being?

Frank had spent years, maybe even decades, entirely alone. Frank hated what he was and so did the people that worked so hard to keep him quiet, invisible, isolated. Frank had been so desperate and low for a fucking connection that he’d taken me in against his better judgement, despite the fact that it could have gotten both of us killed, and it still could. There was something backwardly romantic about it, at face value, but the longer I looked at him and drank in the sadness and the shadow of regret in his perfectly clear brown eyes, the worse it made me feel. 

He had endangered himself as much as he had endangered me and yet I didn’t care so much about the threat to my life. Maybe that’s because I didn’t believe it, entirely, because the conspiracies at the level that he was describing just felt insane and unrealistic to me. Nothing that huge could ever be that much of a secret. 

“Frank?” I mumbled, my eyes fluttering closed and then open again quickly, not wanting my body to betray me and pull me to sleep no matter how badly I needed it, afraid that when I finally did wake up again he would be gone, again. He hummed in response, getting up off the bed to work his way back into his clothes, to my dismay. Please don’t leave, I screamed internally at the back of his head, at the tattoos between his shoulders.

“What do we do now?” 

He looked over at me and there was a sad look in his eyes, eyebrows pulling together, before he looked away and started rooting around for his cigarettes. The longer he stayed silent, the worse I felt about it, because I knew exactly what the answer would be. 

“I don’t know,” he murmured, placing a cigarette between his lips, fingertips hovering, and taking it back out again. “Go to sleep,” he whispered, “you look kinda peaky.” It was the last thing I heard before my head hit the pillow again, as if something so light could beat me instantly unconscious. 

*

It was the first time in weeks that I slept without dreaming. 

*

I woke up to Frank’s hands moving slowly through my hair. I jolted, at first, but he shushed me, pressing a gentle kiss to my temple as I tried to blink away the fog in my eyes, relaxing back against his body almost immediately. 

“You okay?” He mumbled against the top of my ear, the hand that wasn’t in my hair light against my bare ribs, and I could only grumble in half-agreement, squeezing my eyes closed against the sudden invasion of a rampant headache. He hummed a little, slowly prising himself away from me, fingers lingering as long as they could, by the feel of it. 

“You got any aspirin?” I whispered, hoarse and garbled and bordering on nonsensical, and he just chuckled. 

“Best I can do is more disgusting coffee.”

“Ugh,” I groaned, my hand reaching out weakly in his direction as he got off of the bed and dropping down, defeated, when I couldn’t find him. “Yes.”

“I can’t believe you can drink this shit,” he sighed when he set a cup down on the nightstand, his hand catching mine carefully when it flailed out toward it. “Careful.” 

“Don’t think you’re one to be poking fun at what I drink,” I muttered, forcing myself to sit up and balking a little as the nausea shifted around in my stomach. Frank laughed weakly and I opened my eyes, flinching at the light and relaxing the moment I could focus on him. Sight for sore fucking eyes. 

“Fair point,” he sighed, smiling timidly and a little wider the longer I looked at him, before nodding with his chin toward the steaming cup of questionable coffee. “C’mon, fix your head.”  

“What time is it?” I hissed against the surface of the practically molten sludge as I drank it, and I almost spat it straight back out when he told me it was five in the morning. “Oh, fuck, Frank, it’s Christmas.”

“Yeah,” he mumbled, nonplussed, smiling just a little. Grinch. He stayed quiet for a little while and it was just disconcerting enough for everything that had happened before I fell asleep to sink back in, solving the mystery of why my shoulder was stinging and why he looked so bleak and why I couldn’t quite feel my body and why the room smelled slightly like rusted nails. The word vampire barged into my head so quickly I almost dropped my coffee. 

It was obvious then that Frank was retreating back up into his head and that it was probably, at least a little bit, my fault. I remembered I’d derailed his attempt at trying to explain himself because I’m selfish and I wanted to get closer to him physically to solve my own loneliness, with no regard for his. He lit a cigarette and his breath was shaky enough that I could hear it, see it in the way the smoke stuttered out of him and climbed unevenly toward the ceiling. 

“Frank,” I mumbled anxiously, frowning, “I’m sorry.” 

“Yeah, me too,” he murmured around another small cloud of smoke. “You look tired.”

“S’okay,” I mumbled, but I yawned, eliciting a small, humourful hum from him. 

“You can go back to sleep,” he whispered, blowing smoke from the corner of his mouth before leaning in to kiss me once at the corner of mine, looking up at me through his lashes as he pulled away. “I’m not going anywhere. Someone’s gotta guard the door.” A sad, useless smile. 

“Well, what I actually need to do is go home,” I sighed, and he hummed as if he’d already considered it. “I think I scared the shit out of Mikey.” 

“I took care of that,” Frank whispered, lips pursing together in a shameful smile of apology, and I glowered at him when I realised what he meant. Can we just stay out of people’s heads, Frank? Just for a little while?

“Seriously?”

“I needed to get you alone.” I let the words hang in the air for a little while before sighing and rubbing my hand over my face. He might have sounded a little remorseful about it but an apology would have been nice. 

“What am I supposed to tell him?” The whisper was as harsh as the realisation that now that I knew Frank’s secret, I was well and truly alone. Frank didn’t even bother shrugging, looking to the other end of the room and appearing to zone out. “I mean… Where do we even go from here, now?” 

“I don’t know,” he whispered again, eyes falling shut, cigarette forgotten between his fingers. 

“And… What exactly are we supposed to—“

“Gerard,” he said, bluntly, slowly, soft like a punch in the nose. “I don’t know. I’m thinking.”

The reprimand slipped me into a stiff silence and I felt too self conscious to even move. 

“I’m sorry,” Frank said eventually, and I noticed that he was stubbing out his cigarette in the palm of his hand, not even aware that I was watching. Just watching turned my stomach but I forced myself to in the hopes that it would help me remember just how real all of this was. But I think I could have watched him do that a hundred times a day for the rest of my life and it would never quite sink in. Same with a lot of things. “Just… it’s not like I have a plan, alright?”

“I’m sorry,” I mumble, thoughtlessly, uselessly, because what good does an apology do us now? Frank flinches a little and shakes his head again. 

“It’s my fault, not yours.”

“It’s not your fault you are what you are.” I catch the tail end of a miserable smile and he nods, brushing so quickly at his eyes that I almost didn’t see it at all. 

“Yeah,” he mumbles, self-conscious and even starting to roll his eyes, shoulders squared. I’m afraid to reach out and touch him, not knowing how I’ll handle it if he shrugs me away. Frank sniffles and mutters something under his breath as though crying is the worst thing he could have done tonight. “Y’know, I don’t think anybody’s ever said that to me.” 

“Duh. Catholic.” I force a small smile and he returns it, eyes softening as he looks over his shoulder at me again, like he’s inviting me. I lean forward and place my chin on his shoulder, his eyes darting down to my mouth and straight back up, and when I hum in the back of my throat he kisses me, just once, the tip of his nose nudging at my own. “What do you want to do?” I ask him as he pulls away, and he chuckles dryly, leaning his head back on my shoulder and staring up at the damp-smattered ceiling, blinking slowly. 

“Now there’s a question.” I kiss his temple and brush a hand back through his hair and his eyelids flutter, breath slipping out of him slowly. “Hm.”

“Tell me,” I mumble against his skin, shifting my weight enough that I can support his, putting my arms delicately around his waist and trying not to squeeze him but I can’t help it. Soft. He doesn’t seem to mind. His lip ring shines in the dim light like it’s smiling at me. 

“Short of driving to Alaska, I have no idea,” he breathes out, head rolling a little against my shoulder and leaning into my hand. 

“Alaska, huh.”

“Mhm.” His lip tugs upward slightly. “Y’know, cold, dark, remote, no fucking cops on my ass.”

“You know they still have cops in Alaska, right?”

“Hm. Killjoy,” he grumbles, still smiling, one of his hands tracing the bare skin of my forearm as it presses against his waist. “You got a better idea?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I mumble, letting my nose brush the tail of his eyebrow, “maybe storm a government building or two, stage a coup, get some laws changed.” He can feel me grinning and I can feel him grinning too, savouring the sound of his bitter, yet somehow still carefree, laughter. 

“You really must love me.”

“Hm.” My hand finds his and twists around it, tattooed fingers slipping in between mine and holding them tight. There’s a persistent pang of dread yanking at the inside of my chest, like barbed wire being wound tight between my ribs. “You’re not… Actually going to Alaska, right?” 

His eyes find mine again and his mouth drops open by a millimetre or two. 

“Depends.” My heart stutters in its place. 

“On?”

“I don’t know,” he mumbles, repositioning his head against my shoulder as if to prompt my hands to start moving again. I didn’t even realise that they’d stopped. “I think it’s less about what I want and more about what you want.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” His hand squeezes mine, just a little, just enough. He hesitates, no longer blinking as he stares up at the ceiling light, the slow movements of the ceiling fan, pupils the size of pinpricks.

“If I asked you to leave with me, would you?” I can tell the words hurt him to get out, and I’m not sure what I’m even supposed to say. 

“I’m sorry, is that a question?”

“Yeah,” he mumbles, quieter, less conviction than I’m used to hearing from him. I wish I could say I wasn’t offended but it just wouldn’t be true. 

“It’s a stupid question,” I say instead of giving him a solid answer and he scoffs weakly, nostrils flaring a little as he closes his eyes again. 

“Not really.” 

“Frank,” I mutter, disappointed and maybe panicking a little, “there is no way that you’re going anywhere without me, not again.” Apparently, that’s all it takes to get him incensed. 

“Yeah?” He gently pulls away from me and stands up, looking down at me in my place on the bed. His sudden inflammatory tone catches me by surprise. “Alright, well if that’s supposed to be so obvious, you wanna tell me how you think that’s gonna work out without me ending up dead and you hooked up to a fucking ventilator with your memory sucked out of you?”

What?

“Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid,” I snap back, unable to resist it, and he sets his jaw because I can tell he wants to do the exact opposite of that. I narrow my eyes. “Alright, so I am, whatever. You still fucking told me, didn’t you?” His face falls by a fraction. 

“Yeah, but–”

“Frank, you can’t just ditch me. Not after this.” I gesture loosely to my half-naked body and the section of his t-shirt wrapped around my gently maimed shoulder. 

“So? What do we do, genius?” That hurts. “You can’t tell anybody and I’ve got one friend in the entire fucking world and he’s sick of my bullshit. He’ll cut me off if he finds out I’ve gone after you again.” It takes me a second, but then another piece of the puzzle slides into place. 

“Ray’s a vampire too?” Not really important, Gerard, but okay. 

“Yeah, and I can’t ask him for his help anymore. I’ve already asked too much of him.” The way he looks at me feels like getting impaled in the head with a fucking nail gun. “You can’t tell anybody, Gerard. I mean, shit, I don’t even feel good about your brother knowing my name, what I look like.” Do not come for my fucking brother. 

“Mikey’s good,” I bargain, “we can trust him.”

“No, we can’t.” He notices the fire starting to rage in my eyes and his own squint uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, Gerard, but, no. Everybody always talks. It’s bad enough telling one person, but–”

“He’s my little brother!” I screech out, and Frank flinches and panics at the volume but I don’t care. “I can’t just abandon him and not tell him why, alright? And he…” It kicks in, really kicks in, what I’m considering doing, and I don’t doubt that Frank can feel my unsteadiness now. “He wouldn’t tell anybody. He’d understand.”

“Gerard, this could get him killed,” Frank says softly, evenly, a plea to get me to lower my voice, maybe. “Think about that for a second, alright? This isn’t just me, or you, or me and you. This has stakes. Real-life, in the fucking flesh, stakes. There are consequences and there are–”

“How do you know?” I might not have said it if I wasn’t so fucking pissed at him for implying what he did about Mikey. I might not ever have questioned it again. 

“What?” Frank looks at me like I’m speaking fucking Russian.

“How do you know? You’re warning me, threatening me, even, with all of these things that I need to be scared of, but how do you even know that it’s gonna happen?” His face cracks like a dam. 

“Gerard–”

“I’m serious! How do you know?” 

Frank’s face flits through several different emotions at lightning speed, like I’m watching him on fast-forward. His eyebrows pull together and his mouth moves around wordlessly, uneasily, a hand rubbing at the back of his neck. 

“I just…” There was a small sigh of defeat. “I just know.”

“That’s not good enough.”

“But–”

“Here’s the thing, Frank, you’re telling me that somebody is gonna pull up in a van and whisk me away to suck my brains out through my nose, or that some fucking Men-In-Black super secret vampire agent is gonna show up and put, what, a stake in your heart, or that I’m gonna get shot execution-style just for being here with you, but have you ever, just once, actually seen it happen?”

He’s just standing there staring at me, eyes huge and jaw clenched so hard it’s a wonder his teeth don’t break and breathing slowly but hard enough that I can hear it. 

“Exactly,” I mutter, “you can’t, can you? Because, Frank, it sounds to me like you’ve just been fucking manipulated and scared into thinking something’s gonna happen if you let somebody in, just because they want to control you, because–”

“This is my life,” he yells over me, so startlingly sharp and edging on being cruel. “What the fuck would you know about it? You’ve known about it for what, an hour? I’ve been living with this for twenty-five fucking years, Gerard, do you really think I don’t know?” 

“Don’t yell at me,” I mumble, flat and taken aback like my voice is just a flame that’s been extinguished, nothing left but smoke. 

“You don’t know shit,” Frank hisses at me. “You don’t know shit and maybe that’s my own damn fault because I don’t even know where to begin with explaining all of this but–”

“You’re telling me I’m in danger and I’m asking you where the fuck the danger is, Frank!”

“What?” He laughs out, pushing his hands back through his hair and holding onto the back of his head, biceps taut and pale. “You think, what, just because there’s not a fucking SWAT team kicking the door down that you’re safe? That this is safe?” He gestures wildly at the space between our bodies, and I can feel tears stinging in my eyes at the way his voice is climbing up in pitch and speed, dripping with blind terror. 

“No, I’m just–”

“I told you because I love you,” he moans, exasperated and spitting the words out like he doesn’t like the taste, and for a second, everything is silent save for the drone of the ceiling fan and the ominous clicking and clanging of the - probably poisonous - heater. “Because I can’t let you go,” he says shakily, hands coming down to wipe at his eyes, tear tracks smeared over his cheekbones. “I can’t, and it’s scaring the fucking shit out of me. Because I can’t be with you without endangering your life, or mine. And I can’t leave, and I can’t be without you, and I can’t let anybody take you away and I’m…” He stares straight into my eyes like he’s the deer and I’m the headlights and I’m looking at him just the same way. “I’m fucked,” he croaks, sniffling around a sob that turns into vicious, almost sarcastic, bewildered laughter. 

“You’re not making sense,” I mumble, drowned out by him laughing. 

“I’m a monster,” he whines, gesturing to himself, with his delicate hands that know how to be the right amount of rough, at the most beautiful face I’ve ever seen, staring at me with eyes the colour of Central Park in fall. I know he’s right and yet, I can’t make myself look away. “There’s no being with me. There’s no normal life, alright? There’s not even a life at all.”

Yes there is. I’m living proof, because you gave me mine back. 

“Frank–”

“There’s no being in public with me,” he says, carrying on before I can get a word in. “It’s not like we can just date. There’s no restaurants, no bars, no gigs, no fucking movie theatres. There’s no holding hands in the street, there’s no grocery shopping, there’s no long walks on the fucking beach.”

“So what?” I snap, folding my arms, and he recoils slightly. 

“The fuck do you mean, so what?”

“Fuck that. I don’t care about that.”

“No?” There’s a tease of a twisted smirk on his face and I want to get up and slap it off of him. “What about your brother? You think I can just go ahead and get involved in your life like that, endanger everyone?” I roll my eyes, the words give me strength burning the back of my tongue. “What about when Mikey, God help his fucking soul, starts asking you why I won’t come over with you, why we never get together, just the four of us? What about your parents? Hell, Gerard, it’s Christmas, and where the fuck are you right now?” 

“It doesn’t matter,” I breathe, scrambling to think of something that might make him believe me but I’m not even sure I believe myself. 

“It does matter,” Frank says, with an edge. “I can’t go anywhere with you. I can’t be seen with you and I can’t fucking believe I brought you here in the first place when I should have just walked away but it’s the truth, I can’t just be your boyfriend, and I can’t just be some monster freak fantasy you can dip your feet into whenever you fucking feel like it, alright? It’s bigger than that and it’s worse than that. So you can keep asking me what I want to do about it, but I just don’t know, alright? I don’t know how to be with you and keep you safe at the same time and you’re being so insanely fucking stupid about it.”

“Not wanting to leave my brother behind without an explanation isn’t me being stupid.”

“Then it’s him or me,” Frank says bluntly, and my eyes just about shoot out of my skull. 

“What did you just say?”

“Did I stutter?” Even before now, he’s never been quite this cold with me, not even when he was leaving me, tears in his eyes notwithstanding. My limbs turn to jelly before going completely numb and I can only imagine how pathetic I look right now. “I’m not compatible with a normal life. They’ve seen to that, and if I just stay here with you like this out in the fucking open then it’s all over anyway.”

“I’m not choosing between you and my brother,” I retort, and it takes a moment for his expression to change. 

“Fine. Let’s say you choose your brother, alright? We’re both miserable but at least I know you’re safe. At least. And yeah, maybe I’ll never get over it, but you will, because you’re human and that’s what you do.”

It insults me to the point I feel radioactive, nuclear, but he interrupts before I can even start. 

“Let’s say you choose me. Let’s say we go somewhere far away.” He chokes a little on the last word and I can tell it’s what he wants, what he really wants. He clears his throat and levels himself out just enough. “When I got arrested,” he says, “the cops could smell you on me. They told me they could smell you. And that means I’m being watched. I don’t know how, and I don’t know by who, but that’s what that means. It means that they’re waiting for me to slip up, and that means they’ll be waiting for you to slip up. And the next time I go to a blood bank - because I have to go to a blood bank, because if I don’t eat I can’t physically be around you, at all, by the way - that shit’s gonna be in my file, and I’ll still have your fucking stink all over me. And if they’ve not already, they’ll search my house, and they’ll smell you in every fucking crack in the floorboards, and they’ll find your blood, and they’ll know beyond a shadow of a doubt what I’ve done, and that’ll be it for me.”

“Then don’t go home.”

“Christ, Gerard, aren’t you getting it? There’s a network for shit like this, alright? I’ve been pulled in for fucking murder and I’m on paper for interacting with fucking humans beyond anything I’m allowed to do. Anywhere, wherever we go, someone will pick up on it and when they do, it’s over. They’ll find me, and that’s if they don’t find you first.”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re seriously telling me that there’s that many fucking vampire cops out there that they have the time to monitor this fucking bullshit? What about all the murders, Frank? Isn’t that infinitely more important than who you’re fucking?” In love with. “Do you really think you’re that important that you’ve gotta be looking over your shoulder your entire life?”

“I can’t–”

“Have you ever tried?” 

Frank looks at me like I’ve punched him in the gut. There’s a glint of something hopeful in his eyes but it diminishes the moment he blinks. His eyes crease gently at the corners and he frowns, lips gently parted. 

“I don’t—“

“Have you?” I lower my voice and tilt my head slightly to one side, itching to get up and just touch him, hold him, get this into his head. “Have you tried, living like nobody is out to get to you?” His mouth opens and I hold my hands up to him. “Don’t start telling me that everybody is out to get you, Frank. I’m asking you if you’ve ever taken the chance to find out.”

“That’s not the point,” he mumbles, voice cracking with desperation and tears, and I have to try my best not to fall completely apart. 

“Just answer the question,” I whisper back. “Don’t you wanna find out, Frank? Don’t you wanna at least take the chance? Don’t you wanna find out whether, maybe, just maybe, we can do this? That it’s not as hard as it seems?”

“Not if the other option is you ending up dead,” he mumbles, reluctantly, and I know I might be finally getting somewhere. 

“That’s not any way to live,” I say, and he flinches like he knows I’m right.

“But I can’t change what I am,” he argues, softly, like he has to fight for the words to get out at all. “And if…” He shakes his head and makes a grim expression with his mouth. “If you get hurt, because of me, because of what I am and because I’m not meant to be anywhere near you then, I’m stuck with that. Forever. And I’ve got enough things left in me that are gonna go unforgiven. I can’t add you to that list.” 

“You said that this was about what I want,” I pose, tentatively, and there’s a flicker of a reluctant smile.

“This isn’t what I meant.”

“But if I asked you to try, would you?” 

The words hang in the air between us to the point I can almost see them, like the motes of dust suspended in the sunlight in my dreams. Frank shifts uncomfortably on his feet and stares down at them and I can hear his lip ring clacking against his teeth as he chews on it. I get up from the bed and approach him slowly, my hands resting steadily on his waist, his own hands flinching as they rest on top of mine. 

“Would you?” I whisper, nudging at his nose to get him to lift his chin, and I stare down into his eyes, the way that they’re blown out and dizzy and exhausted but so focused at the same time, smouldering and golden like a goddamn bonfire.

“Gerard,” he breathes, the start of something uncomfortable, something harsh, and I let my lips skim his as he starts to shake his head, because I don’t know any better, because I want him above all else, because it’s Christmas, for crying out loud. 

“Come home with me,” I say, squeezing at his hips, pressing in with my fingers like I had claws and I could hook him just by doing that.

”Absolutely not.”

”Please?”

“I can’t,” he chokes out, his head leaning into mine, hands smoothing up the lengths of my arms. When I kiss him softly on the mouth his breath stutters.

“If you didn’t want to,” I murmur, kissing him again, and again, and again, “you would’ve gotten up inside my head and made me forget about it.”

“That’s not true,” he strains, kissing me back anyway, and my hands are vibrating against his body I’m so fucking nervous and overexcited.

“Yes it is,” I mumble against his lips, and he makes a pained, dubious noise, a mixture of consent and dissent at the same time. “Just try,” I insist, half an octave away from begging. “Try. And if I’m right, then you’ve not got anything to lose, right?” 

His fingers press in gently to the top of my arm, clinging, like if he lets go he’ll fall over. 

“And if you’re wrong?” 

“Then you run,” I mumble as his lips part to make way for mine again, like it’s that simple. “And I’ll be right behind you.” 

*

It takes me about a half hour to get Frank out of the motel room. He’s quiet, surly, maybe even seething, but he does it without complaint; he’s just procrastinating, insisting upon a shower, taking his bag into the bathroom with him like I was thinking about going through it - and I was, but it’s besides the point. When he comes out he’s relaxed a little, and when I move in to kiss him - because apparently that’s something that I have the guts to just do, seeing as I managed to talk him round to actually going outside - he’s reluctant about it, and I get a whiff of iron on his breath. 

“Were you drinking blood?” I whisper, like it’s scandalous, and maybe it is, and maybe I just need to get over it if I’m going to do this, taking a vampire home for Christmas. My mom is gonna shit. 

“Yeah,” Frank grumbles, voice perfectly clear like running water, light like distant church bells. “You’re taking me into a house full of humans against my will, would you rather I go hungry?”

Yeah, maybe don’t massacre my entire family. God, what am I even doing?

”Guess not,” I mumble, and he shoots me a sarcastic smile. 

I watch him closely as he gets ready to leave, one of my legs bouncing nervously against the bed where I’m sat, already bundled up inside my coat. I’m trying to figure out what it is that I said that made him give in, but I can’t. Maybe he does believe me, just a little. Maybe he does want this just as badly as I want it. My heart swells and shudders in my throat as I watch him, how fucking beautiful he is and how nonsensically proud I am that he’s mine, monster or no, just for today or no. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that he came back for me. My shoulder aches and itches beneath my sweater but I don’t mind because it’s nothing more than proof that he was here. In the space of a minute or maybe two, I pinch myself hard on the arm six times, just in case I’m dreaming. I wonder how long I’ll be doing that for. 

When we do finally get outside, the sky is just barely starting to break apart at the horizon to make space for the sun. Purples, pinks and oranges streak through the moody clouds and it’s a dry kind of cold, no longer snowing and there’s hardly a whisper of a breeze. I shiver a little and hunch my shoulders deep inside my coat and Frank looks me up and down as he locks the door behind us, a cigarette already hanging from between his lips. 

“This is a dumbass fucking idea,” he mutters around it, and I can’t hold back my smile because at the end of the day I still won, but there’s nothing I can say to that. We start across the parking lot and he stops in front of a black, piece-of-shit car that as far as I was aware, doesn’t belong to him. 

“What?” I ask him dumbly when he raises an eyebrow at me, and he scoffs. 

“We’re not walking.” 

“This isn’t your car,” I say, like an idiot, and he rolls his eyes. 

“Yeah, I stole it, big deal. You getting in?” The words spin a little inside my head and I set my feet firmly in the snow on the ground, glaring at him. 

“No, because we’re walking.”

”Gerard,” he moans in protest, and I untuck my chin from my jacket and stare him down. 

“With God as my witness, Frank, you will be seen in public with me.” His nostrils flare a little and he sighs, loudly, dramatically like the shithead kid he is. Doesn’t matter that he’s fifty. “And it’s, like, what, six in the morning? Who’s gonna see you?” He grumbles something unintelligible and shoves the car keys back into his pocket and I reach for his hand, my fingers reddening in the cold. He hesitates, lip trembling in between his teeth, and I thrust my hand forward with every ounce of foolish fucking arrogance I’ve got left in me to curl my fingers around his palm. “Come the fuck on.”

The streets are quiet, like you’d expect them to be on Christmas morning in Belleville. When the occasional car drives past us Frank flinches and his hand goes limp in mine and I have to squeeze it back to life, pulling him forward with me as he looks over his shoulder until the car turns a corner or falls out of view. It’s quiet, our breath visible in front of our faces, feet crunching on snow and ice as we make our way into town. I permit Frank his silence and chainsmoking for a few blocks, until another car speeds past us and his back stiffens like a hissing cat. 

“Will you stop it,” I hiss, lacing my fingers between his and pulling his hand into my pocket in the hopes that, first, my hand won’t freeze and drop off and second, that if he makes a run for it I might have a second to stall him. 

“Sorry,” he mumbles thickly, mouth full of smoke. 

We lapse back into silence for a little while until we’re downtown and we’re walking past Lucky’s, Frank’s eyes following mine to the alley down the side of it where he found me. 

“You gonna tell me how you got your photo on that wall?” I ask him, nudging his shoulder gently with mine, and for the first time in a long time he laughs, quiet like he’s afraid someone is going to hear him, but laughing nonetheless.

”I dunno.” He hunches his shoulders a little more, turning his face away from mine. “We used to play there kinda regularly, before we took off, but it was never much of big deal. I guess we must have gotten a bit of buzz after I died, that’s my best guess.” He says it so nonchalantly that it takes me a few seconds to catch up. 

“You took off, huh.”

”Yeah, a little.” Something sour to his tone now. “Didn’t last long though.”

I don’t know which line of questioning is worth pursuing more. 

“Was that… I don’t know, was that what you wanted to do? Back then?” In 1981 when I was fucking four. He looks up at me and smiles, boyish and shy and sad. 

“Yeah. I don’t know, I guess music was kinda just the be-all, end-all.” His jaw clenches for a second and he sighs through his teeth and he speaks with a devastating, gut-wrenching air of nostalgia that I almost trip over my own feet right there on the sidewalk. “I can’t even play guitar anymore, not really.” 

“Why not?” He shrugs weakly. 

“Feels kinda pointless. And I’m not good at it like I used to be. Kinda like there’s something missing, you know? Like, my soul or something, I don’t know.” There’s still that horrible, heartbroken smile on his face but his tone is so forcefully lighthearted that it breaks me. “And it just bums me out. Guess I kinda just miss the stage, and all that.”

”So vampires don’t play in bands?” Frank chuckles weakly. 

“Not in any of the good ones.” He hums around his cigarette, eyebrows tugging together. “I’m not gonna lie, I was pretty pissed about the whole thing, but we were like—“ and he holds up his finger and thumb, barely an inch apart— “this close to getting a record deal, you know?” It’s strange to me, this being the most Frank has ever spoken to me about anything personal, this being perhaps the most normal interaction we’ve ever had.

“So… what happened?” 

Frank shrugs. The sun is splitting through the clouds now and it’s a warm and thin buttery yellow on his skin, his eyes squinting against it. He’s so fucking beautiful. He motions with his chin to the other side of the street, to the shade, and I follow him. 

“We were playing a show in New York, I don’t know, just this shitty little club in Soho. Felt like a big deal at the time.” He pushes out a small puff of irritated breath. When I watch his eyes they aren’t really focused on anything, fixed ahead. “And the show was good, y’know, really good crowd, and we killed it. ‘Cause we always killed it. But I’d had a lot to drink, and I was kinda fucked up, y’know, because it was my birthday and everything. So—“

”Sorry, I— your birthday?” That’s just not fucking fair. 

“Yeah, Halloween.” He shoots me a weak, fleeting smile. “Ironic, right? But, anyway, I ended up outside, like, around the back, and…” He shrugs, taking a long drag on his cigarette, gesturing a little with his hand as he pulls it away and I’m still reeling from the fact that he died on his fucking birthday. “I don’t really remember what happened after that. I woke up in the hospital for like, five minutes, and I was all strapped down to this gurney and I was screaming and shit, but after that it’s…” He rolls his wrist around in the air, shrugging with his mouth. “I dunno. Hazy.” 

“And that was it?” I don’t know what I was expecting. Try not to sound too disappointed about it. 

“Yeah,” Frank sighs, “that was it.” He looks around and twice over his shoulder and then smiles a little to himself, glancing up at me bashfully through his lashes. You’re so pretty I want to jump into traffic. “We got time for a detour?”

Frank leads me off the street and through a couple alleys, my throat getting thick with nerves at one point and then thicker with utter despondency at realising that he still knows these streets, remembers them, that they were his long before they were ever mine. A shiver hammers its way through my spinal column and I brace myself against the cold to keep on going. 

We end up in the park, somewhere I’ve not been for years now, and Frank’s almost entirely changed, yanking at my hand, telling me to hurry up. 

“I used to smoke here,” Frank says with a small contented noise as he looks around, at the smooth, untouched snow and the bare trees casting claw-like shadows across it in the sun. Every so often, I notice him rubbing at his eyes whenever the light crosses his face. “God damn, what’s it been, like twenty fucking years since I was here last?” He brushes the snow from the two seats of the swing set and sits down, motioning for me to sit down on the one next to him, and I do. I hold onto the chains for maybe a minute before my hands start going numb and I thrust them straight back into my pockets. Frank had gotten so animated there for a moment that I’d assumed he would just keep talking, but as I look over at him and watch him rocking back and forth on his heels on the swing, shoulders curled up tight and chin resting on his knuckles, I feel a tug somewhere deep behind my navel. 

“You believe me now?” I force myself to say, and Frank looks over dumbly like I’ve pulled him out of a deep thought, like he didn’t hear me. “See? No cops, no guns, no pitchforks, no men in white coats.” Slowly, he looks away again. 

“I know what you’re doing,” he sighs, adjusting the hood of his coat when a stray strand of sunlight starts to dance on the back of his neck. “I get it. You think that if I can go a day without anybody showing up to arrest me then I’ll realise how stupid and paranoid I am and we can just go on like everything’s okay. Right?” He leans his head against one of the chains of the swing and blinks slowly, smiling fondly, like I’m the village idiot and my stupidity is just so adorable to him. He hums when I say nothing and looks away. “I don’t blame you for trying. I’d do the same thing if it was the other way around.” My heart is going to explode. “But it doesn’t change anything.”

”Doesn’t it?” He smiles and shakes his head, closing his eyes. I’m expecting him to argue back a little more, but he doesn’t.

”I thought I’d feel better here,” he says, “you know, when I left the city. Thought it would help. But, I dunno, it kinda just feels like I’m walking around a haunted house.” His eyes snap open and he points vaguely across the park, sighing with a wistful, peculiar misery. “I used to live right over there. Last time I was here, my parents were still putting up ‘MISSING’ posters.”

Do not ask him if his parents are dead. Nausea curls around my small intestine and squeezes. He’s been alone for so long. He deserves a second chance. 

“I’m sorry.”

”I don’t think there’s anybody left that would recognise me if it’s been this long,” he sighs. “I’m not worried about that, really, I just can’t stomach being here.” 

In my head, I’m weighing everything up: leaving Mikey behind; leaving my parents behind; never coming back to Jersey like I’d always intended, just under different circumstances; going somewhere new and no matter where it is, Frank will always have one eye fixed on the door, one ear tuned into police radios, because of me. What would I do? How would I spend my life, when half of it was entirely a secret, like he was suggesting? Would I fall for it, eventually, being scared of getting caught, just as he was?

There’s no saying I couldn’t do it. There’s no end to the lies I could make up if I had to, like getting a job on the other side of the country or always being sick over the holidays. I wouldn’t have to tell anybody about Frank at all, but my words from before came back to bite me, viciously, in the fucking throat. That’s no way to live. And then there was Mikey - he’d know I was lying. One way or the other, he’d know, because Mikey always knows. He’d never forgive me, and I’d never forgive myself.

“You could always turn me into a vampire,” I blurted out, before the thought had even fully formed, and from the corner of my eye I could see Frank glaring at me. 

“Yeah, alright,” he scoffed. “Do you take anything seriously?” 

“Just a thought,” I shot back defensively, cheeks burning, wanting to force out a laugh but it just came out like some dreadful, strangled rasp. Just a thought. There was something appealing about it at face value; eternal life with Frank at my side. 

“You’re a moron,” Frank muttered, but I could tell he was smiling, because maybe he really did think it was a joke. “All of this not enough for you?” Well, no, not really. For the first time in a long time, it was occurring to me that eventually, I would die. I would die, and Frank would carry on living. It didn’t sit right with me. It felt like the cold was setting me on fire. 

“But, what happens when I die?” I whispered, sideways out of the corner of my mouth, feeling my eyebrows knitting together and my stomach starting to get uneasy. 

“Beats me,” Frank chuckles out, the chains of the swings creaking as he pushed himself slowly back and forth. 

“No, I mean…” I shrugged, wringing my hands inside my pockets. Shame and anxiety took over my body and I couldn’t finish the rest. There was no way I was about to start suggesting that Frank would actually stay with me for the rest of my life, if he did stay. 

“Oh,” Frank mumbled, and I would have thought he was back up inside my head if not for the complete, dreadful clarity I was thinking with. “I…” He had stopped swinging and he was frowning at the floor, feet shuffling together awkwardly in the snow and turning it to slush. “Can we not—“

”Yeah, I’m sorry,” I breathed, swallowing hard and struggling to clear my throat. “I know we’re not, I mean…” Get a fucking grip. 

“If you’re about to say something about how we’re not serious I’m gonna put you through the fucking floor,” Frank laughs out, leaning over and getting his face in front of mine, searching my eyes. Straight to Hell, please. I want to cry. Maybe I already am, but I’m so damn cold I can’t feel my face. “I’m about as serious about you as I am about getting a fucking stake in the chest,” he murmurs, breath warm against my mouth, and I’m looking at him like I’m fucking terrified. “Which is why I’m here instead of halfway to fucking Alaska.”

”You wouldn’t be halfway to Alaska already,” I mumble without thinking, immediately wanting to smack myself upside the head for it, and Frank laughs and peels himself up out of the swing and pulls me up by my arms. 

“You’d know if you’d bothered to come with me when I asked,” he said, stretching up on his toes to kiss me once, softly, on my lips that I’m certain are starting to turn blue. I can’t say a word because all I can think about is dying but Frank’s voice snaps me out of it, different to before, as he pulls back to look at my face in its entirety, mouth hinting at a playful smile. “Y’know, it’s a shame we weren’t alive at the same time.”

An uneasy laugh sputters out of me. The fuck am I supposed to say to that? I think if he keeps reminding me that I’m alive and he’s not, quite, I’m going to pass out and I’m going to throw up. Doesn’t matter if there’s nothing in my stomach but motel coffee and smoke, it’ll come up anyway. 

“I would’ve been all over you,” he sighs, tucking a piece of hair behind my ear, alarmingly and deliberately tender. 

“I don’t see how this is any different,” I breathed out, my cheeks stinging. Because if I’d had you alive and things were different and better and maybe even working out and you disappeared on me on account of turning into a vampire I would have fucking killed myself. Maybe I wouldn’t have let it happen to him. Maybe I wouldn’t have left his side for a second. Maybe we would have suffered the same fate and we’d be damned to eternity together. 

“It’s a lot different,” he whispers, and there’s a weight to his voice that almost makes it snap, bursting with everything that maybe he wishes we could have. I smile as if that’s enough to say sorry and he smiles back, as if that’s enough to say I love you and maybe it is. He stretches up to kiss me again. “Idiot,” he mutters into my mouth without any real reason when I kiss him back but I know he’s right, and my heart flutters in its place, butterflies eating up all my nausea when I realise exactly what he’s doing, what it means for the two of us right now in this moment. When he pulls away he’s only looking at me, and then it’s my turn to look around, watching for black vans and special agents, just to prove a point. 

“Hey, look, you kissed me in public and no one died,” I tease, grinning in spite of myself because apparently, even the tiniest victory is worth celebrating. For a moment, everything melts away, nothing left but me and Frank standing in the middle of our shithole of a hometown like there really isn’t anything that could stop us at all. There’s a spark of something rebellious and exhilarated in Frank’s eyes and they’re the colour of neat whisky as the sun floods into them, his skin golden and starting to give off very real, very warm steam as he stares up at me. 

“Yet,” he whispers, fingers curling around my jacket and pulling me down to kiss him, my face shielding his from the sun as it breaks through the clouds again. 

Chapter Text

Not long after we left the park I started to get the impression that Frank was stalling, deliberately taking me on more detours to further put off arriving at Mikey and Pete’s apartment, as if he could somehow get out of it. He showed me the house he had grown up in, a house he told me he hardly even recognised anymore but that still felt oddly to him like home. There was another family living there now, he said; he’d seen them a couple days before, unloading their last-minute, pre-Christmas groceries. The house was trussed up in what we both agreed was a distasteful amount of string lights that, even in the early morning sun, were still switched on, the colours looking strange and washed-out as the sun got brighter. Frank had put his hood up to shield himself from the worst of it, always having his back to the light wherever he could. 

“They’ve got a kid,” Frank mumbled around a cigarette as we stood on the other side of the street, watching the house like a couple of freaks. “Maybe like, six or seven, I dunno.” When I looked over at him the expression on his face didn’t quite match what he said next, as if he’d been about to say something reckless but thought better of it. “It’s weird. Y’know, when I think about how many Christmases I had here.” I open my mouth and he waves a hand at me dismissively. “Cue my pathetic monologue about the passage of time and the curse of immortality,” he muttered, grinning sarcastically around it, and I could just smile sympathetically back. It’s all I could really do at all, whenever he talked about anything to do with when he was actually alive. 

We talked about pointless things as we made the turn that would lead us toward Mikey and Pete’s apartment, Frank’s feet getting incrementally slower on the sidewalk and his hand growing stiff in mine. I’m surprised I could even detect it at all, being as cold as I was. Thinking about it, I hadn’t been this cold since that first night on the bridge. 

We talked about our teenage years, about how Frank dropped out of Catholic school to focus on his band and I’d graduated both high school and college, about how we’d both been bullied within an inch of our lives. Frank asked me about college, and art, and I shrugged it off and when he started pressing me I launched into a long tirade about how none of my art was ever good enough for any of my professors and when I was halfway into lamenting about the fact I was never gonna make it in the art world, I snapped to, and realised what he was doing; we were a good two blocks away from where we needed to be, and he’d done it on purpose. 

“You can distract me as much as you want, but you’re not getting out of this, I hope you know that,” I huffed at him when I finally realised where we were, and Frank shot me a hopeless, pleading look. 

“I’m not distracting you,” he mumbled, looking genuinely hurt at the accusation, but I wasn't buying it. “How am I supposed to know where we’re going?”

I grumbled something ineffectual and tugged him along with me, back the way we had come. 

“And by the way,” he said as he jogged a little to keep up with how hard I was pulling at his hand, “for what it’s worth, I think your art’s really fucking good.”

“Oh, shut up,” I mumble, cheeks already a little hot, thinking back to the night I’d first showed him some of my sketches and he’d gotten overexcited and given me a papercut and proceeded to cram my bleeding finger straight into his mouth. How fucking dumb was I, exactly? I didn’t remember it being that obvious, but then again, hindsight is an evil, wonderful thing. 

“I’m serious,” Frank says, dropping his voice a little lower, pouting up at me with the puppy eyes I’ve not seen in a long time and that make me weak at the knees. “You know, I… Well ,” he starts, clearing his throat, “I went back to the house before I came here, you know, to get some stuff, and I went into your room.”

Even just the mention of it sends a tiny electric shock through me. It had been a while since I had thought about the house. I missed the house. Everything had almost been simpler there, until he’d ruined it. 

“Of course you did.”

“I wasn’t snooping , okay, I guess I was just making sure that you were gone.” That stings. “But I, uh, I saw the sketches that you left?” Fuck. Frank squeezes insistently - or is it reassuringly - at my hand. “You’re really good.” When I look at him he’s smiling, smug and not at all shy. 

“It helps when you’re pretty,” I say, through my teeth because I’m embarrassed and it’s true. I’d never seen anything as beautiful as him. 

“ Shyeah , okay,” Frank says with a sly smile, his head nudging my shoulder. For a second - and those moments are getting unnervingly and soul-crushingly frequent - it’s easy to forget. It’s really, really fucking easy to forget. 

“I’m serious,” I sigh, resisting the urge to slow our pace myself now, because maybe I do want to be alone with him for a little longer. Maybe I do want to ignore the reality of it, just for a while. “Frank, you’re gorgeous. I just… I don’t know, I guess I couldn’t get you out of my head.” And then I do stop, right there in the middle of the street, to look down at him. “ Oh, ” I growl, and he grins, because he knows what I’m implying. 

“Hey, don’t look at me,” he shrugs, cocky, lip ring blinding white in the sun, his hand concealed in his sleeve and coming up to shield his face. “That’s all you, I didn’t do shit.” 

“ Except fuck me in my dreams.” He purses his lips for a moment and his eyes search mine, briefly, showing just a little darkness. 

“Alright, guilty,” he sighs, and I roll my eyes and pull him forward as I start walking again, trying to ignore the way that just the mention of it has me on the edge of pitching a fucking tent. 

It’s around eight when Frank and I are standing on the street looking up at Mikey and Pete’s apartment building and saying nothing because just like I expected, Frank has cold feet about the entire thing. 

“I can’t,” he says after a little while, chest rising and falling quickly, voice squeaky and pinched. 

“You said you were gonna try,” I whisper, gently, encouraging, and he makes a small, uneasy noise that’s awfully close to a whine. 

“I never actually said that,” he mumbles, looking up at me like a dog begging not to be kicked, and for a moment I almost fall for it. I can’t even be sure that he’s trying to trick or manipulate me at all, but now that I know about it it’s easy to second guess everything that he does. I don’t even think that he would , necessarily, but it doesn’t hurt to be careful. 

“Frank, please,” I plead, manoeuvring our bodies so that once more, he’s out of the sun, my height blocking the worst of it. I take his face in my hands and his eyes dart around for what must be the twentieth time, always checking for danger, but there is none, so he looks back up at me. “ Please. ”

His bottom lip trembles and I have to hold myself back from touching it with my thumb the way he knows I like to do. 

“Nothing bad is gonna happen,” I say with perhaps a shred too much conviction. “It’s just my brother. You don’t even have to worry about Pete, because he is literally harmless.” Practically a fucking baby bird. 

“It’s not them I’m scared of,” Frank mutters with a touch of irritation and I smooth my thumbs along the curve of his jaw, nudging his nose with mine. 

“No one is about to show up here and arrest you, you know that, right?”

“No,” he says through his teeth, and I can’t help but smile.

“Alright, well I know, so that’s gonna have to be good enough.”

“You don’t know shit,” he mumbles, resisting my lips for a moment when I kiss him and then giving in with a forceful sigh, his body pressing into mine a little more. “And your brother fucking hates me, by the way, seeing as we’re talking about all the things that you don’t know shit about.”

“Yeah, alright,” I mutter as I type in the code that unlocks the door to the building and trying not to think too hard about the possibility of that being one-hundred-percent true. “It’s a good thing you’re my problem, not his, then, isn’t it?” I motion for Frank to follow me, and he takes one last long, sweeping look at the street before rushing inside to get out of the sun. 

We take the stairs up to the second floor and by the time we reach the top, Frank looks nauseous and pissed off and terrified all at the same time. I squeeze his hand and he doesn’t squeeze it back, and so I put my hands carefully on his hips, forcing him to look up at me. 

“You good?” I whisper, and he shakes his head slowly, grimly, mouth pulling down at the edges. 

“It stinks in here,” he whispers back, and because I can’t smell anything except for maybe a faint tinge of everybody’s morning coffee, it takes a moment to figure out what he means. An apartment building full of humans. It’s at this point that I start panicking myself, wondering if I have made a huge mistake bringing him here after all. 

“You’ll be okay, though, right?” I ask him, thumbs pressing softly into his hipbones. 

“Well, yeah , but…” He sighs, the sound of it pitching upward and alerting me to a significant level of pain that he must be feeling, and I feel awful. But you can’t back out now, because this was supposed to be your whole fucking point. If this doesn’t work then he’ll leave you for good. Alaska, remember? Alaska doesn’t feel so good. “I’m freaking out,” Frank says lowly, leaning his head into my shoulder. I twist my head and kiss the side of his neck, just beneath his scorpion tattoo, and he hums. When I do it again, he puts his arms around my waist and squeezes. 

“Can I help?” I mumble, uselessly, against his skin, and he rubs his nose softly against my shoulder, inhaling with a soft sniffle. Yeah, you could have just not brought him here in the first place, idiot. 

“You can let me take another chunk out of your neck,” he jokes, bleakly, and I hum in the back of my throat. “Just to take the edge off,” he rasps, just a hint of a laugh slipping through, and I pull back to look down at him, at the faint humour in his eyes flecked through with fright and discomfort. 

“Maybe later,” I joke back, and he squares up a little, pressing a small kiss to the corner of my mouth. 

“I’ll be fine,” he breathes with relief, “but you know damn well I’m gonna hold you to that.”

“Whatever,” I mutter, because that’s a problem for later, and this is a problem for now. 

Mikey hadn’t yet given me a key; that was one of the many things that was still in progress and, in his defense, it’s not like I had even left the apartment until last night. Frank lingered close behind me when I knocked on the door, and I could feel the air shift around me when I could hear movement inside and Frank stiffened immediately at my back. 

When Pete opened the door instead of Mikey, wearing nothing but threadbare pyjama bottoms, I was blindsided because I guess I still wasn’t used to having him around like this, some omnipresent force that’s always sitting somewhere in between me and my baby brother. That’s not to say I minded, but right now, I needed Mikey. Pete grinned when he saw me and then I saw the confusion setting in as he took in how I must have looked, marginally sleepless and frozen half to death with just a touch of wild franticness about me. 

“Hey, Pete,” I said with a small smile, trying to ignore the anxious energy I could practically smell radiating from Frank. I cleared my throat. “Merry Christmas.”

“Yeah, merry Christmas,” Pete mumbled, managing something halfway in between a relieved and incredibly tense smile. “Jeez, you know, we were getting kinda worried about you.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry. Look, I…” I hadn’t even thought of what to say. Why do I never fucking think of something to say? “I hope it’s alright, but uh, I brought Frank with me.” 

Pete peered over my shoulder at the same time that I did, and I’m not sure why I did; perhaps to make sure Frank was even still there at all or whether he had made a run for it. Frank looked up for hardly more than a second, smiling shyly and nodding before staring straight back down at the floor. I love you, but would it hurt you to just try a little harder? Please? 

“Oh,” Pete breathed, slowly, like seeing Frank was some kind of immeasurable shock. Really? After last night? Use your head, Pete, come on. I watched him swallow, staring at Frank for a little longer than made any sense, like something had magically changed since seeing him for the first time last night, like he’s realised something awful. Maybe he didn’t realise Frank was this hot. Who knows. Pete cleared his throat and when he spoke his voice was different, tense and scratchy. “Lemme get Mikey, hang on,” he mumbled, rushing from the door and just leaving me standing there gawking at the empty space he left behind. What the hell is his problem? At least say fucking ‘hi’. 

When Mikey came to the door, his hair a mess and glasses askew and Pete nowhere to be seen, his obviously sleepy eyes blew wide when he looked at me, and then at Frank, and back to me again. 

“Gerard,” he said, sternly, sounding scarily like our dad and getting double points because he never used my full name anymore, “can I talk to you for a second?” I swallowed, fairly accustomed by now to Mikey’s lectures of concern, but this was different. Mikey was pissed. 

“Sure, Mikes, yeah,” I mumbled, not wanting to argue with him right there on the doorstep, the whole thing just making me feel stupid and small. I looked behind me at Frank who was trying his best to look innocent and polite but if anything, he just looked queasy and mildly constipated. “I’ll be right back?” I said uneasily to Frank, and he just nodded, letting himself slump a little against the wall. Mikey all but yanked me inside the apartment by my collar, jamming the door closed and looking like he was going to shove me against it. 

“What is your problem?” Mikey whispered, his voice still gravelly and groggy, adjusting his glasses to sit straight. When I opened my mouth he folded my arms, and I quickly closed it again. “Are you kidding me? Like are you actually kidding me right now, Gee? What is he doing here?” 

“Mikes–”

“You do realise this is the same guy you’ve been like, completely messed up over since you got here, right?”

“Yeah, but–”

“Gee, I love you, really, I love you, but what the hell are you doing?”

“Will you let me speak?” I hissed, unnerved with how loud he was getting so quickly, knowing that Frank could hear us through the door anyway seeing as it was basically made of cardboard and he probably had superhuman fucking hearing anyway and I really need to ask him about that . Mikey glowered at me from over his frames and nodded, shoulders hunched as he straightened up to his full height, and I sighed. “Look, we… We sorted some things out, alright? I just thought–”

“Did he follow you here?” Mikey interjects, cocking a judgmental eyebrow, and I roll my eyes.

“ No , Mikes, he grew up here.” Quick. Think. Anything. “He’s visiting family.” Sorry, Frank. “It was just a coincidence. Look , it’s not important, okay? I just figured that, you know, it’s Christmas , and I didn’t want to just disappear for the day because I know I freaked you out last night but I didn’t want you to get even more mad at me for–”

“So, what, he shows up, you disappear and you go somewhere to fuck, and now everything’s peachy and I’m supposed to just let him in? Is that what you’re telling me?” 

“Mikey!” I hiss, like a fucking girl , and he raises both eyebrows as if to call me out on it. Sure, face value, that’s exactly what happened. Except, not really, and I’ve had maybe the weirdest night of my life, but we can’t talk about that. I really don’t like that Mikey knows everything.  “Can he just come in? Please?”

“What do you even expect me to say to this guy?” Mikey whines, all nasal and petulant the way it’s been since he was a baby. 

“I just want you to be nice,” I mumble. “I’m, look, I’m kinda nuts about him, alright? And he’s really cool. You’ll like him, I promise.” Mikey looks at me for a solid minute and the whole time, my blood pressure is climbing, waiting to get back to Frank, wanting to check he’s still there. 

“Gee…” Mikey whispers, and it’s that same concerned tone that feels like a knife in the gut each and every time I hear it, the one that tells me I’m a terrible brother and an even worse best friend, the one that makes me feel like an unshakeable burden. His eyes flinch and I know he’s worried and for a moment, I consider blurting the truth out right there and then, but he saves me by carrying on, the knife twisting around. “I’m sorry, but, no. This is too much.” You don’t understand. I need this. I need to prove to him that everything can and will be alright. If not, I’m screwed. Mikey can see the look on my face and he looks like he’s going to cry. I’m forever the pathetic let down of a brother. “Please, can you just think about this? Have you forgotten about the last two weeks, already? I can’t take any more of you getting screwed over, Gee. Can you just listen to what I’m saying and realise I’m trying to look out for you?”

I want to tell him that I get it. I want to tell him that if I was in his position I’d be telling him the exact same thing and I’d make him listen to me no matter what it took, that I’d hold him back kicking and screaming and crying if I had to, if it meant he would be safe. But it’s not the other way around, and there’s no getting him to see this any other way. Frank broke my heart and got me here and Mikey’s got a chip on his shoulder that I put there in the first place because I’ve always had a habit of getting myself into trouble, of never having things work out for me. How am I supposed to talk him out of wanting to protect me the way I’d protect him? 

And what the hell am I doing, anyway, putting Frank through listening to this just to prove to him that he’s not going to get arrested just for hanging out around humans? Is this really the way I should be going about it? I should have just waited, taken him to a bar, back to fucking Lucky’s for all he cares, it would be the same. 

I brought him here because it’s supposed to be safe. Mikey is supposed to be my haven. 

“Mikes,” I croak, not even realising that I’d started crying and it wouldn’t even be that bad if the whole situation wasn’t so fucked , “please. I’m sorry, and you know I hate that I’m asking, but please ? He’s important to me and I really want to make it work and I don’t want this to be something else that you just hold against me, alright?” Mikey’s face falls a little. “That’s why I brought him here, because I don’t want you thinking he’s just some asshole, because he’s not and I care what you think and I don’t have anywhere else to fucking go . And, I don’t know, if you don’t like him after an hour then, fine, we’ll leave, but please .” Like he’s a dog I’m bringing home from the fucking pound. If he bites, I’ll take him back. 

He doesn’t know what to say. I can see it in the way he’s squeezing at the tops of his arms and folding them tighter across his chest, the way his eyebrows are pinched together above his glasses. He sniffles and his chin twitches upward in something I can’t completely rely on to be a nod. 

“I just don’t want you getting hurt,” Mikey mumbles in defeat, tucking his hair behind his ear, and I offer a weak, but nevertheless completely genuine smile. 

“We’re good,” I whisper. “I promise , we’re good. I don’t think he’s going anywhere.” Fake it till you make it. Mikey’s jaw clenches and then he sighs, rubbing his hands over his face.

“He’s not coming to Mom and Dad’s,” Mikey says flatly, and I roll my eyes. 

“Obviously.” I am not giving my mom a heart attack on Christmas. Mikey waits, and then sighs. 

“Alright.” My heart seizes and screams, a victorious yes! erupting from every chamber, swiftly cut off by Mikey’s eyes burning into mine. “Gee, I swear to god, if you’re just being crazy stupid right now and I end up having to peel your depressed ass out of bed even one more time, I am going to kill him. And I can't exactly promise I'm gonna be nice right now, either.” It's good enough. Whether Frank’s a monster or not, right now I wholeheartedly believe that Mikey could take him and it wouldn’t even be a real fight because Frank wouldn’t lift a finger to him. The thought douses me in guilt and I thrust myself forward and hug him, my arms tight around his waist. 

“You got it,” I mumble into his shoulder, and Mikey just grunts, gently peeling himself away. 

“You need a shower,” he grumbles disapprovingly, before unlatching the door and pulling it open. To my surprise, Frank is still there, propped up against the wall with his eyes closed and head tilted back. “You can come in,” Mikey tells him warily, making a point of towering over him in the doorway like he’s the vampire, eyes hard and exasperated at the same time, “but you make one wrong move and I’m kicking your ass out.” 

Looking at the two of them together, Mikey with more limbs than sense (and really, that’s saying something) and Frank with his piercings and his tattoos and his unwavering tendency for blood-sucking, I can’t believe that these are, honestly, the only two men in the world I would completely trust with my life, and there’s no way in Hell that they’re even going to get along. 

But when Frank looks up at him he’s completely unsurprised by the grave threat in Mikey’s voice and he nods, crossing the threshold without a word.

Chapter Text

I had met Gerard at the very start of December; three weeks ago, almost to the day. If I could go back in time and tell myself, as I walked over that fucking bridge, that the lunatic I was about to see on the verge of killing himself was going to turn my life upside down, pull out my spine, lick it and shove it back in ever so slightly out of place, I’m not sure I would ever have approached him at all. 

If I could have told myself that, three weeks on, on Christmas fucking Day, Gerard would be coralling me into an apartment in Belleville and I would be jammed awkwardly against the arm of a tiny fucking couch having coffee with him, his brother and his brother’s weird boyfriend, well there’s no way that my past self would believe me because there’s no way that I would ever be this stupid. 

If I told myself back then that I was going to fall in love with Gerard, and he with me, that I was going to spill all of my secrets to him like dragging a knife through my leaking guts, I would have laughed. That’s all I would have done. That’s how stupid this is. 

But thinking about that doesn’t do me any good. Each and every time I try and dissociate myself from this situation, there’s a punch of the smell of blood in my nose. I’m trying my best to hold my breath but the animal in me just keeps sniffing around for Gerard in the air because there’s no getting enough of him. Whenever I indulge myself and breathe him in, the smell of his brother distracts me; to my utter misery, they smell fairly similar, Gerard’s blood dark and heavy like ancient wine and Mikey’s is lighter, like the watered-down, supermarket version. So they don’t just look alike. There’s something else in the air, something I guess must be Pete, but he smells bizarre. The closest thing I can liken it to is lilies at a funeral. He hasn’t come close enough to me that I can get a proper read on him over the stink of the other two. Even their sweat smells the same.

The last time I was around this many humans in close proximity - or, honestly, ten times this amount - was at the show I’d been to a couple months back where Jamia had showed up and I’d been forced to make a swift exit. I would do that from time to time, carefully glamouring my way into human clubs just to have something to do, prone to severe, inane fucking recklessness when I was angry, and I’m not sure I can even remember what it was that I was angry about. 

Oh, that’s it. It was my birthday. 

It’s not so hard to be around humans when they’re so loaded that the smell of liquor is stronger than the smell of their blood. It’s not hard when I just stick to the furthest, darkest corner of the room and keep to myself, never having any intention of talking to or being seen by anyone. Years ago, I used to watch out for other vampires, imagining and almost waiting for the moment that one of them would go for a human and try and seduce them just to get at their neck and I’d weigh up what to do, whether to let them have it or to save a life. When I was angry, I could never be sure what the answer would be, but I never found out. 

The point is, I’ve not done this for a long time. I’ve never done this, exactly, at all. 

It’s not Gerard’s fault. I tell that to myself, over and over again, a little louder inside my head whenever the smell gets a little much and I have to go back to holding my breath for as long as I can without arousing suspicion. It’s not Gerard’s fault that he’s stupid. 

Except, it’s my fault for going along with it. It’s my fault for not getting myself up inside his head and showing him something that might scare him enough, a full-blown, extended-cut motion picture of all the worst things I can possibly imagine happening to him, and to myself, if this all goes south. For that, I blame myself, but maybe I blame him a little, too. 

I’ve always been a pessimist, and being turned into a soulless, immortal freak doomed to just drink blood until the sun goes black doesn’t exactly help. But that doesn’t mean I’m not a sucker for hope, especially false hope like the kind that seems to be driving Gerard right now. There’s no use blaming myself for falling for it, when he was looking at me the way he was back in the motel, begging me to try and forget or at the very least ignore everything I’d come to fear. I can’t say that the fact he was - admittedly, blindly - willing to risk his life in an attempt to prove me wrong wasn’t endearing to me. Because it finally felt like someone cared. 

Gerard’s brother hasn’t said a word to me since he invited me into the apartment and his boyfriend keeps disappearing from the room every few minutes and Gerard is clearly doing his best to behave like all of this is normal. He’s next to me on the couch right now, his knee pressed up against the edge of mine and bouncing nervously. When I look up at Mikey he’s shooting daggers at me. This would be awkward under any circumstances and even though there’s bigger things that I have to be worrying about, I do hate that this, and what he saw in the alley last night, is Gerard’s brother’s first impression of me. Gerard had sounded so genuine and so fucking sure, while Mikey was grilling him before he let me in. 

You’ll like him, my ass. 

“You can stare at me all you want, douchebag, it’s not gonna make me like you any better,” Mikey pipes up, and I realise I’m still staring, so I drop my eyes down to my lap. 

“Mikey, please,” Gerard mutters, and I clear my throat, nudging at his incessantly vibrating leg with mine. 

“It’s fine,” I whisper, smiling apologetically at Mikey though it hurts my face to do it. Is this really the part where I do my best to play human, to just behave like I’m nothing more than the useless lowlife Mikey thinks I am, the guy that just messed around on his brother before ditching him? I can’t exactly blame him, can I? God, Gerard, it’s a good thing I love you. “I, uh… I appreciate you letting me in, man,” I say to Mikey, unsteadily, and he scoffs. Because I did, literally, need you to invite me in. I’m a walking stereotype. 

“Didn’t do it for you.” Pair of fucking divas. Move on, Frank. Play nice. There’s a big juicy chunk of Gerard in it for you if you’re good. He said so himself.

Christ, what am I, a dog? 

“How come you’re not with your folks, anyway?” Mikey asks me, hatred practically dripping out of his mouth. Why don’t you go somewhere where you’re wanted, Frank? I wish I could get up inside his head without Gerard flipping his lid but what good would that do, in the long run? This is never going to work. Gerard’s lost his mind. Mikey’s gonna start blabbing about his brother’s asshole boyfriend to everyone he knows and I’ll be dead within the week as soon as somebody gets a whiff of me. 

“I’m going over there later,” I lie, and Mikey nods a little to himself, lapsing back into silence and chewing at the inside of his cheek. 

“Speaking of,” Gerard chirps, so obvious that he’s just trying to break the tension but there’s no getting rid of this without a fucking gun, “what time is Mom expecting us?” Mikey shrugs and there’s a familiar, awful pang inside my chest. More than twenty-five years since the last time I had a normal Christmas. And my family was chaotic, my mom cooking up a fucking frenzy and my dad calling at the worst possible moment to talk to me just because he knew it would make her cry, and then my mom getting drunk and my aunts all weighing on how much a piece of shit my dad was and me freaking out and defending him because I didn’t know any better, and by the time I was grown enough to realise just how badly he’d screwed me over, I was fucking dead. 

I zone out for a moment, remembering watching them and the way they tried to reconcile things, attempting to bond and rebuild over the common ground of a missing, presumed-dead son, only for that to go to shit all over again and for my mom to die alone and my dad to drink himself to death in a fucking ditch in Princeton or wherever else. 

Yeah. Why don’t I go somewhere where I’m wanted?  

I feel like I’m waiting to be taken to the fucking lethal injection chamber. 

It’s difficult not to get preoccupied with everything that could happen to me as a result of this. There’s every likelihood that a SWAT team is going to burst through that door and that’s why I made sure not to sit with my back to it. There’s a slim but real possibility that Mikey’s already considered calling 911 just because he doesn’t like the look of me. My only saving grace in that situation would be the miserable statistics for domestic disturbances on Christmas Day that might delay them long enough for me to get away. Then again, the cops could be waiting downstairs on the street, just killing time until I step out into the sun. I turn my head and glance at the window and squint to see if I can spot a red laser sight aiming straight for my head. 

I can’t, and the longer I think about it the more Gerard’s words and his cruel, relentless, foolish fucking optimism start to make sense. How is he supposed to believe me if he’s never seen any of it? 

I’ve never seen any of it. I just know the stories, the same rumours that everybody knows. 

Maybe it is just a method of control. Maybe it is nothing more than fear and intimidation and intricate oppression tactics. Maybe nothing will happen to me. Maybe I’m about to get shot in the head and dragged down the stairs by my feet in a body bag. 

Mikey leaves the room and Gerard and I are alone and the words come out of me before I've even registered them because thinking about it all has me messed up. 

“Can we go now?” I groan, quiet enough that no one will hear me, and he leans in to kiss me once, gently, on the cheek. It leaves a sting behind. 

“You’re doing fine.” 

“Because no one wants to be in the same room as me ,” I hiss through my teeth, and Gerard just hums, like he knows, like that’s fine, like this isn’t ridiculously awkward and uncomfortable for me in every possible sense of the word. 

“Mikey’s just protective,” he explains, nudging my knee with his again and reaching for my hand, which reluctantly and automatically links with his upon contact. “And he’s right, you know, you did mess me up.” I grumble something unintelligible but he squeezes my hand. “I can’t say I really care. I think he’s being a bit dramatic about it, honestly.”

“I disagree,” I sigh, leaning my head back against the couch and rubbing weakly at the base of my throat, where it hurts. Well, not exactly where it hurts; it hurts about halfway down on the inside, like my esophagus is breaking out in hives. If I could get my hands down there to scratch it I would. I don’t even have any conscious desire to drink, no tangible hunger, but my body is crying out for an escape. I’m not sure how I would have even managed it but I should have brought the rest of the bag with me. It was just a third, not much of anything, but it might have helped. 

And I can hear Mikey and his boyfriend arguing in another room, down the hall, whispering but not quiet enough, not for my ears. 

This is just fucking insane, Mikey’s whining, his voice almost indistinguishable from Gerard’s, cracking in all of the same places like they’re carbon copies of one another and they may as well be. 

I really don’t think it’s that bad, Pete argues back, trying to talk him down, and I can’t believe that the only person who has any sense whatsoever in this entire apartment is Gerard’s geeky younger brother. Seems like he’s the only one with more than two brain cells to rub together. 

What does that say about you, Frank? 

Come on, babe, Pete groans, and something about it makes me smile because even something as insignificant as a pet name makes it apparent to me just how much time has passed since I fucking died, sitting in an apartment as one portion of a quartet of gay men like it’s the most normal thing in the world, not at all like it used to be. Just give him a chance. If Gerard’s telling you it’s okay shouldn’t we just–

Gerard’s lost his mind, Mikey snaps, and I keep my eyes closed in case Gerard can tell I’m listening to something and butts his nose in. I’m getting such bad vibes off this guy, Pete, it’s not even funny. 

You got bad vibes off of me when you first met me! Pete hits back, and Mikey grumbles something I can’t hear. Come on. If he’s happy, why is it any of your business? 

Because he’s in our fucking apartment! Mikey hisses. I can almost hear Pete rolling his eyes. 

Yeah, and obviously he feels bad about it, Mikes! Come on! It’s Christmas, can you just lighten up? Just suffer it a little? He pauses and what he says next makes me feel awful. This is the happiest I’ve seen him since he got here. Isn’t that better than nothing?  

Whatever. Can you go and get him? 

“Not feeling well, Frank?” Comes Pete’s voice on this side of the wall, the only non-Jersey accent in the apartment, and when I snap my eyes open his eyes are burning into mine with an intensity that renders me completely silent. I’d not gotten a good look at him up until now, but there’s something there, something–

“He’s fine,” Gerard says softly, squeezing my hand, and I’m almost grateful for it because there’s no way I can speak. I straighten up and drop my hand from my throat and I try my best to smile at Pete like everything’s alright, but I can’t. Something’s off. Venom floods my extremities in a panic, something aggressive and shit-scared activating inside of me. Pete’s eyes are shimmering. 

“Hey, um, Gee, Mikey asked for you,” Pete says, jerking his head behind him to the hallway that Mikey disappeared into, and Gerard rolls his eyes and releases my hand. I want to stop him, to beg him not to leave me here alone, but before I know it he’s gone and it’s just me and Pete. 

I watch in horror, completely frozen, as Pete crosses the room to me, standing over where I’m glued to the couch with no way out. My fingernails press into the arm of the couch and my knuckles are so white they’re almost blue. 

“I’ve got some bags, if you’re struggling,” he says, polite and simple and composed, and my ears are ringing, head pounding like somebody just let off a fucking flashbang. Saved by the SWAT team? 

“I’m sorry?” I choke out, trying to blink like that’ll make anything better, like that will make Pete disappear. The fuck does he mean, bags? Of what? Coke? Pot? Pete sits delicately at the edge of the couch, close enough that I can smell him properly, and sure enough there’s that smell again, like funeral flowers and hospitals, like the fucking blood bank. 

“He knows, right? Gerard?” I can’t speak. I’m pretty sure I’ve forgotten every word I know. “Listen – don’t tell Mikey, alright?” Pete rolls his eyes because my jaw is on the floor and I look absurd. “Seriously, if you need it, I’ve got some. I’ve got O and A, you got a preference?” I’m sure I look cartoonish right now, eyes bulging out of my head, skin the colour of slate, tongue dried up like a stone. Like a fucking zombie. I can’t even say that the realisation has even hit, because I can’t throw two fucking fragments of thought together. 

“I don’t know what you mean, man,” I rasp out, straightening my back a little more, recoiling as much as I can without getting inside the couch cushions. This is so much worse than anything I ever could have imagined. My radar for danger is on the fucking fritz and if my heart could beat it would be going faster than a Geiger counter at Chernobyl. Where the fuck is Gerard? We need to get out of here and we need to get out of here now .

“Don’t freak out,” Pete hisses, and when I look back at him he’s glaring at me, because obviously it’s too late for that and I’m so on edge I’m probably gonna be the first vampire to ever shit his fucking pants. “Don’t exactly catch on quick, do you? Just – don’t make a fucking scene about it, ‘kay? Everything’s fine.” He pauses and his eyes dart upward to the hallway at the same time that I hear footsteps coming our way. “I’ve got your back if you’ve got mine, alright?” He looks up and forces a massive, overdramatic smile when Gerard comes back into the room, looking sorry for himself. Pete leans in to murmur, low and insistent against my ear, “it’s taped behind the toilet tank,” before getting up and picking up my coffee cup, rushing into the kitchen with it. 

Gerard stares at me and raises an eyebrow like he’s just caught us making out and it takes him a moment to drink in the way I’m trembling, the nauseous and dread-riddled look on my face, the way my mouth is opening and closing like some insipid fucking goldfish as my brain short-circuits, over and over again. 

How the fuck did I not clock that? How the fuck did I walk straight into this? What the fuck is going on? 

“What was that about?” Gerard squeaks, tilting his head a little to the side and something surges in my stomach like I’m about to lunge and throw myself in front of a fucking bullet that I can see is coming straight for him. Like countless times before, just looking at his face knocks all the air out of me, like a roundhouse kick to the stomach, like a punch to the throat. I love you so much and I’m so sorry and you’re so beautiful and we’re so fucking screwed I can’t even make sense of it anymore. 

“Nothing,” I force out, and when I get up off the couch I’m off balance and my instincts are all confused because he’s here and even after twenty-five years of conditioning it’s becoming almost impossible not to behave like exactly what I am. I wish I knew sign language. I wish I could just talk to him telepathically instead of having to manipulate the hell out of him in order to just get a word in, just for him to not believe me anyway. 

“Frank?” Gerard’s voice, small and anxious and beautifully, hopelessly fucking devoted, brings me crashing back down to Earth just for a moment. He’s watching me like I’m frightening him and like he wants to hold me at the same time and maybe that’s not such a bad thing. “You okay?” 

I make a nonsensical gesture with my hands, a loose attempt at trying to get him to shut the hell up, before settling for putting my finger in front of my lips, and his eyes fly open a little wider, the pungent gas-station tang of adrenaline in his blood getting stronger. 

“Hey, Pete,” I call out, my voice as normal and even as I can make it but it’s still wavering, “can I use your bathroom?”

“Second door on the left, man,” he calls back, just as steady, just as careful, and that’s as close to telepathy as I can get. What the fuck is he doing here? Maybe he’s feeding off Mikey, like an incubus type. Maybe he’s a secret agent and this has all been orchestrated from the start and he’s in that kitchen right now on a direct line to the fucking FVBI. Maybe he’s wearing a wire. Maybe he’s–

“Come on,” I whisper gruffly to Gerard as I grab his wrist, my vision blurry as I navigate my way to the bathroom with Gerard nipping at my heels and blabbering, asking me what the hell is going on, and I growl at him to shut up, over and over again until he does and we’re in the bathroom which, of course, doesn’t have a lock. Like that would stop anything. Like that would stop Pete. 

“What is the matter with you?” Gerard shrieks out in a high-pitched whisper and my hand flies up to clamp down on his mouth, staring up into his eyes that have doubled in size, the colour of apples in autumn and shot through with panic. 

“Shut up,” I whisper, softer, pleading, begging with almost everything I’ve got. I know he can see the wildness in my eyes and hear the desperation in my voice and I know I’m freaking him out and I probably could have done this better. I probably should have dragged him straight out the front door and just kept on fucking running. God, Alaska sounds fucking good right now. 

Gerard mumbles something against my palm and I relax my grip, not having realised that it was hard enough to hurt him to begin with. For a moment, the hesitation kicks in, as I briefly consider all the ways in which this could go wrong, but the possibilities are almost infinite. Pete could be dangerous and this is just going to be another massacre for the cops to cover up. Pete could be harmless; Pete could be just like me, in love with a human and risking it all, and I’m about to blow the entire thing to fucking kingdom come. Merry Christmas, here’s an atom bomb. But Mikey doesn’t know and there’s an inherent, unignorable danger in that that turns my stomach. There’s no way that Mikey doesn’t know. But how can I possibly tell Gerard and expect him not to say a word until I’ve figured it the fuck out? 

I could just about stomach the danger to Gerard and myself, but now it’s doubled in size and severity and intensity. It’s bigger and it’s messier and it’s impossible to navigate. It’s mutually-assured destruction. There’s no getting out of it alive. 

“Pete’s a vampire,” I whisper, the words falling out like bodies tumbling off a cliff, accepting fate and surrendering to gravity the way I was surrendering to my guaranteed doom. Gerard stares at me blankly for a second before rolling his eyes and getting this pissy, queenish fucking expression on his face and pulling himself away from me to fold his arms, hips cocked out to one side. 

“Frank,” he complains, disapproval shadowing his features, and I want to scream. “Don’t be fucking ridiculous.”

“I’m serious!” I groan, and maybe it’s just him rubbing off on me, but I swear we’re starting to sound the same when we use that tone. Dogs really do start to resemble their owners.

“Really,” Gerard says bluntly, and I roll my eyes, resisting clawing out my own eyes or tearing out my hair, and because I don’t know where to start with what to say my hands go straight for the back of the toilet tank, just like Pete said. Part of me is hoping Pete was telling the truth just so that I don’t look completely insane in front of Gerard and the other part is hoping to God that he was lying just so that the nightmare can end and I can just blame it all on being hungry and paranoid and delirious and–

My hand latches onto the familiar, tepid squishiness of a standard-issue blood bag and everything goes cold, from the top of my head to my fucking pinky toe. When I give it a tug it comes away, and there’s a full, untouched bag of A-positive in the palm of my hand. I would have thought I’d have something triumphant to say but now that it’s real it really doesn’t feel so good. My stomach lurches squeamishly, traitorously, just at the sight of it. 

Gerard knows better than to ask what it is because it says it right there on the bag and there’s a big raging biohazard tag for good measure. For the first time in perhaps forever, he doesn’t say something stupid and he doesn’t immediately start jumping to alternative conclusions and excuses. He just stares at it. 

“Huh,” he sighs, frowning slowly as all the blood drains - no, gushes, audibly - from his face. Before I can even think, Gerard’s eyes roll back into his head and my arms flail out to catch him just as he fucking faints on me, and at the exact same time, Mikey pushes open the bathroom door and stares at me, eyes darting between Gerard’s unconscious weight slumped against my chest and the bulging bag of blood that, for some reason, is still in my godforsaken hand. 

Chapter Text

“Mikey,” I whisper, trying to keep my voice as calm as I can, “take it easy, alright?” 

He’s looking at me like he wants to kill me, or at the very least like he wants to break my jaw.

“What did you do?” He asks me, voice ticking up at the end the exact same way that Gerard’s does when he’s horrified and I’m freaking him out. I know I have about five seconds before this goes completely nuclear because he’s looking at Gerard like I’ve killed him, for crying out loud, and I can hear, smell, feel the adrenaline coursing urgently through his body with nowhere to go. What am I supposed to do? Do I drop Gerard or do I drop the blood? For god’s sake, Gerard, wake up. 

“What are you…?” He points loosely at the bag of blood and quickly drops his hand, his voice turning aggressive, furious, terrified . “What the fuck did you do to my brother, you freak?” My mouth moves without speaking. “What did you do!?”

It happens before I can even think about how it’s really not a good idea.

“Mikey,” I say, a little louder and a little softer at the same time, commanding and perfectly clear and as good as I can get it, “everything’s fine.” It’s the hardest I’ve ever glamoured anybody, more than Gerard, more than I thought I was even capable of, and it makes my head hurt and I hardly have the energy to do it and it whacks me out. It only takes a second but Mikey’s expression flattens out, just the hint of a quirk at one eyebrow. God, these fucking guys. Two peas in a fucked up, weak-minded pod. His subconscious feels like jelly left out in the sun. “Mikey, why don’t you sit down?” Why don’t you go to sleep?

“Huh,” Mikey mumbles, eyes still fixed on the back of Gerard’s head as he stirs a little in my arms, and he nods, sitting abruptly on the floor of the bathroom and leaning back against the wall like a college kid greening out at a party. I can’t imagine it feels all that different and for a moment I feel bad for the guy but it’s quickly overshadowed by how completely screwed I am. Gerard is going to kill me. If Pete doesn’t kill me first. 

“There you go,” I murmur, hitching Gerard’s weight up a little higher onto my chest - and I curse my body because why am I this strong but still short enough for this to hurt my fucking back - and carefully discarding the blood bag onto the counter. I can feel my brainstem throbbing with the force it’s taking to keep ahold of Mikey enough that he stays put and I gently lower Gerard to the floor, leaning his head back against the cabinets under the sink and repositioning his knees. He whines a little and I shush him. 

“You’re alright, angel, you just fainted,” I whisper distractedly as I brush his hair back from his clammy, sheet-white face, and his eyes roll open and catch mine, just for a second. He smiles, faintly.

“Who’s an angel?” He mumbles, and there’s a scream building low in my stomach that I let out in the form of a shrill, urgent call of Pete’s name. I’ve got your back if you’ve got mine. I squeeze the back of Gerard’s neck in vague reassurance as I look at Mikey, making sure to stay up inside his head until the last available second, and he looks like he’s seen a ghost.

“What the fuck is going on?” Pete screeches from the doorway, looking down at the scene that’s unfolded so chaotically it could be a fucking Renaissance painting, Mikey propped up dumbly against the wall with his brain turning into temporary scrambled egg, Gerard mumbling something about wanting to throw up from somewhere behind me as he paws at my shoulders, the bag of untouched blood on the counter next to the sink, the way I’m crouching between the two of them.

“Dude!” Pete hisses, furious, eyes so dark under the white fluorescent lights of the bathroom that they almost look purple. “Did you fucking glamour my fucking boyfriend? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Something I can imagine would get my head torn clean off my shoulders.

“Big picture, please, ” I hissed back through bared teeth, gesturing wildly between the two of them. Gerard jumps visibly and loudly when he looks up and sees Pete and it’s clear that what I said is slowly coming back to him and whatever was left of my panic comes back with a vengeance.

“What’s going on,” Gerard mumbles.

“God, you’re such a fucking dick, ” Pete mutters, not even bothered about Gerard, crouching down in front of Mikey and snapping his fingers right in front of his face. He whips his head around and stares me down, fraught with hostility. “Dude! Can you get out, please!?”

“Sorry,” I gasp, and I mentally let Mikey go, the lost connection snapping and rippling like an elastic band smacking me straight in the eye. I seriously didn’t even know I could do that, straight up fucking hypnosis. Maybe that’s what happens when humans actually invite you in. 

“Mikey? Baby?” Pete’s babbling, grabbing at Mikey’s face as he snaps out of it a little, and before Pete can get a word in Mikey reels himself away from the wall and lands a firm, gangly-legged kick right in my hip. 

“Dick move, asshole,” he snaps, and I almost fall the fuck over, because what does that even mean? How does he even—

“Gerard? Are you okay?” He’s scrambling over to Gerard on the tiles and shoving me out of the way and instinct tells me to go for his fucking throat but I don’t . Gerard grumbles something and he’s trying his best to articulate himself by pointing at Pete and then at me and before I know it he’s crying. That’s it. I’ve officially broken him. Mikey puts his body in between mine and Gerard’s like he’s some kind of human fucking shield and I just gawk at him. Really? “The fuck’s the matter with you? Seriously?” He thrusts a finger at the base of Gerard’s neck just peeking out from beneath his sweater, at the edge of the stitches that he should really have taken out by now. “Oh, Jesus, you did that, didn’t you?”

My head’s spinning so bad I’m surprised it’s not turned a-hundred-and-eighty degrees on my shoulders like in the fucking Exorcist. 

“I… Uh… I- What?”

“Mikey, it’s fine, ” Gerard groans, his eyes flitting between all three of us like he can’t make any sense of it either. 

“No, Gerard, this is so beyond fine,” Mikey growls, and I don’t know how to react when he puts a hand on my chest and shoves me and I fall back on my fucking ass. “ You. Get the fuck out of my house.”

“Mikey,” Pete stresses, at the same time as Gerard only nowhere near as loud, and I’m amazed I’m holding myself together. It’s his brother, I remind myself as I’m thinking about snapping his neck, you can’t hurt his brother. 

“No, you stay the fuck away from my brother,” Mikey practically snarls, glasses askew, jabbing at the centre of my chest with his finger and it’s a wonder it doesn’t snap in two with how tense I am. I’m too hungry for a fight, I’ll kill someone . 

“I–”

“Go and find someone else to leech off,” Mikey spits. “You get out of here right now , before I get Pete to drag you out.”