Chapter Text
Magic hummed through Tommy’s veins like he was an electric livewire.
He could feel the sigils on his arm glowing under his jacket, warming his muscles and keeping him quick as he jumped out of the way of the vampire’s swipe. Dried blood tugged against his cheek when he grimaced, the scratch the vampire had landed on him having already healed thanks to magic flowing through him.
This wasn’t the strongest vampire Tommy had ever fought. Honestly, this wasn’t the strongest vampire he’d fought this week. If anything, it was almost sad the way this guy struggled to lunge at him, breathing heavily like even just the slightest movement was hard for him.
Tommy sidestepped another attempted hit from the vampire. The silver dagger in his hand hummed with energy, and Tommy flipped it in his palm before darting forward.
The vampire grunted as Tommy pinned him to the wall, wincing when the blade came up to rest against his throat. Tommy waited for him to fight back. For the creature to snap at him with his pointed fangs, to struggle under his grip and shove him backwards.
But instead, as soon as the blade was against his throat, the vampire slumped against the wall completely limp. Tommy didn’t let up the pressure he had on the thing’s shoulders, but the lack of resistance was enough to make him pause.
“Why aren’t you fighting back?” Tommy asked, his voice muffled by the black metal mask covering the lower half of his face.
The vampire blinked at him slowly, swirling gold eyes quickly fading to dark brown as the adrenaline from the fight faded.
“You can kill me,” the vampire said in a hoarse voice. “I’m not going to fight it anymore. I’m too tired.”
Tommy frowned at the vampire. There were dark circles settled under the creature’s eyes, and although vampires were already pretty damn pale, this guy looked like his skin was made of paper. Tommy had been a hunter for a few years already, and knew the tells of a starving vampire. This guy hadn’t fed in a while, and it was a miracle he wasn’t acting like a feral animal.
He should kill the vampire. If he wasn’t feral now, he would be soon if he didn’t feed. And feral vampires were no fun to deal with. They barely registered things like pain and injuries, they could only think of one thing, and that was blood.
But the longer Tommy stared into the dark brown eyes of the weakened vampire, the easier it was to see the resignation in his gaze. He had accepted his death long before Tommy found him in this alley. Death wasn’t something he feared—it was something he wanted.
“Why?” Tommy pushed after a few beats of silence. “Why do you want to die?”
The vampire let out a weak laugh, but there was nothing joyful about the sound. “Why would I want to live? The only option I have is to hurt innocent people if I don’t wanna become a fucking animal, and I don’t really want to do that anymore. I think getting killed by a hunter is a bit kinder than starving to death.”
Blinking a few times in shock, Tommy struggled to process the vampire’s words. He didn’t want to drink from humans? That… While that wasn’t unheard of, it wasn’t a common sentiment to come across either. Especially not in older vampires.
“How old are you?” He asked without thinking. If he had to make a guess, he’d say this guy was under fifty years old. While this could be a trick on the vampire’s part, if he was being genuine in his empathy for humans, it meant he was likely very young for a vampire.
The vampire hesitated for a moment, eyes flickering over Tommy’s face before sighing. “I’m twenty-four.”
Tommy frowned. “I didn’t mean the age you were turned, I meant how old you actually are.”
The vampire nodded. “I was twenty-three when I was turned, and I think it’s been a year since then, so I’m twenty-four now.”
Oh.
Oh.
Holy shit.
Tommy almost dropped the silver dagger pressed against the vampire’s throat in his shock. This wasn’t just a young vampire, this guy was still technically a fledgeling. Although the Hunter’s had limited information on vampire culture and customs, it was rare to see a fledgeling out and about without a Sire to accompany them, and a vampire was considered a fledgeling for the first three years after being turned.
This guy was clearly alone. If his Sire was around, they would’ve shown up within two minutes of Tommy attacking the fledgeling. But here he was, pressing a knife to the fledgeling’s neck, and all Tommy could think about was how human his eyes looked now that they were no longer swirling with shades of gold.
It didn’t matter if he was young though. Tommy was supposed to kill all vampires that were found in the city limits. As a hunter, it was Tommy’s job to protect innocents.
But this guy… he’d been innocent too. Only a year before, he was one of the humans Tommy had been trained to protect.
And now he was asking Tommy to kill him. This guy seemed like he hadn’t wanted to be turned, which meant Tommy—and the Hunters as a whole—had failed at protecting him.
The realization hit him like a smack in the face. Tommy couldn’t kill him. He couldn’t kill this poor bastard who didn’t want to live this kind of life in the first place. He was only a few years older than Tommy. If Tommy had met him just a year earlier, they could’ve been friends.
With shaking hands, Tommy pulled the blade away from the vampire’s throat and forced himself to take a step back. The vampire slumped against the wall, looking like he was struggling to lift his head as he frowned at Tommy.
“What the hell are you doing?” The vampire asked, narrowing his eyes at him. “You’re a hunter, I’m a vampire. You need to kill me.”
What was Tommy doing? The vampire was right. Tommy was doing the exact opposite of what he was supposed to. He’d killed plenty of vampires before, so why was this guy any different?
Well, he knew the answer to that. Because this guy was so young. Because he wasn’t fighting back. Because Tommy couldn’t kill someone with eyes as human as his.
“It just… it feels wrong,” Tommy admitted, running his finger along the edge of his blade. “I’m guessing you didn’t want to be turned?”
The vampire shook his head. “No. I was attacked by a vampire and left to bleed out on the ground. I guess some other vampire came by and took pity on my sorry ass, because I remember a bloody wrist being pressed to my face and when I woke up I was alone, but I wasn’t human anymore.”
Tommy clenched his jaw. He was right. The Hunters had failed to protect him.
“I’m sorry,” Tommy apologized, and he was surprised at the sincerity dripping from his voice.
“Sorry I got turned, or sorry you can’t even do your job to end this miserable existence I’m trapped in?” The vampire asked, his tone turning sharp.
“Both,” Tommy whispered with a wince.
Silence fell between them. Tommy stared at the guy, shifting his dagger from hand to hand to try and figure out what the hell he was supposed to do from here. He couldn’t just leave the vampire, because it was obvious he didn’t want to feed, but if he kept starving himself he’d end up going feral.
He needed a way to get this guy some blood. Preferably not straight from a person’s neck.
Suddenly, a light bulb lit up in Tommy’s mind.
The Hunters had a blood bank. He’d only been down to the storage room twice, but he remembered the way all the same. Plus, if memory served him right, Eryn was going to be the one guarding the door tonight, meaning it wouldn’t be all that hard for him to get inside.
“Come with me,” Tommy said to the vampire, sheathing his knife and grabbing the guy’s wrist to drag him to the mouth of the alley.
The vampire yelped at the touch, despite the fact that Tommy definitely hadn’t grabbed him that hard. He yanked his wrist out of Tommy’s hand, cradling it to his chest like it had burnt him.
“Why? Where the hell are we going?” The vampire asked, eyes briefly flashing gold again.
“We’re gonna get you some blood—but from an ethical source,” Tommy explained, trying to ignore the screaming in his head telling him he was acting completely insane. “Can’t have you going feral, now can we?”
The vampire’s irises faded back to brown as his features softened, but there was still wariness etched into the lines of his face. “What’s the ‘ethical source’?”
“Walk with me and I’ll tell you,” Tommy said, gesturing for him to follow.
While the guy still seemed unsure, after a few beats of silence, he sighed and started walking behind Tommy.
“Can’t even get a fucking vampire hunter to kill me,” the guy muttered under his breath, shaking his head as Tommy led him out of the alley.
Snorting, Tommy glanced over his shoulder as they turned down an empty street. “Maybe try not being so pathetic next time. If you put up a bit more of a fight, I probably would’ve killed you without thinking twice.”
The guy shot him a dirty look. “I’m not pathetic! I’m just tired!”
“Yeah, I can tell,” Tommy said, slowing his pace a bit so they were walking side by side. “When was the last time you ate anyway, man?”
The vampire winced at the question, wrapping his arms around himself and looking at the ground. “...a while.”
An average, full grown vampire could roughly go a month and a half without drinking the equivalent of an entire human’s blood supply before they went feral. Fledgelings still had their own human blood lingering in their systems, so they could go nearly three months before going feral.
This guy seemed right on the edge of the tipping point between feral and not. If Tommy had to take a guess, he’d say it’d been at least two and a half months since this guy had had any blood. The downside of fledgelings being able to go so long without blood though was that starving weakened them far more than it weakened adult vampires. Again, this was obvious with how easy it had been to fight the guy.
Tommy didn’t say any of that though, because he could tell by the vampire’s face that he didn’t want to talk about the last time he fed. So instead, Tommy asked him something else.
“What’s your name?”
The vampire blinked in surprise. “You want to know my name?”
“Uh, yeah? Why else would I have asked the question, dumbass.”
If vampires could flush, Tommy assumed this guy probably would have. But he couldn’t, so instead he just ducked his head, like he was embarrassed.
“Sorry it’s just- I haven’t been asked for my name in a while.” The vampire took a breath to steady himself, and looked up again to meet Tommy’s eyes. “I’m Wilbur.”
“How the fuck did you only get turned a year ago with a name like Wilbur?” Tommy asked, chuckling a bit. “That’s such an old fucking name! If you had told me your name was Wilbur earlier, I would’ve assumed you were, like, five hundred years old or some shit!”
“I can’t believe I’m getting bullied for my name by a vampire hunter,” Wilbur complained.
“You deserve it with a name like that,” Tommy shot back, grinning at the exaggerated pout on the vampire’s face. “Also my name is Tommy, which is much cooler than Wilbur, for the record.”
Wilbur rolled his eyes. “I think Wilbur is way cooler than Tommy. Tommy is such a basic fucking name.”
“Excuse you, there is nothing basic about Tommy Careful Danger Kraken Innit.”
There was a pause, and Tommy saw Wilbur was raising an eyebrow at him. “There is no way that’s your legal name.”
“Is too, bitch!”
For the first time all night, Wilbur laughed in a way that didn’t sound painful. “You’re fucking with me. No parents would name their kid that.”
“You’re right, my parents didn’t name me that,” Tommy told him with a nod. “When I joined the Hunters, I didn’t have a birth certificate or anything, so they helped me file all my information. That meant I got to name myself.”
Suddenly, the small smile that had been growing on Wilbur’s face fell. “Why didn’t you have a birth certificate?”
Tommy shrugged. “That’s what happens when you don’t know who your parents are, big man.”
Wilbur’s brows furrowed together. “How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
“And how long ago did you join the Hunters?”
“Four years ago.”
“You were fucking thirteen when you joined the Hunters?!” Wilbur hissed, stopping mid step.
Tommy paused his walking, frowning at Wilbur. “Uh, yeah? The Hunters take in recruits as young as twelve, but we’re not allowed out on patrols until we’re at least sixteen, and then usually we have to be supervised by a senior hunter until we’re eighteen.”
Wilbur stared at him in blatant shock. Tommy didn’t see what the big deal was. It’s not like this stuff was a secret. Anyone could access public information like this if they wanted to. It just wasn’t advertised on billboards or anything.
“Why the hell are you alone then if you’re seventeen?” Wilbur asked quietly.
“Because I’m one of the best hunters at the academy, so they made an exception for me,” Tommy explained, flashing Wilbur a proud grin. “Plus, I’m turning eighteen in a few months, so it’s not like I’m that far off.”
Another silence. Wilbur shook his head, as if he was pained by Tommy’s words.
One second.
Two seconds.
Then, Wilbur sighed and resumed walking, and Tommy took that as his cue to keep going.
“I just can’t believe the Hunters recruit literal children,” Wilbur muttered, shaking his head.
“I’m not a child!” Tommy argued, frowning at Wilbur. “I don’t get why you’re acting so shocked. If you knew literally anything about the Hunters you could’ve found this out on your own.”
“Well, I never had much reason to keep up with the Hunters before I got turned,” Wilbur admitted, his voice getting softer. “And once I was turned, I was more focused on just trying to figure out how not to get killed by you guys.”
Once again, a pang of sympathy flashed through Tommy. In truth, he didn’t mind that Wilbur hadn’t known much about the Hunters before being turned. That was how it was supposed to be. They were invisible protectors of the city. Innocent people shouldn’t have to worry about getting killed by bloodsucking immortals on a daily basis. The Hunters worked from the shadows so they didn’t have to think about that stuff.
Speaking of, all it took was one more turn down an intersection, and the Hunter Academy came into view.
A grand, old building made of brick and concrete, the academy sat in the heart of the city. It was surrounded on all sides by spiked iron fence, guarding the green lawn that the hunters trained on. Through the bars, Tommy could see colorful targets still littered with holes from arrows and knives that had been thrown earlier that day—but there were no people out on the grass.
As soon as the academy came into view, Wilbur gasped and stumbled back several steps. Tommy reached out to grab his shoulder, not letting go even when Wilbur flinched violently at the touch.
“Why the fuck- was this some sort of trap?!” Wilbur asked, betrayal flashing through his eyes.
Shit. Yeah, maybe Tommy should’ve explained on the way over.
“Wilbur, look, it’s not what you think,” Tommy reassured, squeezing Wilbur’s shoulder. “If I wanted to kill you already I could’ve, remember? But I didn’t, so why the hell would I take you all the way over here if it was a trap?”
Wilbur was still breathing heavily, but the panic began to fade from his face as he took in Tommy’s words. “I still don’t understand what we’re doing here though.”
“You haven’t given me a chance to explain,” Tommy pointed out. “We have a blood bank here. Blood that’s been willingly donated by other hunters. I was going to try and get you a bag of blood to drink.”
“Why the fuck do you have a blood bank?” Wilbur asked, narrowing his eyes.
“Two reasons: one, we use it when a hunter has been injured and needs a blood transfusion,” Tommy began. “And two: we use it if a hunter gets turned.”
Now that seemed to shock Wilbur enough that he stopped panicking, instead shifting to confusion. “If a hunter got turned, wouldn’t you just kill them?”
Tommy recoiled. “What the fuck? No! We’re not monsters!” Fucking hell, was that really what the public thought about them? Or was it just vampires? “If a hunter gets turned, they stay in the organization. They feed on the donated blood, and continue their work hunting other vampires.”
“You make vampires hunt other vampires?” Wilbur asked.
“Well, usually they’re pretty pissed about being turned, so that’s the only thing they want to do,” Tommy explained.
“How many vampires do you have in the Hunters right now?”
At that question, Tommy winced. “Um, well, at the moment we only have one. He only got turned a few months ago.” There was a silent question in Wilbur’s eyes, and Tommy decided to answer it before he asked. “We’ve had others but they, uh, don’t usually stick around for very long.”
“They get killed fighting other vampires?”
Shoving down the bile rising in his throat, Tommy shook his head. “It’s usually… it’s hard, when you become the thing you’ve sworn to kill. It’s really hard for those guys.”
In his mind, Tommy could see the scene as if it was imprinted on the back of his eyelids. Dark, crimson blood pooling on the floor, the sizzling sound of silver embedded in an undead heart, bright teal hair streaked with red.
(Tommy could still hear Bad’s screams echoing through the academy’s walls.)
Understanding dawned on Wilbur’s face. “They kill themselves.”
Tommy nodded, squeezing his eyes shut to try and shake the image out of his mind. “But, um, yeah. We have blood banks for that too. So I’m gonna go try and get a bag or two for you.”
Sensing Tommy’s desire to change the subject, Wilbur nodded. “Should I come with you or-”
“No, no you don’t get anywhere near the building,” Tommy cut him off. “You just wait here. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Although Wilbur didn’t seem like he liked the idea of being left alone in front of the academy, he nodded anyway. “Okay. Just make it quick.”
Flashing him a reassuring smile, Tommy gave him a thumbs up. “I’ll be back in five minutes!”
With that, he jogged across the street, ignoring the way his heart was still pounding in his chest.
Tommy didn’t bother to pull his mask down as he walked up to the front gates of the academy. The two guards on either side recognized him without him needing to show his ID, and pushed the gates open without any words exchanged between them.
His boots slapped against the cobblestone path that led through the lawn and to the building itself. For the thousandth time that night, Tommy questioned what the fuck he was doing. He had returned from patrols like this hundreds of times before, but never with this sickly feeling crawling up his throat. He was about to steal from the Hunters. The organization that had clothed him, fed him, and taught him how to defend himself when he was nothing but a starving street rat. The Hunters had given him everything, and now he was going behind their backs to help a vampire.
But Tommy couldn’t kill Wilbur. He couldn’t before, and he certainly couldn’t now that he’d actually spoken to the guy. So this was his only option.
It was a weak excuse, but it was what Tommy was sticking to.
Pushing through the grand oak door that made up the front of the academy, Tommy found himself engulfed in shadows. It was late at night—the junior hunters were all asleep, and the senior hunters were either patrolling, or their shifts had ended already. Tommy was part of the latter group. His shift had technically ended an hour before, but he’d gotten caught up sparing a vampire with a stupid name, which he doubted would count as overtime.
Tall archways made of dark wood towered over his head. The plush rugs stretched across the floor muffled the sound of his footsteps, a fact Tommy was grateful for as he hurried towards the door underneath the stairs.
The door opened silently. Tommy was careful as he let it click shut behind him, finding himself facing a narrow staircase lit up by the weak glow of a yellow lamp. He hurried down the steps, pausing at the bottom to listen for the sound of voices moving echoing through the supply room.
There was silence. Tommy breathed a sigh of relief and hopped off the last step.
Rushing into the supply room, Tommy pulled his silver dagger out of his pocket. Silver daggers were cleaned and repaired at the end of every patrol, with hunters being given secondary daggers to hold onto for self-defense. The metal box covered in sigils and runes that had been scratched into the surface hummed with energy, waiting to log Tommy’s return of his dagger. But before he could return it, there was something he had to do if he wanted to get the blood for Wilbur.
Undoing his belt and sliding it out from his jeans, Tommy bit the end of the leather, before he brought the blade up to his elbow. He had to be careful where he made the cut—it had to look bad, but not actually be that hard to patch up.
After checking one more time to make sure no one was coming, Tommy dragged the blade down his forearm, his pained groan muffled by the leather in his mouth. Hot blood immediately began to drip down his skin, pain racing up his arm like living flames. Once he was sure it was big enough, he dropped the dagger and let the blood spill down his arm. The healing sigils on his arms heated up as their magic was activated again, and Tommy winced as he tried to push their power down. He needed to bleed for this.
Using his good hand, he opened the box for the daggers and dropped his inside, his ownership sigil glowing soft blue as it was registered by the box itself.
With his dagger returned, Tommy dug into his pockets for his roll of bandages. Before he started wrapping his wound, he pressed his arm to his shirt, biting down a yelp when he squeezed the edges to make it bleed more. After a few seconds he let go, and was satisfied when his shirt was sufficiently covered with blood.
Tommy wrapped the wound in gauze and stretchy bandages. The blood stained through the gauze, which was exactly what Tommy needed it to do. As the pain ebbed away, Tommy breathed a sigh of relief, and put his belt back on before doing a once over of himself in the mirror.
He looked pale, with a massive splotch of crimson staining the front of his clothes. The entire lower part of his left arm was also covered in blood, and Tommy wiped it off on his shirt for good measure. Although it would be a bitch to clean, Tommy wasn’t unfamiliar with getting blood out of his clothes, so it was probably salvageable.
After doing one more check around to make sure he hadn’t missed anything, he hurried out of the supply room, slamming the door behind him to announce his presence to anyone around. Turning away from the staircase he’d come from, Tommy hurried down the hall, shoving down the dizziness threatening to make his vision spin. He was fine. He hadn’t actually lost that much blood, and would feel better once he ate some dinner.
At the end of the hallway, Tommy spotted the door to the blood bank. It didn’t look that different from any other door in the building—plain oak wood with a silver door knob—but the guard sitting in front of the door was what made it stand out.
Eryn looked like he was half-asleep. He was leaning against the wall, eyes closed and a dark hoodie pulled up to cover his hair like a makeshift pillow. Tommy put a little more force into his footsteps, and Eryn’s eyes immediately flew open at the stomping sound that echoed off the walls.
As soon as Eryn spotted Tommy, his eyes widened, and he straightened off the wall to rush towards him.
“Holy shit, man! What the hell happened to you?” Eryn asked, reaching for Tommy’s shoulders as if to steady him.
“Something fucking stupid,” Tommy mumbled, slurring his words so he sounded more out of it than he was.
“Did you get in a fight?”
Tommy shook his head. “Nah, I was fucking around with my dagger and cut myself,” he explained, holding out his bandaged arm for Eryn to see.
Eryn blinked in surprise. “I wouldn’t expect you of all people to accidentally cut yourself with your blade.”
Yeah, that was the tricky part about pulling off this lie. Eryn had joined the academy only a few months after Tommy, and the two had been attached at the hip for most of their junior hunter training. Eryn had been there when Tommy scored perfect marks on his knife throwing tests, so he knew better than anyone that Tommy knew his way around a knife.
But Tommy had been allowed to graduate the juniors program early because of his high marks. Eryn was a bit younger than Tommy, and while he did well in his tests, he wasn’t at Tommy’s skill level. This meant he was still a junior hunter, and since Tommy had taken up a position as a senior hunter, the two hadn’t had much opportunity to spend time together.
As much as Tommy missed his friend, at this moment he was insanely grateful he and Eryn hadn’t talked for more than five minutes in the past three months. Because Eryn hadn’t seen him train in forever, and was more likely to believe his lie.
“I know, it was so fucking stupid! There was no one around so I was bored as shit, and decided to try one of those dumb ass tricks I used to do all the time. But then I fucked up and got a blade in my arm,” Tommy groaned, slumping against Eryn’s side.
“Shit, why the hell did you come here instead of going to the infirmary?” Eryn asked, grunting under Tommy’s weight.
“If I go to the infirmary, Dream will find out what happened,” Tommy explained, shooting Eryn a pleading look. “Then he might demote me back to a junior hunter!”
Eryn frowned. “You look like you lost a lot of blood. You need a transfusion.”
“Why do you think I came here, dumbass?” Tommy asked, raising an eyebrow. “Remember when I got stabbed that one time and was put on bedrest for a whole month? I still have the IV shit at my apartment, and I know my blood type so I can do it myself.”
That wasn’t necessarily a lie. Tommy did have IV equipment at his apartment that had been left there after he’d recovered from that stab wound. And if it ever came down to it, he knew how to insert an IV line. It was part of the medical training all hunters received in case they ever needed to do emergency field medicine.
“You want me to let you take a blood bag home with you?” Eryn questioned.
“Yes! You know Ponk always forgets to check out the bags for the infirmary, so if someone asks you can just say they’re the one who took it,” Tommy explained, gripping Eryn’s forearm.
Eryn grimaced. “Tommy, I don’t know-”
“I can’t let Dream find out about this, please Eryn,” Tommy begged, trying to put as much whine into his voice as he could. “I’ll owe you one, okay? I just- I really can’t get demoted, man.”
There was a pause as Eryn considered it. Tommy squeezed his arm, begging him with his eyes to give him the bag.
After a few seconds, Eryn sighed. “Fine. But you’re gonna owe me a favor, got it?”
Oh thank fuck.
“Yeah, of course, man. I’ll owe you big time for this,” Tommy said, grinning at Eryn as he propped Tommy up against the wall.
Tommy watched as Eryn pressed his hand against the sigil carved into the wood that locked the door. The sigil glowed gold, matching the identical sigil drawn on the top of Eryn’s hand, and there was a clicking sound as the door unlocked.
“Make it quick,” Eryn said, letting the door swing open and gesturing for Tommy to go inside.
Nodding, Tommy rushed into the room, his arm aching as cold air washed over him. The room was nearly a freezer, and Tommy ignored the way his breath formed small clouds in front of his face as he skimmed the shelves, looking for his blood type.
After a few seconds, he spotted the matching bag and grabbed it off the shelf. It was a large pouch filled with bright red liquid, and there was a second where Tommy considered seeing if he could grab two.
He quickly dismissed the thought though. The bag was far too large to hide under his shirt, and Eryn wasn’t stupid. He knew Tommy didn’t need two whole bags of blood.
It was fine. This would tie Wilbur over for a while—at least until Tommy could figure out an alternate solution for where he could get blood.
In the back of his mind, Tommy wondered why he had so quickly decided that he was going to find a long term solution for Wilbur. This would keep him from going feral for the time being, and that was Tommy’s only real obligation.
But it felt wrong to just give him one bag of blood and send him on his way. Not when it was clear he was just going to end up in the same place next month.
Brushing all that aside for now, Tommy left the blood bank, with Eryn closing the door behind him.
“Are you gonna be okay getting back to your apartment by yourself?” Eryn asked, frowning at him.
“I’ll be fine,” Tommy insisted. “You know me. I’m such a big, powerful man I could kill a vampire with one hand tied behind my back!”
Eryn rolled his eyes at the boasting. “Yeah yeah, I know, the ‘Big Man’ is so much better than us Average Joe’s. But if you become a juice pouch for a vamp on your way back, I’m telling everyone at your funeral that your cause of death was failing a knife trick.”
“You’re so cruel, Eryn! You’re supposed to make me sound like I was the coolest man ever at my funeral!”
“I’m not a liar though,” Eryn said innocently, and Tommy gasped.
“You are such a bitch!”
“A bitch who’s letting you steal blood,” Eryn snorted. “Now hurry up and get the hell out of here before someone sees you.”
Flashing Eryn a grateful smile, Tommy turned away to head down the hall. “Thanks, man!”
Eryn waved at him as he left, and Tommy nearly collapsed in relief as soon as he was out of Eryn’s line of sight. Fuck. That worked even better than he thought it would. If anyone but Eryn had been working that night, Tommy probably wouldn’t have gotten away with it. But Eryn had helped him out of sticky situations like this before. He was the friend that Tommy could call to hide a body, and Eryn would help him with no questions asked (though he’d probably make Tommy buy him dinner afterwards as a thank you).
Thankfully, Tommy didn’t run into anyone as he left the academy building. Instead of going back through the front gate to leave, he went to the much smaller back gate. It was one that was enchanted so you could only exit it and not enter it, so there was no need for a guard to stand watch.
Tugging off his mask and shoving it in his pocket, he sighed as the cool night air hit his flushed cheeks. Then, he pulled his jacket back on, wincing when the sleeve rubbed against his bandages. He hated lying to Eryn, but it wasn’t like he had much other choice. At the very least, the bile in his throat had subsided, and he could breathe easy again as he rushed back across the street with the blood bag in hand.
Wilbur was still waiting on the corner where Tommy had left him. He had his arms folded over his chest, and was hunched in on himself, as if he was trying to make himself smaller. The minute Tommy got close though, his head whipped up.
“What the hell took you so long? I swear to god you were in there for-” Wilbur cut off as a breeze blew from behind Tommy, ruffling his hair and sending the smell of Tommy’s blood straight into Wilbur’s face.
His eyes immediately began to glow gold, and Tommy cursed himself for not thinking about the fact that he was walking up to a starving fledgeling covered in his own blood.
Wilbur pressed a hand over his mouth, stumbling back a few steps as his glowing eyes flickered over Tommy’s left arm and the blood bag in his hand. “Wh- What the fuck happened?” His voice was muffled by the fingers pressed against his mouth. “Did you get in a fight?”
Although Tommy had already accepted he couldn’t kill Wilbur, his good hand drifted to the secondary dagger he had stashed in his pocket. “No. I had to come up with an excuse for why I needed a bag of blood, so I cut my arm.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” Wilbur exclaimed, still keeping his hand over his mouth. “Why the hell would you hurt yourself for me?”
“It was the only thing I could think of on such short notice! But that’s besides the point right now, because I need to know if you can make it back to my apartment without trying to rip my throat out or not,” Tommy snapped, wrapping his hand around the hilt of the smaller dagger.
Wilbur flinched at the question. “I’ll be fine. I just won’t breathe.”
With that, Wilbur dropped his hand from his mouth, although his eyes stayed gold and he didn’t move closer to Tommy. Tommy’s eyes fell to his chest, and noticed there was no rise and fall to it.
“Why were you breathing before? It’s not like you need to,” Tommy said, remembering the lessons the academy had given them on how trying to suffocate or choke a vampire wasn’t going to get them anywhere.
Wilbur shrugged, wrapping his arms around himself. “It’s a habit. Way harder to break than you think it’d be.” He spared one last glance at the blood bag in Tommy’s good hand before he looked back to the street. “So which way are we going?”
“This way,” Tommy told him, starting in a direction and trusting Wilbur would follow him.
They headed down the road, with Tommy doing his best to ignore the way his head was spinning the longer they walked. Maybe he had made himself bleed just a bit too much, but as long as he didn’t pass out during this walk, he would be fine. He just had to make it back to his apartment, then he could eat a chocolate bar and the dizziness would go away.
Thankfully there was no one else out on the streets at this hour, because Tommy wouldn’t have wanted to try and explain why he was walking down the street with a blood bag if they ran into anyone. The chilly night air threaded under his jacket, making goosebumps rise on his skin. He shivered, and Wilbur gave him a worried look, but didn’t say anything as they turned down another corner.
Finally, when Tommy was debating if he should sit down for a few minutes to catch his breath, he spotted his apartment building in the distance. The relief revitalized him enough to quicken his pace, and Wilbur picked up his own speed to match him as they hurried to the building.
The apartment complex wasn’t anything fancy, but it was far better than the dilapidated buildings on the edge of the city. As a junior hunter, Tommy had lived in the dorms of the Academy. Since he’d been promoted to senior hunter though, he’d gotten his own apartment paid for by the Academy, which was one of the best perks of being a senior hunter in his humble opinion.
Tommy had never had his own place to live until now. He’d always either been on the streets, couch surfing, or staying in the dorms with dozens of other hunters. His apartment was small, and maybe the sink had a leaky faucet that he couldn’t seem to fix no matter how many times he got Sam to try and fix it for him, but it was home and Tommy wouldn’t trade it for anything else.
Wilbur stayed close to his side as they walked through the front doors of the building, head down while he followed Tommy to the elevator. For their first few steps across the foyer, Tommy was relieved because he didn’t see anyone else around, and he really didn’t want to have to explain why he was holding a giant bag of blood with a strange dude walking next to him.
But then, Tommy’s luck of the night seemed to run out, because the elevator opened with a loud ding right when Tommy was about to press the button to call it.
Tommy found himself making eye contact with a pair of flat, purple eyes that he was all too familiar with. Purpled was Tommy’s neighbor a few doors down, and the two had chatted casually a few times when they’d caught the elevator together, but had never talked enough to be considered anything more than acquaintances.
Right stiffened as Purpled glanced him up and down, eyes lingering on the blood bag he totally couldn’t hide. He waited for Purpled to look surprised, worried, or even just plain confused.
Instead though, Purpled just blinked, his expression completely flat.
“Do I wanna know why you have that?” Purpled asked, holding the elevator door open with his arm.
Wilbur shrunk in on himself, while Tommy shook his head. “Nope. You don’t.”
Purpled glanced between Tommy and Wilbur for a beat, before shrugging and stepping out of the elevator. “Okay. See you later, man.”
“Later,” Tommy called, breathing out a sigh of relief as he and Wilbur took Purpled’s place in the elevator.
Purpled was the kind of guy who didn’t mess in business that wasn’t his to mess with. Tommy respected that about him, and it was very helpful for his current situation.
As the elevator doors closed and Tommy hit the button for his floor, Wilbur glanced up. “Friend of yours?” He whispered.
Tommy shook his head. “Just a neighbor.”
Wilbur nodded and dropped his eyes again. Tommy was still swaying as he stood, and he had to close his eyes when the light of the elevator was a bit too bright for his pounding head. He must’ve leaned a bit too far to the right, because there was a cold hand on his shoulder, and he jumped when he saw Wilbur was holding onto him to steady him.
Neither of them spoke. As soon as the elevator doors opened, Wilbur dropped his hand, and Tommy stumbled out with the blood bag pressed to his chest.
His hands shook as he unlocked the door to his apartment. Once he stepped inside though, he heaved a sigh of relief as he shoved the blood bag into Wilbur’s arms, stumbling forward to collapse face first onto his couch.
“Thank fucking god,” Tommy muttered, the red fabric of the cushion scratching his cheek. “I’m so goddamn tired.”
“Are you okay?” Wilbur asked while hovering in front of the couch, holding the blood bag with the same kind of caution someone would hold a gun with.
“I had to cut open my arm and bleed all over myself to get that blood bag for you. What do you think?” Tommy deadpanned, his voice muffled by the couch. “You better fuckin’ enjoy it.”
Wilbur glanced at the blood bag again, his eyes flashing gold the longer he stared at it. Tommy was surprised he hadn’t ripped the thing open the second they stepped inside the apartment, especially if he’d been holding his breath so he didn’t have to smell Tommy’s blood. Still, he hadn’t started drinking the blood yet, and instead kept glancing between it and Tommy like he was waiting for permission.
“Wil, my man, what’s the hold up?” Tommy asked, readjusting his head so his face was no longer squished into the pillow.
Brows furrowing, Wilbur shrugged. “I feel guilty drinking this when you’re, uh, not doing too well.”
Huffing, Tommy rolled his eyes. “If you’re that worried, go get me a chocolate bar from the kitchen. That’ll help me feel better.”
Although Wilbur still seemed unsure, he hurried towards the kitchen, the harsh fluorescents buzzing when he flipped them on. Forcing himself to sit up against the couch, Tommy squeezed his eyes shut again when the movement made the room spin, and waited until he heard Wilbur’s footsteps come back over to him to open them.
Wilbur was holding a chocolate bar in front of his face, along with a bottle of water he didn’t even realize he had in his cabinet. Muttering a thanks, Tommy took the chocolate and the bottle from the vampire, and tore the chocolate bar open before taking the largest bite he could out of it.
The sweetness exploded across his tongue, and Tommy sighed in relief as he slumped back against the cushions. He swallowed his mouthful and glanced back up at Wilbur, who was still standing in front of the couch like he wasn’t sure what to do now.
“I got my chocolate, I’m good,” Tommy told him, holding up the candy. “It’s your turn.”
“Uh, okay,” Wilbur muttered, frowning at the blood bag. “Should I drink it over the sink in case I spill or-”
“What kind of fucking vampire are you?! I don’t care! Just drink the fucking blood so I don’t have to look at it anymore!”
If vampires could flush with embarrassment, Tommy was sure Wilbur would be doing exactly that. He winced and hurried to the kitchen, making Tommy roll his eyes as he took another bite of his candy.
It was almost funny to watch Wilbur try to figure out the best way to drink the blood. First he stared at it for a solid ten seconds, his eyes flickering over it like he was looking for a place to poke a straw into it. Then, he started fiddling with the corner of the plastic, like he was debating tearing it open from the bottom and slurping it. If anything, it was a bit pathetic.
“Y’know I have cups,” Tommy said after a solid thirty seconds of watching Wilbur struggle with the blood bag.
Wilbur blinked. “Is it okay to use your cups for this?”
“Would I have suggested it if I wasn’t fine with it?” Tommy scoffed.
“Fair enough,” Wilbur muttered. He opened up the cabinet and took out a tall glass, setting it down before tearing open the corner of the blood bag. Tommy watched as thick, red blood filled up the glass, and noticed that Wilbur’s eyes had startled swirling with gold once more.
If Wilbur had grabbed a glass he couldn’t see through, it would almost look like he was just drinking soda or something. Tommy had seen vampires feed before. It was an animalistic affair of bared fangs and bloody throats. But Wilbur leaned against the counter like he was just a normal guy, sipping at his blood in exactly the same way Tommy sipped at his coca cola.
Except there were a few subtle differences. Of course there were the gold eyes, but there was also the way Tommy could see the tension leaking out of Wilbur’s shoulders with every gulp. He slumped against the counter, his eyes fluttering shut like he was a man in a desert who’d just gotten his first sip of water in days.
Maybe it was weird for Tommy to watch Wilbur drink blood, but it wasn’t like he got the opportunity to just watch a vampire drink without the whole, y’know, trying to kill them part. Once Wilbur had finished the glass, he poured the rest of the blood from the bag to refill it, and repeated the process to finish it off.
Once he was done, he set the cup down and dragged his hands down his face, letting out a sigh of relief. When he opened his eyes again, they had gone back to dark brown, and Tommy could already see the dark circles fading away.
“Feeling better?” Tommy asked, taking a sip from his water bottle.
Wilbur nodded. “Yeah, like, fuck man. I didn’t realize how bad off I was until now.”
Tommy had noticed. Despite Wilbur’s surprising amount of self-control, he probably had only been a few days away from going feral. Now though he should’ve been good for at least a week or two.
That didn’t mean all his problems were solved though. Wilbur was still a vampire with the potential to go feral. If Tommy wasn’t going to kill him, he better damn well make sure he wasn’t going to hurt anyone.
As Tommy tried to think over options in his head—because god knew he wasn’t going to be able to pull the trick he’d done tonight a second time—Wilbur stiffened and took a step towards the door.
“I should be heading out now I think,” Wilbur said, eyes darting between Tommy and the door.
Immediately, Tommy frowned. “What? No, you’re not leaving yet.”
Pausing mid step, Wilbur blinked at Tommy. “Um… look, I appreciate the help, but you’ve done quite a lot for me already. I don’t want to overstay my welcome.”
“You’re not overstaying your welcome,” Tommy said, standing up so he could properly look Wilbur in the eyes. “In case you forgot, I’m a hunter. I need to know where you plan on getting your blood from now on.”
Wilbur froze. “I mean, you don’t really want to hear that I’ll hunt, do you?”
Tommy huffed. “I don’t believe you’re going to hunt,” he corrected, raising an eyebrow at him. “You’ve been starving yourself for ages now. I really doubt you’re just gonna go hunt people again like any normal ass vampire.”
There was a beat of silence as Wilbur stared at him. When it became clear he wasn’t going to say anything, Tommy continued.
“You aren’t planning on hunting, are you?” Tommy then asked, his voice softer now.
A choking silence smothered the air between them. A silence that spoke louder than any words could.
“Look man, I can’t let you starve yourself. You’ll go feral at some point and probably hurt a lot of innocent people,” Tommy pointed out, frowning at him.
Wilbur squeezed his eyes shut, letting out a slow breath between his teeth. “I wasn’t planning on starving myself,” he said quietly.
“Then what were you planning to do?”
Opening his eyes again, Wilbur glared at him. Tommy met his gaze without flinching, because he wasn’t an idiot. He could read between the lines well enough to see what Wilbur’s intentions actually were.
“I told you I was tired,” Wilbur told him, his voice so low, Tommy almost couldn’t hear it. “And there are other hunters in the city besides you.”
Goddammit. If Wilbur had at least tried to lie, this wouldn’t be Tommy’s problem. But now there was a suicidal vampire standing in front of him who had been a human only a year before. While the Academy would say the only solution for this problem was the dagger still sitting in his pocket, Tommy had already made peace with the fact that he couldn’t kill Wilbur.
It just… it wasn’t right.
“I’m not letting you go out and get yourself killed. Especially not after I just fucking cut my arm open for you, asshole,” Tommy snapped, pointing at the lump of the bandage underneath his jacket sleeve.
“I didn’t ask you to do that,” Wilbur snapped back. “If you had just killed me in that alleyway, none of this would’ve happened!”
“Yeah, well I hate to break it to you, but I actually have a thing called compassion, so that’s why I did that.”
“You shouldn’t have any goddamn compassion for me!” Wilbur hissed, storming forward so he was right in Tommy’s face. “I’m a vampire. The thing you’re supposed to kill!”
Tommy didn’t flinch when Wilbur got up in his face. Instead, he just folded his arms over his chest, and met Wilbur’s eyes evenly.
“The hunters were supposed to protect you, and we didn’t,” Tommy said calmly. “I can’t undo that, and it sucks shit, but I can try to make up for our failure.”
Wilbur stared at him for a moment, his painfully human eyes filled with a deep kind of sorrow that hurt Tommy just to look at. He took a shaky breath, and suddenly, he was tipping forward and clutching the front of Tommy’s shirt.
“Please,” Wilbur whispered, head brushing Tommy’s chest, “if you want to help me, just fucking put me out of my misery. I don’t even have a future anymore, so what’s the point in going on with this?”
Placing his hands on Wilbur’s shoulders, Tommy pushed him away from his chest, but held him so they were back to being face to face.
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re on about, but you’re literally immortal now. All you have is future.”
Wilbur scoffed, like Tommy had told some kind of bad joke. “For the past year, I’ve had to live on the streets, hiding from hunters and trying not to kill people when I drink from them. I lost my friends, I didn’t have any family, and even if I did I’d outlive all of them. Why the hell would I look forward to an eternity of that?”
Shit. This guy was really in the gutter about everything, wasn’t he?
Again, Tommy knew he shouldn’t care. But he knew he’d never be able to live with himself if he did what Wilbur asked. This guy deserved a chance to live, even if he was undead. His chance at a normal human life had been stolen, and while Tommy couldn’t explain why, he felt like he had to make that up to him.
“Just… let me try to find you a blood source that doesn’t involve hurting people,” Tommy said, squeezing his shoulders. “Once we get that worked out, and you don’t have to worry about feeding, we can figure out where to go from there.”
The frustration slowly leaked out of Wilbur’s face, until the only thing left in the lines of his forehead was exhaustion. Not physical exhaustion, but something more. Something deeper.
“You’re the worst fucking vampire hunter I’ve ever met.”
Tommy gasped in fake offense. “Excuse you, I have some of the top scores at the Academy!”
“And yet you won’t even kill the vampire literally begging you to stab him,” Wilbur deadpanned, raising an eyebrow. “You’re really failing at your only job here.”
“Oh fuck off,” Tommy scoffed, shoving Wilbur back and dropping his hands from his shoulders. “Are you gonna let me find you an ethical blood source before trying to go get killed by a hunter or what?”
“You’re not really giving me much of a choice here,” Wilbur huffed, plopping down on the couch with his arms wrapped around himself.
“You’re right. I’m not.” Bending down, Tommy picked up a blanket off a chair he had shoved in the corner of the living room, and tossed it at Wilbur’s face. Wilbur yelped as he caught it, and Tommy ignored his glare as he set the blanket down on the couch beside him.
“What’s this for?” Wilbur asked.
“You said you live on the streets, right?” Wilbur nodded. “Well that’s not gonna work if I need to stay in contact with you about finding you an ethical blood source, so you can stay here till I work that out.”
Wilbur frowned again, although there was no real anger behind it. He opened his mouth to say something, paused, before glancing at the blanket in his lap.
He was silent for a moment as he picked at the threads on the corner of the blanket.
“I don’t understand you at all,” Wilbur muttered, shaking his head.
Tommy wished he could give Wilbur a logical explanation for what the hell he was doing. But frankly, he didn’t understand it either. All he could do was just go along with what his gut was telling him to do, because his gut had never steered him wrong before.
He decided to ignore Wilbur’s comment, and headed to the door that led to his bedroom. “I’m tired as hell so I’m gonna go to sleep. Don’t go through my shit, but you’re welcome to read anything on that bookshelf,” Tommy said, gesturing to the bookshelf that sat against the wall across from the couch.
“You know, I could kill you in your sleep,” Wilbur pointed out.
Tommy snorted. “Yeah, sure. If you even tried that, which I seriously doubt you would, I sleep with a knife under my pillow so I’m not that worried, bud.”
Wilbur’s face fell, and Tommy flipped him off before turning into his room, slamming the door shut behind him. Even though he wasn’t worried about Wilbur attacking him in his sleep, he locked the door to the room anyway, just in case.
And then, for the first time in hours, he was finally alone.
Slumping against his door, Tommy let out a quiet breath between his teeth. He had no idea what the hell he was doing. Nothing about his actions tonight made any damn sense, but it was like Tommy had lost all self control.
He couldn’t kill Wilbur. He couldn’t let Wilbur get killed by another hunter. He had lied to his friend to steal blood for a vampire he’d just fucking met that night.
It was insane. Tommy was well-aware of that. But if there was one thing Tommy knew about himself, it was that he was stubborn. Once he made a decision, he wasn’t one to go back on it, and he had decided back in that alleyway that he wasn’t going to hurt Wilbur.
Collapsing face first onto his bed, Tommy groaned into his pillow as he debated googling, ‘what to do if you find yourself stuck with a suicidal vampire?’ But he was too tired to bother grabbing his phone from his pocket, the blood loss still sending his vision spinning when he stood for too long.
He would be fine in the morning. But for now, all he wanted to do was pass out.
Maybe it should’ve been harder to fall asleep when he knew there was a literal vampire sitting right outside his door. But to Tommy’s surprise, it was only a few minutes before he was out like a light.