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"What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?"
(Welcome to Night Vale, “All Hail”)
Andrew slides his finger over the edges of the heart-shaped envelopes with calculated disinterest, the tacky material pushing back against his skin in all sorts of colors, from the deepest scarlet red to the softest baby pink. The stand they are being sold on is decorated enough to last the shop an entire year of Valentine’s day, what with the intricate patterns and the careful folding of each envelope, and just the mere sight of it is enough to make Andrew question what his life has come to in the past three to four months.
A pearly scarred hand invades his line of sight, slapping Andrew’s hand away from a sunset-orange envelope. “That’s awful and Kevin will hate it,” Neil says, no inflation to his words. “Are you colorblind?”
Andrew grits his teeth in annoyance, bitterly considering what must have gone through his head when he accepted Neil’s company to visit arguably the worst place in the entirety of Palmetto. “No,” he replies. From behind him, a customer down the line curiously opens one of the screaming Valentines cards, cutting through the unpleasant humming of Abby’s Valentines’ theme song with terrible yelling.
He sighs, inconvenienced. It is only the third time someone has done that, in spite of the bright red warning sign that said some — most — cards came with Unseelie magic on them.
“Well, no color-seeing monster would choose such a toneless, muted shade of orange when you could get it bright and loud,” Neil argues, tugging on Andrew’s sleeve to keep him moving as other customers crowd around the envelope aisle. Ghost privileges are perhaps one too many to count, but this is the one Andrew is most jealous of — Neil’s feet barely touch the ground as he cuts through the crowd with little to no effort, unbothered by others’ physical forms as he disappears and reappears to his own desires, leaving Andrew behind to grumpily run into people as he tries to catch up.
Once near enough to Neil, Andrew answers, “Bright orange is hideous.”
Neil shrugs, hand shoved between two boxes of sickeningly sweet sugarplums. Andrew, ever enemy to fruits of all kinds, has never bought Abby’s Valentines’ sugarplums — the Unseelie magic infused into them aside, he is not a fan of trickster sweets, especially those who can potentially give you pink hair depending on which side you bite first. “These are all so ugly. Why must everything in this place be heart-shaped?”
“It’s called Abby’s Valentines for a reason.”
Neil sniffs in faux sadness. “Oh, what a pity. Guess our scaredy bat will just have to deal with Walmart candy this Valentine’s Day.”
“The fangling will be getting whatever he wants for Valentine’s Day,” Andrew replies, blank-faced, as he searches through a handful of pink and red marshmallow packages for the one bitter flavored brand Kevin actually likes, “even if it means getting through the heart-shaped sodomy of this store.”
With a witchy cackle, Neil throws his head back in laughter. “Oh, Valentine, aren’t you funny,” he muses, letting go of the candy rack to float behind Andrew with mocking ill-intent. “The fangling has gotten you more whipped than cream, now hasn’t he?”
“What are you, Cupid’s hellspawn?” Andrew shoos him away, unwinding himself from the cold shiver of being near Neil for too long. “Go make yourself useful and ask Abby if they still sell sour marshmallows.”
Neil’s ghostly smile is sharp, but not unkind. “The trickster ones?”
“The normal ones, Fox.”
He hums, “I’ll get the normal ones, but not because you asked. I’ll do it for Kevin, and Kevin only,” before disappearing.
“Breaks my heart, Abram,” Andrew deadpans to himself, pushing three cans of Kevin’s favorite cherry tea brand onto his basket. Drinks are the only thing you can trust in Abby’s Valentines’ — something about the Court’s rules towards intoxicating substances for monsters. He stares at the aisle for a few more seconds before also getting two cans of Betsy’s Bubbly Hot Cocoa.
The entire store is full to the brim with the brand of magic that is just campy and childish enough to be inconvenient, but ultimately harmless. As Andrew walks past the colorful packages, his eyes scan the one too many advertisements with boredom, each one worse than the other — Aunt Jemima’s Mocha Brownie Bar, the werewolves’ favorite!, Diet Bloody Cola for the special fang in your life, Fae-Finger chocolate 50% off, Cheese and Crackens: Buy your seasalt crackers from native sea-monsters — with little to no distinction between them.
He gives up on buying food soon enough, certain that there is nothing Kevin would enjoy in a shop so obnoxious, and returns to the Valentines’ card aisle to try and choose one that Kevin would like to receive. It was a somewhat hard task, given Kevin Day is of all vampires the hardest to shop for, but there is very little Andrew wouldn’t do to ease the anxious mess Kevin had become ever since his transitions drops had become more frequent and harder to deal with. If the price of Kevin’s happiness is sour candy and ridiculously pink envelopes, then Andrew is willing to spend all he has.
The cards were, in themselves, a study in cheesiness of all kinds: from “You’re sweet enough to eat, Valentine!” to “Roses are red, vinyl is black, skip the bouquet and send me a stack!”, Andrew felt the ever-recurring embarrassment at the prospect of buying Kevin any of these, in spite of how many times he’s caught Kevin staring at Valentines themed cards in wonder for the past two weeks. It wasn’t like Andrew to be at Abby’s Valentines in early February, much less to be buying something even slightly related to the holiday, but life has a funny way of twisting up a monster until he breaks.
Grumpily, he takes out a discreet-looking card and folds it under the tea cans he’d just bought, hoping it was enough of a cover-up for him to not get any weird stares from the cashier. Andrew tucks the basket under his arm, using his free hand to take out his wallet from his back-pocket, and makes his way towards the cash register, where Neil is waving a toothy grin towards Nicky.
When he notices Andrew’s approach, he holds out a lemon-flavored bag of marshmallows proudly. “Last one in stock,” Neil replies, bright like a comet under the artificial shop lights. “Paid for it myself, too. Consider it my Valentines’ Day’s gift to Kevin.”
“Andrew,” his cousin grins from behind the register, taking Andrew’s basket and quickly swiping his items. “You’re buying Valentine Cards? My Lupin, you’ve clearly gone mad, and it’s not even a full moon.”
Andrew flicks his fingers in dismissal. “I am as unhappy with this as you are.”
“Pff,” Nicky huffs, carefully stacking Andrew’s cans into a paper bag. “Baby cousin, I’m thrilled to know that your relationship is going well with both of your boys.”
Neil snorts from where he’d been propped up on the counter, legs dangling down. “Not a boy,” he corrects, but does not deny the part where it implies he is as Andrew’s as Kevin is. Andrew supposes there’s enough truth in that for it to be incontestable.
“And not a relationship,” Andrew also corrects, sliding Nicky the money before tucking the paper bag to himself protectively. “Ghosts don’t date.”
“Times are changing,” Neil replies, mocking. Nicky shoves him out of the counter as a new customer arrives behind them, mouth curled into his customer-service smile, and they’re basically forced out of the line by the sheer pointedness of his cousin’s glare. Andrew huffs, annoyed, before following Neil out of the shop by the hand on the back of his sweater.
Once away from Nicky’s earshot, Neil opens a cruel-looking smile, sparkly and pretty enough to make Andrew’s heart ache with familiarity. “How long until Nicky realizes me, you and Kevin are not a couple, you reckon?”
Andrew rolls his eyes, popping open one of the bubbly chocolate cans as they wait by the roadside. “Long enough,” Andrew hums, taking a sip before offering it towards Neil. He takes the can only to remember mid-sip that he hates the taste of it, nose scrunching up in disgust as Neil all but shoves the can back to Andrew’s hand. “What? Cat got your tongue?”
Wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his sweater, Neil retorts, “Fuck you, Andrew. I can’t believe I still fall for this.”
“You’re not very smart.”
“You’re not very nice.”
If Andrew cared to, he could almost smile right now. “Not news to anyone,” he hums, raking a hand through his hair. Palmetto is a five minute walk from Abby’s Valentines, granted, but the early-February weather is just nice enough for him to stay by the roadside for a while, the cold making his cheeks and nose pink. Neil never flushes because of the weather, one of the side effects of his unalive nature, but Andrew does not find it to be that much of a bother these days.
They walk back to Palmetto in easy, quick banter, the both of them too used to their casual volatility to accept anything else from the other. They were an odd pair, Andrew knew, and even odder ever since Kevin arrived in their lives: a ghost and a werewolf could never work, and yet they did. Before there was anything, there was Andrew and Neil, friends with benefits until they weren’t, forever stricken by the romanticism of those who don’t confuse love with ownership.
Kevin made their relationship more complicated, but nonetheless better — even now, stuck in the limbo between lovers and friends, Neil’s affection lies within Andrew’s boyfriend just as much as it lies within Andrew. Kevin did not mind their history of hooking up before, and Neil did not mind that Andrew was immediately enamoured by Kevin the second he walked into Palmetto with nothing but growing fangs and big, doe eyes: in a way, they seemed to work as three better than anyone could’ve ever bet for, even if Neil was — supposedly — just a friend of theirs.
They climb towards the cable cars leading them back to the main campus easily, and arrive with no major inconveniences; this time of the year there was no one willing to brave the Columbian winter but the pair of them, and the silence was comforting. They don’t part — there was no reason to, really, when they both knew the place the other is heading to is Kevin’s dorm room, on the far side of campus and nearing his father’s apartment.
Andrew scratches his key against the lock for a second to announce their arrival before unlocking the door to Kevin's dorm, at this point more theirs than it is Kevin's as the drawer designed for Andrew's belongings has quickly become an entire section of Kevin's closet. In spite of it being early noon, the lights are dim as they walk in, egg-yellows and warm oranges drenching Kevin's decor as if straight from a painting.
The vampire in question is no less gloomy than his dorm is, tucked under three of his heaviest blankets with his cheek squished against the pillow and his reading glasses crooked, the fabric of a hoodie that is most surely Andrew's peeking out from his blanket burrito. Neil lets out a soft snicker at the sight, barely audible in the heaviness of the room, and Andrew silently locks the door behind them before kicking his shoes, paper bags and jacket to the side as quietly as he could manage.
Being Kevin's sire came long before being Kevin's boyfriend — Andrew remembers that chain of events better than he remembers the palm of his own hand, the history of them richer and more complicated than the one of the American South. It was perhaps what most of their relationship was built in: because Kevin trusted Andrew as both a friend and a protector, he found it in himself to trust Andrew as a lover as well, one not being able to coexist without the other in the grand scheme of things that led the way to Kevin Day's tender spots.
Kevin blinks softly at his approach, eyes glazed over but still present; still seeing. His eyes are sharper than most, a smart eld to them making it clear that Kevin was the type of person whose rough edges were only barely sanded down by the emery paper of time, but now they just look exhausted — Andrew doesn't need to ask if he's close to dropping to know it.
"Fangling," Andrew greets, serene. Being a vampire is one of the many things about Kevin's life he does not envy, given the transition from the dead to the undead is long, painful and deeply disconcerting from both an outsider's and an insider's point of view — that, attached with the traumatic memories of Kevin's previous sire and the general vulnerability it all represents, has made Andrew an entire world more careful of his interactions with Kevin nearing and during his transition drops.
He feels the cold brush of Neil's shoulder by his side, and the shiver running up his arm is more familiar than it is comforting.
"Andrew," Kevin softly replies, the sound of it coming out muffled. His voice is still steady and earnest, but Andrew can tell it won't be for long — Kevin hates to talk during moments where his voice is too weak to be anything but a small cry. "Neil," he greets afterwards, still quiet.
"Fangling," Neil hums, curiously hovering over the ground to take a better look at Kevin's face. "You look like garbage."
Andrew elbows Neil on his side at that, but Kevin's reponse is a mere soft huff, almost a laugh. "I feel like I'm being torn into two," he replies, so soft Andrew has to crouch closer to hear it. Kevin chews on the bruised skin of his bottom lip for a short while before adding, "It's supportable."
"For now," Andrew murmurs, not unkindly.
Kevin makes an agreeing sound. "For now."
He stares for a little longer before leaning down to sit on the edge of Kevin's bed, leaving space for Neil to sit beside him even though Andrew knows he won't with Kevin in this sickly state. Andrew reaches a careful hand to push hair out of Kevin's forehead, the wavy strands curling around his fingers before sneaking back into place. He lets his hand linger for a moment longer before pressing his palm to Kevin's forehead, the expected coldness of it making a shudder run up Andrew's arm on instinct.
Being a werewolf, Andrew's hands are always warmer than necessary, often sweaty and sticky in the summertime. Kevin, being a transitioning vampire, is the exact opposite — almost every moment of the day is spent in a never-ending chilly breeze, hence the mountain of blankets on top of him still doing barely anything to keep him from shivering from the cold. His lips are red and purple, bitten out but nonetheless a clear tell of his general state, and Andrew runs his palm through Kevin's face as a meek attempt to warm it up.
Kevin purses his lips, staring at Andrew's hand suspiciously for one, two, three seconds before rubbing his face against it, like a cat who'd been convinced of Andrew's goodwill.
"You are freezing," Andrew points out, monotone.
Neil snorts from where he'd been hovering near Kevin's face. "Like a popsicle," he adds, pushing his fingers forward and meekly booping Kevin on his nose, as to not scare.
"I'm fine," Kevin replies, curling towards Andrew's hand as a way to soak up the warmth for himself. He pauses for a second before nosing against Andrew's palm, probably trying to surround himself with the familiar scent to battle off the ones that overwhelm the rest of the room.
"That's not your line, fangling," Neil hums, though his voice softens anyway, clearly hyper aware of Kevin's slowly-deteriorating state.
Andrew, for one, unwraps the layers of Kevin's blanket mountain carefully to check for general damage that could've been made in the half an hour he'd been out with Neil. Luckily, there were no transition-induced bruises to find yet, just Kevin in one of their communal oversized hoodies and an entire new layer of Andrew's clothes under the last blanket.
"Those are washed," he murmurs, tucking Kevin under the blankets once more. "They don't smell like anything."
"I know they're yours," is Kevin's reply, pushing his hood over his head and tucking the fabric behind his ears. The sensory overload of transitioning applies much less to vampire ears, given their hearing is not nearly as good or accurate as a werewolf's, but time and again Kevin complains about a high-pitched sound apparently only he can hear in the entirety of Fox tower.
"Hm," Andrew says, unable to think of much else to answer. He knew the job of Kevin's sire would make Kevin inevitably dependent on him in one way or another during times like these, but the sight of it so open and clear still makes something unbearably angry — and tender — unfurl inside of him. He pushes the blanket all the way up to Kevin's chin before prompting, "Go to sleep. You look like shit."
"I'll wake up in an hour wanting to die."
"And I'll be here to keep you from dying. Sleep."
Kevin hesitates, falling quiet. There was a struggle on his face visible only to Andrew, who knew every twitch of Kevin's expression with exacerbating familiarity — it was the face Kevin made when he was conflicted between asking for something or remaining quiet, his inherent fear of vulnerability battling out his desperation for whatever it is that he wants at the moment. It took two months of on and off siring for Kevin to ask something of Andrew for the first time, and about one more of it before Kevin felt comfortable enough to do it without breaking into an anxious spiel beforehand.
"You can ask," Andrew reminds him out of habit, voice falling into a hoarse whisper. His voice wasn't nearly as deep and soothing as Kevin's was — it resembled Neil's witchy cackle much more than it did Kevin's low, tender rumble, but he supposes that there is comfort in the fact that it is Andrew's, despite it all.
The reassurance is easy, familiar, because Andrew had spent the last three months trying to convince Kevin to communicate his needs when the going gets rough. It was a hard task for a man whose trust and safety had been breached so many times in the past by a sire, but Andrew was not Riko — he needed Kevin to be aware of that distinction, and to base all of their interactions upon that same change in circumstance. The path ahead of them was still long, but good God, hadn't Kevin been getting better the past weeks.
At last, Kevin starts with a soft spoken, "I want…" before trailing off into a quiet murmur, barely understandable even for Andrew's attuned senses. Neil frowns from beside him, and kneels next to the bed to be able to hear Kevin better.
"You want?" Andrew prompts, mild and dismissive though he felt anything but.
Kevin huffs frustratedly. "Nevermind."
"Fangling."
"Andrew."
"Neil!" Neil exclaims, flicking at Kevin's nose affectionately.
Andrew blinks at him, attention temporarily derailed. "What?" he asks, impatient.
Neil's mouth opens into a cutthroat smile. "It was the only name left."
There is a soft sound of what might be a laugh coming from Kevin's mouth afterwards, though Andrew doesn't pay it any attention in order to turn to Kevin once more. "Ask," he says, firm. All of the siring books he's read claimed that being stern with a fangling does not help nearly as much as being gentle does, but Kevin is as contrary with this as he is with anything else — accepting any kind of gentleness comes harder to him than to most.
The vampire squeezes his lips together stubbornly, as if refusing to speak. Andrew sighs, longsuffering, before pressing his thumb to Kevin's Adam's apple as a warning. "Kevin," he murmurs, tone kept soft, "talk. I cannot help you if you don't."
Kevin just stares, blank-faced and pale. He rubs his chin against Andrew's wrist, tender, but does not do as he is told, or tries to cooperate at all. Resigned from Kevin's stubbornness, Andrew sighs yet again before slowly dragging his thumb up and down Kevin's neck, a dainty caress he could not help himself with. The skin is cold, defenseless, but not fragile — Kevin's habit of railing against his own vulnerability made him much more than a snake that has not yet learned how to strike.
At last, the tenderness seems to unfurl him into quietly asking, "Can you come close?"
Patiently, Andrew hums, "Is that what you want?"
"If he asked," Neil comments matter-of-factly, though also in a soft whisper. His voice is raucous, scratchy, as if nails on a chalkboard; Neil's entire existence is a haunted house.
Andrew considers elbowing him again, but deems it too much effort. Kevin answers, "I want to not feel empty," which is the best Andrew can get from him when he is like this.
The emptiness of vampirism — such big words for such a small, mundane feeling. Kevin's loneliness is a bigger part of him than his slowly-separating humanity is.
Andrew grumbles in understanding, a sound from the very back of his throat. "How close?"
Touching was not allowed in the first few times Andrew sired for Kevin — the ever-recurring memories of Riko were perhaps too strong, or there wasn't enough trust in Andrew yet to allow him to touch but not hurt. Nowadays Kevin's wish for it comes and goes, though the need is almost always there, underlining his every bone: Andrew often wondered what tipped the scales to either side, what made Kevin feel well enough to allow himself to curl into Andrew and what didn't, but ultimate he decided it was not his place to know.
Neither Andrew or Neil interrupt the broad silence between them as Kevin thinks about that question. Distantly, Andrew thinks he should gift Kevin his Valentine's Day's card before the transition drops make him unable to accept it, but the thought eventually slips away at the reasoning that there are always better, simpler times to do it — and preferably not when Kevin is at his lowest and most vulnerable.
At last, Kevin's answer is a simple, "Close," which tells Andrew nothing but that Kevin knows as little about his own needs as Andrew does.
Luckily, they've done this before: going back and forth with Kevin won't solve anything, so Andrew tugs him nearer blankets and all, back to Andrew's chest and Andrew's arm slung across his chest and shoulders. "Good?" he asks.
Kevin purses his lips. He squirms around for a bit, pushing back against Andrew's chest, before he can nestle his face on the crook of Andrew's elbow, letting out a quiet sigh. "Yes."
Over Kevin's head, Andrew rolls the fondness out of his eyes, allowing the vampire to steal both his body warmth and affection for the time being. Neil settles near them, throwing Kevin's legs over his lap, and they are silent once more, though this time a lot more comfortably than before.
After some more quietness — empty and suspended in time —, Neil tentatively prompts, "I don't understand how this works."
"What this?" Andrew asks, looking up from where he'd been swirling Kevin's short ponytail around as a distraction.
"The transition," he explains, leaning the back of his head against the wall beside Kevin's bed. "I mean — I get the concept of it, but why is it so painful to vampires, specifically? I'm pretty sure yours wasn't that bad, and neither was mine."
Andrew purses his lips. He knows Kevin is listening, but his eyes are half-lidded and droopy, glazed over by exhaustion and sickness. "It's a bodily process," he replies, "of course it will hurt."
"It takes Kevin down for days at a time, though."
Kevin makes a sad sound of protest, muffled by Andrew's sleeve. They ignore it.
"It's more psychological to them," Andrew hums, still playing with Kevin's ponytail. "Something about the inbetween. It is hard to be neither or."
"It's not psychological," Kevin retorts, the sound of it even more muffled than before. It feels as if he's trying to make Andrew swallow him whole, clinging to his clothes so tightly it's as if Andrew would walk away and leave otherwise. "It just makes me feel like shit."
"That's psychological." He pushes hair out of Kevin's forehead. "It bares you of your survival skills."
His shoulders lock up momentarily, an innate reaction Andrew knows Kevin can't do anything about, and he feels more than he sees it as Kevin burrows closer to try and drain out that tension. "Tell me about it," Kevin murmurs with a bitter smirk, an entire lifetime of fear buried under it.
Andrew caresses the side of Kevin's neck briefly before continuing his explanation, verbatim to the hundred or so books about siring he's read ever since the first time he'd done it. "The transition drops put fanglings in vulnerable mental states, as well as weakens their physical strength. The pain in itself is not in the becoming, but more so in the body fighting off the vampire venom." He carefully lets his fingers slide all the way down to Kevin's collarbones, and then slip under the hoodie to rest over his heart. Underneath the skin, nothing — an overwhelming emptiness. "And it is worse for Kevin than it is for most."
Neil purses his lips. They all know the reason, the dents of Riko's name deep and violent on the surface of their tongues, but even this blatant denial feels like comradery — by not letting his name slip away, it is almost as if they could deny the memories out of holding any power.
"Hm," Neil replies. He slides his hands over Kevin's ankles, apologetic, and the coldness of them does not make either shiver as it would Andrew. "Sorry, fangling. You just got the evolutionary short stick."
"You are literally a ghost," Kevin complains sadly, as unable to accept sympathy as he is to accept gentleness. "'Drew, a ghost is telling me I got the evolutionary short stick."
Andrew hides his fought-back smirk behind Kevin's head, burying his nose on the raven strands to keep his fondness well hidden. "Undead on undead crime is not my business."
"I'm not undead," Neil frowns. "I'm dead. There's no 'un' prefix. I died. You were there."
"I was not there."
"You went to my funeral."
"To spit on the casket."
Neil smirks. "You even got me flowers."
"Those were funeral wreath flowers. And they were fake." He slides his palm up to Kevin's neck, cupping his Adam's apple gently and taking advantage of the position of his hand to tease the tip of his nails against his chin and jawline, making Kevin melt into him with a sigh. "Plus, you invited me to your funeral."
"And you went," Kevin murmurs, his voice rumbling deep through Andrew's palm.
"Shush," he replies. "Didn't ask."
Kevin makes a small annoyed sound at that, but doesn't bother to offer Andrew any more quips. Neil snickers from the other end of the bed.
They fall into a comfortable silence for a small while — that is, Kevin and Neil do, as Andrew never stops listening. There are no heartbeats to be heard, given their undead state, but Andrew can still hear Kevin’s quiet, mechanical breaths, a memory from his human life he got too used to to give up now; he can still hear Neil’s cold fingers tapping against Kevin’s ankles, a distant rhythm of what Andrew can only assume is grocery store music, Neil’s favorite genre; and he can still hear the sound of his own heartbeat, simultaneously bruising and comforting against Kevin’s back.
There was no livelihood to Andrew, but he was alive in a way neither of them were: unendurably so, with no escape.
Andrew never knows when Kevin’s transition drops happen, or at least not exactly. It’s a gradual change, based on circumstance and situation — pre-drops were common for him, the first hours before his drops being marked by watered down versions of his usual symptoms, but very rarely did Kevin allow them to grind him down to the same extent the actual thing does. Stubborn as he is, Andrew has had to drag him away from physical activity and intense studying one too many times before, lest he wanted the drop to be twice as intense as it would have had Kevin rested as soon as the first symptoms appeared.
Today, though, what Kevin does to let him know it has finally reached its long-lasting peak is simply murmur, “This sucks so fucking much,” before curling into himself automatically, completely frozen except for the violent trembling of his shoulders.
As if on cue, Neil jumps back from him, alarmed. Kevin’s transitions drops are a crucial point for his relationship with Andrew, but that does not extend to his relationship with Neil — more often than not the ghost is barely capable of being in the same room as Kevin, too scared of further damaging Kevin’s already damaged mental state to fathom being near him during times like these. Even now, the degree of physical distance Neil puts between himself and Kevin is a clear exaggeration from his part, as if Kevin could somehow transmit his sickness to someone whose body is not even alive enough to ever be sick again.
Andrew lets go of Kevin’s throat to put a firm hand on the back of his neck, sliding his forearm underneath Kevin’s knees to turn him towards Andrew’s front. “Fangling,” he says, steady, “breathe. Give me five things you can see.”
Kevin grits his teeth against each other, jawline locked. He’s fighting back a dry heave, Andrew knows, the struggle making his fists tighten on his sides. “You,” he grits out, forehead pressed to Andrew’s shoulder, “your sweater. My blankets. Your clothes. Neil.”
He clicks his tongue. “Four things you can touch.”
“You,” Kevin repeats, the violent trembling of his shoulders spreading to his hands and thighs. He tries to steady himself against the bed, pulling away from Andrew’s shoulder, but is barely stable enough to do it — Andrew has to hold him up by the wrists lest he wanted Kevin to fall out of bed. “My hoodie. Your—” he stops, swallowing down bile, and waits for a small, stabilizing while before continuing, “hands. Blankets. Socks.”
Andrew’s hands on his wrists are gentler than his usual iron grip, but he lets them go all the same, instead redirecting Kevin’s shaky clutch to the front of his sweater. “Three things you can hear,” he murmurs to Kevin’s hands.
“Andrew,” Kevin starts, probably planning to make a complaint, but is cut off by a wave of nausea so violent it forces him to double over, the top of his head knocking against Andrew’s chest.
“Three things,” Andrew insists, running fingers through the back of Kevin’s hair. “Three things you can hear, fangling.”
Kevin pants against the fabric of Andrew’s sweater, then answers in one single breath, “You. The noise. Neil leaving.”
The last part of his answer startles Andrew enough to snap his neck towards the rest of the room, early enough to catch the last glimpse of Neil’s back as he slips through the window, shameless and barely corporeal. He stares at the empty space where Neil should be for one second too long before snapping back towards Kevin.
“Two things you can smell,” he whispers, tone falling soft. Andrew doesn’t know what Kevin thinks of Neil’s habit of disappearing whenever things get the slightest bit inconvenient, but he decides he — of all people Andrew knows, the most stubborn — can’t like it.
“Death,” Kevin whispers back, small and terrified though never enough to show it, “and Abby’s Valentines. On you.”
Andrew lets out a proud hum. “Last one. One thing you can taste.”
Another wave of nausea hits Kevin as soon as he opens his mouth, but nothing comes out of it — nothing ever does. His entire face spasms in pain, the body growing desperate and confused at its inability to fight back the vampire venom, and Kevin falls face first into Andrew’s lap, barely avoiding Andrew’s knee as he lands on his upper thigh. He curls over Andrew’s legs, knees up to his chest, but Andrew knows this is not the time to touch him: not when Kevin is this defenseless, this vulnerable to harm so freely done to him in the past.
He allows Kevin a few moments of silence before gently prompting, “Just one thing. Anything. Anything you can taste.”
Kevin whimpers, broken and dry, but replies: “God– I don’t– bile. Saliva. Venom. I don’t know.”
“Can I touch you?” Andrew asks, hand hovering over Kevin’s cheek.
The vampire takes a small while to answer, staring at Andrew’s hand with eyes slightly crossed; glazed over by pain. At last, he replies a cold and distant, “Yes,” though he still curls closer to Andrew’s lap.
Andrew uses both his palms to cup Kevin’s face, leaning down just enough to press his lips to Kevin’s temple. He does not say what for, but they both know — Kevin could barely speak the first time Andrew sired for him, terrified of his own vulnerability and how the body next to him could use it for its advantage, and now he can form entire sentences; answer five questions with little struggle. The progress communicated an entire universe of trust and respect, from both sides of this exchange.
He leans back afterwards, not assuming more permission than what’s been explicitly given, and watches Kevin meekly try and follow his hand before giving up altogether. Andrew hooks his finger on the hair tie keeping Kevin’s small pigtail intact at the same time the vampire is thrown into a fit of dry coughs followed by agonizing sounds of retching, and he frees the dark strands from the pigtail as a way to brush his hands through Kevin’s hair, one of the first soothing touches Kevin asked for as soon as touching was allowed.
Methodical in everything he does, Andrew untangles the few knots of his hair with precision, carding his fingers through the shorter strands at the back and twirling the longer ones at the front. Cafuné is the word Kevin uses, still connected to his Brazilian roots in spite of how long he’s been in American ground — untranslatable to any other language, the word sounds more home in Kevin’s mouth than it will ever in Andrew’s, though the feeling, still, remains; inexhaustible and beyond the communicable.
“You’re fine,” Andrew whispers, blank-faced, as Kevin falls into a stable breathing, harsh though much smoother than before. “You have been through this before. You know you’ll be well soon.”
Kevin chokes on a breath. “Will I?”
“Yes,” he quietly retorts. Andrew is not soft spoken — he has the harsh tone of someone whose life had been defined by how crueler he could be to those who’d been cruel to him first, and he would never think, a year ago, that his mouth would be taken so easily by words that are quiet and dainty, easy to the ear. “I will not allow it any different.”
Kevin is quiet at that, not mulling over Andrew’s words but still pensive; distant. Sometimes, it’s better like this — for Kevin to be alone in his head, as long as he leaves the door open for Andrew to follow.
Ceaseless and omniscient, the tenderness of his own voice surprises him as he adds, “You know I will not allow it any different. I promised you, didn’t I?” He runs his fingers through the back of Kevin’s head, careful not to brush against his neck. “Don’t you believe me?”
“I do.”
He twirls a wavy strand around his pointer finger. “Do you?”
“You are here, are you not?” Kevin murmurs. “No broken necks yet.”
Andrew almost smiles. He can tell Kevin almost does, too. “Yet.”
He huffs, wrapping arms around his own knees and positioning his face to be staring up at Andrew, dark eyebags and a small scar splitting his eyebrow in two. Kevin looks as if life has grinded him down to a fine powder, and yet, there is happiness — behind the death of it all, there is an amount of life not even the living can own. What died did not stay dead; or if it did, it was not for long. He thinks if there is anyone who can be used as a lesson on resilience, then that someone might as well be Kevin Day, born twice but never once fully erased.
Andrew waits with hands full of longing for Kevin’s misery to subdue, and then strokes his fingers down the entirety of Kevin’s face — around his temples and up and down his cheekbones, tracing the bump of his nose and the shape of his mouth. He rubs his fingertips through every bit of skin he can find, soothing what’s been hurt, and watches as the fight drains from Kevin little by little, his body allowing the venom through. It was a temporary compromise, Andrew knew, but the peace it gave Kevin was precious: it all still hurt, but now it’d become subdued; mellow; a refined ruin.
“You need water,” Andrew says after a while, tracing the sharp lines of Kevin’s eyebrows. “And to eat.”
“I’ll throw up if I eat.”
“You’ll throw up regardless.”
Kevin presses his lips together. “I don’t want— you to see me like that.”
“I’ll leave,” he reasons.
“No,” Kevin replies, adamant and final. “Don’t leave.”
Andrew’s hands still on his face, palms pressed to both Kevin’s cheeks. “I will cook something for you if you eat.”
That seems to make him consider it. It was not the cooking in itself that Andrew was offering, but the care — there were implications to it, ones that said Andrew was willing to allow Kevin the vulnerability of a child, a humble dog. Feeding guarantees docility; compliance; it is the first step of domesticating a wild animal, the only love language whose words are better felt than said. Through an open mouth, the world comes pouring through.
Ultimately, Kevin’s shoulders tremble, then drop. There is a small, dragged moan of pain in his voice as he replies, “Okay,” and forces his eyes closed, black hair framing brown skin.
Andrew slides his fingers to Kevin’s eyelids, tracing them with the tip of his thumb. He is not pale-white the way Andrew is, and even if he were, there would be no veins visible through the thin skin of his eyelids — still, Andrew traces the imaginary lines of them, draws out a map of everything Kevin was when he was alive.
“What are you thinking about?” Kevin struggles to ask through curt, harsh breaths, cold sweat starting to accumulate on his temples. Andrew will have to put him through a bath soon, if only for some temporary warmth, but the idea of having Kevin anywhere but closer than his shadow is still too fresh, too early to compute.
The answer, of course, is you, but Andrew and romanticism are long-lost antagonists. “Nothing,” is what he replies, instead.
“Nothing?”
“Not a thing.”
Kevin’s eyes flutter, but don’t open. “I’m thinking about books. And Exy. And kisses.”
Andrew rubs his thumb over Kevin’s eyebrow. “Why?”
“The three things I want to do once this is over.”
There is a short pause before Andrew prompts, changing subjects, “I will get you water. Don’t move.”
Kevin huffs as if the prospect of him leaving the bed in this state is funny, and Andrew carefully unwinds his legs from under his head to hop out of Kevin’s bed. He’d bought Kevin a knock-off water filter a handful of weeks ago, appalled by how easily Kevin drank Palmetto’s self-admittedly shady tap water, and now more than ever Andrew is thankful for his own deeds as he fills up Kevin’s water bottle without having to visit Fox Tower’s communal kitchen for it.
He scratches his nails against the bottle’s baby blue coat absentmindedly, feeling the paint come off behind his fingertips. Once filled to the brim, Andrew caps it once more and returns to Kevin, who’d barely moved from his position. He sits on the bed again, legs dangling off to the side, and asks — demands, “Sit up.”
Kevin does, though slowly. Andrew meets him halfway, and allows Kevin to lean against his side, halfway on Andrew’s lap with his head tipped back to meet his shoulder. He takes the bottle from Andrew’s clutch with shaky hands, but manages to get it to his mouth through sheer stubbornness, one of Kevin’s most defining traits. Andrew places a stabilizing hand under Kevin’s wrist, glaring him into accepting help in the process, and doesn’t let go until Kevin taps his arm.
Afterwards, he puts the half-drank bottle to the bedside table, and tucks Kevin under his thousand blankets once more. “I’ll go to the kitchen and make you ramen,” he says, folding the ends of his blankets under Kevin’s chin. “Don’t move. Don’t leave. Call me if you need something.”
He waits for an answer, but the next thing Kevin does is encircle Andrew’s wrist with his hand in a surprisingly strong grip, more desperate than it is tender. “I will be back,” Andrew hums easily, not as if a promise but as if an incontestable fact — death is inevitable, the sky is blue, Andrew will come back. When Kevin doesn’t let up, he repeats, “Kevin, I will come back. You know this.”
In small steps, Kevin eventually lets go. It wasn’t nearly strong enough of a grip to keep Andrew in place, but he’d stayed until allowed to leave, anyways, if perhaps out of respect. At last, Kevin whispers, “I don’t like eggs in my ramen.”
Andrew bites down on an amused huff before adjusting the blankets once more. “Try and sleep,” is his advice before gathering instant ramen from Kevin’s infinite pantry and walking out of his dorm.
He debates locking the door for a small while before deciding not to, in spite of the bitter taste it left on his mouth. Andrew knew no one would walk in and do Kevin any harm, not when he is still well guarded by Palmetto as the only vampire in the entire campus, but the thought lingered like a poisonous vine, creating sickly ill green spots around his stomach.
Fox Tower's kitchen is huge, well prepared, and an entire world better than their usual dormitory kitchens. Andrew shouldn't be surprised: Kevin being a Brazilian Monstrology professor's son and the only vampire in the province, his accommodations were sure to be the best possible in the principal's hands. Much was wrong with Palmetto, but one thing read true: they cared for their young, especially those still in transition. That aligned with Kevin's traumatic past — a case so public it shook up the entire monster community from West Virginia all the way to South Carolina — guaranteed him a better, more careful treatment from the administration than most monsters would ever dream of.
The window by the wall shows a slowly dwindling down sunset, early winter making the days shorter than they need be and the nights longer than what is healthy. The weather is gloomy outside, a few fingertip-pink strikes over the ever-boiling grays and yellows of Palmetto’s sunset, and Andrew is not alone in the kitchen as he thought he would be.
Neil is sitting on the windowsill, his back to the room and his legs dangling down. He’s noticed someone else’s presence, but hasn’t bothered to look back, spine hunched into his usual awful posture as he stares off into the sky.
It is only when Andrew is already halfway through boiling the water for Kevin’s ramen that he says, more quietly than he’d meant it to be, “You know he will stop waiting for you to come back if you keep leaving.”
The ghost is not startled by the sudden sound, but he does not turn around to look at Andrew either. “I’m not you,” is what he chooses to stay, lighthearted enough.
“And he is not me, either,” Andrew replies, slipping the block of uncooked ramen into the boiling water and stirring them with chopsticks. “He does not forgive nor does he understand as much as I do.”
At that, Neil turns to the side to glance at Andrew from the corner of his eye. He lets out a dramatic sigh, leaning his head against the windowsill, and proclaims, “O queen, my queen. How merciless he is.” He moves his other hand, the one Andrew hadn’t seen up until now, and throws a package in Andrew’s direction, missing only a few centimeters from his head. Andrew catches it effortlessly, and Neil explains, “His sour marshmallows. You didn’t take them.”
Andrew is quiet as he puts the bag on the counter. Neil does these things — makes you believe he doesn’t care just to prove his own theory wrong. It was as problematic as everything else about him, but Andrew couldn’t help but think Kevin would be happy to know Neil still cared enough to buy him his favorite candy.
He is chopping up green onions when he speaks again. “You,” Andrew starts, collected, “care more than you think you do.”
Neil chuckles, “That makes two of us.” When Andrew doesn’t reply, he continues, more honest than he thought Neil could be: “I care about Kevin. But I’m not— you. I don’t care for people. That’s not my deal.”
“What is, then?” he questions, sautéing vegetables on a separate pan to the noodles. Andrew knows Kevin won’t eat all of this by himself, so he might as well prepare it to his own tastes as well as his.
“I don’t know,” Neil shrugs. “Running, I guess. When things get tough.”
“How complex,” Andrew deadpans, stirring the vegetables. “Godspeed to you on your journey to self-enlightenment.”
“Fuck off, Andrew,” is what Neil says, only a tinge of it being true. He hops out of the window, hovering near Andrew, and crosses his arms. “I’ll make it up to Kevin.”
Without looking up from his task, Andrew says, “Hm. Should I be jealous?”
“Of me or him?”
He shrugs. “Yes.”
Neil smiles his usual knife-grin, acute and sharp edged. “What a son of a bitch you are,” he comments, not unkindly, “trying to coach me about feelings like you got those.”
Andrew huffs, because they both know well enough that that is not true. Still, he plays along, “Do what I say, not what I do.”
“I don’t think I’ll do either,” Neil hums, raking a hand through his hair. He taps his temple twice in a mock salute before disappearing into thin air, a ghostly scene in all that he is. A chill runs up Andrew’s nape at that, and he doesn’t think it’s because of the cold.
He finishes Kevin’s food easily, automatically, and wraps it up in tin foil before leaving the kitchen with the bowl in hands. Andrew takes the elevator with a red-haired cheerleader, most likely a siren, and slips back into Kevin’s dorm as if he owned it in the first place, the bowl in one hand and the marshmallows in another.
Kevin had switched to his side in the meanwhile Andrew had been gone, curled up under the blankets with closed eyes that open instantly as soon as Andrew steps into the room. He shakes out the marshmallow package to bring Kevin’s attention to it, and says, “Neil said to give it to you. You fed him and now he’ll keep coming back.”
The corner of Kevin’s mouth pulls into a tired smile. Andrew puts the ramen bowl on top of Kevin’s desk, and leans against its edge. “Don’t let him in with no intention to keep him. Next thing you know you’re giving him a name and a collar.”
“Is that what you did?” Kevin faintly asks.
Andrew stares at Kevin for a second too long before retorting, “I’m not interested in putting anyone in a collar. It does not do it for me.”
The vampire laughs, though ginger and quiet. Andrew adjusts the ramen bowl and takes off the tin foil before bringing it to Kevin on the bed, balancing it on his own lap while Kevin sits up with less struggle than before, growing used to the temporary weakness. “I can eat on my own,” Kevin mutters, leaning towards Andrew and resting his cheek on his shoulder tiredly.
“Shut up,” Andrew replies, grabbing a spoonful of noodle and broth and bringing it to Kevin’s lips.
“I am twenty years old.”
“So am I,” he says matter-of-factly. “Open up.”
Kevin does, reluctantly, and allows Andrew to feed him bite by bite. He knows Kevin is battling off nausea each time he asks for Andrew to wait before another spoonful, holding onto his sleeve to distract himself from the sudden waves of pain. It was a sad existence, the one of a monster yet-to-be, but Kevin said nothing. He did not like to ask for help.
Andrew finishes off the bowl once Kevin falls back on the bed with a hand clamped over his mouth, forcing the food down. Even then, he looked a bit better now, fed and hydrated rather than left to his own devices, and Andrew counts it as progress as he slips back into bed.
The vampire waits for Andrew to adjust himself against the headboard before asking, “Can I lay on your chest?”
“Yes,” he replies, bringing Kevin down by a hand on his nape. Kevin nestles his cheek on the very middle of Andrew’s chest, ear pressed over his heart and hands curled to his own stomach. Andrew pokes the back of his head, then says, “Don’t puke on me.”
Kevin huffs tiredly, closing his eyes. “Okay.”
“I’ll get you to take a bath when you wake up.”
“Okay.” He nuzzles Andrew’s sweater, fangs getting stuck on the fabric for a brief second before being pulled out rather indelicately. “Don’t leave,” Kevin asks, no louder than a whisper.
“Am not legally allowed to,” Andrew answers to Kevin’s hair, monotone. “That’d be neglect, and would lead me to two to three years of reclusion from the monster world by the Court’s order.”
Kevin whines. "I hate that you're a Law of the Court student."
Andrew shrugs. "Sleep. I do not plan on getting prosecuted for the neglect of an incapable."
"I'm not incapable."
"You're not of vampire age. Sleep."
"I–" Kevin starts, then sighs. "Fine."
He adjusts his cheek against Andrew's chest, and Andrew brings his hand to Kevin's hair in retaliation, slowly playing with the strands. It is so soothing Kevin is not the only one to fall asleep, in the end — Andrew phases out of consciousness with his hand buried in Kevin's hair, the two of them merrily intertwined for all of their banter.
Andrew wakes up when Kevin does, inevitably, given Kevin all but violently jerks up from his slumber in what Andrew assumes was less than an hour later. His hands shake as he tries to claw his way out of the blanket mountain on top of them, nails not nearly sharp enough to have the intended effect. Andrew reaches for Kevin's wrists on instinct, barely awake himself, and has to dunk when Kevin's instincts win against his conscience and his reaction is to throw a punch at whatever's holding him down.
"Shh, shh," Andrew soothes as if speaking to a child, putting Kevin's wrist down. "That's enough. Calm down — be quiet now."
Kevin's eyes widen, still sweet and round even now, and he slowly stops his limp struggle to be let out. "Andrew," he whispers, mortified. "Andrew."
"That would be me," he replies, slowly releasing Kevin's wrists from his grip. "That was a bad punch. You'd have lost if we were in a street fight."
But Kevin looks as if he'll double over and vomit the remains of his ramen at any moment now, pale and green under the lamplight, and Andrew is brutally reminded that this reaction — as well as the indifference and the suspicion — is perfectly adequate from the things Kevin had been put through in the past during his transition drops.
More often than not, Kevin felt like a mirror.
"It is fine," Andrew repeats a well known mantra, hands falling to his own lap. "You're in Palmetto, South Carolina. Riko was executed by the Law of the Court five months ago." Then, softer yet full of mortification, "I'm your boyfriend. Allegedly."
Kevin blinks, his surroundings downing on him little by little. He grabs the blanket with tightened fists, still so very disconcerted, and slowly puts down, "Andrew, I'm so sorry."
"Don't be," he answers. "It was a bad punch."
But Kevin is not listening. "I'm– I thought–" he frowns. "I had a nightmare. I didn't mean to be so aggressive, I just– I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
Andrew sighs, longsuffering, before cupping Kevin's cheeks with both his palms and forcing him to end his spiel. "Shut up," he snarls, somehow softly. "Shut up. Be quiet now."
When silence is finally achieved, Andrew leans their foreheads together. "What did you dream about," he asks, though it came off more as an order than anything else, a vicious habit of his.
"Riko," is Kevin's obvious reply, followed by a bitter intake of air, "always Riko. I'm so fucking tired of Riko."
"Kill him," Andrew murmurs, knocking his nose against Kevin's. "Again and again, let him die."
"I'd have broken his neck myself if I could," Kevin whispers, a white-faced lie. They both know Kevin would not have done it, but the bravado is real, still; and perhaps everlasting.
Still, Andrew agrees — "Me too."
What he doesn't say is that he'd strangle dream-Riko out of existence if it meant Kevin could get one peaceful night of sleep, and that he'd cut a hole in the ozone if it meant Kevin would have one less day of rain.
Kevin's shoulders deflate entirely, and his next phrase is, "I think I want that bath now," though it sounds a lot like I know.
"Okay," Andrew agrees once more, because there are also things he cannot outright say. Things that, on the ground that they hadn't been said, would soon be wept. "Come on, then."
He fills up the bath with lukewarm water while Kevin sits beside him on the edge of the tub, making no move to start undressing. Andrew thinks he should probably not allow Kevin to soak his clothes in the bath if it comes to it, but he does not have it in himself to make Kevin undress out of his own volition either, given the distrust is easily explained by the Riko flashbacks Kevin had just been put through. Nudity is another level of vulnerability, and could not be forced lest Andrew wanted to ruin the entirety of their relationship in a span of five minutes.
Once the water is high enough to be able to cover Kevin's shoulders, Andrew leans back and turns to him, a quiet question to his features.
It takes Kevin a while to respond, shaky hands gripping the edge of the bathtub for stability. "Can you leave and then come back?" is Kevin's reply, though not much of an answer. "Just so I can undress."
"Yes," Andrew says, already pushing himself up and through the door. He feels Kevin's stare heavy on his shoulders as he leaves, closing the door behind him, and leans against Kevin's desk while he waits.
Only a few minutes after Kevin calls out, "Andrew?" from the bathroom, muffled but nonetheless certain.
Andrew opens the door again to find Kevin already entirely covered by hazy, bubbly water, only his head and knees visible as he folds his inexplicably long legs to fit them in the bathtub. There is a slight tremble to Kevin's knees, an overall weakness to the tight lock of them, but he is relaxed as Andrew approaches, face tipped back.
He sits by the closed toilet, spine curved towards Kevin with his elbows on his knees. They are silent in their comfort, though at some point Kevin offers his wet hand for Andrew to hold, and he does. For a while they are so quiet Andrew could hear the flood of water through the bathtub, a small hum of life he could not find elsewhere in the room but himself. At last, he lets go of Kevin's hand to grab the shampoo bottle by the edge of the tub, offering it to Kevin in question.
"Do it for me," Kevin hums, sliding down enough to wet his hair before coming back up, water dripping from his long eyelashes to his neck and shoulders.
Andrew puts a small amount of shampoo on his palms before reaching forward and rubbing it into the root of Kevin's hair, fingers carding through the strands the more foam surrounds his hands. Kevin's eyes are closed when Andrew cups water from the bathtub to rinse out the shampoo, but Andrew still places a palm over them anyways, if only to protect his eyes from the foam as well as he could. Once done with the shampoo, Andrew slicks back Kevin's wet hair carefully, keeping it from falling on his face.
Kevin doesn't ask for help as he soaps up his entire body before rinsing it out, but he leans against the edge of the bathtub to allow Andrew to condition his hair afterwards. He applies the conditioner through the entire length of Kevin's hair, methodical and automatic, and avoids the roots as he rubs the product in, nails gently scratching against the vampire's scalp. It is not often Andrew considers the life of a monster from human eyes, but, distantly, he considers how must the idea of tenderness this big from two monsters shock those who believe there is only anger to them, and nothing else.
His eyes are still closed when Andrew leans forward to check up on him, held still like a bird. The comparison made sense — Andrew looks at his own hands, then at the way they mold against Kevin's hair, and cannot help but think that these hands could crush Kevin had they wanted to. Both of them were well aware of the harm Andrew could do; yet the sweetness was not in the knowledge that it could happen, but in the fact that, time and time again, it did not. Mostly, siring for Kevin has shown Andrew that he is capable of a lot more kindness than he thought himself to be capable of before.
Andrew wraps him up in a towel as soon as Kevin steps out of the tub, hands clinical, and tugs him to sit on the closed toilet as he dries out the wet hair with another towel. It's systemic, easy, and he does not stop even when Kevin murmurs, "I want you to go to class tomorrow."
"And who's going to look out for you?" Andrew asks, rubbing the towel against Kevin's face and collarbones to get rid of any remaining water.
"I will," Kevin replies.
"I thought you were past thinking you could deal with the transition alone," he tells him, tipping Kevin's chin back to carefully apply moisturizer to the skin of his face. It is not entirely necessary, but Andrew likes touching him.
"Andrew," he murmurs once more, looking up at Andrew with pleading eyes. "I can be alone for a few hours."
Andrew hums. "You can. But you should not have to."
"I want to."
That makes Andrew stop in his tracks, fingers stilling where they'd been applying the moisturizer on Kevin's forehead. "Do you?" he asks, nonchalant.
"Yes," Kevin answers, the sound of his voice ricocheting through the walls of Andrew's body. "Not– not for long, but yes."
Andrew does not ask Kevin what had caused the sudden wish for space. He knows.
"Okay," Andrew says, and that is that. There is nothing else to be said. Message sent; message received.
He tucks himself and Kevin into bed once more, curled around Kevin's back with his fingers intertwined with each other on top of Kevin's stomach, close enough to feel the gentle rocking of Kevin's muscles. Andrew knows when Kevin falls asleep again, his breaths stopping altogether once Kevin is no longer making the conscious decision of breathing, but he does not sleep at all for a long, long time.
The next morning Andrew leaves for class while Kevin is still fast asleep, quietly moving around the dark room for a change of clothes and his book bag. It is harder to leave Kevin than he thought it'd be — Andrew can't stop thinking about the small glimpses of Riko he'd gotten through Kevin's retelling of the story, and the inherent, utmost fear of being like him in any way, shape or form, even when he is leaving because he was asked to.
He doesn't stop wondering about Kevin during his first classes of the day, though most of it has to be pushed aside in order for him to catch up with the immense workload of a Law of the Court student. Andrew meets up with Renee Walker for lunch, the resident Marine Monstrous Biology major who'd somehow wormed her way into Andrew's goodwill through the sheer force of offering him candy, but barely digests any of her words as he stares out the cafeteria's window at Fox Tower, distantly wondering if Kevin would even call if an emergency came up.
"And then she said 'Well , if you support sirens so much, why don't you offer them your home?' and I said, 'Because I am unable to single handedly solve the systemic oppression of sirens and mermaids', but she wouldn't listen because of all those stereotypes they fed her in her stupid, stuck-up human school," Renee babbles on, stabbing a piece of vegetarian nuggets distractedly. She glares at him from behind her food before uttering, "Andrew, you're not paying attention."
"I am," Andrew replies, nonplussed. "Systemic oppression. Mermaids. Human school. Something, something."
Renee squints at him. "And sirens."
"And sirens," he agrees.
"You're still not paying attention. What's up?" she asks, leaning forward on her elbows. Renee's fae ancestry is perhaps the least noticeable thing about her — with a slick, long nose and sharp eyes, all Andrew can see is the irises of a siren. "You keep staring at Kevin's dorm building."
"It is none of your business, you reckon."
"No," Renee agrees, "but I was the one who got you all those siring books, so you owe me one."
Andrew puts down his blueberry croissant, dusting off buttery crumbs from his hands. "I did not realize that was given on credit."
"It wasn't," she says, leaning back on her chair with crossed arms. "Still."
"Kevin is alone today, per his request," Andrew replies, not looking up from his food. He doesn't explain further, but he does not have to — at least not to her.
Renee frowns. "That's a stupid idea."
"I know."
"A fangling shouldn't be left alone during drops. They feel abandoned."
"I know."
She frowns again. "Then why did you do it?"
"He asked," Andrew answers, matter of factly.
Renee opens her mouth to reply, probably another judgement of Andrew's intelligence based on how easy he gives into Kevin's wishes, but Andrew's phone starts ringing at the exact moment her voice makes it to come out. Andrew holds up a palm to ask for silence, and fishes for the phone before accepting the call, quicker once he realizes Kevin's contact is on the screen.
"Fangling," Andrew greets, forcing his voice to remain collected as a wave of bruise-purple panic washes over him. "What is up?"
"Andrew," the voice that replies is not Kevin, but Neil, soft and hushed.
Andrew's stomach drops. "Abram. What's going on?"
"Andrew, why are you not here?" Neil asks, ignoring Andrew's question. His line is silent — suspiciously silent —, and Andrew is already getting up from their cafeteria table. "Are you off in the head?"
"What. Happened," Andrew slowly grits out, elbowing his way through the cafeteria's exit. "What are you doing with Kevin's phone. Where is he."
"He's here," Neil replies, tone kept quiet. "At his dorm. I came over because I saw you walking to class earlier this morning, so I thought he'd be better already. Andrew, what the fuck? "
He stops mid-jog, halfway to Fox Tower already. "How is he."
"I don't know," is Neil's answer, a whisper-yell that could almost be a hiss. "He won't talk to me. He–" there's a nervous sigh, and then a quiet pause. "He just crawled over to me and put his head on my lap. He was in the corner surrounded by furniture when I arrived, and he only moved after he saw it was me."
Andrew picks up his pace at that, practically running to Fox Tower. "Don't move. Don't leave. I'm almost there."
"I'm not fucking leaving him, Andrew," Neil says, though there is a tremble to his voice; something that says Neil's entire body is shaking with the urge to run and disappear. "Why did you?"
"Because he asked to be alone," Andrew grits out, slamming the buttons to the elevator. Once the door opens, he all but punches in Kevin's dorm number. "He said he wanted it."
"Well, it didn't help," Neil hisses, stressed. "Where are you?"
"In the elevator. Hold on. I'm coming up."
Andrew turns off the call, shoving his phone in his book bag, and bolts towards Kevin's dorm door. He doesn't bother knocking, swinging the door open, and what he finds is a dark room and a bunch of furniture surrounding Neil and Kevin, the last one wrapped up in blankets with only his head peeking out, resting over Neil's lap. His eyes are closed tightly, a harsh frown to his features, and he curls into himself at the loud sound of Andrew's arrival, frightened.
Neil looks up at him, legs stirred awkwardly with his back to the wall, and Andrew carefully makes his way through the maze of furniture around them. Once he's close enough, Andrew squats down to be able to take a look at Kevin's face, and quietly calls, "Fangling."
Kevin's face twitches. Andrew continues, "Fangling, look at me."
He does, but only so barely Andrew can hardly see the outline of green in his eyes through the thickness of his eyelashes. "What happened?" Andrew asks.
Kevin's mouth opens, then closes. What comes out of it is a foreign syllable; a wretched sound that sounds more Kevin than it does English. At the very last, Kevin struggles with himself for a minute before pulling away from Neil's lap. "I don't think you should leave again," is what he says, quiet as if on a hair-pin trigger.
Andrew does not waste time wondering, sire instincts kicking in at the tension in Kevin's neck. "You're in pain," he points out, practically obvious from the way Kevin's movements were minimal; almost not there at all.
Kevin doesn't reply, which is perhaps as much confirmation as anything else. Andrew slides down carefully, stirring his legs the way Neil had done his, and slowly — ever so slowly — reaches a hand to rest upon Kevin's shoulder over the blanket.
"Kevin, let me take the blanket off."
Neil frowns at him, clueless to Andrew's intentions, and the rejection only rises as Kevin makes a small sound of protest. That was a bad sign, of course, but Neil wouldn't know — to him, Andrew is just being an asshole.
"Fangling," he tries again, softer now. Andrew's hand falls to the very ends of the blanket, but he does not force it off or make an attempt to pull it from Kevin. "Let me."
He tries to reach forward, but Kevin's panicked no has him backing off, more patient than Andrew ever thought he could be. "Kevin," he murmurs.
Neil tentatively pushes up on his knees to look at Kevin's face, grim and somber under the shadows of his lamp, and Andrew's heart exists, if only because it is breaking the longer Kevin refuses care.
"An-drew," Kevin replies with struggle, forcing a fake sense of normality that just wasn't there.
Andrew carefully reaches for the blanket again, and he goes quite far on his mission until Kevin protests once more. The same cycle happens a few times: Andrew tries, goes further each time, and stops immediately once Kevin asks him to. It was an old dance, and Andrew knew that with Kevin things could never be easier — he is fine with one step back and two step forwards as long as they are moving at all.
He folds the blanket towards Kevin's middle gingerly after given the green light to do so, Kevin's face buried on his thigh as if his heart had already been broken. Andrew's face remains unmoved as he inspects Kevin's left hand, cupped to his own chest and inherently mangled by what seems to be vampire teeth, the most common occurrence for fanglings whose pain they did not know how to deal with.
"You left," Kevin tries to defend himself, as if he needed to at all when Andrew had been to blame for all of this. "I thought I could do it– but you left and you weren't there."
Andrew shushes him by slowly dragging his thumb over Kevin's nape. "Quiet now," he says, no louder than a whisper.
"I didn't mean to," the vampire continues regardless, as bad at following orders as he is when outside of transition drops. "I know– I know I asked. Logically. I knew it. But–"
"It wasn't rational," Neil completes it for him, eyes downcast to Kevin's bruised hand as if he should've known better.
Kevin looks down, train of thought abruptly cut short, and stares at Andrew's shirt so as to not stare at his own hand. "It's mangled," he croaks out, as if mangled meant dirty; unworthy.
Andrew stares up at him, refusing to meet Kevin in this shame as he cradles the injured hand in both of his. "It is your hand," he puts down slowly, "and we will take care of it."
"Andrew," Kevin whimpers. "It's fucked up. It's ugly."
"Shut up."
"Andrew."
At Kevin's alarm, Neil silently leans over and presses his mouth to Kevin's temple, the suddenness of it making Kevin stop short in his tracks. Neil insistently maintains his lips to Kevin's temple, a diaspora of kisses dragged all the way to his forehead. Kevin's mouth opens in surprise, then closes again — somewhere between all of that he lets Andrew take a better look at his left hand.
There is no blood, but Andrew hadn't expected there to be. Kevin's vampiresque nature made it so he did not have any to shed, and the only issue — as far as Andrew's foul knowledge of monster anatomy went — seemed to be the clear bite marks all over the skin of his hands, pale but not so deep Andrew could see flesh. It would heal: vampire wounds always do. The problem wasn't the healing in itself, but the fact it had happened at all, when Andrew's job was to guarantee it did not.
"Sit up," Andrew asks, at once stunned by a whirlwind of emotion so destabilizing he thought he'd double over and empty out his stomach, as if in motion sickness. The guilt and the confusion of seeing Kevin and Neil so close battled out in Andrew, neither side tipping over, and the strength needed to push the both of them back was nearly Herculean.
Neil takes the initiative to help Kevin up, just enough for him to be able to lean against Neil's chest and stare straight at Andrew, who curls a protective palm over Kevin's bruised hand as if to say, I got you. I do.
"I'm sorry," Kevin mutters, eyes impossibly huge as he directed at Andrew the gaze of a pleading saint, martyrized by guilt that wasn't his to carry.
"For what," he replies.
Kevin stops to consider it, Neil's palms resting on his leg but not moving. "For not knowing how to be alone," Kevin ultimately answers, a hint of shame to it.
"Kevin," Neil says, nothing more than a sad sigh, and Andrew is glad that he is there, because he can't possibly imagine what to tell Kevin that could make him understand that Andrew is at fault for this, and not him. "It's not your job to know."
He purses his lips, but doesn't reply. Andrew delicately places Kevin's injured hand over the vampire's knee and reaches out for Kevin's first aid kit, embuted under his drawer by the administration as soon as he'd been transferred from Edgar Allan. He pops out the cap of a bottle of alcohol and applies some of the substance to a piece of cotton, once again holding Kevin's hand.
"It will hurt," he quietly warns, rubbing his thumb over Kevin's knuckles, "but you will take it. You know nothing but."
Andrew doesn't wait for Kevin's response to start sanitizing the wounds, small hisses leaving the vampire as the alcohol drags over the pale teeth marks. He is careful, but not slow — Andrew finishes it before Kevin can protest to the sanitizing, and starts wrapping his hand up in curatives straight after.
"It'll heal," Kevin murmurs. "You don't need to bandage it."
Neil watches Andrew's hands work intently, blue eyes sharp and nearly obsessive in their constant checking. He places a careful hand on Kevin's side, holding him still while Andrew applies the curatives, and he is the one to answer, "Doesn't matter, fangling. We'll take care of it."
He finishes off the bandaging by safely gluing down the curatives, but doesn't let go of Kevin's hand even after he puts the first aid kit away. Nothing is well, not really, but there is nothing Andrew can do now. They stay silent for a while, breathing into the newfound heart bone of them, and it is only when a small shiver runs through Kevin that Andrew convinces him to climb back on the bed, squished between Andrew and Neil.
Andrew is curled around Kevin's back, his left hand still safely clutched in Andrew's grip, a protective touch to communicate everything Andrew still could not outright say. Neil lies on his side in front of Kevin, not really touching but still looking; searching; trying to find something in his eyes not even Andrew knows what is. Maybe it's life.
Whatever it is, Neil finds it — there was enough life to Kevin for it to be an easy find, almost glaringly obvious. Neil gently scratches his nails under Kevin's chin, a caress more than a reward, and the image of a pale scarred hand against smooth brown skin makes something in Andrew click into place, alike to peace but never quite it. Mostly, what he felt was relief: that Neil was here, and that Kevin loved him, still. Perhaps even more than Andrew thought he did.
"Is it terrifying?" Kevin murmurs after a long silence, finally relaxing as today eases into a painful memory rather than a painful today. "Being dead. Is it?"
The question is not for Andrew, but still, he takes his time tracing Kevin's knuckles with his thumb, trying to memorize the feeling as accurately as he could.
Neil raises an eyebrow, but his voice goes a tone higher — and gentler — as he answers, "No, I don't think it is. It's how it is, you know. Something finally clicks into place." He traces Kevin's mouth with his fingertip, then goes up to do the same to his nose and eyes. "Now that you're less worried about being dead, you can worry more about living. It's what I thought, at least."
"I don't know if I want to live," Kevin quietly confesses. "It's a lot of work."
Neil huffs shortly, and leans closer to press a kiss to each of Kevin's eyelids, the both of them falling closed on instinct. He is a lot closer to Andrew, too, and his eyes land on Andrew's when he tells Kevin, "You'll find your will to do all that work again. You lost it, but you'll find it again."
Kevin's shoulders relax ever so slightly at the advice — the trust he had in Neil was almost as insane as the trust he had in Andrew, which is to say that both were all-encompassing and unblinking; undefeated-to-be; the proof of the hard muscle that Kevin's heart is.
Andrew stares back at Neil, and watches as he presses kisses around Kevin's eyelids so as to not watch the way his hands still shake where no one could see. Tenderness did not come to Neil easily, if at all — the conscious effort Neil put into staying by Kevin's side was Herculean, like Atlas holding up the weight of the world, but Neil managed it more flawlessly than Andrew ever could.
They were troubled monsters: they were three disasters. It wasn't too bad of a thing to be.
Hold tight the monsters you love, Palmetto, said the Valentine's card Andrew had bought Kevin the day before. As he brings both Kevin and Neil closer, Andrew thinks he's done a good job at holding tight the monsters beloved to him.