Let's get these teen hearts beating faster...
TITLE: Testosterone Boys, Harlequin Girls
FANDOM: Vampire High
DEDICATION: What the Countess wants, the Countess gets.
CHARACTERS: Drew, Sherry, Merrill, Marty
RATING: If you were fine watching the show, you'll be fine here.
SUMMARY: In the end, we're all blind whether we'll admit to it or not.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Highly, highly inspired by the Panic! At the Disco song "Lying Is The Most Fun A Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off", and a weekend marathon of "Vampire High" that resulted in a crapload of nostalgia. And Marty love.
Chronologically, this piece is set particularly early in the series. Probably somewhere between "The Withering" and "Odd Man Out"...though probably close to "Rats".
Marty has always been good with shadows. He’d originally supposed it was just a vampire thing - children of the night and all that - but upon meeting the others, he came to realize that hiding in the dark places of the world was a particular talent of his.
He’d also always been of the mind that a talent, upon discovery, simply begged to be used…or abused. He’s not one to discriminate.
He doesn’t think of it as stalking or eavesdropping or any of those other words that Doctor Murdoch would suggest in that infuriatingly condescending you-should-know-better tone.
Well, Marty doesn’t know better. He also happens to be perfectly okay with that. On top of that, Doctor Murdoch doesn’t even know what he does in his spare time, which makes any consideration of what the good Doctor has to say on the matter a waste of brain power . . . not to mention time.
Time better spent hanging back in the shadows and watching.
While Essie and Karl are fun to watch simply because it gives him ammunition for the jeers and taunts he’s known for, it’s Drew and Merrill that he spends most of his time observing. It’s probably just a bad case of trainwreck syndrome or something - the whole thing is a mess of the best (worst?) kind, and he just can’t look away as the whole thing plays out in all its dirty glory.
Drew reaches out to his beloved Sherry in a stream of increasingly desperate, madcap schemes. Merrill helps him out in the hopes that maybe he’ll look at her the way he looks at the mortal girl. And Sherry? Sherry’s too busy stewing in her loneliness to notice anything.
And through it all, none of them see what’s really happening. Sherry remains ignorant of Drew’s feelings, Drew doesn’t even notice how hopelessly obsessed Merrill is with him, and Merill . . . she’s not too observant herself.
He’d laugh if it didn’t piss him off so much.
True, he laughs anyhow, but that’s what everyone expects from him. He’s the funny guy after all. The whole affair is so damn high school though, and it’s that more than anything that keeps Marty angry. And watching.
Nothing changes though. Nothing. Drew keeps trying, Merrill keeps helping, and Sherry keeps whining to her roommate about how there’s got to be someone out there for her.
They’re blind, all three of them. None of them can see what’s right in front of their faces. None of them can see the fricking truth.
And just what is that truth?
The truth is that Drew will never ever see Merrill, because his tunnel vision is so tightly focused on Sherry. The truth is that he’s completely obsessed with the notion that she is the one for him, and there’s absolutely no room for Merrill in that picture.
The truth is that Sherry will never notice Drew the way he wants. The truth is she’s in love with her misery and the idea of a white knight rescuing her from her tower, and is completely missing the black knight gunning after her. The truth is that she is a mortal and Drew is not, and that pretty much finishes them off before they’ll even get a chance to start.
The truth is that Drew will never look at Merrill as anything but an enabler. The truth is that her psychic gifts make her just a tool to be used in the futile quest for Sherry’s heart. The truth is that she’ll keep letting herself get used and get hurt because she thinks maybe this time he’ll finally get it. The truth is that she doesn’t see what’s right in front of her face. Or in the shadows behind her.
None of them do.
Well, screw Drew and his little mortal fixation.
And honestly? Screw Merrill too.
It’s not Marty’s fault that he’s the only one who sees what’s going on.
-Fin-