Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

When he finishes cleaning the floor, Raleigh sits back on his haunches to survey his work. His back is sore and aching from the way he’d been hunched over, and his knees feel numb from being on them for so long. The lighting in the kitchen is dim, but his work seems to have paid off – he doesn’t see any more red anywhere on the linoleum. It looks like he’s gotten all of the blood.

He swipes an arm across his forehead and stands, grabbing the trash bag he’d slung over the back of one of the chairs before he’d gotten started. Peeling the rubber gloves off, he shoves them in first, and then all of the towels and paper towels he’d used up. He takes the bowl of bleach solution he’d been using to the sink to wash it out, and then he scrubs his hands all the way up to his elbows, despite having been wearing the gloves.

The clock chimes, breaking the silence. It’s midnight.

And suddenly, the vampire at the table laughs.

Raleigh turns off the water, his arms red and burning, and he spins to face Chuck Hansen. “What?”

“It’s my birthday.”

Raleigh blinks, pausing to do the math. Had they really been there that long? His internal clock had gone to hell since Chuck had come to him a couple of weeks prior, since his nights had become his day, and his days had become his night. It didn’t help any that summer weather in Alaska was nothing like the hot humidity of China, which he’d grown somewhat fond of in the time that he’d been there.

These past few days, he’d felt like he was losing his mind trying to keep it all straight. And having to clean up after Chuck’s messes was just the cherry on top, an added bonus to Raleigh’s mounting lunacy.

“Oh…” is all that he can say.

“Would have been twenty-two,” Chuck murmurs. He isn’t laughing anymore, but there’s still a humorless smirk on his face, and his eyes are distant like he’s lost in thought.

If only because he doesn’t know what else to say, Raleigh starts, “Happy –” but Chuck cuts off.

“Don’t feel right celebrating it, now does it?” There’s a little blood on his face, but Raleigh doesn’t point it out. “Implies I’m still alive. Reckon we’re better off celebrating the day Striker blew to shit instead.”

“We don’t know….” Raleigh trails off. Wants to say, We don’t know if you’re not still alive, we don’t know what you are. Because they don’t – because it’s all just been a bunch of trial and error since Chuck had appeared outside his front door. But having fangs and a never-ending need for blood doesn’t exactly leave much room for more interpretation.

“Yeah, well. What we do know is that my heart ain’t beating anymore and my skin’s colder than it’ll ever get in this God awful place,” Chuck snorts, and Raleigh bristles a little. They’re currently staying on the outskirts of Fairbanks, a little north of town in a secluded cabin that Raleigh had somehow been able to procure, and he thinks it’s a pretty damn good location for someone like him. Chuck finally looks at Raleigh and bites out, “Seems pretty obvious to me.”

Raleigh has to fight to quell the urge to argue, and he nods.

Chuck stares at him. He looks like he’s waiting for something, and then he seems annoyed when he doesn’t get it. He stands so quickly that Raleigh almost flinches – he’s not at all used to the way Chuck moves now, all fluid and graceful, unnatural like something else is controlling his body. Chuck turns to stalk from the kitchen.

“Your shirt,” Raleigh says quickly, and when Chuck turns back to him, eyebrows furrowing, Raleigh nods at the trash bag. “Your pants can be saved but we need to get rid of your shirt.”

Chuck looks down, like he’s already forgotten what’s happened, like he’s forgotten the red that’s stained all down the front of his shirt, making him look like an extra in a horror movie. His expression goes blank again, and he wordlessly rips the shirt over his head and shoves it into the trash bag. Not sparing Raleigh another look, he storms from the room.

Raleigh doesn’t move. He stays where he is, holding his breath, and he waits until he can hear the bathroom door upstairs close. Then he sighs, his shoulders slumping, and he grabs the counter for support. The bleach is overpowering to his nose, but even so, it doesn’t cover up the lingering scent of blood. He moves to tie off the trash bag, but his knees buckle and his body gives out on him, and he falls into the chair Chuck had been sitting in. He scrubs a hand down his face and gazes at the floor, giving it another critical scan to make sure he’d gotten it all.

But every time he blinks, he can still see it…. The red splashed against the pale yellow squares. The body of that camper and the way her limbs had been bent at awkward angles.

And before he knows it, he starts to laugh. Because Chuck Hansen is a vampire. And fuck, that’s rich. Undead, creature of the night, bloodsucker – you name it, that’s Chuck. It’s hilarious, really. And even funnier is that Raleigh insists on sticking around, that he apparently has no sense of self-preservation whatsoever. It’s a hoot.

In the time it takes to take a breath, the laughing turns to crying. He hunches over, puts his head between his knees, and he curls an arm against his stomach, which is tight and knotted. It’s somewhat of a delayed reaction, he realizes, something that his body’s been waiting to do for weeks, something he’s refused to let happen until now. He knows that if Chuck is bothering to listen, he can hear Raleigh reaching his breaking point, but he can’t stop himself.

This is the second time he’s had to clean up after Chuck. And a sick feeling in his gut tells him it won’t be the last.

 

*

 

Chuck doesn’t know where it originated from that vampires don’t have reflections.

All he knows is that whoever came up with the idea was a right prick. Because he’s staring at himself in the dingy full length mirror in the bathroom behind the door, and it’s not something he’s ever going to get used to seeing. He’s pale – too pale, too translucent – and there’s a sort of darkness around his eyes, not like dark circles, more like… stage make-up. No, that’s not right either. He doesn’t know.

He just looks flat and dull, washed out. Even his hair looks colorless.

Lifeless.

The blood on his chin and cheek, staining his neck, is a stark contrast against his skin. It looks fake.

He glances down at his hands which are surprisingly clean, and he vaguely remembers having washed them after… after he’d gotten back from hiding the body. He flexes his fingers, watches the tendons jump under his skin. They’d jumped the same way when he’d been tightening his hands around the camper’s neck to keep her quiet. Her pulse had drummed beneath his touch, frantic and desperate, and her hands – small compared to his own – had clawed at his wrists, her skin so warm against his.

His gums tingle. He hears the beating heart downstairs, smells sweat clinging to skin. Senses Raleigh’s warm body. His fangs extend. A curse leaves him and he shakes himself out of it, squeezing his eyes shut and snapping his hands into tight fists. But he can’t control it. It’s too hard. Too much.

She’d gotten lost, had come across the cabin by chance, she’d said. She’d asked if they had a working phone and if she could use it – had joked that she was there, so “might as well!” with the prettiest smile Chuck had ever seen. Raleigh hadn’t been home and he’d been so hungry.

He sits down on the side of the bathtub, buries his face in his hands, and damn it all, he starts to cry.

He hadn’t meant to kill her. But his fangs had come out on their own like the usually did, and when she’d seen them, she’d started to scream. He hadn’t meant to even bite her – he’d grabbed her by the throat to try and keep her quiet, to try and get her to listen to him. But his gums had been aching, and she was so warm, and he’d just needed a little. Just a few drops to get the pain to go away, yeah? And hey, she’d been there, so might as well!

He starts to laugh. Because he shouldn’t even exist, this can’t be happening.

There are two short knocks on the door and his head jerks up, his half-sob, half-laugh cutting off in his throat. He’s not completely in control of his senses yet, but Raleigh still shouldn’t have been able to sneak up on him like that. Had he heard anything?

“What?” he snaps.

“Where did you…?” comes Raleigh’s voice.

“I’m not telling you. She’s gone. No one will find her,” Chuck says shortly, forces the words out through his teeth.

Raleigh doesn’t respond right away, and when he does, his tone is too casual, too phony. “I’m going out again. Going to meet up with that guy from Fairbanks Memorial.” He hesitates again, and then adds slowly, “You have to make it last this time, Chuck.”

“That’s real easy for you to say. Just get more,” Chuck says, standing and moving towards the door. He wants to get in Raleigh’s face about it, but he doesn’t want Raleigh seeing him like this.

“I can’t.”

“Or you won’t?” Chuck asks sarcastically.

He hears the deep, steadying breath that Raleigh takes, and for some reason, it just makes Chuck more mad, though he doesn’t know why. He’s always let his anger get the better of him, but it’s different now – it’s even harder to reign in his emotions. Which is kind of funny in its own way, because you’d think that being dead would make it easier, would give you more indifference.

“Other people need it too,” Raleigh says. “Actual patients at the hospital and –”

“I need it,” Chuck growls, and without meaning to, he slams a hand down on the edge of the sink.

There’s complete silence on the other side of the door for a long, long moment. If he hadn’t been able to hear Raleigh’s heartbeat, he’d have thought that Raleigh had already left.

“I’ll try to be back before sunrise,” Raleigh says, and his tone is softer. There’s a whisper-like sound – Raleigh’s hand sliding away from where it’d been resting against the door, most likely – and then Chuck listens to his footsteps as he crosses the hall and makes his way back downstairs.

Chuck stands there for some time, hears the front door open and close, and then he turns to look back at the mirror. There’s fresh red on his face now, streaked down his cheeks with more yet welling at the corners of his eyes. He clenches his fists again.

Raleigh never asks him about the smashed up mirror.

 

*

I feel it welling up inside, and Robert Smith lied – boys do cry.

And with blood tears in my eyes, I’m an Anne Rice novel come to life.

– “The Crimson,” Atreyu

*

 

It’s a week or so later, as the temperature’s starting to drop, when Raleigh sees the flier. Hanging up behind the counter at one of the smaller general stores in town, MISSING, it reads in all caps, with a picture of the camper that Chuck had killed. Even if the only time Raleigh had seen her was with a gash in her throat so wide her head had nearly been taken off, he has no trouble recognizing her.

He’s standing at the register, hand outstretched to take his bag of groceries, when his gaze lands on the homemade poster. He hesitates, his stomach dropping in guilt, and this is the quickest he’s ever felt so ill in his life. The cashier – an elderly woman with a too big jacket and Coke bottle glasses – turns and throws a quick glance up at it.

“Shame, isn’t it?” she asks as she turns back around.

His answer is short. “Yeah.”

“Seems kinda funny – war’s finally over, but there’s always something new to mourn,” she says. “They never seem to find the ones that go missing around here, do they?”

“No.”

When he leaves, he gets looks – mostly curious – from some of the locals, and he does his best to ignore them. He knows how people see him; the mysterious guy who lives alone in a somewhat ramshackle cabin and only ventures into town once a week. Even the ones that recognize him as a war ‘hero’ look at him with the same semblance of curious suspicion, wariness. He’s sure they’re probably wondering why he isn’t out in California or something, soaking up fame and fortune.

It’s times like this when he misses Mako.

They’d been living together in Kowloon Bay when Chuck had made his grand reappearance, in a small apartment near the water. After the Breach had been closed, the both of them had sort of just stayed in China, neither having any real motivation to leave – they were all each other had left in the world, and since they were already together, what was the point? Mako had been in Japan then, however, in Nara – Raleigh had wanted to go with her, only she’d said that she wanted to be alone. Which he’d known was code for her wanting to grieve over Pentecost on her own terms, which he more than understood after Yancy.

When Chuck turned up, Raleigh had moved them out of town almost instantly, wanting to get him out of sight as quickly as possible. It made him feel like a coward, running away before she returned, with only a hastily written letter left for her to come back to – he hadn’t mentioned Chuck, of course, had only said that he needed to sort some things out, that he too needed some time alone. It’s all he could have done, right? Especially after what’d happened with Chuck that first night, there was no way he could have kept him at the apartment until she came home from Japan. If only he didn’t feel so empty without her. If only he didn’t feel so empty.

There’s still quite a few hours of sun left – it won’t start setting at a normal time until September or October – so the house is completely still and quiet when he gets back. It doesn’t take him long to put away his few groceries, he only has to shop for one person, of course, and afterwards, he makes his way into the small square of a living room. He sheds his light jacket, tosses it onto the coach, and then he lets himself fall onto it, throwing an arm over his eyes and sighing heavily.

The cabin doesn’t have a basement, only a crawl space just big enough for the heating unit and whatnot, so Chuck sleeps – if you can call it that – in the attic. It’s not completely insulated and would be way too cold for Raleigh, but it is light-proof – absolutely no sun gets through. Raleigh’s only seen the effects of sunlight on Chuck’s skin once, but it’s not something he’d care to repeat. Chuck had avoided the sun since he’d first come to Raleigh, but when they’d arrived in Fairbanks, he’d wanted to see what it did, so he’d thrown open the curtains Raleigh had hung. He hadn’t caught fire or anything dramatic like that, but he had slowly started to bake. His skin reddened, steamed, started to warp as it heated up, and that had been when Raleigh had shut the curtains. The smell had remained the rest of the day.

It’s how they have to figure these things out – like Chuck’s some sort of science project that needs to be tested over and over again. Just the night before the incident with the camper, Chuck had used a knife to slice open one of his palms right in front of Raleigh to see what would happen. He hadn’t bled at all, and it’d healed, like most movies and books claimed vampires did.

But for everything that’s regarded as a vampire truth in fiction, there’s things that don’t really add up, things that make it all the more confusing.

Raleigh knows about as much about vampires as the next guy, and he knows that in fiction, you have to be bitten to be turned into one. Only, Chuck doesn’t remember if that actually ever happened – he even swears that it didn’t. He always says he doesn’t remember much aside from showing up outside Raleigh’s apartment, but sometimes he says really baffling stuff. Stuff that seems to imply that he’d simply woken up like this and had walked right out of the ocean itself, seeking Raleigh out by scent alone because it was the only thing familiar to him.

But that doesn’t seem possible.

Then again, all the shit Raleigh’d seen in his life? Monster aliens, another dimension? What else could possibly exist that people didn’t know about?

He figures it’s something that triggered itself at Chuck’s death. Like… a pathogen. Something in his physiology that had reanimated him like this. He’d died that day with Pentecost, plain and simple; nobody could have survived Striker Eureka blowing up. And a good five and a half months had passed between the closing of the Breach and Chuck’s arrival, but…. Well, Chuck doesn’t need to breathe, he wouldn’t have had to worry about drowning, so maybe all that time had been spent at the bottom of the ocean. And maybe his body had been mending itself back together while he was there, sewing itself together the way his skin had after he’d cut into it with the knife. Maybe, after he was healed up, he had just walked right out of the sea.

Thinking about it makes Raleigh’s head hurt. And he figures it doesn’t do much good anyway – he has to take care of a newborn vampire with barely controllable urges, he doesn’t have time to think on the science of it all.

He drifts in and out, has strange dreams. He sees Yancy and Mako at the cabin with him, his parents and Jazmine. He dreams he’s chasing ghosts – he follows Yancy down the hall, watches him turn into a room and disappear completely. Dreams he’s standing in the kitchen and sees Mako out of the corner of his eye before she disappears.

And then he sees sharp fangs snapping at him, a set of eyes gleaming in the darkness.

He comes to with a jolt, nearly falling off the couch.

The house is dark and he can hear movement across the hall – Chuck’s awake. He rubs the sleep from his eyes and climbs to his feet, and when he enters the kitchen, flipping on the light, it’s in time to find Chuck pulling a blood bag from the microwave – Raleigh’s never needed to ask why he prefers it heated. If there’s any conversation he wants to avoid, it’s the ones based on Chuck’s feeding habits.

“Hey,” Raleigh says.

Chuck sweeps his gaze over Raleigh almost contemplatively, murmurs a noncommittal response.

“There’s posters in town… for that girl….” Raleigh doesn’t really know where he’s going with that so he lets his words trail off.

Chuck’s eyes darken and he looks down at the blood bag in his hand. After a moment of consideration, Chuck lifts the bag up like he’s brandishing a weapon and says, “You mind, asshole? You know I hate it when you watch me.”

Raleigh rolls his eyes – sometimes he just can’t help himself – and with a little sigh, he turns and goes back out into the hallway. He leans against the wall just outside the room, folding his arms over his chest, and he shrugs, even though Chuck can’t see him. “I just want to make sure she won’t be found.”

“I told you already. She won’t,” Chuck says, voice different in a way that means his fangs are out. There’s a wet puncturing sound that turns Raleigh’s stomach.

As he waits for Chuck to finish, he has to make an effort not to think about the girl – he doesn’t need to think about the family she must have, or whether or not she’d left behind people that depended on her. She was no one, he tells himself. A piece of meat. A bag of bones and blood. Nothing.

But he can’t. And the attempt doesn’t make him feel any better.

Chuck appears in the archway of the kitchen when he’s done. His skin looks just as dead as it had before – even after he feeds, it never gets any of its color back – and his lips are slightly tinged with red. Like when you drink fruit juice. “She’s gone,” he insists shortly.

“I’m just trying to look out for you,” Raleigh says.

Chuck stares at him, but then his eyes seem to lose some of their stoniness, and he drops his gaze. “I know.”

“It’s not as easy as it looks.”

“I know that too,” Chuck says sarcastically. But he meets Raleigh’s gaze again, and for once, he looks like he’s actually trying to be civil. “I promise you, mate – no one’s finding her.”

It isn’t as comforting as Raleigh’d hoped it would be. But he nods anyway.

 

*

And I swear to you, on everything I am,

And I dedicate to you all that I have.

– “This Flesh A Tomb,” Atreyu

*

 

Whether it’s because Chuck is so new at this, or because he’s a glutton, or because it’s just how the whole vampire thing works, the blood bags go too fast.

And when Chuck runs out one early September night, Raleigh and he get into an argument. Raleigh normally tries not to get angry with him, mostly because he knows that Chuck can’t help himself, can’t help what he’s become. But also because Raleigh has a stupid sense of pride in him and he doesn’t want Chuck getting smug over it, doesn’t want Chuck to feel like he’s won because Raleigh got mad. But even Raleigh can only tolerate so much – and Chuck knows all the right buttons to push, he always did, even when he was alive.

“What do you want me to do?” Raleigh demands.

“You said you’d take care of me,” Chuck says, sounding like the child he never got to be.

“I’m doing the best I can.”

“Well your best isn’t bloody good enough!” Chuck’s fangs extend like he doesn’t even have to think about it, like it’s a natural instinct. His eyes are sparking in his anger, and a deep part of Raleigh knows that he should be afraid of him – has always known he should be afraid.

But naiveté or stupid bravado keeps Raleigh undaunted. “You’re not making it any easier on me. You were supposed to make it last.”

“I did. How long d’you reckon it should have lasted me, eh? It ain’t like you got me an infinite amount of it,” Chuck says.

“I got you enough,” Raleigh says. He turns away, running a hand through his hair – he’s cut it close to his head, much closer than he likes, because he’d taken to pulling it out when things got to be too much for him with Chuck. “Christ. The guy I get it from? He’s starting to ask more questions. He’s starting to pry.”

“So get a new guy.”

And the sheer audacity of such a response has Raleigh spinning back to Chuck, his nostrils flaring and his eyebrows shooting up. “Do you have any idea how hard this is for me? The shit I have to do?”

“Not exactly a walk in the park for me either –”

“No, you have the easy job. You get to sit back and wait for me to bring you blood, and if I don’t deliver it fast enough, you get to bitch and moan about what a piss-poor job I’m doing.” Chuck opens his mouth in a snarl to respond, but Raleigh doesn’t want to hear it. “I dropped everything for you. I left Mako. I came all the way out here and turned into this – this reclusive freak who lives in a cabin in the woods. I know every trick in the book to cleaning up blood, and I’m bribing a guy at the hospital to give me the shit they use for transfusions – shit innocent patients need. And I’m doing all of this for you.” He shakes his head and throws his arms out at his sides. “And what am I getting out of this? The blame. It’s all my fault, isn’t it?”

Chuck glowers at him, and though his mouth is slightly open, his fangs still visible, he doesn’t say anything. He sort of just stares at Raleigh like he’s never seen him before, and Raleigh stares back. Straightening his shirt, Raleigh puffs his chest out a little and turns to leave the room. He strides towards the doorway as casually as he can because he’s already starting to feel guilty – he’d thought it’d feel good to get that all out, but it just makes him feel worse.

“What am I supposed to –?” Chuck starts to indignantly ask.

“Starve.” Raleigh regrets the word the minute it leaves his mouth, but he doesn’t look back as he leaves the kitchen.

 

*

 

Chuck doesn’t blame Raleigh for what he said.

He may have always been a hothead whose mouth got him into trouble more times than he could count, but he was never too irrational – he’d always been at least a little level-headed, despite what most people thought. And he’d never been an idiot. Too stubborn for his own good, maybe, but not stupid. He knows he deserved everything Raleigh had thrown at him – even the chair.

Okay, especially the chair.

But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. Which, of course, just makes Chuck feel worse about it all, the fact that he’s actually wounded by that one simple word Raleigh had hissed at him before disappearing upstairs. Deep down, he knows that Raleigh hadn’t meant it. But it sort of hits a little too close, digs itself just a little too deep under his skin. Because Chuck knows that without Raleigh, he probably wouldn’t still be around. He has to depend entirely on Raleigh and that makes him feel… guilty, he reckons. Considering the shit Raleigh’s had to do for him, like the camper back in August, or the man in China that first night. Both of which Chuck knows gave Raleigh nightmares, though Raleigh would never admit it.

But Chuck…. Well, he’s scared. And it’s easier to take it out on Raleigh in the form of anger than it is to confront the feeling.

He hadn’t really meant to make Raleigh as mad as he got, though. He knows this is hard on him, can actually see the toll it’s taking on him – Raleigh looks like he’s aged at least eight years in the past two months alone, and his face is harder and more closed off. He looks even worse than he had when he’d first come to the Hong Kong Shatterdome, and Chuck had thought he’d looked bloody awful then. He’s quiet and withdrawn, and sometimes days pass without him saying a single word.

And it’s Chuck’s fault. The knowledge of that just makes him feel shittier than he already does all the time – he’s pissed at himself for bringing this on Raleigh, for burying him under such stress and hardship, but he doesn’t know how to express it, so he just takes it out on Raleigh instead.

Fuck. It’s all bullshit.

After Raleigh had left the kitchen, Chuck had remained. He’s embarrassed and ashamed of himself, though he’d vehemently deny it if anyone ever asked. It’s just that Raleigh’s always been so patient with him – he almost doesn’t know how to react to the other man’s anger. So while he listens to Raleigh move around upstairs in his room, Chuck just hangs out in the kitchen for an hour or so. He picks up the chair Raleigh had thrown, and he alternates between sitting in it and pacing back and forth.

He finds himself stopping to stand at the back door, staring out at the trees through the small window and contemplating whether or not he should go out and try to find some animal to feed from. He’s pretty sure bears and moose can sometimes be nocturnal, and aren’t they local to these parts? He’s had animal blood before, but it tastes even worse than the shit Raleigh gets from the hospital – it tastes dirty. He’d rather go without, thinks maybe he can last another day or two.

Who knows what he’ll do after that, though?

When he hears Raleigh come down the stairs and stop outside the kitchen, Chuck pretends not to have noticed. He almost wishes he’d retreated to the attic instead, because Raleigh hates going up there – too small, he says, too cold – and Chuck’s still a little embarrassed. He can sense it as Raleigh enters the room, moving slowly towards him, and Chuck frowns, wanting desperately to say something, but apologizing has never been his thing. He just doesn’t know how to.

It’s Raleigh who speaks first, finally.

“What I said…. I didn’t mean it.”

“Yeah. I know,” Chuck says shortly. Then, he purposely tries to soften his tone – which is a lot harder than it should be, and it comes out sounding wrong anyway. “Neither did I.”

They’re quiet again. When Chuck makes himself turn away from the door, he finds Raleigh watching him, his eyes dark and intense, expression hard with deliberation. When he’d been alive, Chuck might have flushed and wilted a little under such scrutiny, but instead, he just stares back.

Raleigh’s mouth twitches a little, like he’s biting back the words he wants to say, and when he does speak again, it’s on a sigh. “I’m gonna try and find some new contacts at the hospital. Until I can, I’ll meet with my guy tomorrow and see if a little more money will get him to stop asking questions.”

Chuck nods. Reckons the wait won’t kill him. There’s a very dull ache in his teeth, but nowhere near as severe as it usually is when he’s hungry, at least.

But all of a sudden, Raleigh’s shrugging out of his sweater, and tossing it onto the table carelessly. He straightens the white singlet he’d been wearing under it, and gives Chuck a look that can only be called pointed and expectant, and Chuck’s more confused than he’s proud of.

“What?” he asks stupidly.

“You can have some of mine for now.”

Chuck gives a quick shake of his head. “Don’t need it. I can wait.”

“I’m not gonna beg you if that’s what you’re waiting for,” Raleigh says, a little gruffly like he’s irritated by Chuck’s response.

Chuck hesitates and looks back at Raleigh again. He’s only fed from him once before, back on that first night in China, a night that is, truthfully, somewhat of a blur to Chuck. He doesn’t remember much, apart from stumbling into the complex and finding Raleigh’s apartment through scent. His hunger had been unbearable, agonizing, even, and Raleigh had smelled like sunshine and rain and sweat all rolled into one. He’d smelled like life itself.

But he does distinctly remember Raleigh having to use force to get Chuck to stop feeding. They hadn’t talked about it since.

“You’re sure about this,” he asks, and maybe he sneers a little, because it’s just easier to treat Raleigh like this. “Look, I already know you didn’t mean what you said – you don’t have to make it up to me or anything.”

“I can’t promise I’m gonna be able to get you any blood tomorrow. This is just something to hold you over until I do,” Raleigh says firmly.

He moves closer and Chuck can’t deny that the heat radiating off of him wakes something up in him, a faint pull stirring in his gut. On the surface, Raleigh smells like clean linen and coffee beans, but beneath that is something more natural, something natural and heady, and Chuck unconsciously runs his tongue over his teeth.

“Take it from my neck this time.”

Chuck drops his gaze to Raleigh’s right hand, his brow furrowing just a little. The first time, he’d bitten Raleigh’s wrist. “Why not –?”

“I want both my hands free,” Raleigh says after a beat. Doesn’t need to add ‘Just in case;’ it hangs in the air obviously. But when he sees that Chuck is still a little unsure, he says, “I’m only doing this because I know your – your hunger isn’t that bad yet. I’m not worried.”

“Are you really that much of an idiot?” Chuck asks. “Having your hands free won’t do a damn bit of good.”

“I trust you…. Mostly,” Raleigh says. “Maybe I’m curious what it feels like. Maybe it hurt too damn much when you took it from my wrist and I just want to see if there’s an easier way.”

Chuck frowns. He doesn’t need to be reminded that he’s the source of so much difficulty and pain. His gaze drops to Raleigh’s hand again, but Raleigh turns his arm inward like he’s trying to hide the scar. Then he’s cocking his head to the side, his neck and jaw flexing with the motion, and Chuck feels a sharp, instinctive pang in his gums, his teeth starting to feel sore almost instantly. And when Raleigh raises his eyebrows in impatience, Chuck really can’t find it in him to keep saying no. Weak, one half of his brain thinks. Eat, the other half drowns it out.

He closes the gap between them, and to Raleigh’s credit, he doesn’t flinch or back away – even as Chuck’s fangs smoothly extend, something Chuck still isn’t entirely in control of. He doesn’t even bat an eyelash. He’s never once shown any fear when it came to Chuck, and while that might have been something that would have pissed off the human Chuck, vampire Chuck thinks it’s… kind of nice.

As Chuck lifts a hand, taking Raleigh’s jaw in it, Raleigh tenses in anticipation, though it’s almost imperceptible, and Chuck tilts the blond’s head just enough to expose his neck more. His eyes zero in on Raleigh’s pulse point, can see it jump beneath the smooth skin, and again, Chuck brushes his tongue against his teeth to try and soothe the ache. His throat’s gone dry and there’s a blurred red filling the corners of his vision.

He pauses like he’s waiting for Raleigh to change his mind, and then he leans in and without warning, sinks his fangs into Raleigh’s taut flesh. They slide in like hot knives through butter, and Raleigh makes a surprised little gasping sound that speaks to a deep, dark part of Chuck that he’d rather not acknowledge – the predator in him.

And then Raleigh’s blood – hotter and so much sweeter than the stuff from the hospital – hits Chuck’s tongue and lights him up, sending a jolt of electricity through his dead bones. There’s something so entirely different when it comes to drinking blood from plastic bags and fresh, live blood like this. The blurred red spreads into a haze that covers the entirety of his vision now and Chuck attaches his lips to Raleigh’s throat, shaping the punctures so as not to spill and let any go to waste. He takes a long pull, unable to stop himself from making a rumbling sort of noise of appreciation in his chest as he swallows the honey-thick liquid.

 

*

 

When Chuck’s fangs first pierced his skin, Raleigh couldn’t help the gasp that left him, because it hurt, of course, but not in the way he’d expected. It’s like nothing he’s ever felt before – and that’s saying a lot, considering some of the injuries he’d sustained during the war. It feels invasive. Wrong. Raleigh instinctively wants to pull away, and he knows that he could because Chuck’s grasp isn’t that tight on him, and hey, that’s what Raleigh had wanted his hands free for anyway. But he doesn’t.  

He hadn’t been lying when he’d told Chuck that he wanted him to bite his neck this time because of how badly it’d hurt his wrist. The night Chuck had bitten him, he’d been nearly feral and wild, and the scar he’d left on Raleigh’s wrist wasn’t pretty. And when it’d been happening, Raleigh hadn’t liked the feeling of having only one hand free – it had made him feel like he had no control at all.

And even as Chuck holds him, one hand still on his jaw, the other coming up to curl around Raleigh’s shoulder, Raleigh feels like this is better. He twists the fingers of both hands into the material of Chuck’s T-shirt at the collar, ready to fight back if need be – and even with the pain, he feels good, he feels up to the mark. Chuck’s lips are cold against his skin, wet with blood – mine, Raleigh thinks almost incredulously – and it’s a surreal sensation.

And as Chuck makes that low appreciative noise, something completely bizarre happens. A thrill slides down Raleigh’s spine, curling around the base, and his hands unintentionally tighten in Chuck’s shirt. A noise threatens to leave him, so he bites down on his bottom lip hard to stifle it. And as Chuck takes a second pull on his blood, Raleigh feels it throughout his entire body. It hurts – almost feels like something inside of him is being torn out by the roots against its will – but at the same time, it feels maybe a little… good.

Maybe really good.

It hadn’t felt like this that first time. That had burned and made his entire arm feel like it was literally getting ripped out of its socket, and it was a pain that he’d felt for many days after. A pain he swore he could sometimes still feel. But this is so different. It’s a feeling that goes to his head like liquor, makes him feel airy and high. He gets a little lightheaded, but that feels good too – like when you’re a kid and you close your eyes and just spin around in circles for fun.

But he isn’t dumb.

“Enough,” he says. His voice is thick and husky, and even with Chuck’s heightened senses, he’s worried Chuck can’t hear him. So he clears his throat and says a little more firmly, “That’s enough, Chuck.”

For a split second, it doesn’t seem like Chuck’s going to stop, and a very brief panic wells up in Raleigh before he runs through a hundred different scenarios in his head. He’d had to fight Chuck off of him the first time, and though he doesn’t want to hurt him, he can do it again if he has to, make no mistake about it. He braces himself, gets ready for it, even.

But then Chuck lets him go.

Breathless, Raleigh takes a step back, almost swaying on his feet, and he claps a hand over his neck to apply pressure – the punctures are small, not at all like what happened with his wrist. A lot of vampires in books and whatnot have some sort of healing power they can share with their victims, so that their bites won’t leave marks, but that’s not the case with whatever Chuck is. But scars are nothing new to Raleigh.

Chuck’s eyes are closed like he’s still savoring the taste, and he wipes at his mouth with the back of a hand, which does nothing but smear a line of blood over his cheek. Raleigh has to look away, which is almost funny – he’s totally okay with letting Chuck drink his blood, but seeing him like this is apparently too much. So he turns away, pressing at his neck and still feeling a little dizzy, and right about now he realizes that something isn’t quite right.

He glances down and an immediate wave of shame sends heat racing up his neck and into his cheeks.

“I need to get something on this,” he says curtly, hurrying to the doorway. He doesn’t know if Chuck even hears him – he looks like he’s experiencing some kind of high from Raleigh’s blood, like he’s somewhere else entirely – and a part of Raleigh’s actually glad he’s in such a mood. At least he hasn’t seemed to notice.

In the bathroom, he goes through the motions of cleaning and bandaging his neck, and then he sits down on the toilet with the lid closed, and he tries to take a few steadying breaths. But then he looks into the mirror behind the door – smashed and cracked from Chuck, an incident he’d never asked about – and he cringes. It’s bad enough that he can feel it, but seeing it just makes it worse.

He’s practically hard as a rock, straining against and tenting his loose-fitting pants. He covers his face with a hand so he doesn’t have to see it anymore, and he stays in the bathroom for a little while, talking himself down until his erection’s gone.

But later on, when he’s lying in bed with sunlight creeping in through the curtains, and when the house is still and quiet because Chuck’s retreated to the attic, Raleigh can’t sleep. There’s an echo of pain in his neck and a ghost of the pleasure he’d felt when Chuck had been drinking his blood – he tries not to think about it, but it’d been intense, and his mind can’t help but to linger. He lets his fingers brush over the bandage at his throat absentmindedly, and he thinks about Chuck’s cool lips against his skin, his firm hands holding Raleigh in place. More importantly, he thinks about the noise Chuck had made, that low rumbling in his chest.

And before he knows it, Raleigh’s hard again.

He rolls onto his stomach like he can crush his erection out of existence, but he winds up just starting to grind his hips down to get more friction. And if he ends up thrusting against the mattress until he comes in his boxers, his eyes squeezed closed and his mind recalling Chuck’s mouth at his neck, he blames it on the fact that he hasn’t had sex for a long, long while.

And he tells himself that it’s just because his body still doesn’t know how to react to being bitten like that. He’s not attracted to Chuck. He’s not attracted to a monster.

 

*

I’m losing control, and it’s all that I can do

Not to black out, and fall into lust with you.

– “This Flesh A Tomb,” Atreyu

*

 

A few weeks later, a detective from Anchorage comes by the cabin.

When Raleigh wakes up to heavy knocking at the front door, he’s immediately cautious. They never get visitors – and why should they? Raleigh doesn’t know anybody in town – and it’s the middle of the day, judging by the sunlight streaming in through his window. He hurriedly slips into some jeans and a sweater from the floor, and on his way down the stairs, he makes sure the cluster of bite marks on his neck are covered up.

So he’d let Chuck feed from him a few more times, what of it? It hasn’t been easy getting in touch with new contacts at Fairbanks Memorial, and he’s only doing it to take care of Chuck – if he doesn’t, Chuck will starve. It’s not because of the sick sexual pleasure he gets out of it – not at all. He isn’t attracted to Chuck Hansen, and this is just him being a good person, and that’s final. Period. End of story.

The detective is young – maybe even younger than Raleigh – and he shuffles a little when Raleigh opens the door, looking strangely excited. Raleigh figures it must be his first outing alone or something, must be eager to prove himself, and he’s too lost in thought to catch the man’s name when he flashes his badge, which is upside-down, mind you. The detective apologizes for disturbing him, but Raleigh takes all the blame – explains that he keeps odd hours, hints at insomnia.

“Yeah, I suppose it isn’t easy adjusting to normal life after the war,” the man says.

And then it makes sense why he’d seemed so excited – it looks like Raleigh’s got a fan.

He invites the detective in and gets a pot of coffee brewing, and he doesn’t bother telling the man to be quiet or anything, because Chuck sleeps like… well, he sleeps like the dead. His body literally shuts down and he can’t be woken up until he’s good and ready – and Raleigh should know, he’d tried everything he could think of on a few different occasions to get Chuck up.

“So let me tell you why I’m here, Mr. Becket –”

“You can call me Raleigh,” he cuts him off gently. Because he knows the reaction he’s going to get. And sure enough, the detective looks like he’s just been told Santa Claus is real and coming to town early. It’s not that Raleigh enjoys playing people, but if he’s got it, he’s going to use it to his advantage.

After he fixes him a cup of coffee – and after the man says, “Who’d have thought I’d be having coffee with Raleigh Becket?” – Raleigh sits down at the table with him and tries to look as casual and unsuspecting as possible. He knows what this is about. And his stomach is twisted up into a tight knot because of it.

When the detective pulls out a photo, Raleigh doesn’t even need to look at it to know it’s the camper that Chuck had killed. But he pretends to study the picture as the detective tells him about where she was from, how long she’s been missing – about how Raleigh’s cabin is in the general area she liked to hike and camp around. And Raleigh puts on his best sympathetic look – which isn’t that difficult, considering his very real guilt – and says no, he hasn’t ever seen her, that he doesn’t tend to see many people around his parts, actually.

“I imagine most people like to steer clear of this place – it kind of looks like a haunted house,” the detective says with a little smile, his good humor making it seem like he doesn’t at all consider Raleigh a suspect.

“I am known as the weird and reclusive war vet who lives all alone and talks to himself,” Raleigh jokes back lightly.

And that, for some reason, ignites the detective’s excitement about Jaegers and winning the war, and Raleigh – for no reason other than to get in the guy’s good graces – humors him and tells him all about it. He tells him about what it was like piloting, how much he misses it, and he talks about the devastating loss of Stacker Pentecost. And when the detective asks about Mako, Raleigh tells him that they’d both just needed some time apart to recuperate.

And when they’re done, the detective sits back in his chair and just sort of stares at Raleigh with an awed expression on his face. “I just… can’t believe you’re out here all alone. Seems like you deserve a lot more,” he says finally.

Raleigh shrugs and tries to ignore the way his mind flashes to Chuck. Absentmindedly, he rubs at his neck where the bite marks are to make sure his sweater’s hiding them. “Being alone’s not so bad – I got everything I need out here,” he says, almost robotically, like it’s a practiced answer.

When he walks the detective to the door a good few minutes later, the other man almost asks him for an autograph – Raleigh can just feel it coming. But then, as if stepping out onto the porch is his way of stepping back into reality, the detective becomes a professional again.

“I’m really sorry to have woken you up, Mr. Beck – Raleigh.” He heaves a sigh and looks out at the trees surrounding the cabin, shaking his head. “So many people go missing around here, I find myself at dead ends more often than not.”

“I hope you find her,” Raleigh says.

And somehow, he manages to shut and lock the door before he breaks down.

He all but collapses in on himself and makes it to the stairs, where he sits and hunches over, trying to keep his breathing under control. He feels like he’s going to be sick, and he knows it’s the remorse and shame of it all – not just the lying about not having seen the woman, but that he’d expressed the false hope that she be found, because god knows, he hopes no one ever, ever finds her. And that is severely fucked up.

After he collects himself, he paces and wanders the house, too wired to go back to sleep. In the end, he finds himself pulling the attic ladder down and climbing up to join Chuck. Besides being cooler than the rest of the house, the attic is pitch black, so he has to use his hands to feel around as he clambers in. He finds Chuck – accidentally digs his knee into Chuck’s thigh, but Chuck is still and lifeless, and doesn’t at all react – and he stretches out beside him in the darkness.

He realizes he’s seeking comfort from a vampire – one who couldn’t even stand him in life – and he can’t help but laugh aloud at the irony of it all. Chuck’s relying on him for survival and care, and he’s relying on Chuck for ‘human’ contact and companionship. It’s messed up. It’s all messed up.

It’s easy to tell when Chuck wakes up – it’s like a button is pressed and he comes to life, his body giving a very slight twitch almost like he’s taking a breath. Chuck hesitates, and after a long moment, he curses.

“Don’t bloody do that, Raleigh,” he grumps.

And yeah, maybe it’s not the smartest idea to sneak up on a sleeping vampire.

“Sorry,” Raleigh says. Means it.

“What are you doing up here? You hate it.”

Raleigh nods, because he does hate the attic. It’s barely big enough to be considered a room at all, and the lack of insulation makes it extremely uncomfortable. “A detective came by earlier…. To ask about that girl,” he says slowly. He knows he doesn’t have to clarify. As cool as Chuck likes to act, he knows that the guilt’s been eating away at him too. “She was from Anchorage, he said. Liked camping up here.”

“What’d you tell him?” Chuck asks.

“That a vampire killed her, what do you think?” Raleigh says a little curtly.  He sighs. “Guy was more interested in Gipsy Danger and the war than his job. Made it easier for me to lie to him.”

“Even out here you’re famous,” Chuck scoffs, and though Raleigh can’t see him, he can tell he’s rolling his eyes.

“Jealousy doesn’t become you, Chuck.”

Chuck grumbles something but Raleigh ignores it. They both lie there for a moment and Raleigh tries to think of something else to say – he feels the desperate need to make it seem like he’d come up to the attic for more than just the small comfort that came from telling him about the detective.

But Chuck speaks first. “You gonna make me drink from a bag tonight?”

“You’re starting to take me for granted now,” Raleigh says.

Chuck makes a noise in his throat like he’s trying to argue but doesn’t know how. He eventually settles on, “You taste good.”

“Compliment?”

“I think so.”

Raleigh grins because he can’t help it.

“Don’t let it go to your head, mate.”

“If I give you my blood tonight, it’s bagged tomorrow,” Raleigh says, and Chuck makes a ‘uh huh’ sort of sound. Raleigh feels only a little ashamed of himself for looking forward to it – the healed bites on his neck tingle with his eagerness, and oh how he’s going to hate himself when he’s alone again. “Alright, meet you downst –” he starts to say.

“Why not now?”

“In here?” Raleigh asks.

“I don’t feel like moving just yet, and the sun’s still out – I can feel it,” Chuck says. “Just come here and let me bite you already.” As an afterthought, he adds, “Please.”

Propping himself up, he leans over Chuck. This position is even more awkward than he’d thought it would be, but Chuck doesn’t seem to think so – Raleigh has to remind himself that Chuck would have no reason to find this uncomfortable; his need to feed trumps everything else. And as one of Chuck’s hands finds Raleigh’s jaw, his grasp firm but familiar, almost startling in the way it seems to come out of nowhere, a thrill shoots down Raleigh’s spine.

And he has to admit to himself that yeah, maybe he’s a little attracted to Chuck. A thought that makes him feel kind of nauseated actually.

It’s a mistake, he figures, to let Chuck continue to feed from him. Because it’ll accomplish nothing but to make things even more strange between them. God, how would Chuck react if he knew how much Raleigh enjoys it? If he found out that Raleigh often thought about it when he couldn’t sleep? Chuck uses his other hand to push the collar of Raleigh’s sweater out of the way, and then he leans up and buries his face in Raleigh’s neck. When his cold mouth presses against Raleigh’s skin, Raleigh tenses and his breath catches in anticipation – he suddenly doesn’t care about the awkward position either.

When Chuck’s fangs pierce his skin, Raleigh can’t help the small noise he makes at the initial pain – and the sound of it, of his flesh tearing beneath the razor sharp points, seems excruciatingly loud in his head. With his palms flat on the floor on either side of Chuck, he braces his weight over him and he forces himself to relax, even though his heart is hammering in his chest and his pulse thrums loud in his ears. Is this a physical reaction to the bite? Or is this simply his attraction to Chuck?

The thought almost makes him laugh. He doesn’t even know what to think anymore – Chuck Hansen’s got him all twisted up and turned upside-down. He’s ruined Raleigh’s life.

Like he’s savoring it, Chuck takes a slow pull on Raleigh’s blood, and the sensation ripples down Raleigh’s spine, makes his stomach tighten like when you’re riding a rollercoaster and going down a steep hill. Without thinking, he moves one of his hands to Chuck’s hair, fingers twisting into it, and Chuck’s grasp on him tightens in response. Another deep pull sends a current of electricity straight to Raleigh’s groin, and a choked moan leaves him before he can even think to bite it back. The arm keeping him up wobbles a little, and he lets his eyes fall closed, his head getting light and fuzzy. He can hear Chuck swallowing his blood and he knows he should be grossed out, but fuck, it feels too good. And Chuck makes an approving sound like he’s agreeing with Raleigh’s train of thought; the noise rides through Raleigh, encouraging him. Lost to the moment, like someone else has taken control of him, Raleigh pushes his hips down, grinding his hardening cock against Chuck’s thigh.

It’s something he can bask in forever, the giddiness that comes from having his blood drank. But a guy only has so much blood to give, he knows.

He opens his mouth to tell Chuck that he’s had enough, but Chuck stops on his own. His hold on Raleigh loosens and he pulls back, lapping at Raleigh’s neck a final time before he relaxes against the floor again. Still lightheaded and trying to catch his breath, Raleigh doesn’t move for a long moment, wanting to gather himself. But then he realizes he’s still pressed against Chuck, still hard and getting harder by the second.

Hoping the feeding’s got Chuck’s mind distracted and that he hasn’t noticed the stiffness digging into his thigh, Raleigh starts to move off of him. But Chuck’s hand is on his jaw again, making Raleigh flinch, and instinctively, Raleigh tries to pull away. Chuck holds him there, however, and though Raleigh can’t see him through the darkness, he can feel Chuck’s eyes burning into him as he studies him.

Chuck abruptly shifts and then his lips – cool, wet with Raleigh’s blood – press against Raleigh’s. It’s a soft, almost hesitant kiss, like Chuck’s uncertain of how Raleigh will take it, and though Raleigh wants to feel weirded out by it, he can’t – it sends another thrill right through him. And isn’t this what he wanted the whole time? He shouldn’t like any of this… but he does.

When Chuck pulls back again, his hand stays on Raleigh’s jaw, his thumb moving very subtly back and forth, and his eyes bore into Raleigh. Raleigh stares back at him, wishes the light was on because he wants – no, needs – to see his expression, wants to not only feel the intensity of his gaze, but see it as well. They remain like this, drowning in the heavy silence, and Raleigh feels like he’s dreaming. This is too surreal.

And then, something in him snaps.

Blindly, he finds Chuck’s wrists and jerks Chuck’s arms up over his head, pinning them there. God knows Chuck could break free if he wanted – the whole super strength and all – but Chuck lets it happen, like he’s curious to see what comes next. And what comes next is Raleigh leaning down and covering Chuck’s mouth with his own, kissing him harder. A kiss more direct than the one Chuck had given him. And Chuck responds instantly, his lips parting and mouth slanting against Raleigh’s. Raleigh pushes his tongue into Chuck’s mouth, licks at his teeth, and a jolt goes through him when he feels that Chuck’s fangs are still extended. Flicking his tongue over the sharp points earns a throaty noise from Chuck, like it feels good, and that noise makes Raleigh’s cock nearly throb.

Raleigh can’t explain the desperation that’s come over him. It’s just that he’s been fighting this for the past few weeks, trying to bury all of this shit – the loneliness, the need for real companionship, the guilt and the uselessness – and he can’t hold it back anymore. Even tasting his own blood in Chuck’s mouth doesn’t deter him – it’s bizarre and makes his stomach turn at first, but it’s oddly intoxicating.

He hasn’t asked for much since taking Chuck in, but this is something he wants. Something he needs.

There’s a tickle at his throat, warm and wet, and it hits him that he’s still bleeding. This one simple and tiny realization wakes him from his reverie, and reality comes slamming back into him like a Mack truck. He yanks away from Chuck, panting, and one of his hands snaps up to his neck.

What the hell’s wrong with him? What would Yancy think if he were alive to see this? What would Mako think?

What would Chuck’s father think?

“I gotta put something on this,” he mumbles, and he gracelessly shimmies backwards towards the attic ladder. He drops down onto the landing, leaves the ladder where it is, and he dashes into the bathroom like he’s worried Chuck will follow. He even locks the door, though he’s not sure if it’s his way of protecting himself, or protecting Chuck.

Funny. He’s the human – he should be the voice of reason in all of this, he should be the one who has no problem controlling himself.

He pulls his sweater off, dropping it to the floor as he goes into the medicine cabinet for bandages and antiseptic. Idiot, he thinks harshly. And then he hisses the word aloud, scolding himself. When he shuts the cabinet and catches sight of himself in the mirror, he winces.

There’s blood smeared on his lips and chin. He lowers his gaze to his neck, the slowly bleeding puncture marks smack dab in the middle of the others that are all mostly healed.

And mixed with the shame of it all, Raleigh hates that tiny thrill he feels at the sight.

 

*

For the first time, I’m losing control.

And I like it.

– “My Sanity on the Funeral Pyre,” Atreyu

*

 

Chuck definitely wants to blame Raleigh for this one.

About a week passes and Raleigh avoids him like he’s got the plague or something, and Chuck’s back to drinking strictly from blood bags. When night rolls around and Chuck wakes up, Raleigh keeps to his room. And Chuck’s got far too much pride to knock on his door and beg for attention, even if that’s what he really, really wants to do.

So when he wakes up early one evening – early enough that he can sense the sun’s still up – and he can hear Raleigh moving around downstairs, Chuck has to fight the frantic urge to go down and see him. Raleigh will come to him when he’s ready, he tells himself, which sounds like a load of bullshit, but it’s really all Chuck’s got. He just lays there, staring through the darkness at the rafters above him, and he can hear the refrigerator door open – it creaks a little when you pull it too slowly – and he knows Raleigh’s checking to see how much blood they have left.

The answer’s none. Chuck drank the last of it about two days earlier. Which he would have told Raleigh, had Raleigh not been avoiding him like a finicky jackass. It’s all Raleigh’s fault. Like always. And Chuck tries to pretend he doesn’t notice how immature and childish that line of thought is.

After a minute or so, he hears Raleigh tramp through the foyer, can hear him take his coat from the hook on the wall, and then the front door opens and closes. Chuck waits, his ears strained, just in case Raleigh comes back because he forgot something, but a dead silence settles over the house, and he figures it’s safe to come out.

He’s careful as he climbs down the attic ladder, not wanting to find himself in front of an open window – they keep the curtains drawn most of the time, and the sun’s setting, so even if a stray beam of light hit him, he’s sure it would be too weak to do much harm, but still. The hallway is dark, though, the window at the end covered with the heavy black drapes Raleigh had hung when they’d first arrived.

Though Chuck had originally intended to go downstairs, he instead finds himself making his way to Raleigh’s room. He hesitates outside the door before saying aloud, “Fuck it,” and shoving his way inside. He’s never been in there, which seems strange, considering how long they’ve lived together, and it’s plain and sparsely decorated – there’s just a large bed, a dresser against the opposite wall, and a couple of end tables that look like they’re going to collapse under the weight of the antique lamps on them.

Though there’s curtains above the window, they’re parted slightly, allowing a dim light in from outside. Chuck skirts his way over to pull them closed, enveloping the room in shadow. Then he turns, sweeps his gaze over the room, and he makes his way to the bed hesitantly, like he’s afraid he’s going to be caught. He sits down on the edge of the mattress – it’s been, god, it’s been so long since he’s even been in a room that had a real bed in it, he realizes. He lays down on his back and looks up at the ceiling, and he kind of feels a little underwhelmed – it’s no more comfortable than lying in the attic. It’s disappointing, but also a little sad.

So Chuck rolls over to try and get more comfortable, shoving his arms up under the pillow as he buries his face in it. Raleigh’s scent washes over him – his soap, sweat, and that one smell that’s just so distinctly him – and Chuck feels something of a spark somewhere inside him. Though it’s not a discomfort to him in any way, it’s a simple fact that he’s always cold – and not just to the touch, it’s an internal feeling too, he just feels like his bones are carved from ice. But this smell makes him feel almost… warm. It’s like a memory of what it feels like to be warm.

His fangs slowly extend on their own, gums tingling, and his senses kick into overdrive. He inhales deeply, opening his mouth against the pillowcase for more. He replays the last time he’d fed from Raleigh in his mind. First lets himself remember the feeling of his fangs sinking into Raleigh’s skin, that first taste of blood as it’d hit Chuck’s lips – Raleigh tastes so sweet and alive, it’s unreal. Chuck presses the pillow tighter to his face and next thinks about the sounds Raleigh had made – the gasps, the way his heart had beat in his chest, and that one moan he’d given while one of his hands had been buried in Chuck’s hair. The moan that had made it seem like Raleigh had been enjoying it.

Chuck’s hips squirm a bit as he feels himself harden. One would think it’s impossible for his body to react in such a way, him being a vampire and all, but Chuck’s done trying to figure out his physiology. He rolls onto his back again, basking in the scent that’s engulfed him, and he looks down at the growing bulge in his pants. He almost wants to laugh because this is the most human he’s felt in a long time, even with his fangs out like this, and distracted by the giddiness he feels in the situation, he reaches down and cups himself through his jeans.

It’s like his body’s finally been woken up from a slumber that’s lasted way too long. He’d forgotten the simplicity of the pleasure that comes from just touching yourself, forgotten what it’d even felt like to desire someone like this. And this time he does laugh, because of all the bloody people in the world, it’s Raleigh fucking Becket who’s giving him an erection the size of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

And why not? he asks himself. Raleigh’s the only person he’s had contact with in months, the only person he’s seen since Striker Eureka went up – and more than that, they’ve actually developed a weird sort of relationship. At first, he knows it was just Raleigh being Raleigh, being the good little savior he is and wanting to do what’s right. But they care for one another now, he thinks. They actually like each other.

And Chuck’s never wanted anyone as badly as he wants Raleigh. He’d felt Raleigh’s cock against his leg when they’d lain in the attic together, and he’d known that – in that moment, at least – Raleigh had wanted him in return. Chuck’s never been kissed the way Raleigh had kissed him that day. He’s never been on the receiving end of such fierce passion from anyone. He has to reckon it’s why Raleigh’s avoiding him; maybe he’s embarrassed, maybe he feels guilty, maybe he’s disgusted with himself, even.

They need to talk about it, Chuck decides.

He’s mentally rehearsing what he wants to say when he hears movement downstairs. He’d been so caught up in his lust that he hadn’t noticed Raleigh’s return. He jumps out of the bed, hesitating and looking down with a hint of shame at the shape in his pants, and he makes his way to the door. As he pokes his head out into the hallway, however, he catches a scent that is decidedly not Raleigh’s. This scent is bitter and sour, and it clings to the back of Chuck’s throat, leaving a bad, acidic taste in his mouth.

As quietly as he can – which is pretty damn quiet, now that he’s dead – Chuck creeps from the room and makes his way down the hall. He stops at the top of the stairs to listen , and he can hear that whoever it is is in the living room, their heart racing erratically in their chest. For the briefest of moments, Chuck almost worries – what is he supposed to do? Does he let them take whatever they want and leave? Does he confront them? Does he call someone?

But then the nervousness turns to something else. He gets angry.

He carefully navigates the stairs, avoiding all the ones that creak, and he edges to the doorway of the living room to peer in. The curtains in the room are completely drawn, bathing the room in shadow, and the intruder has a flashlight in his hand as he searches the room. Stealing, Chuck thinks, vexed.

He steps forward into the room, and sensing his presence, the man spins to face him. The beam of his flashlight dances all around Chuck, and Chuck doesn’t even blink as it hits him square in the face.

“Shit! I thought – I didn’t think anyone was here!” the man yelps. Acts as if it’s some sort of apology, like it’s just an honest mistake. And that irritates Chuck further. “Oh, fuck.”

“You stealing from us, mate?” Chuck asks, taking a step towards him. His voice sounds dangerously low, even to his own ears, but he likes it. His gums have been tingling since he’d lain eyes on the man – he doesn’t much care for the sour stench of this man’s fear, but he can hear the blood pumping through his veins, and it has been a few days since he’s fed.

The man’s babbling, starts to say something that sounds an awful lot like, “Please, I’m sorry,” but the words die in his throat. His eyes go wide as his whole body freezes up, rooting him to the spot, and Chuck can see the last hint of color drain from the man’s face. “What the…?” he asks, and hesitantly, he aims the flashlight at Chuck’s face again.

Chuck’s fangs have been out this whole time, since Raleigh’s bedroom.

The next few moments seem to happen so quickly it feels like a weird dream. The intruder’s gaze darts to the hallway – no doubt, he’s trying to plan out a quick escape – and Chuck realizes that he can’t let him leave. If this guy leaves, he’s going to tell someone. As far as anyone in town knows, Raleigh Becket lives alone – if they find out about Chuck, even if they don’t necessarily believe whatever this man tells them, things could change. And Chuck can’t have that. He can’t have things changing.

So when he makes his move, a mad sprint for the hall, Chuck acts on instinct, lunging after him. The man happens to slip away from him – hey, Chuck’s still new at this – and he turns to Chuck, jerking a hand up towards him. At first, Chuck thinks he’s throwing his flashlight at him, but in the next instant, there’s a deafening bang. Chuck doesn’t even realize he’s been shot by a gun until he looks down at his left shoulder – the sharp, burning pain is delayed, and he hisses through his fangs when it registers.

He looks back up at the intruder, who’s still aiming the handgun at him. And suddenly, Chuck finds himself thinking about Raleigh. What if Raleigh had been there? What if the man had shot him instead? Chuck will live – he can already feel his body working against the wound, it’ll repair itself in moments and he’ll be good as new – but an injury like this could have seriously harmed Raleigh.

Could have killed him.

Red blurs at the corners of Chuck’s vision. And teeth and gums aching, he gives in to the angry haze. He feeds.

 

*

 

After leaving Fairbanks Memorial, Raleigh finds himself sitting in his truck in a 7-Eleven parking lot, flipping through the tiny notebook he uses for his hospital contacts. The hardest thing about taking care of Chuck has to be getting the blood bags – there’s only so many times you can bribe a staff member before they start prying and asking questions. He has absolutely no idea what he’s going to do if – no, when – that happens. He’s been thinking that maybe he ought to try and get a job at the hospital, janitorial work or something; maybe he’d be able to figure out some way to get what he needs.

The ride back to the cabin is a long one – mostly because he takes his time and drives as slowly as he can. He tells himself it’s because he just needs to consider everything, needs to think up what they’re going to do, but he can’t keep the charade up long, even with himself. He’s avoiding Chuck, plain and simple. He’s been avoiding him for over a week now, locking himself up in his bedroom at night, where he lays on his bed and listens to Chuck wander the house like a ghost – bored and trapped there. And lonely, no doubt. Which makes Raleigh feel horrible, but it’s better than the alternative.

He likes Chuck. He desires him. He’d thought it was just a natural reaction to Chuck biting him, he’d thought it was something he’d only ever feel when Chuck fed from him. But it’s so much more than that. He hasn’t just grown used to Chuck’s company, but has come to crave it, and he finds himself wishing for little things in Chuck’s presence – he likes making Chuck laugh, however rare that is, and he likes it when Chuck touches him, he likes feeling that raw, underlying power in his touch.  He’s developed feelings for Chuck, even if he doesn’t know exactly what those feelings are, and it’s like they’ve come completely out of left field.

And there’s a million things wrong with that, isn’t there? The first of which being that Chuck’s Chuck, and before, they’d only just barely tolerated one another. The second, of course, being that Chuck’s not even human anymore.

And there’s a part of Raleigh that almost feels like he’d be taking advantage of Chuck were he to act on these feelings. Chuck may be a vampire – or whatever the hell it is that he’s turned into – but he’s still in such a fragile state. He’s alone and confused, and Raleigh hates to think Chuck might have just gone along with what’d happened in the attic because he thought he owes something to Raleigh for taking care of him like this.

They need to talk about it, Raleigh figures.

He can’t keep running away from this – the only time in his life he was ever a runner was after Yancy, and he’s always regretted it. He’s no coward. He can face things head-on and he can come out on top, he knows this. He proved it with the Kaiju. He needs to suck it up and do what’s right, because damn, this is no way to treat his only friend in the world these days.

When he gets home, though, something doesn’t feel quite right.

He parks and squints through the windshield at the darkened house, like he thinks if he concentrates hard enough, he’ll be able to magically know what room Chuck is in and what he’s doing. For a long moment, he just sits there, his stomach tight and uneasy for reasons he can’t even fathom, but then a strange worry for Chuck’s safety settles in him, and he scrambles out of the truck. Leaving the cooler of blood bags he’d brought home, he jogs up to the porch, unlocking the door and slipping inside as fast as he can.

He flips the light switch as he goes, since by now the house is almost totally dark. But the smell hits him in the instant just before the lamp comes to life – coppery and rusty, the sort of smell that sticks in your throat. And then the room’s bathed in light and Raleigh sees it – the red everywhere.

Chuck’s in the center of the room, had been standing with his back to the doorway, and he turns to Raleigh, looking like a child who’s just gotten caught with their hand in the cookie jar. If that child had sharp fangs and blood all over his chin, dripping down his front.

“Raleigh,” he says, strangely blank-sounding. His eyes are inexpressive, emotionless, and Raleigh’s stomach clenches harder because this is how Chuck had acted after he’d killed that girl. “I was going to have this cleaned up before you got back….” He turns and looks at the mess.

Raleigh doesn’t recognize the man lying in a heap on the floor, and not just because his throat’s been torn out. A sick sort of relief sweeps through him at that, because at least this guy isn’t a town local, he thinks. And his next thought is, Good thing there are so many missing people in Alaska, just like that detective said, but he buries that thought deep inside before it can make him feel guilty. He raises his gaze back to Chuck, wants to say something, but words are failing him.

“We were out of blood,” Chuck says, still expressionless. Dead.

Raleigh stares at him for a good hard moment, his mind racing with all that needs to be done. And finally, he nods. He’d known this wouldn’t be easy when he’d first decided to take Chuck in – and especially after Chuck had killed those people so early on, he’d been well aware that it could happen again. Had expected it, even. He feels like he doesn’t have any right to be surprised or upset, even though he is, very much so, and he knows he needs to take care of this right away. He nods again, mostly to himself, and he shrugs out of his coat to hang it on the hook on the wall – it’ll just get in the way when he’s cleaning.

“I didn’t go looking for something to eat,” Chuck says. His eyes seem to come back to life, searching Raleigh’s face intensely. Raleigh darts his own gaze away, uncertain of how he feels having Chuck stare at him so hard, and a hint of emotion comes back into Chuck’s voice as he adds, “He broke in.”

“He what?”

“Kitchen window,” Chuck says.

Raleigh murmurs a curse, but all he can do is nod some more, because he can’t really speak – he doesn’t know what to say. Because it’s hard to talk to Chuck when he’s covered in blood like this. It’s different when he feeds from Raleigh – it’s always just a little bit, and it’s Raleigh’s, and that makes it okay. But this is so much more. This is so much worse.

“He had a gun. He shot me,” Chuck says, voice getting louder, more emotional. He jabs a finger at his left shoulder and Raleigh notices the tear in his shirt, and for a split second, he almost panics. Then he remembers Chuck can heal.

“Alright – self-defense,” Raleigh says. He moves around Chuck, feeling like he’s going to throw up, but knowing he needs to get the body out of the house. But Chuck suddenly grabs him by the front of his shirt and shoves him up against the wall – Raleigh flinches as his back hits, because Chuck still doesn’t know his own strength sometimes. “Damnit, Chuck, I have to take care of this.”

“It wasn’t self-defense,” Chuck says. He seems angry. He’s looking at Raleigh like Raleigh’s missing the point of something, and Raleigh just wants to sit down, he just wants to take a breather and get himself together.

So he nods. “Alright. It wasn’t self-defense –”

“He might have shot you if you were here. He might have killed you,” Chuck bites out through his fangs. But his eyes are wide with something Raleigh can’t place, and it looks like there’s a sea of conflicting emotions raging in him, which is almost hilarious considering how lifeless he’d seemed at first. “I just – I got angry. I was protecting this house, yeah? My family?”

Raleigh softens at that. Knows he needs to give Chuck the validation he needs. Without any thought to it, he reaches up and puts a hand on Chuck’s shoulder. “Yeah – I know.”

Chuck studies him again, then blinks and ducks his head. “You weren’t here – I was so hungry,” he says, sounding accusatory. Then he makes a strained little noise in his throat and shakes his head. “And I knew you were bringing it home, I knew….”

He makes another noise, and it’s like he’s too emotional now. Raleigh’s starting to think that this is too much, taking care of Chuck is too hard – he can’t do it anymore. He’d been wrong before, this is the breaking point. But then he remembers that he’s not alone in this, has to tell himself that it isn’t at all any easier on Chuck. In life, Chuck might have been an asshole fueled on by his own insecurities, but he never would have wanted to become this – Raleigh can’t even come close to imagining what this must be like to be in Chuck’s shoes.

So he swallows back his worsening nausea, and he slides his hand from Chuck’s shoulder to the side of his neck, avoiding most of the blood. “Hey… it’s gonna be alright, okay? I promise.”

Chuck’s grasp on him has loosened, so he starts to move away, because that body is going to start stinking soon, and he just wants it out of the house. But Chuck grabs him again. Pulls Raleigh to him and clings to him like a child. And though Raleigh’s natural instinct is to pull away – mostly because now he’s covered in blood, and now he really wants to vomit – Raleigh cares too much for Chuck to deny him this comfort. He stiffly wraps around his arms around Chuck, forcing himself to ignore the odor of blood and death.

“I’m sorry,” Chuck says softly, his fangs just about brushing against Raleigh’s neck as he speaks. A sane person should have been afraid, considering Chuck doesn’t at all seem like he’s in his right mind, but Raleigh figures he’s far from sane these days.

“I forgive you.”

Chuck pulls him in tighter. Things are so fucked, Raleigh thinks. But he’s in too deep by now – and even seeing this, he knows his feelings for Chuck haven’t changed. And that’s even more fucked. How did this happen?

 

*

And I promise you that I’ll stand right by your side,

Forever and always, until the day I die.

– “This Flesh A Tomb,” Atreyu

*

Raleigh doesn’t get a chance to talk to Chuck about why he’d been avoiding him. Chuck’s latest kill puts somewhat of a damper on the both of them – things had been going so well, they’d been doing so good – the fact that things could take a turn for the worst so quickly is disheartening, to say the least. And Raleigh has no one to blame but himself. Chuck’s still so new at this and Raleigh should have been more watchful and vigilant, should have taken better care of him. He’d gotten lazy, he figures. And another person had suffered because of it.

The few days following the bloodbath – because that’s what it’d been, Chuck had made a complete mess of the foyer and living room – are tense, and though Raleigh and Chuck don’t avoid one another, things aren’t the same between them. They don’t talk to each other much, and when they do, it’s to argue. Raleigh’s guilt makes Chuck angry, and he tries to convince Raleigh that any man who breaks into a house with a gun deserves such a fate, but Raleigh’s nowhere near being on board with that idea. And secretly, he thinks Chuck isn’t either. Some of their more intense arguments are Chuck blaming him for having avoided him, for having taken so long to get more blood, and Raleigh, even though he agrees that it’s his fault, ends up snapping once or twice and telling Chuck that it wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t been such a glutton.

So when Raleigh walks in after visiting the hospital and Chuck’s waiting for him, Raleigh instantly tries to get away from him, ducks into the kitchen to try and avoid him. He’s not in the mood to argue again – not after such an unsuccessful trip. He’d actually contemplated going somewhere else, a hotel maybe, just so he wouldn’t have to come home as empty-handed as he was now.

“What’s wrong?” Chuck demands, following right on his heels.

Raleigh shakes his head. He goes to the fridge under the guise of wanting something to drink, but it’s mostly just so he can look busy with something.

“Don’t bloody do that, Raleigh. Don’t treat me like I’m some sort of idiot.”

Raleigh stays there for a second, just staring into the mostly empty fridge, and then he turns to face Chuck, mind working wildly to come up with a way to explain just how fucked they are. The words don’t come, however, and he shakes his head, snorting a little, and he throws an arm out at his side uselessly, taking a quick, shaky breath. There’s an almost physical weight resting on his shoulders and he feels so close to buckling under it, so close to just giving up for a final time. And it seems that Chuck can sense this – he watches Raleigh, frowning so hard that lines appear in his forehead.

“What’s wrong?” he asks again, and this time his tone is a little lighter.

“They don’t want me coming around the hospital anymore….”

Chuck tenses visibly, but doesn’t say anything, and Raleigh’s words seem to echo uncomfortably in the empty house. Raleigh shuffles a little, moves away from the fridge and leans a hip against the counter, crossing his arms and looking down at the floor because he can’t stand to look at Chuck – he feels like he’s failing him. Chuck doesn’t take his eyes off of him, however, continues to stare, and Raleigh just stands there like a moron. He’s kind of surprised, truthfully, that Chuck’s being so quiet – he’d expected more of an argument by now.

“What are we…?” Chuck starts to ask slowly, apparently just as lost as Raleigh is.

“There’s a clinic – between here and Anchorage – they won’t have a lot of blood, but combining it with how often you drink from me….” Raleigh trails off because he knows that would never work. He could never get enough blood from a clinic that size – they’d be lucky if the clinic even carried more than a handful of bags. “Or maybe I could get a job at Alaska Regional or something.”

“Anchorage is like six bloody hours away,” Chuck says skeptically.

“I don’t know what else to do,” Raleigh snaps. He reaches up and digs his palms into his eyes until they’re sore and he’s seeing spots, grinding his teeth together in frustration. “I wish Yancy were here.” Yancy could have come up with something. Yancy could fix anything. 

Chuck takes a slow step towards him, almost like he’s hesitant, and he says, “I can do better. I can get by on less blood than before. Maybe I only need yours –”

Raleigh shakes his head. “You can’t live on just mine. I don’t have enough. You could take too much and you could –”

“I would never,” Chuck all but snarls at him. “And that you’re implying that I would –”

“I’m implying that you could. You could lose control –”

“I wouldn’t –”

“– just like you did with those others,” Raleigh finishes, loud enough to talk over him. He meets his gaze, and though he hesitates because he doesn’t want to make Chuck feel bad, this is something that needs to be addressed. “You could kill me, Chuck.”

Chuck’s whole body jerks like he’s just been doused in boiling hot water, his expression going tight with anger. He glares through narrowed eyes at Raleigh, his fists clenching at his sides, and though his mouth opens a little, he doesn’t speak – what can he say? The smell of death still lingers in the foyer, a testament to just how hard it is for him to control his urges.

Raleigh looks back down at the floor, rubbing absently at his neck – where the bite marks are. It’s become somewhat of a nervous habit for him, something he does more times in a day than he can count. “That first night – back in Kowloon Bay….” Raleigh trails off, doesn’t know where to go from there.

“I was different then,” Chuck says quickly. “That wasn’t me.”

“I had to fight you to get you off me…. What if I hadn’t been able to do it? I’ve seen the people who haven’t been so lucky.”

Chuck snorts crossly, sounding much like an irate bull, and he shakes his head. “They weren’t you.” His voice is a low rumble – this is much different from the anger Raleigh’s used to, which is of the ‘yelling-as-loud-as-you-can-and-throwing-anything-you-can-reach’ variety. This sort of anger is much more… intimate. More personal.

“I’m not saying this so you can stand there and tell me how special I am compared to them,” Raleigh says. “I’m saying this because – well, shit, Chuck, one of us has to think about it.”

And suddenly, Chuck is right there. Raleigh flattens himself against the counter, taking a defensive stance because he thinks Chuck is ready to fight. But instead, all Chuck does is grab him roughly by the side of his neck. A part of Raleigh wants to pull away, and another sad, pathetic part of him wants to lean into the touch – this is the closest they’ve been since they’d cleaned up the burglar’s body together. Instead, all he can do is stand stock still, staring at Chuck’s unreadable face.

Chuck studies him for what feels like an eternity. His eyes are hard and intense, clouded with thought, and Raleigh can’t even begin to guess what’s going on in his mind. His grasp on Raleigh’s neck is unyielding, almost too firm, and Raleigh realizes a little belatedly that one of his own hands has come up and is resting against Chuck’s wrist, ready to fight back if need be.

At last, Chuck blinks and his expression comes back to life. His nostrils flare a little, he bares his teeth – his normal, human teeth, surprisingly, the fangs are nowhere to be seen – and his eyes are dark and hinting at things Raleigh’s better off not thinking about. “I would sooner kill myself than hurt you, Raleigh,” he says quietly, only the words come out on a mocking sneer. Like he blames Raleigh for himself holding such a sentiment. It could sound compassionate had it come from someone else, but Chuck says it like it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. Says his name like it’s a curse word.

Raleigh swallows and the motion draws Chuck’s gaze. As if he’s only just now realizing how near he is to Raleigh, like he doesn’t at all remember closing the distance between them, he slowly reclaims his hand and takes a small step back. He starts to turn away, ducking his head almost submissively, like it’s his way of apologizing for getting in Raleigh’s face, and something about it just breaks something in Raleigh.

Lurching forward, he grabs and tugs on the front of Chuck’s shirt, and getting the picture, Chuck returns to him, leaning in and meeting Raleigh’s mouth with his own. The kiss is hard and nearly bruising, and Chuck crowds Raleigh against the counter again, his hands going to Raleigh’s waist as Raleigh’s fist into the material of his shirt. There’s a small voice in the back of Raleigh’s mind that’s telling him what an idiot he is, that this is no time for him to act on his feelings for Chuck – feelings that he shouldn’t at all have in the first place, mind you. But he needs this. He needs to feel something other than the worthlessness that’s been bubbling in him, the guilt and shame that eat away at him day in and day out. Just something to help alleviate the weight crushing his shoulders.

And this? Isn’t enough.

With a burst of strength, he turns them – he shoves Chuck up against the counter this time, and Chuck, despite being more than capable of fighting it, lets him. Raleigh breaks the kiss for only an instant, long enough for Chuck to murmur his name against his lips – and this time, Chuck almost sounds like he’s savoring the word.

Raleigh shoves both hands into Chuck’s hair, earning the tiniest hum of appreciation from the vampire. He grazes his teeth over Chuck’s bottom lip, like he’s testing out whether or not Chuck’ll like it, and Chuck’s only response is to do the same to him. It’s not the sort of kiss you’d see in a particularly romantic movie scene, it’s a lot of lips and teeth, and it’s hard and direct. The whole being dead thing means Chuck doesn’t need to breathe, of course, so there’s no stopping him – he’s relentless in his passion, like he’s trying to steal the very life from Raleigh.

Raleigh pulls on Chuck’s hair like he means to stop him, and Chuck lets up a little, and then Raleigh takes control again, thrusting his tongue into Chuck’s mouth. He flicks it over Chuck’s teeth, wondering – maybe a little hopefully – about the reaction it’ll bring, and sure enough, Chuck makes small noise, this one sounding almost surprised. His fangs extend into their fine points on their own, Raleigh can feel, and he wonders in the back of his mind if that’s something Chuck can control or if it’s always automatic. He presses his tongue very lightly against one of the sharp tips, and a groan leaves Chuck like it feels good. 

Chuck, whose hands have once more found Raleigh’s hips, pulls Raleigh closer, and at the same time, he arches against him. Raleigh instinctively mirrors the motion, and he realizes that Chuck’s cock is already hard and pushing against the denim of his pants – a realization that goes straight to Raleigh’s head, that spark of desire igniting into something more desperate. Emboldened by the knowledge that Chuck wants him so badly, Raleigh slides a hand down Chuck’s front and grabs him through his jeans, squeezes him hard. Chuck breaks the kiss by turning his head, and a weak, would-be breathless moan leaves him.

Chuck throws him a little scowl. “Does it look like I want you to stop?” he counters through his fangs, low and husky.

Raleigh can’t help but to give a little chuckle at that, despite everything. Because he can let himself get caught up in this and he can forget all the other stuff, even if only for the time being. Chuck starts to roll his eyes, so Raleigh squeezes him again, and Chuck’s hips jerk forward as though by their own will. Raleigh feels a little guilty for it, but he finds himself really enjoying this – having control. He’s just a human, he has no power over Chuck whatsoever, can’t make him do anything. Can’t even keep him from hurting other people.

But at this moment in time, Chuck is like putty in his hands. And it’s addictive.

Only, he’s far too quiet for Raleigh’s taste – normal human Chuck would have had his cheeks flushed red and would have been panting, if not gasping for more, but instead, Chuck’s colorless as ever and completely silent. Raleigh can fix that, he figures. And he leans in to press his lips to the spot just beneath Chuck’s ear, giving him another hard squeeze through his jeans just as he grazes his teeth over Chuck’s cool skin.

And sure enough, Chuck moans, though it turns into a low irritable curse, as if he’s mad at himself for it. But Raleigh’s pleased with it. More pleased than he cares to admit, even to himself. Unable to stop himself, he smiles into Chuck’s neck.

 

*

 

No one has ever touched Chuck like this but Chuck himself, and that had always been rushed and aggressive – like a lot of things Chuck did when he was alive. It’s just that there was a war going on, had been going on since he was a kid, and he hadn’t been a Ranger just for the fame and status. He’d been in it to fight Kaiju. To protect people. So even though he’d had men and women across the board interested in him, he’d never taken any of them up on their offers.

He sort of wishes that he had now, so he hadn’t died a twenty-one year old virgin.

But then Raleigh’s hand is starting to move against him, not just squeezing him but stroking too, and Chuck can no longer think about all the could-have-beens. An embarrassing little sound leaves him again, though he tries to bite it back – god damn Raleigh for making him moan and whine like this. He rolls his hips, pressing against Raleigh’s hand, and his own grasp tightens on Raleigh’s waist, needing more of him, needing more of his warmth. He doesn’t want to act so desperate and needy like this, it’s just what Raleigh’s turned him into. Even though he can hear Raleigh’s heart beating, can practically smell the blood in his veins, Chuck feels human like this. That alone is the best feeling in the world.

And Raleigh doesn’t even know. The stupid idiot has no clue what he does to Chuck.

It also feels a little good to let Raleigh have control like this, not that Chuck would ever admit that. He likes that Raleigh’s other hand still has a firm hold in his hair, and he likes that Raleigh’s handling him so rough – like he’s daring Chuck to even think about trying to take over. Though his fangs are out and aching something terrible, Chuck doesn’t feel like he normally does when he wants blood – it’s like his desire for Raleigh is canceling out his hunger, and it makes him desperate for even more of it.

“Raleigh, I…” he murmurs before he can stop himself, but he trails off, not really knowing where he’d wanted to go with that.

Raleigh’s hand leaves his hair, slides to his shoulder, and then trails down his arm. He grabs Chuck’s wrist, pulling his hand and guiding it, and Chuck’s too curious to pull back. When he finds his hand being directed to Raleigh’s crotch, Raleigh pressing Chuck’s fingers against the bulge in his own pants, Chuck knows he’d probably be blushing if he were human. And the notion kind of pisses Chuck off, and he almost jerks his hand away just to be an asshole. But Raleigh lets go of his wrist and his hand returns to Chuck’s head, fingers carding through his hair like that’s what they were made to do, and Chuck is lost to how much he wants him.

He follows Raleigh’s lead, starts to mirror what Raleigh’s doing to him as best as he can. It’s one thing touching yourself, but it’s completely different touching someone else, even if they have the same working parts as you. He shapes his fingers around Raleigh’s half-hardened cock through his pants, and he squeezes a little, tentatively. Raleigh presses into him, his breath catching in his throat nearly imperceptibly, his kisses halting as his lips part silently against Chuck’s neck. It’s a small sensation but it feels electric, so Chuck squeezes Raleigh again, harder this time. And this time, a low noise leaves Raleigh, breathy and so very human, and Chuck’s gums and fangs twinge painfully.

Abruptly, Raleigh pulls away just a little, and he looks down at what he’s doing as both of his hands go to the front of Chuck’s jeans. Chuck watches too, feeling like he’s dreaming – which is a funny feeling, since he hasn’t dreamed since the day he died – and Raleigh undoes the button fly violently, like he’s pissed at it for even existing. Chuck opens his mouth to speak, feels stupidly sheepish and insecure, but Raleigh crushes their mouths together in a bruising kiss again, cutting the words off before they even come out.

His slides one of his hands into Chuck’s pants and since Chuck isn’t wearing anything underneath them, Raleigh’s skin is against Chuck’s right away. It’s so warm that it feels like Raleigh must have fire running through his veins, and he almost hisses in surprise against Raleigh’s mouth at the contact. Raleigh wraps his fingers around the base of Chuck’s cock, and he doesn’t waste any time in starting to stroke him, and Chuck’s glad he has the counter behind him because Raleigh’s touch feels so good that he’s sure his knees tremble a little. He does break the kiss this time, but only so he can bite out a hoarse curse, his hips starting to move on their own, and he ducks his head because even though this white hot pleasure is engulfing him, he’s still a little embarrassed that Raleigh’s undone him so easily.

Raleigh pushes against him and Chuck realizes he’d stopped squeezing him, had just been standing there with his hand over Raleigh’s crotch, too mesmerized by what Raleigh’s doing to continue. He quickly takes back up, palming Raleigh’s cock again, and he brings his other hand up to the zipper on Raleigh’s pants. For all his inhuman grace, he fumbles with the fly and it takes him a little longer than it should to get Raleigh’s pants open – he blames Raleigh, who’s hand is moving in long, slow pumps that are nearly torturous.

He dips his hand into Raleigh’s pants and underwear, and before his uncertainty can stall him, he grabs Raleigh’s cock. Like before, he simply tries to emulate what Raleigh’s doing to him, and he figures he must be doing it right, because a short groan leaves Raleigh, his fingers going a little tighter around Chuck. Chuck raises his gaze finally, and he finds that Raleigh’s staring at him. Their eyes meet and lock, and Raleigh brings his free hand up, returning it to Chuck’s hair like he wants to hold him place, like he refuses to let Chuck look away now that they’re watching one another like this.

It ends just as quickly as it’d started.

They stand there, bodies flush against one another, with just enough room to maneuver, and they jerk each other off like sex-starved teenagers or something. Though Chuck is thrusting against Raleigh like he can get more – and Christ, does he need more – and though Raleigh’s breathing is out of control and short, they don’t take their eyes off one another the entire time. It’s Chuck who comes first, which is a blissful feeling in and of itself, the fact that he can still come in this state. He arches against the counter, spitting out a string of curses that ends in Raleigh’s name, and his hold on Raleigh’s cock unintentionally squeezes almost too hard – but surprisingly, it seems like Raleigh enjoys it. Judging by the fact that Raleigh hits his own climax only a few seconds after.

After he comes, Raleigh just about lays against Chuck, who’s only able to stay upright because of the counter digging into his ass. In this position, Raleigh’s face is buried in Chuck’s neck – he’s panting, breath hot against Chuck’s skin, as he tries to come down from his orgasm – and Chuck’s is buried in his, vice versa. He realizes all too suddenly how loud and fast Raleigh’s pulse is, and his fangs tingle.

He brushes his lips against Raleigh’s neck, tastes the sheen of sweat clinging to his flushed skin, and Raleigh tenses very slightly, swallowing audibly. But he doesn’t move away, doesn’t say anything, and so Chuck bites him. He doesn’t take much, but what he does drink seems to taste better than ever – in the afterglow of an orgasm he wasn’t sure he could even have, Raleigh’s blood is sweeter than usual and seems ten times more fulfilling. Chuck can’t help the grateful noise he makes as he takes a pull of it, savoring the slow way it slides down his throat.

For now, everything feels right in the world, even being dead and all.

When they finally disentangle themselves, Raleigh moves away from Chuck, and though he’ll take it to his grave, Chuck inwardly mourns the loss of his warmth. One hand covering the bite on his neck, the other holding his pants up, Raleigh wearily mumbles something about the bathroom and starts to walk away.

“Raleigh,” Chuck says. And when the other man turns to look at him, eyebrows going up a little, Chuck almost panics because he hadn’t actually planned on saying anything. He shakes his head a little and says, “You’ll – we’ll figure something out, yeah?”

Raleigh just looks at him for a moment. A long moment. Then he blinks slowly, mouth twitching in a way that says he wants to give Chuck a reassuring smile but can’t quite get his face to work right, and he nods before he turns and leaves the kitchen. Chuck looks down at his open jeans, at the mess inside them – damnit, Raleigh – and he wants to be angry at himself for the thoughts that run through his head, the emotions you’d think a dead man can no longer feel.

Raleigh is everything to him. And he can no longer pretend otherwise.

 

*

Right now you’re the only one who understands my plight.

Right now you’re the only reason I can’t sleep through the night.

– “Corseting,” Atreyu

*