Fic: You Are the Dark... Chuck/Vamp!Bryce, PG-13 (1/?)
Title: You Are the Dark (I'm the Vampire) 1/?
Fandom: Chuck
Pairing: Chuck/Bryce
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1500+
Summary: Chuck could totally kill Bryce. He thinks. Chuck's sort of awesome at killing vampires, but on the other hand Bryce keeps kissing him. So. Yeah. It's a standoff.
Author's Note: For this prompt at comment_fic. A Stanford Era Vampire!AU
AO3
Chuck tries to make a normal life for himself. He really does. His big sister, Ellie, worked hard to keep them out of the hunting world after their dad took off, and Chuck figures that the least he can do is give her one, single family member who isn't going to disappear into a hunt (like their mom did) or into a bottle (presumably) like their dad.
Chuck made a friend who knows nothing about hunting outside of what he's learned playing Mario Bro.s Duck Hunt, and avoided all sports at school. He got a part-time job at an Electronics Store to pay for his first car instead of grifting and hustling like Mom taught them, and - when it came time to go to college - Chuck applied for scholarships to get him into the school of his choice, instead of just hacking Stanford's computer servers like Dad would have done.
The thing about hunting, though, is that the very best hunters are born into it. Hunting is in their blood. It's taught from birth.
So Chuck is kind of amazing at it.
In fact, hunting is the only thing that Chuck is amazing at. Sure, he's really smart. Borderline genius, maybe. He's even had to perform poorly in one of his advanced classes, on purpose, to avoid calling attention to himself. (Chuck has a hunter's instincts; he knows that his Encoded Images professor was watching him way too intently. And even though Flemming passed all of the standard tests - iron, holy water, silver, salt, devil's trap - Chuck couldn't shake the thought that falling back off of Flemming's radar would be a good thing.) But try caring about how great you are at math and programming languages when you know that 0.006 percent of the American population this year is going to die from supernatural causes by Christmas...
Yeah. Chuck can't do it.
He can't help casing every room he's in first for emergency exits, next for potential threats; third for available means of defense and/or cover. At least once a month Chuck listens in on the current hunter chatter, and he never skips the Obituary section of the local paper. Chuck's more or less kept up Dad's training regiment, and he sleeps with the Colt that Mom was saving for his eighteenth birthday underneath his pillow.
In other words, Chuck's attempt to stay out of the hunting world is probably a token effort at best, but he does try.
And then he meets Bryce.
Bryce demonstrates an uncanny tendency to pop in and out of Chuck's life at the most inopportune of times... Which, if Bryce were just any other college student, wouldn't be such a big deal.
But Bryce is a blood-sucking, undead creature of the night...
So. Yeah. That's kind of a problem.
Okay, so calling Bryce a "blood-sucking, undead creature of the night" isn't very nice. It isn't strictly correct either. Vampires can actually go out into the sunlight, but they burn super easy; heat stroke is a real concern for them; and old school vamps prefer to hunt in the night because then they can kill out in the open, where a body can be left and blamed on one kind of any number of animal attacks.
Bryce reminds Chuck of this when Chuck calls him that, looking hurt by the unintentional slur. And Chuck would probably feel bad about that - even, you know, considering the fact that Bryce is a vampire - except...
Bryce is a vampire.
And Chuck wasn't expecting that.
Also, maybe he's the teeniest bit embarrassed that he didn't notice for the first month and a half of his and Bryce's acquaintance, during which he may or may not have started crushing on the other boy the vampire. A lot.
"...and as for the 'blood-sucking' thing, you know, it's not very flattering to be defined by what you eat. Imagine if humans were named after their favorite foods... Would anyone want to be called a Cheese Ball-sucker?" Bryce asks.
Chuck feels dizzy. It's disorienting to have your adrenaline level spike and your stomach drop simultaneously, and this is the closest Chuck's ever been to a vamp that wasn't either in the process of trying to kill him or in the process of dying at the end of Chuck's stake.
"Also, if you plan on breaking that off and trying to jab it into my chest," Bryce says, watching Chuck just as closely as Chuck has been watching him since putting two and two together and blurting out his revelation. Bryce nods at the armrest on Chuck's side of the bench that they're both sitting on, at Chuck's white-knuckled grip on it in one fist. "I wish you wouldn't. One, I like this bench. Two, I like this shirt. And three, I really don't want to have to kill you, Chuck, but if you try to stake me in the middle of the quad at dusk... One way or the other, that'll be the end for both of us here at Stanford, and I'm not ready to leave yet."
Bryce has a point. And Chuck does not. Even if he had considered testing out a stake-by-quad-bench-armrest scenario for, like, a second... Bryce is sitting so close, vamp reflexes are so fast... that Chuck saw - right away - a flaw in that so-called "plan".
"Think about it, Chuck," Bryce says. And if Chuck didn't know for certain that vampires don't plead with humans for anything (except maybe, if the hunt's gone really awesome, a quick death), he'd swear that Bryce's eyes are pleading when he continues, "Have there been any unexplained deaths in the Palo
Alto area as long as I've been here? Any disappearances... Hell, any lost pets that you could possibly pin on me?"
"You're a vampire." As comebacks go... It isn't Chuck's best. But his brain - the parts of it not still searching for alternatives to an unsuccessful-staking-via-demolished-quad-bench solution, anyway - is still stuck on that one, key fact.
Bryce sighs. Later, Chuck will wonder if Bryce does that to maintain his human facade, or if sighing is just one of those mannerisms that become a habit, even for beings that don't really need to breathe. In the moment, Chuck just wonders why Bryce looks so convincingly sad. Vampires don't feel things like people. At least not for humans. "Yes, I am," Bryce again confirms.
"I kill vampires," Chuck states.
Bryce blinks. Another habit? "I know, buddy."
That word snaps Chuck out of his stupor. "Son of a bitch!" He can't stop himself from cursing.
Bryce's lips quirk up at the ends. "That pretty much sums things up. But, look, Chuck, I've thought about it and-"
"No. No, no, no, no..."
Chuck isn't even sure what he's saying no to, but he's off the bench and saying it as he walks away.
"Chuck..."
Chuck whirls around. "You said you don't want to risk k-" Chuck looks around them and then lowers his voice. "-risk killing me here."
Bryce shakes his head, "That's not what I meant."
Chuck ignores him. "You plan on trying to anyways?"
It's been weeks since Chuck's been on a hunt. In a real fight for his life. Months since he's been up against odds as steep as being unarmed within pacing distance of a vampire. But he can feel his muscles coil with that familiar tension that never really goes away.
As if with real patience, Bryce tells him, "No, Chuck."
Chuck swallows. "Then I suggest you watch your back. No, you know what? I hope you don't. I've got exams this week... I need this to go down easy."
"Chuck." Bryce sounds like he can't decide whether he's amused by Chuck's reaction or not.
Which doesn't fully register with Chuck, because Chuck can't imagine - at this point - that Bryce hasn't been laughing his ass off at Chuck's ignorance the entire time that they've known each other.
So Chuck does something that his parents once made him promise that he'd never, never do. He turns his back on a vamp and walks away.
"Chuck, it doesn't have to be like this!" Bryce calls after him.
The worst thing is that - no matter his bloodline, no matter his training - Chuck feels almost sick with wishing that that was true.
[tbc]
Fandom: Chuck
Pairing: Chuck/Bryce
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1500+
Summary: Chuck could totally kill Bryce. He thinks. Chuck's sort of awesome at killing vampires, but on the other hand Bryce keeps kissing him. So. Yeah. It's a standoff.
Author's Note: For this prompt at comment_fic. A Stanford Era Vampire!AU
AO3
Chuck tries to make a normal life for himself. He really does. His big sister, Ellie, worked hard to keep them out of the hunting world after their dad took off, and Chuck figures that the least he can do is give her one, single family member who isn't going to disappear into a hunt (like their mom did) or into a bottle (presumably) like their dad.
Chuck made a friend who knows nothing about hunting outside of what he's learned playing Mario Bro.s Duck Hunt, and avoided all sports at school. He got a part-time job at an Electronics Store to pay for his first car instead of grifting and hustling like Mom taught them, and - when it came time to go to college - Chuck applied for scholarships to get him into the school of his choice, instead of just hacking Stanford's computer servers like Dad would have done.
The thing about hunting, though, is that the very best hunters are born into it. Hunting is in their blood. It's taught from birth.
So Chuck is kind of amazing at it.
In fact, hunting is the only thing that Chuck is amazing at. Sure, he's really smart. Borderline genius, maybe. He's even had to perform poorly in one of his advanced classes, on purpose, to avoid calling attention to himself. (Chuck has a hunter's instincts; he knows that his Encoded Images professor was watching him way too intently. And even though Flemming passed all of the standard tests - iron, holy water, silver, salt, devil's trap - Chuck couldn't shake the thought that falling back off of Flemming's radar would be a good thing.) But try caring about how great you are at math and programming languages when you know that 0.006 percent of the American population this year is going to die from supernatural causes by Christmas...
Yeah. Chuck can't do it.
He can't help casing every room he's in first for emergency exits, next for potential threats; third for available means of defense and/or cover. At least once a month Chuck listens in on the current hunter chatter, and he never skips the Obituary section of the local paper. Chuck's more or less kept up Dad's training regiment, and he sleeps with the Colt that Mom was saving for his eighteenth birthday underneath his pillow.
In other words, Chuck's attempt to stay out of the hunting world is probably a token effort at best, but he does try.
And then he meets Bryce.
Bryce demonstrates an uncanny tendency to pop in and out of Chuck's life at the most inopportune of times... Which, if Bryce were just any other college student, wouldn't be such a big deal.
But Bryce is a blood-sucking, undead creature of the night...
So. Yeah. That's kind of a problem.
Okay, so calling Bryce a "blood-sucking, undead creature of the night" isn't very nice. It isn't strictly correct either. Vampires can actually go out into the sunlight, but they burn super easy; heat stroke is a real concern for them; and old school vamps prefer to hunt in the night because then they can kill out in the open, where a body can be left and blamed on one kind of any number of animal attacks.
Bryce reminds Chuck of this when Chuck calls him that, looking hurt by the unintentional slur. And Chuck would probably feel bad about that - even, you know, considering the fact that Bryce is a vampire - except...
Bryce is a vampire.
And Chuck wasn't expecting that.
Also, maybe he's the teeniest bit embarrassed that he didn't notice for the first month and a half of his and Bryce's acquaintance, during which he may or may not have started crushing on the other boy the vampire. A lot.
"...and as for the 'blood-sucking' thing, you know, it's not very flattering to be defined by what you eat. Imagine if humans were named after their favorite foods... Would anyone want to be called a Cheese Ball-sucker?" Bryce asks.
Chuck feels dizzy. It's disorienting to have your adrenaline level spike and your stomach drop simultaneously, and this is the closest Chuck's ever been to a vamp that wasn't either in the process of trying to kill him or in the process of dying at the end of Chuck's stake.
"Also, if you plan on breaking that off and trying to jab it into my chest," Bryce says, watching Chuck just as closely as Chuck has been watching him since putting two and two together and blurting out his revelation. Bryce nods at the armrest on Chuck's side of the bench that they're both sitting on, at Chuck's white-knuckled grip on it in one fist. "I wish you wouldn't. One, I like this bench. Two, I like this shirt. And three, I really don't want to have to kill you, Chuck, but if you try to stake me in the middle of the quad at dusk... One way or the other, that'll be the end for both of us here at Stanford, and I'm not ready to leave yet."
Bryce has a point. And Chuck does not. Even if he had considered testing out a stake-by-quad-bench-armrest scenario for, like, a second... Bryce is sitting so close, vamp reflexes are so fast... that Chuck saw - right away - a flaw in that so-called "plan".
"Think about it, Chuck," Bryce says. And if Chuck didn't know for certain that vampires don't plead with humans for anything (except maybe, if the hunt's gone really awesome, a quick death), he'd swear that Bryce's eyes are pleading when he continues, "Have there been any unexplained deaths in the Palo
Alto area as long as I've been here? Any disappearances... Hell, any lost pets that you could possibly pin on me?"
"You're a vampire." As comebacks go... It isn't Chuck's best. But his brain - the parts of it not still searching for alternatives to an unsuccessful-staking-via-demolished-quad-bench solution, anyway - is still stuck on that one, key fact.
Bryce sighs. Later, Chuck will wonder if Bryce does that to maintain his human facade, or if sighing is just one of those mannerisms that become a habit, even for beings that don't really need to breathe. In the moment, Chuck just wonders why Bryce looks so convincingly sad. Vampires don't feel things like people. At least not for humans. "Yes, I am," Bryce again confirms.
"I kill vampires," Chuck states.
Bryce blinks. Another habit? "I know, buddy."
That word snaps Chuck out of his stupor. "Son of a bitch!" He can't stop himself from cursing.
Bryce's lips quirk up at the ends. "That pretty much sums things up. But, look, Chuck, I've thought about it and-"
"No. No, no, no, no..."
Chuck isn't even sure what he's saying no to, but he's off the bench and saying it as he walks away.
"Chuck..."
Chuck whirls around. "You said you don't want to risk k-" Chuck looks around them and then lowers his voice. "-risk killing me here."
Bryce shakes his head, "That's not what I meant."
Chuck ignores him. "You plan on trying to anyways?"
It's been weeks since Chuck's been on a hunt. In a real fight for his life. Months since he's been up against odds as steep as being unarmed within pacing distance of a vampire. But he can feel his muscles coil with that familiar tension that never really goes away.
As if with real patience, Bryce tells him, "No, Chuck."
Chuck swallows. "Then I suggest you watch your back. No, you know what? I hope you don't. I've got exams this week... I need this to go down easy."
"Chuck." Bryce sounds like he can't decide whether he's amused by Chuck's reaction or not.
Which doesn't fully register with Chuck, because Chuck can't imagine - at this point - that Bryce hasn't been laughing his ass off at Chuck's ignorance the entire time that they've known each other.
So Chuck does something that his parents once made him promise that he'd never, never do. He turns his back on a vamp and walks away.
"Chuck, it doesn't have to be like this!" Bryce calls after him.
The worst thing is that - no matter his bloodline, no matter his training - Chuck feels almost sick with wishing that that was true.
[tbc]