Blood Ties - part 6c/6
Blood Ties, part 6c
One year later
Amazingly, Jim’s proved to be a model room mate: he doesn’t have any unpleasant habits, he doesn’t slurp his blood and he trusts Leonard enough that he’ll even eat it around him. Having spent an age around medical students and been one, Leonard’s seen way grosser behavior and, of course, he tells Jim as much. He’s managed to convince Jim that eating human food is bad for him. Once Jim’s suffered enough stomach cramps, realizing that regurgitating his food like a gannet because his digestive system can’t handle it is way more offensive than eating blood, he’s seen sense and other than allowing himself the odd piece of chocolate, his diet is entirely kosher, or whatever the undead equivalent is.
And he’s been taking his vervain while Leonard’s set himself the challenge of working with replicated human blood, trying to make it more palatable than what Jim assures him currently tastes like packaging material. Leonard manages to source animal blood, experimenting with cow’s blood and other domestic animals from the abattoir in San Francisco. Jim tries his mixes and there’s no doubt, since they contain what Jim ghoulishly refers to as the ‘essence’ of life, he looks as healthy as he ever has. Leonard recalls a conversation they had about it.
“You should see me after I’ve had human blood, Bones, it’s fucking awesome,” he said one day when they were both in their dorm, studying. “I’m like a leopard or something.”
“Well, if you start spraying the furniture, I’ll know why, now shut up, I’m trying to study.”
There was blessed silence for at least five minutes then Jim looked up from his PADD again and mused, “I wonder how being out in space will affect my circadian rhythms, Bones...”
“Jim!”
Leonard is aware Jim visits bleeders once in a while. He can always tell because it makes Jim so horny after. He’s hooked up with an Orion cadet, Gaila, who seems to match him in brains, sexual stamina, and, “She takes suppressants too, Bones - it’s cool. Pheromones, to stop humans falling under her sexy spell - we’re two of a kind!”
Well yeah, they both like sex a lot, Leonard thinks grimly and glowers when Jim, who’s a great mimic, does a perfect impression of her.
“These humans, they think they have come a long way in the past few hundred years but they still cling onto pair-bonding.”
Actually, Leonard’s glad Jim’s got someone though part of him aches when he thinks about them together; only, it’s not jealousy, not at all, he’s never been one to demand exclusivity.
It’s just that he realised some time around the first year of Jim moving in, that he’s perhaps fallen for him. And, strangest thing of all, even though he knows Jim wants him, all he’s got to go by is what he said, the look in Jim’s eyes the night he failed the Kobayashi Maru. Since then, nothing; it’s like Jim’s practicing at playing best buddies.
One night he disappears, not quite without trace - there’s a note resting on Leonard’s PADD, on paper, written in fancy, old-style cursive script.
I’m leaving town for a couple of days -JTK.
They’re on winter break, he’s been working at the clinic all week, they had a few days off that coincided, finally, and they were going to...hell, he doesn’t know what they were going to do, but now Jim’s gone and Leonard’s room, their room, suddenly feels very empty, and he has this horrible fear that he might never see Jim again. And isn’t that weird...?
+++
Jim can’t afford the shuttle so he visits his favourite bleeder and trades; the deal is he gets to borrow the bleeder’s motorbike and Jim sucks his blood out of him nice and slow, just a small drop, but they both come in a happy shudder together.
They’re in a back alley behind some grotty club, and the guy’s shivering with the cold and the blood loss. Jim of course is fine in his skimpy t and jeans, even with his jacket open - he never suffers from the cold. But when Jim sees how pale his bleeder is, he feels a pang of guilt.
“How many other vampires do you have feeding off you, man?”
“Not enough, Jim, I wish I could persuade one of you to turn me.”
“What, and end up like some neutered tom cat? It’s not glamorous man, it fucking sucks...if you’ll pardon the expression.”
The guy lights a cigarette and hands Jim his keys. “You look after her man, I love this bike more than anything.”
They’re always the same, bleeders, hooked on the pain, the rush and the ecstasy when they come, and of course being ‘needed’ in some fucked up way; though it’s never bothered him before - who’s he to judge when his every waking moment is about his own addictions, about blood? And Bones.
But this time when Jim takes the keys, he leans close to the bleeder. “Hey man, you know something?”
“What’s that, Jim?” His voice is thready, eyes unblinking, like they always are when they’re caught in his web.
“You don’t like being bitten anymore, in fact, you’re going to forget you ever did.” The bleeder listens glassy-eyed while Jim compels him. “You’re going to go home, eat a steak nice and bloody to get your iron levels up, and follow it up with some milk. And you’ll get an iron shot tomorrow, okay? And, remember what you said about wanting to go to art school? Dust off some of your work, it’s the right thing for you and you give a great interview, don’t you? Answer...”
“Yeah, my paintings are amazing. I’m going to art school...”the bleeder says, a look of wonder and realization on his face, like a light-bulb’s gone off in his head.
Jim adds: “You won’t notice your bike’s gone. I’ll deliver it safe and sound in a couple of days. I’ll even re-charge it. How’s that sound?”
“That sounds awesome, Jim.”
“Now, go and don’t see me. Thanks for everything...” Jim squeezes his arm fondly.
He doesn’t answer and walks past Jim, out the other end of the alley.
Jim hops on the bike, throat a little tight - he’s gonna miss his bleeder.
+++
He arrives in Riverside around 4am, vervain free and high on human blood. He manages to avoid any traffic cops, the computer alerting him to their presence well ahead of time.
Once, long ago, Jim knew Riverside well. In his day, it was a two-horse town; in the last war it was razed to the ground.
It was where one fateful night, drunk and wild-eyed after an evening’s fighting and whoring, he was lured by an amber-eyed, finely dressed gentleman into an alley and turned into a vampire.
He woke alone and abandoned in a stable, left to fend for himself through the pain and horror of transformation, having no idea what was happening to him, screaming and shaking with the blood-lust.
He was never asked if this was what he wanted and it’s why he’s never turned another, not wanting to condemn any soul to this loneliness, this hunger.
He stayed in Riverside long enough to visit his mother one last time, watching her through a window, dressed in black, still grieving the loss of her husband at sea all those years ago. And now Jim was going to disappear too. He has no idea how she explained his absence and he’s rarely given it any thought since the memory of her is still too painful to bear - of her kind, patient eyes, the way she nursed and soothed him when he rolled in drunk and angry yet again, as if the fact that he was fatherless was somehow his fault.
When he awoke into a world devastated by war, having gone to ground after the agony of losing Len, he made his way to Iowa hoping to find some purpose or answers here where he was raised. All he found was ruin, hunger and loss.
And, of course there was Leah.
He’s here this time because on the anniversary of the Kelvin disaster, he knows Winona Kirk is on shore leave and back home having seen her interviewed on the news, brave and dignified and still so obviously heart-broken. Time does not heal for Winona Kirk. And it doesn’t for Jim either.
And though Jim knows the ship would have been lost whatever happened, he snatched life away from George and Winona’s new-born son.
Now there isn’t one building in Riverside older than a hundred years. With a shaky hand, he knocks on the door while he stands on an unremarkable porch outside a house that looks freshly decorated; well, she wouldn’t be short of credits - that’s one thing Starfleet does: takes care of its bereaved families, and she’ll have been compensated handsomely for her loss.
It hasn’t crossed his mind that he might startle her at this late hour; it only occurs to him as the security camera scans him. The lack of image will make her believe there’s no one there, that it’s just the wind. If she doesn’t come to the door, he’ll wait and return in the daylight. He hasn’t planned this, merely followed an instinct to come here when he saw her face on the news.
The door opens and he sees a phaser pointed at him through the crack - he loves that she’s so badass. He reads her mind, knows she thinks he’s her husband’s ghost, that she thinks she must be dreaming. He draws her in with his eyes to quell any fear.
“George?”
“No, it’s...” how the fuck does he explain? He dare not say his name out loud but sends it to her mind. I’m a friend. I’m sorry, I should have called or something. I’m Jim.”
Her eyes scan his face through the opening and he sighs when she pulls the door fully open.
“You look like my late husband.”
“He was a great man,” Jim says with a hitch in his voice, “and I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you. Why are you here, Jim? it’s late...”
It sends a shiver through him when she says his name, and he has a distant memory of his Winona, his mother, across a massive ocean of time - her hair tied away from her face, wearing a bonnet, sitting next to him in church, so far away, so long dead, it’s hard even for him to comprehend this distance of time, though he remembers every detail of her face, her voice and her mannerisms.
He hasn’t thought of her in many, many years. She belonged to the Jim he was before and when he died, when he became a vampire - she never found out what became of him. He wrote her a note saying he’d run away to sea, and he didn’t allow himself to think about the agony she must have felt when he did that to her. He took her son away, just as he snatched this woman’s away. She’s his mother in a way too because, in the dream, ‘he’ died in her arms.
So what the fuck does he say? He hasn’t thought this through; he just wanted to see her, hoped to catch a glimpse of her through an open window, to satisfy his curiosity.
Now she’s here before him.
And since there aren’t any words that can make sense, his voice becomes melodious and haunting and he can see her eyes widen as he speaks and captures her, as he explains, “It’s me mom, I just wanted to tell you that I’m safe. That I’m going to make it.” She steps out over the invisible boundary between them, the one he won’t be able to cross unless she invites him, and takes his hands in hers.
“My Jim?” She says. “Am I dreaming?”
“Yes, you’re dreaming.” Her eyes are filled with tears. “I’m sorry I left you, mom, I tried to stay, but...” She interrupts him by wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him down so his chin is on her shoulder. She’ll find his bloody tears on her shoulder in the morning.
“It’s okay, I don’t understand how you came back, but I’m so happy to see you. You’ve turned out so tall and handsome.”
She strokes his hair and he whispers in her ear, tells her she’s loved, helps the wounds in her heart finally heal, and maybe his own too.
He makes sure she forgets the whole of their encounter and plants a feeling of warmth and love in her, straight from his own heart; he’s closed a door on all their pasts and made it possible to move on.
He’s come full circle, and like a circle he feels complete at last.
+++
Jim didn’t take a rest-stop on the way, but driving back he treats himself to a day’s sleep in a motel. He checks his comm and there’s a long scroll of texts from Bones. All different permutations of Where the fuck are you?
He sends a message back; it’s 8am in San Francisco, Bones should be up.
[I’ll be back late tonight.]
Bones instantly calls: “Where the fuck are you?” His face is clean-shaven and his hair’s wet. He’s fresh out of the shower. And boy, that’s a hell of a scowl.
“You said that, like a lot of times.”
“Why can’t I see you, Jim, have you been...? Shit.” Bones scrubs his hand across his eyes and Jim realizes he probably hasn’t slept a wink worrying about him. It gives him a warm fuzzy feeling.
“It’s okay, Bones, no one died, k? I’ll tell you all about it later - I’m so fucking tired now. I’ve gotta sleep.”
“I’ve been-”
“Worried? Damn, Bones, that’s so sweet.”
“Stop fucking smirking, you jackass, I can’t see you but I know that look.” He lowers his eyes, his cheeks all flushed. “Where are you?”
“Just outside Riverside.”
“Why?” His eyebrows do their thing.
“I came to visit family.”
“You said you don’t have any family. I’m family, dammit.” Only Bones can sound that pissed and soft at one and the same time. It would make his heart skip a beat...if he had a pulse.
Jim starts unlacing his boots and he looks in the mirror. There’s no reflection at all; it seems fitting - he’s a blank slate. He’s ready to start again. With Bones.
“Look, I’ll be back soon, okay? We’ll go out for dinner-”
“What? Why? We never go out for dinner.”
“It’s okay, I’ll watch you eat, I’ll drink extra to make up for it.”
“But why?”
“It’s my birthday today.” His voice cracks a little when he says it.
“Which one? Your vampire birthday or, you know, the other one?”
“You’re spoiling the moment, Bones...”
“You had me worried.” he says again.
“Bones...”
“Yeah?”
“...tired.”
end of part 6c and onto part 6d - final part