Chapter Text
The sun was setting. It’s Tank’s favourite time of day, not just because it marks the beginning of Sam’s twelve-hour freedom, but also because the honey-glazed sky filled their heart with more emotion than they felt humanly possible, especially now, standing under the shade of a hundred trees with their mate. They were going out to a bar together, and Tank found themselves sighing in the pleasant warmth of the evening, the feeling of the sun’s hands on their skin all too comforting. Sam’s hands replace the feeling soon enough, cool against the bare skin of their waist.
“You ready, darlin?” he asks, and they nod, moving further into his touch. Tank’s motorbike helmet is wedged firmly under their left arm, its sleek black shape cool under the pads of their fingers. The one they’re lending Sam is sitting quietly on the grass by his front porch, but as soon as he lets them go they bend down to grab it, shoving it into his hands. It’s red and yellow like a flame, scratches dusting the paintwork from years of use. He smiles, thumbing it gently as if it was his own and not something that Tank was trusting him with. Maybe that was what he found so amusing. The unexpected trust in their gaze.
“You ever been on a bike before? I usually go pretty fast, but I can slow down if you want.”
He nods once, lips pressed into a smile. He looked nervous, somehow - Tank was used to Sam’s usual easy expression.
“Nervous?” they ask. He laughed then, a hand travelling up to their shoulder to pat it reassuringly.
“You can go as fast as you want. A bike can’t go any faster than I can run, can it?”
It was Tank’s turn to laugh then, the sudden eruption of joy surprising them as much as it surprised Sam. What he said hadn’t been particularly funny, but they found their heart swelling with admiration all the same. His eyebrows relaxed, and Tank shoved their helmet firmly onto their head. Sam followed suit, albeit clumsily; Tank had to push it on for him, making sure that it sat correctly on his skull before rapping against it with their knuckles jokingly.
They kicked a leg over the seat of the bike, grinning at him under their helmet. Sam must have seen the way their eyes crinkled through the visor, and when he sat behind them on the bike, he tucked his chin into their neck the best he could and breathed out like he had been holding it in his whole life. Maybe he had been.
“I’m gonna start driving now, kay? Hold on to me.”
He nodded, pulling away from their shoulder and wrapping his hands around their waist. The sun had set fully on the horizon now, and Tank didn’t have to worry about driving out of the shadow of his house and burning him - Sam was breathing quickly, probably from nerves, but Tank noticed him relax after a little while, his hands locked together over their stomach. It made their heart leap from the intimacy of the touch.
The drive wasn’t long; Tank found themselves pulling up into the parking lot of their favourite bar after ten minutes. Sam didn’t know the place, somehow, despite his wolf frequenting it. Tank said that its atmosphere was comfortable for them - comforting, almost. He wondered whether they’d been here when they were younger. From the way Tank always answered his unspoken questions, Sam might have believed that they were a telepath if he didn’t know any better.
“Gabe used to bring me here, you know. He took me in after my parents had to leave the city. I was twelve. David and I would sit in the back of this place while he drank with a few of the other alphas in the area.”
Sam blanched. Tank wasn’t one to share much about their personal life. He’d been given snippets of their childhood in moments when they were tired and called him over for company - he knew they’d opted to stay with the pack when their parents had to leave Dahlia (though the reason why, he wasn’t sure of). He knew Gabe had taken them in, and he knew that they saw David as more of a brother than as their alpha. Still, everything else was all about as clear as mud. They didn’t trust easily, he knew that. Their trust was an honour bestowed only to the most worthy.
“You come here often, then?” he said, nudging them with his elbow. They laugh, looking at him as they crush their helmet into the box on the back of their motorbike.
“Always. Alone, though. Since Gabe passed, at least.”
It made Sam uneasy to hear them talk about Gabe, but he was glad they didn’t struggle for words like David did when talking of his father.
“Come on, old man. Let’s get you a drink.” Tank laughed, grabbing his hand and pulling him through the door.
It was dark inside the bar, the space lit by old, warm lamps that were hung on the wall. The walls themselves were a sort of sad beige, but there were plenty of paintings hung up to offset their colour; in a few corners, Sam could see taxidermy birds in glass boxes. There was a deer head on the wall above the bar, which was lined with liquors in various shades of brown. The woman standing behind the bar was chatting to a few customers who sat on the plush leather stools in front of the wooden counter, but excused herself as soon as she saw Tank. They just smiled in response, pulling Sam up to the counter and leaning over it, a smirk adorning their face.
“Evening,” she said, eyeing Sam cautiously. She’d noticed the couple’s proximity, though. The vampire noticed her shift uncomfortably, avoiding his eyes.
“Hey,” Tank greeted, tapping their nails onto the wood rhythmically, “a lager for me, thanks- Sam?” they said, turning to him, “what do you want?”
“Ardbeg. Whisky.”
Tank nodded, and the woman behind the bar smiled, turning to get them their drinks. She nodded to the wolf as she slid their drinks over the counter, holding her hand out for the cash Tank was gripping, still avoiding Sam’s eyes.
He asked Tank as they walked away together. “Is this place for the empowered?”
“I mean, not specifically. But all the staff are. Lara’s an electro energetic. Had a bad experience with a vampire a few years back. Sorry.”
“Hey, stop that.”
“Hm?” Tank hummed as they slid into a booth right at the back of the bar. There was a stuffed fox in a glass case to their right, on the stained glass windowsill. Tank looked at it with a smile, as if it were a pet. He supposed that in a way, it was.
“Stop apologising. You didn’t do anything. No need.” Sam was firm but kind in the way he spoke, something that Tank appreciated. He noticed them spacing out, staring at their hands and the damp of their palm from the condensation on their glass.
“Darlin?”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
Sam just looked at them, eyebrows raised. They laughed, opening their mouth as if they wanted to say something. Sam interrupted them.
“Don’t say it.” He was chuckling, rolling his sleeves up to his elbows and resting them on the table. It was busy, but Tank had chosen a table the furthest away from everything that neither of them really noticed the rowdy group at the front of the bar.
They took a sip of their lager. There was soft jazz playing over the speakers, and Sam sighed heavily, cocking his head to the side and smiling gently at them.
“This was our table, by the way.”
“Yours and David’s?” he asked, his knuckles brushing against Tank’s. They nodded, and then pointed to a table a little further away.
“It’s not exactly the same, but that table there was the one Gabe and his friends sat at. It used to be bigger. They changed it. He used to buy us both colas, and the bar’s owner would let us go back and get refills for free. We’d be here for hours sometimes. I used to sleep on this seat underneath David’s jacket.”
Sam tried to imagine a younger version of Tank, one who was close to David. It was odd, but it made him smile nonetheless. As offensive as David seemed to Tank, they cared. Both of them. They were siblings. He decided to push (however gently) for more information. Sam loved learning more about Tank, and, more than that, he loved hearing them talk.
“Did any of the others ever come?”
“Sometimes. I lived with Gabe and David. Had since I was twelve, so … I mean, sometimes Asher came on his sleepovers with David. Milo never did, though. He liked to stay at home. Still does.” They were smiling sadly, and Sam wished it wasn’t so dark in this corner so that he could see their face properly.
“You guys were close, huh?”
Tank laughed, loud and brash. “I guess, in our own way. It’s like David told you; I was distant. Only started really integrating into pack life when I was what … fourteen?”
They fell silent, suddenly. Sam was worried he’d touched a nerve.
“Darlin? You okay?”
“Yeah. Just … I fell in with Quinn when I was fifteen, so .. now I’m thinking about it, I missed more of my childhood than I realised.”
Sam fell silent at that. Even after knowing them for this long, he had never asked how they’d gotten acquainted with Quinn. He upheld that they didn’t owe him an explanation for anything, but their sudden confession of the age they’d met the other vampire had him struggling to find the right words. He ended up just stuttering, earning a quizzical look from the wolf.
“Fifteen?” Sam eventually managed. They nodded solemnly, gazing into the golden liquid in their glass.
“I wasn’t a ‘good kid’, whatever that means. Used to go roaming around Dahlia alone at night. Scared the shit out of Gabe when I came home at four in the morning hurt, or drunk. Sometimes high, but not often. David hated it, too. I met Quinn at a blood club one of those nights. I still have no idea how I got let in.”
Suddenly, Sam realised that Tank had probably been withholding this information for a very long time. They weren’t one to willingly share their history, and he supposed that now, considering their relationship, they either felt obliged to, or were fed up with hiding it from him. If David knew, why shouldn’t he?
“Christ, Darlin.” Sam whispered, his hands finding their across the table. They were warm, their face tilted downwards. He noticed they were still smiling, for some reason. “You want me to know this? Don’t feel obliged to tell me just ‘cause of our relationship. Like I said, you don’t owe me anything.”
“I know. I want you to know. It’s-” they paused, searching for the right phrasing, “I’m not embarrassed about it. Not anymore, at least. I kind of … I get that it wasn’t my fault now. David and I spoke about it.”
“When?”
“Few hours ago. Pack meeting. I stayed behind to talk to him for a little.”
Sam adored the way that Tank spoke. Never in full sentences - he thought it was endearing, like they never really thought ahead, just went with the first thing in their head.
“Quinn and I started dating when I was sixteen-” they continued, sounding overly enthusiastic. It put Sam on edge a little. “which sounds horrendous, but he turned when he was eighteen, and he said he was fresh off the fang. I didn’t know he was … was so old. And he was nice to me. Bought me things. Remembered my birthday and got me gifts at Christmas. It was nice. For a while. It was really nice. It- it only got bad when I turned nineteen. Started … y’know. Started keeping me at his place so I wasn’t around the pack much. Gabe was so upset, but I really thought that they- I thought I hated them.”
They were quiet for a little after that ‘outburst’. Sam let them be, hands still in his. Tank drank some of their lager and opened their mouth to speak again, meeting Sam’s eyes.
“By the time I was twenty, we were dating on and off. It was a cycle, you know? I’d leave him, and go back to the pack, but felt worthless without him, and would go running back after a few weeks. And he was there every time, just … just waiting for me. I mean, I mouthed off to him a ton, and we were awful to each other, but he always got me back for it, and ten times worse.” They shuddered, gripping their cup a little too tight. “I reported him a year and a bit ago, so … I was twenty five? Yeah. Jesus, it’s been a long time.”
Sam was quiet then. They laughed awkwardly, pulling their hand out of his own. “Sorry for dumping that on you. I just … I needed to tell someone. I haven’t even finished my first drink.”
“No, I’m honoured that you trust me with that.” Sam immediately replied, watching tentatively as they drank. “I’m glad you don’t blame yourself anymore. And it’s great that you and David are talking about this.”
“I just- I feel so bad. He watched it all happen, and tried to help, and I was angry at him. I thought I knew better. I thought he was overreacting. I couldn’t even see that what was happening to me was wrong.”
“That’s normal, darlin. You were a kid.”
Tank sighed. “I guess so.”
They were smiling again now, gently, and Sam, despite not having set one foot into daylight in fifteen years, felt like he was basking in the rays of the sun. Their voice was delicate, unusually so, but the vampire was beyond grateful to be trusted with something so personal to them - he hadn’t come here with Tank to hear their story, but now that he was sat here with them, their hands back in his, he couldn’t help but be beyond glad that he did come.
“Thank you.” he said, just loud enough for them to hear.
“Hm? What for?”
“Sharing that.”
“You already said thanks, sort of. I wanted to tell you. You don’t have to thank me.”
“Too late, then. I’ve said it. And,” Sam said, accent curling with the smile that graced his lips, “It’s true. I love it when you tell me about yourself.”
Tank felt a rush of heat to their cheeks. They hoped he didn’t notice how they suddenly became a little skittish.
“Hey, Sam?” they asked, thumb running over the back of his hand gently. He hummed in response, looking at the way they were tilting their head to the side and staring at him.
“You done with your drink? I have something I wanna show you.”