Chapter Text
“Edinburgh police are reporting another string of murders, allegedly vampire-related–“
John twists the key and the radio cuts off with the truck’s engine. He returns his hand to the wheel and stares at the house, the front door lit up in stark contrast by his high beams. 3:12 blinks green at him from the dashboard clock and gravel dust swirls in front of his headlights. His shoe still smells like the pint a customer dropped on his foot.
He sits like that for a while, eventually leaning forward to rest his forehead on the steering wheel when the headlights turn themselves off.
He should call Gaz or Miriam. Or both—both would be good. Invite them over or invite himself over; doesn’t really matter which, so long as he doesn’t have to be alone.
John lifts his head to look at the house again. It looks smaller, sadder now with the headlights out. The only hint of light comes from the tired yellow pole light out back, turning some of the curtains a faded white.
It’s another one of those nights when he can’t quite bring himself to just go home and crawl into bed. These nights used to be constant; he spent more time on friends’ couches or passed out in a cot in the bar than he did in his perfectly-fine bed. Grief kept him away and grief kept the house in his name instead of Miriam’s.
He’d been fine for a while after that, managing to clean up the house and make it feel a bit more like something he could look forward to. He’d bought a new couch and threw the old one onto the back porch. He’d finally gathered the strength to clean the other four bedrooms in the house and to sift through year after year of memories buried in boxes and nightstand drawers.
But after a while, it was no longer grief that forced him onto lumpy couch cushions; loneliness did instead. Because no matter how much he did to the house, it was still just him trying to fill the space of seven people.
A brief scrape reaches his ears and he unbuckles his seatbelt. It’s not a natural sound, sticking out from the usual murmur and whisper of leaves and damp grass. He knows better than to go looking for the source.
John grabs his crossbow from the passenger seat and pauses, scanning the dark for whatever he’d just heard. The same sound repeats itself, this time a little longer, but it’s far off.
He takes his chance and hurries from the truck to the front door, briefly checking the bushes for undesirables as he wedges himself between the locked front door and the screen door. It wouldn’t be the first time he found someone of the not-quite-human variety waiting for him. Some of the stone pavers still need a pressure washing after the last visit.
He’s inside a moment later, deadbolt and doorknob securely locked. John turns a lamp on and squints in the sudden light. Alone, as usual.
Whatever the sound was, he’s safe from it now. John pauses to listen and, sure enough, he faintly hears it again.
“Whatever,” he mutters to himself as he toes his shoes off and kicks them beside the door. He shrugs his jacket off next and tosses it over the back of the couch.
He could still call someone. Are Gaz and Miriam even awake? Definitely noy Miriam. Gaz, maybe, but 3:30 in the morning is late even for him. John eyes the bottle of scotch on the kitchen counter for a moment, then turns the other way and heads upstairs. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow he’ll call them, and maybe tomorrow he’ll finish that bottle.
The scraping occasionally continues as he gets ready for bed, exchanging his tee and jeans for flannel pajama pants and scrubbing the day off of his face. The sound is almost metallic at times, more like a clinking than a rough drag. Sometimes it sounds like both.
He’s in the middle of brushing his teeth when he realizes just how close the sound has gotten. He pauses his brushing to walk to the bedroom window, peering out into the dark.
A stranger limps into the pole lamp’s light, his face stark white and his hair hanging limp over his forehead. His shirt is water worn and thick silver shackles circle his ankles and wrists.
He appears human until he looks toward the house and his eyes catch the light. They reflect like an animal’s would, flashing the strange shade of red a vampire’s eyes always do.
The vampire takes another step. The sound is from a chain linked to one of his ankles, dragging into the dark beyond the lamp’s light.
Great. No one puts in the effort to chain down a vampire without good reason. And now said vampire is trudging toward his house when all he wants to do is go to bed.
John swipes a thumb across his bottom lip, barely catching his toothpaste before it dribbles onto the floor. He returns to the bathroom to spit and then leans his hands on the sink for a moment. He should go to bed and hope the vampire moves on. The vampire probably will, dragging his chain to god-knows-where.
Probably.
John nearly does exactly that: go to bed and forget about it. He’s swinging his legs onto the mattress when the vampire falls onto the back porch with a heavy thud.
“Fan-fuckin’-tastic,” John mutters, swinging his legs right back out of bed and grabbing his shotgun from beside the nightstand. Vampires this far out of town are hungry vampires. Hungry vampires are bad fucking news.
He checks the shotgun chamber as he pads downstairs, just to confirm he’s actually got silver buckshot inside. The time he didn’t check nearly made him someone’s meal.
John walks into the kitchen and peers at the porch from the kitchen window. Sure enough, the vampire is a dark lump on the porch steps with his chain stretching into the yard.
He turns the porch light on and checks again. The vampire doesn’t move. His head is ducked down against the top step so John can’t see his face, but he can see how wet his pale blonde hair is. His shirt is similarly wet and small droplets glimmer on the back of his neck.
If John can even call it a shirt. The black waffle-knit fabric is riddled with holes, his pale skin peeking through like little stars in a waterlogged night sky.
John sighs, sagging against the countertop. Most of his undead visitors are victims of the river, dragged there by a vampire hoping to feed in peace and turned by accident. More and more have slogged by as of late.
But none of them had a full set of silver fucking shackles. This isn’t an unfortunately-turned meal, this is an intentionally-drowned victim.
John straightens and double-checks the shotgun, then opens the back door. The vampire doesn’t move. John pumps the shotgun, the racking sound echoing around the house and the yard. That gets the vampire’s attention.
The vampire lifts his head from the planks and briefly shakes it. A few drops of water patter to the porch planks. He pushes himself up slowly, his arm shaking under the effort. Definitely not normal; most of John’s visitors would have hurled themselves at him by now. Blame the ravenous newborn hunger.
The vampire finally looks up, revealing sad, downturned eyes, blonde lashes, and a scar shining silvery across his top lip. He blinks in the light, his dark eyes landing on John behind the screen door.
The vampire may look miserable and exhausted, but he’s still a vampire. He hasn’t tried to tear the screen door open or started begging to be let in yet, but that doesn’t mean he won’t start. John takes a breath to tell him to fuck off, then lets it out. Then mentally kicks himself for not saying it.
The vampire also takes a breath as if to speak, only to break into a watery coughing fit. He falters, hanging his head as he hacks up more water than air.
John grimaces. Sure, he’s seen vampires in rough shape. Plenty that he and his brothers put in rough shape. But never like this.
The vampire lets out a soft groan as he recovers, smaller coughs still wracking his shoulders. He lifts his head again, looking back up at John.
“You solid?” John asks. He shifts his weight to his other foot.
“Help me,” the vampire pleads in a ragged voice. “Please.” His accent is English; someone truly wanted him gone if they brought him all the way up here just to drown him.
Vampires, in his experience, don’t ask for help. They just take and take and take when given the opportunity. Any other behavior is deception or the exception.
This one, though? His eyes and skin are clear of the deep red that marks a death-stained vampire. There are no shadows, no starkly-contrasted veins under the eyes to indicate a killer. Hell, John wouldn’t have even known the man was a vampire if he hadn’t seen the telltale glare in his eyes under the light.
John opens his mouth and shuts it. He should help. Should at least offer some clothing that isn’t sopping wet and half-destroyed by water. Should at least offer bolt cutters to get the damn shackles off.
He shifts again and readjusts his grip on the shotgun. “I can’t help you,” he finally manages.
He shuts the door, turns the porch light off, and hurries upstairs. The vampire will move on. He has to move on.
John hardly sleeps, fitfully tossing and turning and kicking the too-warm covers to the foot of the bed. Because there’s a vampire flopped on his back porch, obviously. Definitely not because he feels guilty for denying him the help he clearly needs.
A vampire doesn’t deserve his help. Not when he’d drain John dry just for the fun of it.
It’s a poor justification, but it’s something. He eventually manages to drift off as the sun rises, staining his room with gray light.
Only to wake a little while later to the chain dragging in the yard. It’s only for a moment, but it’s more than enough to jolt him awake.
John rolls over and glares at the ceiling. The chain drags again, this time accompanied by the porch planks creaking. The links thump against the steps as the vampire climbs them, then fall silent with a wheeze of the porch couch cushions.
John turns over again, pushing his face into his pillow. The vampire can stay in the porch’s shade for the day. That’s all the help he’s going to get before John runs him off at nightfall.
His room is brighter and the sun much higher when he opens his eyes again. John squints at the slash of sunlight resting on his pillow as he lifts his head. His stomach growls in the dry way it always does after a sleepless night.
He momentarily questions why, then tosses his head back into the pillow with a groan. There’s a vampire on the back porch.
He slowly drags himself out of bed and down the stairs, the shotgun heavy in his still-sleepy hands. John opens the back door again and immediately spots the silver chain glittering in the daylight. A few strands of lakeweed cling to the links. He can’t see the couch very well because of its spot against the house, but he can see the chain leading to it.
John shuts the back door and leans his forehead against it. There’s a goddamn vampire sleeping on his porch. And he’s letting it happen.
He gets dressed quickly and skips breakfast in favor of finding something to eat in town. Anything to get him out of the house and away from his guest—if he can call the vampire a guest.
Maybe he’ll invite himself over to Gaz’s or Miriam’s for the night. Maybe the vampire will leave if John just ignores him for a while.
Yeah, right.