who_is_she | Yeah I smoke pot yeah I love peace I don't give a fuck I ain't no hippie

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Yeah I smoke pot yeah I love peace I don't give a fuck I ain't no hippie

It was kind of a fitting end, when Tony thought about it. He'd failed,
utterly and completely, and now he was going to die, a victim of his own
ineptitude.

The vampires he'd been chasing hadn't even wanted to turn him, like they
sometimes did when they caught a hunter. They would turn the hunter and
then leave them somewhere they'd be easily found by other hunters--knowing
no hunter would leave a vampire alive, relative or no.

They hadn't bothered with Tony, though, just feasted on him and then left
him to bleed out in a hidden crevice. It was likely the smell of his own
blood smeared against the rocks would catch the attention of a predator,
leaving no remains for his family to find.

He knew it was all his fault. He'd been full of doubt and fear about his
first hunt, unsure if he was doing the right thing and unsure if it was
something he wanted to do. His own fear had made him careless, but he
couldn't stop thinking about the research he'd done outside of his family's
library; accounts of vampirism being a horrible curse, a plague of hunger
that went unsatisfied unless you abandoned your humanity.

Tony had begun to worry that it was the hunters who were the real monsters,
killing without a thought or a chance at mercy. It was too late now though,
and Tony supposed he could find solace in the fact that his failure had
kept his hands clean of any blood aside his own.

Tony felt his legs go numb and spots appear in his vision, wondering
deliriously if there was any chance of surviving this, and if there was,
would anyone even deem him worth the effort?

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Roddie was very careful about prowling the woods for food tonight. By spending times in bars he knew were secretly frequented by his own kind, he'd managed to hear that a travelling clan of especially ruthless vampires was in the area and had taken shelter in a cave outside of town, and that they were being tailed by a family of hunters who had been poking around town for information. The other vampires in the area had taken to laying low, opting to feed off of more easily accessible prey who few would miss if they suddenly disappeared, but that wasn't an option for Roddie. Scornfully referred to as a "vegetarian" by the other vampires in his district, Roddie had restricted his diet to animals large enough and with enough blood to survive his bites, and since he couldn't very well get away with sucking at the neck of the neighbor's labrador, it was into the forest for him.

He was just in the middle of tailing a very large deer, one big enough to sate his appetite without causing serious harm to the animal, when he caught the scent of blood. His heart hammers both with hunger and with dread when he recognizes the scent as human, and he mournfully abandons his chase to follow the trail. The scent leads him to a sort of a ditch, and he braces himself for a gory scene before leaning over and peering inside.

To his surprise, he can tell almost immediately that the young man inside is breathing, from the way his chest heaves with effort. As Roddie takes in the sickening sight of his wounds, which, by the look of them, must have been caused by a fellow vampire, he feels his stomach growling and his fangs extending in spite of himself.

"Hey, Jesus, hey, can you hear me?" he whispers fearfully, gulping as his voice shakes. He slides down into the crevice beside him and does his best to retract his fangs, not wanting to cause him any more distress than he was already in, but has little luck.

"You're all right, hey, you're okay, I'm Roddie, I'm gonna help you, but we have to be quiet, okay?"

Tony groans when the voice disturbs the fitful half-sleep he'd fallen into, and when he pries his eyes open all he sees are sharp teeth glinting in the darkness. He groans again, this one sounding more heartfelt and desperate.

"Please," he says, his voice scratchy as he reaches out pathetically towards the figure, "Please finish me off. End it." He can't imagine returning to his family now, and every moment here is agony, so a quick and merciful death seems like the best option.

"Shh, hey, shh," Roddie says, kneeling slowly down beside the man and carefully rolling him onto his back, "You don't know what you're saying, just let me look at you."

There were several wounds on his body, but the most grievous looking ones are on his throat and stomach. Roddie manages to push aside any embarrassment he had at the prospect of putting his mouth all over this stranger's body, and leans in to begin licking at the wounds on his neck.

He had almost forgotten what human blood tasted like, and is practically intoxicated by it as he mouths at the gash on the young man's neck. It takes all the strength he can muster not to sink his teeth into his flesh, but he manages, and soon the wound is closing up. Once it's healed, he moved down to repeat the process on the man's stomach, which makes him blush all the more, but soon his bites become but minor scrapes and cuts.

"You still with me?" Roddie asks quietly, patting the stranger's face, "Hey, buddy, you in there? What's your name, you know your name?"

Tony deliriously paws at the stranger, the pain too intense to allow his thoughts to make any sense. He can't make any sense of the stranger either, or what's happening when he opens his mouth above Tony's neck and Tony doesn't feel the horrible agony of getting torn open like earlier.

There's no pain, in fact there's the opposite of pain, and it takes Tony a moment to remember what that's called. He just ends up laying still and enjoying the feeling of the stranger's tongue, slipping from consciousness as his agony fades enough that it's not keeping him awake.

He starts a little when the guy talks to him directly and touches his face, his mind clearer than it had been a few minutes ago, and he processes the situation very quickly.

"Oh, fuck," he swears, loudly, scrambling away from the vampire, "You're a vampire." He looks down at himself, realizes his wounds are healed, and looks back up at the vampire, even more horror on his face, "I'm not dead? Oh, fuck, am I turned? --Fuck, oh, God, why am I not dead? Why didn't you kill me?!" Tony's tirade reaches a high-pitched screech by the end, as the dizziness from blood loss and panic set in at the same time.

Roddie starts when the stranger starts shrieking, and it takes him a minute to regain his footing and raise his hands placatingly.

"Easy, easy!" he says, keeping his voice steady, "You're not dead and you're not a vampire, you're a mortal and you're totally alive, one hundred percent. Now just relax, keep quiet, and tell me your name. I swear I won't hurt you, I know those other guys roughed you up pretty bad but I'm not with them, I just closed your wounds. I'm one of those fuckin'...magical spit and tears vampires, I forget what we're called, but I fixed you up."

Tony stares blankly at the man--boy, really, he didn't look any older than Tony was--his mouth hanging open as he tried to comprehend what he was saying.

"I... Tony," he breathes, awkwardly settling down from the half-crouch he'd been in, heaving a sigh as he did, "You... You're a medela-sanguine?" Tony balks, glancing the boy up and down. He'd been told that was an extremely rare ability, and that the vampires who did possess that ability only used it to prolong the life of the victim they fed on. Tony's eyes go wide as guilt and doubt churn in his gut, the look on this vampire's face is open and guileless, as if he's never harmed a soul.

"Yeah, that's the one!" Roddie starts in, "I always forget. I'm Roddie, by the way, I - wait..."

His eyes go wide as he realizes he ought to be surprised at the fact that the stranger seemed to know more about his own kind than he did himself, and he gives the boy a puzzled look.

"Whoah, how did you know that?" he asks, scratching at his scalp, "I was expecting you to be like, oh my god, vampires are real, is this a nightmare, how much did I drink, I must be delerious. What's your deal?"

A branch snaps behind them at that very moment, and with a start Roddie realizes immediately after he asks the question that this wasn't the time or the place to wait for an answer.

"Uh oh. Come on Mr.-" he starts, as another branch snaps a little ways off, "Uhh...just come on, these guys are bad news, we've gotta go."

With that, he hoists Tony up, slinging one of his arms over his shoulder to keep him steady and quickly and quietly making their way out of the woods.

Edited 2015-09-12 01:39 (UTC)

Tony stumbles along, his head spinning and not just from the blood loss. He can't quite believe his life has been saved by a vampire, and a cute one at that, though Tony's sure him being cute doesn't have any bearing on whether or not he's a murdering monster. He doesn't seem the... monster type, though, not if he went out of his way to save Tony's life and then wanted to help him to safety.

Well, relative safety. It was likely that Roddie was taking him back to some kind of lair or dungeon, to tie him to the wall to become the next blood slave. He didn't have much choice in the matter, not when Roddie was leading him up the stairs to a rickety old apartment building, and probably his death.

But then Roddie shoves his shoulder into a door and nothing happens. He looks over at Tony, laughing awkwardly and then shoving again. It takes him a few tries to get the door open, and when he does get it open it's just a small, terrible apartment with a mattress on the floor. Tony gapes at it.

Roddie helps Tony into his apartment, and as they enter he suddenly becomes painfully aware of what bad shape the place was in.

"Ah...sorry about the mess," he laughs apologetically, "Most of it was like this when I rented the place. I mean...the trash is mine, but the holes in the walls were already there, and the ceiling was like that, and the stains...I'm sorry, I don't have a couch or another bed, but I can't really sleep anymore, so you can sleep on my mattress. I mostly just sit on it to use the laptop, so it's all clean. Oh, I guess you're hungry, right? Yeah, you should eat, after all that blood loss."

Roddie stops his flustering long enough to instinctively go and open the fridge, before being rudely reminded that there wasn't anything Tony could eat in there.

"Oh shit - blood," he stammers with a choked laugh, "That's blood. Just cow blood. And the cows aren't even dead, there's a, uh...guy with a farm outside of town, with lots of...cows, and I go there and...drink the cows. Blood, not cows, but, they're fine, the cows. Anyway, let me just...I'll run out and get something for you to eat. Just take it easy, and...don't drink the tap water."

With that, he steps out the door, leaving Tony alone in his apartment.

Tony collapses exhaustedly onto the mattress, staring around and not quite comprehending what's going on until after Roddie leaves. He still feels lightheaded and dizzy, and as gazes around Roddie's apartment he realizes it's not any kind of lair or dungeon, and there's nobody strung up anywhere and kept barely alive just for their blood. Cow's blood, Roddie said he drank, and Tony didn't even know that was possible. He'd been taught that no blood could satisfy a vampire other than human blood, and any attempts to do so would kill the vampire.

He accidentally nudged the laptop and the screen turned on, showing a paused still of a TV show. That was when it really hit him; Roddie was a vampire, and he lived just like a normal human did. No human blood slaves, no moldy basement dungeon, no black silk sheets and attempts at seduction.

Roddie was just a normal guy who had a fridge full of cow blood in IV bags.

Tony's head was swimming, so he laid back down on the bed and stared up at the water stains on the ceiling.

Roddie was gone longer than he meant to be, and when he did come back Tony was curled up on his bed, soundly asleep. The sight makes him smile a little, once he takes his pulse and maintains that Tony is simply asleep rather than dead or in a coma, and he opts to let him rest. He sets the food down on the counter and grabs one of the last blood bags out of the fridge, figuring he'd have to make due with a snack tonight. The portion was much smaller than what he needed for a proper meal, and the old cow's blood tasted bad enough to make him choke, but he sits down beside Tony's bed and sucks it down nonetheless. A good majority of the vampire population survived on blood taken from unwilling victims, who were left alive after the feeding was finished, but even that type of feeding made Roddie uneasy, and he preferred to drink from animals who weren't smart enough to be frightened by him.

So, he sits in silence next to Tony as he sleeps, watching his show on his laptop in his lap and sucking down the cow's blood like it was a juice box, waiting for him to rouse.

Tony wakes slowly, and for a long moment he forgets where he is, thinks he's waking up in his bed in his parent's estate, and he only starts awake because he feels like he must have overslept, and at any moment his mother is going to burst in, berating him for sleeping in and being lazy. He sits up, looking around quickly, and then his head pounds and he groans, his hands coming up to hold his head.

It takes him a moment to realize his mistake and remember what had happened, and he peeks out from between his fingers to look at the vampire who was sitting next to him, a laptop in his lap and a surprised look on his face.

"Oh, God," Tony groans, covering his face again and sinking back into the bed, "I wish I was dead," he mutters into the pillow.

Roddie starts a little when Tony sits bolt upright, and quickly closes his laptop and turns to face his guest.

"Hey, calm down. Is the pain really that bad?" he says, in his gentlest voice, not taking his meaning, "You'll feel better soon, you just lost a lot of blood. Here, this will help."

He reaches for the bag beside him and pulls out its contents - a now cold cheeseburger, some room temperature fries, and an apple pie strudel.

"Here," he says, "This'll help, especially the pie. You're gonna need some more sugar in your system. Well, I think that's right anyway. They give you cookies at blood drives, right?"

Tony peers over at the food, his expression disbelieving and verging on disgusted, unsure what the reason Roddie could possibly have for getting him real food and saving his life.

"I'm... fine," he says slowly, reaching out to take the burger like it's poison, peeling up one edge of the paper, "So... What, are you like, fattening me up or what? Going to lead me off and have a nice feast with your other vampire friends?" Tony's eyes are wide and bulging a little, not sure he actually believes that this guy is capable of that kind of scheming, but unable to come up with another explanation. It couldn't be that he's just a nice vampire who saved his life.

Roddie makes a face at his suggestion, half disgusted and half wounded.

"No, dude, what the hell?" he says, sticking his blood bag back into his mouth and drinking more, "What's the matter with you? A guy saves your life and you assume he's going to drag you off to a freaky cannibal ritual party? You're welcome, by the way, Jesus."

His tone was irritated, and his mind is on his wounded feelings rather than on minding his manners, so he doesnt notice when his teeth puncture the blood bag and he begins to make something of a mess.

"What would even be the point of making you fat, even if I was doing that?" he mumbles as he chews hungrily, his mouth half full of plastic bag, "Vampires don't eat people, we just drink blood. Making you fat wouldn't give you more blood...anyway, I just wanted you to get where you weren't falling all over yourself and fainting before you tried to go anywhere. And I kind of thought we could...you know, hang out for now."

"Hang out?!" Tony repeats, his voice getting screechy again, "You want to hang out with someone you found bleeding to death in the woods? What on Earth is wrong with you? You-- You don't know anything about me, you don't know--" Tony stops short of bursting out the truth about why he was there and where he came from, his mouth hanging open as he stared at Roddie.

After a moment he closes his mouth with a click, and he looks away, at the food.

"I... sorry. I didn't mean to offend you. I'm sure the food is fine," he picks up the burger apologetically and starts to eat it, not realizing how starving he is until he tastes food. HE starts shoving the food into his mouth, his hunger making him forget his manners.

Roddie flinches a little at the pitch of his voice, and only opens his eyes again once he's stopped screaming and settled into eating his food.

"It's fine," Roddie mumbles dismissively, still sulking slightly, "I just thought...I dunno, I don't meet a lot of people, I didn't think you'd mind hanging around here with me until you were able to get back on your feet, that's all."

He leans back against the wall, pouting as he finishes off his blood bag and throws it in the direction of the wastebasket near the bed.

"You're right, though, I guess, I don't know anything about you," he says, "How is it you know so much about vampires, anyway? Are you like, escaped livestock from that freaky travelling vampire cult that's been hanging around the woods, or something?"

Tony laughs in spite of himself, thinking that maybe that description wasn't too far off, if you added the word "hunter".

"No, I... I've... studied vampires," he hedges, anxiously feeling the raised brand on his wrist through his shirt. He knows he shouldn't tell a vampire he's from a family of hunters, but it's not as if he's going to kill Roddie and bring his heart back as proof of his first kill. Tony sighs, reaching for his sleeve and pushing it up until the brand is visible, a dagger through a bleeding heart.

"I was... on my first hunt last night," he says miserably, "And I couldn't. I couldn't do it."

Roddie immediately recoils in horror at the sight of the dagger, his pupils dialating wide in fear not unlike a cat's eye. Taking the exposure of the knife as a threat, hhe backs himself across the room into the corner. He recognizes the symbol - it was like the one etched into a blade his mentor Zakeef had shown him, which he'd told him he'd found plunged into the heart of his former love.

"Oh, fuck," he hisses, and as his mind races he berates himself internally for not realizing the obvious sooner, "Fuck, shit, fucking shit, that's - oh my God, I knew there were hunters in town and I didn't even...idiot!"

Realizing now that he had just welcomed into his home a member of a group of people who would like to skin him and wear him as a hat, Roddie jumps up, backing towards the door and locking it without taking his eyes off of Tony. With a shaking hand he grabs the closest thing he can find to defend himself, which happens to be his car keys, and he brandishes them in front of him as best as he can.

"Don't -- don't come near me, dude," he stammers, "I'll call the cops, I swear to God."

"Wait, wait!" Tony says, holding his hands out in front of him, shock and guilt turning his stomach at the palpable fear in Roddie's eyes. He'd expected some hostility and apprehension, but he hadn't expected such profound fear.

"I'm not... I don't want to hurt you. I don't want to hurt anyone!" he says, his voice taking on a desperate, panicking edge, "I didn't... I threw my weapons away. I was supposed to kill one and bring back their heart, to complete the ritual, but I didn't, I couldn't, and you..." Tony's voice gets rougher as he thinks about his failure, his entire wretched existence, "You should have left me there in that ditch."

After a moment of staring blankly at a box of cold French fries, he slowly gets up, unsteady on his feet and moving slowly.

"I'll just... I'll leave you alone. You won't see me again, I promise," he says, keeping his eyes on the ground and his hands where Roddie could see them.

Roddie feels panic churning in his gut. Tony seemed genuine, and he wants to believe that he's not a threat, but at the moment he had very little faith in his own instincts, and knew from the stories he'd heard that hunters could be ruthless manipulators when backed into a corner.

"Do you think I'm an idiot? If I let you go, are you gonna bring a bunch of your friends back and gut me in my sleep?" he says, swallowing down the lump in his throat, "You think im going to -- after talking about fucking...carving out people's hearts, you think I'm just gonna...I...God, I'm so fucking stupid, I can't afford to move again, I'm only scraping by because I don't eat, and now..."

His mind was spinning, racing desperately to come up with a solution and meeting dead end after dead end. He couldn't keep a human being locked up in his house, but he couldn't let him go. He definitely couldn't kill him, and he definitely couldn't up and relocate.

He hardly even notices when the tears start spilling out of his eyes.

"I won't go back," Tony says immediately, urgently, "I can't. They'll kill me if I show up now, they'll think I've been turned." He says, gaping even more when Roddie starts to cry.

"I'm sorry!" he bursts out, his own panic and fear making his voice shake, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-- I'm-- I'm sorry, just... just tell me what you want me to do and I'll do it, okay? I don't... I don't have any weapons, I'm... I can barely walk, right? Just... I don't... have anywhere to go, or any... friends... to help me, I swear."

Tony sinks back down onto the mattress, his exhaustion making his knees give out, "I'm sorry, God, please don't cry."

Roddie sinks down with his back against the door and pushes his hands back through his hair, trying to steady his breathing.

"I'm not crying!" he insists, but is undercut by his shaking voice, "I just...that's really sad if it's true, and I want to believe you, but I just...I can't, I need to...I don't know!"

He clutches his stomach, fighting the urge to vomit, and looks up at him mournfully.

"I-I'm sorry, God, why did you have to go and tell me!" he groans, "I can't just let you go, now, it's like, suicide, I...look, if you've really got nowhere to go and no friends or family who will take you, then just...stay here. I might have to tie you up and take away your phone, but I'll give you plenty of food and you can do whatever you want and you can watch TV, and I'll...oh God, I'm a fucking kidnapper now, I'm a criminal, I'm freaking out!"

"I don't have a phone," Tony says, shrugging, "It's fine, I won't... report you... or anything. It's only kidnapping if I don't want to be here, right?" Tony tries to smile but can't quite manage it.

"I'm sorry," he says, sighing, unable to meet Roddie's eyes any longer and pulling his sleeve back down over the brand, "I don't know why I... Told you. I'm sorry. I guess I thought you might... undo all the saving you did and then I wouldn't have to think about going home." This, too, comes with an attempted laugh but it comes out awkward and flat.

"They said you were monsters. Not just... people," Tony admits quietly, devastation in his voice, "I'm sorry. I didn't know. I'm sorry." He puts his face in his hands, guilt and self loathing overwhelming him.

Roddie eyes him uncertainly and doesn't comment, catching his breath and swallowing down the lump in his throat before hoisting himself up and crossing the room.

"Give me the knife," he says, extending his hand with his palm up, "And anything else you've got. I can't...Jesus, you want to come in here talking about monsters when you're the ones armed like you're going to war. You people really think a bite on the neck and a need to drink blood is going to turn good, rational, decent human beings into merciless...wild animals or something?"

"I don't know!" Tony exclaims, reaching down to unstrap the knife from his calf and put it in Roddie's palm. He pulls two hidden daggers from the heel of each of his shoes too, setting them on the floor within Roddie's grasp, glad to be rid of them.

"I don't... know. They said you weren't really... people. After you got turned. I..." he pauses, swallowing thickly, "I read books I wasn't supposed to. They said different things... About vampires, I didn't... I didn't know what was right, I didn't... I'm sorry." He curls up into his knees, covering his head with his arms and starting to hyperventilate. He was facing that everything he'd been taught was wrong, everything he'd been suspicious about and afraid of researching was real, and he'd been fed lies and propaganda to... To turn him into a soldier.

"Hey, no, come on, chill out," Roddie urges, with an anxious edge in his voice. He didn't want to be too kind, in case this guy really was just playing with his emotions, but he couldn't fight the sympathy he was starting to feel for him, "You didn't know, you were raised in one of those hunter cult societies I guess, right? I've heard about those, it sounds like...I dunno, you didn't know. Just take it easy, eat your french fries, take a nap or something. Take a nap. Watch some cable."

He tosses him the remote to his small, busted TV, and walks into the kitchen when he isn't looking to hide the weapons, still keeping his eye on him. He doesn't make any sudden moves, or run for the door, and Roddie felt somewhat reassured by this.

Tony can't help but smile a little at Roddie's gruff attempts at comfort, not really feeling any better about his situation but sure that he wasn't in any danger with Roddie.

He turns on the TV for a distraction, leaving it on the first thing that comes up. It's some kind of reality program with girls trying on wedding dresses, the kind of show his parents would never let him watch. Tony watches interestedly, idly eating the food Roddie had left, too dizzy and out of it to continue thinking about this horrible situation.

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