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Sometimes it was easy to hide the fact that he was a vampire.
Well... half-vampire, really. But still a variant of blood-sucking humanoid with fangs and next to no body heat, an aversion to garlic and holy things, a slightly higher-than-average reaction to sunlight, occasionally drinking blood and an affinity for staying up at night. It was easy most of the time to pass it off as a strange habit, and especially easy given the general habits of youth in the current time period:
Don’t like the sun? UV allergies.
Can’t eat garlic? Ayurvedic diet.
Doesn’t sleep at night? Netflix.
Flinches at holy objects? Atheist.
Drinks from a metal flask? Paranoid.
Really, most of the time it was easy to dodge questions and queries and general confusion about his lifestyle and his routine. He could even hide his fangs most of the time, which when he talked or laughed usually just looked like slightly sharper than normal canines.
But there had been a few times when his cover had been blown, and spectacularly. There had been that time when he’d kissed that girl in high school behind the gym—and had cut her with his fangs, right across her lower lip. He’d managed to cover that one up hastily, but at least no questions had been asked.
Then there was the time one of his roommates at college had swiped his flask thinking it was booze. He’d snatched it back quickly enough, making it up on the spot that he was obsessive-compulsive about it—which also neatly explained the obsessive counting problem. Two birds with one stone.
But it had gotten increasingly harder after he’d gotten a serious boyfriend. And then a serious girlfriend. Who was also serious with his boyfriend. Who happened to be a Belmont.
Dozens of generations of migration and assimilation had probably watered down the hunter instincts and the vampire-killing thing they’d had going on, but Adrian was still wary. He was extra cautious whenever they kissed, and made sure neither him nor Sypha ever opened his fridge.
All in all, he was just scraping by at this point.
There had been a few times, however, when they’d nearly found out. Close shaves, all of them, and they’d left unanswered questions hanging in the air in their wake. He had covered up, but, well—how long could he go on hiding it? He’d tell them. Not today, but someday. And... it wasn’t as if they’d sort of guessed already, right?
Right?
1
“Can we order pizza?”
He looked down at Trevor where he was sprawled across Adrian’s lap, fiddling with his ancient Nintendo DS. Small pixelated figures were tromping about onscreen, tinny game music spilling from the tiny speakers.
“Ooh, yeah, can we?” piped up Sypha from where she was lying on the floor, her laptop open and reflecting blue light on her face. “I’m fucking starving.”
Adrian heaved a sigh. “It’s ten-thirty,” he pointed out, fingers stilling in Trevor’s hair.
“So?” Trevor drew the word out slowly, the way he knew both Adrian and Sypha absolutely hated. “I’m pretty sure Za closes at eleven.”
“It does,” Sypha confirmed from where she had evidently just googled the closing hours. “And they’re only a block down.”
“Fuck yes.” Trevor abandoned the glitching DS, grabbing up his phone. “Sypha, Venmo me forty bucks, I’m broke.”
“Forty?” She looked up from where she was holding her own phone, scowling at him. “What, you’re going to order two large at ten-thirty in the night?”
“Nope,” Trevor said happily, looking up and wiggling his eyebrows. “Garlic bread.”
Sypha rolled her eyes, but a second later Adrian heard a soft ping as the money reached Trevor. “You’d better not spend all of it,” she said, setting her phone down and pointing an accusatory finger at Trevor. “That’s a significant fraction of my meager salary.”
“I told you we’d be better off with one of us stripping,” Trevor said, holding his phone up to order. “We’d be a lot richer.”
“If any one of us would make enough money off stripping, it would be me,” Adrian said, stretching his arms above his head with a sigh. “Don’t bother flattering yourselves, you know it’s true.”
“Probably,” Sypha said, standing and rolling her shoulders. She was dressed in an ancient basketball jersey that had belonged to Trevor and one he had been about to throw away (“I can’t keep it anymore, Iguodala left the team!” he had said indignantly when Sypha had shouted at him for attempting to burn a $60 piece of clothing), and it came till mid-thigh. She was also wearing absolutely nothing else. This was distracting.
She moved forward, depositing herself on the armrest and leaning forward towards him. The neck of the jersey dipped and, like an idiot, he glanced down. She wasn’t wearing a bra. This was also. Very distracting. He glanced up hastily and she grinned at him.
“I’d pay you good to strip for me now,” she purred, and he made an inarticulate, possibly very horny sound, and pulled her forward to kiss her. She scooted closer on the armrest and kissed him back, her lips parting. His fingers found the edge of the jersey and he rucked it up, encountering smooth, soft skin. This was entirely too distracting. So distracting that he momentarily forgot about the garlic bread dilemma he was sure to face in less than twenty minutes.
“Right,” Trevor’s voice said from somewhere to his left. “I’m going to get the pizza, just don’t be naked when I come back.” There was a pause. “Or, actually, it doesn’t matter if you are, just don’t mess the couch up. I vacuumed it, like—last week or some shit.”
He stood up, yanking on a jacket that was thrown carelessly on the back of a chair, then reached back to slap Sypha’s ass for good measure—she made an irritated sound against Adrian’s mouth but didn’t break the kiss—as he left, slamming the door behind him as he did, loudly.
By the time he got back, with two cardboard boxes smelling strongly of cheese, tomatoes and—ugh, garlic—Sypha was on her back on the couch with Adrian above her, the jersey now pushed up till her stomach. They were so preoccupied they hardly heard Trevor come in, slam the door behind him and deposit the boxes on the coffee table.
“I brought the pizza,” he announced unnecessarily.
“Mmmh,” Sypha said in reply, pulling Adrian’s head back down when he moved to look up. He relented willingly.
“Your loss,” Trevor said loftily, opening up the garlic bread and swiping a piece, sitting on the edge of the couch, undeterred and apparently uncaring about the fact that Adrian’s feet were digging into his back. “This is fucking delicious,” he said, his voice muffled around the bread. “If you don’t stop right now I’ll finish all of it.”
“You’re most welcome to,” Adrian said, resurfacing from Sypha with a loud and telltale pop. “I hate garlic.”
“Wait, seriously?” She pushed herself up, the jersey falling back to its rightful place around her thighs. “You don’t eat garlic?”
“It’s a sort of... mild aversion.” He shrugged. “It’s not really a—”
“You can’t eat garlic bread?” Trevor looked absolutely devastated on his behalf. “Oh, my God. This is terrible. We need to have a moment of silence for Adrian. He can’t eat garlic bread.”
“Ha ha.” He swung his legs off the couch. “It’s not that big a deal, you know.”
“I would literally fucking die if I couldn’t eat garlic bread,” Trevor informed him, swiping another piece from the box. “Literally just die.”
Adrian rolled his eyes. “I’ve never gotten a different reaction to my condition.”
“Condition?” Sypha was all business now, wielding her own slice of garlic bread and frowning at him around it. “So is it medical? Is it an allergy, or a sort of illness?”
“It’s... not really an allergy—or maybe it is, I don’t know.” He squirmed a little in his seat. “I’ve never really bothered finding out.”
“Huh. Do you maybe want to go to a doctor, see what—?”
“No!” It came out louder than he had intended and he felt himself blushing. “No, it’s... fine, I can live with it. It’s not like I haven’t gotten by all these years. It’s not a big deal, seriously.”
“It’s still weird.” She bit into her bread, looking lost in thought. “I’ve never heard of a garlic aversion that’s not allergic, and that too allergies are rare if not entirely unheard of. I wonder what you’ve got...”
Trevor snorted. “Maybe he’s got vampire disease.”
Sypha rolled her eyes. “Very funny, Trevor.”
Adrian only laughed too, and while the subject didn’t crop up again that night, he wondered if Trevor had any idea how right he had been.
2
He stopped a good five hundred meters up the trail, waiting for Sypha to catch up.
They’d gone running that morning while Trevor was at the gym, heading to Crissy Field once dawn had broken. He usually went alone (Sypha tended to sleep in after after late nights studying, but that morning she insisted on coming along), and he was rather acutely reminded of how much humans breathed. It was ridiculous.
She caught up a few minutes later, as Adrian was stretching along the side of the trail. She bent double, hands braced on her knees, gasping for breath. “How... how the fuck... do you go so... so long without a break?” she panted, straightening. Pitying her flushed face and sweaty hair he tossed her his bottle of water.
She took a sip, still breathing hard, and he shrugged. “Force of habit.”
She shook her head. “That’s crazy. We ran—what, two miles?”
“Two and a half.”
“And you haven’t broken a sweat.” She raised an eyebrow. “Maybe this is why you always go alone, and why you never go to the gym with Trevor. You’re too courteous a gentleman to make us look so bad in front of your... unnatural put-togetherness.”
“She’s discovered my secret.” He grinned at her and she smiled too, handing his bottle back. “But I do remember Trevor telling me about the time when you went to the gym with him one one very rare occasion.”
“Did I? I don’t really remember...”
“He said you bench-pressed 350 pounds without batting an eyelash,” she said. “I didn’t believe him. I mean... I’ve never heard of anyone lifting so much, much less easily. He was probably kidding, right?”
“Probably.” He looked away, taking a sip of water himself. He wasn’t a very good liar. “He does like to embellish things. Maybe he read the numbers wrong or something.”
“Or something,” she said after a pause. “Yeah.”
“We’ve only got another half mile or so to go before we head back,” he said. “Shall we?”
“It’s humanly impossible to lift that much weight lying down,” she said as if he hadn’t spoken. “Even Trevor said so. He said it was the craziest thing he’d ever seen.”
“Sypha—”
“Did you really lift that much?” She turned large, hesitant blue eyes up to him and he hesitated. “I mean—it’s impossible,” she went on. “Literally impossible. Your arms could break, or your back, or... I don’t know. It’s just not possible. The same way running two and a half miles without losing breath is not possible.”
“Sypha,” he said. “I’m not out of breath. I waited here for about ten minutes, it’s fine. And, look—” He took her wrist, pressing her fingers to his chest, right above his heart, which was beating too fast. A side effect of his alarm and not the running, but she didn’t have to know that. “Nothing’s out of the ordinary.”
“But...” She looked uncertain. “Trevor...”
“Trevor probably saw the numbers wrong,” he said firmly. “I think I’d know if I broke the record for heaviest weight lifted, Sypha. I didn’t.”
She stepped back, still looking a little doubtful. “Okay,” she exhaled. “Okay. Yeah, you’re right. Let’s just finish up and head home.”
So they did, and for the rest of the run Sypha never took her eyes off him, uncertain and even a little suspicious, but probably in vain; it wasn’t as if Adrian wasn’t human, right? And if he wasn’t... then what was he?
3
“Fuck you, that was an easy one!” Trevor shouted at the TV, gesturing angrily at the screen, where a basketball game was playing. One of the players had, apparently just missed an easy shot, which to Trevor was a punishable offense. “You’d be tied if you got the damn shot!”
“Sypha’s studying for midterms, you’d do well to quiet down a little,” Adrian said, popping the recliner of the couch open and stretching his legs. “And plus, it’s not like they can hear you yelling through the screen.”
“Doesn’t matter even if they could,” he retorted, grabbing the packet of M&Ms he had brought from the fridge and popping a few in his mouth. “They’d still make stupid mistakes anyway.” He proffered the bag to Adrian, who took a couple chocolates from inside.
“Hm.” He rather enjoyed American chocolate, more so than he did English chocolate. There was more cocoa, less milk and sugar, more texture. God, he was turning into an American. Soon he’d prefer coffee, and forget the rules of cricket, and start drinking cheap beer instead of wine.
One of the players on the opposing team shot a three-pointer and the crowd on screen erupted, earning a pained groan from Trevor. “We’re going to lose,” he moaned, crunching more chocolate. “We’re going to lose and then our winning streak will break and we’ll never beat the Lakers’ record. It’s a national emergency.”
“This is pointless,” Adrian said, swiping some M&Ms for himself. “It’s just a bunch of sweaty men trying to throw a ball into a net.”
“It’s art,” Trevor said. “It’s poetry in motion.” He gestured. “There are rules and shit, and that gives the game direction. Poise. Elegance!” He gestured again, and a sudden avalanche of M&Ms cascaded from the packet in his hands, which had torn open almost seam to seam.
“Shit,” he said, scrambling off the couch. “Better sweep those up before we get ants.”
Adrian’s fingers itched. His brain went numb. His body seized up, going rigid. Before Trevor could even get off the couch fully he was pushing him aside, kneeling on the floor beside the fallen round buttons of chocolate, no other thought in his mind but count them, count them all until you know exactly how many fell out of the packet, even the ones under the couch, count them all—
He was counting before he knew what he was doing, segregating four at a time. He’d gotten a third into the whole thing when he grew aware of Trevor staring at him, on his knees beside him on the floor.
“What?” he snapped.
“What are you doing?” Trevor asked blankly. “We need to clean this up, not count it.”
“I have to.” He continued counting, brows furrowing in concentration. “It’s—I can’t help it. I need to know how many fell.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, I just do.” He turned back to the pile and realized with a flash of irritation that he’d lost count. “Now look what you made me do,” he said, his palm meeting the floor with a loud cracking sound of impact. “You made me lose focus, now I have to start all over again.”
“No, you don’t,” Trevor said. “Why the hell are you—”
“It’s... it’s an obsessive-compulsive thing, okay?” he said defensively, starting his counting all over again. “I’ve had this problem since I was little. I just... have to count it all.”
“You never mentioned this before,” Trevor said, still sounding bewildered. “It’s never even come up.”
“Well, you never asked, did you?” Adrian said testily, his fingers scooping up more M&Ms and sweeping them four at a time into the growing pile he had created. “And it’s not really a big deal, it’s just a minor problem.”
“That’s the same thing you said for the garlic allergy not-really-an-allergy thing,” Trevor said. “And it’s not, not really, but it’s just... weird. You have to obsessively count everything you see, you can’t eat garlic, you don’t lose breath after sprinting for three fucking miles...”
“It’s a mental issue,” Adrian said, stilling as Trevor mused aloud to himself. “I can’t exactly help it. And you make it sound so weird. How uncommon is it to have an aversion to garlic? And plenty of people contract dozens of variations of obsessive-compulsive disorder, I just happen to have arithmomania. It’s perfectly ordinary, Trevor.”
“Yeah,” Trevor said, sounding unconvinced. “Yeah, I guess, it’s just...” He shook his head. On screen, the opposing team had scored another fifteen points, but Trevor didn’t even seem to notice, or even care, for that matter. “It’s just odd,” he finished.
“Well, I don’t think so,” Adrian said, finally finishing his counting—119. That was more than half the bag. He swept them up into a plastic bag, tossing it into the trash as he went. He sat back on the couch beside Trevor, who had turned the volume up on the game and was watching again.
Neither of them mentioned the counting to Sypha when she came out for dinner, nor did they explain the empty M&M packet on the coffee table. But Adrian had the oddest feeling that one of these days he would have to explain exactly why he was acting so oddly.
But for now, his cover was safe. Sort of. I’ll tell them, he thought. Soon. Just... not tonight.
And so another night passed in silence.
4
He carefully opened his fridge, nestling the packets of blood he’d managed to buy off the local blood-guy (there were a surprising number of vampires in this part of San Francisco, most of them university students like he was) into it. He shut the door, wishing not for the first time that there was a locking system on it.
It was your average mini-fridge, a tiny rectangular thing he kept in his dresser. He didn’t use it often, since he didn’t need blood as often or as acutely as full-blooded vampires did, but he still needed the stuff. So far he’d managed to hide the fridge’s contents from Trevor or Sypha, but the fact that their flat was a one-bedroom didn’t really help.
It wasn’t like he was expecting them to open it one day, it was just a feeling that they might accidentally find out he kept blood in his mini-fridge. Sometimes he’d come home after a long day of classes and be half-expecting them to be standing in the hallway with their arms crossed and a half-dozen packets of blood strewn on the table in front of them, and demand he explain.
But they never were, and eventually he relaxed.
Which was, to put it simply, a huge fucking mistake.
He’d been careless. He had managed to force down half the packet (if he was home alone he’d heat it, but he didn’t have that luxury now, and it had been veritable weeks since he’d last fed) and stuff it back into the fridge, then quickly slammed it before Trevor walked in. He stood hastily, wiping his mouth in case there was any residual blood left, trying not to look suspicious.
Trevor didn’t seem to notice, merely getting ready for bed, his back to Adrian. He managed to exhale relief, then quickly padded into the kitchen to finish off the dishes. Sypha was taking out the trash at the communal dumpster, which was in their unfortunate case a block away, and the front door was firmly closed.
He popped his earphones in, turned the volume up and started on the dishes, losing track of time with the monotonous labor. Trevor had initially insisted they use the ancient dishwasher the flat had come with, but after it nearly caught fire the third time they’d given up on it.
That was why he didn’t hear the first yell.
He slid another finished dish into the rack and was just reaching for another when something yanked one of his earbuds out, making him spin around. Trevor was standing there, wide-eyed and horrified, in old yoga pants and nothing else, holding up a packet of blood.
“What the fuck is this?” he demanded.
Adrian froze.
Shit, his brain supplied unhelpfully. Shit, shit shit shit shitshitshitshitshit—
“It’s blood,” he blurted finally.
“I fucking know it’s blood, you moron,” Trevor said. “What the fuck is it doing in your fridge?”
“I told you not to open it—”
“You’d left it open a crack,” Trevor said, still looking horrified. “I got the window open and it blew the door open the rest of the way, and I saw all this shit inside.” He shook the packet and Adrian felt oddly like laughing hysterically. He forced it down.
“It’s for my classes,” he said, his brain running through excuses so fast he thought the gears in there would catch fire. “It’s for my pre-med course. I need it for samples and plasma examinations.”
Trevor stared at him incredulously. “Seriously?”
He nodded, his mouth dry. He swallowed.
“Where the fuck is your microscope, then?” he demanded. “And that glass slip shit? And all that equipment?”
“In my bag.” This was, at least, true. “You can even open it if you want.”
“Hell no. This was scarring enough, God knows what you’ve got in your bag.” He put the blood on the counter, still staring at it as if he expected it to sprout legs and scuttle away. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell us that before? And why’s it got to be so top-secret if it’s just for classes?”
“Well—because I’m not allowed to have it,” he lied. “I... I’m supposed to only do the examinations in school, but I wanted to do something a little more advanced. I wanted to get ahead, so I bought blood for it.”
Trevor shook his head. “That’s... I don’t...” He stared at the packet of blood. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “I mean, it’s not like you’re part of some cult or something, right? Some crazy Satanic shit that needs blood sacrifices or whatever.”
Adrian laughed. “Trevor, no.”
“No,” he agreed. “Yeah, okay. But... next time, a little warning, okay? Before you stuff blood into the fucking fridge.” He snatched the packet and moved away towards the bedroom again, and Adrian let out a breath he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding.
Shit, his brain said again. That was close—too close. Way too fucking close. Thank God Trevor hadn’t smelled the stuff on his breath. He made a mental note to brush his teeth twice before he went to bed.
He really was fucked, wasn’t he?
5
“I’ve had a long, horrible day,” Sypha announced as she walked in, slamming the door shut behind her. “It was long, and horrible.”
She dropped her bag on the floor, kicked off her sneakers and promptly climbed onto the couch between Adrian and Trevor—which was a feat, since there had been no space between them at all. “I want cuddles,” she said clearly.
Trevor laughed, leaning in to kiss her cheek. “Anything for you, Sypha,” he vowed. “And if you want more than just cuddles we can totally take this to the bed—”
“No,” she said adamantly. “Just cuddles.”
“The lady has spoken,” Adrian said, putting his arms around her and gathering her close. She sighed, putting her head on his shoulder. On her other side Trevor did the same, and before long they had all fallen into that fuzzy stupor that came with holding each other and saying nothing.
She turned her head to kiss him for a while, then pulled away with a sigh. His fingers slipped beneath the hem of her cardigan and she shivered. “So why was your day horrible?” Trevor asked, and she sighed.
“Well,” she said, “I missed the bus on the way home, and I’m not wasting ten bucks on an Uber, so I walked home. And then I tripped down the stairs, but before that, in college I didn’t get enough credits, like I wanted to. And that means I have to get consecutive perfect scores in all my tests. But before that I had a really terrible waffle for breakfast. It was awful. An awful waffle.”
“We’re here to erase the awful waffle from your memory,” Trevor promised, kissing her neck. “By tomorrow morning you’d have forgotten all about it.”
“Mmhmm.” She turned her head to kiss him, too, then sighed, her eyes closing. A few minutes later she cracked an eye open, looking at Adrian.
“You have really cold hands,” she mumbled.
“Hmm?”
“Your hands,” she said, blinking sleepily at Adrian. “They’re freezing.”
“Bad circulation,” he said easily, tucking her against him. He didn’t have zero body heat, just less than normal human body temperature. As it was, it took a while for him to warm her up enough.
“Huh,” she said. “That’s strange.”
“How have you not noticed that?” Trevor yawned from her other side. “His hands are always fucking ice blocks. Now do you get why I never ask him to jerk me off, though, huh?” He laughed as Adrian reached over to swat the back of his head.
“I have noticed,” Sypha said, still sounding sleepy. “Just... never brought it up.”
“Well, now you know,” Adrian said.
“Still weird,” she muttered. “Poor circulation...” She sighed, then put her head on his shoulder and didn’t speak again, evidently asleep at last.
He tucked her closer, resting his chin on top of her head, feeling his body temperature rise to mimic hers. Sometimes it was easy to hide it, sometimes it wasn’t. Either way, they’d noticed.
“Help me carry her to the bed,” Trevor said, breaking him from his reverie, and together they gently moved Sypha’s sleeping form to the bed, effectively ridding his mind of the predicament he knew he was in.
By the time he fell asleep, tangled around Trevor’s body, he had forgotten all about the conversation they had had earlier, and by the looks of it, so had Trevor.
“I have to tell you something,” Adrian said.
“Yeah?” Sypha was tucked into his side, Trevor sprawled across the other. Sunlight was streaming in through the windows, settling its warm golden fingers on all three of them. It was maybe midmorning, somewhere between morning and noon. It was too late to still be in bed, but it was Sunday, so everything else had taken a backseat.
“It’s... sort of... important,” he said. “Something important about me and my family.”
They said nothing, evidently waiting for him to go on, and he took a deep breath, steeling himself. “My father is a vampire,” he said. “I’m... half-vampire.”
He expected Sypha to stiffen in his arms, maybe move away, push him away, something. Instead she just said, “Okay. And?”
He blinked at the ceiling. “And... that’s it.”
“That’s it?” Trevor echoed. “All the gravity of your confession, I thought you were going to tell us you were into BDSM or something.”
“But... you’re not... I mean... I’m half-vampire. That’s got to mean something, right? You’re not even a little surprised?”
“Why the fuck would we be surprised?” Trevor asked fairly. “You don’t eat garlic, you obsessively count shit, you drink blood, you get up in the middle of the fucking night to do God-knows what—”
“And you’ve got superhuman strength and ridiculously, bloodlessly cold hands,” Sypha said. “All in all, it wasn’t hard to put the pieces together, Adrian.”
“Oh,” was all he said.
“So now that it’s confirmed,” Trevor said, rolling over to blink out at him, “I need to ask you something important.”
Adrian swallowed. “Yeah?”
“Can you sparkle?”
Sypha burst out laughing as Adrian rolled his eyes. “No, I don’t sparkle. Fuck you,” he said. “Twilight got so many things wrong it’s painful to watch. And it totally messed up our image to the human world. I hate baseball, and I would never creep into a girl’s bedroom to watch her sleep. That’s just creepy.”
“Aww,” Trevor said. “There go my daydreams about you watching over us mortals as we slumber obliviously.”
“Oh, shut up.”
“What about the sexy sexy blood drinking?” Trevor asked, undeterred. “Does that shit really turn you on, or is that just more crap?”
“Would you like to find out?” He bared his teeth, letting his fangs extend, eliciting an excited “Oooh!” from Sypha. Trevor grinned at him. “Maybe later, Fangs,” he said. “So can you turn into a bat?”
“And a wolf.”
“Oooh,” Sypha said again. “So are you undead? Half undead? Partially undead?”
“I’m perfectly alive,” he confirmed. “The undead stuff is pretty much bullshit.” He paused. “Now might be a good time to mention that my father is Dracula.”
“What the fuck,” Trevor said. “Get out of here.”
“Really,” he said. “He lives with my mother in Romania. That’s where I’m from—but you already knew that.”
“So can you fly?” Sypha demanded. “Are you indestructible? Are you constantly horny?”
“Yes to the first, no to the second, and maybe to the third,” he replied. “I can also travel at supersonic speed.”
“Cool,” Trevor said, stretching. “Oh yeah, one last question.” He squinted at Adrian. “Are you the Antichrist? I mean, you’ve got Jesus hair, God knows how old you are, and your dad is Dracula, for fuck’s sake—”
“Oh my God,” said Adrian.