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The opposite of war isn't peace
by Nicola
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: violence, BDSM, character death
1.
"The sky is crying. No, it's bleeding. It's sliced open and it's bleeding dry…"
Pete's voice was low and magnetic. He wasn't speaking to be heard, but his was a voice that snuck inside your head anyway. Patrick rubbed at his eyes. He tried to focus on the monitor in front of him, but his vision was shot. Again, he glanced over at Pete, who was curled into a ball, his body molded into the worn fabric of the armchair. He kept flinching, tiny spasms, as if someone were taking a taser to the inside of his skin.
"…bleeding, won't stop bleeding…"
"Shut the fuck up," Joe mumbled. He was draped over the couch. He cracked open his eyes, mere slits, and then added, "Just shut up!" with a ringing note of frustration. He had been sleeping, or, more likely, just stoned and snoozing (real sleep had become a foreign concept for all of them) and Pete had woken him up.
"He's just cranky," Patrick interjected tiredly.
"No, I'm cranky," Joe burst out. "He's a fucking killing machine gift-wrapped in Pete's tattoos. And he needs to let the rest of us humans get some goddamn sleep."
Patrick envied Joe. He'd made his worldview carefully, painfully simple. Vampires were evil and the day Beckett had turned Pete, Joe had… edited him out. A splodge of white-out in his mind where his best friend had been. Of course, Patrick could tell Joe didn't view things as plainly as he pretended. Sometimes he'd catch Joe staring at Pete (new Pete, vampire Pete), transfixed, immeasurably sad. But most of the time Joe stuck to the pretense that Pete (the real Pete) was gone, and that, Patrick envied. All Patrick had was self-deception… and hope (same fucking difference).
Patrick closed his eyes for a moment, steadying his breathing as he waited for the angry tirade against Joe to recede from his mind. He continued, laboriously calm, "He just needs his cocktail. Then he'll be fine."
Joe snorted, but didn't say anything more. Patrick began moving to the fridge to retrieve Pete's super-fabulous, ultra-nutritious smoothie that would stop him from going Angelus on them all. As he retrieved the glass bottle, he felt a light tug at his sleeve.
Mikey.
"Let me," Mikey said quietly. He was all soft eyes, eager to help. "I'll do it."
Patrick hesitated, but Mikey broke into a lopsided smile. "He likes me. He won't make a fuss."
Patrick felt the stake through his chest, tiny splinters digging at his heart. "Yeah, okay," he said in a low voice.
Patrick watched as Mikey approached Pete slowly. He crouched down a few feet from Pete's chair and murmured something. Pete uncoiled slightly, his limbs still jumping erratically. He stared hard at Mikey, but Mikey merely pushed his glasses up his nose and stared right back. Carefully, he placed the bottle in Pete's hands. With an uncharacteristic calmness, Pete began to drink.
They'd found Mikey walking down the center of Sunset Boulevard at dawn. They'd called him John Doe 23 for weeks because he'd been unable to tell them his name. He'd been unable to say much of anything—except, Gerard; he'd said Gerard over and over, but the way he said it, you knew he wasn't saying his own name. Skeletal and beaten half to death, he'd looked like a refugee that had stepped right off the cover of Time. He'd been dressed in what looked like rags—until they'd looked closer and realized it was a regular t-shirt and jeans that had been shredded, completely shredded into ribbons of cloth.
"Hey 23, have some crackers, okay?" Patrick had said one morning, expecting only skittish silence as a response.
Mikey had responded with a clear, pure smile and said, "It's Mikey." He'd paused, squinting slightly as he considered. "23 makes me sound like a Gibson character. Which is cool. It's just not me." Then he'd taken three Ritz crackers.
Gerard was dead—worse than dead. It had filtered in to Patrick, through an online source, that he'd been recruited. ("They're recruiting people now? What the shit?" Joe had exclaimed, panic shooting his voice through the warehouse. Patrick had shush-ed him sternly.) Accounts varied, but it was alleged that Gerard had been caught up in a trap, a pre-arranged feeding frenzy. He'd been bitten, and then immediately made to sire over a hundred civilians. He'd become iron-strong, literally overnight. And now he sat at Beckett's right hand.
Patrick suspected that Mikey had come out of his catatonic state only after observing Pete. "He's a vampire," Mikey had said to Patrick on that first day he'd ceased being John Doe 23. "He's a vampire, but… he's okay." Excitement had sparked in his eyes and Patrick hadn't been able to extinguish such pure hope.
Mikey wouldn't listen when they tried to explain that putting Gerard on the cocktail simply wasn't an option. The blend they used to neuter Pete was tailor-made for Pete. It would take weeks to adjust it for a different vampire. Also, the circumstances were different. Pete had come to them; he'd fought tooth and nail against the monster inside him—a thin skin of humanity had remained, just barely clinging to him despite the Change. In order to dose Gerard, they would need to capture him, bring him back to the warehouse—risk being followed, risk being attacked by the very person they were trying to help. Most crucially, it was a different Beckett they were dealing with now; a different LA. If the sky had, in fact, begun to rain blood, it wouldn't have made Patrick wouldn't any more certain that Beckett wanted the vampire underworld placed firmly above ground. He was turning killing sprees into an art; a red tide of new vampires rising from the carnage. His reign over LA was tightening. Beckett had let Pete slip from his grasp for reasons all his own. As it was, there was a stalemate. Beckett considered them a mere nuisance, not a real enemy, but Patrick had a feeling that if they tried to take back Gerard, the situation could escalate to all-out war.
"And we won't win," Joe had said darkly, sucking hard on his joint.
One evening, Patrick opened Pete's coffin to find Mikey inside. He was curled around Pete, his glasses askew as his head resting on Pete's chest. His face was perfectly relaxed, exuding a calmness that Patrick found unnerving.
"Fucking freak," Joe spat when Patrick told him, and for once Patrick was glad of Joe's brutal honesty.
It became the norm for Mikey to sleep with Pete, the two of them cocooned away in a 6' x 3' box. None of them saw much daylight anymore. It was technically safe for them to be out on the streets during the day, but all of them seemed to have developed slight agoraphobia. More to the point, none of them wanted to be caught sleeping if a swarm of vampires found their den. As a result, they mostly kept the same waking hours as Beckett's crew. Still, the affinity that Mikey had developed for Pete's vampirism unsettled Patrick.
He didn't share his feelings with anyone else (not even Joe), but he held a deep-seated suspicion that the darkness had crept inside Mikey, perhaps irrevocably. Patrick had spent enough time observing vampires to realize there was more to their Change than a simple bite to the neck. Mikey was still human in a physical sense, yes, but he had changed the night Beckett had recruited his brother.
The thought niggled at Patrick continuously: why not Mikey? why not turn Mikey too?
2.
"You never go hunting anymore," said Mikey. He counted six days since their last hunting party.
"I know," Pete said in a low voice. "Patrick says it's too dangerous. Ever since—" He spat the words, baring his teeth, "—ever since Greta, he says it's not worth it anymore. Not worth the people we lose. He's just scared." Pete's gaze slid involuntarily across the warehouse. "He's scared and weak. City's still crawling with vampires. Someone has to fight back. We took out five vamps last time and only lost one of our people." Pete smiled bitterly. "They're not great numbers, but I'll take 'em."
Mikey nibbled idly at a cracker, making tiny bites around the edges. He and Pete were seated on the concrete floor in the darkest corner of the warehouse. It was almost dawn, and Mikey could feel the nerves jangling in Pete's body. He stopped eating for a moment, discarding the half-eaten cracker. He smoothed his fingers, messy with crumbs, over Pete's forearm, making slow circular motions. He leaned up and placed a soft kiss against Pete's cheek.
"If you don't fight, how are you ever gonna win?" Mikey murmured.
"Exactly." Pete's voice was harsh, venomous. He turned his head suddenly, so his lips were very close to Mikey. For a moment Mikey thought he was going to kiss him. Mikey could see the edge of his teeth, the sharp incisors that extended down, glinting in the half-light.
Pete swallowed hard and disentangled himself from Mikey's clumsy embrace.
"We'll go tomorrow," Mikey said quietly. He paused, smiled, and amended, "Tonight."
Pete was climbing to his feet. He cast a long look in Mikey's direction. "We?" he said slowly.
"You and me," Mikey said, smiling wider. We, Mikey thought proudly. He liked it; liked the taste of it in his mouth. He liked being on a side; part of something. Mikey saw the way the others looked at Pete: Joe's ill-disguised contempt; Patrick's tense distrust. But Mikey felt an affinity for Pete. Pete's mere presence made Mikey feel safer than all of Patrick's clumsy reassurances that things would work out.
Mikey could tell Pete was startled by the matter-of-fact proposal. "Okay," Pete said slowly, with uncharacteristic uncertainty. He hesitated a moment and then added, "Don't tell Patrick, yeah? I don't want to… worry him." The words, the kindness expressed, seemed to cause Pete physical pain.
"I won't tell," Mikey swore.
Secrets. He liked the taste of those, too.
Mikey had never gone hunting. ("Don't call it that. It's not hunting," Patrick would sigh, but Mikey could tell he didn't really believe what he was saying. Because it was hunting. They all had the bloodlust now—Mikey could sense it.) Perhaps because the others didn't consider Mikey one of them yet. Perhaps for other reasons.
"He's so fucking skinny." Darren had laughed. "Some vamp will whale on him and he'll break right in two."
They'd voted on it, because that's what set them apart from the Dandies (said Patrick); they were democratic. On the matter of whether Mikey should be allowed out to play, Joe and Darren had voted no immediately; Bob, Chris, Greta and Andy had made a show of deliberating, but one by one, they had each voted no; Patrick had voted yes, because he was relentlessly fair, and also because the motion wasn't going to pass anyway.
And Pete? Pete was sleeping. "He usually abstains, anyway," Patrick had said wearily. Joe had mumbled something under his breath. He and Darren had appeared noticeably smug about the vote's result. So much for democracy.
Of course, that was then. That was when they went out almost every night. Things had changed. Darren, for instance, now sat on his bed, hunched over in the lotus position, for hours and hours. Up inside his own head, with no reprieve. His sword, still bloody, was laid at his feet. He wouldn't let anyone move it, wouldn't let anyone clean it. He wouldn't talk to anyone. He scarcely ate. Pretty soon, he would be as skinny as Mikey.
They weren't much of an army. They couldn't even save their princess.
That evening it wasn't hard for Pete and Mikey to leave without the others noticing. Patrick was asleep, cartoonishly passed out at his desk, his head resting on a big pile of books. Joe was also sleeping. A thick cloud of pot smoke seemed to hover above the couch, like his own personal bad weather system. Andy was up on the loft level, with Bob and Chris. The noise of their swordplay conveniently covered the sounds of Pete raiding the weapons cabinet. Darren watched them leave. He just stared at them; he said nothing.
They set out on foot, because it would have been too much trouble to lift the keys to the car. Pete was a jumbled combination of excitable and tense. Mikey found Pete's mood rubbing off on him; he felt jumpy, yet more alive than he'd been in weeks.
"Feels good to be out, huh?" said Pete. Despite his nerves, he was strutting. He turned to Mikey, unconsciously baring his teeth a little.
"Feels good," Mikey echoed.
The streets were deserted. The darkness dialed everything into monochrome. With each step Mikey took, he felt his heart leap in his chest. It was a sensation like red, flaring across his vision.
The first vampire they saw was a Punk. His Mohawk created a long, almost comically spiky shadow. Pete reached out and pulled Mikey back round a corner. Pete flattened himself to the wall, gesturing for Mikey to do the same.
"Just the one," Pete muttered, "might be others nearby, but Punks tend to be loners, too fucking stupid to run in packs." He was thinking aloud, or, more probably, he was delivering his status report to an invisible Patrick.
Mikey reached out to touch Pete. A brief sweep of his thumb across the back of Pete's neck before he pulled his hand back. "You can take him," he whispered, warm breath hitting cold skin.
Pete hesitated, half a second in which he cast a sidelong look in Mikey's direction. Then he hurled himself forward. He was raw, discordant energy—nothing like the lackadaisical elegance of the Dandies. Still, as Pete delivered a spinning kick to the Punk's chest, righting himself easily as he half-cartwheeled against the wall, Mikey couldn't help but notice a certain grace to his fighting.
It was an unfair fight—gloriously so. The Punks were the weakest set of LA vampires. They mostly fed at the bars. Vampire epidemic or not, there would always be bars open in LA and always patrons to fill them. The tourists and morons who frequented these bars were easy prey, drunkenly lining up like lambs to the slaughter. The Punks did not hunt in the same way the Dandies did; they didn't even stick together like the Goths. Mikey thought that he could have taken this guy out himself, but it was far more exciting to watch Pete destroy him bit by bit. The way Pete fought, it was like snapping fingers; measured and exact, brutal and breathtaking to observe.
The Punk finally landed on the ground, falling like a lump of meat at the butcher's.
Mikey stepped out from his hiding place, tentatively drawing nearer. "Is he dead?" he asked softly.
"Nope." Pete shook his head, matter-of-fact. "Couple of pints of blood would revive him, a nice fresh kill." Pete was looking around, scoping out the area. After a moment, he stooped down, grasping hold of the Punk under his armpits. He began dragging him over to the entrance of the closest warehouse.
Mikey darted forward, pushing the warehouse's metal door open so that Pete could drag the Punk inside. Pete smiled darkly. "All we gotta do is put him where none of his friends will find him. Don't want any of them getting the bright idea of reviving him. Without fresh blood, he'll be shriveled skin within hours."
Mikey glanced up at the row of windows that lined the top of the warehouse's walls. "Or ashes," he added, "when morning comes."
Mikey continued to observe the warehouse as Pete set about concealing the Punk's body. His life, he realized, could be calculated as a series of warehouses. He wondered vaguely what that meant, metaphorically. Soulless, filled up with echoes and stale air; hard edges, rougher walls. He shivered.
Mikey felt Pete's eyes on him. The Dandies were into voodoo; vanishing acts and brainwashing. Mikey wondered whether that was A Vampire Thing; he wondered if Pete could get inside his head—
—if Gerard could—
"Why haven't you kissed me?" Mikey asked. He tilted his head slightly, meeting Pete's gaze, posing the question as more genuinely curious than petulant.
Pete's eyes were shadowy, impenetrable in the half-light.
"I didn't know you wanted me to," Pete replied, after a long pause.
Mikey almost smiled. "You did know. You do." He wasn't quite ready to let go of the mind-reading theory yet.
Mikey moved nearer to Pete. He could see the tension in Pete's body—like someone had threaded a cord of steel in place of his spine and was yanking him into an upright position. The fingers of his right hand clenched and unclenched unconsciously. There were bruises on his knuckles; they looked scuffed like an ill-cared-for toy.
Kiss me. Mikey reached out to touch Pete. Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me. He chanted it silently, willing Pete to read his mind. Mikey cupped Pete's face. Pete flinched slightly, but he did not move away. Pete's skin had the quality of touching glass; not ice-cold, but the kind of fundamental coolness that couldn't retain warmth. Of course, Mikey thought, glass can melt. It can heat up, melt down, reform.
Mikey brushed his fingers across Pete's jaw. Pete bottom lip was wet—an overzealous tongue. Mikey slid his thumb to the corner of Pete's mouth. He hesitated a moment before slipping it inside Pete's mouth.
Pete's body was still passive, his expression unreadable. Mikey allowed his thumb to bend at the joint, exploring Pete's mouth. He felt Pete's tongue rise to meet the pad of his thumb. Mikey smiled and pushed against Pete's tongue, which flicked restlessly against his thumb. Finally, Mikey ran his thumb along the edge of Pete's front teeth—lightly, at first, so it was like touching the dull edge of a blade. As he reached one of the sharp incisors, he pressed down hard.
Pete recoiled, and Mikey withdrew his hand from Pete's face, his thumb from Pete's mouth. Blood blossomed from the pad of Mikey's thumb, appearing bright in the grayscaled gloom.
Mikey paused for a long moment, examining the way his blood looked, spilling out of his skin. Then he put his thumb to his own mouth, sucking it between his lips. The blood tasted bold and bitter. It tasted better than stale crackers and expired orange juice.
Mikey moved closer to Pete once more, closing the gap between them, pressing himself into Pete's personal space. Pete's eyes were wide; he looked scared. He looked the way Gerard had looked, before the humanity had slid off his face. A speck of pain flared at Mikey's thumb. He felt the wetness of his own blood as he clenched his hand into a fist. Kiss me.
When he was with Pete, Mikey felt the rest of the world diminishing. In Pete's eyes he saw himself reflected large. It was a relief, that sensation of everything else fading away. No longer was he anyone's victim—anyone's brother.
Pete took Mikey's face in his hand—the bruised hand, the one that was messy and rubbed raw. He tilted Mikey's face carefully. Mikey licked his lips; he could feel his body slackening. Pete kissed him, slowly, so that Mikey could almost taste his sadness. He was incredibly gentle—infuriatingly so. It was a kiss for a summers day.
He kissed back, harder. His tongue pushed inside Pete's mouth; its tip nicked the edge of Pete's incisor. He pushed harder, his tongue squirming against the sharp point of Pete's tooth. When Mikey pulled away, breathlessly, it was with a mouthful of blood. His tongue burned with a pain that felt bright and bold.
As they resumed kissing, Mikey felt Pete's gentleness dimming into something less compromising. His hands began to roam Mikey's body more freely; Mikey allowed himself to yield, dissolving into Pete's touch. He moaned against Pete's mouth. As Pete yanked at his limbs, clawing his body parts into alignment with his own, Mikey did not cry out with pain. When Pete slammed him backward against the wall, Mikey savored the crack of his bones as they connected with concrete.
Pete finally wrenched himself away from Mikey. He was quivering, a slight tic making the muscles in his shoulders jump. Mikey could see traces of blood smeared across his mouth. Mine? Mikey thought in awe.
Pete was staring at him again, but his fear had changed to something feral; something close to anger, close to desire.
"I want you to tie me up," Mikey said clearly.
"What?" Pete's nervous tics stilled.
"You have rope in your bag, right?" Mikey leaned his head against the wall. He felt small and broken, but there was power in the way Pete was looking at him. He continued, "Along with the knives, the stakes… you have rope." His voice faded to a murmur. "Tie me up." His voice came back, hoarse but strong. "Tie me up and fuck me."
"Mikey—" Pete choked out. "Mikey, I could hurt you, you know I could—" He wiped at his mouth and the blood smeared across the curve of his wrist.
"You won't." Mikey reached out to grasp Pete's hand. He pulled him close once more. "I trust you." He brushed the back of his fingers lightly against Pete's neck, close to where dual punctures had healed badly into rubbery white ridges. "Now go get the rope."
The rope that the Dandies had used to tie up Gerard had been old and dirty. Mikey remembered the way it had left dark smears across his chest when they'd bound him. Mikey thought about the curve of Gerard's arms; the soft exposed skin revealed by a yank of his wrists. If he concentrated, he could hear the scream exploding breath outward from his throat.
It's funny, Mikey thought vaguely, because Gerard wasn't a fighter. Even when they were kids, he had never lashed out. Mikey had gotten mad at Gerard once or twice, a swift kick to the shins before running to tell Mom. Gerard had merely looked at him with sad, reproachful eyes as he had rubbed at his bruises. But the day Beckett's crew caught him, he had struggled hard; fought harder than Mikey would have guessed possible. When the vampires had finally succeeded in pinning him to the wall, his arms had stuck out at sharp angles from his body, like a doll that had been unnaturally repositioned.
Mikey had hidden. "Go," Gerard had hissed desperately. "There, in the corner." Mikey had hidden—because he was a coward. He was weak and pathetic and frightened. He'd pulled a cardboard box around himself, folding his limbs inside its cube. Through a slit in the top of the box, he'd watched the vampires descend on the warehouse. Hours had passed, stretching and unraveling so all his senses collapsed in on themselves. The ritual, the countless sacrifices—these things spun around him, leering into the darkest crevices of his mind, combining with his nightmares.
When finally—finally—it was over, Mikey had thought he heard a voice rising above the clamor.
"Let him go? No! He'll be the final sacrifice. A final nail in Gerard Way's proverbial coffin. Or better yet! A delicious treat for you, Master."
Beckett had sounded almost bored as he had replied to the overzealous vampire. "I said no. Just leave him."
The sycophant the others called Brendon was doing a poor job of concealing his frustration. "But why—?"
"He's the bait," Beckett had explained coolly. "No, better than that. He's the hook. We'll draw him back soon enough."
Mikey didn't know whether to believe the conversation. So much of that night was a blur of nightmare and delusion. But true to the voice he thought he had overheard, the vampires had not harmed him. Beckett's crew had slowly drifted away, until only two figures had remained. Mikey hadn't heard what Beckett had said to Gerard in those final moments before dawn; his ears had only been able to produce a ringing sound. Mikey had blinked and they were gone.
The sun had risen and he'd staggered out of the warehouse. He hadn't realized he had been clawing at himself until he looked down and saw only rags in place of his clothes.
The rope that Pete used to bind his hands behind his neck was clean. It was new; it smelled like plastic and woodshavings. It was from a hardware store a few streets over that Andy and Joe had looted weeks earlier. At first the rope felt slippery against his skin—its texture only felt rough as Pete pulled it tight around his wrists.
"Tighter," Mikey said.
Mikey turned to face the wall and dropped to his knees. Pete was behind him now. He placed his hands against Mikey's shoulder blades for a moment and Mikey could almost imagine his touch was warm. He pulled the rope tighter.
3.
"We should go and look for him," said Patrick. He paused. He shook his head slightly and amended, "Them. Look for them."
"They should be back by now," Joe replied tonelessly.
Patrick was exasperated. "I know. That's why we have to—"
Joe cut in heavily, "They should be back by now and they're not."
Joe seemed about to say more and then didn't. Patrick was glad he chose not to elaborate on exactly what might have happened to Pete and Mikey.
"We should go anyway…" Patrick's voice was strained; equal parts obstinate and desperate. He looked up at Joe, meeting his eyes only briefly. "Please. It's almost dawn. Most of the vampires will have cleared out."
"Fine," Joe said at last. "But just the two us. I don't mind dying for John Doe 23 and his vampire fuckbuddy, but I don't want the others going on a fucking kamikaze mission."
Patrick's lips formed into a wry half-smile as Joe handed him a taser gun. "Just us," he agreed.
They walked south for a few blocks, until the warehouse district opened up into a residential area. Most of the families were gone. (Not dead, necessarily—this was a nice area; most of them had the money to hightail it to a better city.) They'd left behind big, dollhouse-style properties, perfect squares of front yards that were now growing wild. A dog (once a beloved pet, but now driven feral?) ran down the street towards them, hurling itself forward in crazed leaps and bounds. Joe readied his taser, but the dog careened past them.
They reached a small play area at the end of the street. Just a slide and a swing set. It was deserted. Patrick imagined the laughter and yelling of children. By comparison, the silence felt tight and overwhelming. He suddenly felt immeasurably sad.
"Let's not go any further," Patrick said quietly.
Joe seemed about to argue. (Good Joe; solid, dependable Joe, who, in the very end, would do anything for his friends.) Then he saw the look on Patrick's face and he sighed. He moved his shoulders into a shrug and walked over to the swing set. He sat down, resting his gun between his knees.
Patrick took a seat on the swing next to him. The sun was just beginning to rise. Soft pinks and oranges peeked up over the horizon. The darkness was receding, and it made Patrick irrationally feel better. Patrick knew that things were no less terrible when the sun shone, but compared to the dull ache he attributed to watching the sun set, sunrise felt indescribably wonderful.
Joe began rummaging in the pockets of his hoodie. He withdrew a joint, already rolled, and proceeded to light it. As he breathed out a cloud of smoke, the familiar pot smell wrapped around Patrick, warm and strangely reassuring.
Joe held out the joint to Patrick. It was a cursory gesture; Patrick knew that Joe expected him to say no. Patrick didn't smoke. Not often. He just didn't entirely trust that the drug wouldn't take something away from him. The thought unnerved him. "Control freak," Joe had said with a smile, the first time he'd offered Patrick a hit and Patrick had demurred with too many words.
This time, Patrick reached out and took it. He held the joint to his lips hesitantly. He tried to mimic Joe, the unthinking ease with which he toked. He ended up coughing a little, but not too badly. He took a second drag and a mellowing numbness began to spread through his mind.
Joe smiled at him. Patrick could sense a teasing remark resting on his lips, but Joe held it back. That was what Patrick liked best about Joe, maybe: his restraint; his kindness. Even before, Patrick had always known that Pete possessed the innate ability to hurt him. Pete's urges to hurt were unthinking, misplaced; like a kid plucking the wings off an insect, just to see how it would fly. Patrick realized with certainty that Patrick would never hurt him. Patrick smiled back at Joe. They passed the joint back and forth until it burned down to a stub.
The sun was fully up by this time. It was a glorious, cloudless day in Los Angeles and they were the only ones left to enjoy it.
"Do you think things'll get better?" Joe asked. His voice was heavy with irony; they were all wary of expressing anything like optimism these days.
Patrick remembered Pete asking him a variation on the same question many months (a lifetime) ago. Patrick let his eyes drift shut momentarily, losing himself in marijuana-calm and happy memories. He remembered sunshine, a new morning, and lying in bed with Pete—no, not in bed, lying on the bed, fully-clothed, because their relationship had been innocent, so perfectly innocent.
This was before Beckett. Back when the vampires had seemed a mere oddity of a relentlessly strange city; no more harmful than the crazy hobos who roamed Sunset, drunkenly brandishing sticks and hurling warnings of the forthcoming apocalypse. At that time, vampires held all the glamour of an urban legend. The vampires were no more threatening, no more real than the things in Pete's nightmares (the things that it had always been Patrick's job to protect him from).
Pete had wrapped his arms around Patrick in the early-morning sunshine; in a pleading whisper, he had asked for reassurance. On that day, in that perfectly-contained moment, it hadn't been difficult for Patrick to say, "Yeah, everything will be okay."
Patrick opened his eyes and looked over at Joe. "No," he said truthfully. "I think it will get worse."
The happy memories were fading from Patrick's mind. Moments of peace with Pete were slippery, hard to hold on to—rendered almost unreal. Instead, Patrick's mind tended to replay Greta's death, over and over, until his synapses stung with the sensation of loss. Darren had been fighting two vamps, thrusting forward easily with his sword. He lacked Andy's finesse, his skill—but these days there was no time for extensive training. Greta had approached from behind, intending to give him cover. Darren had made a wide sweep with his sword. He'd missed the vampire, but sliced Greta's head clean off. Patrick could still see it hideously rolling in circles on the tarmac. Apart from the blood (god, so much blood), it had looked almost like the head of a defective store mannequin, even down to the look of slight surprise preserved on her face.
"I think we'll die one by one," Patrick said. "I think some of us will become vampires. I think given the choice between dying or going to hell, some of us will choose to become vampires. I think Mikey will turn on us. I know Pete will turn on us. He can't not."
Patrick exhaled hard. He felt spent, empty—all of his fears laid bare.
"I think you're right," Joe said slowly. "But we'll keep fighting. We'll get another few months, maybe. Or maybe it'll be more like weeks. Days, if we're unlucky." Joe's face cracked into a sloppy, painful grin. "And we are. Unlucky. Really fucking unlucky."
Patrick couldn't help but smile. "Yeah. We've got today at least. Until the sun goes down." He squinted, calculating. "Sixteen hours, maybe."
"Mmm," said Joe. "Today is good."
Joe leaned over. He grasped Patrick's upper arm with his right hand. He wobbled slightly, the swing making his movements unsteady. Joe's gun fell to the ground with a thud, but he did not move to retrieve it. Patrick shuffled forward, scuffing his Converse against the woodchip-covered ground. Awkwardly, he helped to align their upper bodies. Their knees banged painfully, and Patrick made a grimace-smile. Joe's hand had snuck across Patrick's shoulder. His fingers now coaxed at the nape of Patrick's neck. Patrick savored the closeness, the seconds of pre-kiss anticipation as their noses bumped.
Their kiss, when it finally happened, was awkward, unsteady—and deliciously warm; full of the optimism neither of them was entirely ready to let go.
July 2006
Muse music: 'Black Tangled Heart' by Silverchair. And, uh, RENT, obviously.
Note: Written for the first DYW fic exchange. Thank you to Jessa for the kickass beta.
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