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Oliver used to like cold nights. There was something endearing and comforting about staying up to the early hours, fueled by warm coffee and pizza, and kicking anonymous gamer ass so hard that they always tried to add him on Xbox Live. Especially when he got to do it with one of the people he cared about the most. Harmonized laughter, too-close touching, shared warmth under blankets and common soft embraces. Oliver was no stranger to these things. For years, no matter how hard things got, no matter how challenging, he always took comfort knowing he got to have those nights.
There’s no one out there who can prepare you for it. Who will tell you how different it feels to lean your head on the chest of someone who’s not breathing. Who can warn about the lack of a heartbeat, once so subtle it was nearly impossible to notice, but its absence so deafeningly loud. About that singular fucking pizza box saying everything remaining unsaid. Oliver’s eyes focused away from the screen to watch cold hands manipulate and press buttons on the controller with practiced precision, just to remind himself that he was still cuddled up to someone. The arm draped around his chest only provided the comfort of pressure; he thanked god that it was at least a warm night.
It had been nearly nine months since Lucas Gardiner died. Since Oliver had to drag his incoherent blood-soaked roommate to the bathroom. Since she threatened to kill him if he told anyone what happened or what they were. He was only allowed to live, “since it would make Lucas sad if you died.”
From that night Oliver remembered only three things clearly:
The blood smeared across Lucas’s face and hands and clothes and then Oliver’s clothes.
The laughter, as if Lucas thought being killed was the funniest thing in the universe.
“I love you so much.” Repeated at him, desperately and constantly, almost as if Lucas thought if he stopped saying it Oliver would disappear.
He doubted Lucas could remember anything from that night. That’s just how he is when something bad happens.
Oliver screwed his eyes shut, tight enough to hurt, for just a few seconds to get his head back on track. He never liked his thoughts drifting to that night. It was too… Everything. But he didn’t think he could stop thinking about the person he was cuddled up against, so he shifted his thoughts just a little. Philosophical thought was almost meditative to Oliver at this point. Deep contemplation and exploration of ethics, the mind, the self and the world was his favorite hobby outside of video games. Which is why his friend’s recent situation basically lit his mind on fire.
Oliver shifted his position, cuddling closer to Lucas, and watched him play his game. He watched his lifeless hands, still animate, and listened to his either celebratory or frustrated self-mumbling. Someone dead yet still very much here, not just in the metaphorical sense but in the physical. Still walking, talking, thinking, being , without the necessary biological mechanics to support it. It was equally disturbing as it was fascinating. Lucas was cagey when Oliver asked about the how and why. Oliver knew why. It was dangerous to have any information on vampires, ‘Kindrid’ as Lucas called them, lest the powers at be kill you for being a ‘masquerade breach’.
The one thing he did learn though, was to throw the biological and scientific explanations out of the window. Lucas had even rambled at one point in a very esoteric way about blood, something along the lines of - ‘the metaphysical properties and representation of the soul and suffering are worth more than the substance itself.’ So Oliver threw out any plans to research the nutritional value of the cells and plasma. In short: magical phenomena was real now. It always was real, and he just had to deal with it. He also gleaned that vampirism was a curse of some kind, the nature of it he was unaware of. Thinking about that made him feel a deep sadness, even at just knowing Lucas was cursed.
He reached his hand up and gently placed some fingers on Lucas’s wrist, causing him to stop playing for a moment, fingers twitching, before continuing his game. To be forced to sustain your life on other living things… Oliver already thought about this extensively. By nature, all creatures other than most plants and the occasional bacteria drew this lot in existence. Everything someone ate was alive; it lived, respired, sensed its surroundings, maybe bred, and then died. Humans eat death. Former life. Vampires, he reasoned, eat life.
She ate his life.
Oliver wrapped his fingers around Lucas’s wrist. Once again the fingers twitched, a pause menu appeared on the screen. An unfamiliar voice spoken with an identical sound asked, “what are you up to down there?”
“Dunno. Thinking, I guess,” Oliver mumbled.
“...That’s like saying you’re breathing.”
“Is it, though?”
A chuckle from above. “Always the questions… You know what I mean. Your brain never stops, even when you want it to.”
He was right. Lucas knew him so well. So so well. Yet Oliver was just getting to know him. Originally Oliver thought Lucas’s Chicago accent switching to some sort of British one was just a vampire thing. Bloodsucking leech colonialism joke, hence and so-forth. It’d be the kind of stupid long-form prank he’d pull to make him laugh. It was only when Lucas didn’t understand the first time Oliver questioned it that he started to become worried.
“Just going to keep holding my wrist?”
Oliver blinked, Lucas’s soft melodic voice bringing him back to reality. “Yeah. Got a problem?”
“Never.” The game was unpaused. The crashing of steel and northern European music once again became background noise.
Oliver watched hands that he knew from his early childhood skillfully pilot Geralt of Rivia through the mountainous wilds of Skellige, the character on the screen never knowing someone else is influencing all of his decisions. Oliver remembered watching those hands build castles in the dirt, hide pokemon cards before anyone saw them, fish food out of trash bins and shake when someone asked him why. He remembered holding them to draw on them with marker, then asking about the long bruises, about the torn nails. He remembered a second boy’s hand gripping his other tight, reassuring him the home he was going to have with him would be better than the one he was taken from.
He watched this young man, beside him his whole life, go through a hell worse than most suffer and come out the other side alive. Come out successful, hopeful. It took so long, such a long time, but he was finally able to go outside by himself safely. And the first time he did he was murdered. And the person that came home covered in blood that night was someone else.
Not in the metaphorical sense, mind you. Oliver was very well aware of that now. Lucas had recently attempted to explain why he was acting so differently by referencing the Ship of Theseus. Clearly playing into the philosophy angle so Oliver would have an easier time understanding. But nothing could have really prepared him for the statement, “now imagine the Ship of Theseus is a person. Me, in fact. Yeah… So anyway I’m Lucas!”
Lucas Gardiner is a dead man. I’m Lucas now . This statement, one that he liked to repeat, made Oliver’s head spin a little every time he heard it. It made sense once Lucas gave him context. Apparently his fucking, clan or bloodline or whatever, has a psychic hive mind link…? If Oliver heard him right, that is? And that some old-ass vampire who uploaded his brain probably fucked up the uploading, so upon trying to download himself onto Lucas, it melded the two of them together as opposed to completely possessing his body. Like a corrupted file still managing to open.
It was at least mildly comforting to know that his best friend still kind of existed, in a way. The fucking guy looked just as meek, awkward and nervous when he told Oliver that he’s someone else as when he-, well, ‘Gardiner’ as he calls him, came out as gay to him. But…
Oliver gripped his wrist a little tighter, running his thumb over the cool flesh, feeling his tendons pull and release.
It was like… An approximation of him was still here. The idea of ‘Lucas’. His new roommate had the same face, the same name, the same memories and traumas, but also new memories, new body language, new traumas and a new fucking accent. Oliver supposed there is also an approximation of whoever the hell blended himself into his roommate’s mind. The ghost of two dead people, and a present enigma that still asked to cuddle on the couch and play video games despite it all.
Originally Oliver tried to liken him to a video game protagonist not knowing about the puppeteer pulling the strings. But that wasn’t accurate. He was just… New. Lucas never used to be obsessed with invertebrate life cycles, medicine, occultism, and now these new hobbies bled all over the apartment. The same old ones, video games, streaming, art, anime, all remained too, if his tastes shifted just a little. He wondered if Lucas’s tastes in the new, weird hobbies also had shifted. He kind of hated admitting this to himself, but new Lucas was far more engaging to talk to on a one-on-one level. Lucas was always smart, but often lost track of conversation due to his dissociative condition. New Lucas was focused, present, matched his questions and speculation with wit, curiosity and wisdom he never expected from him. Sure, a large portion of his statements were nonsensical, but it gave Oliver something to think about, sinew to chew on.
However, none of the excitement of good conversation was ever going to bring his best friend back.
Oliver moved away from this thought. He didn’t want to start crying, and then make Lucas feel bad about being fucking born. Or dying. Or being reborn or however the hell it worked. He didn’t choose for this to happen. He doubted she even thought this was going to happen to him. Apparently, according to Lucas and his weird new friends, this is the outlier of all outliers. “The kind of thing that could only happen with a Malkavian.” Whatever a Malkavian is.
What he did have a choice over, was how he lived and acted. Modern nights consisted of much conversation with Lucas, the usual staying up late, and watching his new friend invite the same rotating door of fans over to play games, bite them, wipe their memories of the bite and shuffle them out the door once they were feeling okay. It was surreal to watch. Manipulation was as easy to this Lucas as breathing is to Oliver. He was just glad Lucas wasn’t killing people. And that they were friends.
At least, Oliver always got the impression they were still friends. Lucas was protective over him, very protective. He did things Oliver didn’t understand, and only really trusted Scott, Lucas’s adoptive brother and the third of their friend circle, to ensure his safety when he couldn’t. Oliver watched his hands again, and then the arm wrapped around him, and wondered how he really thought of him. Lucas’s- the old Lucas's thoughts on him were… complicated. Oliver knew Lucas had feelings for him, they were just never acted on. Stupidly, Oliver never had asked about them. But Oliver always got a feeling. And now…? He didn’t know. Lucas acted too differently, and though he was more open with Oliver than he was with many others, that resting small smile betrayed nothing.
Oliver let out a deep sigh, relaxing his body and letting all of the missed opportunities and regret filter out of the room. “Why don’t you ever bite me?”
Lucas immediately paused the game. “Sorry, repeat that?”
Long curly hair now tickled Oliver’s forehead. “Why don’t you ever bite me, Lucas?”
The controller was put down. “I don’t want to?”
Oliver adjusted his glasses and craned his head back a little to stare up at Lucas’s puzzled face. “But why don’t you want to?”
“...Where is this coming from?”
“All those people, the fans of your channels, the ‘special’ ones that you have come over. The same like, eight to ten people, almost on a roster. Why am I not on that with them? I’m easy. I’m right here.” Oliver’s voice was level and non-confrontational. Curious.
Lucas glanced away for just a moment before looking into his eyes again. “The bite, you call it, typically is referred to as ‘The Kiss’ amongst Kindrid. The feeling it produces is euphoric, and it’s not uncommon to become addicted to it. I don’t want that to happen to you, nor do I think of you the way I do them.”
“Like food?”
His eyebrows furrowed slightly. “No I… Well, yes. Don’t mistake that answer for thinking I don’t see them as people.”
Oliver slowly sat up, stretched his back, and then shuffled so he sat right on Lucas’s lap, legs across the couch. Lucas’s eyes widened, one hand floating above Oliver’s lap, the other his back. “Then the distinction between me and them is…?”
“We’re-... We’re
friends
, Oliver. You’re my best friend.”
“They’re friends too, or at least they think they are. You hang out with them on this couch just like we are.”
The vampire’s head tilted, eyes narrowing a little. “I don’t exactly catch what you’re getting at, but I know you’re way, way too smart to not grasp why you’re different. So why the questions?”
Oliver remained leaning into him, studying his face as neither of them pulled away from each other. “I want to know how you feel about me.”
Unlike those other people, and even his new friends, Lucas allowed his body language to be an open book around Oliver. Whether that be subconscious or an active choice, Oliver was no longer sure of. But it still stood that Oliver knew Lucas’s face was not lying when he became a deer in headlights. “...Feel..? In what way?”
“In general. And I want you to be honest about it. You’ve become a damn good liar, but you’ll never fool me, Lucas. Lucas cared about me. I know this very, very well. Why you?”
A sharp, amused exhale. Quiet though. “I’m him, but I'm also not him. I’ll never be him, but I'll always be Lucas. I don’t really know why, but I think my feelings are stronger than his… Wait actually, it’s probably because I’m not lost in a dissociative fog 24/7 like he was. Sensory tools can only do so much. Hooray for the therapy equivalent of replacing worn car parts!” He grinned widely, that big familiar smile combined with that smooth slow voice. At least some things never changed. But god those fangs were wicked long, for some reason he really liked showing them off.
“But what were those feelings? Well, what are they? You’re still dodging the question dude.”
“But isn’t it fun to watch me duck and weave?” Still smiling genuinely.
Oliver cracked a half smile. “You never fail to make things interesting.”
“And you,” Lucas poked his chest, “never fail to turn every damn conversation into a ‘teaching moment’. I can only sustain so much talk about Diogenies before I start wondering if you want to fuck his statue.”
“It’s how you know I haven’t been replaced!”
Lucas laughed for a moment, cut off with a pause. “...Hang on… Was that a dig at me?”
“Maybe.”
Lucas rested his arms on the head of the couch. “I’m so fucking wounded right now. A dying animal under you. Caught in your carefully laid yet completely illegal bear trap.”
“Good. Now you can’t move away when I ask why you’re trying to get rid of me if you apparently love me.”
The tone of that statement immediately changed the air in the room. That was confrontational. Direct. Lucas stared, shock written all over his face. Oliver was right, despite everything, he’ll never fool him. He felt exposed, seen through. It was never fun to have a curtain ripped right open before a grand reveal. “I…”
Oliver blinked a few times, face twisting a little as he composed his words. “Scott told me. You’re trying to organize me moving in with him, or at least near him. Why? You never told me about this.”
“I was going to.”
“When?”
“When it was possible.”
“Why do you want me gone?” he asked, hurt.
There was no point mincing words, or lying. “I don’t want you gone.”
“Then why are you trying to palm me off to Scott?”
“I love you.”
Silence. There was guilt written all over Lucas’s pleading look. Oliver’s expression softened, he could tell from his tone there that Lucas wasn’t deflecting, that was his answer.
“I’ve been telling you this whole time that you’re in a whole lot of danger, Oliver. This way, we can still be in each other’s lives with much less of a risk of your death.”
“Do you think I can’t handle myself?”
“I don’t think you can handle Kindrid, Oliver. Much less one who decides to kill you. Or one that accidentally tries.”
“... I don’t feel like I’m in danger when you’re here.” Oliver knew that statement wouldn’t solve the problem. It was an excuse. He just didn’t want to leave Lucas.
Lucas did not break eye contact. “You should.”
Oliver glanced away from him, breaking into a nervous half-smile. “The only time I felt in danger was when you brought your weird new friends over, and that one guy let his fucking cougar into the house… God…”
His voice remained level, and serious. “The fact that the mountain lion was what scared you then, and not the
four
vampires being in your home and knowing where you live, is
extremely
concerning to me.”
“Well it would’ve scared me if you weren’t there.”
“I’m implying you should be scared of me , Oliver.”
Oliver slowly looked back at him. Images he saw all over the internet flashed in his mind, the kind where people would photograph a calf cuddled up to a cute dog. The prey, uncaring or unaware of the jagged teeth behind its companions’ adorable face.
Despite the dead seriousness of his tone, his face was all concern and care. “... If I promised to be scared, would you let me stay…?”
More sadness dripped into his voice. “Come on, Oliver…”
“I just want a fucking choice in the matter! I know knowing is dangerous, but if I don’t know I also can’t protect myself! I don’t want to sit here wondering at your motivations, wondering if you’re getting rid of me because you care or because I'm a problem…”
At even the smallest hint of tears, Lucas’s hands gently cupped his face, a thumb snaking under his glasses and wiping his eye. “
You’re
never a problem.
I’m
the problem…” he whispered, “I’m sorry… I’ll talk to you more about plans and such later… I just want you to be okay…”
Oliver wiped his eyes, then put his glasses back on. “I just… I need to know the answers when I ask questions. And if I can’t have that then I need to know your reasons. All of… This ,” he gestured vaguely to Lucas, “rules your life now. And I don't know any of it. And that drives me fucking crazy.”
A sympathetic smile. “It drives me crazy too.”
“I…” Oliver looked away from him, at the glow of the TV, the messy coffee table in front of him. “You… Want me to move away soon, yeah? So I can be safer?”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t want to do that?”
“I don’t. I want you here with me.”
He didn’t need to ask why. “...”
A hand drifted up, moving some hair behind Oliver’s ear.
“If… If you could have anything with me, what would it be?”
“Clarify the question some more?”
Oliver exhaled slowly. “If… There was none of this, fucking… Curse shit… None of this masquerade stuff… None of this ‘i’m at risk of killing you’ situation… What relationship would you have with me? And I’m asking
you
. Not Gardiner. I’m asking
Lucas
.”
He paused for around ten seconds. “We… We’d have a garden together… You’d never know why I grow the things I do, but you’d think they’re pretty. You’d know not to touch them… We’d play video games, and laugh, and I’d hold you while we ate flatbread and chips… You’d ask me the wildest questions and I’d give answers that give you more questions, and we’d never get bored of each other… When I forget where I am you’ll take my hand and make sure I get home, and when you get anxious I’ll be there to hold you and tell you it’ll be okay… I’d look at the afternoon sun dancing off of your skin, and want to eat you in the best way… You’d forgive me when I get too scared to take things further, and understand it’s not your fault I started crying… We’d raise insects and debate whether the butterfly and caterpillar are truly the same creature after their metamorphosis… I’d lose every debate…”
His voice trailed off into quiet just as Oliver’s lips met his. Lucas froze for just a moment, before those arms moved to hold him close. When they parted, Oliver whispered, “one night. Just one. Before I leave. Before I move away. We get to have that. After that… You come back to me one day alive , or we move on with our lives as friends… Whatever’s safest… Promise?”
He was close enough to feel Oliver’s breath against his lips. “I promise…”