Chapter Text
It was Friday, and Gerard was determined to have a good time tonight. He’d had a week of deadlines and antsy bosses breathing down his neck, even though he mostly worked from home, and he was really free to have a few drinks and relax.
He went to his favourite local bar, the one that was little more than an old shack with a new paint job. Inside smelled like a heady combination of sweat, smoke and vomit, eau de drunk. There was hardly anybody in there at all, except the bored-looking barman and one guy sat at the end of the bar in the corner, looking like he was trying to melt into the shadows.
Gerard took a seat at the other end of the bar and ordered a whisky and coke, and checked out the guy.
He was very attractive. Pale, lean, with hair which seemed to glow red-gold in the dim-light of the bar, and he had striking cheekbones. He seemed to smolder a lot, like he wasn’t quite aware this was the twenty-first century and most people didn’t smolder anymore. Gerard had always had a soft spot for people who were a little bit odd, and this guy fit the bill.
Gerard caught his eye at few times, and smiled encouragingly. He never made the first move, not considering how many moderately-attractive guys turned out to be less than enamoured with his rather awkward come-ons.
After his second drink, he turned back to the bar to order another and startled when he realised that the man had taken the seat next to him. He hadn’t even noticed him move from the corner.
He smiled, sharp and beautiful, and said, “I’m Lloyd. Can I buy you a drink?” and Gerard just nodded dumbly, unable to tear his eyes away from the rich golden brown of Lloyd’s own.
**
They fucked on Gerard’s kitchen table.
And then they fucked on the floor.
At some point in their enthusiasm, they managed to send one of the dirty glasses that had been left on the table flying into the floor. At the time, Gerard hadn’t cared, but now – even as drunk as he was – he was still aware of how shitty it would be to step on glass in the morning.
Lloyd was smirking at him, taking slow drags of his freshly-lit cigarette, as Gerard scrabbled around trying to pick up all the smashed pieces of glass on the floor. He thought he had them all, and he went to dump them in the bin, when he noticed one more tiny piece next to his foot.
He bent down and made a grab for it, but the glass rolled between his fingers, and then he felt the sharp slide of skin breaking. He recoiled, dropping the rest of the glass in the process.
“Ah, for fuck’s sake,” he said, cupping his hand and looking at the tiny bead of blood that had swelled up on his thumb. It was kind of pathetic how little it was bleeding considering how much it hurt.
“Shit,” he heard behind him. He spun around, and realised his affable companion was now looking at him with a lot less affability. In fact, he looked a bit like he wanted to eat him. The cigarette was on the floor, forgotten.
“I’m so sorry, please don’t hold this against me,” Lloyd said, suddenly so much closer, so close Gerard could count his eyelashes, and then he sunk his fangs into Gerard’s neck.
**
He woke up in bed with the worst hangover he’d ever had. It felt like he’d been up far too long, like when he’d pull all-nighters to finish projects, but he’d also been hit by a truck. His blood was fizzing in his veins like cherry soda. Everything was too loud – a pounding in his head which was worse every time he breathed. He swore he could hear upstairs smashing around their apartment like they had a vendetta against the floor and everybody’s peaceful lives in roughly a five mile vicinity.
He stared blearily at the ceiling and considered if it was worth the effort he’d expend to throw himself off a bridge. Then, finally, he gathered the energy to pull himself into a sitting position, but that made his vision bleed black at the edges. He let out a small groan and fell backwards again.
His head was definitely the place that hurt the most, but his neck was also throbbing. He raised a hand to his neck and sought out the problem. His fingers brushed unnaturally-heated skin and he hissed in pain. It felt like somebody had held a hot iron there, the under-the-skin burning sensation that only went away with gallons of ice cold water.
His upstairs neighbours were being even louder now, as if they knew he was suffering and wanted to ensure it was ten times worse. Had they found a stray Mariachi band to be their roommates? Or picked up a hobby involving tap-dancing in boots made of stone?
He sighed, covered his ears with his hands and went back to sleep.
**
It was only when he woke for the second time he realised that he didn’t know how he’d gotten back into his bed the night before. Last he remembered, the guy from the bar and him had fucked in the kitchen and then – nothing. It was like he’d blacked out the rest of the night, but even when he drank his own weight in whisky he’d remember what he did the night before in the morning. This was often more of a curse than a blessing.
He threw out a hand and blindly groped for his phone, then pulled it close to his face so he didn’t have to move and stared at the time.
4:37pm, Sunday 19th June
3 missed calls, 2 new texts
He’d definitely slept in. It was only after a moment that the day next to the time hit him.
He stared at his phone, frowning, then decided that it wasn’t lying to him unless it had become sentient recently and decided to prank him. He’d gone out on Friday night. It was now Sunday. He’d lost a whole day? That seemed like more than the normal hangover recovery period. Maybe he’d been roofied. That guy had been awfully twitchy.
But, where had the guy even gone? Was he the one that had put Gerard to bed? It seemed like rather a maternal thing for a one-night stand to do, but maybe he didn’t enjoy leaving unconscious men on kitchen floors.
Gerard’s head was still pounding, but his limbs felt like they were doing a little better now. He sat up again. He held his breath for a moment, but no blackness rushed up to meet him, so he slowly shifted around so he could put his feet on the floor. The floor felt warm, which was new, because he didn’t turn on the heating most days. In fact, the whole room felt overly hot, and the air had an edge of stale mustiness to it. He wrinkled his nose up as he pulled himself to his feet.
He swayed for a moment, then found his balance. He had to brush his teeth because his mouth tasted like something had died in there, and if he had the energy, wash his face of Friday night’s shame, grime and leftover makeup.
Inside the bathroom, he glanced up into the mirror and froze.
He blinked, once, twice, then pinched his arm. Ow. Okay, so he wasn’t dreaming. The room swayed unhappily.
He didn’t have a reflection anymore.
**
At first he thought he was seeing things. He considered that he may still be drunk, but this was even beyond his normal drunken achievements. On a night out, he’d usually drink too much, vomit his guts up, cry a bit, and then fall asleep. It was a nice, solid routine. His reflection disappearing was not part of this plan.
He tried going out of the room and coming back, but that didn’t help. Maybe he should just pass out again, and everything would be back to normal when he woke up?
He didn’t get a chance to find out though, because on his second loop from his bedroom to his bathroom, he heard a crash in his hallway and froze. He lived alone – always had done – and whilst his apartment occasionally groaned and creaked, that was definitely not just the wind. He could hear voices and everything.
He poked his head warily around his bedroom door.
There was nothing there.
Taking a relieved breath, he turned around–
“Hi, we’re your new vampire guardians. Welcome to your new undead life. Any questions?”
“What the fuck.”
**
The two men who had mysteriously appeared behind him (somehow) in his bedroom took him by the arms and lead him into the lounge. One had very big, very wild hair which seemed to be fighting his face for the most attention, and the other was very frowny and very blond like a modern viking.
They took him to the couch and gently pushed him into a sitting position.
“Who are you? What the fuck is going on?” Gerard demanded, because they hadn’t yet explained the whole ‘Welcome to your undead life’ thing, which he felt was important.
“You’re dead,” the guy with big hair said. “Technically undead. You’re a vampire, specifically. And we're here to be your new vampire guardians. Weren’t you listening?
“What the fuck,” Gerard said again. He felt that summed it up aptly.
“You should check your pulse,” one said. Gerard didn’t catch which one was speaking, but obediently he curled his fingers up and pressed them to his neck, and sure as hell, there was no tell-tale thud of his heart even though he swore he could feel it still racing in his chest.
“How are you feeling?” Frowny Viking didn’t seem to care about the answer, but it was nice of him to ask.
“Like I’ve crawled out of my own grave in search of fresh brains.” Gerard was freaking out, but he thought that was understandable. In his experience, once someone was dead, they were supposed to stay dead. That’s what the Discovery Channel had taught him via the scarring medium of baby animals being eaten.
“Wrong undead,” Frowny Viking said. “You’re a vampire, not a zombie.”
Despite the many books and movies Gerard had seen and read, he'd never actually stopped to consider that vampires could be real. And if they were, what else could be real? It seemed a bit far-fetched that a corpse could drink blood and stay – well, not living, but certainly walking around. His head swam slightly.
“Does that matter right now? I’m – fucking dead, man. I wanted to do so much shit with my life before I died!”
Gerard was pretty sure he wasn’t meant to become a vampire. It hadn’t really been in his after Art School plans. He’d thought he might settle down in a nice little place, with less annual murders than his hometown, and draw a bit and even put money in a pension. That’s what adults did, right?
But apparently that was too much to hope for.
“You still can,” the guy said. “Like, nothing’s stopping you.”
Gerard leapt to his feet, aghast at how casually he was treating his death. That wasn’t very good manners. “Except being dead.”
“What did you want? Fucking ballet dancing at your funeral? Get over it, we all did.”
Big Hair Guy sighed. “Bob,” he said, low like a warning.
After a few minutes of pacing, and then a few more minutes of freaking out, and then a few minutes of chanting ‘What the fuck’ under his breath, Gerard recovered enough to point a shaky finger at the guy with the hair. “How the fuck do I know you’re telling the truth?”
The guy made a pinched face in response, as if he’d been expecting this question and wasn’t looking forward to having to answer. He bent down to his calf, slid a knife out of a holster that Gerard hadn’t even noticed, then he held out his arm to Gerard. “Look.”
Then, calmly, he slit his wrist.
Gerard went to shriek and jump backwards, but instead of red blood spurting out and redecorating his entire apartment, only a tiny trickle of sluggish black liquid swelled up. It smelled – wrong. Stale, somehow, like old metallic paint mixed with mud, not the coppery tang of fresh blood. Gerard could taste it in the back of his throat.
“Do you want to check my pulse too?” the guy asked as he slid the knife back into its holder and brought his wrist up to his mouth. He ran his tongue over the wound and it seemed to twist up, skin pulling together. It was still there, red and angry, but it wasn’t bleeding and it wasn’t gaping open anymore.
“I think I’m good,” Gerard said, trying to swallow back his nausea. Could vampires even vomit? He’d have to ask them that. He glanced around the room and stared at the pale sunlight filtering through his half-closed blinds. “Hold on a minute. It’s fucking, daylight. And you’re up? Isn’t that against like, every vampire characterisation ever?”
Bob grunted. “Do we really have to the do whole 'explain the lore' shit, Ray?”
The guy with all the hair – Ray – looked like he’d been over this same argument more than once. He just sighed. “I mean, that is our job, Bob. You know, as seniors, we should take fledglings under our wings, make sure they don't slaughter half of New York again.”
Gerard wasn’t proud of how high-pitched his voice went when he said, “Again?”
“Look, let’s sit down and have a nice long chat,” Ray said patiently.
**
Gerard sat stiffly on his couch, and Ray perched awkwardly on the edge of the armchair next to it. Bob declined to take a seat, hovering in the corner and looking dark and mysterious, like, Gerard, supposed, vampires were meant to look.
“Here,” Ray said, tossing a packet Gerard’s way that he’d recovered from the messenger bag he was carrying. Gerard didn’t think it was very undead to use a messenger bag, but apparently they were useful whether you were alive or not. “Drink up, you’ll need it.”
Gerard caught the packet without trying to, which surprised him because he’d always been a clumsy motherfucker. He held it up to see what it actually was. It looked a bit like a Capri Sun but without any branding, just plain silver. Something about it made his nose twitch, but he couldn’t figure out what. He ripped the straw off the side and stabbed it through the top of the carton, then took a long drink. At first, he wasn’t impressed at it. It was lukewarm and tasted off somehow, as if it was unnatural to drink it. But when he swallowed, he changed his mind entirely. His mouth and throat burst with flavour, a sweet-sour rush with a twist of heat.
He took another long drink, enjoying the slide of it down his parched throat. Until that point, he hadn’t realised quite how thirsty he’d been. “What is this?”
Ray looked quietly amused at how fast he was gulping it down. “That one? O Negative I think. They all have their own flavour. I like those ones, though.”
Gerard choked on the current mouthful of liquid he had – “It’s blood?”
Bob looked unimpressed. “What part of vampire did you not understand? Was it the dead part, or the bloodsucker part?”
Gerard wanted to retch, wanted to throw it up, but he couldn’t make himself. It tasted so good. His eyes watered at the idea.
Ray reached over and touched his shoulder, apparently seeking to comfort him. “Dude, relax. It’s all donated. Totally cruelty-free.”
“Oh my god,” Gerard moaned, throwing the empty packet on the floor. “I need some water.”