Chapter Text
He didn’t notice when he’d been bit.
He’d been sloppy, caught up in a fight against a rogue vamp that he and his brother stumbled upon. It was a small thing, and the two of them should’ve been more than enough to overpower it, but it was a quick little bugger and they could barely get a hit in. It was desperate, too, which made its attacks wild and unpredictable.
He’d aimed for its neck with a knife and missed, his arm racing past its face. He didn’t feel the sting as its fangs quickly pierced his skin, adrenaline pumping too fast for pain to register. Afterwards, he was too frustrated with its escape to let Hero check him over – despite the fact that it escaped both of their grasps, he still felt as humiliated as if it was his own single loss.
When they were back home, and he was calm enough to look over his own injuries in the privacy of his room, the wound didn’t immediately look like a bite. Maybe it was the speed that he ripped his arm away, or maybe the vamp just wasn’t experienced with biting, but the wound was jagged and long and nothing at all like what he’d expect from a bite. His assumption was that it had clawed him, so all he did was bandage it up and let it slip from his mind.
The headaches and hunger pangs didn’t worry him, either. He got caught up in the moment easily and had marbles for brains, so forgetting to eat or drink water sometimes wasn’t uncommon. He just assumed the headaches were from dehydration, and the pain in his stomach was from skipping meals. He wasn’t concerned, and while Hero sometimes raised his brow when he went for yet another snack, neither was he.
The toothaches were…more worrisome, but only because they were annoying. His jaw ached and his gums stung constantly. He took to chewing ice to try and numb it out – the pain made it hard to eat. That just gave more credence to his hunger being a lack of eating.
When the silver necklace he wore as a gift from his aunt started itching and burning his skin…That’s when he started getting worried. The likelihood of him gaining a sudden allergy to silver completely out of the blue was…unlikely. Hero wore silver rings emblazoned with their family crest, and he clapped Kel on the shoulder once after he told a joke – Kel had flinched at the sharp pain that came from it. They’d stared at each other in confusion before Kel tried to joke about the ring just being cold and surprising him. When he checked in the mirror later, there was a small red mark on his shoulder where it had touched him.
He couldn’t ignore his symptoms anymore, really, but he tried. The more his teeth hurt, the more he salivated around meat and found it harder to stay asleep at night, the more afraid he grew. He wanted to deny it. He wanted it to just be some strange cold he caught and that he’d be back to normal in the morning. The wanted the wound on his arm that he bandaged weeks ago to finally be healed and stop itching so much.
And then, one day, he woke up to something burning his foot. He shot awake and pulled back, scooting up on his bed against his headboard. His eyes flickered around the room in alarm, but found nothing and no one that could have hurt him.
Nothing, except the single ray of sun the flittered through the blind and landed on his bed, right where his foot was.
Time and sound ceased as he finally had to realize what was happening to him. He was turning.
He didn’t know what to do for a few minutes. There was a numb, pale feeling in his chest. He knew the stages of turning, as much as he tried to deny his symptoms. He knew that once sunlight aversion was reached, any antidotes ceased to work. There was no cure for creatures of the night. He was past the point of no return.
His family came from a long lineage of vampire hunters. He was going to be a full-fanged vamp in less than a month. He was an idiot.
……and he didn’t want to die.
This was his first day of aversion. It would steadily get worse, but for now, the sun wouldn’t even leave a mark. It would just hurt like a bitch. He didn’t care – he’s scaled building in pursuit of monsters with broken ribs, he could handle a bad sunburn. He packed up his room and didn’t even bother packing lightly. Vampires had increased strength, so heavy bags wouldn’t be a problem soon, and anything he didn’t need anyway he could always drop.
He wanted to leave a note. He didn’t know how to explain his absence without his family searching for him, to either return or kill him. So, he didn’t. He left his necklace of Hero’s pillow, knowing it would soon be able to scar him, and left through the window.
The sun burned as he left. It scorched his heart to a crisp. He’d always loved the blue sky.
He refused to drink human blood.
He knew it would kill him, though, if he drank nothing at all. He wasn’t the best at anatomy unless it was for the sake of fighting, but he knew it had something to do with nutrition, or…something. He had a bit of money and was skilled enough to do some odd hunting jobs – lucky for him that most hunts take place at night – and used that money to buy raw meats from the supermarket. They sometimes still had a bit of the animal’s blood in them, so he…made do with that.
He hated how the smell of copper gave him goosebumps. He hated how the taste of iron excited his nerves and made him shiver with ecstasy. He hated how hard it was to resist the urge to lick the red off his fingers and rip the meat to shreds to find more. He was so hungry. There was a deep dissatisfaction settling in his bones, a need for something richer and electric. He ached for real, human blood. He caught himself staring at the people on the streets walking by, salivating at their bared flesh.
He stopped walking down the big streets of the cities. He kept to the alleyways full of rats and dumpsters where no one would ever want to peek in. He wanted blood so, so badly and he was terrified of getting it. The last thing he wanted was to hurt someone. (The last thing he wanted was for someone to call his brother to exterminate him.)
He went to the store less and less frequently and took fewer and fewer jobs. He wanted to limit his interactions with humans as much as possible. It meant, however, that he ate less often, and that just drove his bloodlust crazier and crazier.
He got hungrier. He trusted himself less. He isolated more.
It was a cycle, he knew, and a dangerous one at that. He didn’t know what to do, though. He wasn’t a strategic person. It’s why Hero and he worked so well together – Hero made the plan, and Kel carried it out. Kel’s plans always sucked. They always ended up with someone getting hurt.
…His current plan was probably going to kill him, eventually. The hunger would get too much. He’d either snap and go on a feeding spree, or wither away from malnutrition. Seeing as he’d rather die than harm a single human being…
He sat in an alleyway one night, fighting dizziness. He closed his eyes and rested his head against the wall of one of the buildings. He wrapped his arms around his stomach. It’s been one and a half weeks since he last ate, unless you counted the box of donuts he found thrown out the other day. It did nothing to satisfy his need for blood, though.
He’s long since grown in his fangs. He ran his tongue against their sharp points, a fidget he’s acquired since they came. He pressed a little harder, breaking skin, and tasted his own blood in his mouth. It wasn’t real nutrition, but tasting his own blood was something like a placebo for his cravings. His hands were covered in little scars from his trying to convince himself he was feeding.
He was tired despite the moon high in the sky. It wasn’t natural for a nocturnal creature like him anymore, so he knew it meant he was unwell, but it made him feel nostalgic for his humanity. Maybe he wouldn’t actually mind dying if it was like this. If he could pretend he was still human when he passed. Maybe he was fine dying as long as it wasn’t by his family’s hand.
A wave of vertigo hit him like a truck and made his ears ring, and he groaned. He really needed to eat something with substance. He still had a little money left. He could go to the little corner-store and buy a cheap steak to stave him off. But…he didn’t think he could make the trip.
He felt his weakness acutely. The tremors in his hands had nothing to do with the chill of he night. He was on his last legs.
He sighed. What a sad, sad end he’d meet. The world’s dumbest vampire hunter dying the world’s most cowardly vampire. Hopefully no one would remember his name.
“…-el? Kel?!”
His eyes flittered open, and he looked to the opening of the alley. Someone stood, shadowed by the moonlight and holding a flashlight in his direction. His vision was hazy despite his night vision, so he couldn’t quite make out their features, but their voice sounded like his brother.
….Ah. He must be hallucinating. He’s really on his death bed, isn’t he?
He didn’t respond to it, too tired to force words out of his mouth. They rushed over to him anyway, dropping to their knees beside him. The hallucination of Hero set his flashlight on the ground, torch up, acting like a lamp. His eyes scanned over Kel’s body, analyzing and cataloguing every speck of dirt and every hair out of place. His eyes widened at the sight of Kel’s hands, covered in dots and spiderweb scars.
He reached his hands out to grab Kel’s face like he used to when they were kids and Kel hurt himself. Kel wanted to play into the act his mind created, to lean into the touch. The moment his hand came into contact with Kel’s cheek, though, and the ring on his finger grazed his skin, an incredible and searing pain jolted his senses. He slapped Hero’s hands away and hissed in pain, cradling his cheek. Pure silver burned as badly as sunlight did – he could’ve sworn he’d just been stabbed.
It was too much. He was weak, he was sick, he was – he was horribly, horribly unwell. The pain spreading through his face from the silver burn and the millisecond realization that he was not hallucinating was just too much for him to hand.
Hero shouted in alarm, and Kel blacked out.
He only hoped Hero would make his death quick.