Chapter Text
Brian learns that you shouldn't donate blood more often than once every eight weeks.
He figures he can probably shave that down to six, seven on the outside; guidelines are always more conservative than they need to be. So, he has six or seven weeks, give or take, to convince Patrick to bite him again.
The morning after it happens the first time, Brian rolls over to find Pat already awake, fearful and hopeful; it's so easy to turn to him, into his well-fed warmth, morning breath and all. But when Brian brings up the possibility of it happening again, Pat refuses so adamantly Brian's half-surprised there's not a Pat-shaped hole in his wall.
Are you kidding, Brian? I nearly killed you turns out to be a pretty good trump card.
Whatever's going to come of that conversation, though, is derailed when their phones chime simultaneously with new messages in Slack:
Tara:
Hey, can you two sync with me this morning, first thing? Thx.
Brian looks up from his phone to see Pat already looking at him, lip caught in his teeth. "Are we in for it?" Brian asks.
Pat sighs. "You'll probably be fine."
They get ready side-by-side, focusing on the mundane minutiae of getting out the door in something resembling clean clothes on Patrick and no visible wounds on Brian. They take the same train into work. Pat is a solicitous shadow: taking Brian's elbow when the train bounces, holding his water bottle between sips.
And they don't talk about it, even though Brian aches to, with a tight and anxious feeling in his chest that's worse than the dizziness, worse than the vaguely itchy feeling of his healing bites. Brian tries to, he needs to, but Pat's clenched jaw and tight, distant smile when he mutters 'not here, Brian' brook no discussion.
Brian looks around at the densely-packed train of commuters and slips his hand into his jacket pocket instead, leaning against the pole as the train rocks them together and apart.
—
Tara's got a box of doughnuts on her desk when they walk in together, which is either a good sign or one final kindness. She gestures to the box while looking expressly at Brian.
"You, take at least one, alright?" she says; an order, but a gentle one. Brian takes an apple fritter. "Both of you, sit, please."
They do, and she does as well, putting her elbows on her desk and steepling her fingers. "Alright," she says. "Tell me what you need to tell me about what happened last night."
Brian and Pat share a look, then:
"I bit Brian," Pat says.
"Pat and I are dating now," Brian says, at the same time. Pat turns his head to look at Brian, surprised.
Tara levels them with a look that's hard to interpret, then puts her face in her hands and sighs. "Okay. That makes this a little bit easier, thank God, there's actual forms for this." She opens her desk drawer and pulls out a manila folder. She takes out two sheets of paper and slides them over her desk. "Pat, you have to report that you bit a coworker—"
"He has to what?" Brian interjects, but Pat just nods and takes the form he's given.
"And between the both of you, you just have to file with HR that you're in a workplace relationship, so that's this one," she says, sliding the second form over to Brian. "It's a cover-your-ass thing in case you ever do something actionable, it's no big, they just wanna know."
"Brian has to sign this, when I'm done," Pat says, around the pen cap in his mouth as he scrawls on his form.
"Wh-why, though?" Brian asks, looking between Pat and Tara.
"Brian," Tara says, gently; "Pat's literally classified as a predator."
Beside him, Pat stiffens and pulls in a whistling breath through the hollow of the pen cap. Tara continues: "He’s legally obligated to report if he bites a living human, even if it's consensual. Which, I mean—" she says, gesturing between the both of them, "I'm assuming, here."
"Yeah, yeah, of course," Brian nods, emphatically. "It was definitely my idea."
Tara has the decency not to look relieved. "Great. Good. So, it's pretty much like any other workplace relationship; if you feel like your relationship creates a conflict of interest, tell me immediately, before it becomes a problem. As for PDA: if it could get you arrested for doing it in a park, you're not allowed to do it on the clock."
Pat coughs. "I'm, uh, technically not allowed to drink live blood in public," he says.
Tara sighs. "I—okay, that's true, but, I'm also not allowed to restrict your right to sustenance, under the Act. If Brian's your donor, you're fine as long as you're not literally in public. So, you're retroactively in the clear for whatever happened last night before the stream—please don't tell me, I don't want to know—and any time it might happen in the future. I don't have the form for that one, though, Brian; that's a Department of Sanguivore Affairs thing, if you wanna register as Pat's donor so you don't have to do this every time. There's classes and support groups and stuff."
"Not gonna happen," Pat mutters as he finishes and passes his form to Brian to sign.
Brian scans it; it looks like the form you fill out at the doctor's office, complete with a little anatomical illustration where Pat's already circled where he bit Brian the night before. Brian lightly touches where the bite's already scabbed over on his neck, the smooth-rough-smooth pattern of it. At the bottom is a bit of dense text about consent and liability, with Pat's tight-scrawl signature. Brian adds his and slides it back across the desk for Tara.
Tara blows out her breath through her lips and slips the form into her outbox. "Okay, thank you. I'll make sure that gets where it needs to go. You two get your stories straight about the HR one, get it back to me when you can."
"Okay, Tara," Pat and Brian answer, and Tara nods.
"Okay," she echoes, and then makes a show of taking off an imaginary hat and putting on a different one. When she does, a huge smile explodes across her face and she stands up from her chair. "Oh my god, you guys!"
Brian laughs as Tara runs around her desk and throws her arms around him. "You guys! I'm so happy! Patrick, get in here!" She reaches her arm out until she can grab Pat around the neck and haul him in, which he does grudgingly but with a smile. "How did it happen?! When?"
"You literally just said you didn't want to know," Pat grouses.
Tara releases them and sits on the edge of her desk, grabbing the box of doughnuts. "Brian, eat another," she says first, and then, "That was Boss Tara! Friend Tara wants to know! Spill!"
—
Tara eventually lets them off the hook fairly easily, after giving them both one more effusive hug and a reminder to please get the HR paperwork done when they can. They file out of her office with the distinct aura of men surprised they weren't fired.
"Holy smokes," Brian sighs, hand over his heart.
"I thought that was gonna go way worse for me, to be honest," Pat admits.
Brian stops walking, turning to face Pat. "Could it have?"
Pat looks off to the side, his lips thinning as he considers his words for a few seconds. "Yeah. If you had… well, you could have really blown up my spot, if you wanted to."
"Pat…" Brian says, and steps closer. Pat's hand is still warm when he laces their fingers together. It's the first recreational contact they've had since they woke up, with Brian cradled in Pat's arms. "Pat, I wouldn't have."
"You could have, though," Pat says. "If… if you'd thought about it overnight, and realized… how much danger you were in. How I could have…" he swallows and blinks a few times, rapidly. "How I could have really hurt you. Killed you. Turned you, if I wanted to."
"Did you?" Brian asks. "Want to? Any of it?"
Pat's face crumples, and he rubs his eyes with the heel of his free hand. "Yes," he whispers, miserably. "No? I don't know. I wasn't thinking."
Brian steps forward and wraps his arms around Pat's waist, with his head against Pat's shoulder. Pat's tense as hell, all up the tight corded muscle of his back as Brian runs his hand up and down Pat's spine. "You didn't. You stopped. It's fine."
"I wasn't going to," Pat mumbles into Brian's hair.
"You did."
Pat just holds Brian tighter, shaking his head—so unlike Brian, who'll come back to a point like a dog with a bone until there's no meat left on it. When he speaks again, his voice sounds strangled. "Don't—don't ask me to do it again."
"Okay," Brian says, turning his head so he can nod. "But… if you change your mind..."
"I won't," Pat replies, quickly. It sounds more like a promise than just a statement of fact.
Brian doesn't want to let go, so he doesn't, and Pat seems just as content to hold Brian against his chest. Tara's office isn't in a private area, exactly, but it's not in the bullpen either, and Brian doesn't want to go back to their separate desks just yet. He turns his head to Pat's shoulder and feels the gentle, arrhythmic rise and fall of his chest, the eerie absence of his heartbeat.
"It's neat you still breathe," Brian observes.
"I never got out of the habit," Pat says. "Older vampires sometimes do, if they go a long time without talking. Sometimes I forget. But you can't talk unless you have air in your lungs—that's physics, not magic."
"But you still, like, sigh and stuff."
Pat shrugs. "I was a sad, quiet human. You get used to communicating certain ways."
"You're a sad, quiet vampire," Brian says, dry.
Pat snorts. "Sometimes."
Brian closes his eyes as he feels Pat's fingers slip up his shoulders, up his neck, skirting around the scabby bite to alight gently at the base of his skull. Pat's thumb brushes his cheekbone. Pat takes another long breath, holding it before he speaks again. "So, we're dating now," he says, carefully.
Brian chews on his lip. "Yeah. I… hope so, anyway."
Pat's arm's circle him more purposefully as he ducks his head to press a kiss to the top of Brian's head. "I… okay," he murmurs, into Brian's hair, and then, even quieter, "...thank you."
"Pat," Brian's voice breaks, because that's so fucking sad he doesn't even know what to say. Instead, he pulls back to take Pat's face in his hands and tug him down until their lips meet. Pat's hesitant, keeping his teeth and tongue firmly behind his lips as Brian kisses him long and sweet, but his fingers dig into Brian where they touch, greedy anyway. As if Brian's still gonna change his mind.
They both jump when there's a small clunk from nearby: something small hitting the glass wall between them and Tara's office. Brian looks up to see Tara, exasperated but fond, brandishing a second pencil to throw.
"Really? In front of my salad?" Tara crows, waving them away. "Go to work!"
Pat laughs, embarrassed, and Brian steals another kiss up on his toes before Pat steps away to unnecessarily straighten his shirt.
"Do you wanna go tell Simone?" Brian asks, and Pat's face falls so comically that Tara has to shout at Brian again to stop laughing so loud and go make a viral video, for God's sake, Brian!
—
So that's the plan. Six or seven weeks, give or take.
Brian’s not a total fuckboy, and he's not gonna ask again, no matter how bad he wants the bite—and, god, isn't that just so funny, he's exactly what they called him on stream the night before. He scrolls through his Twitter mentions over yet another bottle of Gatorade. He's really coming to hate the taste, but he can't deny he feels light years better than he did last night already. Most people tweeting at him are just… worried for him. It sits poorly on Brian's shoulders.
So, no. The goal isn't to convince Pat to bite him, that's not quite right. No, he's got six or seven weeks to convince Pat that he's not a monster for wanting it, too.
Whatever happens after that? Well, that'll be up to Pat.