Work Text:
Alex can’t pinpoint the first time he truly notices the man who sits at the third stool from the end of the counter. It’s almost as if he’s always been there, just outside of the periphery of Alex’s vision, until finally something about him sticks in Alex’s mind. Perhaps it’s that, from the back—which is how Alex mostly sees him—he’s not very notable. Tall, blond, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist, wearing the most boring and nondescript clothes you could imagine. But then, one day, as Alex is taking a little break to stretch his back after hours of being hunched over a computer, his eyes catch on the man and he thinks: Huh.
There aren’t a lot of people who regularly come to this Waffle House in the wee hours of the night during the week, which is one of the reasons Alex likes it. There’s Joe, who comes in at 5AM the end of his overnight shift, and Cindy, who stops in around 2AM for a cup of coffee in between bus routes. Then there’s Alex, who started coming here during his first year of law school for all-night study or writing sessions, and who still finds his way here when he can’t sleep and needs to get out of his apartment. Which is regularly. He always camps out in the same booth in the front so he can watch the night sluggishly move by through the front window when he’s not working. There’s something comforting about the smell of frying bacon and waffle batter, and Pamela who works overnights always keeps his coffee topped up.
He likes his routine. He’s not expecting it to change.
Once he notices the new(?) blond man, though, he can’t seem to stop. The way he hums softly sometimes, snatches of melodies Alex can’t place. The curve of his full lips, just about the only things that are flushed with color on his otherwise pale face. His long, elegant fingers first, drumming idly on the countertop as he bends over a book to read, or curling around a ceramic mug. The lilt of his British accent when he exchanges a few words with Pamela. And once, Alex accidentally caught his gaze when he got up to leave, and he got briefly trapped in the most stunning pale blue eyes he’s ever seen. The man never eats anything, no matter how long he stays, only orders a cup of tea and leaves an enormous tip when he departs.
Alex is fascinated despite himself, even though everyone knows you mind our own goddamned business in the Waffle House at 3AM. Where did he come from? What is he doing here? Not even Pamela knows—he’s asked, on nights when the man hasn’t shown up—and Pamela knows everything.
Then, one day Alex is coming back from the bathroom and not paying attention to where he’s going, and his shoulder collides with a very solid body. The mystery guy barely moves, but he lets out an oof as Alex bounces off of him, only narrowly keeping his feet.
“Fuck, sorry man,” Alex apologizes, his tongue darting out to wet his lips as he stares. He’d known the man was tall, but it still surprises him how far he has to look up into those startled blue eyes. Up close, he seems to be about Alex’s age, though it’s very hard to say. There aren’t any obvious creases marking his skin, but there’s something that feels oddly ancient in the man’s gaze. Mesmerizing, even when his eyes drop to follow the movement of Alex’s tongue. Alex feels caught in it.
Something had hit the ground when they’d bumped into each other, and Alex finally tears his eyes away and looks down to find a worn leather notebook on the floor. It falls open when he picks it up, the pages full of dense, elegant cursive in an unusual red-brown ink, but he doesn’t have a chance to look at it closely before the man snatches it away, holding it close to his chest with clear alarm.
“That’s mine,” he says sharply, his eyes wide.
“I know,” Alex replies carefully. “Just picking it up for you. Y’know, since I was the reason it was on the floor.”
The man swallows. “Right. Thank you.”
“I’m Alex,” Alex says, sticking out his hand. Perhaps predictably, given his odd behavior, the man just stares at it. “You’re a regular now, huh? I’ve seen you around.”
The man blinks slowly, making no move to shake Alex’s hand, and Alex is just about to drop it and give it up for good when he finally reaches out. His hand is soft and cool to the touch, his neatly trimmed nails standing in contrast to Alex’s bitten-down ones.
“Henry,” the man says. “I just moved here a month ago.”
“Night owl, or night shift?”
Henry hesitates. “A bit of both, I suppose,” he answers after another few beats. “I do work nights.”
“Better than just not sleeping,” Alex laughs self-deprecatingly.
“Perhaps if you didn’t consume coffee at quite that rate,” Henry says with a tiny smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, which surprises him. Alex hadn’t realized Henry had been noticing him, too.
Alex grins. “Everyone’s a critic.” He lets a moment of silence pass; the faint clatter of dishes filters out from the kitchen. “You were heading out?”
Henry nods. “My next shift.”
“I’ll let you go, then,” he says, even though he wants to ask doing what. Henry didn’t offer, and he’s not pushy enough to ask. Yet. “See you around, Henry.”
He does see Henry around after that, quite a bit. Sometimes they just exchange greetings and stick to their own business. Sometimes Henry sits with him in his booth, after Alex invited him one time and it became a bit of an irregular habit until eventually Henry sits with him more often than not. He learns that Henry is a year older than him and he’s been living in the US for a while, but only recently moved to Texas. That he came here to escape the family business and ended up in it anyway—though Alex doesn’t find out what that business is.
He also learns that Henry is witty and smart and really fucking charming. When he fixes Alex in that pale blue gaze of his, it’s like nothing else exists in the world. Alex is, for lack of a better word, entranced. He wants to spend more time with Henry. Get to know him. Kiss the coy smile off those full, pink lips.
“Hey, uh,” Alex ventures one evening, fidgeting restless in his nervousness. “You ever do things in the daytime? Like, maybe we could have a normal meal together? Go for a walk?”
Henry smiles at him, an odd wistfulness to the slant of it. “Not usually, no. I mostly sleep during the day.”
The thing is, Alex is also pretty sure Henry is a vampire.
Vampires aren’t real, of course. Everyone knows that. But the list of evidence Alex compiles is pretty damning. Extremely pale skin. Only active at night. Never eats regular food. Seductive as all hell. Preternatural reflexes—Alex once saw him catch a falling teacup at a speed that shouldn’t be humanly possible. Sometimes talks like he’s from an earlier century. And more than once, there have been little dark splatters on his clothes. Henry said it was ink, but it could have been blood.
Alex doesn’t want to think about why none of this seems to matter to his interest in Henry. Maybe it’s Henry’s vampire mind control powers. Maybe it’s just Alex’s tendency towards shitty self-preservation. Regardless, Alex still wants him. Wonders how to broach the subject. Hey, just so you know, I’m a blood donor. That’s probably too cheesy. He’s workshopping it.
For now, they spend time together, and Alex catalogs every time Henry’s gaze lingers on his hands, or on his body, or on his lips.
Alex is pretty sure Henry wants him, too. Hopefully, for more than just a meal.
Their visits to the Waffle House don’t always overlap. Alex isn’t there every night, and some nights, Henry doesn’t show. Alex tries not to worry. They’ve never exchanged phone numbers because they see each other so regularly. It’s not lost on him that Henry could just disappear and Alex wouldn’t know how to find him again, but he still hasn’t gotten up the nerve to ask. He’d need a reason, wouldn’t he? And every time he tries to suggest they do something else outside of sitting at a Waffle House in the middle of the night, Henry brushes him off.
It’s fine. He’s perfectly happy like this.
It’s nearly 4AM, which means Henry’s most likely not showing, and Alex decides to call it a night. He’ll go home and scrape together a few hours of sleep, then come back tomorrow. So what if he’s getting less sleep than ever before because he doesn’t want to miss the chance of seeing Henry at the Waffle House? He’s managing.
By this time of night, the air has lost all of its lingering heat, but somehow it feels closer than it did when he came in. The sounds of traffic from the highway nearby are muffled, and everything is unnaturally still. Alex picks up the pace as he heads toward his car, hunching over a little as his hand tightens on his satchel.
“Alex.”
Alex’s steps falter and he looks over his shoulder, but there’s no one there. “H?” he calls out. “Is that you?”
A shadow moves near the rear of the building, slowly resolving into the shape of a person. Tall, lanky, broad shoulders. His face is shadowed, but the harsh streetlights cast a glow around the edges of his pale hair. It’s gotta be Henry, because no one else matching that description should know his name. At least not anyone who’d be at a Waffle House at 4AM.
“Anyone ever tell you it’s kinda creepy to hang out in the dark?” Alex asks with a nervous laugh as he takes a few steps closer, glancing over his shoulder into the darkness pressing in around them. “What’re you doing out here?”
The man-who-might-be-Henry doesn’t move, and Alex keeps approaching, drawn in despite the warning bells going off in his head. Something pulls him in, inevitably and inexorably, and his feet move without his permission until he stops in front of Henry—or, not Henry, because when the man finally looks up his eyes are completely black in the low light, and his mouth is hard and cruel as it splits into a vicious grin.
“Waiting for a meal,” he growls in a voice full of gravel and nails.
With a speed that definitely isn’t human, his hand darts out and closes in the front of Alex’s shirt, hauling him nearly off his feet as he swings around toward the building. The back of Alex’s head slams into the brick wall when he’s shoved up against it, and he gasps as stars burst in his vision. Trying to blink them away, he struggles against the man’s hold, but the single hand might as well be pressing with a thousand pounds against his chest.
“Mm,” the man hums, leaning in close to Alex’s neck as his other hand comes up to press just above Alex’s collarbones, icy cold where they dig into soft flesh. “He’s always had good taste, I’ll give him that.”
Alex digs his fingernails into the unyielding wrist, choking as his vision swims. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a flash of gleaming white. Fangs.
So vampires are fucking real. Alex would feel vindicated if he wasn’t scared absolutely shitless. Fuck, if he gets himself turned undead, June’s never going to let him hear the end of it—
The vampire jerks backward, as if struck by an invisible blow. A second later, Alex realizes that he wasn’t struck but dragged away by another person. Tall. Blond. Blue eyes almost glowing in the low light. And absolutely covered in blood that’s spraying everywhere as he draws a gleaming knife across the vampire’s neck. A horrible gurgling keen pierces the night for a split second, only to be cut off when Henry drives a wooden stake up under the vampire’s ribs and into his heart.
The only sound that breaks the dreadful silence that follows is the ragged sound of Alex’s breathing.
“What,” he croaks out, “the fuck.”
Henry kneels by the vampire’s supine form, an odd sort of regretful expression on his face. “I’ve been hunting him for a long time,” he mutters before he glances up at Alex again. “You’ll want to look away for this part.”
Alex doesn’t need to be told twice, nor does he let himself think about what Henry might be doing back there. He hums to himself to drown out any sounds, staring up at the stars, until he feels a gentle hand brush his shoulder.
“I thought they turned to dust when you staked them?” Alex asks. The vampire’s boots are just visible out of the corner or his eye.
“A common myth,” Henry says, a little wryly. “Are you all right, love?”
Alex clears his throat and narrowly resists reaching up to touch his own neck as the endearment lands squarely in the middle of his chest and sends out warm fingers that chase away the lingering chill from the vampire’s grip. “Fine,” he says. “Though it’s possible I have a mild concussion? I don’t know how else to explain what just happened. Are you some kind of vampire hunter?”
“Monsters, more broadly. Vampires are the most common, though.” Henry gives a small, humorless laugh. “The family business.”
“Fuck,” Alex says. “I just thought y’all were in, like, marketing or something.”
“You thought I worked nights… in marketing?” Henry asks dubiously.
“I didn’t really think about it that hard, ok?” Alex huffs. “Can we go back to the part where you saved me from a vampire?”
Henry’s face crumples. “I’m sorry, Alex. I should have known he’d go after you.”
“Hey,” Alex says gently, “it’s not your fault.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Henry says, his lips twisting bitterly. “He had a penchant for turning people that I… care about. I think he liked the sport of it. It’s part of why I’ve not let myself get too close to anyone in years.”
“Oh,” Alex breathes as the implications of all of that sink in. “You care about me.”
Henry gives him a look like he’s being ridiculous. “To a rather dangerous degree, as it turns out. I nearly got you killed. Or worse.”
Alex moves before he even knows what he’s doing, grabbing Henry on both sides of his face and hauling him into a bruising kiss. It’s a little awkward because of the angle and the fact that Henry freezes, but a second later he’s kissing Alex back just as desperately. He does not, however, put his hands anywhere on Alex’s body, which is as disconcerting as it is disappointing.
“Why aren’t you touching me, baby?” Alex nearly whines, his lips still brushing Henry’s. He’s shaking now, whether from the adrenaline crash or the terror of realizing how close he came to death finally catching up to him is hard to say, but he’s pretty sure he’s going to die if he allows more than an inch of space between them right now.
Henry makes a sound like he’s been wounded. “I’m covered in blood, darling,” he protests, though he punctuates it with another kiss. “Don’t want to get it on you.”
“I don’t care about the fucking blood, hold me, please—”
Turns out, there’s nothing in the world that feels better than being wrapped up in Henry’s strong arms.
“I can’t believe you thought I was a vampire.”
“C’mon, baby. You kinda fit the profile.”
“Only because the entirety of your knowledge of vampires comes from films.”
“And Buffy.”
“Oh, of course. An unassailable source. Why on Earth do I put up with this?”
“Because you love me?”
“Mm.” Henry kisses him, soft and slow. “That must be it.”