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The vampire was a gift. Kind of.
In the aftermath of a raid on yet another fight ring (permanently cropping up in the news despite all boasted efforts to put a stop to them), he was one of the lucky ones. Rescued. Saved from his violent fate by oh-so-kind humans eager to put him in the proper sort of home instead.
Personally, you think there’s something uniquely cruel about tearing vampires out of the only way of living they’ve ever known, then judging their ultimate worth on their ability to adapt to something entirely different— but no one is asking you. You’re just the semi-unwilling recipient of someone else’s cast-aside pity project, too broken to be passed onto anyone else.
It’s not like you can say no. If you don’t take him, who will? The vampire will either be sent to some last-hope shelter that’s more interested in turning a profit than keeping him alive, or put down to spare the trouble.
You don’t want him. You don’t know at all what to do with him. But declining a belated birthday gift from your distant coworker would be rude.
She calls it a delightful chance to make a difference— won’t it be heart-warming to know how much better this creature’s life is because of you? You don’t have enough of an argumentative streak to tell her that you’re not the type to reap self-satisfaction from something else’s suffering.
In the end, you agree to it; or rather, you don’t protest enough to stop her from scheduling the pick-up time and walking away with a beaming grin that seems a little too shallow. You have the feeling there’s a catch to this, somehow, that making the vampire your responsibility is going to look better on paper than if her department had dealt with him on its own. You get all of two days to prepare for a new pet with more problems than you can count.
And you do make an effort. You spend a good few hours on an internet search to see what needs to be done for this thing— and the results are every bit as disheartening as you were expecting. There aren’t high hopes for fight-ring vampires. Even the best ones end up inevitably violent and unable to adjust, bearing a disturbingly high statistic of eventual euthanasia.
With blood bags in your fridge and a walk-in closet newly devoted to your charge’s living space, you’re waiting for something to go wrong.
. . .
The facility that you’re directed to is nicer than you were anticipating, but the handful of caged, wild-eyed vampires you pass on the way back to yours are still far from reassuring. The employee who guides you happily explains that these are all rescues, and proudly details some of the painstaking efforts that have been made for their comfort.
Unconvinced, you simply follow her back to the cage that contains your new responsibility, bracing yourself for certain disappointment.
Your expectations turn out to be dismayingly accurate.
He’s big. Not too tall and not too bulky, but broad-shouldered in a way that promises strength if he was better fed. The pale hands poking out from underneath the long sleeves of his oversized shirt are scarred. His knuckles bear fading bruises, and the crimson gaze that stares up at you from an eerily pretty face, half-hidden by a tangled puff of off-white hair, is filled with as much distrust and bitter resignation as a single look can hold.
The employee tells you that his (originally registered) name is Subaru. Records prove that he’s from an impressive lineage and a prized sire, but after a few noted accounts of aggression as a juvenile, he’d disappeared from the paperwork altogether— only to have turned up in a fight ring raid two weeks ago, with no evidence left as to how he wound up there.
Meeting his miserable stare, the sole thought in your head is that he’s utterly pathetic, all hunched shoulders, trembling fingers, and gritted teeth.
With no choice but to take him home, you don’t linger for long. It’s easier to compliantly go along with the employee’s instructions and get this thing home, so that you can start tackling the real challenge of it all.
Keeping him.
Subaru already has a collar around his neck (heavy and industrial-looking), so all you have to do is attach the leash you had brought once the employee gets him out of his cage. He doesn’t have to be dragged out by force, but his motions as he emerges are much too tense.
He keeps staring at you as you clip the leash into place, looking like he’s considering either mauling you or shoving himself back in his cage and never leaving it again. The fear in his eyes is painfully obvious.
And as much as you don’t want to think about why he’s making that kind of face, there’s only so much denial you can hang onto when you know exactly where he’s from, and by extension, a fair idea of what’s happened to him. Fight-ring vampires suffer half of their injuries at the hands of their owners, excuses like discipline testing their healing factors long before they ever face an opponent. They’re tough. Disposable. And as all the sources have adamantly insisted, it’s better to keep the dangerous ones in check.
Still, he follows you, trailing obediently after you as you go to sign the final paperwork, close enough that the leash never even pulls tight.
. . .
Getting him home goes about as well as you expected. Subaru huddles in the back seat of your car looking utterly miserable, while you try not to dwell on how badly this could go. The warnings for potentially aggressive were in bold-faced print in his paperwork, a loud-and-clear warning that nothing about your newly assigned charge is going to be easy.
When you pull up in your driveway and get one of the back doors open, for a moment, Subaru looks like he’s debating the merits of refusing to leave. He hasn’t spoken yet (that’s probably normal) and he won’t tear his gaze away from you, and you have no idea what you’re supposed to do to make him obey if he decides that it’s not worth listening to you. You doubt you could make yourself hit him, even if other owners say it’s easy.
But once you tug the leash, just a little bit, reason gets the better of him. He leaves the car without a fight, in the end, and follows you inside with as much miserable compliance as you could have hoped for.
Judging from the nervous way he takes in your furniture and carpeted floor, you can guess he’s never been in a home before. That happens, sometimes, or so your research told you. The dangerous kinds are kept outside, not deserving of any better shelter than a shed’s thin roof over their heads, or whatever else their owners deign to give them.
You take him all the way to the open, waiting door of the repurposed closet, meant to be his space, before you unclip the leash.
“This is for you,” you tell him. “You’ll stay here when I don’t need you somewhere else. It’s safe.” Considering his obvious discomfort with your home, as a whole, you doubt the padded, nest-like closet is going over well.
However, Subaru just nods.
He does hesitate, though. Instead of entering the closet, Subaru sits right where he is, just staring into the small, dimly lit room like he can’t figure out how he’s supposed to respond. He might think it’s a trick. Probably that. That seems like an appropriately depressing explanation.
The slightest movement from you ends in a sharp flinch. His gaze swerves up to you, and whatever he sees on your face is enough to finally make him move, and plant himself right in the closet, just as you said.
Keeping the door open, you leave him there and go to the kitchen to collect your thoughts. It’s probably not the best idea to leave the unstable vampire without supervision this soon, but... you need a minute. The whole situation is getting much too surreal. Having this thing in your house is going to take some adjusting; you didn’t ask for a companion, in the first place, and now you’re stuck taking care of him until something goes wrong.
Can vampires sense stress? You wouldn’t be surprised. And if he knows how freaked out you are, it’s bound to only make things worse.
So you sigh, and after a lamenting moment spent leaning over the counter with your head in your hands, it’s time to get back to your responsibilities. Unfortunately, you don’t really know what to do next. The sources you read insisted that vampires require very little care— and that the better-trained ones can even help around the house.
You have the feeling that Subaru would rather not interact with anyone after what he’s been through, but it’s not like you can just leave him in the closet for the rest of your time together, either. A lot is going to depend on how he responds to you— if he’s scared, or worse, if he’s aggressive.
In the end, you decide to try offering a meal. Even though all of the internet groups you read through say it’s not necessary, you feel like anyone would be a little more agreeable on a full stomach, vampires included.
The blood bag is a little creepy; it’s well-packaged and looks innocent enough, but the sight of red liquid swishing around inside the plastic casing still gives you an eerie feeling. It’s cold from the fridge and grossly squishy in your hands, leaving you to wonder if it’ll somehow be appetizing to the very much non-human thing now relying on you for its feeding.
Back at the closet, Subaru hasn’t moved.
More accurately, he hasn’t left. Instead, he’s scooted his way back into the farthest, darkest corner, kicked the blankets away from himself, and is now huddled up in a ball of tension and obvious misery, still staring.
“Uhh... hi,” you say, half on reflex. “Are you hungry? I brought one of those blood bag things for you.” Talking to him like he’s a person comes much too easily— even though you know better, it’s hard to do anything different when you’re faced with his expression of all-too-human distrust.
The dissonance between what you know and what you’re seeing is disturbing in ways you’d never begun to anticipate.
“...I’m fine,” Subaru says, after a moment. “Don’t need it.”
Despite his dismissal, his eyes are locked on the blood bag with an intensity that should almost be comical. “You sure about that?” you ask. “I’m offering. You won’t be, um, punished or anything if you drink it.” That feels like a reasonable assurance before you say it, but Subaru still flinches the instant the words leave your mouth. His perpetual scowl deepens, leaving you to try to figure out exactly what part of that was the wrong choice.
For a moment, you’re just plain frustrated. Whatever. You can leave the nasty little bag in the closet with him to eat when he feels like it.
But no sooner do you shift your weight, intending to approach him and hand over the bag than Subaru’s posture goes from ‘tense’ to ‘anticipating attack’. He flinches, hard, all over, snapping up onto his hands and knees with his body held tight enough that he trembles with the strain of it.
You freeze. Neither of you moves.
For a few moments, you’re almost expecting him to lash out at you. There’s maybe six feet of space between you in the little closet, and that gap would take an instant to close. But the seconds tick by, and Subaru just... stays like that. Not moving at all. Staring at you with something that’s starting to look more like fear than any kind of intention to do harm.
And eventually, you regain your courage first. You take a step toward him, into his space in the narrow closet.
Subaru’s back hits the wall behind him. He hunches in on himself even more, somehow, scrambling back like that could somehow make him less of a target. The shaking worsens as a high, tense whine leaves his throat.
You kneel down in front of him and hold out the blood bag.
“Why don’t you want this? I know they didn’t feed you very often, so you can’t tell me you’re not hungry. I’m trying to be nice. I don’t know what to do with you, at all, and this isn’t helping.” It all comes out harsher than you’d intended, but at this point, you barely care. You didn’t want this. It’s not your fault that you have no idea how to handle it— a little frustration feels perfectly justified, even if his cowering erodes your anger a bit.
Subaru shakes his head. “I-It’s not...” he starts, then trails off just as quickly. After a moment of internal debate, he tries again. “I can’t drink it.”
“Why not?” you ask.
“Why do you care?” he spits in return.
“Because you belong to me, and I have to deal with it.”
Wincing at that, Subaru shrinks deeper into the corner. While his fear has settled a bit, it’s turning into something that feels a lot more like shame. It’s pitiful, kind of, but just as irritating when you don’t know what to do.
Finally, still not meeting your gaze, Subaru opens his mouth and pulls his upper lip away from his teeth— revealing two empty spaces where a vampire’s fangs should be. Oh. Oh. Without fangs, he’s no more capable of draining the pouch of blood than you are. He really can’t drink it.
“...what happened to you?” The question slips out of your mouth before you can think better of it. Subaru’s jaw snaps shut.
“I’m dangerous. Fucked up one too many times, s-so they—”
His voice breaks, then. Looking at him like this, so much stronger than you but still huddled up in the corner like he’s trying to make himself small, there’s something truly pathetic about it all. There’s a deep, loathing sort of shame in his tone, as if admitting that one little thing hurts more than whatever he’s expecting you to do to him, in the first place. You’re still holding the pouch of blood, now half-warm against your palm, and you—, you really don’t know how you’re supposed to deal with this. Any of it.
On some frustrated, helpless-feeling impulse, you storm out of the closet and back to the kitchen. After digging out an old coffee thermos, the kind with a sealable lid, you tear the pouch of blood open and pour it all in, shaking it a few times to dislodge the final drops clinging to the plastic.
And then, it’s right back to the closet. Subaru hasn’t moved an inch. He flinches all over again the second he sees you, his body tense and expecting a kind of pain that you don’t even want to think about.
You kneel down in front of him again and hold out the cup. “Here. Is this better? You can drink it like this, right?”
You’re more exasperated by the whole situation than trying to be kind, but Subaru still stares at the cup like you’re offering him a miracle. His throat bobs at the smell of blood now hovering in the air, eyes wide. He doesn’t reach for it, though, and you can handle the silent, distrustful lack of response for all of three seconds before your patience runs out.
“It’s for you,” you say firmly. “ Drink. ”
Obedience wins out over his fear, in the end. With a grimace that clearly expects punishment to follow, Subaru takes the thermos with shaking hands. His eyes squeeze closed. He swallows heavily, visibly, then brings the thing to his lips and chokes down one long, slow gulp of the liquid inside.
That’s all it takes. Once he’s tasted blood, there’s no holding back. Subaru downs the rest of the thermos in six more swallows, fast enough that you’re almost afraid he’s going to choke. It can’t be more than ten seconds, but by the time he’s done, his eyes are dilated and frantic-looking as he licks any lingering taste of it off his lips. From the way he’s eying the empty thermos, it looks like he’s going to try to lick that out next.
He doesn’t resist when you take the cup away. You stand up, exit the closet, and close the door halfway. “Thank you,” you say. “That was...”
With no idea how to finish that sentence, you walk away.
. . .
The next couple of days are rough. Subaru doesn’t leave the closet, and for the most part, you don’t bother him. If you don’t look through the cracked door, it’s easy enough to pretend like he doesn’t exist— so that’s exactly what happens. It’s easier not to face the issue in front of you.
In a way, you feel bad for him. More so than you want to. No matter how much you tell yourself that he could use the space, the time to himself, there’s a little pang of guilt in your chest that refuses to budge.
You do more research— because what else can you do?
Learning about fight ring vampires makes you sick to your stomach every time. Even though you have very little idea of how to treat the one you own, you can’t imagine doing the kinds of things you read about to a living being. De-fanging, in particular, leaves you irrationally angry once you find the details of how and why it’s done. Thinking about someone holding Subaru down while someone else takes pliers to his mouth with nothing at all to dull the pain sends your blood boiling. You take a break, after that.
On the fourth day since Subaru has been in your home, you decide to try again. It feels all kinds of futile, but you really can’t leave him in the closet forever. There’s no choice but to figure something out, and that something starts with another thermos full of refrigerated blood.
Reflexively, you knock before entering the little area. The second you nudge the door open, Subaru is staring at you again, just as intensely.
“Hello again,” you say, hoping you don’t look as nervous as you feel.
Subaru doesn’t respond. He still flinches when you kneel beside him and hold out the thermos, but the reaction isn’t quite as violent as before. That’s... a good thing, right? That he’s not quite so tense?
“Look,” you start when he once again hesitates to drink, “I don’t know what to do with you. I didn’t choose to have you here. I have no idea how to handle a vampire, and that means you’re going to have to help me figure that out.” Frustration seeps out in your voice even now, even when you’re trying your best to stay calm. “This is your chance for a nice home, I guess. Think of it that way. I’ll believe whatever you tell me about what you need.”
“ As if— ” Subaru snarls, not quite angry, but distinctly distressed . “That’s not how it works. That’s never how it works. If you don’t want me, throw me out! Take me back to the stupid fucking rescue place where everyone thinks they did me a favor by putting me in a different cage—!”
“That is how it works, this time. My rule is that I’m not okay with returning you,” you explain. “Now, you have to tell me your rules.”
For a moment, Subaru doesn’t know how to respond. “...what do you mean by that?” he manages, in the end, though his voice has gone back to its previous, quieter volume, sounding more defeated than anything.
“How often do you want meals? The honest answer. Let’s say... no more than two of those—” you point at the thermos, “—a day, and no less than one a week. What would be best for you?”
Now, the disbelief is really kicking in.
The seconds tick by. You don’t rush him for an answer, this time. You can only imagine the effort it takes to calculate something that would have been entirely out of his control anywhere else— but this is the only solution you can think of that might actually work. If you don’t know what to do with him, he can tell you. You don’t care if you end up spoiling him. After the life he’s been through so far, you’d venture to say he deserves it by now.
“Every other day...?” is the eventual whisper, hesitant like he expects some kind of punishment for even saying it, even when you asked.
“Alright, done. I’ll set a schedule. And if you need more than that, or even less, tell me. These are your rules. If you tell me something like that, I’ll believe you. You know what you need better than I do.”
This is definitely an unusual way to handle vampire ownership. Even you know that much. But while you’re aware that the sudden consideration of his needs has to be stressful for Subaru, it’s better than the alternative. You do not have the patience to try to figure this mess out on your own.
“Anything else?” you ask when Subaru doesn’t continue.
It takes him a moment to decide what to say. Still reeling from the strangeness of your orders, in the first place, you’re not surprised that his brain needs some time to catch up. There’s no way this isn’t weird.
But eventually, Subaru tentatively offers something else.
“Th-The collar...” he mumbles, audibly uncertain. “Can it come off...? A different one is fine, of course, whatever, I just... don’t like this one.”
“Yep, easy.”
While Subaru is still tense with shock, you finally dare to reach for him. In the back of your mind, you’d been, admittedly, a little bit worried that he’d hurt you— the notes in his paperwork couldn’t be for nothing, after all. And yet, even when you’re very much in his space, he doesn’t lash out.
Rather, he just sits there. Visibly nervous. Eyes squeezed closed while he waits for what he might still think will be pain. You go right for the weighty, industrial buckle on the thing, locked with a complex mechanism that takes a few seconds of fiddling with to figure out. All the while, Subaru doesn’t move. Despite his visible discomfort with the closeness, he stays obediently statue-still until you finally manage to unlock the buckle and pull the solid weight of the collar away from his throat.
The skin underneath is marred with red, irritated lines from the thing digging in much too tightly, because of course it is. Subaru sighs, though, as soon as you scoot back, shoulders dropping with what can only be relief.
You’ll get him a new one. Suddenly, you’re determined to find a new, better collar, if only to spite whoever thought that the last one was a good idea. Despite your utter lack of knowledge about how to handle him, at the very least, you’re smart enough to pick out a collar that fits.
“Is that better?” you ask. Subaru’s eyes snap open.
“Uh... y-yeah. It is. Thank you, owner.” The last part is said out of obligation, almost robotically— it sounds wrong coming from him, somehow.
“Good. I want you to tell me things like that from now on. If something is bothering you, I want to know.”
There’s no way you’re going to be good at this, not when you still wish you wouldn’t have been put in this position of responsibility, to begin with... but when you look at the fragile little spark of hope in his gaze, it makes you want to at least try. Unfair situations happen— all you can do is work with what you have and try to make the best of it. Try to give Subaru something better than what the people before you would have bothered with.
Somehow, you’ll figure it out.