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It’s stupid how breathless Dan is, hurrying off down the street. He’s surrounded by all of the ordinary sounds of the early morning – the burble of birdsong, the occasional whisper of a passing car, the sharp clack-clack of professional commuters in professional shoes as they hurry past him on the pavement on their way to the train station.
Vamps don’t need to breathe, Dan thinks, as he struggles to draw another breath, oxygen burning the back of his throat. It’s just a habit he’s got into – a habit like keeping his teeth retracted at all times even though it hurts.
Dan’s impression of a real living person is, most of the time, pretty fucking impressive. It’s only in moments like this, when he can’t breathe and his stomach’s cramping, aching with hunger, that the veneer gets torn away. Some guy passing him the other way on the pavement takes a look at his face and hops backwards so fast he nearly falls off the curb.
Dan nearly snarls at him. The impulse is there, constantly lurking under everything he does. He has to stop for a minute and lean against the wall with his hands over his face until he can be sure he’s not about to snap at someone’s throat.
He stands and breathes and thinks about Phil. He thinks about how it’d felt to touch him, skin so warm under his fingers. He thinks about how Phil’s heart had stuttered and sped up the closer they’d got. Dan had been so caught up in the moment – in the heady reality of being able to touch Phil, even in a small, clinical way – that he’d forgotten to distance himself. He’d forgotten to worry and he’d just been happy, hardly daring to believe that Phil was reacting like that because of him.
The smell of Phil’s blood had made his stomach ache and his gums sting, fangs instinctively ready to emerge and strike, but he’d forced them back. Phil wasn’t a meal, and he could do this, he could help him in this way.
And he’d done it. He’d cleaned the blood off the scratches, even though he felt faint with the need to eat. He’d almost forgotten all about that in the face of Phil’s skin and his smile and the sound of his breath and his heart, closer than usual, Dan feeling his pulse throb under his hands.
He’d been overwhelmed by wanting Phil – but wanting him in the ordinary, human way. He wanted to touch his hair and his waist, he wanted to hold his hand and squeeze tight, he wanted to kiss him and see how his heartbeat would change then. He’d been like a soup of wanting Phil, just letting everything flood through him that he’d forced down for so long.
It was too easy, it turned out, for the innocent, human kind of wanting to morph into the other kind – the kind that wants to feel bones break under his fingers, to feel the warmth of blood on his hands. And as soon as the hunger had hit him like a wave he’d torn his hands away from Phil, forced himself to move back and get out of there.
At the end of the day he doesn’t deserve Phil. He doesn’t deserve his friendship, he doesn’t deserve the way Phil talks to him – like he’s an equal, like he’s alive. He doesn’t deserve any of it. The way the need to eat had forced its way up his throat like bile, making his mouth water and his fingers ache with the need to grab and take, that just proves what he knew already.
He’s a monster.
He’s a monster, and the beating hearts of everyone walking past deafen him. He’s surrounded by the wet noises of the living and it’s making it harder and harder to keep walking himself, to cling to the parts of himself that remember why he doesn’t do this, why he doesn’t hunt people.
He might be a monster but he didn’t choose to be one.
So he keeps walking, drawing his coat tighter around himself, shoving his treacherous grasping hands deep into his pockets and moving as fast as he can without drawing attention to himself, until his shaking hands are fumbling gratefully over the latch of the gate of the blue zone, and he can finally run as fast as he wants to.
The house he lives in only became his because someone else gave it to him. He’d first arrived in the blue zone, nervous and scared, and he’d made friends with some vamp called Carter. Carter had been trying to get a job – before they’d died they’d been a mechanic – and they’d been clean for twelve months. Back then Dan couldn’t even imagine being clean for twelve minutes, not when the hunger pains were so strong they made him want to throw up.
“It’s all about focus,” Carter had said, every other day. “You just have to focus on the other things you want, that’s all. Transfer your obsession to something else.”
It worked for Carter. They’d let Dan stay in their house, and Dan had watched them studying books and old manuals about cars every day. They’d recite endless lists of car parts and give Dan facts about lorries and trucks. Sometimes Dan would come into the kitchen after a meeting with a donor, feeling slow and sick and shameful, and find Carter tinkering with an entire car engine, motor oil dripping onto the floor.
When they’d finally got a job, they’d left the zone and said Dan could keep the house. Dan thinks about them sometimes – about their engines and their focus – and wonders if it’s still working out for them. He hopes so.
He’s so caught up in the memory of Carter that it isn’t until he’s walking down his street that he realises he can smell blood on the air – the unmistakeable smell that means someone’s fed nearby. He hopes against hope that it’s coming from one of the surrounding houses, but there’s no point. The closer he gets to his front door the stronger the smell gets, making his mouth water.
Focus, he thinks, remembering Carter and their books on car parts. Focus focus focus…
He smells the blood for real as soon as he gets the front door open.
The hall floor’s wet, the smell strong enough that Dan can’t keep his fangs retracted any longer. Goosebumps are breaking up across his arms and up the back of his neck, and all he wants to do is throw himself on the floor and drink off the floorboards like a dog. He wants that metallic taste on his tongue, it won’t be hot but it’ll still make him feel better when it hits the back of his throat, and his shoulders’ll slump and he’ll be calm, everything will be perfect if he just –
If he just-
“Dan,” A voice slurs. Sam stumbles out into the hallway and hits the stairs hard, but he barely notices. His dark hair's all over the place, his skin flushed. Dan can practically see the heat coming off him, the languid warmth of a feed. “You’re just in time for dinner, come on-“
He moves fast and grabs Dan’s arm, holding on tight.
“Fuck off, I’m not hungry,” Dan lies, like he didn’t just consider licking someone’s blood off the fucking floorboards.
“Hah,” Sam says, not letting go. “Liar. C’mon, I saved some for you.”
What really kills Dan later, when he’s sitting in his room despising himself, is that he could easily shake Sam off and slip away upstairs. But he doesn’t. The smell of death in the air is thick and Dan hates himself for the way it makes his mouth water, the way he stumbles after Sam, who can barely stand up, and lets himself be pulled into the kitchen.
It’s only when he’s there that his stomach drops and he realises what he’s been dragged into. There’s a guy sprawled out on the kitchen table, breathing shallowly, eyes wide and fearful. His clothes are covered in blood but he’s too lethargic to move, Dan can tell.
“Please,” He croaks out. “Please…”
His exposed forearms are covered in bites that are oozing. Dan could just move over and put one to his mouth, he could just taste, just once…
“See I could’ve gone straight for one of the main arteries but I wanted us to share,” Sam says, like he’s offering Dan a slice of cake. Dan thinks he might pass out. He feels weak, light headed, and he takes a step closer to the table before he manages to stop himself.
“Please,” The guy says again. Dan looks at him and watches as he blinks and tears roll down his face.
Sam laughs, high pitched and stupid, and Dan hates him so much in that moment that it burns.
“Where did you find him?”
“Walking past the zone,” Sam says, still laughing a little as he talks, leaning into Dan in this overly familiar way that means Dan can smell blood on his breath. “Turned on some charm.” He flutters his eyelashes and laughs again.
Dan swallows. He could feed from this guy right now and nobody would know. He wandered into a blue zone of his own volition, that’s a legal grey area right there, and beyond Sam nobody would ever know that he was weak, nobody would know.
Except Dan’s eyes are catching on the tears streaming down the guys’ face rather than the temptation of the blood on his arms. He thinks that this guy has people at home who are worried about him – friends or family who’d always wonder what had happened to him. He might even have someone like Phil out there, someone soft and kind who’d wait by the phone for calls that’d never come if –
If Dan did what he wants to do and drank and drank and drank until there was nothing left. Until every bad thought and feeling he’s had over the past six months melts away like it was a dream, like it was nothing – just a couple of grey clouds blown away by the wind.
His stomach hurts, but something else in him hurts more watching this guy just lie there, crying, thinking he’s about to die.
Dan turns and lets out the snarl he’s been wanting to since he was walking here, but instead of snapping at some innocent person he snaps at Sam, shoving him away. His post-feed lethargy means he’s not expecting it and he certainly isn’t in a position to fight back – he stumbles and hits the fridge, making the contents rattle.
“What the fuck?” He says, half of his sentence eaten up by an inane laugh. “I mean if you wanted pizza instead you should’ve just said-“
Dan shoves him again, seizing him by a satisfying handful of his jacket.
“I told you I wasn’t fucking hungry,” He says, voice low, and starts dragging Sam out of the kitchen.
He’s so out of it he barely attempts to fight back, just flailing his arms uselessly a little. Dan knows he’ll pay for this later, knows that when Sam comes back to himself – when the hunger hits him in a couple of hours like a speeding train – then Dan’s gonna regret this, but right now he takes great satisfaction in forcing Sam out through the front door of the house (their feet slipping on the blood in the hall) and down the front steps.
He falls and ends up sprawled on the front path, rolling over like he’s lying in a feather bed.
“You bastard,” He says to the sky, blood dark around his mouth. “I saved him for you and you’re really gonna – really gonna do this?”
“I really am,” Dan says, feeling reckless. “You need to stay away from me from now on. I don’t know what sick obsession you have with me but - but you’re a fucking mess. Just – just stay away from me.”
Sam just laughs again, and it makes anger flare up inside Dan, makes him want to walk over there and stamp on one of Sam’s flailing arms until he feels bone crunch under his foot.
“I’ll come back in a few hours,” Sam says, when he manages to get to his feet, Dan watching him stony-faced from the top of the stairs. “You – you don’t mean any of that, it’s just the hunger talking. Makes you cranky.”
Dan doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t move. He just stands and listens to the heartbeat of the guy who’s still on the table in the kitchen – weak-sounding, but not like it’s about to stop any time soon. More like the way donor’s heartbeats get after a feed – slow and unsteady but not in any immediate danger.
“Yeah, I’ll be back,” Sam says, leaning heavily on the gatepost. Dan watches him and doesn’t move until he’s out of sight.
-
It takes him ten minutes to get the guy out of the blue zone.
“You’re gonna be ok,” Dan keeps saying every few seconds, even though breathing to talk means he can’t avoid the smell of the guy’s blood, his hunger so strong now he thinks he might pass out. “Everything’s gonna be fine, you’re gonna be ok.”
The first thing Dan had done when he’d gone back inside was use the poor guy’s phone to call an ambulance to the main gate. He sees the blue lights flashing from streets away as they approach, and it’s only when they’re within a few metres of the gate and Dan can see the hi-vis jackets of the paramedics, waiting, that he lets the guy go.
“You’re gonna be fine, just – just walk through there, ok, they’re waiting for you,” He says.
Dan slips back into the shadows and watches the guy sway on his feet and then somehow manage to stumble to the gate, fingers fumbling over the latch. He watches the paramedics leap into action when they see him standing there, opening the gate and escorting him into the safety of the ambulance.
-
It’s only when he’s safely back at home with the front and back doors barricaded and a wardrobe shoved up against his bedroom door that he texts Phil.
He’d drunk four bags of blood substitute when he’d first got in, tearing the plastic with his teeth in his haste to eat. Substitute doesn’t really give the same effect as the real thing – hardly at all, in fact. There’s no lethargy, no soft feelings of satisfaction, no floating sensations. It’s enough to make his stomach feel full, though.
It’s enough that he can finally retract his fangs and clean his face with a face wipe and finally think things over rationally, without the pounding, roaring hunger rearing up and threatening to choke him.
Sorry, he sends, trying for damage control.
I felt awkward and weird so I left but it wasn’t anything to do with u
I’m just not good with touching ppl and I haven’t in a while and I thought I was doing ok but I wasn’t
I’m really sorry
Pls don’t hate me
It’s like Dan can’t stop once he sends one text, and they keep going, and the more he sends the more he sounds like a plaintive teenager who just messed up with their first crush.
He’s so embarrassed by himself that he has to lock his phone when he’s done and pace up and down his room for a while, occasionally peering through the curtains to make sure there’s nobody outside the house.
When his phone beeps with a response on his bed, Dan goes over there so fast he nearly tears the curtain down in his haste.
No need to worry , it’s fine
I understand, it’s ok. and I could never hate u
Dan could laugh at that, even though the heart emoji in the last message makes him squeeze his eyes shut for a second, hardly daring to believe it.
“Hey Phil,” He says, quietly. “I thought I was gonna kill you earlier so I had to rush out. How do you feel about not hating me now?”
He only says it to try and stop the stupid hopeful thoughts he’s having, the stupid hopeful thoughts about him and Phil, as though he didn’t nearly seriously hurt him earlier. As though their entire friendship isn’t built on a lie.
He lets himself crawl into bed after that, feeling faintly warmed by all the blood substitute, phone on the pillow next to him so he can periodically unlock it and look at the text.
I could never hate you, he mouths to himself in the dark, the covers pulled up high over his head.
Dan only wishes that could be true.