in lieu of having a life
I bring fic! For Hanna Is Not a Boy's Name, which you should read if you're not already.
feeding on fever
conrad/toni/veser, r, 4451 words
"Hey, Mr. Fangs," she says, peeking out from under the high collar of her coat. "You mind if I come in? I brought dinner."
"Fang," says Veser from behind her. He slinks through the doorway and stretches out on Conrad's sofa. "He's only got the one, see?"
"Hm," Toni murmurs, putting her cold hands on Conrad's face, tilting it up so she can see. He gulps. "You're right, I guess," she shrugs, "but it's still sharp, right? So long as it gets the job done-"
"Hey," Veser drawls with a wink, "if that's what you're into, I got a whole mouthful."
She rolls her eyes and goes to peel off her coat.
"Just to clarify," Veser tells him, deadpan, "I am not dinner." Toni hands over a blood bag as proof. He tries not to wonder where she got it.
"Would you two mind telling me," Conrad says politely, "why you are in my apartment?"
-
It's a horrible feeling, complacency, but he has only the slightest twinge of irritation when he wakes up and Toni is sprawled across the floor on her stomach.
"Morning," she says contently, flipping through her magazine. "Or evening, I guess. I was wondering when you were gonna get up. The sun went down hours ago. Were you a late sleeper when you were, y'know, or is it something you picked up with the whole undead thin-"
"How did you get in here?" Conrad says wearily, because it's early and his neck is stiff and there's the same awful hunger curling in his gut as always. "Did I leave the door unlocked?"
"Key under the mat," she grins, feral.
"Ah," and he is not comforted at all.
"Don't frown at me like that," she says, sticks her tongue out. "Here, look at this." She tugs on the leg of his pants and he crouches down next to her. She tilts the magazine in his direction.
"What am I looking at?" he asks, dumbfounded, because seriously, the moon is not even up and he hasn't been awake for five minutes yet.
"Art," she says matter-of-factly. "Student stuff."
"Any of it yours?" She blushes and shakes her head. "Too bad," he says, and means it. Her smile is warm and she leans against him conspiratorially. Toni is always touching people: punching and hugging and holding. No one really minds, at least Conrad doesn't think they do, because she is always mildly feverish and trying to curl around you like a blanket.
He doesn't mind, at least.
She sighs as she flips the pages, stretching out like elastic. She keeps edging closer to him, and she doesn't look up so he can't tell if it's an accident. The hem of her shirt rides up as she's leaning emphatically over an article on the pros and cons of Photoshop, and the skin of her hip is boiling hot against his arm. He freezes.
"I, uh," he stammers. "I need to go brush my teeth."
Toni's lips quirk wryly. "Veser's asleep in your bathtub," she warns.
"I won't wake him up."
"I hope not, for your sake."
Veser is, in fact, asleep in his bathtub, naked in the murky water, his chest and arms peeking out like pale sand-white, fractured. Even unconscious, he's scowling, and Conrad's first thought is nightmares and he reaches out to shake him. He pauses, lets his fingers skim the water as he pulls his hand back. It's ice cold.
Veser's hand is latched onto his wrist before he knows what's going on. Veser sees what he's caught and smirks. "Figured you'd be the pervert," he quips, and he sinks back under the water before he lets go of Conrad's arm.
-
He should really be more surprised when he opens his eyes to see Veser sitting on his bed, Toni perched on his other side, but he's tired and dead so all he can manage is a half-shocked 'what the fuck!' before he sits up quickly.
"We're having movie night," Toni informs him gleefully, waving DVDs in his face.
"So you better have some fucking popcorn," Veser adds, punching him in the shoulder a little too hard to be friendly.
He indeed has some fucking popcorn, hidden away in the back of his cabinet. Veser busies himself with preparing it while Toni drags him away in search of spare blankets and pillows.
"I don't want to leave that alone with my appliances," he whines.
"To be fair," Toni says absentmindedly, letting out a short 'ha!' of victory as she unearths a linen closet, "you don't really use them, do you?"
"That," Conrad huffs, "is not the point."
"Hush and help me pick which movie to watch first."
Conrad makes his way back into the living room, where Veser is already seated with an enormous bowl of popcorn that he doesn't look intent on sharing. "Are you serious?" he asks, thumbing through the stack of DVDs she brought-An American Werewolf in London and The Creature from the Black Lagoon pop out at him. "Did you rent every monster movie known to man?"
"Tried to," she says cheerily, and curls up beside Veser, who tells Conrad to pick the Gary Oldman Dracula if he wants to watch a vampire movie. He obliges and joins them on the couch, where Toni promptly lays down across them, her head in Conrad's lap and her knees hooked around Veser's thighs. The opening credits start to roll and he lets his fingers tangle in her hair.
Halfway though, she leans up onto her elbow (which is kind of painfully digging into Conrad's leg, but he's not about to say anything) and says, "Conrad."
"Yes?"
"Can you do that?"
"Do what," he says, too absorbed in being appalled by Keanu Reaves' acting.
"Glamour people, stupid," she says with a pinch to the arm for emphasis.
"Ouch, stop that. I don't know, I've never tried."
"Well," she singsongs, sitting up and righting herself, "try it."
Conrad blinks.
"Oh, come on," she says, rolling her eyes. "Just stare at me. Try to put me in a trance or whatever."
He sighs and he's about to protest but she grabs him by the shoulder and holds him there, her hands surprisingly strong. So he meets her eyes thinking about trances and spells but he thinks it backfires a little, because all he sees are Toni's eyes-dark and huge and sedate, and their shape is something foreign and intricate, like what you'd find on one of her canvases-and if he's supposed to be hypnotizing her he is the world's worst vampire, because he thinks it's working the other way around.
Conrad stares some more. Toni stares back. Veser cracks up.
"You two," he says through his laughter and his popcorn, "are the biggest fucking idiots I have ever met."
Toni can't hide her grin and she turns away, smacking Veser on the back of the head and saying, "Shut it, Swamp Thing."
"Anybody else smell wet dog, or is it just me?" he shoots back. She laughs and turns to the window, arching her back and letting out a howl that shakes Conrad's bones and makes the upstairs neighbors stomp, one that carries all the way to the moon.
The screen has faded to white noise, so Conrad gets up and starts flicking through the DVDs again. "We don't know any aliens, do we?" he asks, holding up a copy of E.T. Toni groans and knocks on the wooden coffee table while Veser says, "Don't tempt fate, man."
Conrad shrugs and pops the movie in.
-
And it's easy enough to think of them as roommates, kind of; roommates who have their own houses and go home every morning. At least, he thinks they go home. He really can't be sure.
At any rate, they act like they live there, so roommates it is. Sometimes Conrad wakes up to Veser prowling for food, glowering at him when there's no milk in the fridge. Sometimes it's Toni laid out on the couch, hair crazier than usual and paints and canvases piled up around her. There are now an infinite number of charcoal stains on his sofa, for which she apologizes profusely, and Veser just says something snide about how there are better ways to ruin furniture, if you know what he means.
The apartment seems a little lighter, a little happier. Lived in, for the first time.
Then one night Conrad wakes up, expecting the scratching noise of Toni's pencils or the sound of water running in the bathroom but all is weirdly silent. The living room is empty and barren save for a few stray pastels rolling around on the floor. The bathroom door hangs open, only tile and the shower curtain visible.
He decides to go to the kitchen, to see if maybe they were getting something to eat. The small thuds of his feet padding against the floor seem too loud and so does the creak of the door.
Oh.
He starts with Toni's back, because that's what he sees the most. The jut of her hip is soft against the edge of the counter, and her skin is glinting over the muscles threaded through her back. She is moving boneless, spineless, and Conrad traces the lines of her shoulders all the way down to the harsh boundary of her jeans, and then back up again, and then freezing when Veser's hands move down the routes he carved out with his eyes.
He takes a moment to consider Veser's fingers-all papercuts and bitten-down nails, white and stark against honey-dark skin of Toni's waist. Then he realizes that Veser's eyes are wide and staring, glinting with something Conrad doesn't recognize. Veser blinks once and his eyes are closed again, his mouth preoccupied with the exposed neck in front of it.
Conrad backs out of the room and walks briskly out the front door. He does not need to hear Toni's breath catch like that, or see the tension in Veser's hands, or remember the way his body froze upon seeing their tangled limbs.
While Hanna is rambling about a legit witch who lives down the block and do you think maybe she'd want to hang out, the zombie asks in his low, measured voice if Conrad is feeling quite alright. He nods quickly and fixes his eyes on the ground.
By the time he gets home, exhausted and bleeding and armed with the knowledge that not all witches are friendly, it's going on five o' clock. He expects them to be gone, he expects his house to be lonely and safe and empty like it's always been, like it should be.
The universe has a way of shattering Conrad's expectations, throwing the shards in his face, and laughing when he cries.
"In case you were wondering," Veser says gleefully, low and manic, "the proper etiquette when one catches his fucking sexy friends making out is to ask to join. Running away works, too, I guess."
Conrad swallows. "Why are you in my house?" and then he backs up against the door a little, because Veser keeps walking closer like some kind of predator. "Is Toni-"
"Relax, she went home. It's just me." Veser's tone is almost bored but his eyes are working overtime, thoughtful and evaluating and running over Conrad in a way he is totally not comfortable with.
"I didn't mean to-"Conrad starts, clearing his throat, before he realizes that he's apologizing to Veser. "I mean. This is my house. Why were you kissing her in my house?"
"'Cause you didn't do it first," he shrugs, and laughs at Conrad's bewildered expression. "Do you wish I hadn't?" he asks, but shakes his head. "No. You liked watching." Conrad doesn't remember when Veser got this close, but he is feeling really claustrophobic and all his words are lodged in his throat.
"You're not mad at all," he continues, and he has Conrad fucking pinned, now, hands on either side of his head. "You're just pissed that you didn't have the balls to stay." Conrad's heart doesn't beat anymore, but he feels something stuttering underneath his ribcage, staccato and quick. This a million different kinds of unfair, because he can feel Veser's pulse, smell the saltiness in his veins, the electric twang of it, and it would be so easy to just lean forward, just an inch-
"You're probably gonna fucking jack off to it as soon as I'm gone, aren't you," he murmurs, and Conrad inhales sharply, flattening himself against the door as much as possible. Veser's hips are a breath away from his and-this is not supposed to happen. He's not supposed to want it to.
Veser grins, an inch from Conrad's ear. "You so are."
He drops his arms, then, shoves them in his pockets casually and backs away. "You should get some rest," he says, glancing back to the pale starts of daylight peeking out through the curtains, and then at the bloodstain on Conrad's shirt. "You look kind of rough."
He nudges Conrad out of the way and leaves. Conrad bolts to his bedroom as soon as the door clicks, hiding under the covers and breathing hard. He is determined not to beat off, not to give Veser the satisfaction.
He does, anyway.
-
"Hey, Connie," Toni says brightly. She's actually knocked on the door today, much to Conrad's surprise and hidden amusement. "It's finals week," she explains as he stares at the bag of textbooks over her arm. "That's where Veser's been, too."
"Too bad," Conrad deadpans, and she giggles.
"C'mere," she says suddenly, tugging on his arm. "I need your help with something."
Something is an art project, and it involves him laying on the floor while she traces his limbs sloppily with red paint.
"Conrad," she says, pausing for a second, which is really unfortunate because she's kind of stretched over him to outline his shoulder and he could lean up and taste the contours of her neck, her chest, if he wanted to-
"Mm?"
She rocks back on her heels and he breathes a sigh of relief, careful not to move and mess up her painting. "Did you kiss Veser?" It sounds strangely innocent, out of her mouth.
"No," he replies quickly. "Why would you think that?"
"I can smell him on you," she says, staring at him curiously and worrying her lower lip.
"I really didn't," he assures her. Toni shrugs.
"No big," she says, and offers a hand to pull him up. It looks kind of like a crime scene, Conrad thinks, looking at his bloody silhouette with his head cocked. He is dead, after all; it works.
Then Toni splashes black paint all over it.
"What was that for?" he sputters, like she'd thrown it at him and not his likeness.
"Chill," she says, rolling her eyes. "It's gonna look really cool."
It does, in the end, despite his protests.
"What should I call it?" she asks with a smile. "'My Buddy Dracula'? 'Bump in the Night'?" He shrugs. She sighs, exasperated, and scribbles CONRAD in her sloping handwriting on the bottom right corner of the canvas. "Simplicity is best, I guess," she acquiesces. Her eyes dart up at him expectantly and he crouches down beside her, head tilted to the side.
"I like it," he declares, and she leans her head against his shoulder.
-
"Do you think," Conrad says tersely, without opening his eyes, "that you could fucking stop that for five seconds?"
Veser stops tapping his fingers against his textbook for a fraction of a moment, just so Conrad hears his snide 'nope' clearly.
Conrad blinks, lets his eyes adjust to the light overhead and the way it plays off Veser's white white hands. Over the noise, he says, "So, are we gonna talk about-"
"Nope," comes the reply, more casual than Conrad was expecting.
"Oh," he says. "Right. " He swallows, and the tapping still hasn't stopped, so he watches to drown out the listening, watches the fingers and the glimpse of scrapes and scratches on the flat of his palm.
He keeps staring, disgusted to find that it's not as bothersome now. Veser beats out a steady rhythm, his lips turning up at the corners.
-
"Okay," Toni says finally, "what's wrong with you two?"
Conrad quickly begins studying the ground while Veser just shrugs and tosses a pencil at her. She catches it and smiles, not as exasperated as she sounds. "I mean it, Veser."
"Bat-boy wants to fuck you," he says lazily, and Conrad can feel the heat rising in his face, sinks lower in his chair. But Toni doesn't freak out, she just walks over to him and leans close. Conrad can smell her shampoo, her toothpaste, and underneath it the dusky warm scent of her blood. She kisses him softly on the forehead and smiles. He feels Veser's stare like a brand.
-
This time the sound of them wakes him up.
He crawls out of bed, getting down on his hands and knees and pressing his ear to the door, like this is somewhere he needs to eavesdrop, like he doesn't live here. And this-it's just unfair, on so many levels. He'd known the whole vampire thing would make him want to drink blood, but this isn't just thirst. This is an irrevocable hunger, a necessity that pangs in the hollows of his bones. And he can hear them, their breathing and the small sounds they make, but more than that, he feels them; staggered pulses through the walls, through the floor, accompanied by the salty smell that his body registers as both sex and food. He leans closer against the door and closes his eyes, inhaling slowly.
Then the door opens and he topples backwards. When he looks up, Veser is staring at him, leaned up against the doorframe with his hip jutted out, cocky and shirtless like he isn't pale and scarred and built like a twelve year old.
"So, are you going to run this time or are you going to get naked?" His voice is thick and rich, and it makes Conrad want to shudder. Toni is peering at them through the open door, shoulders flushed and dark.
Conrad stands up and walks over to him. "Get out of my house," he says calmly, and slams the door in his face.
And then he dives under his covers and hides, trying to will himself asleep despite the heavy moon hanging outside his window.
It's no use, and he's not there for ten minutes before he hears the door creak open and feels the bed dip under a new pressure.
"It's okay if you're freaked," Toni murmurs, suddenly close to him, and Conrad stiffens, feeling the press of her knees against the backs of his. He keeps the covers tight around his head, his eyes squeezed shut. "I mean, it is really, really weird, but. We all kind of were already, you know?" He does know.
She lets her fingers trace absentminded circles on his arm that burn, even through the blankets. She rests her forehead on the back of his neck and her breathing starts to grow tired, sleep-hazed. He rolls over then, emboldened. Her hair isn't done, he notes, just hanging lazily over her shoulders. She took the liberty of borrowing one of his shirts, and it clings at her chest and at her hips, skimming the tops of her thighs. Then Conrad sees her eyes open a slit, obviously not as asleep as he thought she was, and she can't fight a peek of a grin, flattered and pleased.
"We're sorry," she starts to say softly, soberly, "we won't do it again," but Conrad has heard enough 'sorry's for a lifetime so he leans in and presses his mouth around the word. Toni lets out a little squeal of delight and curls her arms around his neck. Veser jumps out of whatever dark corner he was hiding in and lands on the other side of Conrad.
"Knew you'd come around," he smirks against Conrad's neck. Conrad, surprising himself, leans back into the touch.
-
Weirdly enough, nothing changes.
There are little things, of course, like how Toni makes a habit of stealing his clothes and Veser makes a habit of walking around without a whole lot of them-okay, so it's mostly just the naked parts that change. But Veser still traipses around complaining about how there's never any goddamned food, which, really, dead guy's apartment, hello. And then Toni keeps finding new and inventive ways to destroy Conrad's décor ("Look, why would I smear blue paint all over your wall? That was totally already there-stop looking at me like that."). Conrad just tries to keep up with them, and he finds himself dragged out in the night-time streets with them more times in one week than he had been his entire life. He doesn't even mind it.
"Maybe," says Veser, after ten minutes of staring morosely out the window at the pouring rain while Conrad reads the paper. "Maybe we could go to the beach."
"Yes," Conrad says without looking up, "I'm sure that would go over well. What with the sun and the undead thing I've got going on."
"I didn't say you had to get a fucking tan," he argues. "Just. It would be nice to get out of town for a while. See something besides this damn rain."
"No."
Veser hops over the couch in one bound and leans in close. "All I said," he leers, hand on Conrad's chest, "was maybe."
"All I said was no," comes the reply, disinterested.
"Jesus," Veser sighs, "why are you still fucking talking?" And then he sinks to his knees in front of Conrad.
"Because I-fuck," Conrad hisses. "Just watch the teeth." He suddenly thinks of waves and moonlit boardwalks.
Veser rolls his eyes, unseen.
Toni waltzes in about five minutes later, arms loaded with groceries and dripping wet. She smirks, taking in Conrad's reddened face.
"Can't leave you two alone for a second, can I?" she murmurs, and sets her bags on the floor.
-
"You're kidding, right?"
Conrad stands in the doorway, half-defiant and half-embarrassed. Worth's place always smells like a mix of cleaning supplies and urine, a regular hospital wing with the twang of smoke.
"Shit," Worth laughs, cigarette nearly falling out of his mouth, "a fuckin' vampire and you can't keep from getting your ass kicked." He clenches his sides, and seriously, it's not that funny. He's not totally destroyed.
"It's not like-I don't walk around with a neon sign saying, 'hey, please beat me up!'-"
"What, you wear a bag over your head?"
"It just so happens that your number one client fucked up my social standing in the supernatural community," he finishes with a glare.
"You'd have done it yourself, eventually," Worth shrugs.
"I'm not healing as fast as I should be."
"'Cause you don't drink enough goddamn blood, genius." Worth busies himself with rubbing antiseptic into a cut on Conrad's arm, hard, smirking when he flinches.
"I'm going to guess that you aren't famous for your bedside manner," Conrad remarks dryly.
"Why work hard beside the bed when you do just fine in it," Worth jeers. Conrad turns to gag, but that requires him staring at Worth's sink which contains a variety of all thinks sharp and pointy and coated with bodily fluids. He settles for winces and cursing when Worth wipes at his arm too roughly.
"Heard you picked up a couple o' freeloaders," Worth says casually, digging out a bandage. Conrad peers over his shoulder to make sure there was nothing festering in the drawer he pulled it out of; it's surprisingly clean.
"What's it to you?" Conrad mumbles.
"Just don't seem the social butterfly, is all," Worth snaps back with a sneer.
Conrad thinks of when he was alive, how he liked to stay in his closed-in apartment with the blinds pulled shut. Then he thinks of Veser's stupid fucking teeth and his stupid fucking smirk, and how Toni has taken to fixing her hair in front of his bathroom mirror every evening with a fierce determination. He thinks how he keeps the kitchen stocked, even now.
"Everything's conditional, I guess," he shrugs. "Ow, what the fuck!"
Worth pats down on his bandaged wound once more, for good measure. Then he tosses a bag of blood from the freezer at Conrad's head. He catches it, but hesitantly.
"Oh, for fuck's sake, really?"
"I'm going to drink it," Conrad scowls. "I just can't make myself like it, okay?"
"You better, Hanna'll be on my ass if we've got ourselves an anorexic vampire."
"It tastes like people," he whines.
"You're s'posed to eat people," Worth says. "Pussy," he adds helpfully.
"Oh, fuck you," Conrad mutters.
"It tastes better if it's fresh."
"What? Why do you know tha-never mind, never fucking mind, I don't want to know. I'm gonna leave now."
Worth laughs and exhales a cloud of smoke.
-
"They're so married," Toni says with a snicker, leaning into Veser easily. Conrad follows her glance to Hanna and the dead guy, who are hovering nearby. Hanna is grinning wide enough to break his face in half and gesturing emphatically with no regard for personal space, while the corpse beside him nods calmly and tells him to button his coat.
"What?" Conrad says, wrinkling his brow.
"You are really not the brightest bat in the belfry, are you?" Veser sneers.
"They can't be married, he's dead," Conrad says resolutely.
"You're dead," Toni points out.
"Yeah, but I'm not decaying," he protests.
"I dunno, dude, you kind of reek sometimes," Veser says ambivalently.
"Oh, you're so funny. Hilarious. Pardon me while I laugh myself into a frenzy."
"There's no need for that," Veser sniffs.
"If they're married," Conrad wonders, after a pause, "what does that make us?"
"No," Veser says bluntly. "No. Do not even fucking go there, or I will punch you in the face, for real."
"Wouldn't be the first time," Conrad replies.
"Boys, boys," Toni says, jumping between them. "Play nice." She slides her small hands into theirs and lets her fingers tickle their palms; a maybe, a promise.
"Hey!" Hanna shouts, waving his hands in the air. "We're gonna go check out this report on a poltergeist and maybe go rollerblading, do you want to come?"
"Definitely!" she yells back, and then, an afterthought: "Can we get ice cream, too?"
Veser opens his mouth to say something but she squeezes his hand in appeasement. "Later," she murmurs, and Conrad shivers.
This is mostly just a clusterfuck of songs I was listening to while writing this, and I am way too lazy to make a legit fanmix.
the cardigans; you're the storm ☆
bear your fangs and burn my wings
i hear bullets singing
and if you want me, i'm your country
andrew bird; fake palindromes ☆
what monsters that talk
monsters that walk the earth
lady gaga; teeth ☆
tell me something that'll change me
i'm gonna love you with my hands tied
empires; i want blood ☆
you scream insanity
i'll be right there
florence + the machine; howl ☆
if you could only see the beast you've made of me
i held it in but now it seems you've set it running free
stars; death to death ☆
i am destroyer, i am lover
why love one thing and not the other?
i am destroyer, i am lover
and when i kiss i like to smother
tv on the radio; wolf like me ☆
my mind has changed my body's frame, but god, i like it
my heart's aflame, my body's strained, but god, i like it
jenny lewis; handle with care ☆
everybody got somebody to lean on
put your body next to mine and dream on
feeding on fever
conrad/toni/veser, r, 4451 words
"Hey, Mr. Fangs," she says, peeking out from under the high collar of her coat. "You mind if I come in? I brought dinner."
"Fang," says Veser from behind her. He slinks through the doorway and stretches out on Conrad's sofa. "He's only got the one, see?"
"Hm," Toni murmurs, putting her cold hands on Conrad's face, tilting it up so she can see. He gulps. "You're right, I guess," she shrugs, "but it's still sharp, right? So long as it gets the job done-"
"Hey," Veser drawls with a wink, "if that's what you're into, I got a whole mouthful."
She rolls her eyes and goes to peel off her coat.
"Just to clarify," Veser tells him, deadpan, "I am not dinner." Toni hands over a blood bag as proof. He tries not to wonder where she got it.
"Would you two mind telling me," Conrad says politely, "why you are in my apartment?"
-
It's a horrible feeling, complacency, but he has only the slightest twinge of irritation when he wakes up and Toni is sprawled across the floor on her stomach.
"Morning," she says contently, flipping through her magazine. "Or evening, I guess. I was wondering when you were gonna get up. The sun went down hours ago. Were you a late sleeper when you were, y'know, or is it something you picked up with the whole undead thin-"
"How did you get in here?" Conrad says wearily, because it's early and his neck is stiff and there's the same awful hunger curling in his gut as always. "Did I leave the door unlocked?"
"Key under the mat," she grins, feral.
"Ah," and he is not comforted at all.
"Don't frown at me like that," she says, sticks her tongue out. "Here, look at this." She tugs on the leg of his pants and he crouches down next to her. She tilts the magazine in his direction.
"What am I looking at?" he asks, dumbfounded, because seriously, the moon is not even up and he hasn't been awake for five minutes yet.
"Art," she says matter-of-factly. "Student stuff."
"Any of it yours?" She blushes and shakes her head. "Too bad," he says, and means it. Her smile is warm and she leans against him conspiratorially. Toni is always touching people: punching and hugging and holding. No one really minds, at least Conrad doesn't think they do, because she is always mildly feverish and trying to curl around you like a blanket.
He doesn't mind, at least.
She sighs as she flips the pages, stretching out like elastic. She keeps edging closer to him, and she doesn't look up so he can't tell if it's an accident. The hem of her shirt rides up as she's leaning emphatically over an article on the pros and cons of Photoshop, and the skin of her hip is boiling hot against his arm. He freezes.
"I, uh," he stammers. "I need to go brush my teeth."
Toni's lips quirk wryly. "Veser's asleep in your bathtub," she warns.
"I won't wake him up."
"I hope not, for your sake."
Veser is, in fact, asleep in his bathtub, naked in the murky water, his chest and arms peeking out like pale sand-white, fractured. Even unconscious, he's scowling, and Conrad's first thought is nightmares and he reaches out to shake him. He pauses, lets his fingers skim the water as he pulls his hand back. It's ice cold.
Veser's hand is latched onto his wrist before he knows what's going on. Veser sees what he's caught and smirks. "Figured you'd be the pervert," he quips, and he sinks back under the water before he lets go of Conrad's arm.
-
He should really be more surprised when he opens his eyes to see Veser sitting on his bed, Toni perched on his other side, but he's tired and dead so all he can manage is a half-shocked 'what the fuck!' before he sits up quickly.
"We're having movie night," Toni informs him gleefully, waving DVDs in his face.
"So you better have some fucking popcorn," Veser adds, punching him in the shoulder a little too hard to be friendly.
He indeed has some fucking popcorn, hidden away in the back of his cabinet. Veser busies himself with preparing it while Toni drags him away in search of spare blankets and pillows.
"I don't want to leave that alone with my appliances," he whines.
"To be fair," Toni says absentmindedly, letting out a short 'ha!' of victory as she unearths a linen closet, "you don't really use them, do you?"
"That," Conrad huffs, "is not the point."
"Hush and help me pick which movie to watch first."
Conrad makes his way back into the living room, where Veser is already seated with an enormous bowl of popcorn that he doesn't look intent on sharing. "Are you serious?" he asks, thumbing through the stack of DVDs she brought-An American Werewolf in London and The Creature from the Black Lagoon pop out at him. "Did you rent every monster movie known to man?"
"Tried to," she says cheerily, and curls up beside Veser, who tells Conrad to pick the Gary Oldman Dracula if he wants to watch a vampire movie. He obliges and joins them on the couch, where Toni promptly lays down across them, her head in Conrad's lap and her knees hooked around Veser's thighs. The opening credits start to roll and he lets his fingers tangle in her hair.
Halfway though, she leans up onto her elbow (which is kind of painfully digging into Conrad's leg, but he's not about to say anything) and says, "Conrad."
"Yes?"
"Can you do that?"
"Do what," he says, too absorbed in being appalled by Keanu Reaves' acting.
"Glamour people, stupid," she says with a pinch to the arm for emphasis.
"Ouch, stop that. I don't know, I've never tried."
"Well," she singsongs, sitting up and righting herself, "try it."
Conrad blinks.
"Oh, come on," she says, rolling her eyes. "Just stare at me. Try to put me in a trance or whatever."
He sighs and he's about to protest but she grabs him by the shoulder and holds him there, her hands surprisingly strong. So he meets her eyes thinking about trances and spells but he thinks it backfires a little, because all he sees are Toni's eyes-dark and huge and sedate, and their shape is something foreign and intricate, like what you'd find on one of her canvases-and if he's supposed to be hypnotizing her he is the world's worst vampire, because he thinks it's working the other way around.
Conrad stares some more. Toni stares back. Veser cracks up.
"You two," he says through his laughter and his popcorn, "are the biggest fucking idiots I have ever met."
Toni can't hide her grin and she turns away, smacking Veser on the back of the head and saying, "Shut it, Swamp Thing."
"Anybody else smell wet dog, or is it just me?" he shoots back. She laughs and turns to the window, arching her back and letting out a howl that shakes Conrad's bones and makes the upstairs neighbors stomp, one that carries all the way to the moon.
The screen has faded to white noise, so Conrad gets up and starts flicking through the DVDs again. "We don't know any aliens, do we?" he asks, holding up a copy of E.T. Toni groans and knocks on the wooden coffee table while Veser says, "Don't tempt fate, man."
Conrad shrugs and pops the movie in.
-
And it's easy enough to think of them as roommates, kind of; roommates who have their own houses and go home every morning. At least, he thinks they go home. He really can't be sure.
At any rate, they act like they live there, so roommates it is. Sometimes Conrad wakes up to Veser prowling for food, glowering at him when there's no milk in the fridge. Sometimes it's Toni laid out on the couch, hair crazier than usual and paints and canvases piled up around her. There are now an infinite number of charcoal stains on his sofa, for which she apologizes profusely, and Veser just says something snide about how there are better ways to ruin furniture, if you know what he means.
The apartment seems a little lighter, a little happier. Lived in, for the first time.
Then one night Conrad wakes up, expecting the scratching noise of Toni's pencils or the sound of water running in the bathroom but all is weirdly silent. The living room is empty and barren save for a few stray pastels rolling around on the floor. The bathroom door hangs open, only tile and the shower curtain visible.
He decides to go to the kitchen, to see if maybe they were getting something to eat. The small thuds of his feet padding against the floor seem too loud and so does the creak of the door.
Oh.
He starts with Toni's back, because that's what he sees the most. The jut of her hip is soft against the edge of the counter, and her skin is glinting over the muscles threaded through her back. She is moving boneless, spineless, and Conrad traces the lines of her shoulders all the way down to the harsh boundary of her jeans, and then back up again, and then freezing when Veser's hands move down the routes he carved out with his eyes.
He takes a moment to consider Veser's fingers-all papercuts and bitten-down nails, white and stark against honey-dark skin of Toni's waist. Then he realizes that Veser's eyes are wide and staring, glinting with something Conrad doesn't recognize. Veser blinks once and his eyes are closed again, his mouth preoccupied with the exposed neck in front of it.
Conrad backs out of the room and walks briskly out the front door. He does not need to hear Toni's breath catch like that, or see the tension in Veser's hands, or remember the way his body froze upon seeing their tangled limbs.
While Hanna is rambling about a legit witch who lives down the block and do you think maybe she'd want to hang out, the zombie asks in his low, measured voice if Conrad is feeling quite alright. He nods quickly and fixes his eyes on the ground.
By the time he gets home, exhausted and bleeding and armed with the knowledge that not all witches are friendly, it's going on five o' clock. He expects them to be gone, he expects his house to be lonely and safe and empty like it's always been, like it should be.
The universe has a way of shattering Conrad's expectations, throwing the shards in his face, and laughing when he cries.
"In case you were wondering," Veser says gleefully, low and manic, "the proper etiquette when one catches his fucking sexy friends making out is to ask to join. Running away works, too, I guess."
Conrad swallows. "Why are you in my house?" and then he backs up against the door a little, because Veser keeps walking closer like some kind of predator. "Is Toni-"
"Relax, she went home. It's just me." Veser's tone is almost bored but his eyes are working overtime, thoughtful and evaluating and running over Conrad in a way he is totally not comfortable with.
"I didn't mean to-"Conrad starts, clearing his throat, before he realizes that he's apologizing to Veser. "I mean. This is my house. Why were you kissing her in my house?"
"'Cause you didn't do it first," he shrugs, and laughs at Conrad's bewildered expression. "Do you wish I hadn't?" he asks, but shakes his head. "No. You liked watching." Conrad doesn't remember when Veser got this close, but he is feeling really claustrophobic and all his words are lodged in his throat.
"You're not mad at all," he continues, and he has Conrad fucking pinned, now, hands on either side of his head. "You're just pissed that you didn't have the balls to stay." Conrad's heart doesn't beat anymore, but he feels something stuttering underneath his ribcage, staccato and quick. This a million different kinds of unfair, because he can feel Veser's pulse, smell the saltiness in his veins, the electric twang of it, and it would be so easy to just lean forward, just an inch-
"You're probably gonna fucking jack off to it as soon as I'm gone, aren't you," he murmurs, and Conrad inhales sharply, flattening himself against the door as much as possible. Veser's hips are a breath away from his and-this is not supposed to happen. He's not supposed to want it to.
Veser grins, an inch from Conrad's ear. "You so are."
He drops his arms, then, shoves them in his pockets casually and backs away. "You should get some rest," he says, glancing back to the pale starts of daylight peeking out through the curtains, and then at the bloodstain on Conrad's shirt. "You look kind of rough."
He nudges Conrad out of the way and leaves. Conrad bolts to his bedroom as soon as the door clicks, hiding under the covers and breathing hard. He is determined not to beat off, not to give Veser the satisfaction.
He does, anyway.
-
"Hey, Connie," Toni says brightly. She's actually knocked on the door today, much to Conrad's surprise and hidden amusement. "It's finals week," she explains as he stares at the bag of textbooks over her arm. "That's where Veser's been, too."
"Too bad," Conrad deadpans, and she giggles.
"C'mere," she says suddenly, tugging on his arm. "I need your help with something."
Something is an art project, and it involves him laying on the floor while she traces his limbs sloppily with red paint.
"Conrad," she says, pausing for a second, which is really unfortunate because she's kind of stretched over him to outline his shoulder and he could lean up and taste the contours of her neck, her chest, if he wanted to-
"Mm?"
She rocks back on her heels and he breathes a sigh of relief, careful not to move and mess up her painting. "Did you kiss Veser?" It sounds strangely innocent, out of her mouth.
"No," he replies quickly. "Why would you think that?"
"I can smell him on you," she says, staring at him curiously and worrying her lower lip.
"I really didn't," he assures her. Toni shrugs.
"No big," she says, and offers a hand to pull him up. It looks kind of like a crime scene, Conrad thinks, looking at his bloody silhouette with his head cocked. He is dead, after all; it works.
Then Toni splashes black paint all over it.
"What was that for?" he sputters, like she'd thrown it at him and not his likeness.
"Chill," she says, rolling her eyes. "It's gonna look really cool."
It does, in the end, despite his protests.
"What should I call it?" she asks with a smile. "'My Buddy Dracula'? 'Bump in the Night'?" He shrugs. She sighs, exasperated, and scribbles CONRAD in her sloping handwriting on the bottom right corner of the canvas. "Simplicity is best, I guess," she acquiesces. Her eyes dart up at him expectantly and he crouches down beside her, head tilted to the side.
"I like it," he declares, and she leans her head against his shoulder.
-
"Do you think," Conrad says tersely, without opening his eyes, "that you could fucking stop that for five seconds?"
Veser stops tapping his fingers against his textbook for a fraction of a moment, just so Conrad hears his snide 'nope' clearly.
Conrad blinks, lets his eyes adjust to the light overhead and the way it plays off Veser's white white hands. Over the noise, he says, "So, are we gonna talk about-"
"Nope," comes the reply, more casual than Conrad was expecting.
"Oh," he says. "Right. " He swallows, and the tapping still hasn't stopped, so he watches to drown out the listening, watches the fingers and the glimpse of scrapes and scratches on the flat of his palm.
He keeps staring, disgusted to find that it's not as bothersome now. Veser beats out a steady rhythm, his lips turning up at the corners.
-
"Okay," Toni says finally, "what's wrong with you two?"
Conrad quickly begins studying the ground while Veser just shrugs and tosses a pencil at her. She catches it and smiles, not as exasperated as she sounds. "I mean it, Veser."
"Bat-boy wants to fuck you," he says lazily, and Conrad can feel the heat rising in his face, sinks lower in his chair. But Toni doesn't freak out, she just walks over to him and leans close. Conrad can smell her shampoo, her toothpaste, and underneath it the dusky warm scent of her blood. She kisses him softly on the forehead and smiles. He feels Veser's stare like a brand.
-
This time the sound of them wakes him up.
He crawls out of bed, getting down on his hands and knees and pressing his ear to the door, like this is somewhere he needs to eavesdrop, like he doesn't live here. And this-it's just unfair, on so many levels. He'd known the whole vampire thing would make him want to drink blood, but this isn't just thirst. This is an irrevocable hunger, a necessity that pangs in the hollows of his bones. And he can hear them, their breathing and the small sounds they make, but more than that, he feels them; staggered pulses through the walls, through the floor, accompanied by the salty smell that his body registers as both sex and food. He leans closer against the door and closes his eyes, inhaling slowly.
Then the door opens and he topples backwards. When he looks up, Veser is staring at him, leaned up against the doorframe with his hip jutted out, cocky and shirtless like he isn't pale and scarred and built like a twelve year old.
"So, are you going to run this time or are you going to get naked?" His voice is thick and rich, and it makes Conrad want to shudder. Toni is peering at them through the open door, shoulders flushed and dark.
Conrad stands up and walks over to him. "Get out of my house," he says calmly, and slams the door in his face.
And then he dives under his covers and hides, trying to will himself asleep despite the heavy moon hanging outside his window.
It's no use, and he's not there for ten minutes before he hears the door creak open and feels the bed dip under a new pressure.
"It's okay if you're freaked," Toni murmurs, suddenly close to him, and Conrad stiffens, feeling the press of her knees against the backs of his. He keeps the covers tight around his head, his eyes squeezed shut. "I mean, it is really, really weird, but. We all kind of were already, you know?" He does know.
She lets her fingers trace absentminded circles on his arm that burn, even through the blankets. She rests her forehead on the back of his neck and her breathing starts to grow tired, sleep-hazed. He rolls over then, emboldened. Her hair isn't done, he notes, just hanging lazily over her shoulders. She took the liberty of borrowing one of his shirts, and it clings at her chest and at her hips, skimming the tops of her thighs. Then Conrad sees her eyes open a slit, obviously not as asleep as he thought she was, and she can't fight a peek of a grin, flattered and pleased.
"We're sorry," she starts to say softly, soberly, "we won't do it again," but Conrad has heard enough 'sorry's for a lifetime so he leans in and presses his mouth around the word. Toni lets out a little squeal of delight and curls her arms around his neck. Veser jumps out of whatever dark corner he was hiding in and lands on the other side of Conrad.
"Knew you'd come around," he smirks against Conrad's neck. Conrad, surprising himself, leans back into the touch.
-
Weirdly enough, nothing changes.
There are little things, of course, like how Toni makes a habit of stealing his clothes and Veser makes a habit of walking around without a whole lot of them-okay, so it's mostly just the naked parts that change. But Veser still traipses around complaining about how there's never any goddamned food, which, really, dead guy's apartment, hello. And then Toni keeps finding new and inventive ways to destroy Conrad's décor ("Look, why would I smear blue paint all over your wall? That was totally already there-stop looking at me like that."). Conrad just tries to keep up with them, and he finds himself dragged out in the night-time streets with them more times in one week than he had been his entire life. He doesn't even mind it.
"Maybe," says Veser, after ten minutes of staring morosely out the window at the pouring rain while Conrad reads the paper. "Maybe we could go to the beach."
"Yes," Conrad says without looking up, "I'm sure that would go over well. What with the sun and the undead thing I've got going on."
"I didn't say you had to get a fucking tan," he argues. "Just. It would be nice to get out of town for a while. See something besides this damn rain."
"No."
Veser hops over the couch in one bound and leans in close. "All I said," he leers, hand on Conrad's chest, "was maybe."
"All I said was no," comes the reply, disinterested.
"Jesus," Veser sighs, "why are you still fucking talking?" And then he sinks to his knees in front of Conrad.
"Because I-fuck," Conrad hisses. "Just watch the teeth." He suddenly thinks of waves and moonlit boardwalks.
Veser rolls his eyes, unseen.
Toni waltzes in about five minutes later, arms loaded with groceries and dripping wet. She smirks, taking in Conrad's reddened face.
"Can't leave you two alone for a second, can I?" she murmurs, and sets her bags on the floor.
-
"You're kidding, right?"
Conrad stands in the doorway, half-defiant and half-embarrassed. Worth's place always smells like a mix of cleaning supplies and urine, a regular hospital wing with the twang of smoke.
"Shit," Worth laughs, cigarette nearly falling out of his mouth, "a fuckin' vampire and you can't keep from getting your ass kicked." He clenches his sides, and seriously, it's not that funny. He's not totally destroyed.
"It's not like-I don't walk around with a neon sign saying, 'hey, please beat me up!'-"
"What, you wear a bag over your head?"
"It just so happens that your number one client fucked up my social standing in the supernatural community," he finishes with a glare.
"You'd have done it yourself, eventually," Worth shrugs.
"I'm not healing as fast as I should be."
"'Cause you don't drink enough goddamn blood, genius." Worth busies himself with rubbing antiseptic into a cut on Conrad's arm, hard, smirking when he flinches.
"I'm going to guess that you aren't famous for your bedside manner," Conrad remarks dryly.
"Why work hard beside the bed when you do just fine in it," Worth jeers. Conrad turns to gag, but that requires him staring at Worth's sink which contains a variety of all thinks sharp and pointy and coated with bodily fluids. He settles for winces and cursing when Worth wipes at his arm too roughly.
"Heard you picked up a couple o' freeloaders," Worth says casually, digging out a bandage. Conrad peers over his shoulder to make sure there was nothing festering in the drawer he pulled it out of; it's surprisingly clean.
"What's it to you?" Conrad mumbles.
"Just don't seem the social butterfly, is all," Worth snaps back with a sneer.
Conrad thinks of when he was alive, how he liked to stay in his closed-in apartment with the blinds pulled shut. Then he thinks of Veser's stupid fucking teeth and his stupid fucking smirk, and how Toni has taken to fixing her hair in front of his bathroom mirror every evening with a fierce determination. He thinks how he keeps the kitchen stocked, even now.
"Everything's conditional, I guess," he shrugs. "Ow, what the fuck!"
Worth pats down on his bandaged wound once more, for good measure. Then he tosses a bag of blood from the freezer at Conrad's head. He catches it, but hesitantly.
"Oh, for fuck's sake, really?"
"I'm going to drink it," Conrad scowls. "I just can't make myself like it, okay?"
"You better, Hanna'll be on my ass if we've got ourselves an anorexic vampire."
"It tastes like people," he whines.
"You're s'posed to eat people," Worth says. "Pussy," he adds helpfully.
"Oh, fuck you," Conrad mutters.
"It tastes better if it's fresh."
"What? Why do you know tha-never mind, never fucking mind, I don't want to know. I'm gonna leave now."
Worth laughs and exhales a cloud of smoke.
-
"They're so married," Toni says with a snicker, leaning into Veser easily. Conrad follows her glance to Hanna and the dead guy, who are hovering nearby. Hanna is grinning wide enough to break his face in half and gesturing emphatically with no regard for personal space, while the corpse beside him nods calmly and tells him to button his coat.
"What?" Conrad says, wrinkling his brow.
"You are really not the brightest bat in the belfry, are you?" Veser sneers.
"They can't be married, he's dead," Conrad says resolutely.
"You're dead," Toni points out.
"Yeah, but I'm not decaying," he protests.
"I dunno, dude, you kind of reek sometimes," Veser says ambivalently.
"Oh, you're so funny. Hilarious. Pardon me while I laugh myself into a frenzy."
"There's no need for that," Veser sniffs.
"If they're married," Conrad wonders, after a pause, "what does that make us?"
"No," Veser says bluntly. "No. Do not even fucking go there, or I will punch you in the face, for real."
"Wouldn't be the first time," Conrad replies.
"Boys, boys," Toni says, jumping between them. "Play nice." She slides her small hands into theirs and lets her fingers tickle their palms; a maybe, a promise.
"Hey!" Hanna shouts, waving his hands in the air. "We're gonna go check out this report on a poltergeist and maybe go rollerblading, do you want to come?"
"Definitely!" she yells back, and then, an afterthought: "Can we get ice cream, too?"
Veser opens his mouth to say something but she squeezes his hand in appeasement. "Later," she murmurs, and Conrad shivers.
This is mostly just a clusterfuck of songs I was listening to while writing this, and I am way too lazy to make a legit fanmix.
the cardigans; you're the storm ☆
bear your fangs and burn my wings
i hear bullets singing
and if you want me, i'm your country
andrew bird; fake palindromes ☆
what monsters that talk
monsters that walk the earth
lady gaga; teeth ☆
tell me something that'll change me
i'm gonna love you with my hands tied
empires; i want blood ☆
you scream insanity
i'll be right there
florence + the machine; howl ☆
if you could only see the beast you've made of me
i held it in but now it seems you've set it running free
stars; death to death ☆
i am destroyer, i am lover
why love one thing and not the other?
i am destroyer, i am lover
and when i kiss i like to smother
tv on the radio; wolf like me ☆
my mind has changed my body's frame, but god, i like it
my heart's aflame, my body's strained, but god, i like it
jenny lewis; handle with care ☆
everybody got somebody to lean on
put your body next to mine and dream on