One Regret to Live Through [1/3]
Title: One Regret to Live Through
Author: Amanda, who goes by the aliasapodiopsys
Pairing: Danny Kurily/Ian Planet
Rating: NC-17 Overall
Summary: The one where a lot of people from bands are vampires and not that many people even die.
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters; the plot belongs to me. Please don't steal.
A/N: Notes in the masterpost!
tumblr is here
Master Post
As soon as the sun rises, Ian rises too. Danny keeps up the facade of sleeping a little bit longer; he likes lying in bed and doing nothing for hours and hours on end. Ian finds it a waste of time. He slips out of the bedroom, black jeans slung low on his hips. He doesn’t bother with a shirt. The rest of the house is still playing pretend, lying in beds behind closed doors pretending to be something they’re not. Ian doesn’t understand most of them. He misses Italy. This is unnatural to him. It doesn’t feel right.
Ian doesn’t like playing pretend, but he will for Danny.
The tiles on the kitchen floor are cold against his bare feet, and he thinks that maybe he should have picked up a pair of socks off of the floor. His hands work without thinking about it (coffee filter, coffee, two cups of water, turn the machine on.) Ian runs a hand through his hair, wonders vaguely why he even bothers with coffee when it isn’t necessary.
The only blood they have in the fridge is what Jeff can get from the blood bank without anyone noticing. Ian takes out a pack of AB negative, and his fangs make a soft shick! noise as they slide properly out of his gums before he’s even opened the bag. He holds it up to his mouth, nose wrinkling as he takes a mouthful.
Bagged blood doesn’t taste the same as it does fresh. It tastes dead, and that’s what Ian has the biggest problem with, dead tasting food when he’s been used to the real deal for so long. Dead blood tastes better then animal blood, in any case. He stares at the coffeemaker, drip after drip filling the pot minute after minute. He’s taking the pot out of the machine before it’s quite finished, drops of coffee falling to the bottom that he’ll have to clean up later.
His left hand reaches up into the cabinet next to the stove, pulling out a Mickey Mouse mug. He glances at it, pushes it back in and takes out a plain navy blue one instead, pouring half a cup of black coffee into it. He pushes the pot back into the machine for anyone else who wants some (he doubts anyone will), and then pours what’s left of the blood into the mug, dropping the blood bag into the trash and then taking a spoon so he can mix it together. The mix is thick, it tastes worse than straight bagged blood but it comes with a slight kick to it.
Ian takes the mug in both hands and goes out to watch the sun rise. Jeff is out there too, and a flicker of surprise crosses Ian’s face. He hadn’t heard him get up. Ian leans against the railing, taking sips of bloody coffee in the silence.
“How are you adjusting?” Jeff asks, watching him with hooded curiosity.
His tongue traces the seam of his lips, chasing stray drops of coffee and blood. “It’s hard,” he admits softly, turning around so his back is leaning against the rail, elbows holding up the pretense of keeping him balanced. He watches Jeff with equal hooded curiosity. Ian’s eyes are still a few shades darker than everyone else; he hasn’t been with them long enough for his past to have completely washed away.
“You’re doing a good job though,” Jeff points out, taking a seat on the bench that’s next to the door. There are at least eight different pairs of sneakers lined up underneath it; Nike’s and Chuck Taylor’s and Vans and brands that Ian isn’t completely familiar with. He’s never quite seen a group of vampires like this.
For one, there are no women.
Ian smiles, a slow curl of his lips that reveal straight white teeth and curving fangs. “I’m good at hiding it. For Danny, you know.” He drains the last of the drink from his mug, licks his lips and then balances the navy blue ceramic mug on the rail, a little distance away from his arm so it didn’t get knocked off to shatter into a million un-fixable pieces.
Something flashes in Jeff’s eyes. He doesn’t quite understand their relationship: as far as the others know, Danny and Ian have only been together for a few months, six at the most. They are such a young couple, especially when you compare them to some of the others paired off in the house. Jack and Alex have been together for seventy nine years. Ian and Danny will be in the honeymoon phase of their relationship for years to come.
“Be careful, if you push yourself too hard too soon you might snap,” he warns, a slight edge to his voice. It’s nothing personal against Ian, it’s more for the safety of the rest of his coven. They have a good thing going here, they won’t have to leave for five years at the least if things go good.
“I wouldn’t willingly risk what you have here,” Ian says in a liquid smooth voice, understanding what he means. The way they run here is different to how he’s used to it. They hide it, what they are. They pretend to be human. No one suspects anything hugely out of the ordinary. Besides the fact that there are thirteen or so men living in a giant house with a lot of fast cars, according the everyone else, they’re all completely ordinary people with a little bit too much money and are all a little to pretty.
Jeff’s face relaxes a little, and he nods. “Okay,” he says, and Danny comes out just as Jeff leaves to go back inside. He kisses his shoulder and his neck and his cheek and his lips, hands curving to fit around his biceps.
“You’re up early today,” he says, and Ian nods.
“I was restless. Thirsty,” he says softly, r’s rolling off his tongue. Thirrrrsty. He kisses the corner of Danny’s lips, and then kisses him properly, mouth covering his as tongues press and sweep, slow in the glow of seven a.m. sunshine.
Danny’s tongue darts out to taste at his lips, raises an eyebrow at Ian and says, “Coffee and AB negative? You like weird things,” he observes, smiling up to his eyes. He licks his lips and then says, “I was thinking we could go hunting later. It’s been almost two weeks, and you can’t live off of blood bags forever.”
He catches the face that Ian makes, nose wrinkling. “You’ll get used to it, I swear,” Danny laughs, pressing a kiss to his nose. “It took about three years for me to even like the taste, be patient.”
Ian laughs again, hands dropping down to rest on Danny’s waist. Unlike him, he had the decency to put a shirt on. “I’m a hundred and three years older than you,” he laughs, nuzzling his cheek. “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”
“Myth Busters proved that wrong, there’s an episode on it,” Danny says, and Ian rolls his eyes because Danny has pretty much every season of Myth Busters on DVD; at one point he spent the hours he pretended to sleep in on watching every episode back to back.
“You would know,” he snorts, and tugs him close so they’re pressed chest to shirt clothed chest. Ian kisses him again, warm and languid like the sunshine, and then about a minute later says, “I’ll go get my keys, and you can clear things with Matt, okay?”
&
They usually hunt out of state, so hunting trips turn into road trips and overnights and vacations, sometimes. Danny clears it with Matt to go to Virginia, and Ian throws two shirts into a bag and throws that bag into the trunk of his car and they’re gone before eight a.m. has even come and gone.
Ian drives down the highway, his car a red blur streaking across the pavement. Danny says, “You think you’re driving fast enough?” and Ian smirks at him, presses down on the accelerate and the engine roars underneath them.
Fast cars are the fucking bomb. Danny turns his head and looks out the window, trees and bushes and plants a green and brown blur as they drive through a forest and come out in a small town with one stop light. Ian drives all the way through without stopping.
He gets them to the Quantico Marine Base in under an hour and fifteen minutes, foot pressed firmly down on the gas pedal the whole way there. They talk about whatever, which Green Day era was better or which guitar strings are best to use. Ian parks the car and his skin is humming, a cross between excitement and dread filling him.
Ian likes the chase of the hunt, he secretly likes being able to sense the fear in a human in the second that they realize what he is and what he’s doing. He kills them before he drinks; it’s an act of mercy, he doesn’t need to do it, but the part of him that’s still human doesn’t want them to suffer through it. Animals are... they’re different. Hunting deer and hunting bear is not the same as hunting humans. It tastes different, headier. It’s, just. Human blood, straight from the source, it’s powerful. After feeding like that, Ian always felt at his best, stronger and faster. He was deadly at best, almost invincible on a human blood induced high.
Animal blood is different. Technically, it has almost the same qualities as human blood: vitamins and minerals and whatever else it is. But there’s something else, something about the energy in it, or whatever it was that they called it. He feels stronger after feeding, but a little slower too, like he’s on anaesthetics or something. It makes him uncomfortable, but Danny makes him happy, and Danny doesn’t feed off of humans. Danny’s coven - his coven - doesn’t feed off of humans. Ian doesn’t feed off of humans anymore.
Danny is more human than Ian ever will be.
Even when he hasn’t fed on anything other than bagged blood for two weeks, Ian always feels most powerful during a hunt. He’s aware of two things: Danny and the elk they’re hunting. His skin is thrumming; hunting animals is different to hunting to humans. You can’t play with an animal, it’s more of a step by step game that’s more primal instinct and survival. Chase, pounce, kill, eat. With humans, you can play with your food.
They move silently along the ground, knowing what the other is doing before they even do it. Danny goes to the left; Ian goes right. They move like blurs, locking down on one animal as prey, chasing it and cornering it between them. As vampires, they’re faster and stronger then the humans they once were. To the naked eye, they’re blurs of colors streaking after an elk. It’s Danny who pounces, tackling it to the floor and snapping it’s neck cleanly. Ian skids to a stop, leaves flying into the air.
“That didn’t take long,” Danny smirks self righteously, fangs extracting himself from his gums. He isn’t breathless, but something similar to adrenaline is coursing through his still veins. He leans down and sinks his teeth into the jugular vein in the animals neck. Ian sees his eyes shift from blue to deep red; unlike vampires that feed on human blood, vampires that feed on animals have the eye color they had as humans almost all the time. Ian’s haven’t yet faded from red to brown, they’re stuck in limbo at a dark rusty color.
Ian kneels, dried leaves crunching under his knees. He leans down, fitting his mouth to the neck of the animal. He doesn’t like the fur; his fangs sink into the flesh, blood filling his mouth. The fur is a distraction; he’s still not used to it being there when he feeds.
He’s not done when Danny pulls back, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. The blood stains his skin red. Ian looks up at him, finally, mouth tinged red and wet with blood. It gleams in the sunshine that shows through the canopy of leaves. Elk blood leaves a chalky after taste in his mouth. Danny leans over, leans into him and puts one blood stained hand on his shoulder, the other cupping his jaw as he pulls his face towards him.
Danny licks the blood off of his jaw, curling his tongue as he cleans his skin carefully. His tongue sweeps past Ian’s lips and he lurches forward, hands curving over his arms. Fangs scrape over his bottom lip; they’re sharp like razor blades and the skin slices open, fresh blood pooling into his mouth. Danny’s tongue chases it, moaning soft and low as he tastes it, sharp and metallic and so, so good.
His tongue curls around his, hot and languid, blood a metallic tinge that stains their lips and mouths. Danny pushes it back into his mouth, swapping it back and forth. It’s hot, so fucking hot, like snowballing but with fucking blood. Ian’s hair is curled tight between his fingers now, chest pressed to chest; Ian can feel the slight rumble in his chest when he moans, and when he shifts his hips, he can feel the tell-tale hardness against his thigh.
“Not here, caro,” Ian whispers into his mouth, r’s rolling like they had earlier that morning. The time he spent in Italy doesn’t show through often; when it does, Danny knows exactly what a girl means when she says she would drop her panties for a guy. They’re in the middle of hunting ground, dirt and leaves underneath them and a dead elk carcass two feet away. If nothing else, Ian has class, and he isn’t going to fuck Danny here.
&
They go back to the coven late that afternoon, driving back much slower than they had on the way towards the hunting reservation. They stop in a couple of towns, sitting in cafés and pretending to drink coffees and iced teas while they people watch. Ian thinks that humans are incredibly naïve; they have no idea what’s going on around them, even if it’s staring them right in the face. They don’t realize that sitting at a table away from them are two vampires - one of the waitresses serving them beer and coffee and sandwiches is a fey and the homeless man sitting in the doorway across the street is a lycanthrope. He lifts the coffee mug to his mouth, pretends to drink and meets Danny’s eye. Humans have no idea how many of the things that they claim to be beings of fiction actually are real.
There’s a line of foam on his upper lip. “Come here,” Danny laughs, and cups one hand under his jaw, pulling him forwards so he can lick it off, much like he had done with the blood from earlier. They don’t usually eat or drink human food. It’s not that they can’t, because they can. They just prefer not to. Ian usually limits it to coffee here and there. It makes him miss being human, eating their food and drinking their drinks. It’s easier just drinking blood.
Sunshine falls down in rays between thick clouds rolling in from the south. “Thunderstorm,” Ian says, and smiles. His teeth are white, fangs currently retracted. Thunderstorms are his favorite kind of weather. Twilight has it all wrong, vampires don’t sparkle. They don’t burst into flame or ashes at the touch of a ray of sun either. They can be out and about in sunny weather just like anyone else can. They only thing that makes them any different from anyone else walking around in the sun is that they wouldn’t tan from it. They stay midwinter pale all year around, skin a few shades above white, veins showing blue underneath thin layers of skin. They’re known as creatures of the night because it’s easiest hunting during the night. Hundreds of years ago it was because it was easier to hide in the shadows to take your prey. Now, it’s because people let their guards down under the cover of darkness, dancing their souls away in nightclubs and bars, drugged up and drunk.
“Come on,” Danny says. “Let’s get back to the car before it really starts to rain.”
They close the doors of the sports car just as the first drops of rain hit the windshield. Ian pushes the clutch, foot pressed on the gas and releases the handbreak, and the car is off, once again a red bullet shooting in the direction of the place that they call home. Ian’s car is a manual, a red Ferrari, Italian like he is. Danny drives an Aston Martin. They all have fancy cars, they’re all fast and flashy and above all they’re expensive.
By the time they get back to the manor house, the car making a purring noise as he shuts the engine off inside of the garage, its pouring rain outside. Ian puts the cover over his car, grabs Danny’s hand and pulls him up the stairs, through the hallway to the main room. Alex is sitting at the baby grand piano, hands scaling the key.
“Good hunting trip?” he asks and they walk in, and Danny nods.
“Excellent.”
Alex grins at them, and his fangs are there, clear as day. His are out almost all the time, although Ian has no idea why.
“Matt said something about having a fourth of July party, yano? It’s funny because I remember when the declaration actually got signed.” He launches into a story about being there through the war and how much blood there was and how it was really cool and the parties that the vampire world had afterwards lasted for at least a week, more like two. Matt walks in halfway through, sits down on the sofa and rolls his eyes.
“Weren’t you just a fledgling back then?”
He makes an indignant noise, something like a sigh and a snort. “I was well over a hundred and fifty by then, James.”
The coven leader laughs, propping his sock clad feet up on the coffee table. He opens a magazine, glancing down at the page and then up at the vampire seated at the piano. Danny and Ian watch in near-silent amusement. “Unlike you, some of us were actually around when the Dead Sea was actually just a really sick lake,” Matt deadpans, a completely serious expression on his face. Alex stifles a laugh, fingers shaping a melody onto the keys.
“Fine, you win. You win,” he says, corners of his lips drooping playfully.
“You owe me a Bloody Mary later,” Matt says, to which Alex mutters something along the lines of You’ve been fucking our bartender for half a century, just ask him for one.
Danny roars with laughter.
&
Vinny actually does play their bartender, and he does a really good job of it as well. “What’s your poison?” he asks with a drawl, leaning against the counter of the bar that’s in the corner of the main room. At least fifty and more like a hundred bottles of liquor line the shelves behind him. Alex is once again seated at the piano, playing Sweet Home Alabama and singing at the top of his lungs, even over the music that’s playing over their sound system.
“Anything but a Bloody Mary,” Ian says, watching as Vinny reaches into the fridge under the counter. “Actually, how about a round of shots?”
“A, B? AB or O? Any preferences?” Vinny asks as he lines up a row of shot glasses on a tray. Alcohol is one of the things that Ian actually enjoys mixing with blood. It tastes so much better than straight booze. He waves his hand in a motion that comes across as whatever Vinny tears open a blood bag and pours half a shot into each of the glasses, pouring the remainder of the bag into a beer glass, presumably for himself. He turns around and reaches up, fingers closing around a bottle of Smirnoff Ice which he pours into the remaining half of the shot glasses. “Enjoy,” he grins, and Ian leaves just as Matt comes, hoisting himself up onto the bar.
Ian wonders if he’s had enough to drink that he’ll start dancing up there.
This fourth of July party is kind of their whole coven and then also a neighboring coven from out of state that they’re friends with. He hasn’t met most of the people outside of his, and Danny is sitting in a group of unfamiliar vampires on the sofa and chairs in the den. Ian knows just by looking at them that they’re not vegetarians: their eyes are a permanent red color, but they’ve agreed not to hunt in the area. “I bring peace offerings,” Ian teases, holding up the tray with shots.
Danny is sprawled out across one of the sofas, taking up the length by himself. “Ian!” he says, his whole face lighting up. Ian isn’t entirely sure how much he’s had to drink, but judging by the looks of things, it’s fairly safe to say that his mate is drunk. “Ian, this is William, Gabe, Sisky, Butcher and Mike!” He swings his legs over the edge of the couch so he’s sitting up properly. Ian puts the tray down on the table, taking a seat next to Danny and curling his arm possessively around his shoulder. He doesn’t know the other people, and he wants to be sure that they know that Danny is his.
A skinny guy with chin length hair (William, maybe, Danny’s pointing as he said the names was kind of more of a general direction pointing then at the actual person the name belonged to) laughs and leans into the guy next to him. His skin is dark for an undead ‘creature of the night’. “Hey, we know that he’s taken, none of us are going to do anything,” he says, not unkindly. Ian does a second take of the group, decides that they’re all paired off, except for maybe the Mike guy.
“Not without your permission, anyway,” the dark haired guy says, and he’s almost leering at Danny except, he’s kind of not. William swats him over the head, says something sharply and the guy swears in Spanish. Spanish and Italian are close enough that Ian knows that he just called William’s mother a whore. He snorts with laughter. “Bilvy! Stop! You would totally fuck Danny if you could!” he yelps as William just hits him harder.
“He tried, about ten years ago,” Danny says, breath hot against Ian’s ear. “He looks too much like a lesbian to be my type, though.”
“I heard that!” William yells, pushing a strand of his brown hair behind his ears, only for it to fall forward and into his eyes again. “I do not look like a lesbian! Vicky looks like a lesbian! Vicky and Greta!” Ian blinks at how loud he is. And then he realizes that the two girls he saw making out in the hallway earlier must have been Vicky and Greta. He wonders if there’s anyone in these two vampire covens that’s actually straight. Part of him doubts it.
Ian has possibly identified each of them: William is the guy who looks lesbian, Gabe is the guy who called William’s mother a whore in Spanish. Sisky and Butcher are the two guys who are pressed thigh to thigh on the sofa opposite them. He can’t quite tell them apart yet, although he thinks that the skinnier one out of the two is Butcher (he wonders if it’s actual his name, or just a slightly grotesque nickname.) That leaves Mike to be the one sitting quietly by himself.
Gabe (or maybe it’s William, he’s not really sure since they’re kind of sitting on each other and they’ve... melded into one being) yells, “Hey, lets do body shots!” Which is how Danny ends up on the table, shirtless, with a shot balancing on his lower abdomen. Mike disappeared with some guy with a lot of tattoos and dark skin and a lot of hair. Ian kneels, and William picks up a salt shaker and shakes crystal grains onto Danny’s stomach.
They downed the shots that Ian brought over originially, and Gabe disappeared for a few minutes to sweet talk Vinny into giving him a bottle of tequila and O negative blood and lemons. A knife appears out of no where and the lemon is cut into slices; Ian licks the salt off of his skin and takes the shot glass in between his teeth, tipping his head back to down the blood and tequila concoction. Danny holds the lemon slice in between his teeth, a smirk befitting the devil clear on his face. He takes it with his mouth, and they kiss around the citrus fruit, and Ian is sober enough to be aware of the cat calls. He pulls back and spits out the lemon rind, grinning wolfishly and kissing him again. Danny rolls off of the table and on top of him, skin grainy from left over salt.
They disappear upstairs, up to the room that they share in the northeast wing of the house, Ian’s teeth nipping at his skin as alcohol and dead blood rushes through their veins.
&
Two weeks later and they haven’t hunted since before the fourth of July party. Ian can feel it down to his core, his skin is crawling with need. He’s paler than usual, skin a luminous pale that seems to glow in the sun. Veins run blue up his arms, dancing on his pale skin.
And there is a human in the house.
Ian can smell him the second he steps foot on the front steps. He’s with a vampire; one that he isn’t familiar with. Danny’s by his side seconds between the front door opening and closing, hand curling around his wrist.
“Here,” he says quietly, his other hand holding onto a blood bag. “Matt wants everyone in the main room, and I know that it’s been a while since I took you hunting.” He frowns a little, and then adds, “Sorry, we just. It slipped my mind that you need it more often since you’re not used to it.” Ian’s fangs slide out with a shick, even though he doesn’t need them just to drink dead blood from a bag. It’s a natural reaction.
They go down together, and he’s a little less pale, the circles under his eyes are a little less pronounced. Their hands are clasped together; Danny and Ian slide in and stand in the back of the people gathered, leaning against the wall. “They belong to a coven in Maine,” Danny whispers, raising one hand in greeting. Ian mirrors his action. “Well, the one on the left is. The other one is his mate.”
He doesn’t need to be told that the mate is human.
“He’s not going to tell,” Ian hears the vampire telling Matt. “You can trust him, we trust him.”
Matt narrows his eyes a little bit, but his voice is neutral. “You say that now. What happens when you get bored of him, or when he’s forty and you still look no older than twenty three?” He’s not being intentionally cruel. He’s asking so that they can be kept a secret.
Ian understands just from that why they’re there. They need to convince them that he - the human - poses no threat. Humans aren’t supposed to know their secrets. They know there is something special about the groups of people in those houses, all stronger and more beautiful and dangerous than the average human. Nonetheless, they don’t know. A human who knows their secret poses a threat to the whole vampire community.
“The human’s name is Toby. The vampire is Alex.” Danny whispers again. They’ve met before. He thinks that there are a lot of vampires who are called Alex.
Alex - their Alex, the four hundred year old ex-English lord Alex - clears his throat from where he’s sitting with Jack draped around him. “Why don’t you just turn him?” he asks with a lazy drawl, and his fangs are drawn, which is normal to everyone else. The other Alex looks a little unnerved by it.
“He wants to keep me human,” the human - Toby - interjects just as his mate opens his mouth to say something. “Trust me, I’ve tried talking him into it.”
It’s because of Toby that the room smells faintly like cigarette smoke. No one else smokes; nicotine has very little effect on the undead.
Matt has been quiet since he last spoke, expression vague. He’s thinking, Ian knows the coven leader well enough to know that. He had the same expression when Danny and Ian needed to talk to him about him joining their coven and changing to live by their ways and rules. Danny squeezes his hand.
It’s quiet for a little while. Matt leaves the room to talk to Vinny and Jeff, and Ian watches the strangers with guarded curiosity. Why fall in love with a human? Their lives end so fast, they go out like a candle. He watches Alex lean forward and whisper something in his ear, the human’s eyes flickering up to his face. Despite everything, he doesn’t seem to be worried about being in a house full of vampires. It might be though, that this is a house full of non-human blood sucking vampires. They could have easily been the least of their problems.
“He can stay as he is,” Matt says, and he’s holding a piece of paper in his hand. “But if he ever tells anyone, we’ll kill him.” He’s frowning a little, and he doesn’t like killing people, hasn’t had to kill anyone since he was in the civil war.
Alex and Toby don’t look surprised. “That’s what the people in the Saporta clan said,” Alex says. “Except they said that they’d eat him.”
Matt’s frown deepens a little. “We don’t eat humans,” he says, and then steps around all of the vampires gathered in the main room. “I need you to sign this,” he says, and Ian can see from the back of the room lines of written text filling the white page. It’s a contract. “So it’s official.” The paper is handed to Alex first, and he signs it with a pen that’s lying on the table. He slides it over to Toby, who signs it as well.
The paper is signed, folded and handed back to Matt, who in turn hand it to Jeff. Jeff leaves to the office, and the tension in the room seems a little bit easier. Alex starts talking to Vinny and it’s clear that they know each other from before this.
“You have real food in your kitchen?” Toby asks tentatively, glancing around at the people who haven’t left the room. Grieco points his thumb in the direction of the kitchen, says, “We should have some fruit somewhere in the fridge.” The human stands up, and Ian watches him from where him and Danny are still standing in the back of the room, hands clasped together. Their eyes meet as they pass, and Ian holds his breath, counts to a hundred after he’s gone through to find something to eat.
Danny’s hand tightens around his.
Toby comes back with an apple and a bowl and a knife. He sits down next to Alex again, pressed close to him like he belongs there. Ian understands the feeling. Danny squeezes his hand again, and then moves away, to say something to Jack. He leans over and whispers in his ear, and Jack nods, laughing.
The red apple turns in his hand as he peels it carefully, blade flashing silver where the sunlight comes through the window and hits it. He doesn’t know why they even have apples in the fridge, none of them eat them. Ian likes the smell of apples though, it’s weirdly comforting. It reminds him of someone he used to be.
His skin prickles all of a sudden, the air seems to shimmer and the world stands still for a second. “Shit.” Toby says, and looks up and then over, wide eyed. There’s a cut on the palm of his hand from where the knife slipped, blood seeping out and staining the piece of fruit in his hand. His fangs slide out of their sheathes before he’s even aware of it, eyes darkening into a shade of red the same color as Toby’s blood.
Danny is by his side again, appearing between the a blink, eyes closing and opening. “Don’t,” he hisses in his ear. Ian growls, low and guttural. His whole body tenses, ready to jump on the human who looks scared, all too aware of what is roughly ten seconds from happening. Alex steps in front of his mate, fangs bared at Ian. He’s tense, everything about screaming no.
All Ian wants to do is say yes yes yes.
The coven leader steps in front of him, blocking his view of the guest vampire and his human. “Get him out of here,” he orders, pushing Ian backwards, away from the blood and the man that he could kill with a twist of his wrist and his mouth. His body aches with want; not lust, but hunger, it burns in his veins. It’s been so long since he’s tasted blood like that, fresh and young. Live blood.
He wants so badly it burns.
Ian tenses to spring forward; Vinny and Danny grab one of his arms, pulling him backwards. “Fuck you, no.” Danny says, pulling him back. Ian hisses again, narrowing his eyes. He swings around, trying to get away, get away from the people holding him down and back, get to the human that is bleeding. What a waste of fresh blood.
“Get him out!” Matt yells, pushing him back again, and Zack appears all muscles and superhuman strength, grabbing him and shoving him in the direction of the hallway. He turns around, turning the full wrath of his glare on the two guests. “You two need to leave now.” he says in a slightly less than friendly tone. His eyes are cold. He knew that bringing a human in was a bad idea.
Part 2
Author: Amanda, who goes by the aliasapodiopsys
Pairing: Danny Kurily/Ian Planet
Rating: NC-17 Overall
Summary: The one where a lot of people from bands are vampires and not that many people even die.
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters; the plot belongs to me. Please don't steal.
A/N: Notes in the masterpost!
tumblr is here
Master Post
As soon as the sun rises, Ian rises too. Danny keeps up the facade of sleeping a little bit longer; he likes lying in bed and doing nothing for hours and hours on end. Ian finds it a waste of time. He slips out of the bedroom, black jeans slung low on his hips. He doesn’t bother with a shirt. The rest of the house is still playing pretend, lying in beds behind closed doors pretending to be something they’re not. Ian doesn’t understand most of them. He misses Italy. This is unnatural to him. It doesn’t feel right.
Ian doesn’t like playing pretend, but he will for Danny.
The tiles on the kitchen floor are cold against his bare feet, and he thinks that maybe he should have picked up a pair of socks off of the floor. His hands work without thinking about it (coffee filter, coffee, two cups of water, turn the machine on.) Ian runs a hand through his hair, wonders vaguely why he even bothers with coffee when it isn’t necessary.
The only blood they have in the fridge is what Jeff can get from the blood bank without anyone noticing. Ian takes out a pack of AB negative, and his fangs make a soft shick! noise as they slide properly out of his gums before he’s even opened the bag. He holds it up to his mouth, nose wrinkling as he takes a mouthful.
Bagged blood doesn’t taste the same as it does fresh. It tastes dead, and that’s what Ian has the biggest problem with, dead tasting food when he’s been used to the real deal for so long. Dead blood tastes better then animal blood, in any case. He stares at the coffeemaker, drip after drip filling the pot minute after minute. He’s taking the pot out of the machine before it’s quite finished, drops of coffee falling to the bottom that he’ll have to clean up later.
His left hand reaches up into the cabinet next to the stove, pulling out a Mickey Mouse mug. He glances at it, pushes it back in and takes out a plain navy blue one instead, pouring half a cup of black coffee into it. He pushes the pot back into the machine for anyone else who wants some (he doubts anyone will), and then pours what’s left of the blood into the mug, dropping the blood bag into the trash and then taking a spoon so he can mix it together. The mix is thick, it tastes worse than straight bagged blood but it comes with a slight kick to it.
Ian takes the mug in both hands and goes out to watch the sun rise. Jeff is out there too, and a flicker of surprise crosses Ian’s face. He hadn’t heard him get up. Ian leans against the railing, taking sips of bloody coffee in the silence.
“How are you adjusting?” Jeff asks, watching him with hooded curiosity.
His tongue traces the seam of his lips, chasing stray drops of coffee and blood. “It’s hard,” he admits softly, turning around so his back is leaning against the rail, elbows holding up the pretense of keeping him balanced. He watches Jeff with equal hooded curiosity. Ian’s eyes are still a few shades darker than everyone else; he hasn’t been with them long enough for his past to have completely washed away.
“You’re doing a good job though,” Jeff points out, taking a seat on the bench that’s next to the door. There are at least eight different pairs of sneakers lined up underneath it; Nike’s and Chuck Taylor’s and Vans and brands that Ian isn’t completely familiar with. He’s never quite seen a group of vampires like this.
For one, there are no women.
Ian smiles, a slow curl of his lips that reveal straight white teeth and curving fangs. “I’m good at hiding it. For Danny, you know.” He drains the last of the drink from his mug, licks his lips and then balances the navy blue ceramic mug on the rail, a little distance away from his arm so it didn’t get knocked off to shatter into a million un-fixable pieces.
Something flashes in Jeff’s eyes. He doesn’t quite understand their relationship: as far as the others know, Danny and Ian have only been together for a few months, six at the most. They are such a young couple, especially when you compare them to some of the others paired off in the house. Jack and Alex have been together for seventy nine years. Ian and Danny will be in the honeymoon phase of their relationship for years to come.
“Be careful, if you push yourself too hard too soon you might snap,” he warns, a slight edge to his voice. It’s nothing personal against Ian, it’s more for the safety of the rest of his coven. They have a good thing going here, they won’t have to leave for five years at the least if things go good.
“I wouldn’t willingly risk what you have here,” Ian says in a liquid smooth voice, understanding what he means. The way they run here is different to how he’s used to it. They hide it, what they are. They pretend to be human. No one suspects anything hugely out of the ordinary. Besides the fact that there are thirteen or so men living in a giant house with a lot of fast cars, according the everyone else, they’re all completely ordinary people with a little bit too much money and are all a little to pretty.
Jeff’s face relaxes a little, and he nods. “Okay,” he says, and Danny comes out just as Jeff leaves to go back inside. He kisses his shoulder and his neck and his cheek and his lips, hands curving to fit around his biceps.
“You’re up early today,” he says, and Ian nods.
“I was restless. Thirsty,” he says softly, r’s rolling off his tongue. Thirrrrsty. He kisses the corner of Danny’s lips, and then kisses him properly, mouth covering his as tongues press and sweep, slow in the glow of seven a.m. sunshine.
Danny’s tongue darts out to taste at his lips, raises an eyebrow at Ian and says, “Coffee and AB negative? You like weird things,” he observes, smiling up to his eyes. He licks his lips and then says, “I was thinking we could go hunting later. It’s been almost two weeks, and you can’t live off of blood bags forever.”
He catches the face that Ian makes, nose wrinkling. “You’ll get used to it, I swear,” Danny laughs, pressing a kiss to his nose. “It took about three years for me to even like the taste, be patient.”
Ian laughs again, hands dropping down to rest on Danny’s waist. Unlike him, he had the decency to put a shirt on. “I’m a hundred and three years older than you,” he laughs, nuzzling his cheek. “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”
“Myth Busters proved that wrong, there’s an episode on it,” Danny says, and Ian rolls his eyes because Danny has pretty much every season of Myth Busters on DVD; at one point he spent the hours he pretended to sleep in on watching every episode back to back.
“You would know,” he snorts, and tugs him close so they’re pressed chest to shirt clothed chest. Ian kisses him again, warm and languid like the sunshine, and then about a minute later says, “I’ll go get my keys, and you can clear things with Matt, okay?”
&
They usually hunt out of state, so hunting trips turn into road trips and overnights and vacations, sometimes. Danny clears it with Matt to go to Virginia, and Ian throws two shirts into a bag and throws that bag into the trunk of his car and they’re gone before eight a.m. has even come and gone.
Ian drives down the highway, his car a red blur streaking across the pavement. Danny says, “You think you’re driving fast enough?” and Ian smirks at him, presses down on the accelerate and the engine roars underneath them.
Fast cars are the fucking bomb. Danny turns his head and looks out the window, trees and bushes and plants a green and brown blur as they drive through a forest and come out in a small town with one stop light. Ian drives all the way through without stopping.
He gets them to the Quantico Marine Base in under an hour and fifteen minutes, foot pressed firmly down on the gas pedal the whole way there. They talk about whatever, which Green Day era was better or which guitar strings are best to use. Ian parks the car and his skin is humming, a cross between excitement and dread filling him.
Ian likes the chase of the hunt, he secretly likes being able to sense the fear in a human in the second that they realize what he is and what he’s doing. He kills them before he drinks; it’s an act of mercy, he doesn’t need to do it, but the part of him that’s still human doesn’t want them to suffer through it. Animals are... they’re different. Hunting deer and hunting bear is not the same as hunting humans. It tastes different, headier. It’s, just. Human blood, straight from the source, it’s powerful. After feeding like that, Ian always felt at his best, stronger and faster. He was deadly at best, almost invincible on a human blood induced high.
Animal blood is different. Technically, it has almost the same qualities as human blood: vitamins and minerals and whatever else it is. But there’s something else, something about the energy in it, or whatever it was that they called it. He feels stronger after feeding, but a little slower too, like he’s on anaesthetics or something. It makes him uncomfortable, but Danny makes him happy, and Danny doesn’t feed off of humans. Danny’s coven - his coven - doesn’t feed off of humans. Ian doesn’t feed off of humans anymore.
Danny is more human than Ian ever will be.
Even when he hasn’t fed on anything other than bagged blood for two weeks, Ian always feels most powerful during a hunt. He’s aware of two things: Danny and the elk they’re hunting. His skin is thrumming; hunting animals is different to hunting to humans. You can’t play with an animal, it’s more of a step by step game that’s more primal instinct and survival. Chase, pounce, kill, eat. With humans, you can play with your food.
They move silently along the ground, knowing what the other is doing before they even do it. Danny goes to the left; Ian goes right. They move like blurs, locking down on one animal as prey, chasing it and cornering it between them. As vampires, they’re faster and stronger then the humans they once were. To the naked eye, they’re blurs of colors streaking after an elk. It’s Danny who pounces, tackling it to the floor and snapping it’s neck cleanly. Ian skids to a stop, leaves flying into the air.
“That didn’t take long,” Danny smirks self righteously, fangs extracting himself from his gums. He isn’t breathless, but something similar to adrenaline is coursing through his still veins. He leans down and sinks his teeth into the jugular vein in the animals neck. Ian sees his eyes shift from blue to deep red; unlike vampires that feed on human blood, vampires that feed on animals have the eye color they had as humans almost all the time. Ian’s haven’t yet faded from red to brown, they’re stuck in limbo at a dark rusty color.
Ian kneels, dried leaves crunching under his knees. He leans down, fitting his mouth to the neck of the animal. He doesn’t like the fur; his fangs sink into the flesh, blood filling his mouth. The fur is a distraction; he’s still not used to it being there when he feeds.
He’s not done when Danny pulls back, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. The blood stains his skin red. Ian looks up at him, finally, mouth tinged red and wet with blood. It gleams in the sunshine that shows through the canopy of leaves. Elk blood leaves a chalky after taste in his mouth. Danny leans over, leans into him and puts one blood stained hand on his shoulder, the other cupping his jaw as he pulls his face towards him.
Danny licks the blood off of his jaw, curling his tongue as he cleans his skin carefully. His tongue sweeps past Ian’s lips and he lurches forward, hands curving over his arms. Fangs scrape over his bottom lip; they’re sharp like razor blades and the skin slices open, fresh blood pooling into his mouth. Danny’s tongue chases it, moaning soft and low as he tastes it, sharp and metallic and so, so good.
His tongue curls around his, hot and languid, blood a metallic tinge that stains their lips and mouths. Danny pushes it back into his mouth, swapping it back and forth. It’s hot, so fucking hot, like snowballing but with fucking blood. Ian’s hair is curled tight between his fingers now, chest pressed to chest; Ian can feel the slight rumble in his chest when he moans, and when he shifts his hips, he can feel the tell-tale hardness against his thigh.
“Not here, caro,” Ian whispers into his mouth, r’s rolling like they had earlier that morning. The time he spent in Italy doesn’t show through often; when it does, Danny knows exactly what a girl means when she says she would drop her panties for a guy. They’re in the middle of hunting ground, dirt and leaves underneath them and a dead elk carcass two feet away. If nothing else, Ian has class, and he isn’t going to fuck Danny here.
&
They go back to the coven late that afternoon, driving back much slower than they had on the way towards the hunting reservation. They stop in a couple of towns, sitting in cafés and pretending to drink coffees and iced teas while they people watch. Ian thinks that humans are incredibly naïve; they have no idea what’s going on around them, even if it’s staring them right in the face. They don’t realize that sitting at a table away from them are two vampires - one of the waitresses serving them beer and coffee and sandwiches is a fey and the homeless man sitting in the doorway across the street is a lycanthrope. He lifts the coffee mug to his mouth, pretends to drink and meets Danny’s eye. Humans have no idea how many of the things that they claim to be beings of fiction actually are real.
There’s a line of foam on his upper lip. “Come here,” Danny laughs, and cups one hand under his jaw, pulling him forwards so he can lick it off, much like he had done with the blood from earlier. They don’t usually eat or drink human food. It’s not that they can’t, because they can. They just prefer not to. Ian usually limits it to coffee here and there. It makes him miss being human, eating their food and drinking their drinks. It’s easier just drinking blood.
Sunshine falls down in rays between thick clouds rolling in from the south. “Thunderstorm,” Ian says, and smiles. His teeth are white, fangs currently retracted. Thunderstorms are his favorite kind of weather. Twilight has it all wrong, vampires don’t sparkle. They don’t burst into flame or ashes at the touch of a ray of sun either. They can be out and about in sunny weather just like anyone else can. They only thing that makes them any different from anyone else walking around in the sun is that they wouldn’t tan from it. They stay midwinter pale all year around, skin a few shades above white, veins showing blue underneath thin layers of skin. They’re known as creatures of the night because it’s easiest hunting during the night. Hundreds of years ago it was because it was easier to hide in the shadows to take your prey. Now, it’s because people let their guards down under the cover of darkness, dancing their souls away in nightclubs and bars, drugged up and drunk.
“Come on,” Danny says. “Let’s get back to the car before it really starts to rain.”
They close the doors of the sports car just as the first drops of rain hit the windshield. Ian pushes the clutch, foot pressed on the gas and releases the handbreak, and the car is off, once again a red bullet shooting in the direction of the place that they call home. Ian’s car is a manual, a red Ferrari, Italian like he is. Danny drives an Aston Martin. They all have fancy cars, they’re all fast and flashy and above all they’re expensive.
By the time they get back to the manor house, the car making a purring noise as he shuts the engine off inside of the garage, its pouring rain outside. Ian puts the cover over his car, grabs Danny’s hand and pulls him up the stairs, through the hallway to the main room. Alex is sitting at the baby grand piano, hands scaling the key.
“Good hunting trip?” he asks and they walk in, and Danny nods.
“Excellent.”
Alex grins at them, and his fangs are there, clear as day. His are out almost all the time, although Ian has no idea why.
“Matt said something about having a fourth of July party, yano? It’s funny because I remember when the declaration actually got signed.” He launches into a story about being there through the war and how much blood there was and how it was really cool and the parties that the vampire world had afterwards lasted for at least a week, more like two. Matt walks in halfway through, sits down on the sofa and rolls his eyes.
“Weren’t you just a fledgling back then?”
He makes an indignant noise, something like a sigh and a snort. “I was well over a hundred and fifty by then, James.”
The coven leader laughs, propping his sock clad feet up on the coffee table. He opens a magazine, glancing down at the page and then up at the vampire seated at the piano. Danny and Ian watch in near-silent amusement. “Unlike you, some of us were actually around when the Dead Sea was actually just a really sick lake,” Matt deadpans, a completely serious expression on his face. Alex stifles a laugh, fingers shaping a melody onto the keys.
“Fine, you win. You win,” he says, corners of his lips drooping playfully.
“You owe me a Bloody Mary later,” Matt says, to which Alex mutters something along the lines of You’ve been fucking our bartender for half a century, just ask him for one.
Danny roars with laughter.
&
Vinny actually does play their bartender, and he does a really good job of it as well. “What’s your poison?” he asks with a drawl, leaning against the counter of the bar that’s in the corner of the main room. At least fifty and more like a hundred bottles of liquor line the shelves behind him. Alex is once again seated at the piano, playing Sweet Home Alabama and singing at the top of his lungs, even over the music that’s playing over their sound system.
“Anything but a Bloody Mary,” Ian says, watching as Vinny reaches into the fridge under the counter. “Actually, how about a round of shots?”
“A, B? AB or O? Any preferences?” Vinny asks as he lines up a row of shot glasses on a tray. Alcohol is one of the things that Ian actually enjoys mixing with blood. It tastes so much better than straight booze. He waves his hand in a motion that comes across as whatever Vinny tears open a blood bag and pours half a shot into each of the glasses, pouring the remainder of the bag into a beer glass, presumably for himself. He turns around and reaches up, fingers closing around a bottle of Smirnoff Ice which he pours into the remaining half of the shot glasses. “Enjoy,” he grins, and Ian leaves just as Matt comes, hoisting himself up onto the bar.
Ian wonders if he’s had enough to drink that he’ll start dancing up there.
This fourth of July party is kind of their whole coven and then also a neighboring coven from out of state that they’re friends with. He hasn’t met most of the people outside of his, and Danny is sitting in a group of unfamiliar vampires on the sofa and chairs in the den. Ian knows just by looking at them that they’re not vegetarians: their eyes are a permanent red color, but they’ve agreed not to hunt in the area. “I bring peace offerings,” Ian teases, holding up the tray with shots.
Danny is sprawled out across one of the sofas, taking up the length by himself. “Ian!” he says, his whole face lighting up. Ian isn’t entirely sure how much he’s had to drink, but judging by the looks of things, it’s fairly safe to say that his mate is drunk. “Ian, this is William, Gabe, Sisky, Butcher and Mike!” He swings his legs over the edge of the couch so he’s sitting up properly. Ian puts the tray down on the table, taking a seat next to Danny and curling his arm possessively around his shoulder. He doesn’t know the other people, and he wants to be sure that they know that Danny is his.
A skinny guy with chin length hair (William, maybe, Danny’s pointing as he said the names was kind of more of a general direction pointing then at the actual person the name belonged to) laughs and leans into the guy next to him. His skin is dark for an undead ‘creature of the night’. “Hey, we know that he’s taken, none of us are going to do anything,” he says, not unkindly. Ian does a second take of the group, decides that they’re all paired off, except for maybe the Mike guy.
“Not without your permission, anyway,” the dark haired guy says, and he’s almost leering at Danny except, he’s kind of not. William swats him over the head, says something sharply and the guy swears in Spanish. Spanish and Italian are close enough that Ian knows that he just called William’s mother a whore. He snorts with laughter. “Bilvy! Stop! You would totally fuck Danny if you could!” he yelps as William just hits him harder.
“He tried, about ten years ago,” Danny says, breath hot against Ian’s ear. “He looks too much like a lesbian to be my type, though.”
“I heard that!” William yells, pushing a strand of his brown hair behind his ears, only for it to fall forward and into his eyes again. “I do not look like a lesbian! Vicky looks like a lesbian! Vicky and Greta!” Ian blinks at how loud he is. And then he realizes that the two girls he saw making out in the hallway earlier must have been Vicky and Greta. He wonders if there’s anyone in these two vampire covens that’s actually straight. Part of him doubts it.
Ian has possibly identified each of them: William is the guy who looks lesbian, Gabe is the guy who called William’s mother a whore in Spanish. Sisky and Butcher are the two guys who are pressed thigh to thigh on the sofa opposite them. He can’t quite tell them apart yet, although he thinks that the skinnier one out of the two is Butcher (he wonders if it’s actual his name, or just a slightly grotesque nickname.) That leaves Mike to be the one sitting quietly by himself.
Gabe (or maybe it’s William, he’s not really sure since they’re kind of sitting on each other and they’ve... melded into one being) yells, “Hey, lets do body shots!” Which is how Danny ends up on the table, shirtless, with a shot balancing on his lower abdomen. Mike disappeared with some guy with a lot of tattoos and dark skin and a lot of hair. Ian kneels, and William picks up a salt shaker and shakes crystal grains onto Danny’s stomach.
They downed the shots that Ian brought over originially, and Gabe disappeared for a few minutes to sweet talk Vinny into giving him a bottle of tequila and O negative blood and lemons. A knife appears out of no where and the lemon is cut into slices; Ian licks the salt off of his skin and takes the shot glass in between his teeth, tipping his head back to down the blood and tequila concoction. Danny holds the lemon slice in between his teeth, a smirk befitting the devil clear on his face. He takes it with his mouth, and they kiss around the citrus fruit, and Ian is sober enough to be aware of the cat calls. He pulls back and spits out the lemon rind, grinning wolfishly and kissing him again. Danny rolls off of the table and on top of him, skin grainy from left over salt.
They disappear upstairs, up to the room that they share in the northeast wing of the house, Ian’s teeth nipping at his skin as alcohol and dead blood rushes through their veins.
&
Two weeks later and they haven’t hunted since before the fourth of July party. Ian can feel it down to his core, his skin is crawling with need. He’s paler than usual, skin a luminous pale that seems to glow in the sun. Veins run blue up his arms, dancing on his pale skin.
And there is a human in the house.
Ian can smell him the second he steps foot on the front steps. He’s with a vampire; one that he isn’t familiar with. Danny’s by his side seconds between the front door opening and closing, hand curling around his wrist.
“Here,” he says quietly, his other hand holding onto a blood bag. “Matt wants everyone in the main room, and I know that it’s been a while since I took you hunting.” He frowns a little, and then adds, “Sorry, we just. It slipped my mind that you need it more often since you’re not used to it.” Ian’s fangs slide out with a shick, even though he doesn’t need them just to drink dead blood from a bag. It’s a natural reaction.
They go down together, and he’s a little less pale, the circles under his eyes are a little less pronounced. Their hands are clasped together; Danny and Ian slide in and stand in the back of the people gathered, leaning against the wall. “They belong to a coven in Maine,” Danny whispers, raising one hand in greeting. Ian mirrors his action. “Well, the one on the left is. The other one is his mate.”
He doesn’t need to be told that the mate is human.
“He’s not going to tell,” Ian hears the vampire telling Matt. “You can trust him, we trust him.”
Matt narrows his eyes a little bit, but his voice is neutral. “You say that now. What happens when you get bored of him, or when he’s forty and you still look no older than twenty three?” He’s not being intentionally cruel. He’s asking so that they can be kept a secret.
Ian understands just from that why they’re there. They need to convince them that he - the human - poses no threat. Humans aren’t supposed to know their secrets. They know there is something special about the groups of people in those houses, all stronger and more beautiful and dangerous than the average human. Nonetheless, they don’t know. A human who knows their secret poses a threat to the whole vampire community.
“The human’s name is Toby. The vampire is Alex.” Danny whispers again. They’ve met before. He thinks that there are a lot of vampires who are called Alex.
Alex - their Alex, the four hundred year old ex-English lord Alex - clears his throat from where he’s sitting with Jack draped around him. “Why don’t you just turn him?” he asks with a lazy drawl, and his fangs are drawn, which is normal to everyone else. The other Alex looks a little unnerved by it.
“He wants to keep me human,” the human - Toby - interjects just as his mate opens his mouth to say something. “Trust me, I’ve tried talking him into it.”
It’s because of Toby that the room smells faintly like cigarette smoke. No one else smokes; nicotine has very little effect on the undead.
Matt has been quiet since he last spoke, expression vague. He’s thinking, Ian knows the coven leader well enough to know that. He had the same expression when Danny and Ian needed to talk to him about him joining their coven and changing to live by their ways and rules. Danny squeezes his hand.
It’s quiet for a little while. Matt leaves the room to talk to Vinny and Jeff, and Ian watches the strangers with guarded curiosity. Why fall in love with a human? Their lives end so fast, they go out like a candle. He watches Alex lean forward and whisper something in his ear, the human’s eyes flickering up to his face. Despite everything, he doesn’t seem to be worried about being in a house full of vampires. It might be though, that this is a house full of non-human blood sucking vampires. They could have easily been the least of their problems.
“He can stay as he is,” Matt says, and he’s holding a piece of paper in his hand. “But if he ever tells anyone, we’ll kill him.” He’s frowning a little, and he doesn’t like killing people, hasn’t had to kill anyone since he was in the civil war.
Alex and Toby don’t look surprised. “That’s what the people in the Saporta clan said,” Alex says. “Except they said that they’d eat him.”
Matt’s frown deepens a little. “We don’t eat humans,” he says, and then steps around all of the vampires gathered in the main room. “I need you to sign this,” he says, and Ian can see from the back of the room lines of written text filling the white page. It’s a contract. “So it’s official.” The paper is handed to Alex first, and he signs it with a pen that’s lying on the table. He slides it over to Toby, who signs it as well.
The paper is signed, folded and handed back to Matt, who in turn hand it to Jeff. Jeff leaves to the office, and the tension in the room seems a little bit easier. Alex starts talking to Vinny and it’s clear that they know each other from before this.
“You have real food in your kitchen?” Toby asks tentatively, glancing around at the people who haven’t left the room. Grieco points his thumb in the direction of the kitchen, says, “We should have some fruit somewhere in the fridge.” The human stands up, and Ian watches him from where him and Danny are still standing in the back of the room, hands clasped together. Their eyes meet as they pass, and Ian holds his breath, counts to a hundred after he’s gone through to find something to eat.
Danny’s hand tightens around his.
Toby comes back with an apple and a bowl and a knife. He sits down next to Alex again, pressed close to him like he belongs there. Ian understands the feeling. Danny squeezes his hand again, and then moves away, to say something to Jack. He leans over and whispers in his ear, and Jack nods, laughing.
The red apple turns in his hand as he peels it carefully, blade flashing silver where the sunlight comes through the window and hits it. He doesn’t know why they even have apples in the fridge, none of them eat them. Ian likes the smell of apples though, it’s weirdly comforting. It reminds him of someone he used to be.
His skin prickles all of a sudden, the air seems to shimmer and the world stands still for a second. “Shit.” Toby says, and looks up and then over, wide eyed. There’s a cut on the palm of his hand from where the knife slipped, blood seeping out and staining the piece of fruit in his hand. His fangs slide out of their sheathes before he’s even aware of it, eyes darkening into a shade of red the same color as Toby’s blood.
Danny is by his side again, appearing between the a blink, eyes closing and opening. “Don’t,” he hisses in his ear. Ian growls, low and guttural. His whole body tenses, ready to jump on the human who looks scared, all too aware of what is roughly ten seconds from happening. Alex steps in front of his mate, fangs bared at Ian. He’s tense, everything about screaming no.
All Ian wants to do is say yes yes yes.
The coven leader steps in front of him, blocking his view of the guest vampire and his human. “Get him out of here,” he orders, pushing Ian backwards, away from the blood and the man that he could kill with a twist of his wrist and his mouth. His body aches with want; not lust, but hunger, it burns in his veins. It’s been so long since he’s tasted blood like that, fresh and young. Live blood.
He wants so badly it burns.
Ian tenses to spring forward; Vinny and Danny grab one of his arms, pulling him backwards. “Fuck you, no.” Danny says, pulling him back. Ian hisses again, narrowing his eyes. He swings around, trying to get away, get away from the people holding him down and back, get to the human that is bleeding. What a waste of fresh blood.
“Get him out!” Matt yells, pushing him back again, and Zack appears all muscles and superhuman strength, grabbing him and shoving him in the direction of the hallway. He turns around, turning the full wrath of his glare on the two guests. “You two need to leave now.” he says in a slightly less than friendly tone. His eyes are cold. He knew that bringing a human in was a bad idea.
Part 2