Work Text:
As soon as he hears the footsteps on the stairs, he knows its Edgar.
The cheap aftershave and musky scent of dusty comic books are easily detected by his now vampire senses. As is the slowness of Edgar's step, the small mumblings of disgust as he observes his surroundings.
The beating of his heart, faint at first; then loud, pounding, angry. Made all the more potent by the fact that their blood is shared.
He eases his scalpel further into the bloody mass of the animal's gut. He wrenches around, bringing forth a loose bulge of intestine. He pokes at it in morbid fascination, and as part of a guise to act oblivious to his brother's presence. The footsteps grow louder, until they turn into the small area consisting of his workbench. He has to say something first, to break the expanding quiet (even with the tinny echoing of the radio in the background.) It feels wrong that it should be Edgar speaking, as always. He wants to be the accuser here.
"Hello Edgar." His voice is devoid of emotion. He's been devoid of much recently. "What brings you all the way down here?"
He feels the weight of his brother's glare on his back.
"Now I have to have an excuse to visit my own brother," he gruffly laments, and his growl is thicker than ever before.
"At one in the morning..." Alan taps an extract of coyote stomach into the waste bin. "Yeah."
"I figured you'd be up."
Alan slightly smirks at this, and more so, at the weakness in the joke. He fixes his attention solidly to the wall opposite; any excuse not to turn his head and see Edgar silhouetted in the acrid gleam of dim overhead light.
"I've recently learned..."
Alan furrows his brow. There is intent, purpose, in his brother's voice, and he doesn't need that right now. He continues with his work, attempting to power his energies into disembowelling this creature and disconnecting the slow drone of Edgar's words. But like always, as they always have done, they latch into his skin and pull his focus away from the bleak consumption of his compromised bloodlust.
"...That there is a night crawler, whose created a new designer drug that he's handing out to kids at raves..."
A bunch of drug addicts? Seriously, Edgar? Look here, in front of you. I'm one of the worst around. I constantly kill the local wildlife and even people's pets to get my next fix. And even then, it's watered down shit and nothing what I really need...
"The only problem is...it's not a drug." A dramatic pause, so typical of his melodramatic brother. "It's vampire blood."
Alan finds his attention wavering. He breathes in deep, and loosens his hold on the scalpel caked in gut lining. He doesn't know why Edgar is here, why he is bothering to confide this to him. Why he bothers to come at all is still a mystery he refuses to ponder. He casts his gaze down. His thirst is creeping within him, violent and whispering.
"He's breeding an undead army..." Edgar paces lazily behind him, and Alan sees the blur of a checked jacket weave into his eye line. He snaps his gaze elsewhere. "And the only thing that stands between him...and the annihilation... of the entire human race...potentially...would be us."
Edgar can't mask the scabbed pride in his tone.
"The Frog Brothers."
Alan reaches for his work goggles, and slides them off his face. There is no use pretending; he can see twice as well as any human, so why the hell he bothers to wear them is another mystery he refuses to contemplate. He turns to glance at Edgar, to validate his point, as eye communication is now becoming the next thing to not be shared between them.
Edgar stands behind him, and Alan barely has time to register how tired, worn, he looks. The clothes he wears are clean, but crumpled with neglect and are old. His voice creaks; he reigns in his emotions, something he used to pride himself on in his teenage years. But the bitterness pricks through his words; tiny thorns that he knows break into Edgar's skin.
"We haven't been the Frog Brothers..." He accidently catches the stony hazel of Edgar's scrutiny; he closes his eyes, and sighs. "...For a long time."
The slight drop in Edgar's mouth fills him with a frustrated satisfaction. He returns to extracting the creature's entrails, when Edgar speaks again, and this time there is a softening...a forsaken tenderness in his voice, that tightens the muscles in Alan's back.
"It's just...I can't do it without you."
"What about Sam?" Alan's weary retort rips through the silence, wrecking the almost "moment." He won't have it, he can't. Something buried deep stirs and crackles.
"Sam's gone." The softness is still there, although it's of a different kind. "He turned. And I had to do what I had to do."
You didn't have to do anything.
Alan chews over this new information, allowing a momentary pause for his fallen friend. He tries to feel an impulsive stab of grief, but he's so used to feeling hollow.
"That cancels out Michael and Star," he says bitterly, emptying a bundle of liver onto the metallic dish resting by his elbow.
"Yeah," Edgar dully agrees, and Alan can still hear the agitated beat of his blood. "I'm pretty much persona non grata with the entire Emerson family at this point."
Alan finally lowers his scalpel.
"Laddie?"
"He's moved on. He's got a wife...kids..."
That's bullshit, and they both know it. But Star wanted Laddie out of this life, from vampires and hunters alike. She would say something like that to dissuade Edgar, he just knows it...
Edgar shifts behind him, slinking silently over the side; forcing himself into Alan's view. There's an underlay of quiet reproach in his tone.
"He's got a real life now."
Alan can't let that pass.
"Well, so do I..."
Edgar doesn't take the bait. He seizes it.
"You call this a life?" He throws himself round, forcing Alan to look at him. This is the punch line they've both been waiting for. Alan twists his head, biting back a snarl. His reply, through loud, is weak.
"This is from a guy who lives in a trailer..."
"So I've got nothing..." Edgar grits his teeth as Alan ducks his head down once again. He stalks around the shoddy workbench, the overly stuffed chair, and smashes his hand down on the little dish. The knotted ball of liver is overthrown, and drops to the floor. A trickle of blood oozes down the crook in his finger, and Alan's mouth goes dry. "But at least...I know what side I'm on!"
Alan has no reply to that. He inhales sharply, his gloved fingers curling into fists as Edgar says his name...for the first time in what seems like years, actually says his name, in way that is frank and pleading and horribly wonderful.
"Alan...if this is the head vampire, then maybe we can kill him..."
Edgar should know better. They've had this conversation too many fucking times for him to know any different.
"If we kill him, than we just have the find the one above him..." Alan jerks his hand in restrained fury and the lilt in his voice breaks when he sees the blood staining his gloves. "And on and on like that forever."
"They're telling me that this is the alpha..." Edgar lowers his volume, and once again, Alan catches the soft plea beneath the rough husk of his voice. "The OG of all bloodsuckers...the head vampire."
Alan drops his scalpel, pushes away his bloodied instruments and icky remnants of coyote heart and liver and stomach.
"It's a pyramid scheme, Edgar," He replies tiredly, drawing out his own brother's name, to which Edgar stiffens and quiets. His concluding comment is hushed; resigned to the blood, and little else. "Always has been."
Edgar mulls this for a minute, before typically, he doesn't give up. Alan represses a dry bark of laughter. He should know his brother better than this.
"What if this is it, though?" Edgar whispers, leaning forward. Alan senses his brother's fingers twitching, to ghost a touch on his shoulder, but Edgar never will. Never will touch this mutation of their shared blood, this walking parody of their brotherhood; sick manifestation of his...their flesh. "What if this really is the head vampire?"
"Get this," Alan draws himself up, and suddenly the night is sharper, more defined around him. He tried to warn Edgar away, but his brother never listens, never heeds, never learns; until it is too late. "And get it good, Edgar." He fully tilts his head, and stares, unabashed, into Edgar's eyes. His brother blinks for a second, shaken by the change in mood and behaviour, but forever unrelenting, will not balk from Alan's attention.
"As far as I'm concerned..." Alan bows his head, and allows the monster, so very lightly, to scuttle to the surface. Something sharp scrapes his lower lip, and as he arches his head to glower back at his brother, the horror in Edgar's face says it all.
"There's no such thing as vampires."
Edgar's chest rises harshly. His eyes narrow, his mouth forming a taut line. The volcanic ends of his temper are fraying.
"How's that..." His fists quake beneath the stuttering bulb; their only source of light. "I'm looking at one."
Alan doesn't change his face; doesn't retreat fangs back into gums, or reassert black in the crimson hue of his eyes. He hisses slightly, in a warning of impending ferocity, and Edgar sneers; crosses his arms, but doesn't recant back to the exit. He's staying this time, and the thirst growls, tugging at the seams of Alan's breaking willpower. He cracks; sucks in the need, and scrutinises the table.
"What do you want, Edgar?"
"Jesus, Alan..." Edgar mooches over to the small bin full of animal organs. He glares at it, and kicks it out of the way. It clatters, breaking the silence. Alan groans, resting his head in his hands. The hunger is starting to writhe; the room is suddenly unbearably hot. "I want to help you."
"Help me?" Alan smirks, outlining the curve of his eyebrow with a lengthening nail. "You want to help me, Edgar?"
Get out of here, Edgar.
"Why do you think I'm here?" Edgar leans against the wall, rubbing the space between his eyes. "What do you think I come down here for? My health?"
"I don't want your pity..."
"I wouldn't insult you, Alan." Edgar snaps back, bracing a hand on the crumbling bricks. "I just find...this..." He scans the hanging hairy carcases of mutilated beasts, the dark, dismal damp of the lair, and the pungent stench of death and blood.
Alan tsks, tapping his fingers across the work desk. He ambles to his feet, and senses Edgar's tensing at this change in position. He chortles emptily.
"I've accepted this, Edgar." He pushes the chair back. It emits a shrill, rusty shriek. "Maybe you should too."
"No, Alan," Edgar crosses the distance in two strides, and in a moment, forgets himself. Alan freezes, feeling the familiar weight of a strong hand fastened to his shoulder. "We can't let this beat you."
The touch awakens the creature; it shifts, stirs, roars. Alan's breath becomes ragged. His eyes flicker towards Edgar; the chill of his skin soaks through his clothing, seeking out the pulsing warmth rippling beneath Edgar's own flesh. His brother notes this; his jaw clenches, the hand trembles, but it stays locked on his shoulder. Suddenly, in the creeping darkness, he doesn't just look fatigued by life, but human. Completely human, a world away from the gritty dregs of Alan's own existence. His brother came here to attempt, once again, to reach out and compel the wasting core of humanity; but all Alan sees is meat.
"Help me?" His voice is too slick, even to his own ears. Edgar is here to help him, he said that himself. Maybe he could...
He takes a step forward, towards Edgar.
"You want to help me, bro?"
Edgar tears his hand away. He glowers at Alan, but there is a widening anxiety in his eyes. His gaze flits towards the closing shadows of the entrance, and Alan feels the darkness pressing down on his back; the loneliness whispers, but maybe that's the monster. He's been alone so long that sometimes he believes he's crazy, that the beast inside is just neurons firing and the thirst for blood is something else, something he repressed long ago, that swells and bloats each time his brother reappears; to tear at his insides once again, and god, to taunt.
"Help you to become human," Edgar grunts, and Alan quickly glosses over his appearance. No weapons. His brother is completely unarmed.
"You didn't say that." Alan sneers. He takes another step forward, and Edgar jars, almost trips over his own feet. Alan smiles at this. "You said you wanted to help me."
"How?" Edgar hisses, and Alan sees he regrets his bravery. "How, then?"
Alan is now so close to his brother he can see the thin, circular structure of Edgar's iris. He rests a hand over the hot skin of Edgar's wrist.
"Open your vein," He says softly, through the gritted walls of his sharpening incisors. "And give me some fucking relief."
"I'm not your..." Edgar clouts his brother's shoulder; the impact doesn't smart, but Alan takes two ceremonious steps back. Edgar spits the last two words as if they were some disgusting disease. "Blood bank, Alan."
Alan snickers, and lifts a white hand. It tiptoes across Edgar's chest, and his brother stills, taken aback by the touch, and how the sides of Alan's mouth quirk at his brother's discomfort.
"There are different..." He rests his fingers against the protruding, outward curve of Edgar's jugular. He cocks his head to the side, licking his lips with a red tongue, never once drawing his gaze from the sickened realisation sparking in Edgar's eyes. "Kinds of relief, Edgar."
"Alan..." Edgar is stock still, his face paling, but his eyes are slits. His voice is a slow, warning growl, but Alan detects the apprehension building behind it.
Something inside tears through the rumbling beast, and gives a brief, humane wail.
"Shit..." Alan rips his hand away from Edgar; turns, and half way flees back to the workbench, bent over the hollowed corpse of his compromise. "This..." He's choked. Edgar is silent, watchful, behind him. "This is a bad night, Edgar. A bad night. Leave."
Edgar doesn't go anywhere.
"Leave!" He snarls, shielding humanity with a tool of his growing monstrosity, and Edgar takes steps back, still in that eerie quiet, and leaves his brother in the shadows, and with the bloodshed of his work.
Alan hears the fading footsteps on the stairs.
He lowers his head, cradling it within his claws.
The bleary eyes of his latest kill reflect his half reflection in the dismembered black of its sockets.
He bites his lower lip; draws half human blood, metallic and rank, in his mouth. He takes a deep breath, and reaches for the scalpel.