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When Matt had a genius idea, Pidge almost always backed him up on it. Sometimes she would help him if the idea required some sort of proof to back it up or an adventure to be completed. This time, however, Pidge was not on board with Matt’s idea, not matter how genius it was. And it was genius. Perhaps if he hadn’t rushed her room at such an early hour, then Pidge would have believed him more, but whatever the case, Matt didn’t care, he was going to prove it. The flower shop neighbours, Keith Kogane and Lance McClain, were vampires. Matt knew it.
So, to prove it to not only himself, but also to his sister, Matt dragged her down the street to the new store that had just been opened. He beamed the entire way there, even as Pidge looked like she would rather be anywhere else. It wasn’t just the fact that they were vampire hunting that made Pidge want to die, it was also the blazing hot sun beating down on the both of them. Her wrist was sweating under Matt’s grip, but she didn’t complain anymore. She had gotten too tired of whining after realizing that Matt wasn’t going to be letting this go anytime soon.
Matt wasn’t deterred by the sun though. In fact, he saw it as a blessing. What was one thing that vampires couldn’t handle? That’s right. The sun. All he had to do was lure one of them out into the blazing heat. Then he’d have all the proof he’d need.
Once they arrived at the store, Matt turned to Pidge, who was slowly melting into the sidewalk, and whispered, “Watch this, because I’m about to catch a vampire.”
“Make it fast,” Pidge replied without an ounce of enthusiasm.
Matt turned back to the open door of the flower shop and called inside. “Hey! Lance!”
The man who had been pruning one of the flower pots near the window of the store glanced up and met Matt’s eye. He wandered over to the entrance with a smile on his face, but he stopped just short of exiting into the sun. Matt grinned. This was going to be too easy. “Hey, guys! What’s up?” he greeted cheerily.
Matt pointed to one of the flower pots at the end of the row displayed along the front of the store. "What’s that plant there?” he asked.
Lance poked his head out of the doorframe to see where Matt was pointing. He furrowed his eyebrows in thought. With a hum, he stated, “I’m not sure what that one is. Keith would know.” Against all of Matt’s expectations, he cleanly stepped out of the building, into the blistering sun. His flipflops tapped against the pavement as he meandered along to the pot. Crouching down next to it, he removed the tag from the dirt and read it carefully. “This baby is a California Lilac!” Lance announced, standing again.
Matt just gawked at him as he stood in the sun. He wasn’t even wearing a hat or anything. Lance wandered back to the door to get out of the sun and as he passed, Matt studied his skin. It was fine. It was the same shade, the same complexion, and just as moisturized as it always was. Nothing was different.
“Is that all you needed?” Lance asked once he was back in the shop.
“Yeah, I think that’s it. Thank you, Lance,” Pidge interrupted. She stared at Matt with a very steady glare. Matt just looked back at her, confused.
Lance nodded and smiled again. “Stay cool out there then!” he bid his farewell. Turning, Lance re-entered the shop and went back to looking after the plants in the front window, a friendly and content smile on his face.
Once he was out of ear-shot, Pidge sarcastically stated, “Wow. Yup. You really proved me wrong. That was a vampire if I ever saw one.” She couldn’t have sounded deader if she tried.
Matt furrowed his eyebrows. “This means nothing. I’ll still prove they’re vampires, just you wait.” Then he was off, racing down the street back to their shared house to plan his next attempt out.
Behind him, he could hear Pidge groan and call out, “I don’t want to!”
Matt ignored her. There was no way they weren’t vampires. He’d prove it.
◊ ◊ ◊
Matt had it; the perfect plan. It was subtle. It was simple. It was genius. Pidge could make fun of him all she wanted, but this time, Matt was going to get his proof. Then Pidge would have no choice but to believe him.
Matt and Pidge were standing in the flower shop again. This time, on a day when the sun wasn’t dead-set on melting them into puddles. That was more of a request on Pidge’s part than anything to do with the actual plan. Matt just needed to scout the place out for a bit, figure out the layout a little bit better. This time, it was going to be more of an operation in stealth.
“What’s this stupid plan again?” Pidge asked around the sucker in her mouth. Her words slurred, but she didn’t bother to correct anything. It was clear she wasn’t taking this plan seriously. That was alright. Matt was serious enough for the both of them.
“First off,” he muttered to her, “it’s not stupid. Second, I’m trying to figure out the perfect vantage point to place a mirror. Then, we can watch Lance and Keith walk by it, and when they don’t have reflections, you’ll have your proof.” Matt puffed out his chest a little bit as he recounted his ingenious idea.
Pidge hummed in acknowledgment. Then, she removed the sucker from her mouth and pointed it lazily across the room. “That’s cool and all, but there’s a mirror on that wall already, and they put it up themselves,” she told him with a judgemental lilt to her voice.
Matt sputtered. He stared across the room, his eyes focusing on the long, aesthetic mirror hanging on the wall behind the counter. Lance, who was standing beside the cash register, wiping the dirt off the counter, didn’t seem to notice them both staring over in his direction. That didn’t matter though. What did matter, was the fact that Matt could plainly see the back of Lance’s head reflected in the mirror. His jaw fell open.
A moment later, Keith wandered over to speak with Lance, putting himself perfectly in line with the mirror. The side of his face was visible in the reflection as well, along with his hair and the slight wave of his hand when he gestured across the store.
Matt stared at them for a moment longer, then back at Pidge, who was watching him with a small hint of a smirk at the corner of her lips. “You’ll not best me,” he hissed. Then he was turning to leave the store again in favour of going back to the drawing board.
He’d catch them yet.
◊ ◊ ◊
“Matt, please,” Pidge begged.
“This will work!” Matt argued back.
She looked at him, pain in her eyes. “No, it won’t.”
“I’m gonna do it!”
“Don’t do it,” she tried once more.
Matt shrugged her off. “Trust me on this.” And without another word, Matt marched right into the flower shop, leaving his little sister standing on the street, shaking her head. He stepped right up to Keith, who was watering a couple of plants on a shelf, minding his own business completely. When Matt approached, he turned to greet him with a small smile. He never stopped watering the plant as he nodded to Matt.
The thing about that was, Matt didn’t think he’d make it this far. So, he stood there. And he stood there. And he just stared at Keith. Nothing was happening. Keith’s smile was becoming more and more strained the longer Matt just stood there, looking like an idiot.
Before coming over to the shop, Matt had made sure to go out and buy as much religious attire as he could find. His shirt was covered in crosses. His pants held a single metal cross in each of his four pockets. There was a paper cross taped to each of Matt’s shoes, right over the toes. He was wearing his mom’s cross earrings looped over his ears with string since his ears weren’t actually pierced. He had also borrowed hers and Pidge’s cross necklaces. Pidge never wore hers anyway. He had on a top hat which he had taped another paper cross too. In his hand, he held a Bible.
And yet, Keith hadn’t flinched, or hissed, or anything. He still just stood there.
“Anything I can help you with?” Keith eventually asked, looking slightly uncomfortable.
Matt didn’t speak for a moment, still just studying Keith for any vampiric signs. Nothing. “No,” he finally said after an unsettling length of time had passed, “I’m fine.” Just like every other time before, Matt spun on his heel and marched back out, hiking his Bible under his armpit a little farther.
“That was actually one of the most painful things I’ve ever witnessed,” Pidge winced once he had come back out of the shop.
Matt squinted into the middle distance. “He did look bothered by it though. That could have been a sign that it was working.”
Pidge stared incredulously at him. “Uh, that wasn’t a sign of anything. I would be bothered too if some wack job with a million crosses just came up and stared at me for a full three minutes before leaving!” she cried.
Matt would count this as a step in the right direction.
◊ ◊ ◊
“Why do I have to wear these sunglasses while we’re indoors?” Pidge asked, lifting the sunglasses off her other glasses so she could stare at Matt, unimpressed.
He reached a hand through the shelf of plants to the other side where Pidge was, nearly knocking down several pots, and tapped the sunglasses back onto her face. “It’s a disguise!” he reminded her in a whisper. “And keep your voice down!”
Pidge rolled her eyes. “They know who I am,” she pointed out.
Matt stared at her as if she should be catching onto all of this already. “Uh, yeah. That’s why you have the glasses; so they don’t recognize you.”
Pidge didn’t even bother to deign that with a response. She turned back to the aisle she was in.
Right as Matt was about to say something else to her, he heard footsteps coming around the corner. He quickly turned around and pressed himself into the shelf to seem causal. As Keith rounded the corner to tend to his plants, his eyes widened and his shoulders hiked up, startled. He stared at Matt for a moment before his body posture relaxed and he greeted him, “Morning. Can I help you with anything?”
“Yes, actually!” Matt smiled, maybe a little too wide. “What do you know about death?” he asked.
Keith didn’t react. His mouth opened, then closed with a snap, before he opened it again. “I’m sorry…?” he muttered out in the form of a question.
From the other side of the shelf, Matt could hear Pidge’s exhale of, “Oh, sweet Jesus, why?”
“You must know a lot about death, right?” Matt continued, carefully ignoring his sister.
“Are you meaning flowers for a funeral…?” Keith tried again. His eyebrows were still narrowed in careful caution.
Matt shook his head and tried to gesture his hands in what he hoped was a nonchalant manner. “No, I mean that you must know a lot about life and death, huh, Keith?” Once more, Keith didn’t respond, he just stared at him. “What I’m saying is that you’ve been around the block a couple times. A few too many blocks a few too many times, if you catch my drift,” Matt suggested with a wink.
“I…” Keith began, but he quickly halted his sentence as his face scrunched up in an almost angry confusion.
“Like a fine wine that only gets better with age, huh?” Matt pressed on. “Except, you don’t age, and the wine is that sweet life blood of the youth.” Matt nudged his elbow into the air a bit to illustrate his point.
Keith was now full on glaring at him, and if Matt didn’t know any better, he’d say that Keith was about to punch his teeth in. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but don’t make me call the police, Matt.” Then, he spun around and exited the aisle again, more disgruntled than when he had entered.
Matt stood there, wondering exactly where his plan had failed, when suddenly, a sharp smack to the back of his head drew him from his thoughts. “Ow! What the hell?!” he whirled around to see Pidge standing on her tiptoes and pulling her boney little arm back through the shelves.
“Yeah, Matt, ‘what the hell’ is right! What the fuck was the plan there?!” she whisper-shouted at him so she wouldn’t pull in anymore attention from anyone in the store, especially not Keith.
“I just wanted to get him to admit that he’s immortal!” Matt argued, rubbing the back of his head.
Pidge balked at him. “Is that what you thought you were doing?!”
Matt threw his hands up. “It was going just fine, thank you!”
“He threatened to call the police on you!”
Turning to leave the store again, Pidge at his heels, he murmured back to her, “It doesn’t matter! We’ll get them!”
“Or you could just stop harassing them,” she suggested, still angry about Matt’s plan, as if it wasn’t perfectly well thought out. She just couldn’t see the truth, but she soon would.
That conversation would have worked if he had tried it on Lance instead, that was the issue.
◊ ◊ ◊
Matt had a perfect idea. He couldn’t even believe that he hadn’t thought of it sooner. Garlic. What were vampires known for being repelled by? Garlic. Pidge hadn’t been around when Matt had made this plan, so Matt had been forced to leave on his expedition without her. He knew it was going to work this time, so it was a little bit disappointing that Pidge wouldn’t be around to see everything work out, but she would hear about it later. Matt was going to catch a couple vampires with some garlic.
Now, originally, Matt had been thinking he could just walk into the shop with a garlic necklace wrapped around his neck, but he felt like that was a little bit too on the nose for his stealthy tastes. Also, food wasn’t allowed in the shop, that was another reason... So, instead, he had eaten a plethora of the most garlicy foods he could get his hands on and then raced into the shop with the stench still hanging heavy on his tongue.
Lance and Keith were, conveniently, both standing at the desk near the back, chatting about whatever it was that two vampires chatted about. Blood, probably. Matt didn’t stop to ponder it. Instead, he strode right over to the counter, alerting Lance and Keith as soon as he was close enough.
“Hey, Matt!” Lance smiled. “What can we help you with?”
Matt slammed his elbows down onto the counter and leaned in real close to the both of them. They both seemed a little bit startled back by this. Well, Keith seemed more defensive than anything, but Matt continued on. “Yes, I was wondering where you keep the chrysanthemums,” he breathily stated, making sure that his words wafted directly into both Lance and Keith’s faces.
Keith shrunk back, his nose scrunching up in disgust at the scent of Matt’s breath.
Lance did a better job at hiding his revulsion, biting his lip to keep from gagging. “Yeah,” he forced out. “They’re near the front of the shop.” As he pointed to where he was referring, he stealthily averted his face. There was a single tear in his eye.
“You don’t want to come show me where?” Matt asked, smirking now, as if he had somehow caught them both red-handed.
Lance shook his head and backed up a step.
“They’re at the front,” Keith told him again, more hastily.
Matt smiled, “Thank you!” Without another question, he pulled back from where he had been pressing across the counter and sauntered back out of the shop. Rather than actually bother with looking for the flowers, he just exited the store again. He could put another tally in the vampire box after this, because only vampires would react that strongly!
Just then, someone up the road called his name. “Matt!” He turned to squint at the figure hurrying along to catch up to him. It was Pidge. She halted in front of him and took a deep breath. “Dad told me you were at the flower shop again! I wanted to make sure they didn’t actually call the police on you this time,” she told him through her panting. “Believe it or not, I actually like our neighbours and don’t want you to ruin this!”
Matt smiled proudly, “Well, don’t worry, because I just proved they’re vampires!”
Pidge recoiled, a look of utter nausea overtaking her features. “Holy shit,” she coughed out. “Did something die in your mouth?”
Matt glared at her. “No! I just ate a lot of garlic!”
“I can tell,” Pidge agreed, backing away from him a few steps and pressing her arm into her nose.
“I wanted to see if they were repulsed by garlic, and they were. It worked.”
Pidge closed her eyes for a second before opening them again, that same dead look once more restored to her expression. “Please, tell me you did not go breathe on Lance and Keith smelling the way you do.”
Matt puffed out his chest. “I did!” he announced triumphantly.
“Are they still alive?!” Pidge cried out, disbelieving that this was actually her brother.
Matt laughed, “Yes! But they were clearly disgusted! I told you they were vampires! Ha!”
As he breathed his ‘ha’ into Pidge’s face, she retched a little bit. “Seriously, Matt?” complained Pidge. “That proves nothing! Other than that you have no shame! I can’t believe you actually did that!”
Not deterred at all, Matt insisted, “It’s proof. It’s all just proof on top of proof, and one of these days, it’s going to add up to two vampires, and then you’ll see!”
◊ ◊ ◊
So, some of Matt’s plans were great, and others were kind of ridiculous, even to him. This was one of his more ridiculous ones, he would admit. But it was still good! It would still work! He had really dug deep on this one. Along with reflections, vampires also didn’t have shadows. He had already seen Lance in the sun, but he had been more waiting for him to burst into flames, so he wasn’t exactly focused on a shadow. Keith, however, he hadn’t even seen him in the sun at all, so there was no way to know for sure. That is, until Matt devised this foolproof – yet slightly ridiculous – plot to see if Keith had no shadow, and was, therefore, a vampire.
Pidge was in the store with him again, waiting to see what incredible act of vampire hunting Matt had cooked up this time. Little did she know that it involved the flashlight that Matt had hidden up his sleeve. He stood by her side, focusing very carefully on where Keith was in the store, while Pidge just poked around through the cacti. She liked cacti.
“What are you waiting for him to do?” she asked, never looking away from a little, budding cactus in a little, ceramic pot.
“Go near the wall,” Matt offhandedly muttered.
She paused to glance up at Keith, who was roughly in the middle of the store, watering a plant. “Why?” she asked Matt.
Just as Matt was about to answer her, he saw Keith meander his way over to a set of flowers along the wall. It was the perfect moment. He darted out from around the shelf of cacti, ignoring Pidge’s startled choke, and raced after Keith. There was a moment where Keith had spun halfway around and was staring at Matt as though he was insane. Keith didn’t have any time to react. Matt whipped the dinky flashlight out of his sleeve, flicked it on, and shined it directly in Keith’s face.
The man stumbled back a little bit, completely thrown off and probably having a heart attack from how sudden it all was. His eyes were wide and his pupils narrowed into pinpoints. Matt had enough time to spot Keith’s shadow on the wall behind him, clear as day. “Dammit!” he shouted. Then he spun around and booked it toward the door. As he passed Pidge, he grabbed her wrist and yanked her stunned form along with him until they were both back on the sidewalk outside.
Pidge didn’t say anything to him, just staring off into the distance. “You’re actually insane,” she whispered. “What did that prove…?”
“Nothing,” Matt groaned. He was frustrated. That should have worked. “Vampires don’t have shadows but he did. I’ll have to try something else, I guess.”
“You just… shined a light in his face…” Pidge stated. She still seemed extremely shocked by the entire thing. It had all happened very fast, so it was understandable. Still, Matt didn’t have time for this. He needed a new plan.
◊ ◊ ◊
Matt had a very elaborate plan when he was heading toward the store this time, but he wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to swing it. Pidge had been trying to convince him not to do this anymore the entire walk there, but he wasn’t having that. He had to prove they were vampires, one way or another.
The original idea involved coming up with an excuse for Lance and Keith to come over to their house. It was a really good excuse though, like an emergency that only they could help with. Not a police emergency, but like, a flower emergency. Except, urgent and immediate. Then, when they agreed to come over, and they would, Matt wouldn’t invite them in. He’d indicate that the problem was inside, and then he’d go inside, but he wouldn’t say anything about them coming in. When they wouldn’t be able to come inside, Matt would laugh and call them out. That was the plan. Pidge was also there somewhere to make sure she witnessed it. Matt’s plan was kind of great, not to toot his own horn or anything.
He had told Pidge all about it, and the entire time, she had just stared at him with a pleading sort of sheen over her eyes. She really didn’t want Matt to catch these vampires, it seemed.
The plan was all perfectly set up, but the second he stepped into the door, it was completely forgotten. Inside, at the counter near the back of the store, was Lance. He was just standing there with a glass in his hand. It was full of blood. The liquid glimmered a deep red in the warm lights of the shop. Matt’s eyes widened and his heart kickstarted. This was it, this was the proof.
Lance was just about to take a sip of his blood-filled wine glass when Matt’s body kicked into gear. He lunged forward, throwing the only thing in his hand. It was his phone. The phone sailed through the air and smashed into the desk, completely missing Lance and his wine glass by a mile. Lance still pulled the cup away from his mouth instantly though. He stared over the counter at the destroyed phone on the ground, and then he stared up at Matt, who was still stretched out in a pitcher’s pose. They made eye contact.
“Why did you do that…?” Lance asked. He held his bloody wine glass close to his chest, as if he were protecting it.
Matt slowly pulled his arm back and stood up straight. The store was dead silent. There were two women near the front that were watching on with scared expressions. Keith rushed out from the back room a moment later, confusion all over his face. Next to him, Pidge had her jaw dropped and was staring at Matt with disbelief. “I had to stop you,” Matt weakly defended himself.
Lance’s eyebrows pulled together. “From doing what…?” he asked.
“Drinking that…” Matt pointed awkwardly.
“Drinking my wine…?” Lance clarified, tapping his nail into the glass of his cup.
Wine. It was wine. Of course, it was wine. Why would it not be wine in the wine glass? It wasn’t blood. That was just a split second reaction that Matt had, but now that he was really looking at it, he could clearly tell it was wine, not blood.
There was another lapse of silence with the two women near the front staring on, Pidge’s expression becoming more and more incredulous by the second, Lance’s face pulled tight in confusion, and Keith appearing two seconds away from hurdling himself over the counter to attack Matt. The air was heavy with unasked questions that really didn’t have answers to begin with. Matt patted his hands into his thighs just to give them something to do. He swallowed thickly.
“Yes,” Matt answered. Then, he nodded and bolted out of the front door again.
That was a mess.
◊ ◊ ◊
Silver. Usually it was silver bullets that killed vampires, but according to Matt’s research, it was really just anything silver. Matt wasn’t trying to kill anyone here, he just wanted to prove they were vampires. So, silver, but not bullets. His mother had silver. She never let him touch it though and she kept it locked up in a little cabinet by the kitchen. Locks had never been a problem for Matt before and they certainly weren’t now. He also hadn’t ever needed the silver spoons until now.
As he raced down the street with a single silver spoon in his hand and Pidge hot on his trail, he realized that this was probably one of his best plans yet. Just touch the silver to Lance or Keith’s skin and watch to see if it hurts them at all. It would. They were vampires. Once Matt was right outside the store, he paused. Behind him, Pidge nearly crashed into his back, but she skidded to a halt before she did collide with him.
Matt peered around the corner of the doorframe to see who was around. Immediately, he could spot Lance’s fluffy, brown hair as the man shuffled around with a pot on the other side of a shelf. Keith, however, was nowhere to be seen. Matt had been hoping to get Lance this time around because his plan required skin contact with the spoon, and Keith always wore his gloves, but it looked like the cards weren’t in his favour, because Lance was wearing gardening gloves on this particular day. It would have been a lot easier to casually tap a spoon into someone’s hand. Still, Matt had to take what he could get. The only exposed parts of Lance’s skin were his neck and face. This would be very strange, but it had to be done.
“I have no idea what you’re planning to do with Mom’s silver, but don’t destroy it and don’t make a fool of yourself again,” Pidge hissed at him.
He glanced back over his shoulder to level her with a glare. “I won’t. This time, it’ll work, okay?”
“That’s what you say every time and it never works,” Pidge murmured back passive aggressively.
“Well, this time, it will.”
Without anymore argument, Matt stepped calmly into the store. He casually made his way around the shelves with his spoon in hand. His hand trailed along the wooden shelf that Lance was on the other side of. There was no one else in the store at that moment, just him and Lance, so it was no surprise that Lance could hear him approach. He wasn’t trying to be sneaky this time, seeing as that was just what made him look – as Pidge said – creepy the last few times. Lance paused what he was doing to fully face Matt, although there was a weary tint to his eyes.
Matt leaned nonchalantly into the shelf. It was weirdly reminiscent of when he had asked Keith about death, but this time, he wasn’t about to do that. That would make things worse. “You know,” he drawled, “some people might think that silver is second place to gold, but silver is just as beautiful, in its own way.” Matt smiled afterwards. He had a mental checklist of normal conversational things he had to remember to do so as not to scare Lance and Keith away anymore.
Lance looked a tad confused, but not suspicious. That was a plus. “Uh… I guess that’s true.” He shrugged and shuffled his feet so that he was facing Matt a little more head-on.
“I like silver,” Matt told him. He held up the spoon to the light, letting it glint. “I think it has a certain feeling to it.” Then, he took a step closer to Lance and pressed the curve of the spoon into his jaw. “It’s almost soft,” he chatted, hoping that Lance wouldn’t notice his tactics. As long as he kept the silver spoon there long enough to watch its effects, he could easily call this encounter a success.
Lance’s eyebrows were pinched together and his eyes were wide, tracking Matt’s every movement. He was frowning uncomfortably, which was only further amplified by the tense set to his shoulders. “What’re you doing…?”
Matt just smiled at him and smoothed the spoon up across his cheek and back down to his neck. Lance stepped backwards and away from Matt’s spoon. Matt followed him. Nothing was happening. There was no burning or corroding of his skin like Matt had expected. Huh.
“Would you cut it out?” Lance snapped, smacking the spoon away from his face.
Matt moved to stick the spoon back up against Lance’s skin. Suddenly, before he could, a hand was clamping down on his shoulder. “What the fuck are you doing there, Matt?” a deep voice asked. It wasn’t cheery or happy in any regard. Not at all. It was a threat disguised as normalcy.
Matt slowly turned to find that he was eye-level with Keith, who was burning holes into his skull, ready to sock him. There was a certain fire behind Keith’s eyes that told Matt he was walking on thin ice. Where Keith once seemed like a shy man of few words, he was suddenly replaced with a dangerous, brick of a man who would not hesitate to injure anyone. And he was clearly very protective over Lance. There was some sort of component to Keith that Matt had accidentally awoken and he had no intention of provoking it any further.
“Nothing…” Matt blurted out, offering a shaky smile.
“Are you hitting on my boyfriend, Matt?” Keith questioned through gritted teeth.
Matt was starting to find that he really didn’t like that look on Keith, nor did he find comfort in the amount of times Keith was spitting his name. “I was not doing that. And I will be leaving now…”
“You do that, Matt,” Keith practically growled. His narrowed eyes tracked Matt all the way out of the building.
Matt stood on the sidewalk, feeling very much like he had scarcely escaped being murdered right then and there. He could have been a next meal. Pidge was standing on the sidewalk, leaning up against the wall with her phone out.
“How’d it go?” she asked. Then, her eyes flicked up from the screen and she was forced to do a double take. “Holy shit, you’re really white. What the hell happened?”
“I almost died this time, but next time I will be stealthier,” he decided on.
And once more he headed home to plan.
◊ ◊ ◊
The next time Matt went over to the flower shop to prove his theory, Lance and Keith were both standing at the counter again. This was a little bit inconvenient, but he wasn’t going to try anything overly dangerous this time. He didn’t want to die by Keith’s hand. He also brought Pidge inside with him again, just so that someone would be able to tell the officer what happened in the event that Keith really did slaughter him. Pidge still thought this was all very stupid, but she came along anyway, if only to make sure that Matt didn’t actually die.
Four times. That was how many times they had wandered by the desk, just staring at Lance and Keith. They had both noticed, but after asking if Matt and Pidge needed anything and being told that they were fine, the boyfriends went back to their work. The excuse Matt and Pidge were going with was that they were investigating the decorations on the wall behind them. That wouldn’t have been very convincing if it was just Matt on his own, but he had Pidge with him, and she was trustworthy, at least.
Pidge still wasn’t sure what they were looking for, but Matt had promised that if he noticed it, he would point it out to her. The only problem was that Matt couldn’t get a very good look at either Keith, nor Lance’s necks. Lance moved around a lot and wore a higher collar, and Keith had longer hair to cover his neck and kept his back to Matt and Pidge a lot. Because that's what he was looking for; bite marks.
When Keith finally did turn around, Matt found that Keith didn’t have a single mark anywhere on his neck. There were no holes to indicate anything vampire-like about him, but Matt still squinted for an uncomfortable length of time, as if waiting would cause them to show up sooner. Keith finally caught him watching and glowered at him. That ended Matt’s search of his neck pretty damn quickly.
He moved on to Lance. With the way his collar was, it became a lot harder to determine if he had any bite marks in his neck. Still, Matt tried his best. At one point, as Lance was writing something down, he reached a hand up to tug part of his collar down and itch the back of his neck. That was when Matt saw it. Clear as day; a bite mark.
“Aha!” he hollered, pointing openly at Lance. Everyone in the vicinity had heard him, all turning to listen to his outburst. “There, Pidge!” Matt cried. “Bite marks!”
Pidge, while still bewildered, followed Matt’s line of sight to see the marks on Lance’s neck. Her eyes widened in horror as soon as she saw them. She instantly reached out to slam Matt’s hand back down, then she started trying to push him out of the store. “Stop! Stop right now!” she hissed like her life depended on it.
Matt, however, would not stop. “I knew it!” he yelled. Everyone in the store was watching Matt, then turning to study Lance and Keith, who both looked equal parts baffled and embarrassed. Lance had yanked his collar up as far as it would go, covering the marks that were on his skin. His face was smoldering with how red it was and Keith didn’t even look angry, too busy being mortified.
“That's a hickey, you moron!” Pidge whisper-shouted at him again. She pushed him around one of the shelves, closer to the door. “Stop pointing!”
Matt seemed to come to his senses and he immediately pulled his hand back in horror. It was visible as the realization dawned on him. “Oh my god…” he squawked. “I’m so sorry…” Matt stumbled as he was fully pushed out of the shop by Pidge. They both started running as soon as they hit the sidewalk. Matt screamed the entire way home.
◊ ◊ ◊
“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; you’re insane,” Pidge told him through the phone.
Matt was scurrying down the street toward the flower shop. His footsteps were the only sounds on the entire street as it was the dead of night and he was the only one around. The wind whipped at his face as he ran, blowing his long hair back. His phone was still pressed into his cheek and it jostled around with every step he took.
“No, no,” he huffed into the phone. “This is a perfect idea, listen!”
“I’m listening,” Pidge sighed, as though it pained her to be listening.
Matt glanced back behind him to make sure no cars were coming before he ran directly into the empty road. “If vampires can’t do vampire things in the day, then they obviously do them at night, right? So, it stands to reason, that if I want to catch them doing something vampiric, I just have to go there at night!” Matt beamed as he relayed his idea to Pidge.
There was a long silence on the other end, followed by some shuffling. “They’re actually going to get a restraining order from you, you realize that?” Pidge finally answered.
“Not if I’m stealthy! Plus, I need to prove this!” Matt declared. He hurried along around the corner on his left.
“Why? Why do you need to prove this, Matt?” Pidge asked, getting impatient.
Matt paused to take another breath. “Because. I said they were vampires and you didn’t believe me, but they are!”
“That’s the dumbest reason I’ve ever heard. I’m hanging up now because this conversation is stupid, but don’t actually die because I don’t want to have to explain to Dad that you died while stalking the neighbours,” Pidge complained. She didn’t sound like she cared much about the idea of Matt dying.
“I’m not stalking, I’m hunting,” Matt grumbled.
Pidge released a snort. “Believe what you want.” Then she hung up.
Matt pulled the phone away from his ear to glare at it, then shoved it back into his pocket. He tiptoed the rest of the way to Blood Rose Gardens. The entire place was dark, locked up tight and quiet, just like any other shop on the street. That didn’t mean it was empty, though. The garden shop was one of the older places that had the house above the shop. That was where Lance and Keith would be if they weren’t out doing shady vampire things. At the very least, Matt was sure that he would be able to catch a glimpse of their bed, which he was certain was a coffin. What else would it be?
Staring at the shop in the dead of night with the eerie quiet of the wind whistling all around him made everything a lot scarier. Matt wasn’t one to get scared too easily, but this was still very threatening. This was the house of a vampire couple, after all. It felt like the house itself was watching him, daring him.
Matt gave a determined nod, then circled around the shop. There weren’t a lot of ways to get in, but near the back, there was a collection of boxes. They were stacked in such a way that he could just barely reach the fire escape if he leaped. Matt climbed the boxes as silently and carefully as he could. It was wobbly. He almost fell, but he managed to even himself out. With a deep breath in, Matt propelled himself at the ladder. It jiggled with his sudden weight, echoing a clinking noise through the back area of the shop. Matt cringed at the sound and whispered sweet nothings at the metal in hopes it would be persuaded to shut the hell up.
When it was quiet again, Matt began climbing. It was a very difficult operation considering how noisy the thing was, but he eventually made it to the top. His hands were covered in schmutz, but he didn’t think too deeply about it. Instead, he crouched on the edge of the fire escape and peeked into the window through the little slit in the curtain covering his view of the room.
Matt was expecting a lot of things. A coffin. A creepy room full of cobwebs and candelabras. Lance and Keith hanging from the ceiling upside down, asleep. Maybe a huge container of blood. What he did see inside, however, was not at all what he was expecting. And he really wished he hadn’t seen it at all. It was a wonder that he hadn’t guessed this would happen sooner, but he was very fixated on the idea of vampires.
It was only a split second, but it was very clearly a normal bed in a normal room with normal objects. Oh, yeah, and also Lance without clothes on, sprawled out over the covers with his head thrown back in bliss as an also very naked Keith nipped at his neck. And nothing vampiric at all. Nothing. Just Matt, sitting on the fire escape, peeking into the bedroom of an unsuspecting couple. That wasn’t creepy at all.
If only it could have just stayed at that already horrific level of embarrassing. But alas, the world worked in mysterious – and mortifying – ways. The sound of Crazy Frog filled the chilly night air, blasting at full volume from Matt’s pocket. He never turned his ringer off. Of course he didn’t.
Matt ripped his phone out of his pocket, eyes wide and fingers shaking as he tried to turn it off. It was Pidge, probably calling to check up on him. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” he hissed to himself as he frantically attempted to shut his phone up. Finally, it stopped. By the grace of God, his phone stopped making noise. Everything was silent again. Matt’s heart was in his throat as he listened to the merciful silence. He waited. There were no police, the room beside him stayed quiet, and the Earth didn’t collapse on him. It was fine.
The curtain to his left was suddenly whisked open and he was face-to-face with the lethal glare of Keith, who was standing there with only a pair of boxers on to cover himself up. Lance was in the bed behind him, hiding under the covers and looking scandalized.
Matt just stared at Keith as he crouched beside their window, a look of pure terror on his face.
Keith reached over and unflicked the lock from the window. It squeaked as he calmly slid it to the side. They both looked at each other, nothing more than a screen in between them.
“I swear… this isn’t what it looks like…” Matt meekly bumbled out.
Keith’s expression didn’t change. He continued to glare so intensely at Matt that he almost considered just leaping off the fire escape right then. “Matt,” his voice was so deadly cold that Matt actually shivered, “I have been very lenient with you up to now. I am going to give you thirty seconds to get off my property, and if you ever pull anything again, I will not be so lenient. Am I understood?”
Matt nodded once and swallowed thickly. “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir,” he squeaked.
Keith watched him the entire time he climbed back down the fire escape ladder. His eyes followed Matt as he raced off the property.
When Matt got home, Pidge could not stop cackling after he relayed what happened.
◊ ◊ ◊
“After everything that happened last night, you’re still going to try again?” Pidge snickered, watching as Matt stood outside the building with a football in his hand.
“Yes,” Matt stated simply. “I have one more idea and it has to work!”
Pidge laughed incredulously, “Matt! If none of your other ideas have worked, why would this one?!”
Matt scoffed. He pulled his arm back, then whipped it forward again, lugging the ball straight onto the roof of the flower shop. It bounced, then rolled around for a second, all before coming to rest near the edge of the building.
“How does this even help?” Pidge asked, squinting against the sky at the football.
Matt stood, arms akimbo. “Vampires fly.”
Pidge groaned, “How are you related to me? How is that possible?”
Just then, Lance stepped out of the shop. He was just putting out some plants before the morning rush of people started up. The sun had just risen and was almost at the point where it could reach the front of the store. Lance smiled at the both of them. “Good morning!” he greeted.
“Morning, Lance,” Pidge greeted, throwing him a wave.
Matt, on the other hand, pointed up to his ball on the roof. “Hey, I accidentally got my ball stuck on your roof. Do you think you could get it down for me?” He gave his most innocent smile.
Lance followed Matt’s finger to where he was indicating. He stared at it for a moment. Then, he turned back to Matt with the most amused and teasing smile that one man would be capable of. He called out, “Well, you had no trouble climbing our building last night, so I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
Pidge instantly broke down into laughter, not expecting that at all. Matt had the decency to look embarrassed beyond belief.
Before he disappeared back inside, he quickly added, “Also, I’m not a vampire, but Keith is.” He winked, then returned to the cool indoors of the flower shop to look after the days chores.
Matt looked over to Pidge who was killing herself laughing. She was doubled into herself. “It’s not that funny,” he grumbled.
She straightened herself out again and snickered right in his face. “Yeah, it is!” she wheezed.
It was bad enough that Lance and Keith had caught him in his hunting and knew what he was up to, he didn’t need Lance to come outside and mock him as well. Now his sister was just rubbing salt in the wound. He harrumphed and crossed his arms over his chest defiantly.
Pidge cooed, “Aw, don’t be so down! At least now you know for sure that I was right and you’re an idiot.” She patted him on the arm as if that would offer any comfort at all. “I told you to let it go.”
Matt spun around and began wandering back home, leaving his ball on the roof. “Fine,” he relented, “so they aren’t vampires. I get it.”
Pidge raced after him. “Hey, you don’t have to be all sad about it!” she told him. There was a smile on his face that clearly showed how much she was enjoying herself.
“They’re something else.”
Pausing, Pidge stared at him, trying to determine how serious he was being. “Matt, no.”
Matt glanced over to her. “I’ll figure it out.”
“Matt, I’m not joking. Don’t do anything else.”
It was too late. Matt was going to learn the truth one way or another. They thought they were being sneaky and keeping their identities secret the entire time, but what they hadn’t accounted for were Matt’s hacking and tracking skills. How come there were no records of a Lance McClain or a Keith Kogane anywhere? How come they had no past? Furthermore, was Keith aware that there were several pictures of people who looked exactly like him all throughout history, especially in various wars? Did Lance know that he shared a first name and a description with a boy who had gone missing from a town on the other side of the country after the murder of six different people within the span of a year? Matt knew. It was quite interesting.
Oh, yeah. Matt was going to find out the truth. Eventually.
Just… not by peeking in peoples’ windows anymore… because that was really awkward…