(no subject)
Made From the Sharpest Things, 9/?
Fandom: Bandom AU (primarily My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy, with various and sundry other bands).
Rating: R (language, violence, slight sexuality)
Pairings: Eventual Frank/Gerard, Pete/Patrick
Summary: What happens when the video for "A Little Less 16 Candles..." and repeat playings of "Vampires Will Never Hurt You" mix in my head.
Warnings: Bandom vampire AU, so if that's not your thing...yeah. Also character death and members of The Used being villains, but no more villainous than all the FBR-family vampires over in Chicago are being.
Notes: Other half of the halfway point! I debated holding off on this one so I'd have something more to post in a little while even if I don't get much more written, but I've been poking at this chapter so long to get it finalized that I want it posted and done with.
Previous chapters: 1, 2 & 3, 4 & 5, 6 & 7, 8.
Frank thinks it’s daylight outside, but the only thing he has to go on is that Gerard’s been sleeping like the dead (which he is, a part of Frank’s mind points out, the part that still whispers vampire vampire vampire whenever he looks at Gerard) since Frank woke up. There’s no other way to tell. He’s been over every inch of the room fifty times by now, it feels like: no windows, rough concrete walls, a single, metal door that Frank’s kicked and thrown himself against until he has bruises to show for it. A bare double mattress where he woke up with Gerard lying less than a foot away from him, completely out of it, no response to being shaken or shouted at. A bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, too high up for Frank to reach without climbing on something, and there’s nothing but the mattress to climb on. Nothing else in the room, no furniture, even a bed frame-nothing that could be taken apart and turned into a weapon, unless he manages to rip the mattress open with his hands and find a spring or something.
Eventually, Frank drops down cross-legged on the mattress, rubbing his sore shoulder and feeling under his hair for the sore spot on the back of his head. If he can’t do anything productive at the moment, he may as well stop wasting his strength and try to be ready for if the door opens.
Gerard stirs, finally, groaning faintly and then rubbing his eyes with the heel of one hand. He opens his eyes and looks around in confusion, blinking.
“So I don’t know about you, but I could sure as hell use a cigarette right about now,” Frank says by way of greeting.
“-Frank.” Gerard hauls himself into a sitting position, rubbing his head, as well. “You okay? Where are we?”
“Okay except for being stuck in here, and no clue,” Frank replies. “We were here when I woke up, which I figure was maybe five, six hours ago, and since you just woke up, I’m guessing it was just suns-Gerard? You okay?”
Gerard winces, suddenly, doubling over and pressing a hand to his chest. When he speaks, his voice is labored. “We’ve been here a whole day?”
Frank nods. “Yeah. Why, what’s-” he breaks off, eyes widening a little. “Crap.”
“Yeah,” Gerard says, strained. “I haven’t had any formula since last night. And-”
“…And we’re locked in a room together,” Frank finishes, and then lets out a short, humorless laugh. “Hungry vampire, weaponless human-guess we don’t need to wonder what their plan for us is.”
“Okay, um.” Gerard draws his knees up and rests his forehead on them, not looking at Frank. “I realize this probably isn’t going to help? But I can, like, hear your heart rate spiking and it’s seriously like a dinner bell, so if you could try and stay calm-”
Frank throws up his arms, flailing a little. “Dude, that is
not what you tell someone to help them stay calm!”
“Sorry!” Gerard shouts back, burying his face in his arms. “Just, I don’t know, go over on the other side of of the room, that might help a little.”
Frank goes, eying Gerard warily and settling in a crouch with his back to the wall. The room’s too small to give him much distance.
“How long d’you think you can hold out?” he asks after a few seconds.
Gerard shrugs, head still tilted down. “My second night as a vampire, I held out all night, but there wasn’t fresh blood, like, six feet away from me. I’ve avoided the temptation since then.”
“Hey, stop objectifying me,” Frank protests, but his attempt at a joking tone falls flat.
“Ray and Bob knew I was heading to the house where Quinn got me,” Gerard says. “I’ve got no idea where we are now, but there might be some kind of a trail they can follow.”
“Maybe,” Frank agrees, and doesn’t add that he’d rather not trust his neck to maybes. “Um. Would talking help? Like, distraction? Or should I just leave you alone so you can try to pretend I’m not here?”
Gerard lets out a shuddery breath, and tilts his head back, staring up at the ceiling. “I don’t think there’s much point trying to pretend. Talk to me?”
Frank slides into a sitting position-no sense in staying crouched if it’s just gonna make his legs fall asleep-and picks at a loose thread in the seam of his jeans for a moment.
“Batman or Superman?” he asks eventually.
“Oh, totally Batman,” Gerard replies instantly.
Frank smirks. “See, if you’d said Superman, we could’ve had a spirited debate about it. We can still talk about
why Batman’s so much better, though, I guess.”
Frank manages to keep the conversation going for maybe two hours, segueing them from comics into the good or bad qualities of comic movie adaptations into movie soundtracks, and from there into music in general. Gerard’s breathing heavily, and looks increasingly spaced out, but aside from that, they could be hanging out before or after sparring, just talking, being two guys with an increasing amount of things in common instead a of hunter and a vampire.
Only as the night drags on, Gerard’s eyes kind of glaze over and the space between Frank’s comments or questions and his replies gets more drawn out, and he has a harder time stringing a sentence together when he does answer. His head’s lowered again, forehead resting on his drawn-up knees, and his arms are crossed tightly over his chest, fingers digging into his biceps. Eventually Frank stops trying to keep him talking and just watches, biting his lower lip (carefully, because an open wound is the last thing he needs right now).
“So,” Frank says eventually. “This waiting for the cavalry thing’s not working out so well, huh?”
“Not so much,” Gerard says, his voice thin and breathy.
Frank gnaws on his thumbnail for a few seconds, staring at Gerard, and then speaks up again.
“Okay, look. This…is probably the worst idea ever, but I’ve seriously got nothing else besides more waiting.”
Gerard doesn’t so much look over at Frank as let his head loll to the side so that his face is turned in Frank’s general direction. His eyes are huge and dark, pupils dilated, mouth slack. It almost makes Frank reconsider, but he plunges onward.
“Do you think, if you-could you take enough of my blood to be in good shape and not, y’know, take it all?”
Gerard’s head jerks up at that, and he’s already staring at Frank, but his stare gets a little less blank. “What? Frank, that’s-no. Just…no.”
“I’ve been breaking it down in my head, this whole time,” Frank goes on, undeterred. “If we don’t do anything,
maybe Bob and Ray find us, or maybe a few hours from now you lose it and kill me. Or maybe one of McCracken’s boys eventually checks on us. If that happens, they either find you in a…blood withdrawal coma and me unarmed-or they can find me out of it and you in something like fighting shape.” He spreads his hands. “I know which one of those seems like the best option.”
“I don’t…” It’s clearly a struggle for Gerard to think or speak clearly, and he has to pause, swallow hard, and start again. “I don’t even know if I can do that, Frankie. Odds are I wouldn’t be able to stop myself and I’d kill you anyway.”
“Like I’m not dead if we don’t do
something to get ourselves out of here?” Frank snaps. “I’d rather go out like this than keep fucking waiting, and-you know what?” He gets to his feet, hands bunching into fists. “
None of those bastards is getting my blood. I’ll…I’ll bite through my
own fucking wrists and bleed out before that happens, so if it comes to that, you could at least help me the fuck out.”
Gerard blinks at him. “I’m not sure you could actually do that,” he says, slowly and carefully. “You’d probably pass out from pain before-”
“Gerard, shut the
fuck up,” Frank says flatly. Hands still clenched, he paces from one end of the tiny room to the other, and then back. “It’s-I’m not wild about the idea myself, all right? But it’s my fucking decision what happens to me.”
“And it’s been
my decision not to drink blood,” Gerard reminds him, then closes his eyes, rubbing them with the heel of one hand. Quietly, “I…shit, Frankie, I don’t wanna hurt you.”
“I know.” Frank moves across the room, dropping into a crouch in front of the mattress. “I know that,” he repeats-and he does. Whatever doubts he had about Gerard’s intentions at the start, it’d be pure stubbornness to be still holding onto them now. “But…look, you asked me when we met if I trusted you, and I said I didn’t. Yet.”
Gerard opens his eyes. As spaced-out as he’s been, there’s tension running through his whole body right now. Holding himself back, Frank realizes. “You’re saying you do now?”
“I’m saying that right now, what it comes down to is just whether or not I trust you more than Jeph or Bert or anyone who runs with them,” Frank replies. “And guess what? I do.” He reaches out tentatively, touches Gerard’s arm where it’s folded on his knees. “It’s really pretty much trust you with my life or resign myself to death, dude.”
Gerard’s reaches one hand out to brush Frank’s, hesitantly. “Frank. I seriously can’t promise I won’t-”
“I
know,” Frank says, low but urgent. “I’m just asking you to try.”
Gerard lowers his eyes, then nods. “I can do that. I think.”
Frank turns his hand over, exposing his wrist. “Rock and roll, then, man.”
Gerard just stares at Frank’s wrist, eyes wide and blank. The moment stretches out until Frank opens his mouth to say something, shifting uncomfortably.
The instant he moves, Gerard moves, too, lightning-fast, his hand locking around Frank’s wrist. His mouth opens, and Frank catches sight of his fangs for one moment of unsettling clarity before Gerard lowers his head and bites down.
Frank flinches, his wrist jerking in Gerard’s grip, but it’s mostly reflex-it doesn’t hurt as much as he thought it would. Stings, sure, but he’s had worse than that getting shoved around by bullies in high school. What’s worse than the sting is the weakening, draining feeling that starts to steal over him. Not right away, and not for a while, but it comes all the same.
He wobbles a little, and then just pitches to one side; Gerard catches him and drags him fully onto the mattress with one hand, never breaking stride in his steady pull on Frank’s wrist.
“Shit,” Frank tries to say, and it comes out slurred. He’s sort of draped across Gerard’s lap now, Gerard’s arm slung around him, and he suddenly feels absurdly like a fucking damsel in fucking distress. “Gerard, fuck. Anyone home?”
Gerard’s eyes are still open, and still frighteningly blank, and he doesn’t answer except to growl a little and tighten his grip on Frank. Shit.
“
Gerard,” Frank tries again, with as much force as he can muster. Then, grasping at straws. “Dude, if you accidentally kill me Mikey’ll be
pissed.”
Mikey might take dead Frank over potentially-dead-if-they-don’t-get-out-of-here Gerard, actually, but it does the trick. Gerard’s head snaps up, and there’s blood on his lips and he’s gasping for breath but his eyes focus on Frank, and it’s
Gerard again, not the predator Frank was alone with a moment ago.
Frank would take a moment to be smug about the gamble paying off, but it’s kind of hard to be smug when his vision’s starting to blur at the edges. He’d also take a moment to be incredulous over the fact that he’s totally about to swoon in Gerard’s arms, but the swooning kicks in before he can get there.
The first thing Gerard does, when he can think clearly again, is bite the pad of his thumb until blood wells up. The second thing he does is smear his own blood carefully over the two puncture wounds on Frank’s wrist. He doesn’t know if that will actually work-he heals faster than he used to, but he doesn’t know if that’s, like, communicable-but it’s worth a try. The third thing he does is rip a long strip from the hem of his own shirt and tie it tightly around Frank’s wrist, just below the wounds, in case the blood thing doesn’t work.
With all of that done, he scoots backwards so that he can lay Frank down on the mattress, handling him carefully, one hand cupping the back of his head.
“Frank,” he says. “Frankie? You still with me?”
Frank’s eyelids flutter, and he lets out a low moan. Gerard feels for his pulse-it’s slow, but pretty steady, which he figures is good.
Feeling Frank’s heartbeat under his fingertips brings back a teasing echo of what it felt like to drink his blood. Gerard would be trying not to think about that, but he can’t really
not think about it when he can still taste it.
So he gets up, and backs into the far corner of the room, like Frank had done earlier. Gerard wraps his arms around himself and tries to think, taking stock of things. He’s still hungry, but not the debilitating,
starving feeling of earlier. He feels, in fact, sort of prowly, like he wants to hunt, and that’s good, he tells himself, because prey that’s just lying there barely conscious is the last thing he wants right now.
(Except that it’s
Frank, the treacherous part of his mind whispers, Frank, and now Gerard knows exactly what he tastes like. Frank’s blood is rushing through Gerard’s veins right now, and the very idea of that seems shockingly intimate.)
Gerard turns away from the mattress, walking over to the door. He presses an ear to the cool metal and closes his eyes, trying to ignore the slight sounds of Frank behind him and listen outward instead. Getting vampiric abilities and then almost immediately turning your back on the people who could help you learn to use them is kind of like buying a piece of advanced, complicated technology and then burning the manual. Only in that case, he wouldn’t have instinct to work with, and instinct’s steered him through this pretty well so far.
There’s definitely movement out there somewhere. Vampire, human, or animal, Gerard can’t tell, but if he can get out of this room…
He backs up, taking a moment to gather his strength, and then delivers a solid kick to the door.
He doesn’t knock it down, but the metal crumples and bends outward in the center, and the door tears loose from its hinges with a shrieking sound. Which is sure to put whoever’s out there on the alert, so Gerard doesn’t hesitate, throwing himself against the door shoulder-first and pushing it off the hinges completely.
He doesn’t recognize the room he emerges into, but he knew Bert and the others had hideouts besides the house where Gerard spent his first few days as a vampire. This one, wherever it is, has a big, open room with a bunch of doors in the walls-smaller rooms like the one he and Frank have been in, maybe. Only one of the doors is open, and Branden Steineckert’s standing in it, bracing himself in the doorway with one hand.
In the small amount of time Gerard spent with the gang, Branden was one of the ones he interacted with least. He’d been sort of unfriendly-jealous, maybe, because he’d been the last one Bert turned before Gerard. But it’s not as if Gerard ever, like, thought about
killing him.
Except that Branden might be what stands between Gerard getting Frank out of here or not, and Branden would go after Mikey if Bert told him to.
He’s going for Gerard right now, anyway, which sort of takes the ethical guesswork out of the equation.
Gerard moves forward quickly, intercepting Branden in the middle of the room. Branden’s older, stronger, but Gerard still has that tense, dangerous hunger, like there are knives in the pit of his stomach and the only thing that’ll help is more blood. He’s been longing for a hunt, but a fight will do just as well.
The struggle is fierce and quick, and ends a few seconds after Gerard gets his fangs in Branden’s neck.
He hasn’t drunk vampire blood since leaving Bert, and he’d forgotten how
intense it feels, in a way no metaphor Gerard could ever come up with would do justice to. It does a lot to shake the memory of Frank’s blood loose, which is good. And this time, Gerard doesn’t pull back-he drinks and drinks, until Branden’s limp in his grip.
“Sorry, dude,” Gerard croaks as he lets the corpse drop to the ground.
Frank hasn’t moved when Gerard gets back to the room they were locked in. Gerard checks his wrist, and the healing blood thing seems to have worked; the bite marks are still there, but they look old, starting to heal over.
“Okay,” Gerard says, not sure if he’s talking to Frank or himself. “Okay, I’m gonna get you out of here. Hang in there, Frankie.”
He bends down and gathers Frank up, which would be tricky if he were human. Frank’s tiny, sure, but Gerard’s not exactly huge himself, and not exactly athletic. But as it is, Frank feels deceptively light and fragile in Gerard’s arms, his head falling limply on Gerard’s shoulder. Gerard pauses for just a moment, tilting his face down against Frank’s hair, letting himself take in Frank’s scent and warmth while the hunger’s at bay.
Then he stands, holding Frank firmly and easily, and goes to find the exit.
No one else came running when he broke down the door, and no one came looking for Branden, so Gerard’s guessing he was set to guard them alone, and the trip through the empty building confirms that. Bert probably didn’t think Gerard had it in him to do what he did to get out of here, and Gerard doesn’t blame him.
It takes a while for Gerard to get his bearings, out on the street, and when he does, they’re pretty far from home. He has no real idea of how long they were in that room, but he
will have an idea when sunrise is coming, and he doesn’t think that’ll be for a while.
Brian’s car is pulled up outside the house when Gerard finally reaches it, and before he opens the door he can hear the conversation inside. One half of it, anyway-Brian’s on the phone with Ray, covering where they’ve looked already, where they might look next, whether or not Ray and Bob should rest for a while when day comes or take full advantage of the fact that no vampires will be moving, then.
Brian’s perched on the couch when Gerard steps inside, a map of street grids spread out on the coffee table. Mikey’s next to him, shoulders hunched, arms wrapped around himself. Both of them look up; Gerard tracks the play of emotions on their faces-shock, then relief at seeing him and Frank, then worry on Mikey’s part and growing suspicion on Brian’s. He doesn’t wait for either of them to speak before he walks across the room and drops Frank in Brian’s lap.
“You can kick my ass later,” he says, calmly. “Get him to a fucking hospital.”
Fandom: Bandom AU (primarily My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy, with various and sundry other bands).
Rating: R (language, violence, slight sexuality)
Pairings: Eventual Frank/Gerard, Pete/Patrick
Summary: What happens when the video for "A Little Less 16 Candles..." and repeat playings of "Vampires Will Never Hurt You" mix in my head.
Warnings: Bandom vampire AU, so if that's not your thing...yeah. Also character death and members of The Used being villains, but no more villainous than all the FBR-family vampires over in Chicago are being.
Notes: Other half of the halfway point! I debated holding off on this one so I'd have something more to post in a little while even if I don't get much more written, but I've been poking at this chapter so long to get it finalized that I want it posted and done with.
Previous chapters: 1, 2 & 3, 4 & 5, 6 & 7, 8.
Frank thinks it’s daylight outside, but the only thing he has to go on is that Gerard’s been sleeping like the dead (which he is, a part of Frank’s mind points out, the part that still whispers vampire vampire vampire whenever he looks at Gerard) since Frank woke up. There’s no other way to tell. He’s been over every inch of the room fifty times by now, it feels like: no windows, rough concrete walls, a single, metal door that Frank’s kicked and thrown himself against until he has bruises to show for it. A bare double mattress where he woke up with Gerard lying less than a foot away from him, completely out of it, no response to being shaken or shouted at. A bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, too high up for Frank to reach without climbing on something, and there’s nothing but the mattress to climb on. Nothing else in the room, no furniture, even a bed frame-nothing that could be taken apart and turned into a weapon, unless he manages to rip the mattress open with his hands and find a spring or something.
Eventually, Frank drops down cross-legged on the mattress, rubbing his sore shoulder and feeling under his hair for the sore spot on the back of his head. If he can’t do anything productive at the moment, he may as well stop wasting his strength and try to be ready for if the door opens.
Gerard stirs, finally, groaning faintly and then rubbing his eyes with the heel of one hand. He opens his eyes and looks around in confusion, blinking.
“So I don’t know about you, but I could sure as hell use a cigarette right about now,” Frank says by way of greeting.
“-Frank.” Gerard hauls himself into a sitting position, rubbing his head, as well. “You okay? Where are we?”
“Okay except for being stuck in here, and no clue,” Frank replies. “We were here when I woke up, which I figure was maybe five, six hours ago, and since you just woke up, I’m guessing it was just suns-Gerard? You okay?”
Gerard winces, suddenly, doubling over and pressing a hand to his chest. When he speaks, his voice is labored. “We’ve been here a whole day?”
Frank nods. “Yeah. Why, what’s-” he breaks off, eyes widening a little. “Crap.”
“Yeah,” Gerard says, strained. “I haven’t had any formula since last night. And-”
“…And we’re locked in a room together,” Frank finishes, and then lets out a short, humorless laugh. “Hungry vampire, weaponless human-guess we don’t need to wonder what their plan for us is.”
“Okay, um.” Gerard draws his knees up and rests his forehead on them, not looking at Frank. “I realize this probably isn’t going to help? But I can, like, hear your heart rate spiking and it’s seriously like a dinner bell, so if you could try and stay calm-”
Frank throws up his arms, flailing a little. “Dude, that is
not what you tell someone to help them stay calm!”
“Sorry!” Gerard shouts back, burying his face in his arms. “Just, I don’t know, go over on the other side of of the room, that might help a little.”
Frank goes, eying Gerard warily and settling in a crouch with his back to the wall. The room’s too small to give him much distance.
“How long d’you think you can hold out?” he asks after a few seconds.
Gerard shrugs, head still tilted down. “My second night as a vampire, I held out all night, but there wasn’t fresh blood, like, six feet away from me. I’ve avoided the temptation since then.”
“Hey, stop objectifying me,” Frank protests, but his attempt at a joking tone falls flat.
“Ray and Bob knew I was heading to the house where Quinn got me,” Gerard says. “I’ve got no idea where we are now, but there might be some kind of a trail they can follow.”
“Maybe,” Frank agrees, and doesn’t add that he’d rather not trust his neck to maybes. “Um. Would talking help? Like, distraction? Or should I just leave you alone so you can try to pretend I’m not here?”
Gerard lets out a shuddery breath, and tilts his head back, staring up at the ceiling. “I don’t think there’s much point trying to pretend. Talk to me?”
Frank slides into a sitting position-no sense in staying crouched if it’s just gonna make his legs fall asleep-and picks at a loose thread in the seam of his jeans for a moment.
“Batman or Superman?” he asks eventually.
“Oh, totally Batman,” Gerard replies instantly.
Frank smirks. “See, if you’d said Superman, we could’ve had a spirited debate about it. We can still talk about
why Batman’s so much better, though, I guess.”
Frank manages to keep the conversation going for maybe two hours, segueing them from comics into the good or bad qualities of comic movie adaptations into movie soundtracks, and from there into music in general. Gerard’s breathing heavily, and looks increasingly spaced out, but aside from that, they could be hanging out before or after sparring, just talking, being two guys with an increasing amount of things in common instead a of hunter and a vampire.
Only as the night drags on, Gerard’s eyes kind of glaze over and the space between Frank’s comments or questions and his replies gets more drawn out, and he has a harder time stringing a sentence together when he does answer. His head’s lowered again, forehead resting on his drawn-up knees, and his arms are crossed tightly over his chest, fingers digging into his biceps. Eventually Frank stops trying to keep him talking and just watches, biting his lower lip (carefully, because an open wound is the last thing he needs right now).
“So,” Frank says eventually. “This waiting for the cavalry thing’s not working out so well, huh?”
“Not so much,” Gerard says, his voice thin and breathy.
Frank gnaws on his thumbnail for a few seconds, staring at Gerard, and then speaks up again.
“Okay, look. This…is probably the worst idea ever, but I’ve seriously got nothing else besides more waiting.”
Gerard doesn’t so much look over at Frank as let his head loll to the side so that his face is turned in Frank’s general direction. His eyes are huge and dark, pupils dilated, mouth slack. It almost makes Frank reconsider, but he plunges onward.
“Do you think, if you-could you take enough of my blood to be in good shape and not, y’know, take it all?”
Gerard’s head jerks up at that, and he’s already staring at Frank, but his stare gets a little less blank. “What? Frank, that’s-no. Just…no.”
“I’ve been breaking it down in my head, this whole time,” Frank goes on, undeterred. “If we don’t do anything,
maybe Bob and Ray find us, or maybe a few hours from now you lose it and kill me. Or maybe one of McCracken’s boys eventually checks on us. If that happens, they either find you in a…blood withdrawal coma and me unarmed-or they can find me out of it and you in something like fighting shape.” He spreads his hands. “I know which one of those seems like the best option.”
“I don’t…” It’s clearly a struggle for Gerard to think or speak clearly, and he has to pause, swallow hard, and start again. “I don’t even know if I can do that, Frankie. Odds are I wouldn’t be able to stop myself and I’d kill you anyway.”
“Like I’m not dead if we don’t do
something to get ourselves out of here?” Frank snaps. “I’d rather go out like this than keep fucking waiting, and-you know what?” He gets to his feet, hands bunching into fists. “
None of those bastards is getting my blood. I’ll…I’ll bite through my
own fucking wrists and bleed out before that happens, so if it comes to that, you could at least help me the fuck out.”
Gerard blinks at him. “I’m not sure you could actually do that,” he says, slowly and carefully. “You’d probably pass out from pain before-”
“Gerard, shut the
fuck up,” Frank says flatly. Hands still clenched, he paces from one end of the tiny room to the other, and then back. “It’s-I’m not wild about the idea myself, all right? But it’s my fucking decision what happens to me.”
“And it’s been
my decision not to drink blood,” Gerard reminds him, then closes his eyes, rubbing them with the heel of one hand. Quietly, “I…shit, Frankie, I don’t wanna hurt you.”
“I know.” Frank moves across the room, dropping into a crouch in front of the mattress. “I know that,” he repeats-and he does. Whatever doubts he had about Gerard’s intentions at the start, it’d be pure stubbornness to be still holding onto them now. “But…look, you asked me when we met if I trusted you, and I said I didn’t. Yet.”
Gerard opens his eyes. As spaced-out as he’s been, there’s tension running through his whole body right now. Holding himself back, Frank realizes. “You’re saying you do now?”
“I’m saying that right now, what it comes down to is just whether or not I trust you more than Jeph or Bert or anyone who runs with them,” Frank replies. “And guess what? I do.” He reaches out tentatively, touches Gerard’s arm where it’s folded on his knees. “It’s really pretty much trust you with my life or resign myself to death, dude.”
Gerard’s reaches one hand out to brush Frank’s, hesitantly. “Frank. I seriously can’t promise I won’t-”
“I
know,” Frank says, low but urgent. “I’m just asking you to try.”
Gerard lowers his eyes, then nods. “I can do that. I think.”
Frank turns his hand over, exposing his wrist. “Rock and roll, then, man.”
Gerard just stares at Frank’s wrist, eyes wide and blank. The moment stretches out until Frank opens his mouth to say something, shifting uncomfortably.
The instant he moves, Gerard moves, too, lightning-fast, his hand locking around Frank’s wrist. His mouth opens, and Frank catches sight of his fangs for one moment of unsettling clarity before Gerard lowers his head and bites down.
Frank flinches, his wrist jerking in Gerard’s grip, but it’s mostly reflex-it doesn’t hurt as much as he thought it would. Stings, sure, but he’s had worse than that getting shoved around by bullies in high school. What’s worse than the sting is the weakening, draining feeling that starts to steal over him. Not right away, and not for a while, but it comes all the same.
He wobbles a little, and then just pitches to one side; Gerard catches him and drags him fully onto the mattress with one hand, never breaking stride in his steady pull on Frank’s wrist.
“Shit,” Frank tries to say, and it comes out slurred. He’s sort of draped across Gerard’s lap now, Gerard’s arm slung around him, and he suddenly feels absurdly like a fucking damsel in fucking distress. “Gerard, fuck. Anyone home?”
Gerard’s eyes are still open, and still frighteningly blank, and he doesn’t answer except to growl a little and tighten his grip on Frank. Shit.
“
Gerard,” Frank tries again, with as much force as he can muster. Then, grasping at straws. “Dude, if you accidentally kill me Mikey’ll be
pissed.”
Mikey might take dead Frank over potentially-dead-if-they-don’t-get-out-of-here Gerard, actually, but it does the trick. Gerard’s head snaps up, and there’s blood on his lips and he’s gasping for breath but his eyes focus on Frank, and it’s
Gerard again, not the predator Frank was alone with a moment ago.
Frank would take a moment to be smug about the gamble paying off, but it’s kind of hard to be smug when his vision’s starting to blur at the edges. He’d also take a moment to be incredulous over the fact that he’s totally about to swoon in Gerard’s arms, but the swooning kicks in before he can get there.
The first thing Gerard does, when he can think clearly again, is bite the pad of his thumb until blood wells up. The second thing he does is smear his own blood carefully over the two puncture wounds on Frank’s wrist. He doesn’t know if that will actually work-he heals faster than he used to, but he doesn’t know if that’s, like, communicable-but it’s worth a try. The third thing he does is rip a long strip from the hem of his own shirt and tie it tightly around Frank’s wrist, just below the wounds, in case the blood thing doesn’t work.
With all of that done, he scoots backwards so that he can lay Frank down on the mattress, handling him carefully, one hand cupping the back of his head.
“Frank,” he says. “Frankie? You still with me?”
Frank’s eyelids flutter, and he lets out a low moan. Gerard feels for his pulse-it’s slow, but pretty steady, which he figures is good.
Feeling Frank’s heartbeat under his fingertips brings back a teasing echo of what it felt like to drink his blood. Gerard would be trying not to think about that, but he can’t really
not think about it when he can still taste it.
So he gets up, and backs into the far corner of the room, like Frank had done earlier. Gerard wraps his arms around himself and tries to think, taking stock of things. He’s still hungry, but not the debilitating,
starving feeling of earlier. He feels, in fact, sort of prowly, like he wants to hunt, and that’s good, he tells himself, because prey that’s just lying there barely conscious is the last thing he wants right now.
(Except that it’s
Frank, the treacherous part of his mind whispers, Frank, and now Gerard knows exactly what he tastes like. Frank’s blood is rushing through Gerard’s veins right now, and the very idea of that seems shockingly intimate.)
Gerard turns away from the mattress, walking over to the door. He presses an ear to the cool metal and closes his eyes, trying to ignore the slight sounds of Frank behind him and listen outward instead. Getting vampiric abilities and then almost immediately turning your back on the people who could help you learn to use them is kind of like buying a piece of advanced, complicated technology and then burning the manual. Only in that case, he wouldn’t have instinct to work with, and instinct’s steered him through this pretty well so far.
There’s definitely movement out there somewhere. Vampire, human, or animal, Gerard can’t tell, but if he can get out of this room…
He backs up, taking a moment to gather his strength, and then delivers a solid kick to the door.
He doesn’t knock it down, but the metal crumples and bends outward in the center, and the door tears loose from its hinges with a shrieking sound. Which is sure to put whoever’s out there on the alert, so Gerard doesn’t hesitate, throwing himself against the door shoulder-first and pushing it off the hinges completely.
He doesn’t recognize the room he emerges into, but he knew Bert and the others had hideouts besides the house where Gerard spent his first few days as a vampire. This one, wherever it is, has a big, open room with a bunch of doors in the walls-smaller rooms like the one he and Frank have been in, maybe. Only one of the doors is open, and Branden Steineckert’s standing in it, bracing himself in the doorway with one hand.
In the small amount of time Gerard spent with the gang, Branden was one of the ones he interacted with least. He’d been sort of unfriendly-jealous, maybe, because he’d been the last one Bert turned before Gerard. But it’s not as if Gerard ever, like, thought about
killing him.
Except that Branden might be what stands between Gerard getting Frank out of here or not, and Branden would go after Mikey if Bert told him to.
He’s going for Gerard right now, anyway, which sort of takes the ethical guesswork out of the equation.
Gerard moves forward quickly, intercepting Branden in the middle of the room. Branden’s older, stronger, but Gerard still has that tense, dangerous hunger, like there are knives in the pit of his stomach and the only thing that’ll help is more blood. He’s been longing for a hunt, but a fight will do just as well.
The struggle is fierce and quick, and ends a few seconds after Gerard gets his fangs in Branden’s neck.
He hasn’t drunk vampire blood since leaving Bert, and he’d forgotten how
intense it feels, in a way no metaphor Gerard could ever come up with would do justice to. It does a lot to shake the memory of Frank’s blood loose, which is good. And this time, Gerard doesn’t pull back-he drinks and drinks, until Branden’s limp in his grip.
“Sorry, dude,” Gerard croaks as he lets the corpse drop to the ground.
Frank hasn’t moved when Gerard gets back to the room they were locked in. Gerard checks his wrist, and the healing blood thing seems to have worked; the bite marks are still there, but they look old, starting to heal over.
“Okay,” Gerard says, not sure if he’s talking to Frank or himself. “Okay, I’m gonna get you out of here. Hang in there, Frankie.”
He bends down and gathers Frank up, which would be tricky if he were human. Frank’s tiny, sure, but Gerard’s not exactly huge himself, and not exactly athletic. But as it is, Frank feels deceptively light and fragile in Gerard’s arms, his head falling limply on Gerard’s shoulder. Gerard pauses for just a moment, tilting his face down against Frank’s hair, letting himself take in Frank’s scent and warmth while the hunger’s at bay.
Then he stands, holding Frank firmly and easily, and goes to find the exit.
No one else came running when he broke down the door, and no one came looking for Branden, so Gerard’s guessing he was set to guard them alone, and the trip through the empty building confirms that. Bert probably didn’t think Gerard had it in him to do what he did to get out of here, and Gerard doesn’t blame him.
It takes a while for Gerard to get his bearings, out on the street, and when he does, they’re pretty far from home. He has no real idea of how long they were in that room, but he
will have an idea when sunrise is coming, and he doesn’t think that’ll be for a while.
Brian’s car is pulled up outside the house when Gerard finally reaches it, and before he opens the door he can hear the conversation inside. One half of it, anyway-Brian’s on the phone with Ray, covering where they’ve looked already, where they might look next, whether or not Ray and Bob should rest for a while when day comes or take full advantage of the fact that no vampires will be moving, then.
Brian’s perched on the couch when Gerard steps inside, a map of street grids spread out on the coffee table. Mikey’s next to him, shoulders hunched, arms wrapped around himself. Both of them look up; Gerard tracks the play of emotions on their faces-shock, then relief at seeing him and Frank, then worry on Mikey’s part and growing suspicion on Brian’s. He doesn’t wait for either of them to speak before he walks across the room and drops Frank in Brian’s lap.
“You can kick my ass later,” he says, calmly. “Get him to a fucking hospital.”