Archive of Our Own

BROKE HEMOCHROMATIC SEEKS NON-MURDERY BLOODLETTING SERVICES

Mods, please don’t delete this. I swear I’m not a troll. I’m just dying.

So, here’s the deal: I’m a hemochromatic. The short of that is my blood has too much iron. The long of it is that my wrist shit the bed in the middle of my sculptural art class and I can’t walk up the staircase without collapsing a lung. So I need to lose a pint of blood, and I need to lose it by yesterday. The problem is, I just lost my insurance (don’t ask), I can’t donate anymore (seriously, don’t ask), and I’m out of options.

My offer: you feed from me once a week, no more than a pint, until my levels go down enough that my heart stops doing that thump-thump-pause thing where I see God.

I’m O+ (if that matters) and otherwise healthy, if you count eating most of my meals out of a vending machine and seeing the light of day every other week as healthy. Also, mosquitoes fucking love me.

No creeps, please. No blood rituals. No “I’ll suck you off after I suck you dry” messages. I swear on my future grave that I’ll figure out a way to haunt you in the afterlife if you’re weird about it.

DM me if interested. Or don’t. But please do.

Nicholas hovered his finger over the cursor, debating whether or not posting this would be signing his own death certificate. When his shaking finger floated back down against his will, he took it as a sign and clicked CONFIRM POST.

Bite Club was one of the city's more reputable vampire forums—at least, as reputable as it could be for the fact that they let humans in. Half of the site read like a cheap excuse for fanfiction, but the other half was surprisingly sincere, filled with threads on blood substitutes and fang-dulling methods that clung to a thin string of deniability called the “roleplaying” tag.

Nicholas watched the page refresh as the post went live, the dull grey text turning blood red. A cheesy aesthetic choice, maybe, but it got the message across. He leaned back into the stiff computer lab chair, hoodie pulled over his head, and tried to ignore how the fluorescent lights had already given him a migraine. Or maybe it was just the stress. Watching his own physical decline in real-time did that to a person.

Next to him, K was hunched over another monitor with one headphone in, the other dangling across the heart-shaped necklace he never took off. He was supposed to be working on his medieval folklore essay. They both were. Instead, Nicholas was willingly offering himself up to the bloodlusty, and K was about half an hour deep into a scroll through some celebrity gossip site. Nicholas peered over his shoulder. Usually, the articles K got excited about were lame—some affair or accusation of coke bloat. Today, under a sketchy diet pill ad, the post read, “Blind Item #712 - This B-list alliterative actor self-taxidermies all his pets.”

Now that, Nicholas could find an interest in. Unfortunately, today, he had more pressing issues to address.

He poked K with a hoodie-paw. K frowned without looking away.

“How much do you think being polite makes someone less likely to have plans to kill you?” Nicholas asked, his eyes darting back to the post. Maybe adding the 'no creeps' part wasn’t polite. But he’d said please. That had to count for something. And he really didn’t want any weirdos.

K paused his scroll. His posture unfurled for the first time in an hour. “What?”

Nicholas opened his mouth to reply, and found he had no follow-up. Once again, his brain-to-mouth filter had abandoned him. He knew from experience: the more background he gave, the more K would ask, and the more K asked, the more likely he was to have his third breakdown of the year in yet another mortifyingly public place. He still had last week's counselling card (given to him by a well-meaning administrator) tucked guiltily into the back pocket of his best jeans.

K blinked at him. Nicholas blinked back.

“You know what? Nevermind." He clicked away from Bite Club and back into his mockingly blank Google Doc. “Forget it.”

For a moment, it looked like K might try to press. But then the pop song leaking out of his headphones turned to another, and with a shrug, he returned to his scroll, seemingly giving up. Nicholas wasn't sure if it was because his friends were used to questions like that, or just used to the fact that, sometimes, he opened his mouth and then all of them had to pretend he hadn't. Either way, he was grateful for the out.

They fell into silence again—the kind that only existed between people who’d spent too much time in each other’s company. K went back to procrastinating, some pop song leaking out of his headphones. And Nicholas just sat there, fiddling with his hoodie strings, letting his leg shake until he grew too tired to worry.

He'd bloodlet himself, honestly, if his biology grade hadn’t warned him against performing any kind of medicine beyond giving out antacids to the poor, unfortunate, hungover souls in his dorm. And donating blood would’ve been a great option, if the Red Cross hadn’t blacklisted him for reasons he wasn’t emotionally stable enough to rehash.

If he were smart, which he wasn’t, he’d just admit the problem; he knew his friends would help. They were good like that. Too good. The kind of good that would, without a second thought, discreetly pool enough cash to get him to a clinic, even if it meant skipping meals or pawning their stuff. And Nicholas just couldn’t ask that of them. He couldn’t be that selfish. Not again.

It wasn’t pride, exactly. Or maybe it was. But the idea of being a burden again—of bleeding someone dry financially just so he could bleed physically—made his skin crawl.

So he’d done something kind of stupid. Scratch that—very kind of stupid. But, hey, they needed blood. And he needed to bleed. Win-win, right?

As a teenager, he’d fallen down a lot of weird, niche internet rabbitholes. Half of it, along with the guyliner, had just been to annoy his parents (a success!). But long after that phase ended, the screamo posters packed into storage and the hot topic membership left to expire, some part of him still clung to that belief in a weird, secluded corner of the world, operating by different rules. And now, with no insurance, dwindling options, and his own blood trying to kill him from the inside out, that weird corner was starting to look a lot less like entertainment and a lot more like a life raft. Literally. At least, the only life raft he could locate with a barely-functioning brain and a body running off half a granola bar and one of the Celsius flavours from Maki's multipack that he was too embarrassed to admit he liked. Whatever 'playa vibe' was supposed to taste like, it went down like battery acid.

He refreshed the page. Two views; no messages. Nicholas let his head thunk onto the desk without regret.

Thankfully, by the time he got off work that night, he'd gotten a handful of replies. Nicholas clicked through them on his walk home, the full moon glowing high above him. He ignored the expected hornies, the trolls, and the responders that were most definitely and most obviously hoping to kill him. That left him with one: @OrangeJoolius.

OrangeJoolius: Hi ~

OrangeJoolius: I saw your post, and I’m interested.

OrangeJoolius: Do you have proof you’re not a hunter?

HumanStraw: do YOU have proof your not gonna drain me and leave me in a ditch?

OrangeJoolius: That’s fair.

OrangeJoolius: I guess this kind of arrangement requires some mutual trust.

OrangeJoolius: My name’s Euijoo. What’s yours?

HumanStraw: nicholas

HumanStraw: everyone calls me nico

OrangeJoolius: Nice to meet you, Nico :)

So, OrangeJoolius was... polite. Weirdly polite. He used full sentences and typed out his own emojis instead of using the ones shaped like knives or tongues (something Nicholas had gotten well used to on Bite Club). He answered questions without deflecting and asked thoughtful ones back. Stuff Nicholas hadn’t even considered, like: “How do I know you won’t have poisoned yourself with dead man’s blood?” to which Nicholas replied, “what the fuck and where the fuck would I get that” to which Euijoo responded, “Nevermind."

They agreed to meet in a week. Nicholas would’ve pushed it further, but he was already spending his breaks at work slumped on a milk crate in the freezer room, waiting for that fun tunnel vision thing to pass. Rinse, repeat. Soon, it would start affecting his grades. He couldn’t afford that on a scholarship.

Since he was still in a shared dorm, Nicholas convinced K to lend him his basement apartment for a few hours. He let K believe it was a semi-shady hookup—something that would send him breaking down the door if the hours flew by and he still hadn’t heard back. That counted as protection. Sort of.

Nicholas showed up early, his stomach tight with nerves. His clothes were somehow too-tight and too-loose at the same time, making it hard to breathe deeply. After delivering a colourful warning, K tossed him the key and took off for the movies with his boyfriend of the week—though, at this point, Fuma was edging into boyfriend-of-the-month territory. A new record. Nicholas made a mental note to bring it up later. Or to haunt K about it, if that was how the day went.

The door slammed shut, the lock clicked into place, and then, Nicholas was alone.

Really alone.

To distract himself from the fact that he might’ve just arranged his own murder, Nicholas wandered the space like a first-time visitor instead of someone who’d spent half his weekends here for the past three years. It almost worked. Almost.

K wasn’t wealthy by any means, but his set-up was nice, save for the leak in the corner that was, apparently, impossible to fix. Brick walls surrounded the room, and at the top of them, small, rectangular windows let in small bits of the world. LED lights were strung across the walls, above the couch, and under a shelf of records that K was way too snobby about. Along with a set of warm lamps, the lighting made the whole place feel like the backyard patio of a restaurant in summer—especially when the city outside was busy like it was tonight. It should’ve felt stuffy. But K had a magic touch.

Nicholas pulled the old recliner out from the corner, his joints whining under the strain, then dragged K’s fluffy vanity chair to sit beside it. For extra protection—even though it felt dumb and definitely wouldn’t do anything if things went sideways—he placed his grandmother’s silver ring on the side table next to the recliner. It made him feel about ten percent braver and a hundred percent ridiculous.

Still left with time to fill, Nicholas opened the fridge. The hit of cool air was almost refreshing, however weakly it arrived. He located a few abandoned White Claws in the back and cracked one of the strawberry flavours open. He was, officially, out of distractions. So this would have to do.

Soon, too soon, it was gone, and he was grabbing another. By this point, he wasn’t drunk. Wasn’t even buzzed. Just sweaty, nauseous, and very aware that this might be the worst decision of his life. And that included the time he tried to give himself a stick-and-poke, got dizzy halfway through, and ended up with a slanted, sad-looking ‘C’  on his bicep instead of the cool crescent moon he’d been hoping for. He glanced at it now, somehow faint but obvious at the same time. One day he’d fix it. One day things wouldn’t feel so uphill all the time.

OrangeJoolius arrived nine minutes early. Of course he did. It wasn’t even enough time for Nicholas to finish his second drink, so when he opened the door, the half-full can trembled in his hand.

It was still sunny outside. Nicholas noted that as he opened the door, along with the whiff of something citrusy floating in with the breeze. Either sun poisoning was a rumour after all, or SPF 2,000 was a well-kept vampire secret.

OrangeJoolius was tall. Tall enough that even though he was slouching, he nearly touched the top of the doorframe. That much, Nicholas had expected. Weren’t vampires always tall in the movies?

Everything else, however, was a surprise.

OrangeJoolius looked young. Younger even than Maki, with a boyish sort of curve to his face and round, wide eyes that blinked curiously behind a pair of tortoiseshell glasses. He was wearing a stiff-looking jacket, and under it, a sweater that was definitely too warm for May. Nicholas took him in, wondering absently if OrangeJoolius was a professor nearby, or if he just enjoyed dressing like Arthur the aardvark defending a PhD dissertation.

Nicholas took a step back, nodding OrangeJoolius inside. Then, just in case, he added, “You can come in.”

OrangeJoolius’s head swivelled around owlishly as he stepped into the apartment, scanning every inch of the space, probably expecting a hunter to come crawling from under the bed or busting out of the fridge. His eyes landed on the ring Nicholas had left on the table and lingered just a second too long, like he wasn’t sure if it was a joke or a warning. Something about it made Nicholas's own nerves ease—just enough to make it through his next sentence.

“It’s just me,” He said, waving a hand. He’d stress-picked half his nail polish off during one of his lectures that morning, and as he waved, a large piece floated off and onto the floor. He shoved his hands in his pockets and hoped OrangeJoolius hadn’t noticed.

He had. But he was polite enough not to comment on it. “I’m Euijoo,” he said. His voice was a surprise. It was a lot softer than Nicholas had been expecting. Kind and melting, like honey, like something that felt easy to be drawn in by. Or would’ve been, if Nicholas hadn’t already caught a glimpse of his too-sharp canines. They weren’t so dramatic that he would’ve immediately thought ‘vampire’ if he didn’t already know. Then again, most people spent their time rationalising clues like that away. “You’re Nicholas?”

“Nico. You wanna take a seat?”

OrangeJoolius—Euijoo—stiffened even more, his hands gripping the bag at his side like it might run away from him. “I’ll stand for now.”

“Suit yourself.” Nicholas collapsed into the recliner with the kind of bonelessness that he hoped read ‘I’m very whatever about this’ and not ‘I’m worried my legs will literally give up on me, I’m that fucking scared.’

He didn’t quite achieve it. His back was slick with sweat, his t-shirt clinging awkwardly to it, and no matter how much he crossed and uncrossed his legs, he couldn’t quite shake the stiff feeling in his limbs. After a few awkward seconds of fidgeting, he resigned himself to just being uncomfortable.

“The lights are nice,” Euijoo nodded, looking around. He seemed genuinely intruiged. “Cosy.”

“It’s not my place, it’s a friend's.” Nicholas took a sip—okay, more like a chug—of the White Claw. “He’ll be back soon.”

Euijoo hummed in acknowledgement. He was still standing, or more like hovering, in the space. Maybe sitting broke some sort of ancient vampire etiquette.

“So… how does this go?” Nicholas asked, after the pause blew past 'pregnant' and reached 'undeniably awkward.'

Euijoo blinked. Behind his glasses, his eyes looked large and buggish and more than a little surprised. “You’ve never done this before?”

Nicholas scoffed before he could think about it. “I’ve never been this broke before.”

Euijoo let out a nervous laugh. Or maybe it was just choked surprise. Even he didn’t seem to know. And Nicholas, in all his infinite wisdom and inability to respect the flashing red warning signs in his head, actually found that kind of cute. Fantastic. That was a fun variable to add to his inevitable murder.

Nicholas shifted, lifting his arm slightly. It felt heavier than before, which meant the White Claw was finally starting to do its job. “Can you use this? I’m kind of weird about my neck. No offence.”

Euijoo blinked, then gave a small nod. “Yeah, no, that’s… honestly fine.” He looked almost relieved. Maybe he was weird about the neck thing, too. “Are you… are you clean?” He eyed Nicholas up and down like he might be able to tell from sight alone.

It took Nicholas a second to catch up. “Of STDs?” he finally choked out. Was post-draining sex some kind of vampire tradition? Was @lookin2suck not actually fucking with him? Did eternal life also come with eternal horniness?

Another long, long pause passed. Euijoo cleared his throat. “Um, of any diseases.”

... Oh.

Right.

Nicholas downed his White Claw in one, his cheeks burning. “What do you care? You’re already dead.”

Euijoo frowned so deeply it almost looked like a pout. “Well, I guess,” he looked around, avoiding Nicholas’s eye like he’d just been scolded. “It matters to me.”

“Then yeah, I am. Are you?”

“You’re not drinking my blood,” Euijoo pointed out, biting his lip. “But... yes. I think whatever I had before probably died when I turned.”

Probably. Nicholas bit back another stupid comment. That was one word doing a lot of heavy lifting.

Euijoo bent to unzip his bag, clearly eager to change the subject. Nicholas tensed when he got a look inside. It was... neat. Like, concerningly neat. He hoped, dearly, that that made it less likely to be a murder pack. He gripped the chair.

“What is that?”

“Supplies.”

“Suppliesforwhat?”

Euijoo blinked, looking between Nicholas and the bag. “For this?” He pulled out a bandaid. Then a juice box.

Nicholas stared at it, dumbfounded. “Are you… are you planning to babysit me after?”

“No.” Euijoo looked sheepish. He didn’t seem to know what to do with the comment, so he busied himself with the bag again before mumbling, “It seemed considerate, I don’t know.”

Nicholas relaxed. Marginally. He leaned back into the chair. His neck hurt from how long he’d spent with it bent over a computer earlier, and now, he felt halfway to a nap. Even with a vampire in the room.

… Maybe because of the vampire. Wasn’t there that thing about pheromones making victims feel more at ease?

He sat back up. “Hey, how old are you? Like, really?”

Euijoo’s head popped up like a meerkat. “Why do you want to know?”

“Just curious.” Older vampires were more powerful, at least that he’d heard. It was a good way to gauge what level of threat Euijoo might pose to him. And maybe Euijoo knew that, too, or maybe he was thinking in the reverse, because he suddenly looked even paler than when he’d first walked in. Which should have been impossible.

“I’m… a newer turn,” Euijoo admitted, returning to his bag. “Still trying to figure all this out.”

Nicholas studied him. It could be a lie. But most vampires he’d read about online had egos. Euijoo was more likely to have lied the other way.

“Is it that obvious?” Euijoo asked. He was holding something small in his palm now, clenched very tightly. He looked even younger than he had when Nicholas first opened the door.

“No,” Nicholas said immediately, then thought. “I don’t know. Maybe. Not to me.”

Euijoo nodded, coming to sit on the chair next to him. “That’s relieving.” He opened his closed fist, revealing two small paper squares. He ripped one of them open, and the smell immediately hit Nicholas’s nose.

He yanked his arm back before Euijoo could touch it. “You brought alcohol swabs?”

Euijoo looked confused. He stared down at the swab, then back up, like this was vampire 101. “Should I not have?”

“I—”

… Was it vampire 101? Nicholas returned his arm to the chair, the cheap leather crinkling under its weight. He really should have done more research. “I just wasn’t expecting it, that’s all.”

“It’s good to stay protected.” Euijoo tapped one of his fangs, then winced, like he hadn’t been expecting it to be that sharp. “You don’t know where these have been.”

Against his will, Nicholas’s curiosity piqued. “Oh? Where?”

“Well—” Euijoo blinked a little aggressively. “I mean, nowhere. Just like, as a principle. You should always be cautious.”

Nicholas extended his arm. His fingers brushed the edge of Euijoo’s sleeve. The fibres were soft and faded with time, but well taken care of. “Be cautious, then.”

Euijoo nodded, bending to swab the inside of his arm in slow, circular motions. His fingers were delicate, smooth, and much warmer than Nicholas had expected. If it wasn’t for the half-dead skin tone and the fangs pressing against his bottom lip, he might’ve thought Euijoo looked human. His eyes definitely did; there was still life behind them.

“I took a few phlebotomy classes last summer,” Euijoo said, poking around Nicholas’s arm like a vein might appear if he just summoned it politely enough. “Lucky, right?”

“I guess,” Nicholas said, trying not to squirm. “So does that mean you’re not gonna ‘accidentally’ hit an artery?”

Euijoo frowned. He pulled his hand back so quickly that Nicholas almost might’ve said he cared not to make him uncomfortable. But then again. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“You say that like you expect me to believe you.”

Euijoo sighed. “I don’t expect you to believe me. But I still wouldn’t. And anyway, arteries are much deeper. I’d have to use my entire fang to reach one.”

Nicholas raised a brow. “So it’s too much effort, is what you’re saying.”

“I’m saying you’d notice my entire mouth wrapping around you.”

Jesus. Nicholas choked on air. Actually choked. But Euijoo didn’t react. Either he hadn’t noticed the innuendo, or he was a lot better at playing it cool than Nicholas might’ve guessed.

“I’d like to go here, if that’s alright,” Euijoo said, pointing to the crease of Nicholas’s elbow.

Nicholas looked down. He didn’t know what he expected—glowing veins, maybe a bite me! sign—but all he saw was skin. “Why not the wrist?” That’s how they did it in the movies. He’d been relying on a lot of this experience being like the movies. Life imitates art, and all that.

“AC’s are larger veins,” Euijoo said, already shifting closer. Instinctively, Nicholas wanted to move back. But he was already pressed into the opposite side of the recliner. There was simply nowhere to go. “Less risk of collapse, and easier to access, so long as I don’t hit a valve. And I can draw faster from the larger ones, so there’s less pain for you. In theory, of course.” He glanced up. “I’ll still try to go slow.”

Nicholas wasn’t sure whether the explanation made him feel better or worse.

“How will you know you haven’t taken too much?” he asked, pushing back the thought that these all felt too much like the questions he’d be asking as a Dateline victim. “You’re not going over a pint, right?”

Euijoo flushed. Which. Weird. Nicholas didn’t know vampires could do that. “A pint is all I need. So when I reach that amount, I’ll feel it,” he said, staring intently at Nicholas's arm. “Its effects. It’s… been a while.”

Nicholas took a breath. “For me, too.”

Euijoo offered him the softest version of a smile. It had more nerves than actual comfort in it. “I’ll be careful,” he said. “I promise.”

Nicholas wanted to reply—something redeeming, something snarky, something like promises don’t mean shit if you’re already dead—but he didn’t get the chance. Because Euijoo was already leaning in.

Nicholas sucked in a breath. So much for foreplay.

Euijoo’s lips met his skin before his teeth did, and for one humiliating second, Nicholas thought, it feels like a kiss.

But then his pulse kicked up, too loud, too desperate, too afraid like it might draw Euijoo in even faster, and he remembered what Euijoo was really doing. Feeling for blood. Feeling for how it flowed through him. Looking for the source.

Nicholas's entire body went stiff, his shoulders climbing up and his fingernails digging into his palm like individual pinches back to reality. His heart skipped at least a few beats. He couldn’t decide if that was the sickness or just the pure, full-strength panic flowing through every inch of his body.

This was either going to help a lot, or really, really fucking hurt.

For a few seconds, all Nicholas heard was his own breathing, the dripping of the leak overhead, his uneven heartbeat in his ears. And then, pain. Worse than any blood draw he'd gotten in the past, but not unbearable. Breathable.

Nicholas tried not to look. Thought it might make it more painful. Thought he might not like what he saw.

He looked anyway.

Euijoo was bent, fluffy brown hair falling over his face and his glasses hanging low down his nose, his shoulders slackening with relief. One of his hands supported Nicholas’s arm while the other curled around his wrist. He squeezed once. It could’ve meant I’m in, or you good? or something else entirely. In response, Nicholas's nails dug in deeper.

So far, he didn’t feel like the life force was being drained out of him, and the pain had dulled a bit, which all seemed like good signs. Still, he wasn’t out of the woods yet. Not until Euijoo decided to stop. If he decided to stop.

Nicholas stared at the clock across from them, ticking by mockingly. The minute hand was moving agonisingly slow. If he was going to die, he’d at least prefer not to be on a timer. But what would he even say if this was it? Probably, at least I got to live on my own terms. For a bit. Probably, don’t let Maki play Diplo at my funeral.

Euijoo squeezed his wrist again, another silent message. Nicholas didn’t know what it meant, but his heart answered anyway, thudding harder. He was starting to understand now what people meant when they talked about blood rushes. Not just the dizziness, but the heat. It curled up his neck and travelled down his chest at the same time, disappearing out of his fingertips.

This entire time, Euijoo hadn’t moved an inch. Hadn’t even seemed to react, too lost in the feeding to register anything outside of him. Nicholas could see it in the way that his eyes had fluttered closed, long lashes hanging out: the second the blood hit his tongue, he was in peace.

For a moment, that peace was all Nicholas could see. And for even longer, it was all he could desire. To live it. To taste it. And weirdly, beneath it all, to give it.

Nicholas looked away sharply, staring back at the clock. So… being desired for his blood wasn’t the weirdest thing he'd ever been into. It did feel like the one he was supposed to resist the most.

But it was so… hard. Hard not to relax. Hard not to give in. His body wanted to. He had ten pints to spare. He could give Euijoo more than one. Even if it hurt.

Shit, especially if it did.

Weirdly, and this was the part he’d never say out loud, there was a layer to it, however deep, that felt a little… good. Not pleasure exactly, but something close, satisfying and achey, like pressing down on a bruise just to feel something respond. His toes curled in, his shirt growing damper with sweat, his cheeks burning like he had a fever.

It didn’t help that there was a weird thickness to the air now, something that weighed down on both of them. Something too loud to be masked by polite, nervous small talk and too-thick sweaters. Something that felt like wanting.

Something that made Nicholas wonder if this wasn’t a first that had no last.

All that, from one bite. From five minutes of blood loss. From silken hands and even silkier lips, planted on his arm like they’d found their home.

Nicholas swore under his breath. He was in it, now.

But in what?

Euijoo broke from his arm without warning, his entire body arching back in pure satisfaction, all of the self-conscious nerves from before extinguishing at once, like right now, he couldn’t help but be what he was, and what he was was a creature in pure, sustaining bliss.

Nicholas’s vein responded in protest to the cutoff, spraying blood like a fountain across both of them and sending him scrambling for a tissue to tamp it down. Euijoo’s head snapped down before he could, and he threw a sleeve over the vein, clamping down to slow the bleeding, his sweater stained with stray droplets.

“Sorry,” he breathed, his lips red and wet. Nicholas tried to forget the reason why.

Euijoo’s eyes were completely blown black, and the whites of his eyes looked whiter than before, magnified by his glasses as he pushed them back up his nose. It was almost as if with the feeding, every part of him had been made… more. Sharper, whiter, darker, thicker, louder, sweeter. He was the Euijoo Nicholas had just met, but turned up in every single dial. He wiped his mouth with his other sleeve, keeping eye contact.

“‘s okay,” Nicholas mumbled.

Euijoo’s eyes were returning to normal, the brown bleeding back in, but everything else stayed the same. Enhanced. His attention was sharp as he asked, “Do you feel better?” so sincerely that it knocked Nicholas back into himself. It felt like being doused in icy water, his skin damp, the AC on full blast.

“It doesn’t work like that for me,” he said, hoarse for no reason. “It’ll take a few weeks.”

“Oh.” The word was faint. Almost regretful.

“Do you feel better?” Nicholas asked, more curious than he meant to sound.

Euijoo flushed. Again. This time, with even more colour. “Yeah,” he said, a little sheepish. “Is it that obvious?”

Nicholas met his eyes. Swallowed with too much effort. “A little.”

Neither of them looked away. Which was becoming a problem.

Euijoo’s sleeve was stained. So were his lips. So were his teeth when he chased a drop of blood with his tongue.

It should’ve been gross. It wasn’t. Instead, Nicholas’s stomach burned. He felt dizzy, like the kind that came after a roller coaster. Or after a kiss deep enough to sacrifice the chance to come up for air.

Fuck.

Now he was really glad he hadn’t told his friends about this. Adding ‘got a semi watching someone lick my blood off their teeth’ to the list of things that went down today? Yeah. He’d never live that one down.

Euijoo checked the vein, and it must’ve stopped bleeding, because he looked relieved. He rose quickly, more quickly than should've been possible, and rushed over to his bag, returning in what felt like a blink of an eye with a bandaid. Nicholas could have used it himself, but Euijoo seemed to take great pride in doing it himself, cleaning his arm of blood before sealing it with a bandaid. He patted it, looking up at Nicholas with a smile. His face looked warmer. His eyes had more energy. He looked… happy. It was so opposite to how Nicholas might’ve guessed a vampire might look, especially after a feeding. Cold, cruel, evil, sickly—these were the things he was expecting. And if Euijoo was any of them, he hid it well. Maybe he wasn’t the typical vampire. Maybe Nicholas just got lucky. Or maybe Harua’s protection spells actually did work—that one Nicholas would never openly acknowledge, though, lest he end up with another rabbit's foot “accidentally” left under his pillow ahead of finals week.

When he returned from his thoughts, he found Euijoo watching him intently. Nicholas was about to ask why when Euijoo stood, returning once again to rummage again in his bag, and when he returned…

Nicholas rolled his eyes so dramatically that his grandmother would have scolded him about them sticking there. “The juice box, really?”

“You looked pale.”

“I always look pale.”

“Humour me.” Euijoo pressed it into his hand. “Please.”

It must’ve been packed with an ice pack because it was cold and a little wet with condensation. Nicholas grumbled his way through unsealing the box, sticking the straw in, and taking a tiny sip, not more than he needed just to taste it.

It was… a little nice. He’d admit that much to himself. He hadn’t eaten enough today, his stomach too knotted for much of an appetite, and the hit of sugar was relieving.

Not that he’d ever say as much. He took one more sip, then set it down. Euijoo looked satisfied enough.

“You’ve really never done this before?” Nicholas asked, rubbing his arm unconsciously. “This kinda deal?”

Euijoo shook his head. “Never. But I’ve never met someone with your… affliction, before, so.”

Nicholas snorted. “Likewise.”

“It’s smart,” Euijoo continued, licking his lips again, a little too slowly to be casual. His eyes fluttered, like he was trying not to react to the lingering taste. “Blood bags are expensive, and undergrad is…” he cut himself off, visibly scolding himself for letting the information through.

Nicholas sat up. “You’re in university?” The pain in his arm had faded to a dull ache, but now the blood was pumping through more powerfully. Like he’d gone too hard at the gym. Or had just received the world's weirdest hickey. Which, honestly, was a thought he did not need to be having right now.

Euijoo smiled sheepishly. “I told you I was young.”

“Yeah but… wow.” Nicholas eyed him. What happened? hovered on the edge of his tongue. But he didn’t ask. It didn’t feel like his place. Just because he’d given up a pint didn’t mean he got a backstage pass to the vampire trauma hour.

With the feeding, Euijoo looked healthier, stronger, like he’d just been given a boost. But if the shyness from before was a symptom of hunger, he didn’t show it. He didn’t look any more confident, any cockier, any more likely to jump back in to drain Nicholas like a Capri Sun and then book it.

“What are you studying?”

“I was in pre-med,” Euijoo said. “But then I switched to library sciences, um, after. Vampires are big on archiving. I mean, some of us are. It’s not a requirement. I think.” His smile looked a little sad. A little like someone smiled when they were talking about an old friend. And weirdly, absurdingly, and most of all, mortifyingly, it kind of made Nicholas want to reach out and grab his hand.

Stupid pheremones. Stupid dick pheremones.

Thankfully, Euijoo was already standing and gathering his things. Instead of tossing the used alcohol swabs, Nicholas noticed him pocket them. Maybe an anxious thing. Maybe… not an anxious thing?

Nicholas looked away. His brain was really committed to spiralling into weird, horny territory today.

The door was only a few feet away, but Nicholas walked Euijoo there anyway. It felt like the polite thing to do.

Outside, the world glowed orange with golden hour, the kind that made everything feel simultaneously intensely real and not real at all. It was kind of nice. Comforting. Maybe he’d take a walk later. Maybe he’d drag his friends to get milkshakes in secret celebration of the fact that he A) wasn’t murdered (yet) and B) might actually have solved his own problem for once instead of just fucking it up further. It was the small wins.

Nicholas leaned against the doorframe, playing it cool. Or trying to, at least. It was kind of hard when Euijoo was still wearing O+ in shade Nico on his lips.

“Same time next week?” He couldn’t tell if it was an easy question or a big one. It felt vulnerable either way. Even though he couldn’t be sure how much blood he’d lost, and the effects of his usual treatments usually took a few days, he felt… on the road to feeling better, maybe? Like the farthest he’d felt from actively white knuckling it through in weeks. If anything, Euijoo took less time, and with something to focus on, the pain wasn’t nearly so bad. And that small window of relief, the hope of feeling even a little bit better, sent such a strong wave of relief through his body that he almost jumped into K’s bed then and there and passed out for a week. So even though Euijoo had gotten something out of it, too, Nicholas felt weirdly grateful. For more than just living to see another day.

Euijoo turned his head, his hair catching the setting sun and turning red. He lifted his head up to the sky as if happy to meet it for the first time in a while, and at this angle, the picture of pure bliss on his face, his thickened lips and his Adam’s apple illuminated by the light, Nicholas’s head swam. It wasn’t the blood loss—he couldn’t be down more than a pint or two. Maybe it was something Euijoo had left behind, some sort of vampire toxin that made Nicholas more susceptible to being drained again. Or maybe it was just… him.

Euijoo took a deep, long inhale of air. Unlike the vampires Nicholas had read about, Euijoo seemed to greet the world with open arms. Like even though he was a strange, hidden part of it, he was happy to be a part at all.

“Next week,” Euijoo confirmed, a little dreamy, a lot blooddrunk. He turned to look at Nicholas again, and his smile lingered for one long second before he slipped away, disappearing quickly even though the streets were near-empty.

Nicholas stayed in the doorway after he’d gone, his hand on the frame and his stomach doing acrobatics. This was very possibly... fine. Maybe it was just step one in a very special, very practical arrangement. And realistically, he was touch-starved and vitamin-deficient enough that a warm hand and some prolonged eye contact could easily have fried his last working brain cell, tricking him into thinking and feeling things that weren't there. That was what his relational psych professor was always rambling on about, right?

Or maybe, just maybe, he was already royally, epically, impressively fucked, as he tended to be in the face of cute, well-meaning boys who couldn't possibly lead him anywhere good.

His fingers brushed against the bandaid on his arm, the only physical evidence Euijoo had left behind.

Next week.