Fic: Hayfever
Title: Hayfever
Fandom: Fright Night 2011
Rating: T
Disclaimer: If I owned it, the gay would be way more obvious.
Summary: When Charley looks out his window one evening, he isn't surprised as he probably should be to see Jerry standing in his mother's garden.
Note: Once upon a time, scrapbullet and I had a long conversation about how adorable Jerry would be with allergies. Forever later, that plot bunny returned to my brain.
Hayfever
Charley's been preparing, ever since that day. He's always known it was too good to be true, Jerry just vanishing like that. He tries to live his life, tries to be normal, but in his spare time he's been sharpening stakes, filling bottles of holy water, getting ready for the day when Jerry comes back.
So when Charley looks out his window one evening, just after sunset, he isn't as surprised as he probably should be to see Jerry standing in his mother's garden. What does surprise him, when he gets to the front window with a stake in one hand and holy water in the other, is the fact that Jerry seems to be in the clutches of a violent sneezing fit. Charley pushes the window halfway open, carefully checking that the screen is firmly in the frame, and the gooey, miserable sounds of a man with allergies reach his ears. It's... kind of pathetic, actually.
Jerry looks up with watery eyes and sees Charley at the window. "What the hell did she plant?" he asks thickly.
"Uhh... roses, petunias... she tried something new, I think?" He points, thinking how weird this is. "That yellow one there, maybe? Those look new."
Jerry leans closer, and frowns, sneezing on the plants in question. "Goldenrod? Really? Why the--" He's cut off as the breeze shifts, and he's seized by another fit of sneezing.
Charley watches, debating something. Finally, he sighs. "Hang on," he says. He walks to the kitchen and flips the switch on the kettle, sticking a teabag in a mug. After a minute, he pours the boiling water in, adds honey, and takes the mug to the front door. Checking through the window to make sure that Jerry is nowhere near the door, Charley opens it and sets the mug just on the other side of the threshold. Jerry, who looked up when the door opened and immediately sneezed again, tilts his head slightly, walking over. Charley steps back. "You are not invited in," he says firmly.
Jerry's evil chuckle is cut off as he coughs on the gunk in his throat, and Charley can't help but smile at the vampire's clear embarrassment. As Jerry sniffles miserably, Charley takes a step to the side, grabs the Kleenex box from next to the sofa, and tosses it out to the porch. After a moment, Jerry steps right up to the door. "Thanks, guy." He picks up the tea, looking at it speculatively. "You didn't put holy water in this, did you?"
Charley curses. "Goddammit, I should have thought of that!" Jerry snorts, then grabs a tissue to clean off the snot that dripped out at that one. "Ew," Charley says. He watches as Jerry casually sticks a finger (thank god not from the hand he's been sneezing into) into the near-boiling tea. When he takes it out, it's burned, but not burning.
"Can't believe you didn't think of that," he says, taking a sip. "Ooh, honey. Nice."
Charley blinks, realizing he's standing awkwardly in front of his own front door after giving a mug of tea to the monster he should be killing. "Uhhhh..." he says, thankful his mom's in bed with her earplugs in.
Jerry raises an eyebrow. "Awkward, right?" His voice sounds a little better after the tea.
"Yeah..." Charley says.
"That hurt, you know," Jerry says conversationally. He takes another sip, sighing in contentment.
"What did?" Charley asks. He shifts awkwardly from one foot to the other.
Jerry grins, sitting down on the front porch. He leans against the wall, gesturing for Charley to sit down on the inside. "Getting set on fire and staked. Pretty good aim, by the way."
"Yeah, about that," Charley bursts out, settling, legs crossed, against the open door, "how the hell did you survive?"
After taking a moment to blow his nose, neatly adding the balled-up tissue to the pile next to him, Jerry laughs. "I said you had pretty good aim, Charley. I didn't say you had perfect aim."
Charley rolls his eyes. "Do I actually have to get the exact middle of the heart or something?"
"Well, if you wanted to get technical," Jerry says, taking a gulp of the cooling tea, "you need to get into things like aortae and ventricles and atria, and where those all are. But... yeah, you basically need to get lucky."
Charley snorts. "Guess I'm fucked, then."
Jerry's eyes flick across Charley's body. "You could be."
Charley sputters. "What?"
Jerry grins. "You heard me." The effect is somewhat lost due to the amount of phlegm in his voice, but Charley's eyes widen.
"Uh... uh... buh..." Charley stammers, mouthing like a surprised fish. Jerry nearly tips over on the porch, laughing hysterically. Charley silently thanks god for those earplugs again, face red. "Hey!" he protests. "Don't laugh at me!"
Jerry wipes tears from his eyes. "Whoo, that was funny," he wheezes. Charley can't really find it in himself to be sorry when Jerry starts coughing. When Jerry catches his breath again, he looks back at Charley, smirking. "Would I be your first, or did you and Amy ever manage to actually do it?"
Face red, Charley looks away. "We... we..." He looks back, sees Jerry grinning, and suddenly he's angry. "You know what, I don't have to talk about this with you. I could have killed you by now, you know that, right?"
Jerry shrugs. "Probably, yeah. But you haven't." Charley glares. He doesn't really know what to say, because fuck, he hasn't killed Jerry, and why not, but he figures he can make up for that with a really solid glare. If looks could kill and all that.
Instead of dying, however, Jerry's just back to leering. Charley finds himself nearly squirming in discomfort. "You know that's damn creepy, right?" he says eventually.
Jerry laughs, gulping down the rest of the tea. "Creepy? Me, a vampire, be creepy? How dare I?"
Charley suddenly remembers something random. "I get the whole symbolic thing where holy water and sunlight and Jesus are probably bad for incarnations of evil or whatever," he says in a rush, "but what the hell's up with the garlic?"
"Well," Jerry says, looking amused. "Funny story, that. Turns out there's kind of a sliding scale of harm."
"What do you mean?"
"You know how all that other stuff hurts, burns, kills, all that?"
"Yeah."
"Garlic causes indigestion."
Charley blinks. "Seriously?"
"Promise."
Charley leans his head back against the door. "That's so... lame."
Jerry nods. "It really is, yeah." He's turning the mug around in his hands, looking at the teabag sitting soggily at the bottom. He's silent then, seeming lost in thought, and Charley finds himself looking at Jerry, thinking about how normal he seems right now, wondering how the hell this is the same monster who hurt so many people. His eyes wander across the biceps, the teeth, the mouth, the eyes, and he finds himself looking at Jerry's hair.
"How do you do your hair?" Charley asks.
"What?" Jerry says, looking confused.
"I mean, if you don't show up in mirrors or cameras, then... how do you do your hair? Wait, for that matter, how do you try on jeans, or catch stains on your shirt or whatever?"
Jerry laughs, putting the mug next to the threshold. When he draws his hand back, Charley grabs the mug, putting it down just inside. "It's a challenge," Jerry admits. "Especially the bloodstains. Very drippy things, humans are."
Charley swallows, remembering how Doris looked before she died. He's gripping the stake again, the stake that's been sitting on the floor this whole time. Jerry sees, and smiles. "I haven't been invited in, remember?"
"Didn't stop you before."
Jerry nods. "True, true. But honestly, right now I don't feel up to that kind of heavy duty work. Especially not with the stripper I got locked up back home."
Charley's stomach lurches. Shit. Shit. Jerry's got someone else, another Doris, and Charley's been helping him, giving him tea, shit! He stumbles to his feet, swinging the stake wildly, but Jerry's ready. The moment Charley's hand passes over the threshold, Jerry grabs it, yanks him out onto the porch. Charley's slammed up against the wall of his own damn house, arm pinned, stake dropping from nerveless fingers as Jerry squeezes his wrist. He twists desperately, shouting, but Jerry's mouth is at his throat, and he's whispering, "Shut up or I do it."
Charley swallows violently, a couple tears of panic tracing their way down his face. Jerry licks his throat, tongue hot against Charley's skin, and Charley whimpers, knees shaking, heart racing, because oh god he just doesn't want to die. Not like this, not on his own porch, not next to the little pile of tissues he gave Jerry. He thinks of his mom, doesn't want her to find the blood and know, or suspect.
"Relax," Jerry murmurs next to Charley's ear. "I have a meal back home, I told you."
"Then what are you doing?" Charley asks, voice shaking. He feels something slice across the side of his neck, can't help it as he shouts, "No!" and Jerry's just chuckling, holding up a knife so Charley can see it.
"I said relax, Charley." He's licking up the blood, and Charley can feel Jerry's tongue, never moving high enough to touch the open skin, and he feels tears burning his eyes again.
"Please," he chokes, shaking wildly, eyes screwed shut.
Jerry's in front of Charley, lips red, eyes still human, when Charley opens his eyes again. "Relax," he says again, hand against Charley's face. "I'm not going to kill you tonight." Spotting the obvious loophole, Charley moves wildly, trying to break free. Jerry rolls his eyes. "Or turn you," he adds.
"Then what are you doing?" Charley asks again, trying (and failing) to control the fear in his voice.
Jerry's lips are suddenly on his, moving slowly, and when Charley opens his mouth to yell, Jerry's tongue is there with the taste of his own blood. Jerry pulls back, licking his lips, easily holding Charley in place. "Playing," he answers.
Charley's damn near pissing himself, and Jerry just grins, kissing him again. When Jerry steps back, Charley's knees buckle, and his hand closes around the stake at his feet. He's shaking too badly to stand, so he just scrambles backward until he's over the threshold, clutching the stake like a lifeline. Jerry laughs, looking down at him. "Offer still stands, kid. Gimme a call, next time you need a lay." Charley's eyes are wide, and even after Jerry walks away (sneezing loudly as he passes the garden), it takes him a moment to get to his feet and close the door. When it's locked tight, he turns around and leans against it, sliding down to the floor.
Charley finds himself staring at Jerry's mug. He sniffles, rubbing the dried blood on his neck, and kicks it over.
Fandom: Fright Night 2011
Rating: T
Disclaimer: If I owned it, the gay would be way more obvious.
Summary: When Charley looks out his window one evening, he isn't surprised as he probably should be to see Jerry standing in his mother's garden.
Note: Once upon a time, scrapbullet and I had a long conversation about how adorable Jerry would be with allergies. Forever later, that plot bunny returned to my brain.
Hayfever
Charley's been preparing, ever since that day. He's always known it was too good to be true, Jerry just vanishing like that. He tries to live his life, tries to be normal, but in his spare time he's been sharpening stakes, filling bottles of holy water, getting ready for the day when Jerry comes back.
So when Charley looks out his window one evening, just after sunset, he isn't as surprised as he probably should be to see Jerry standing in his mother's garden. What does surprise him, when he gets to the front window with a stake in one hand and holy water in the other, is the fact that Jerry seems to be in the clutches of a violent sneezing fit. Charley pushes the window halfway open, carefully checking that the screen is firmly in the frame, and the gooey, miserable sounds of a man with allergies reach his ears. It's... kind of pathetic, actually.
Jerry looks up with watery eyes and sees Charley at the window. "What the hell did she plant?" he asks thickly.
"Uhh... roses, petunias... she tried something new, I think?" He points, thinking how weird this is. "That yellow one there, maybe? Those look new."
Jerry leans closer, and frowns, sneezing on the plants in question. "Goldenrod? Really? Why the--" He's cut off as the breeze shifts, and he's seized by another fit of sneezing.
Charley watches, debating something. Finally, he sighs. "Hang on," he says. He walks to the kitchen and flips the switch on the kettle, sticking a teabag in a mug. After a minute, he pours the boiling water in, adds honey, and takes the mug to the front door. Checking through the window to make sure that Jerry is nowhere near the door, Charley opens it and sets the mug just on the other side of the threshold. Jerry, who looked up when the door opened and immediately sneezed again, tilts his head slightly, walking over. Charley steps back. "You are not invited in," he says firmly.
Jerry's evil chuckle is cut off as he coughs on the gunk in his throat, and Charley can't help but smile at the vampire's clear embarrassment. As Jerry sniffles miserably, Charley takes a step to the side, grabs the Kleenex box from next to the sofa, and tosses it out to the porch. After a moment, Jerry steps right up to the door. "Thanks, guy." He picks up the tea, looking at it speculatively. "You didn't put holy water in this, did you?"
Charley curses. "Goddammit, I should have thought of that!" Jerry snorts, then grabs a tissue to clean off the snot that dripped out at that one. "Ew," Charley says. He watches as Jerry casually sticks a finger (thank god not from the hand he's been sneezing into) into the near-boiling tea. When he takes it out, it's burned, but not burning.
"Can't believe you didn't think of that," he says, taking a sip. "Ooh, honey. Nice."
Charley blinks, realizing he's standing awkwardly in front of his own front door after giving a mug of tea to the monster he should be killing. "Uhhhh..." he says, thankful his mom's in bed with her earplugs in.
Jerry raises an eyebrow. "Awkward, right?" His voice sounds a little better after the tea.
"Yeah..." Charley says.
"That hurt, you know," Jerry says conversationally. He takes another sip, sighing in contentment.
"What did?" Charley asks. He shifts awkwardly from one foot to the other.
Jerry grins, sitting down on the front porch. He leans against the wall, gesturing for Charley to sit down on the inside. "Getting set on fire and staked. Pretty good aim, by the way."
"Yeah, about that," Charley bursts out, settling, legs crossed, against the open door, "how the hell did you survive?"
After taking a moment to blow his nose, neatly adding the balled-up tissue to the pile next to him, Jerry laughs. "I said you had pretty good aim, Charley. I didn't say you had perfect aim."
Charley rolls his eyes. "Do I actually have to get the exact middle of the heart or something?"
"Well, if you wanted to get technical," Jerry says, taking a gulp of the cooling tea, "you need to get into things like aortae and ventricles and atria, and where those all are. But... yeah, you basically need to get lucky."
Charley snorts. "Guess I'm fucked, then."
Jerry's eyes flick across Charley's body. "You could be."
Charley sputters. "What?"
Jerry grins. "You heard me." The effect is somewhat lost due to the amount of phlegm in his voice, but Charley's eyes widen.
"Uh... uh... buh..." Charley stammers, mouthing like a surprised fish. Jerry nearly tips over on the porch, laughing hysterically. Charley silently thanks god for those earplugs again, face red. "Hey!" he protests. "Don't laugh at me!"
Jerry wipes tears from his eyes. "Whoo, that was funny," he wheezes. Charley can't really find it in himself to be sorry when Jerry starts coughing. When Jerry catches his breath again, he looks back at Charley, smirking. "Would I be your first, or did you and Amy ever manage to actually do it?"
Face red, Charley looks away. "We... we..." He looks back, sees Jerry grinning, and suddenly he's angry. "You know what, I don't have to talk about this with you. I could have killed you by now, you know that, right?"
Jerry shrugs. "Probably, yeah. But you haven't." Charley glares. He doesn't really know what to say, because fuck, he hasn't killed Jerry, and why not, but he figures he can make up for that with a really solid glare. If looks could kill and all that.
Instead of dying, however, Jerry's just back to leering. Charley finds himself nearly squirming in discomfort. "You know that's damn creepy, right?" he says eventually.
Jerry laughs, gulping down the rest of the tea. "Creepy? Me, a vampire, be creepy? How dare I?"
Charley suddenly remembers something random. "I get the whole symbolic thing where holy water and sunlight and Jesus are probably bad for incarnations of evil or whatever," he says in a rush, "but what the hell's up with the garlic?"
"Well," Jerry says, looking amused. "Funny story, that. Turns out there's kind of a sliding scale of harm."
"What do you mean?"
"You know how all that other stuff hurts, burns, kills, all that?"
"Yeah."
"Garlic causes indigestion."
Charley blinks. "Seriously?"
"Promise."
Charley leans his head back against the door. "That's so... lame."
Jerry nods. "It really is, yeah." He's turning the mug around in his hands, looking at the teabag sitting soggily at the bottom. He's silent then, seeming lost in thought, and Charley finds himself looking at Jerry, thinking about how normal he seems right now, wondering how the hell this is the same monster who hurt so many people. His eyes wander across the biceps, the teeth, the mouth, the eyes, and he finds himself looking at Jerry's hair.
"How do you do your hair?" Charley asks.
"What?" Jerry says, looking confused.
"I mean, if you don't show up in mirrors or cameras, then... how do you do your hair? Wait, for that matter, how do you try on jeans, or catch stains on your shirt or whatever?"
Jerry laughs, putting the mug next to the threshold. When he draws his hand back, Charley grabs the mug, putting it down just inside. "It's a challenge," Jerry admits. "Especially the bloodstains. Very drippy things, humans are."
Charley swallows, remembering how Doris looked before she died. He's gripping the stake again, the stake that's been sitting on the floor this whole time. Jerry sees, and smiles. "I haven't been invited in, remember?"
"Didn't stop you before."
Jerry nods. "True, true. But honestly, right now I don't feel up to that kind of heavy duty work. Especially not with the stripper I got locked up back home."
Charley's stomach lurches. Shit. Shit. Jerry's got someone else, another Doris, and Charley's been helping him, giving him tea, shit! He stumbles to his feet, swinging the stake wildly, but Jerry's ready. The moment Charley's hand passes over the threshold, Jerry grabs it, yanks him out onto the porch. Charley's slammed up against the wall of his own damn house, arm pinned, stake dropping from nerveless fingers as Jerry squeezes his wrist. He twists desperately, shouting, but Jerry's mouth is at his throat, and he's whispering, "Shut up or I do it."
Charley swallows violently, a couple tears of panic tracing their way down his face. Jerry licks his throat, tongue hot against Charley's skin, and Charley whimpers, knees shaking, heart racing, because oh god he just doesn't want to die. Not like this, not on his own porch, not next to the little pile of tissues he gave Jerry. He thinks of his mom, doesn't want her to find the blood and know, or suspect.
"Relax," Jerry murmurs next to Charley's ear. "I have a meal back home, I told you."
"Then what are you doing?" Charley asks, voice shaking. He feels something slice across the side of his neck, can't help it as he shouts, "No!" and Jerry's just chuckling, holding up a knife so Charley can see it.
"I said relax, Charley." He's licking up the blood, and Charley can feel Jerry's tongue, never moving high enough to touch the open skin, and he feels tears burning his eyes again.
"Please," he chokes, shaking wildly, eyes screwed shut.
Jerry's in front of Charley, lips red, eyes still human, when Charley opens his eyes again. "Relax," he says again, hand against Charley's face. "I'm not going to kill you tonight." Spotting the obvious loophole, Charley moves wildly, trying to break free. Jerry rolls his eyes. "Or turn you," he adds.
"Then what are you doing?" Charley asks again, trying (and failing) to control the fear in his voice.
Jerry's lips are suddenly on his, moving slowly, and when Charley opens his mouth to yell, Jerry's tongue is there with the taste of his own blood. Jerry pulls back, licking his lips, easily holding Charley in place. "Playing," he answers.
Charley's damn near pissing himself, and Jerry just grins, kissing him again. When Jerry steps back, Charley's knees buckle, and his hand closes around the stake at his feet. He's shaking too badly to stand, so he just scrambles backward until he's over the threshold, clutching the stake like a lifeline. Jerry laughs, looking down at him. "Offer still stands, kid. Gimme a call, next time you need a lay." Charley's eyes are wide, and even after Jerry walks away (sneezing loudly as he passes the garden), it takes him a moment to get to his feet and close the door. When it's locked tight, he turns around and leans against it, sliding down to the floor.
Charley finds himself staring at Jerry's mug. He sniffles, rubbing the dried blood on his neck, and kicks it over.