Archive of Our Own

Ray comes to buried in earth.

It fills his mouth the instant he opens it to scream and it cradles him on all sides and he can't think around the dirt in his eyes and his ears and his mouth and his nose. Instinctively and blindly he reaches out, hands scrabbling furiously at loose-packed earth, dragging himself in a direction he hopes is up. His fingers breach through to air and he scrambles for purchase, heaving himself up, up, up, until his face breaks through.

Ray collapses on the disturbed earth of his grave, hacking up dirt muddy with viscous fluid. His stomach turns violently, painfully, and his coughing morphs into retching. Something thick and meaty splats on the ground, but he's too busy heaving up more gristle and dirt to investigate what's coming out of him. His innards undulate in a foreign wave of nausea and pain, unlike anything he's felt before, and something too solid works its way up his throat, sliding bloody and slimy over his tongue and past his lips. It drops to the ground, raw and wet and shiny in the dim light of the moon. Ray stares down at the pile of viscera, his insides finally calming.

The pale lump of flesh stares back up at him from its blood and dirt and bile nest. The hairs along his arms raise as he looks at everything his body has just evacuated. He touches his stomach gently, feeling like it should be rolling at the sight. Dread washes over him at the realization that he might be looking at his stomach at this moment. He takes a deep, steadying breath, only to realize that he hasn't been breathing.

Ray scrambles backwards on his hands, away from the noxious pile, his thoughts jumbled from fear and confusion. He tries to remember how he came to be here, to be buried in the dirt, but his head pulses and he can't string a thought together. A need thrums through his body, something like hunger, but it lives in his veins. His head throbs harder, more painfully, and he clutches at it desperately like it's about to break apart.

It does. His upper jaw cracks with a force that reverberates through his skull and he screams. The split in his palate widens as something pushes out from somewhere deeper in his cranium, bone dragging on bone so loud he can't hear himself over the awful grind. The protrusions keep growing, forcing his lips out of the way and stretching them until it feels like they're going to burst open, pressure builds behind his eyes as the bone shifts, and the thrum in his body only grows fiercer until—

His vision whites out and his memory blackens. When he comes to, he's on top of a dead woman, the both of them drenched in blood. He stares into her blank, lifeless eyes, his heart thundering faster and louder in his chest than it ever has, and feels triumphant. Her throat opens in paired smiling gashes, bloodied but no longer bleeding, and Ray lowers his head to lick the wounds. Partway through the action, his tongue buried in her opened throat, he wonders why he's doing this. The thought lingers like a ghost at his periphery as the iron tang of her blood dances on his taste buds. Why does anyone do anything, his body seems to answer, tongue laving at the wounds of its own accord. Because they need to.

Time spins on, unaccountable in the fog of his bloodlust. He doesn't know how long it's been by the time he fully comes back to himself. When he's finally aware of what he's doing, of what he's done, there's a trail of bodies that spans farther than he cares to count. He tries to distance himself from that Ray. The one that had just returned to life and was, he thinks (he assures himself), out of control. But he remembers everything in gut-curdling detail. It's a good thing he doesn't have a stomach anymore, or he would make himself sick.

He puts the pieces together slowly, bit by bit. He's a vampire, clearly. Or something like it. The sun doesn't hurt him, but it saps his energy. He hasn't intentionally looked in a mirror, but he's caught his reflection in the sides of well-polished cars and those fish-eye mirrors in convenience stores meant to help catch shoplifters.

He wonders where the blood he drinks goes without a stomach, but doesn't have a way to find out. He tests how long he can go without feeding (two weeks, during which time the sun does start to hurt him, mirrors stop reflecting him, and simply moving becomes a herculean task), and if he can feed without killing (he can't, even though he—no, no). He thinks about Sand. Constantly. But every kill reminds him why he can never go back.

(At some point he realizes he's not even in Bangkok anymore and he wonders at how it took him so long to notice.)

Somewhere in the whirlwind, Ray feeds on a drunk man. It's not a conscious or intentional choice, aside from the fact that the man is alone and easy prey (he's surprised he hasn't been caught yet despite his killing spree and chalks it up to natural hunting instincts and the incompetence of the police). He doesn't expect anything different from this kill versus any of his others. The blood tastes the same. But as it spreads through his body, his limbs loosen and the world wobbles in a way he's intimately familiar with but hasn't experienced in… come to think of it, he's not sure how much time has actually passed.

But it feels good. For the first time in a long time, he feels good.

The next time he feeds on a drunk person, it's targeted.

Ray takes all the cash his victims carry and eventually treats himself to a crappy hotel room. He thinks about his friends, not for the first time. He shuts his eyes against the thought, then marches himself to his room's tiny, dingy bathroom. The mirror is clouded and flecked with toothpaste, but it reflects him all the same. He looks—surprisingly normal, only about as filthy as you'd imagine someone living on the street and hunting people would be. He's been living like an animal for, he guesses, months. But his eyes are bright and his skin clear beneath dirt and what he assumes is black-crusted blood. It speaks to the quality of the establishment that they even let him in the front door. He rinses his face, then turns on the shower and begins to shuck his clothes, which are also in need of a wash.

Naked, he pauses before getting into the shower, his fingers tracing out the pair of wounds on his left thigh. They're long and deep, but they don't bleed, the clearly visible muscle a reminder that everyone is just meat beneath the skin. With his index and middle finger, Ray gently presses into one of the long gashes, spreading it open. It doesn't hurt, though he can feel a pull in the muscle and skin. He peers into the opening and spots a flash of white. Bone. His fingers jerk away as a sudden phantom pain slashes across his thigh, animalistic fear sluicing through him and—

He's on his back, pinned by hands like stone, aware that he's dying and he's sad that he'll never see anyone he loves again and that they'll maybe never know what happened to him but relieved that all of this will finally be over so he doesn't even try to fight it but, fuck, why'd it have to be like this and—

He's in a shitty bathroom, standing naked next to the shower, his hand braced against the wall. He's not breathing, and he forces himself to start. The rhythm and the feeling of air in and out ground him in this time, in this body. He gets in the shower, turning the water as hot as it will go, and scrubs until his skin turns red.

He takes himself to a bar, only allowing himself to be half-aware that he's on the hunt. He doesn't know how long it's been since he set foot in one because he's been too afraid to look at a calendar.

(The last time was his final night of normality; he'd stopped by Yo's to watch Sand's set, then told Sand to wait while he brought the car around so he wouldn't have to lug his guitar and amp all that way. Halfway to the car, a handsome foreigner stopped him to ask for directions in halting Thai and Ray never made it back to Yo's.)

This bar isn't anything like Yo's. Low lights and a lack of neon leave the corners and far end of the room in murky dark. The low ceiling presses in from above, providing no easement from how claustrophobically crowded the place is. Ray snakes between bodies, finding gaps in the crowd just big enough for him to pass by and scarcely brush arms with the people he skirts. The blood beats in his body, sending a signal of exactly where to go and how to maneuver. He hasn't seen his target yet, but the blood has picked one out.

Ray's gaze falls on a man standing at a small table near the bar, and he recognizes him as the man he's been seeking out. He can't be described as handsome, but his downcast eyes glitter beneath thick eyelashes and Ray licks his lips.

He approaches and says some shit that he doesn't mean and barely remembers. The man laps up the attention, his eyes tracing the lines down Ray's body his hands want to follow. Ray suggests they find somewhere more private, a request his victim meets with enthusiasm. He shoots out of his seat and places a hand low—too low—on Ray's back. Ray forces a smile and leads the man out and to his death.

His victim pays for a hotel room that, based on his clothes, is probably out of his price range. Inside, the man's hands are instantly on Ray, pulling him against his heat, fumbling to put Ray's hand on his half-hard dick. Ray gags and forces a laugh.

"Slow down," he says, gentle and seductive.

"You're beautiful," the man gasps, kissing his jaw.

("I've decided," he'd said, hands cupping either side of Ray's face. "Beauty like this should be preserved.")

Ray stiffens in his victim's arms, but the man is so self-interested that he doesn't notice (or simply doesn't care).

Ray puts his hands on his shoulders and pushes, gentle so as not to alarm the man with his superhuman strength, and says, "Let's have a drink first."

The man looks angry enough that Ray thinks for a moment he's going to try and force himself on him, but then he smiles and says, "Sure. Whatever you want, baby." The English endearment crawls along Ray's skin and he considers killing him right then. But he shakes off the feeling and returns the smile as if nothing is wrong.

The man is already intoxicated enough that it's easy to only pretend to drink and easier still to keep refilling the soon-to-be-dead man's glass. His eyes shine too bright and his laughter turns raucous. When he drunkenly paws at Ray's belt, Ray decides he's had enough and grabs his wrist so hard that the bones crunch.

The man starts to scream but Ray covers his mouth with his other hand. The now-familiar pressure builds behind his eyes until it breaks with a snap louder than the man's increasingly panicked whimpers and half-muffled screams. Somewhere in the scuffle, distracted by his transformation, some of Ray's fingers end up in the man's mouth and he bites with the full force of his desperation. Another crack resonates through the room and Ray roars in pain from both the feeling of teeth pushing through his skull and the rending of one of his fingers from his hand. Ray bears down, teeth slicing cleanly across the undulating throat below him, blood pouring over his lips and down his throat, the loose light feeling of drunkenness crashing over him.

He falls away, the laughter escaping him strange and inhuman. The slide of his teeth back into his head sends a wave careening through his whole body and he topples over, still laughing. The room stinks of blood and he drags himself to the pool around the dead man's head and laps at it. The room spins in one direction and his head spins in the other, and when he tries to stand up, he loses his footing and falls giggling to the ground.

It's all so funny.

He's dead, has been dead for who knows how long, and he spends his days tearing the life out of people. He looks at his left hand, where his index finger dangles from the scraps of flesh teeth hadn't quite cut through. That's funny, too. No injuries last long once he feeds, and already the bone realigns itself and muscle and nerves reconnect. No injuries last except the ones on his thigh. Those strange and unnaturally bloodless reminders that he's everything he'd always feared: a parasite. He laughs as tears make tracks through the blood on his face.

He sobers up faster than a human would and wakes in the middle of a gory mess. His clothes are ruined—stiff with dried blood and scratching at his skin. He groans, trying to sit up as tacky blood glues him to the floor. He peels himself up off the ground, blood and viscera coating the side of his face in a disgusting, sticky mess. He can't open his right eye, dried blood coating his lashes and cementing it shut. He swears and stumbles to the bathroom, running the sink and splashing warm water on his face until the blood loosens enough to give and allow his eye to open once again. He blinks at his reflection. Blood, half dried and half smearing from the water, paints the right half of his face and mats his hair. His once-blue shirt is black and hangs oddly on his body.

Is this life now? Blood and death and living on the fucking streets like a rat? Like vermin?

He punches the mirror, which shatters on impact and lacerates his knuckles. He swears loudly and cradles his fist. He shouldn't have done that. It won't heal fully until he feeds again.

"Fuck!" he bellows, kicking the cabinet beneath the sink hard enough to put his foot through it. He loses his balance and topples to the floor, landing on his ass with bruising force. With his foot still caught in the fresh hole in the cabinet, Ray buries his face in his bloodied hands and starts to cry.

Eventually, he musters the willpower to wash himself. He does his best to the get blood out of his clothes and wraps his hand in a towel. He escapes out the window.

He should leave town after this. The hotel is a nice one and the bloody mess he left behind is sure to make the news.

He steals someone's keys and drives their car straight through the night to Bangkok, abandoning the vehicle at the city limits. He lets his feet take him where they want.

It's a testament to how out of it he is that he doesn't realize where he's going until he's standing outside the apartment building where he'd lived with Sand. He stands on the street and looks up at the rows of windows, picking out theirs easily, and gazes at the blackened square. Does he still live there? He forces himself to walk away and leave behind his questions.

He intends to stay away from Sand. At least, he tells himself he does.

He goes on the hunt, falling into the old routine of letting the beat of blood pull him wherever it wants. It has never led him astray yet and has been the only thing he could trust in since he awoke in his grave.

He follows his instincts to a bar. Nothing unusual in that. He just has to be mindful not to repeat his mistakes; he doesn't want to run from Bangkok. Not so soon.

He walks in through the black door and into the neon-painted bar. Hot pink and blue soak the room such that he can't tell what color anything actually is. No one in the room makes his blood hum, so he picks someone at random: a young, tall man with broad shoulders and a bad haircut. He chats him up, but before he can suggest going somewhere more private, the guy says,

"Oh, I think the band is starting."

"I wanted to know, though—"

Ray looks up at the stage right as Sand walks onto it and Ray stops breathing. He stops everything. Mid-sentence, he freezes with his wide eyes glued to the stage.

"Good evening, everyone," Sand says into the mic, showman's smile firmly in place, and Ray runs out of the bar.

He sprints down the street, his chest tight. It's like something delicate has come loose in his chest and shattered, leaving fragments caught between his ribs. He swears that he won't see him again.

But his traitorous feet take him to Sand again and again and again. He follows him from job to job, back home, and then out into the world again. He follows him to dinners with friends, follows him to Nick's, follows and follows and follows. Weeks in which he barely remembers to feed himself slip past.

Watching Sand quickly isn't enough. He starts stealing things from him. Little things that won't be missed. A guitar pick that Ray stores safely in his breast pocket, next to his miraculously still-beating heart. A pack of cigarettes which he smokes slowly over the course of a week. Sand's phone, once, in an ill-advised moment of complete irrationality. Sand still has the same code on his phone and Ray spends an hour combing through his texts, pictures, email, social media—anything and everything. There are a few names in his recent texts that Ray doesn't recognize, and he scrutinizes these conversations for any hint of flirtation, jealousy curling through him. But when he comes back to himself (he seems to drift away so easily), he realizes how stupid this is and he leaves the phone on a random table by the bar.

He worries about Sand. He looks too thin, and almost every time Ray follows him out of the house, it's to one of his jobs. Another thing to worry over: Sand's back to working multiple gigs. He hasn't moved out of their shared apartment, which both relieves and concerns Ray. Is that the reason for the hustle? So he can afford to keep the place?

Driven by the desire to take care of Sand in some way, Ray steals an air fryer. They'd been talking about buying one before… before. He feels stupid and inadequate as he leaves it at Sand's door in an inconspicuous cardboard box, but it's something. He doesn't have money anymore and he can't allow himself to speak to him. This is what he can do. This is all he can do.

He starts to get sloppy in his stalking. Thinking himself invisible in a crowded market, Ray lets himself gaze too long at Sand and gets caught. Their eyes meet across the mass of people, a tether forming along their sight lines that wraps around Ray's throat and stalls his breathing. He has to force himself to turn, to move one foot and then the other, to duck behind a stall and run. To not look back. To not find a way to crawl into Sand's shadow and live there.

It doesn't work. Within hours, he's picked up Sand's trail and unconsciously follows it. He doesn't get gut feelings anymore; everything he senses, he senses in the blood. Some psychic force that once resided in his stomach now radiates out from his heart, tingling all the way down to his toes and fingertips. It pulls at him any time he's on the hunt. He can feel the prey nearby in his veins and in every beat of his heart.

Which is how his feet take him to Sand. Their hearts are synchronized, Ray thinks as he approaches a building he doesn't recognize. With every beat of his heart, an answering echo reverberates through his veins, tugging him step by step towards home. He hunkers down outside, darkness settling on his shoulders, hot coal gaze fixed on the door.

When Sand emerges around an hour later, he leans against the building's facade and lights a cigarette. He looks—awful. Dark circles around the eyes, skin waxy and wan. He looks lost as he burns through cigarette after cigarette. As sad as the picture is, Ray can't help but feel perversely satisfied. Sand misses him. Misses him to the point of ruin. He smiles to himself in the dark, but his chest is hollow and fragile as an overturned cup. He doesn't enjoy seeing Sand like this, empty-eyed and distracted. Look at me, he thinks, his smile dying. I'm not dead. Not completely. Look at me.

Sand looks up.

They freeze in tandem.

"Ray?" Sand whispers, but Ray can hear him as clearly as if they were waking up next to each other, soft good-morning greetings on their sleepy tongues. Two years of imagining, of remembering the way Sand used to say his name, catch up to him like a brick dropped on his toes. He flinches.

Sand bolts across the street without checking for traffic and then he's right there in front of Ray, taking him by the shoulders with an expression of absolute incredulity. His eyes search over him, flooding with tears, hands squeezing his shoulders with bruising force. With a choked sound, he yanks Ray into his arms and buries his face in his neck.

"Ray," he weeps, tears steadily soaking Ray's shoulder. "Ray, Ray, Ray, Ray….."

Ray stares out over Sand's shoulder, lips parted and hands rigid at his sides.

When had someone last held him?

When had someone last held him with love?

"Where have you been? What happened to you? I was so worried, I…" Sand pulls his head away, arms still tight around Ray's back. He could escape if he needed to, he tells himself. But this is safe. This is Sand. He reminds himself that this is Sand. Sand's eyes scrape over his features, like if he looks hard enough he'll peel back Ray's walls and find the answers he wants. His cheeks shine with smeared tears, but he's stopped crying. "Ray, what happened?"

It's almost laughable how impossible that explanation is. So instead Ray just asks, "Can we go home?"

"Yes. Yes, of course," Sand says through fresh tears. His voice shakes and he smiles at Ray, even as a sob escapes him.

Sand books them a car and bundles Ray into it as soon as it arrives, gathering Ray against him with arms like iron bars. This is Sand, he reminds himself. This is safe. Sand holds him the whole way home, and Ray breathes him in. He doesn't relax, but the words start to feel more true with each breath. This is safe. He is safe.

They don't talk the whole way over. They climb the stairs in silence, in the surreality of walking next to one another again. And then Ray is standing in their apartment.

Everything is exactly as it had been prior to his disappearance. The same pictures on the walls, the same couch and rug, all the lamps in the same spots. It's eerie how the place has been seemingly frozen in time.

"It looks the same," he says.

"Yeah."

Sand watches him with wet, worried eyes, the furrow between his brows deepening the longer Ray just stands there. Then he reaches out, tries to touch him, and Ray steps out of his reach on instinct, the backs of his knees hitting the bench behind him. He drops down onto it and Sand holds up his hands as if to say he won't try to touch him again.

"Will you talk to me now?" he asks, voice achingly soft.

Ray drops his gaze to his hands and finds that they're shaking. Where is he supposed to start? He presses the heels of his palms into his eyes, dragging his hands slowly down his face. "You'll think I'm crazy," he whispers.

"I won't."

"I think I'm crazy."

"I think I might be, too," Sand says, kneeling in front of Ray. Ray peers at him from behind his fingers. "For whatever that's worth." Sand blinks up at Ray, the corners of his mouth drawn taut. "Why did you disappear, Ray? Where did you go?"

Ray pulls his hands the rest of the way down his face and lets them rest in his lap. He looks at them because looking at Sand as he says this is too hard. "Someone took me. I got away, but he… he did something to me."

He glances up as Sand's jaw shifts back and forth and, fuck, Ray missed watching him do that.

"It's okay. You can tell me."

"He turned me into something."

Confusion fills Sand's eyes, the inner corners of his eyebrows lifting. "What do you mean?"

"I think he—" Ray laughs one humorless breath and makes himself plow through and just say it. "I think he killed me. I don't know how long I was trapped there. Everything was so confusing after the change and I… I wanted so badly to go home, but I couldn't find it and I was so hungry all the time and…"

"Killed you? Ray, what do you mean he—"

"And I killed people, too." Ray's vision begins to blur from tears, smearing Sand's features into an amalgam of his victims. "I killed people, Sand, and I—Sand, I'm so sorry."

I'm sorry I vanished. I'm sorry I came back. The tears start to fall and Sand reaches for him with hushed reassurances, wrapping him in a tight embrace. Ray shakes against him, tears and snot making a sticky mess of the shoulder of his leather jacket.

"Let's get you cleaned up," Sand says, and leads him to the bathroom.

Sand helps him with taking off his clothes, and Ray doesn't even think about the wounds on his leg until his pants are half-off and Sand gasps. Ray watches as his fear morphs into bewilderment. Yeah, he thinks. They're pretty fucking weird. Ray watches him carefully, watches him furrow his brow, watches his hand slowly lift and reach for him.

Sand tentatively touches the edge of one of the bloodless gashes.

Kisses, too tender for such a vile mouth, trail down his body before he's sliced open, heart beating so so so fast as fear, real fear, fear that this is death, this is how he's going to die, sets in and—

Ray flinches from Sand's touch.

"Sorry. Does it hurt?"

Not how you're thinking. Ray shakes his head.

"Why aren't they bleeding?"

Now this is a real question. One Ray can't dodge. His inexplicable mark. Vampires are supposed to have those, right? So you can tell they're a monster?

"I think it's because they were there when I… changed. Everything else bleeds and heals."

"When you say 'changed'… What do you mean?"

There it is. The question he's been waiting for.

"I'm a vampire."

Questions flit through Sand's eyes until he eventually asks, "Are you sure?"

It almost makes Ray laugh. But to be honest, "No. But I'm… at least something like one."

"I saw you in sunlight."

"Yeah. Something like one."

Sand stares into his eyes for another beat, then drops his eyes to the parallel cuts on his legs. He returns his gaze to Ray's, a decision made. "Okay."

And then he helps Ray out of the rest of his clothes and bathes him. He uses the soap Ray likes and hasn't smelled in years, and he doesn't comment when Ray starts to cry.

Days pass, and Sand rarely leaves his side. Even when he goes to the bathroom, he hesitantly closes the door while casting worried glances at Ray. Doesn't he have work? He wonders, but Ray doesn't ask him the question directly. He doesn't want him to leave.

Ray, naturally, doesn't find the time to hunt with Sand's ever-watchful eyes on him. But it's nice not to kill people. To just lie around with Sand and wile away the hours. He'd almost feel normal, if it weren't for the ever-growing languor. He grows weaker by the day, his blood thinning and drying up in his veins. He passes his time in his strange half-sleep. It doesn't feel much like sleep. But he lies down and closes his eyes and goes… somewhere. It's close enough. It passes the time.

But at night, Ray watches Sand sleep. It feels weird and stereotypical to be a vampire watching his human lover sleep. It was probably stereotypical to stalk him, too. But Ray supposes it's a stereotype for a reason, because some kind of compulsion takes him at night and he just sits there, watching him breathe, tracking the movement of his eyes beneath his eyelids. He wonders what he dreams about.

He leans over Sand's reposing body, bracketing his head between his arms. He watches the shifting patterns on Sand's eyelids, trying to see if they'll make a shape he can understand. They twitch right, down, up, left, center, left, down, right—

He's sitting in a smoky room, across from Sand, the table between them far too large. He's too far away, and the distance between them seems to be growing and the room around them falls away into black—

Ray pulls away from Sand. What the fuck was that?

Sand sleeps on, eyes still dancing their dream pattern.

… was that Sand's dream? Ray sits staring down at Sand for a moment, then leans back in and focuses.

The smoky room has regained its shape, and Sand is now up on a stage. He's fiddling with a microphone when Ray approaches.

"What are you doing?"

Sand jumps at his voice, then relaxes and returns to his fiddling. "The mic won't turn on."

"I don't think I should be here," Ray thinks.

Sand drops the mic, and it hits the stage with a dull thud. "You can't go. You just got here."

"I didn't say that out loud."

"You didn't have to." His voice trembles with barely contained rage and hurt. "You want to leave me again, you—"

Ray scrambles out of the dream and half across the bed. He watches Sand from the foot of the bed for the rest of the night.

The next day, Ray is especially exhausted. He hasn't fed in over a week, and the blood in his veins feels thin and watery. There's no power left in it to tap, too little left to easily animate his dead flesh. So he lies in bed all day, feeling Sand's concerned gaze on his back and cheek. In the evening, Sand finally sits on the bed beside him.

Quietly, he says, "Ray… you don't look well. What's wrong?"

Ray rustles within the cocoon of his blankets, shifting slowly to look up at Sand. His voice is like a ghost when he replies, "Hungry."

"Let me help you." Sand reaches out, wrist first.

It's too much effort to bat the hand away, so Ray just shakes his head. "I need to hunt."

"Okay. I'll come with you."

The words immediately reinvigorate Ray, clearing the fog of his thoughts like sudden rain. "No," he snaps. He feels the blood react, straining within his veins to make something happen. There's not enough. Whatever he was trying to do, he doesn't have the strength for it. "No," he repeats, more quietly.

"I'm not letting you out of my sight."

They looks into each other's eyes for a long time, the both of them weighing the other's commitment to the opposing hills they find themselves on. Eventually, Ray says, "I'm going to kill someone. It's not like in the movies."

Sand's jaw sets. "Okay. I'm coming with you."

Ray, still lying in his nest of pillows and blankets, waits. Maybe if he waits long enough, Sand will change his mind. He'll decide that he doesn't need to watch Ray kill a person and bleed them dry.

He doesn't. Maybe if he knew exactly how gruesome this was about to be, he would. But he doesn't.

"Okay."

The initiation of the hunt gives him a new burst of energy. He follows the familiar pull out and down into the streets, stalking between pools of streetlight until he finds himself in an alley, Sand still trailing behind him. The pressure in his head begins to mount, and while he still has the capacity for speech, he makes himself turn to Sand and say, "You can still go home." Hopeful.

"I know," Sand says, holding his shoulders in an imperious square.

"If it gets to be too much, I won't blame you if you leave."

"I won't."

Ray frowns and hopes that Sand will change his mind. That he'll see the transformation and finally understand that he's let a monster into his life. That he'll tell Ray to go and that will give Ray the strength to finally do the right thing and go. He knows it's a matter of time before he hurts Sand. Before he does something unforgivable. And yet he can't bring himself to go; he never could. Hurting Sand is worth it if he gets to be beside him.

The pressure in his head gives with a pop that careens off the alley walls like a stray bullet. The cracking skull, the teeth that emerge from seemingly nowhere, it all feels routine now. He even forgets he has an audience as the call of blood hooks him in that way it only ever does when he's been fasting. The hunt and subsequent feeding blur together until he finds himself in a familiar position: straddling a dead body. His forearm is lodged between the fresh corpse's teeth, and he has to pry the man's jaw open in order to extract himself. The skin and muscle knit back together with the power of fresh blood coursing through him and his fangs retract, skull fusing into place. He stands, slowly, and freezes when he feels eyes on him. Sand.

Ray turns his head just barely. Just enough to glimpse him standing pressed against the alley wall, sweating face shining in the dimness. They stay in this holding pattern until Sand's breathing returns to a normal pace, until his exhaustion outweighs his fear. He takes a step forward. And then another, and another, until he's right behind Ray. The dead man stares up at them blankly.

"Do you get it now?" Ray asks.

Sand touches his shoulder with a quivering hand. The only thing shaking more than his hand is his voice as he says, "Look at me."

Ray does. He's never seen him look so scared. There's a dead body—the body of a man Ray killed—lying on the ground at their feet. Ray's covered in blood. And a monster. Of course he's scared.

"I fell apart when you disappeared," Sand says. "I think if you'd actually died, and there had been a body for me to mourn, it—it would've been easier. But you just vanished. I went to the police, and then to hospitals, and then to morgues. And you were nowhere. And I kept seeing you everywhere. I can't go back to that, Ray. I love you."

He says it like it's easy. As if he's stating simple facts. Still? Even after everything he just witnessed? It doesn't feel real.

Ray's heart has continued to beat in spite of his death, but he hasn't really felt it until now. It hurts.

He reaches for Sand, takes him by the shoulders and pulls him in. He kisses him for the first time since his return. He doesn't think about the blood on his face until they separate and Sand's jaw and lips are smeared with it. Neither of them remark on it.

They walk home in silence, but the tension that had clung to the quiet air before has finally been cut. Their shoulders brush, and Sand smiles at Ray. Ray can almost smile back.

At home, they get cleaned up and lie side-by-side in bed, arms draped over each other. Sand falls asleep gazing into Ray's eyes.

Ray watches him sleep. He drags a finger over Sand's cheek, nail lightly scratching the skin right below his eye. Is he really okay with everything? Does he really think it's worth it? Ray waits until he sees the telltale eye movement of dreaming and tries again what he'd done accidentally before. He traces the movements of Sand's eyes with his own, follows their dancing patterns until—

They're lying on a beach somewhere. The blanket beneath them has too many colors and something about its pattern is deeply unsettling, but somehow its chaos calms Ray. Nothing can be as bad as the blanket. Everything else seems mundane compared to this awful blanket.

"Just don't look at it," Sand says, eyes closed as he reposes in the sunshine.

"Okay," Ray acquiesces, and turns his face to the sky. It's a blue so big and empty it could swallow him. They lie in silence in the sun until the tide returns, waves lapping at their toes. Ray sits up, watching the waves encroach on the hideous blanket. "We should move."

"It's okay," Sand says, and Ray accepts this and lies back down. The ocean slowly laps over their shins, then their stomachs, until they're underwater. They drown peacefully together.

Ray comes out of the dream with a hazy blink, his face still close to Sand's. He brushes their noses together and closes his eyes. He's never ascribed much weight to dreams.

The murder brings a new level of trust and comfort between Ray and Sand. Sand finally seems to believe that Ray won't vanish again if he leaves, and he starts going to work again. It's probably for the best (there's still rent to pay, after all), but Ray misses him and grows restless in his absence. Eventually, he decides that there's no reason not to leave himself.

His outings begin as random meanderings through Bangkok's familiar streets, turns around the city for the sake of getting out. He passes by restaurants he and Sand used to frequent and the smells trigger memories and nostalgia, but not hunger.

He feels a draw similar to when he’d first returned to Bangkok and follows it on instinct, thinking it will take him to wherever Sand is. Might as well watch him at work; he doesn’t have anything better to fill his time with.

To his surprise, he recognizes the area, but it’s not a neighborhood he associates with Sand. His feet take him to the hostel.

He stands across the street from it, the sunlight and plain realty unreal somehow. Too real. The kind of real that feels like you made it up for a dream or a fantasy because it’s too normal and perfect.

He slips around the back of the building, skirting around the edge of the pool, willing himself to be unseen even in full sun. Maybe it will work. He can step into Sand’s dreams, after all. Why not make himself invisible?

He creeps around to the window he knows looks into the office and stops short when he sees Mew within. He looks well. Healthy. Ray tries and fails to not be angry that his disappearance didn't ruin him like it clearly had Sand.

Ray sits outside the hostel he'd started with his friends, a specter watching Mew through the window. He works with the same focus that he always used to, eyes rarely lifting from his laptop as he types away. In university, Ray could pass hours watching Mew focus on a project. He gets a small furrow in his brow sometimes, and Ray would fantasize about smoothing the skin with his thumb and pressing a kiss to his cheek. Telling him not to worry about it so much. You don't want to get wrinkles.

But then, much as he does now, he would simply watch and enjoy the look of concentration. He'll still be beautiful when he has wrinkles.

He spends a few hours watching Mew work. He follows him from room to room as he does the business that Ray had never really bothered to learn; he idly wonders about who owns the business with him gone. His dad, maybe? Or would it have gone to his friends as a collective unit?

He's glad they've kept it going.

His life becomes days of following Mew and nights of watching Sand's dreams. He doesn't need to sleep and Sand's dreams are more interesting than lying in the dark and staring at nothing.

Weeks go by.

"We need to talk," Sand says one day. He says it in his very firm Ray-sit-down-and-listen voice that never really has the effect Sand wants it to.

"What's up?" Ray asks, not even turning away from the TV.

Sand stands there, frustration radiating from him, for only a moment before he snatches up the TV remote and turns it off. Ray sighs through his nose and turns to Sand with a sweet smile.

"When are we telling people you're back?"

"We're not."

"We're not?"

"Right." Ray reaches for the remote still in Sand's hand, but Sand snatches it out of his reach. Ray turns the smile up a notch. "What else is there to talk about?"

"Ray, I can't keep lying to them. Everyone knows that something's up with me."

"How are we supposed to explain where I've been?"

"With the truth?"

A laugh tears itself unbidden from Ray's chest. "We're just going to tell everyone I'm a vampire. Why would they buy that?"

"We could show them the cuts on your leg," Sand says, and the idea of letting Top (or anyone, really) see the way he died makes Ray want to crawl out of his skin.

"And we'll tell them about how you watched me kill a man, too, right? The truth?"

"We don't—" Sand's eyes dart around; he hadn't thought about that. "We don't have to tell them everything."

"And if they ask how I get blood? It's not an unreasonable question."

"Maybe we can figure out a new source…"

"Are you going to start robbing hospitals?" He kisses his teeth in mock disapproval. "They need that blood, Sand."

Sand shakes his head and takes a different tack. "Don't you at least want to see Mew again?"

Sand doesn't know that he has, in fact, seen Mew already. But he's been staying on top of feeding regularly and that seems to make him harder to notice, so Mew has not seen him.

"I do," Ray allows, not mentioning the ongoing stalking of his best friend. "But it's not like he'll want to keep his mouth shut. He'll probably tell Top, and then the whole Bangkok gay scene will know."

“They deserve to know you’re not dead.”

“I am, though.” That finally stalls Sand's litany of arguments, but his wounded expression almost makes Ray regret his words.

“You’re not dead.” He sits on the couch beside Ray and takes his hands. “You’re right here. Your heart beats. You’re warm. You’re alive.”

Ray leads one of Sand’s hands to his chest and stops breathing. He stares him down until Sand’s fingers twitch against him. He takes one deep breath so he has the breath to pass over his vocal chords and says, “I’m animated. I don’t think that’s the same thing as alive.”

Sand snatches his hands away, eyes filling with tears. “Stop.”

“Not liking the truth won’t change it,” Ray says evenly.

“Stop it. Please.” He shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to keep lying to them. And they deserve to know. Nick keeps asking why I never let him come over anymore. He’s suspicious.”

“I can leave for an evening so you can have him over.”

“That’s not—” Sand makes a frustrated noise and stands up again. “Why aren’t you getting this? Look at me! I’m not—Ray, I need to talk to someone about this. Why don’t you get that?”

“Why don’t you get that I don’t want anyone to know?” Ray stands, too, getting up in Sand’s face. His blood seems to quake. “I don’t want anyone to see me. I would rather they think I'm dead.”

Sand’s tears finally start to fall. “Ray,” he says, weakly. “It’s not that bad. They’ll understand.”

Not that bad. Is that really how he sees biweekly murder?

“And if they don’t? What if they hate me? What then, Sand?”

Sand takes Ray’s face in his hands, his grip too hard. “Then we… We’ll figure it out.”

Ray wants to live in this world Sand conjures. The one where your friends love you no matter what evil you commit, where murder doesn’t whittle your soul away into nothing, where love really does conquer all.

He shakes his head against Sand’s grip, not quite breaking but loosening it.

“Please,” Sand says, and then he kisses Ray. He tastes like tears and weariness. His fingers press hard into the sides of Rays face, nails biting into the soft skin. Ray lets himself be kissed, and hesitantly makes himself kiss back.

Sex has always been communication for them. A means of getting on the same page, of syncing up when they’re on the outs. The anger and frustration bleed out into desire that paves a way forward.

They haven’t fucked since Ray came back to Bangkok. They should now, he reasons. It would help. Maybe they’ll both calm down and be able to better see one another’s side in the post-orgasm clarity. So he kisses Sand back. They've kissed a handful of times since the one they shared in the alley, but none so passionate. Sand licks up along the inside of Ray's upper lip, and need sparks along Ray's skin, his dick twitching in his pants. But then Sand's tongue pushes further into his mouth, and the last time Ray had a tongue in his mouth it had been one that he bit off but it was a monster's so it grew back and he stopped fighting the inevitable because—

Ray shoves Sand away. They both stand there for a moment, Sand breathing hard and Ray not breathing at all.

“I’m sorry,” Sand says. “I thought…”

Ray shakes his head and Sand falls silent, watching him with his dark, wet eyes.

“Are you ever going to tell me what happened to you?” His voice is so small, like he thinks he might break Ray with it if he speaks any louder.

Does it really need spelling out, Ray wonders.

When he doesn’t get an answer, Sand continues, “You don’t have to. But I… I feel like you don't trust me.” He looks away, glaring off into space, pissed off with—Ray? Himself? Everything? He sounds more frustrated than understanding when he says, "You can talk to me. You can always talk to me."

Ray nods, and in an attempt at apology without the words, he gently takes one of Sand’s hands and presses a kiss to the knuckles. “I know.”

It’s late and they trail slowly to bed, an uncomfortable quiet hanging heavy between them. They lie down, shoulder to shoulder, staring up at the ceiling as the tension fails to dissipate. When he can't stand it any more, Ray rolls onto his side and whispers,

"I'm sorry."

Sand turns his head towards him, his eyes catching the faint light coming through their drawn curtains. Ray can see him in perfect detail despite the darkness; he can see the crease between his brows, the unhappy set of his mouth, the guilt in his eyes. Then he rolls onto his side, too, so they're facing each other.

"It's okay," Sand says with the tone of someone trying to convince somebody (Ray? Himself?). "If you're not ready, you're not ready."

Ray wants to be. More than anything, he wants everything to be normal between them again. For everything else to be normal, too. To be the guy that disappeared two years ago instead of the one that came back.

But that's not going to happen, so he just gives Sand a tight smile and watches him as he falls asleep.

Ray lies there, watching Sand's face go slack and his breaths even out. A pulse thrums though him. Something like hunger.

He slides across the short distance between them on the bed and presses their foreheads together. He's really grown to enjoy watching Sand sleep, even if he still thinks it's dumb to act like a vampire out of a teen romance novel. His face is so unguarded in sleep. Vulnerable.

Ray shifts and nestles his face into the crook of Sand's neck and inhales. He smells of sweat and cheap aftershave that doesn't smell good but smells like Sand so Ray kind of loves it. He presses his tongue against Sand's neck, letting the pulse of blood roll through him. He's tasted almost all of Sand that there is to taste; his sweat, his spit, his come. Never his blood, though. He could bite down right now and change that. He trails his tongue up to Sand's ear, which he takes gently between his teeth. Sand doesn't stir.

As curious as he is, Ray doesn't want to kill him. It's possible to feed without killing—he knows it is because it was done to him—but he's never been able to do it himself. He takes one of Sand's hands in his, guides it to his mouth and licks the tip of his index finger. Maybe if he cut his finger. He couldn't bleed out from that. Ray stares for a moment at the digit, imagining a bead of blood welling and running temptingly down its length. A familiar pressure begins to grow behind his eyes and he drops Sand's hand, shaking his head to dispel the transformation. He just lies in silence for a moment, forcing even breaths into his lungs as he tries to calm himself. He's not going to kill Sand. He's not going to kill him.

When the feeling of his transformation dissipates, he returns his attention to Sand's still sleeping face. He presses his hand to his cheek, caressing the rise of his cheekbone. Ray drags his thumb down, over Sand's top lip, admiring the shape of it. He has a perfect mouth, Ray thinks, then leans in to kiss him. It begins chaste; just a press of their lips together, breathing in the scent of his skin.

They've hardly kissed since Ray's return. He wants Sand, of course he does, but the ghost of other hands and lips seem to trail after his touch.

His hand fists the front of Sand's shirt as the hungry feeling spreads before pooling low in his abdomen. Oh, he realizes. It's not bloodlust. Just lust. He almost laughs. When was the last time he was actually horny? It's—it's nice. It's normal.

He watches Sand with half-open eyes, looking for any sign of wakefulness, but his eyes barely twitch beneath their lids and his breathing stays even. He licks the seam of Sand's mouth, then pushes past it.

He wonders for a moment if this is okay, if he's doing something wrong, but decides it's fine. Sand is his boyfriend, so it's not the same as when he kissed Mew in his sleep. He runs his tongue along the back of Sand's upper teeth and wills him not to wake up. He desires, but doesn't want to be desired in return. Ray's blood vibrates in his body, tingling along his veins. Stay asleep. Stay asleep. Stay asleep.

He slides a hand up the front of Sand's worn-out sleep shirt, skin smooth beneath the pads of his fingers. He scratches his nails lightly over Sand's stomach, as if to test how sound asleep he really is, but he gets no reaction. Satisfied, he throws a leg over Sand's hips, simultaneously pushing him onto his back and straddling him, and notices that his eyes have begun to move under his eyelids. With practiced ease, Ray falls into his dream.

Sand is already inside him in the dream. Ray gasps at the intensity of it; it feels real. It feels realer than reality. Like Sand is in him in more ways than just the physical (or metaphysical?), like he's in his chest and his throat and his head, too. In his blood.

It's too much. Ray pushes at his shoulders, but this is Sand's dream. Ray's superhuman strength doesn't exist in this fantasy. He's normal. He's defenseless. He's weak and he's trapped under a man with his legs spread and a dick buried deep inside him and he—

He comes out of the dream dizzy and scared and hard. He's atop Sand, forearms bracketing his head, their noses almost touching. Sand is still dead asleep and Ray presses a frenzied kiss to his mouth, pushes their hips together, rocks against him. He moans into Sand's mouth and feels distantly surprised that none of this wakes Sand, but the pulse of blood through his body is too loud to think about that. It's so strange to kiss and not be kissed back, but—not strange in a bad way, really. He's free to explore, to take at his own pace. He can hear Sand's heartbeat echo his own, too fast for a sleeping man, but he does sleep on. Good.

Ray buries his fingers in Sand's hair, fisting the strands tightly as he grinds himself against Sand's stomach. He breaks the kiss and looks down into an impassive face. Sand breathes evenly beneath him, and Ray reaches down, pushing at the waistband of Sand's boxers. He gets a hand on Sand's half-hard dick and pulls gently, eyes still locked on his face. His expression twitches in sleep and he makes a soft sound that's not quite a moan. Ray smiles and noses at Sand's jaw, nipping gently at the tendon in his neck, tempting himself with the desire to draw blood. Sand makes another sound, this one closer to a whine, and shifts beneath Ray, his dick firming up in his hand.

Ray releases Sand and palms himself through his shorts, breathing a sigh into the juncture of Sand's neck and jaw. He hasn't touched himself in years. Hasn't wanted to for fear of what might float to the surface of his mind. But right now his whole being burns with want, with the driving need for release, and everything else falls away. He pulls his dick out and lets it slide against Sand's. He swipes his thumb over the precome beading on Sand's dick, wants to taste it but is too scared of ingesting anything other than blood (where would it go without a stomach?). He's missed this. The weight and shape of Sand's cock in his hand, something he'd been so intimately familiar with, sends a rush of sadness and nostalgia through him and for a moment he's so utterly overwhelmed by the years that have gone by, by what's become of him, of them, that he has to stop and just press his face against Sand's and try not to cry. Cheek to cheek, Ray lies atop Sand, running a hand through his hair and ensconcing himself in the scent of his shampoo.

"I missed you," he whispers, then licks Sand's ear. He doesn't clean his ears thoroughly enough and the shell carries the bitter taste of earwax. Sand makes another soft sound as Ray nibbles on his ear, a little plaintive whine that makes Ray's dick jump as he resists the urge to bite harder. He draws himself up into a sitting position, rucking up Sand's shirt and hands splaying over his flushed chest, eyes dragging down the length of him. He needs to eat better, Ray thinks as he draws his hands over too-visible ribs. He's always liked Sand's rawboned scrawniness, the body of an overworked young man who prioritizes making money over caring for himself, but now grief hangs in the shadows of his gauntness. Ray kisses his way down each rib, nuzzles his nose in the slight hollow between his stomach and ribcage.

He peers up at Sand's face as one hand trails further down, knuckles grazing the underside of his cock, eyes devouring the small unconscious shifts in expression, his slightly parting lips as his breathing changes. He wonders if what he's doing has changed Sand's dream at all but is too scared to check. He's in control out here. He drags a thumb across the tip of Sand's dick, using the precome to lubricate the head as his fingers circle it lazily. He imagines riding him like this, chasing his own orgasm as Sand lies there pliable and warm and sleeping and the thought makes heat spread up from his belly into his chest, his heart beating like it does when he's on the hunt and it's all kind of the same really, the same chase and the same thrill, a hunt for something that will satisfy or quench.

He buries his face in Sand's stomach and abandons his ministrations in favor of grabbing his own dick again, which is burning hot and hard and dripping. He pants against Sand's skin, lips drawn and teeth grazing. He's so wet already that his hand glides easily over his length, and he shudders out a breath over Sand's stomach. He pumps his hand slowly over himself, savoring the way the tension in his legs and stomach starts to grow, the electricity that dances over his skin. His thumb catches on the underside of the head and he keens high and needy into the hollow of Sand's ribs.

Pressing his head against Sand, he lets his skull take his weight as he brings his free hand to his mouth and licks his middle and index finger until they're thoroughly wetted. He reaches behind himself, fingers slipping between the cleft of his ass and teasing at his rim. As the flat pads of his fingers circle his hole, he again imagines taking Sand like this. Imagines fucking himself on Sand's fingers until he's open and on the edge, then seating himself on his cock, in total control of every thrust, every grind. Imagines sitting on his dick while he sleeps, just enjoying being filled while his hips twitch as he denies himself the satisfaction of anything more than cockwarming. Could he stay like that the whole time Sand slept? His index finger barely breaches the tight ring of muscle and it drives a breathy moan from him, the hand on his dick picking up speed. He angles his head down so he can see Sand's cock, flushed and beautiful with precome dribbling down it and he licks his lips, wanting to be filled and a little thrilled by the fear the thought instills in him. Not tonight, he thinks.

He doesn't really fuck himself with his fingers, just continues to play with the very edge, teasing the rim wet and open until it twitches and flutters like it wants more. He keens and pants until the hollow of Sand's ribs is humid. The tension in his calves, thighs, belly and balls mounts and mounts and he's right there on the edge, his cock weeping down his hand, onto Sand's legs, and he squeezes himself tight, fighting to prolong this moment for as long as he can, but it's too much and he's too close to the edge and he topples over it. Orgasm rips through him, up his spine and down his legs so hard they cramp painfully and he yells Sand's name, not thinking that it might wake him (and how would he explain all of this?) and he strokes himself through it, shuddering as he collapses down on top of Sand, pressing wet open-mouthed kisses to his stomach.

He lies there, Sand's dick pressing into his chest, boneless and relaxed in a way he hasn't been in years. He breathes slow, too infrequent for a living person, just to feel the air gliding in and out of his lungs. He shifts to the side a bit, sliding off of Sand, who whines, hips twitching, as his slicked dick slides against Ray's flushed skin. Ray laughs softly, kissing Sand's side, then up his chest and neck. "Needy," he whispers, then licks Sand's chin, nibbles right over his mole, and lazily wraps a hand around Sand's cock. It doesn't take long for Sand to spill over Ray's fingers with a softer-than-normal cry. It's a cute sound, Ray thinks, kissing his jaw as Sand twitches beneath him.

He doesn't let himself stay in bed enjoying the afterglow for too long, making himself rise from the warm nest of their bed to fetch wetted towels so he can clean up. He wipes Sand down carefully, tenderly, removing all evidence of what's just happened. He frowns. The word evidence implies wrongdoing. He shakes his head and finishes cleaning up Sand's legs. He just doesn't want to let the come dry on him. It would be rude. He tucks Sand's dick back into his boxers and then cleans himself up before settling into bed, snuggling up to Sand's warmth. In the back of his mind, he wonders again at how Sand slept through everything. He wonders what else he could sleep through.