Chapter Text
Matt’s got a new plan. He’s got gears turning, neurons firing, the works.
This isn’t anything new. What is new is the end goal. There’s something in the back of his mind forming for the Rivoli, of course there is, but right now, lying in the bottom bunk and staring up at where Jay’s staked his claim for the night, something else brews. It’s a B-plot. A B-plan.
The B-plan has to do with Jay—hence the staring—and, upon consideration, it’s probably best kept a secret from the subject. It’s all about information-gathering, and Matt doesn’t want to taint the data pool by setting Jay on edge or anything. It’s like how those scientists didn’t explain to those little monkeys what the point of having two lesbian moms to pick between was all about.
Anyway, there’s already one tidbit of info—a real juicy 411 nugget—that Matt can file away in the back of his brain. A headstart.
Garlic makes Jay throw up.
It’s not what Matt would call a fun fact, but it was still a fact. Jay had felt so awful after the incident that he couldn’t even make it to the piano when Matt had asked him for a hand cleaning out the vomit-filled sink after the worst of it was over. Which was fine—maybe Matt shouldn’t have even asked at all, seeing as it was his fault Jay got sick in the first place.
Really, Matt hadn’t meant to get that little piece of Jay trivia at the time—he just wanted to get the creamy garlic dip because the employee at Pizza Pizza recommended it—but it still inspired something within him, still woke up his inner Curious George.
Jay’s a vampire. Or, well, half-vampire. The technical term would be ‘dhampir,’ if you wanted to get Balkan about it. It sounds kind of stupid to say out loud, though. Child of a vampire and a human, basically. Whatever. Matt’s known this since they were kids, but what Matt hasn’t known in the intervening years is the full extent of what vampiric lore actually applies to his friend. Seeing Jay completely bowled over by a bit of garlic was a real eye-opener in that regard.
The fact of the matter is that Matt should know this stuff. He needs to know, in fact, needs to know what makes Jay tick. Needs to dive deep into all the unique elements of his physiology. Needs to understand how to keep Jay safe and happy. It’s just a natural part of friendship. Jay will be better off for it.
Right off the bat, there’s a few typical vampire weaknesses that Matt definitely won’t be testing. They’re all too obviously lethal. Stake to the heart, decapitation, immolation. That sort of thing.
There’s also a few things that Matt already knows. Exhibit A: Jay’s not a sparkly, eternal teen attending high school forever for whatever creepy pervert reason; his human blood keeps him aging mostly normally. Which is just fine by Matt, because it means Matt can take Jay with him towards their shared future without too much trouble. It’s perfect, actually.
“Is it weird to call it your ‘human blood?’” Matt asks, idly tapping at the whiteboard with his marker. “Does that sound eugenics-y to you?”
“What?” At the piano, Jay’s playing stops.
“Like–... like, ‘you’ve ruined our honourable and ancient vampire lineage with your tainted human blood! You little fuckin’—... half-breed freak piece of shit!’ Doesn’t that sound like something vampire Nazis would say?”
“I don’t know if there were ever any vampire Nazis.” Jay shifts uncomfortably on his bench, awkwardly poking at a key and letting a dull note sound out before turning to face Matt. His expression is pained. “Does this have to do with your plan?”
“Huh?”
“You came running down here, shouting about a plan.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Then all you said was ‘sparkly pervert,’ and then you just stared at the whiteboard for a bit. I started playing something, but you still weren’t doing anything.”
“Uh-huh.” Matt does recall hearing something that sounded like it was from Carter Burwell in the background of his thoughts.
“And then you started talking about vampire Nazis.”
“Right.” So Matt got his wires crossed a bit, sue him. He didn’t exactly sleep well last night, what with the train in his brain chugging into the early morning. “Vampire Nazis,” Matt repeats. “Vampire… Nazis.”
“Can you stop saying that?”
Matt’s already writing it on the board.
“Why are you writing it on the board!?”
“Getting an awful lot of pushback from you on this, Bird,” Matt notes. Still feeling the effects of an intense lack of sleep, he begins needling on autopilot. “Hitting too close to home? Got racist—racist? Species-ist. Got species-ist microaggressions hurled your way at the dinner table during Thanksgiving from bitchy vampire aunts?” A new vision comes to mind. With a breathy chuckle, he continues, “Did you have, like, a dude all hog-tied like a turkey? Lying on a plate? Apple in the mouth? Filled with stuffing?”
“No! No to all of—to everything you just said.” Jay’s pouting, now.
“Well—fine.” Time to back off. “Doesn’t matter.” Matt draws a circle around the phrase, and then draws a line out from it, mind map style. “See this? It’s just inspiration. We build off of it. What matters is the… the idea—the thematic through-line of a sordid past. Right?”
Jay looks up at him, considering, and turns back to face the piano.
“I bet if we go digging deep enough into the Rivoli’s history, we’ll find some primo blackmail.”
Matt’s B-plan research has him finding out some pretty weird stuff about vampires. The arithmomania thing is an especially odd one—though it does explain, in hindsight, why Count von Count’s whole deal was what it was.
The problem is, Jay’s already got a handful of these quirky little habits—compulsions spurred on by what Matt would best describe as ‘excessive paranoia.’ Always double-checking the milk before pouring it, always antsy for one of those automatic hand sanitizer dispensers whenever he’s in public for too long.
So, if it turns out that Jay really would stop, drop, and count grains of wheat if he ever encountered a pile thrown his way, Matt’s not sure how exactly he’d determine if it’s a vampire thing, or just a Jay thing.
Well, information’s information. Either way, it’d be a Jay thing.
He hears Jay coming down the stairs, so he starts getting his scenario ready. It’s not overly-complex—there’s no need for it to be—all Matt does is tip over a newly-bought bag of rice as Jay’s descent nears its completion.
“Ah, fuck!” Matt shouts, hamming up his own presentation of clumsiness.
“S█t, Matt!” Jay yelps, jumping back as the grain tumbles out before him.
“We got—now there’s rice all over the place! No—oh no! This is—this is terrible! This must be… this must be, like, hundreds of little pieces of rice!”
“Why… why did you bring an open bag of rice over here, anyway?” Jay whines, kneeling down and gathering up the rice in individual pieces.
Matt doesn’t answer. He watches. He can feel himself staring, filing the information away in the part of his brain dedicated to his Bird. Yes, Jay will, in fact, count grains, like a fucking maniac. He almost wishes he had gotten birdseed instead, so he could've made a funny little joke about it, just for himself.
“We don’t—... even have a rice cooker or anything, do we?” Jay’s still picking up the grains, one at a time.
“We don’t,” Matt agrees. He watches for a few moments longer, Jay’s collection growing slowly but surely. Then, “Hey, Bird?”
Jay looks up at him. “Yeah?”
“I’m gonna grab the vacuum. It’ll be faster than, uh… that.”
Jay looks back down at the small pile that’s been building in the palm of his hand. He blinks at it a few times, as if registering something he hadn’t been considering prior, before unceremoniously dumping it back onto the ground with a shrug. “Alright.” He plods over to the piano, and starts playing seemingly whatever comes to mind.
Huh. Maybe a full-blooded vampire wouldn’t have been able to break away like that. If Matt wanted to get real scientific about it, he’d set up a few more scenarios to test this in, to make himself certain of his observations. But, as he’s running the vacuum over the mess he’s made just to get the one experiment done, he thinks this was enough.
There’s a few more obvious vampire things that don’t apply to Jay. He doesn’t have any problems with mirrors, for one thing, and he obviously doesn’t have a grave to be fucked around with, for another. No need for virgin boys on virgin horses. He still casts a shadow, too.
And with how often florists display their wares all willy-nilly on the streets, roses don’t seem to act as a repellent, either. Do flower shop roses count as wild roses, though? Wikipedia’s going out of its way to specify. Maybe Matt should pencil in a visit to a botanical garden.
Likewise, the running water thing is very much not an issue. It would’ve been hard for them to first meet by that river if it was.
Jay’s also not nocturnal or anything, but he’s already explained that that’s specifically because he’s only half. When Matt had commented that it was great that they were both diurnal because it meant it was easier to hang out, Jay thought he had said ‘die anal.’ Whatever the hell that would even entail.
“You bought a new fork?” Jay asks, peering at Matt’s brand-new purchase. “Was something wrong with our old ones?” He pauses for a moment, contemplating. “And why’d you only get one?”
“C’mon, man!” Matt slaps him on the shoulder. “This,” he pulls out the (very, very expensive) pure silver fork, “is for true fine dining. The really pretentious stuff. That Michelin star bullshit.”
Jay’s skeptical. Matt can tell from the crease of his eyebrows. “It looks pretty normal to me,” he says, reaffirming Matt’s confidence in his ability to read him.
“Here.” Matt holds the utensil out. “See for yourself.”
Jay does, and Matt can see him frowning down at it. He looks more frustrated than a normal person probably would be at holding an otherwise completely normal fork, so Matt takes a mental note. Does not like silver.
“Why the hell is it so warm?”
It was definitely a normal temperature when Matt was holding it just a few seconds ago. He adds to his mental note.
“It feels kinda gross.”
Yet another addendum.
Jay hands the fork back, still grimacing. He moves over to the sink and starts running cold water over his hand.
It’s a good thing that stupid ‘vampires can’t enter unless they’ve been invited’ thing doesn’t apply to Jay, because it would really make a lot of Matt’s plans significantly harder to pull off if it did.
Matt’s simultaneous research into the Rivoli’s history and into vampiric mythos has left him staring at his computer screen for long enough stretches of time that he wonders if he should maybe pick up some eye drops. He'd hate to be interrupted by another bout of temporary blindness.
Anyway, turns out the Rivoli wasn’t around during World War II, so that plan’s a bust.
The B-plan’s still a go, though, so when he’s at the nearest Shoppers picking up drops, he asks the clerk about whether or not they’ve got any holy water. They don’t, and he gets pointed in the direction of the nearest church, instead.
Once there, he asks the guy with the stupidest outfit to bless some water for him, and now he’s fully equipped with the next element of his B-plan.
The thing is, Matt already knows Jay hates quote-unquote 'holy' symbols like crosses and whatever the hell else. Back in their old apartment, whenever Jay got extra catty, Matt would whip a cross out as a form of torment and harassment. Naturally, it worked like a charm. Holy water’s new, though, so Matt reasons that it’s worth the extra bit of experimenting.
He’s already thought of a few ways to try and figure out what Jay’s reaction would be, ranging from simply splashing it on him to elaborately sneaking it into an ornately prepared meal with some manner of Rube Goldberg mechanical chicanery, but, as he recalls the creamy garlic incident, he decides to avoid inducing any unknowing ingestion.
“Got you some new sunscreen, Birdie!” Matt calls out as he returns home, deciding a gentle, self-propelled topical application was his best bet.
That’s another thing, actually—Jay’s sensitivity to sunlight. It doesn’t set him on fire or anything dramatic like that, he’s just usually a bit of a bitch about it. Always checking the UV levels for the day (another little habit), going through gallons of sunscreen, even wearing sunglasses indoors like a prick if it ever got too sunny.
“New sunscreen?” Jay parrots from his place on the couch, idling away on their shared DS. He shuts the device with a clack, looking expectantly at the reusable bag Matt got coerced into buying while doing his shopping.
Matt tosses the bottle of holy water over, a clean arc that leads into a clean catch. It’s in a dinky little plastic bottle Matt had found at a Dollarama, but it looks plausible enough. “It’s, uh, not very viscous because it’s water-based. Yeah.”
Jay squints at it and its complete and utter lack of any proper labeling. “What’s the SPF?”
“...50.”
Jay smiles. “Okay.” And then he sets it down on the table before picking the DS back up.
“You… You’re not gonna try it?” Matt asks. That's no good. He wants a new observation.
“...Why would I? I’m not going out right now.” Jay gestures with the DS, emphasizing his statement.
“Yeah, well,” Matt walks around over to the windows. He sweeps the curtains open, letting the sunlight in.
“Hey!”
“I mean—how about now? Y’know I, I wanna be here too, and, y’know, I need Vitamin D. No glasses of Sunny D to down, so. I need my nutrients. I’m like a plant. A plant man. Pamela Isley after a sex change. Without the eco-terrorism.”
Jay scoffs, clearly incredulous. “Fine, whatever,” he mutters, overdramatically rolling his eyes before standing up and getting ready to leave.
“Hold on!” Matt swipes the bottle of holy water that’s been left abandoned on the coffee table and shoves it in Jay’s face with one hand while the other keeps a grip on Jay’s shoulder. “Try the sunscreen I got you!”
“What’s your problem? Leave me alone!”
Matt unscrews the cap with his teeth.
“Gross! I definitely don’t want to use it now.” Jay shakes Matt off with frustrating ease and continues with his departure.
This isn’t working. Matt’s tunnel-vision and single-minded focus is telling him not to sit around and wait for another opportunity, so he decides to just go back to basics.
Matt swings his arm, sending the liquid flying towards Jay, and when it lands at his nape, he yelps.
“What the f█k was that!?” Jay shouts, hand reaching towards the back of his neck. “Matt, what was that?” He’s hissing in pain now, pulling his hand back and squinting at his wet palm with a wince. He shakes the water off.
“Uh…”
“Matt.”
“Sunscreen.”
“No it wasn’t!”
They’re caught in a bit of a back-and-forth stare down, Jay’s anger fueled by hurt juxtaposed against Matt’s wide-eyed and only somewhat sheepish silence. Matt’s the first to break.
“It was holy water.”
“What—? Why!?” Jay’s wiping at his nape with the sleeve of his blazer with increased vigor.
“It was, y’know, an honest mix-up. Thought I handed you the, uh, the sunscreen.”
“Then where is it?”
“What?”
“The sunscreen. What you mixed up the holy water with.”
“...Okay, so,” Matt starts.
Blood is another thing that applies to Jay. He claims to not need as much as a full vampire, and it doesn’t even always have to be human (many containers of pig and duck blood and cuts of blood sausage have filled their fridge in the past), but a solid sip of human every now and again is still very much a need.
Sneaking into hospitals and donor clinics to steal blood bags was maybe a bit morally and ethically dubious, but it meant that, for the most part, Jay could be sated well enough with relative ease. Apparently, though, fresh blood from a living human was the ‘most effective,’ which was more than vague enough to warrant further explanation, but Jay has never opted to elaborate.
Whatever. In any case, Matt’s not all that precious about his own sanguine fluid, so he’s offered himself up as a live blood bag more than a handful of times. It’s usually only when there’s nothing else and Jay is particularly desperate, though. Feeding off of Matt directly leaves Jay in a good mood for at least a week afterwards, but it leaves Matt lethargic and tired. As literally drained as a guy could get. If his energy levels weren’t so vital to his planning, Matt would let Jay do it as much as he wanted.
Or, maybe he wouldn’t, actually. The elusiveness of the situation lent itself well to being a useful bargaining chip.
For example, if Matt wanted an easy and fast path to forgiveness.
“You know, you could’ve just asked about most of those things,” Jay says as he works Matt’s undershirt off.
He could’ve, yes. It would’ve been much easier—not to mention cheaper. Matt still hasn’t been able to resell that damn silver fork, yet. Not that money’s really that much of an issue, given the arrangement he has with his parents, but it’s really about the principle of the thing.
Anyway, it wouldn’t have been the same. Matt wanted to discover and learn all he could about Jay his own way—make it all his own.
“Yeah, well, I think I’ve covered all my bases now, so who cares?” Matt muses, only a bit defensively. “Counting, silver, holy water… Y’know, on top of the other stuff I already knew.”
“Whatever.” Jay’s sitting behind Matt, now, wiping at his skin with a wet towel. Such a fuckin' stickler, Matt muses, watching Jay clean the area between his neck and shoulder before slotting his fangs into Matt’s flesh, like two puzzle pieces getting put together.
Matt lets out an involuntary gasp as Jay’s stupidly sharp teeth sink in. He shivers—another instinctive response—and fights off the urge to push Jay away. He’s long gotten used to the feeling of being bitten and fed off of, but his hindbrain just won’t let him shake off that primal fear.
Which, honestly, if Matt thinks about it, is crazy. Getting eaten alive wouldn’t even be that bad—not if the predator was Jay—so what’s up with that?
Jay’s licking at the brand new pinprick holes in Matt’s body, now—there’s anticoagulants in his saliva (and he hadn’t appreciated the comparison to a mosquito when Matt found that out)—humming contentedly while Matt has to take deep, shuddering breaths to steady himself.
Once he’s stabilized into a regular rhythm, Matt reaches out to grab the GameCube controller and starts up Melee to do a Classic Mode run. These feeding sessions they share can get pretty lengthy—after a disastrous first attempt at drinking that escalated into their living room turning into a scene straight from a splatstick horror comedy and a hospitalization incident for the piece of food in the equation, Jay only ever takes it slow—so Matt likes to have another activity lined up. Jay seems to like it, too, likes getting to watch Matt as he works away at whatever game he’s decided to be in the mood for.
The flow of blood from Matt is steady and constant. He hears more than feels Jay’s periodic swallowing, the proximity of Jay’s mouth to his ear letting the sound reach him with ease. It’s like his own personal metronome. Matt wonders if he’s the instrument or the player.
Jay’s fingers are pressed into his skin—firm enough to keep Matt mostly still, but gentle enough to avoid causing any pain. As he sends that piece of shit Pichu careening off-screen, Matt contemplates the possibility of offering snack-sized feedings more frequently, if only out of consideration for Jay’s satisfaction. And if Matt gets anything out of the deal, he can just keep that to himself. It’ll make him look better in Jay’s eyes.
“Would you have really counted every single grain of rice?” Matt asks as he hits another target. “Like, the entire fuckin’ bag? Like a psycho?”
Jay doesn’t answer. Matt already figured he wouldn’t—his mouth’s a bit busy at the moment. Still, it gets something turning in Matt’s brain.
“Alright,” Matt says with only the barest hint of sarcasm, “good to know.”