Well, always is more accurate than lately, but lately is a part of always. The point is that his patience is not an especially robust specimen of the breed.
“’Any teenager’,” replies Jay, echoing Blake’s own words. “I’m not like Bette or Ash. I’m not like… I’m not even like Sofie, or Min. I’m not a vampire, or a kid permanently infected with the virus. I’m just nobody. Any teenager, like you said.”
Blake snorts. “Surely this isn’t a case of low self-esteem? From you? My dear boy -“ Blake has to pause to laugh a little at the memory. “- I have seen you wipe the smirk from the face of the cattiest crowd-watcher with nothing but a pointed glance and a cocked set of your head. You can’t possibly -“
“Shut up!” Jay says, and when his eyes meet Blake’s they’re burning and bright, anger and fragility and a glitter of emotion. “Don’t. Just, don’t. Please shut up. I’m not an idiot and I don’t want you to treat me like one. I’d rather you killed me now than treated me like… fuck…”
Words faltering, Jay turns away, pacing back and forth with an agitated gait, running long thin fingers through his ridiculous hairstyle distractedly. “I thought I could handle this. I figured that was why we worked so well, you know, because I didn’t have any illusions about it. I’m just some kid you bit who you decided not to kill, and you liked me enough to keep me around, and I liked you enough to get kept around.
“And we worked like that, or at least we did until right now, because I’m fucking it up like an idiot. We worked like that because I know how it goes. I know this isn’t some book or TV show where some high school kid turns out to be the vampire’s soul mate and they stay in love forever and the vampire promises to be there even when the kid gets old and boring. I know this… I know it’s not… and I tried to keep on not giving a shit, but then my birthday came and I got to thinking, how long? How long before he gets bored of me, before he wants somebody else instead? And that’s why I didn’t tell you, because I’ve gone and fucked it up and I actually give a shit about being with you, and I don’t want it to end.”
Jay scrubs the back of his hand across his eyes, breath ragged as he raises his chin defiantly and waits for a response. Blake steps forward, crowding in close against Jay’s body, forcing Jay to take the two steps backwards, which bring his shoulder blades flush against the wall. The skin of Jay’s cheeks is heated under Blake’s palms as he cups the boy’s face, wiping one errant tear away with the pad of his thumb.
“My occasional penchant for the melodramatic seems to be affecting your own responses to the world,” he tells Jay absently, concentrating for a moment on the quickened pulse rushing in the veins of Jay’s throat. “You absurd creature. Even in the narrow vision of youth, you cannot seriously think that at barely sixteen I would begin to think you had become too old to be of interest? I have enjoyed lovers who were more than five times your age, and most of them knew considerably more about the fascinating intricacies of the world than I learn from your interminable screeds about the merits of local bands and coffee shops. Believe me, your youth is a trial I endure, not a beautiful and soon-lost blush on a rose.”
Jay gives a shaky, somewhat unconvinced laugh. “Occasional? Try constant. And by the way, you still suck at romantic conversation.”
Blake’s thumb ghosts over the line of Jay’s cheekbone again. “Indeed. It seems, in fact, we have reached similar states of frustration and upset over our individual predicaments. You are a bratty, self-obsessed idiot of a child -“
“Hey, look who’s talking,” Jay objects, but a smile has found its way to his mouth, and Blake is glad of the sight. He leans in and kisses that smile, tasting the unhappiness and uncertainty still lingering behind it.
“And I concede that I am hardly heir to the tradition of brooding vampire lovers which fictions delight over.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
“And despite that,” Blake goes on, turning Jay and walking him back toward the edge of the bed, speaking all the while. “Regardless of all our best intentions, we appear to have fallen horribly in love with one another.”
The words make Jay stop mid-step and stumble, and he ends up sitting down abruptly on the mattress, staring up at Blake in surprise. “What?”
“Even the most thrilling hunt pales for me these days, because no prey has the sound of your unique heartbeat, the taste of your skin,” replies Blake, sitting down beside Jay and pulling Jay’s t-shirt up and off in a practised motion. He presses his face to the bare curve of Jay’s shoulder, inhaling that sharp human sweat-scent, nuzzling at the base of Jay’s neck until Jay’s breath catches. “I help you fasten your watch for school and wonder if you’d let me buckle it a notch too tight, if you’d feel the pinch at your wrist all day if I did, over scars I left on you, and if that would keep you from concentrating on your classes.
“I try to sleep and instead find myself thinking of what would happen if you found you loved that sensation so much that you’d want a collar instead of merely a watchband. I like that notion, I must confess. The thought of you sitting in your lessons, distracted by a gentle insistence against your throat, a pressure reminding you that you are mine.”
Jay makes a soft, needy noise in the back of his throat, arching into Blake’s touch. Jay is almost trembling, his breaths erratic, doubtlessly overwhelmed by the gamut of extreme emotions this night has offered. Blake sits up, smoothing one hand down Jay’s chest to rest atop the beat of his heart. Jay’s eyes are dark, his lower lip flushed and pink from being caught between his teeth. There are tears caught in the inky feathers of his lashes.
Settling both of them back against the pillows, Blake makes himself comfortable against the curve of Jay’s neck, brushing his lips against the skin again in another light kiss, and then another.
“Blake,” Jay sobs out, helpless, fingers clutching at Blake’s arm convulsively, his breath harsh and gasping. “Blake,
please.”
If Blake tried to speak now, he knows his own voice would sound hoarse, roughened out of its usual smoothness, even though his breathing is little more than an anecdotal quirk of evolution now. His mouth and throat feel parched and cracked, aching, and the shudder of release that goes through him as he pushes his fangs through the skin and into the hot red heat beneath is almost as pronounced as Jay’s own full-body shiver.
Jay writhes restlessly as Blake drinks, lost in the total abandonment to sensation that only teenagers and lunatics remember the trick to achieving.
Aside from the occasional need to demand, cajole, or plead that Blake hurry up and bite, Jay has always been remarkable in his silence when Blake drinks from him. The only sounds in the room are the whispers of their bodies against the sheets as they move, the erratic stutter of Jay’s breaths— there is still the catch of a sob to the sound, overwhelmed tears trailing down across Jay’s temples— and, lastly, the small wet noises from where Blake gulps at the throb of life which slicks his lips and tongue with coppery warmth.
He fastens his mouth around the bite and sucks hard, shocking a sharp whine out of Jay.
Sometimes they do this up against the wall, because Blake loves how Jay goes pliant and heavy, how he sways against Blake as the blood loss begins to make him dizzy, how Blake can slip one hand under his knees and press the other against the small of his back and carry him to bed when they’re done. But Blake loves this as well, the intimacy of it, the ‘blood-dark mockery of the marriage bed.’ That’s what Nell had called it once, in one of her poems. She never was a very good poet; her lines always sounded as if they were meant to have music to accompany them.
Blake wants to tell Jay about Nell, about her poems and her soft dark hair and the three other vampires she referred to as her brothers and her tendency to fall in love with people who would break her sharp little heart.
He wants to tell Jay all of that, and about all the others too. Blake wants to summon all the ghosts of those he’s known, so that he might share their memories with his bea
utiful boy.
He wants to tell Jay about his girls: tall, emotive Caroline, always called Callie, who’d never called him Papa except when she wanted to annoy him; Henrietta’s shy voice and vivid mind and dark, thick eyelashes; Daisy’s fiery temper and sudden startle of a laugh.
He wants to tell Jay about his cousin Mathilda, always Till to him, and how she’d known what he’d become as soon as she’d seen him for the first time since his death. How unafraid she’d been. How he’d still been the one she’d turned to, when her husband died of pneumonia one winter and left her a widowed mother at twenty-two, with three little daughters to care for already. Blake wonders what Till would think of Jay, what she’d think of Lily and Will, if she’d notice how much alike his ways of governing his little pack of vampires are to the ways he’d had of raising children.
He hasn’t thought of Till this much in a long time. Her memory is fond but faded, like a photograph left framed in the path of sunbeams for too long, yellowed behind glass. The loss of her became a healed scar years and years and years ago.
Blake doesn’t want Jay to become that. Never. The thought that this lively, snide, clever boy with his lovely face and sardonic quips might one day be a dim and distant twinge of history, just another remembered happiness, makes Blake’s chest ache. He cannot stand the thought of Jay being lost to the past.
And so there it is. The simple truth, beyond all considerations the decision might warrant from a rational mind: Blake does not want to be parted from Jay.
Ever.
ASH
It’s strange, but Ash knows that she’s dreaming right away, as soon as the dream starts. Usually she doesn’t know if something’s a dream or not until afterwards, and sometimes even then she hasn’t been absolutely sure: too many pills at a party, or, later, not enough blood, and everything got too-bright and blurry and disconnected, and Ash didn’t know what was real or what wasn’t.
But this, she knows this is a dream, and that much is a certainty because Jenna is beside her, and the sun is bright through the window onto the carpet where they’re sitting together. The brightness doesn’t hurt on Ash’s skin, and she turns her forearm in the light, soaking in the warmth against her paleness and wishing it were real. Jenna is painting her own toenails a pretty pale blue shade, the gloss speckled with glitter of a deeper blue, and humming to herself happily. Ash feels as if her heart is going to break.
“I miss you,” she tells Jenna, the words catching in her throat and coming out even sadder, quieter than she intended. Jenna looks up, blonde ponytail bouncing merrily with the movement, and gives Ash the same half-kind, half-condescending smile that Jenna always gave her when she was being a crybaby.
“I miss you too. You should come to my grave more often, bitch. I get that skulking around in a graveyard at night is seriously morbid, even for a freako like you, but come on. You’ll slather on the sunblock to go to school, but not to come visit me? That’s lame. Incredibly lame.” Jenna shakes her head witheringly. “There’re gonna be all these gorgeous flowers there when spring comes. It’s gonna be beautiful. You have to swear you’ll come, or I’m gonna make you sorry.”
“I’ll come. I promise,” Ash says, and then finds herself smiling, even though she feels like crying. Dreams can be weird like that. “I should have known that even the imaginary you in my head would be a bully.”
Jenna rolls her eyes. “Please. Like you could ever capture my brilliance properly with just your imagination. Not likely.” Jenna begins another layer of polish on her toenails, face stilled in concentration on the task. “We lost our chance, but someone else’s is coming soon. You can save the sister then, for my sake.”
The sunlight is so warm. Ash wishes she could stay in it forever, here with Jenna. “Is talking in ridiculous riddles part of the whole ghost deal, or is that just you being unhelpful? Cryptic clues are lame.”
Jenna smiles wolfishly, her perfect white even teeth gleaming as she laughs. “I know. Sorry about that.” Then her face grows serious. “You’re not looking after yourself, kiddo.” She sounds gently scolding, concerned. Ash blushes in shame.
“I know. I know. It’s just… it’s so hard. You’re gone and I’m always hungry and I’m always cold and it’s all so -“
Scowling at Ash, Jenna huffs out a huge sigh, putting the nail polish bottle aside. “God, would you listen to yourself? Whine, whine, whine, god, you’re as bad as that freako Bette girl you hang out with now. You’re such a loser. You got a shitty deal and you’re sorry for yourself, I get it. Jesus, do I ever get it. It sucks. So, what, that’s it? We’re gonna let this get the best of us? Fuck no!” She reaches out, laying her hand on Ash’s arm. Jenna feels as warm as sunlight.
“This isn’t you. Blue hair and being a wretched little ghoul who sits around being gloomy is not the modus operandi of any sister I had, got it? Snap the hell out of it, honey. It’s time to wake up.”
When she opens her eyes the room around her is dark, the curtains drawn tight against the morning light, the air stuffy and breathless and close around her. She turns her bedside light on and reaches for her phone.
“Michelle, it’s Ashley. Gimme a call when you get this message, okay? I need your help with some stuff when you get out of school.”
~
The dye Michelle buys is almost the exact shade that Ash’s hair was before it went white. They bleach the blue out and the peroxide makes the bathroom smell rank, and then they put the red on and wait for it to set.
She isn’t the Ashley that she was before. She could never be, not anymore. Not after dying. After becoming Ash. But now she feels like maybe she hasn’t lost as much of who she was as she thought she had. Maybe she’s still that person, just that person after a lot of stuff changed everything. She can be Ashley and Ash and this new, third option, all at once, maybe.
Her mom and dad are out attending some work thing, as usual, so it’s just her and Michelle in the house. They put the TV on but there’s nothing to watch, even though the satellite channels Ashley’s dad put in are supposed to get the best programming from all over the world.
“You okay?” Michelle asks, which is a fair question. Ashley knows she’s acting more like her old self than she has in a long time, since before she died. Maybe since before Jenna died. And that’s different enough to elicit comment, and so the comments deserve an answer.
Ashley shrugs. “No, not really. But that’s doesn’t seem as awful now as it used to. Not being okay, I mean. I think I’m okay with being not okay.”
Michelle smiles, reaching out to squeeze Ashley’s hand. “That’s good. That’s really good. I’m glad.”
Ashley remembers the first time she talked to Michelle, after coming back from the dead. Jay and Tommy said that they hadn’t told Michelle anything about vampires being real or anything, and so Ash had been totally terrified of what was going to happen. Would Michelle even believe her? Was there going to be an epic freak-out scene?
But all that happened was that the two of them sat down, and Ash had started to stammer, and Michelle mercifully cut her off and said “Ash, I’m crazy, but I’m not stupid.”
“Hey, Michelle,” Ashley asks her now. “Can I ask about the crazy stuff? I mean, I figure you probably don’t talk about it because knowing would make people be weird around you, but I think our friendship’s moved beyond that by now, right?”
Michelle looks wary, despite Ashley’s assurances, but then seems to relent a little, her shoulders relaxing slightly. “I don’t know, it’s not like it’s dramatic or anything. I’m just sort of mixed up in my head. The diagnosis is ‘borderline personality disorder’, or at least that’s one of the diagnosises— diagnoses? I don’t know what the plural for that is— that I’ve heard. But I think that’s bullshit, because that’s one of those things that can mean anything from being kind of moody to being a full-fledged miniature psychopath in training.
“I don’t think I’m either of those. I think there’s just a chemical missing, or
too much of one, or a broken synapse in my head. Maybe the people in the Middle Ages were right and there’s a balance of different colored humors we’re meant to have inside us. That makes as much sense to me as anything. I have the wrong balance of humors in me. Ever since I was a really little kid. My mom found me scrubbing my arm with steel wool when I was just a toddler.
“She thought I was trying to scrub the black off my skin— which is way, way fucked up, but I wish that had been what it really was. A kid thinking she’ll turn white if she washes hard enough is some seriously sick shit, but even worse is a girl who’s barely more than a baby and already wants to hurt herself just so she feels something. I don’t know. It’s just… it’s just always there and it never stops. Like a voice in my brain. So sometimes I get shut up in mental hospitals for a while or go on pills or whatever, and still none of it helps for long. I’m okay right now; this is the longest I’ve ever been okay for, but… I’m so scared it’s temporary. I’m so fucking scared.”
Ashley waits until Michelle seems to have calmed down, the tremble in her hands settling back to its normal almost-imperceptible level. Then Ashley gives her friend a crooked smile, sympathetic and a little wry.
“What a pair we are, huh? The temporarily sane. Thank god nobody expects us to save the world or anything. We’d fuck it up for sure.”
BLAKE
It’s been many years since Blake worried that a human asleep beside him might be in danger from Blake’s own slumberous state.
There was a time when it concerned him, when Daisy— always Daisy, who was too inquisitive and contrary for her own good or for the good of those around her— used to steal the key to Blake’s rooms from the ring her mother kept it on, tied to the belt of her dress.
Sometimes with her sisters in tow, sometimes alone, Daisy would carefully unlock the door and open it ever so slightly, just a crack, not enough for the thin beam of sunlight to strike Blake’s skin, not enough to rouse him. She’d peep in, giggling quietly, and then shut the door and run away again.
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