[Fic] Process of Becomming(Boyd, Boyd/Echo) R
Title: Process of Becoming
Author: Ersatz Fiction
Characters/Parings: Boyd, Topher, Adelle, Echo, Paul, Boyd/Echo
Word Count:1776
Spoilers:Omega,Epitaph One, Vows.
Disclaimer: If I was Joss, Dollhouse would have been on Syfy in the first place.
Summery: There are many kinds of death.
AN: Inspired byprlrocks ,'s T he Most Important Kiss He’d Ever Know, an awesome story where Spike vamps Topher. While my story is not a true Buffy crossover, Buffy vamp rules apply. All spelling errors, tense confusions and bastardized neuroscience expositions are mine.
----
1
Boyd woke with a sharp pain along his ribs. Opening his eyes, he saw muted lights and wooden honeycomb patterns. The Dollhouse. How did he get back in the Dollhouse? He could hear so much, loud thumping and swooshing noises all around him.
Another sharp pain, further down, drawing along his skin. The new doctor. The new doctor was cutting him open.
“You could have at least used the good anesthetic.” The cutting stopped with a sound of metal falling on wood. Boyd sat up on his forearms.
The doctor looked at him with surprised sloe-eyes, and something inside him wanted to rip them out of his head.
“Boyd?” he turned his head, Topher was half hidden behind a screen. The younger man gasped, mouth moving, before tumbling to the floor in a faint.
The doctor himself didn’t look far off. “Are you alright?" Boyd nodded. "I should go see to him,” the doctor said.
“Probably.” The cut was in a Y formation, and it was just starting to ooze a little blood around the edges. He could smell the sharp smelling salts from where he lay, and the thumping grew louder and quicker. The sound made him hungry.
Topher came to screaming. This too, made him hungry.
A half dozen men in suits ran through the door, guns trained on him. Something had happened to him, and he bet it had something to do with the women he took home. She was a spy. He compromised the Dollhouse. She took one of his kidneys.
“Topher, shut up. Mr. Langnton, I see rumors of your death have been greatly exaggerated.”
Death? “Excuse me?” Adelle stepped closer, the security team maintaining their protective ring. No one stood by the doctor, who was crouched next to Topher filling a syringe.
“Of course, you wouldn’t remember. We intercepted a phone call by the police on route to pick up a dead body discovered half a mile from your apartment. Your dead body.”
“That’s ridiculous, I must have been drugged.”
“She’s right. When we brought you in, you had no pulse or brain activity and a sizable neck wound.” The new doctor frowned. “I guess we made a mistake.”
“It’s no mistake. Boyd’s a zombie!” All eyes were on Topher. “Or a vampire.”
“Topher be reasonable--” Adelle said, as the doctor injected Topher with a sedative.
Now he knew what he wanted. Even the few drops of Topher’s blood made him salivate, and his face spasm.
“Vampire, absolutely positively a vampire.” Topher scooted across the floor until the wall stopped him. Boyd had no idea when people in groups were frightened; their hearts beat in exactly the same tempo.
Adelle tilted her head. “Are you planning to exsanguinate everyone in the House, Mr. Langnton?”
Something inside him screamed yes. “No, Ms. Dewitt.” Fangs. A whole row of fangs in front of his regular teeth.
“Good, as soon as you see fit to return, you may remain our head of security. As long as you allow Topher to create some mental safeguards. For our safety, of course.”
“Of course.” He was going to have to practice talking without cutting his tongue, and the taste of his own thin blood did nothing for his hunger.
“I’ll have someone from the lab send you up a bag of blood.” She mentioned all but two of the guards away. Topher was still bleeding a little.
“Better make it two.”
2
A week after waking up dead, Boyd resumed his duties. Being a vampire didn't change his life in the Dollhouse much. He rarely left the House now, and always with a security detail that was more for the safety of others then his own. No longer eating in the handler’s dinning room, his meals now consisted of warm glasses of blood, supplied by the Dollhouse medical lab and delivered from a Rossum affiliate. He still slept on the glorified futon in the room attached to his office, nodding off around dawn and waking at four PM.
His undead status didn’t expect him from staff meetings, but instead of daydreaming of the scent of Dr. Saunders hair, he thinks about what Alvarez skin would taste like. The look Adelle gave him means he’s not being very subtle about those thoughts either. They are trying to keep it a secret, but the staff rumor mill is rife with speculation. He can only imagine what Adelle told the boys in the lab about all the extra blood.
After the meeting, he thinks that it too bad he only met the vampire that made him the once. He has so many questions that no one has answers too. He considers going out, looking for the vampire he’d only seen once: the night he'd left the Dollhouse to have a drink. The six month mark of Dr. Saunder's absence.
She'd looked like her, the vampire. Longish brown hair and wide eyes with a secretive mouth. At least that’s what he though after several fingers of scotch.
After the bar closed, they kissed in the back of a cab all the way to his place, dusty from his long absence. She was a fantastic kisser, her secretive mouth playing along the edge of his jaw. In his apartment, they ended up tangled in the dust cloth over his couch and kissed more. Cool hands under her shirt, he tried not to moan another woman's name as she pressed her lips to his neck and she is biting him and never, not even when he was young, had he ever peaked so hard, fully clothed, that he blacked out.
It’s weird to think that was his death. An easier one then he imagined. Easier then he deserved, and not just because it didn't stick.
3
Topher said he'll live forever, never changing, which seems the most fanciful thing of all: everything changes.
"Topher, everything changes."
"Yeah, but not you. Look at this." After sitting in the chair for so long while Topher poked around, the controlled chaos of Topher’s outer office was a relief.
"See this? This is an image of your brain when you first started here, and here are the images I just took. You know why I had you sit there for the past hour doing those puzzles"
"To prove some kind of point?"
"To monitor your brain activity. Brain cells fire and die and create new pathways all the time. I know what a normal adult male brain would look like trying to do those puzzles. Yours is not normal. The pathways were there, and they were firing, but none were atrophying."
"So in other words...?"
"Your brain isn't changing. Not in the way mine or," waving a hand at the Actives doing Thai Chi below, "theirs. You should be able to learn new things at the same rate as before, but your mind is like, frozen in time, forever."
"Not forever. Nothing lives forever."
"Well, you’re not technically alive. So who know? Barring any unfortunate sunshine accidents, you'll outlive us all. And thanks to my nifty little blocks, it won’t because you got the munchies."
Topher gave him one of his boyish grins. It occurs to him that Topher would do nearly anything for almost-forever. He walked away then, before Topher offered what he couldn’t be sure he’d refuse.
4
Leaning over the balcony, watching a few Actives read and paint, he though about how many he could bleed before security arrived. Not a thought he would act on it. No. A part of him (the always-hungry part that ruled in his youth once, now creeps forefront more and more) compares them to chicken: no sense of fear when faced with a predator.
Except Echo. Sitting alone, reading her book, she looked like an easy kill. Like him, she watched with hunter eyes and already trapped one fox guarding the chicken coop. From her book, the women in question looked up, expression far too pointed. He stared back, temped to see what would happen if his face--slipped--a little.
5
Topher was wrong: he did change. The always-hungry part of him becomes harder to ignore. His feeling towards Topher changed. His feelings towards Dr. Saunders changed. His feelings for Echo changed.
Echo’s engagements never bothered him before, as long as she came back safe. But now, his always-hungry self growled when she returned smelling like other men and women, like desire and lust.
Echo was his. His to protect. His to love.
This is the reason why, his first act of violence six months after becoming a vampire, happened when Echo returned to the Dollhouse smelling of Paul Ballard and sex. He had his fangs in Ballard's throat in a blink of an eye. He could hear the screaming, feel the burns on his arms and face as the staff pressed sliver crosses to him, but loudest of all was the ever slowing beat of Ballard's heart.
Echo was crying, the salt of her tears a shadow of the taste of salt on his tongue. Easily swatting the others away, he went to her, gathered her in her arms, subduing her struggling with an embrace. He hardly ever touched her unless they were injured, and not since his change, and her warm body was divine. Even if she reeked of the other man. He kissed her: on her forehead, on her cheek, on her neck, her pretty supple neck where he knew he needed to mark her. So he did.
For the first time in months, he wasn’t hungry. Echo was his.
6
This, Boyd though, is what it must have looked like the first time. Crumbled bodies and blood in the rock pool. Echo curled limo in his arms, fingers on the bite mark.
“You hurt them. And me,” she whispered.
He could lie, he didn't mean to hurt her. Not really. But he always did see himself ending Paul Ballard.
Instead, He took her fingers and licked the bloody tips. He should leave, take Echo and run. Find others like him and get some answers.
The big one: he drank from her. Did this mean Echo was to become a vampire? Topher read all those books for him, once he stopped screaming, Boyd would ask him.
7
Drugged, the doctor was sticking wires and electric nodes all over his body. With his fangs out, sight and smell seemed sharper. He could smell Topher’s tears, hear the hummingbird beat of his heart and it seemed right. The doctor finished with the last node and the imprint chair slid back.
This death would not be easy.
Author: Ersatz Fiction
Characters/Parings: Boyd, Topher, Adelle, Echo, Paul, Boyd/Echo
Word Count:1776
Spoilers:Omega,Epitaph One, Vows.
Disclaimer: If I was Joss, Dollhouse would have been on Syfy in the first place.
Summery: There are many kinds of death.
AN: Inspired byprlrocks ,'s T he Most Important Kiss He’d Ever Know, an awesome story where Spike vamps Topher. While my story is not a true Buffy crossover, Buffy vamp rules apply. All spelling errors, tense confusions and bastardized neuroscience expositions are mine.
----
1
Boyd woke with a sharp pain along his ribs. Opening his eyes, he saw muted lights and wooden honeycomb patterns. The Dollhouse. How did he get back in the Dollhouse? He could hear so much, loud thumping and swooshing noises all around him.
Another sharp pain, further down, drawing along his skin. The new doctor. The new doctor was cutting him open.
“You could have at least used the good anesthetic.” The cutting stopped with a sound of metal falling on wood. Boyd sat up on his forearms.
The doctor looked at him with surprised sloe-eyes, and something inside him wanted to rip them out of his head.
“Boyd?” he turned his head, Topher was half hidden behind a screen. The younger man gasped, mouth moving, before tumbling to the floor in a faint.
The doctor himself didn’t look far off. “Are you alright?" Boyd nodded. "I should go see to him,” the doctor said.
“Probably.” The cut was in a Y formation, and it was just starting to ooze a little blood around the edges. He could smell the sharp smelling salts from where he lay, and the thumping grew louder and quicker. The sound made him hungry.
Topher came to screaming. This too, made him hungry.
A half dozen men in suits ran through the door, guns trained on him. Something had happened to him, and he bet it had something to do with the women he took home. She was a spy. He compromised the Dollhouse. She took one of his kidneys.
“Topher, shut up. Mr. Langnton, I see rumors of your death have been greatly exaggerated.”
Death? “Excuse me?” Adelle stepped closer, the security team maintaining their protective ring. No one stood by the doctor, who was crouched next to Topher filling a syringe.
“Of course, you wouldn’t remember. We intercepted a phone call by the police on route to pick up a dead body discovered half a mile from your apartment. Your dead body.”
“That’s ridiculous, I must have been drugged.”
“She’s right. When we brought you in, you had no pulse or brain activity and a sizable neck wound.” The new doctor frowned. “I guess we made a mistake.”
“It’s no mistake. Boyd’s a zombie!” All eyes were on Topher. “Or a vampire.”
“Topher be reasonable--” Adelle said, as the doctor injected Topher with a sedative.
Now he knew what he wanted. Even the few drops of Topher’s blood made him salivate, and his face spasm.
“Vampire, absolutely positively a vampire.” Topher scooted across the floor until the wall stopped him. Boyd had no idea when people in groups were frightened; their hearts beat in exactly the same tempo.
Adelle tilted her head. “Are you planning to exsanguinate everyone in the House, Mr. Langnton?”
Something inside him screamed yes. “No, Ms. Dewitt.” Fangs. A whole row of fangs in front of his regular teeth.
“Good, as soon as you see fit to return, you may remain our head of security. As long as you allow Topher to create some mental safeguards. For our safety, of course.”
“Of course.” He was going to have to practice talking without cutting his tongue, and the taste of his own thin blood did nothing for his hunger.
“I’ll have someone from the lab send you up a bag of blood.” She mentioned all but two of the guards away. Topher was still bleeding a little.
“Better make it two.”
2
A week after waking up dead, Boyd resumed his duties. Being a vampire didn't change his life in the Dollhouse much. He rarely left the House now, and always with a security detail that was more for the safety of others then his own. No longer eating in the handler’s dinning room, his meals now consisted of warm glasses of blood, supplied by the Dollhouse medical lab and delivered from a Rossum affiliate. He still slept on the glorified futon in the room attached to his office, nodding off around dawn and waking at four PM.
His undead status didn’t expect him from staff meetings, but instead of daydreaming of the scent of Dr. Saunders hair, he thinks about what Alvarez skin would taste like. The look Adelle gave him means he’s not being very subtle about those thoughts either. They are trying to keep it a secret, but the staff rumor mill is rife with speculation. He can only imagine what Adelle told the boys in the lab about all the extra blood.
After the meeting, he thinks that it too bad he only met the vampire that made him the once. He has so many questions that no one has answers too. He considers going out, looking for the vampire he’d only seen once: the night he'd left the Dollhouse to have a drink. The six month mark of Dr. Saunder's absence.
She'd looked like her, the vampire. Longish brown hair and wide eyes with a secretive mouth. At least that’s what he though after several fingers of scotch.
After the bar closed, they kissed in the back of a cab all the way to his place, dusty from his long absence. She was a fantastic kisser, her secretive mouth playing along the edge of his jaw. In his apartment, they ended up tangled in the dust cloth over his couch and kissed more. Cool hands under her shirt, he tried not to moan another woman's name as she pressed her lips to his neck and she is biting him and never, not even when he was young, had he ever peaked so hard, fully clothed, that he blacked out.
It’s weird to think that was his death. An easier one then he imagined. Easier then he deserved, and not just because it didn't stick.
3
Topher said he'll live forever, never changing, which seems the most fanciful thing of all: everything changes.
"Topher, everything changes."
"Yeah, but not you. Look at this." After sitting in the chair for so long while Topher poked around, the controlled chaos of Topher’s outer office was a relief.
"See this? This is an image of your brain when you first started here, and here are the images I just took. You know why I had you sit there for the past hour doing those puzzles"
"To prove some kind of point?"
"To monitor your brain activity. Brain cells fire and die and create new pathways all the time. I know what a normal adult male brain would look like trying to do those puzzles. Yours is not normal. The pathways were there, and they were firing, but none were atrophying."
"So in other words...?"
"Your brain isn't changing. Not in the way mine or," waving a hand at the Actives doing Thai Chi below, "theirs. You should be able to learn new things at the same rate as before, but your mind is like, frozen in time, forever."
"Not forever. Nothing lives forever."
"Well, you’re not technically alive. So who know? Barring any unfortunate sunshine accidents, you'll outlive us all. And thanks to my nifty little blocks, it won’t because you got the munchies."
Topher gave him one of his boyish grins. It occurs to him that Topher would do nearly anything for almost-forever. He walked away then, before Topher offered what he couldn’t be sure he’d refuse.
4
Leaning over the balcony, watching a few Actives read and paint, he though about how many he could bleed before security arrived. Not a thought he would act on it. No. A part of him (the always-hungry part that ruled in his youth once, now creeps forefront more and more) compares them to chicken: no sense of fear when faced with a predator.
Except Echo. Sitting alone, reading her book, she looked like an easy kill. Like him, she watched with hunter eyes and already trapped one fox guarding the chicken coop. From her book, the women in question looked up, expression far too pointed. He stared back, temped to see what would happen if his face--slipped--a little.
5
Topher was wrong: he did change. The always-hungry part of him becomes harder to ignore. His feeling towards Topher changed. His feelings towards Dr. Saunders changed. His feelings for Echo changed.
Echo’s engagements never bothered him before, as long as she came back safe. But now, his always-hungry self growled when she returned smelling like other men and women, like desire and lust.
Echo was his. His to protect. His to love.
This is the reason why, his first act of violence six months after becoming a vampire, happened when Echo returned to the Dollhouse smelling of Paul Ballard and sex. He had his fangs in Ballard's throat in a blink of an eye. He could hear the screaming, feel the burns on his arms and face as the staff pressed sliver crosses to him, but loudest of all was the ever slowing beat of Ballard's heart.
Echo was crying, the salt of her tears a shadow of the taste of salt on his tongue. Easily swatting the others away, he went to her, gathered her in her arms, subduing her struggling with an embrace. He hardly ever touched her unless they were injured, and not since his change, and her warm body was divine. Even if she reeked of the other man. He kissed her: on her forehead, on her cheek, on her neck, her pretty supple neck where he knew he needed to mark her. So he did.
For the first time in months, he wasn’t hungry. Echo was his.
6
This, Boyd though, is what it must have looked like the first time. Crumbled bodies and blood in the rock pool. Echo curled limo in his arms, fingers on the bite mark.
“You hurt them. And me,” she whispered.
He could lie, he didn't mean to hurt her. Not really. But he always did see himself ending Paul Ballard.
Instead, He took her fingers and licked the bloody tips. He should leave, take Echo and run. Find others like him and get some answers.
The big one: he drank from her. Did this mean Echo was to become a vampire? Topher read all those books for him, once he stopped screaming, Boyd would ask him.
7
Drugged, the doctor was sticking wires and electric nodes all over his body. With his fangs out, sight and smell seemed sharper. He could smell Topher’s tears, hear the hummingbird beat of his heart and it seemed right. The doctor finished with the last node and the imprint chair slid back.
This death would not be easy.