Five Years
by distira
"Hi, I'm Luis." He waits for the chorus of Hi, Luis before he continues. "It's been, uh. A couple years, now. Five, I think. It's been five years."
Luis usually zones out during meetings. They aren't mandatory- no parole officer ever told him he had to go or anything like that. Attending is something he's been doing since he first changed- since Uruguay, when his mother had to drive him two hours to the nearest meeting, and even though they couldn't really afford travelling like that once a week, she'd insisted because she thought it would help him stay human.
"I was nineteen," he says. "In Uruguay, living with my family, and one day I stayed out playing football too long and on my way home-" Luis coughs. He doesn't go into any more detail than that. Most of them at the meeting have heard the story before, anyway. It was what he'd talked about two months ago, and there wasn't exactly a swelling population in Amsterdam. "Anyway, my brother, he uh. He hates leeks, but we never threw away food because there were seven of us kids, so. Yeah, so whenever my mom cooked anything with leeks in it, he gave them to me because I couldn't really taste anymore." He pauses. "In a way it was easier after I changed? Because then mom didn't have to get as much food. But I always ate my brother's leeks so that we weren't wasting food. It's not like I go grocery shopping very often now-" He laughs a little, and a few of the group follow suit. "But when I do I always buy leeks."
"Thank you, Luis," the group leader says. Luis nods and sits down.
He's never been exactly sure why the meetings are run the way they are. None of them are addicts, they just. Aren't human. Luis guesses it was this or activism. There are a few activist groups floating around, more here in Amsterdam than back in Uruguay, but Luis has no interest in joining them. As long as he can keep going to work and has his little house and can watch football on the weekends, he doesn't really care about the legality of it all.
Mostly Luis comes to the meetings because of his mother, but it's nice to know that there are others.
On his way home, Luis stops at the corner store to pick up a few bottles of AB+.
He isn't sure why AB+ is his favorite. He thinks it's maybe because that was his blood type back when he was still human, but he doesn't really care. This part, going into a store and sifting past beer cans at the refrigerators in the very back until he can find the right bottles, this is the strangest part of his life still.
They didn't sell it in Uruguay.
Well, they did at first, and then they didn't. They stopped selling it and they kicked Luis out of school and rumors had been flying that they were setting up separate communities so that vampires wouldn't come in contact with people. Luis left before that happened.
Here, he buys his bottles of AB+ and goes home and watches a few episodes of House.
"Hey, how's it going?" Luis aims a disarmingly bright smile at Maarten, who shakes his head.
"Same old, same old," Maarten says. He and Luis have been in the same program at the university hospital since Luis moved to Amsterdam. "Getting reassigned today."
Luis frowns. Oddly, he's liked working in the maternal care unit for the past few months. "Yeah? Where are you?"
"Anesthesiology," Maarten tells him. "The list was emailed, didn't you check?"
Luis fumbles for his phone. He saves an email from his brother and deletes two from his landlord. "Oncology ward," he reads.
The first thing he does is volunteer to take the graveyard shift. "I don't sleep much," he explains.
Luis keeps a garden.
It's not a big affair. He doesn't read any gardening magazines, and he only has basic cable so he doesn't watch any shows, either. But every few days he likes to go outside and pull up weeds and keep things tidy. Mostly he grows herbs. He likes the way they smell.
Most of the patients sleep during Luis's shift. He wanders through the ward on rounds every now and then. He couldn't find any AB+ at the corner store this week, so his water bottle is full of B+, instead. It doesn't taste as good.
"Hello?" Luis turns around. There's a guy wearing street clothes peering out of one of the doors. "Can you help me out for a second? Sorry," the guy says.
"Sure," Luis answers. He smiles. Relief breaks over the guy's face and Luis goes into the room.
"It's stupid," the guy says. "He was watching TV and then he fell asleep and I can't figure out how to turn it off."
"No problem," Luis shrugs. He takes the chair from next to the bed and stands on it to reach the power button that's hidden on the back of the TV.
"Thanks," the guy says. Luis clambers down from the chair. "I'm Wesley. That's my brother, Jeffrey."
"I'm Luis," Luis says. He puts the chair back next to the bed. "You an insomniac or something?"
Wesley shakes his head. "Nah, just had some coffee after dinner."
"If you want," Luis offers, "I can put a pot on in the break room."
At group the next week, Luis listens to someone named Klaas talk about not having seen his son in three years. When he gets home, he putters around the garden for a while, pulling up a few dandelions, and then he sends an email to his brother. skype sometime? he asks. miss you.
He knows it's stupid, but Luis fills up two thermoses of coffee before he starts his rounds. He pretends to sip at one (he likes the smell of coffee just fine, but it's too acidic for his taste. He tried mixing O- in it once but it ended up more disgusting than it began) and carries the other in the crook of his elbow.
"You a caffeine addict or something?"
Luis grins, all teeth and dimples. "Maybe," he says. He puts his clipboard down on the hook outside the door and offers the second thermos to Wesley.
"I guess you'd have to be, working this shift," Wesley ponders. He takes the thermos and salutes Luis with it before drinking from it.
"Eh," Luis grunts noncommittally. "Not really."
"Insomniac, then?" Wesley holds the door to his brother's room with his foot. He leans against it with one shoulder. He's shorter than Luis.
"Something like that," Luis says, thinking of how he only has a futon in his bedroom and he cat-naps a few times a week when he has nothing else to do.
Wesley takes a step back into the room but he keeps holding the door open. Luis hesitates for a moment, but steps over the threshold when Wesley quirks the corner of his mouth into something like an invitation. He pretends to take a sip of his coffee and runs his tongue over his teeth as he puts the thermos down.
When he first changed, he thought that somehow his teeth would, too. They didn't, not really. His front teeth still stick out and overlap just slightly. It makes for an awkward angle on the rare occasion that he actually wants to use his canines.
"You okay?" Wesley asks. Luis realizes he must've been contorting his face to touch his teeth. "You don't have to- I just thought. You know, it'd be nice for both of us to have some company or something."
"Yeah," Luis says. He smiles, almost wide enough to see his canines. "I'm good. Are you? If you're good, I'm good."
Luis likes cop shows and hospital dramas. He also likes the occasional daytime soap opera, but those usually aren't on at two in the morning. Wesley tends more towards game shows. He doesn't like Wheel of Fortune very much, Luis learns, but his favorite is Cash Cab.
It usually reruns a few episodes at a time between one and three, so Luis comes into the room then. They watch it with the volume on low and sometimes Wesley misses the answers to questions. (Luis always hears them, but most of the time he pretends he doesn't, unless Wesley looks particularly disappointed.)
"We were in New York once," Wesley says one night. He points at his brother, sleeping on the bed. His skin is pale and almost translucent.
He has leukemia, which Luis knows from filling out his charts. He thinks it's ironic that he spends most of his time now with a leukemia patient and his brother.
"Did you go on Cash Cab?" Luis asks. Wesley snorts.
"No, do you know how many cabs there are in that city?"
Luis doesn't.
"Thirteen thousand eight-oh-seven," Wesley tells him. "That's how many. Besides, we walked."
"Why were you there?"
On the screen, the host asks a group of drunken girls who wrote the Declaration of Independence. They don't know.
"Jeffrey had a football trial, or spot in the draft, however it works over there," Wesley says. His face lights up, proud. "New York Red Bulls."
Luis thinks of kicking a football around in his back yard in Uruguay, how he always wanted to be a striker but sometimes he'd have to be keeper for a match or two to appease his siblings. Sometimes, when Luis watches football on the weekends, he thinks to himself I could've done that. If everything had been different, he thinks.
"Nice," he says, and lets out a low whistle. Wesley laughs.
They fall into a habit of "When we go to New York-" and "But when we're on Cash Cab, we're taking the video bonus, okay" and even though Luis knows he can never go to New York, because America just updated their vampire rights laws to prevent foreigners from visiting or immigrating (rumor was that they'd been having problems with Canadian vampires, according to one of the women at Luis's group), it's a nice thought to settle in to.
One night when Luis comes to Jeffrey's room, Wesley is sleeping.
His legs are kicked out in front of him and he's slumped in the chair. His head lolls back and rests precariously against the edge of Jeffrey's bed. He looks- small, Luis thinks. He looks small. His arms are crossed over his stomach.
Luis stands next to him for a second, contemplating waking him up, but decides against it.
Instead, he puts the extra cup of coffee on the table next to the chair and retreats.
He comes back a few times over the course of his shift. Wesley shifts positions once or twice, turning onto his side (his shirt rides up a little bit and Luis catches a glimpse of muscled abdomen that isn't as pale as it should be for late winter in Amsterdam) and then uncrossing his arms. The next time he comes back, Wesley is gone, but there's a post-it note on the empty travel mug. thanks, i owe you one now, it says. Luis folds it up and puts it in his pocket.
"What do you do during the day?" Wesley asks one day.
Luis shrugs. He thinks, garden. Go to meetings. Buy blood at the corner shop. "I Skype my family sometimes," he says.
"In Uruguay, right?"
"Yep."
"Why'd you leave?"
Jeopardy is on the TV. Jeffrey has extra tubes sticking out of his arms tonight. Wesley looks tired. Luis shifts uncomfortably.
"Was it for school?"
It's an out, but Luis doesn't take it. "No," he says carefully. "It was, uh. Because they were going to make laws putting vampires into separate communities."
"Yeah, I heard about that, but- oh," Wesley says. Luis watches him for a reaction; after a second, Wesley smiles. "So that's why you don't sleep, yeah?"
Luis smiles, big and bright enough to match the grin that splits Wesley's face open. Luis thinks, I want to see him smile like that all the time. "Yeah," he says. Keeps smiling.
"So that coffee I owe you," Wesley says. "I'm gonna guess it won't actually be coffee, then."
"Hi, I'm Luis," Luis says. The group repeats it back to him like they do every time he speaks. "Five years and a few months."
He fidgets. "I told someone, last week," he says. "A human. He, um. I met him at work. He didn't ask or anything, I just didn't want to lie. And it was nice, I guess. It was good. He didn't make a big deal out of it." Luis shoves his hands into his pockets. "His name's Wesley. I think he might prefer Wes, but I'm not actually sure. He said he wanted to buy me coffee." He takes a deep breath. "His brother's dying, and I feel really shitty about that. Because I could- you know. Change him. But I can't. And it sucks."
"Thank you, Luis," the group leader says.
Luis sits down. He feels better and worse at the same time.
"How is it, in oncology?" Maarten asks one day when they both show up to the hospital early to do paperwork.
Luis thinks of going to Jeffrey's room every night and watching Cash Cab. He thinks of the way Wesley's forehead scrunches up when he thinks really hard about something. He thinks of how he brings a thermos full of AB+ for himself and a travel mug of coffee for Wesley every night now.
"It's good," he says.
"What are you doing later?"
It's a Friday night- well, Saturday morning. Luis shrugs. He's wearing scrubs and white orthopedic-looking shoes. Wesley's wearing jeans and an Ajax sweatshirt with frayed cuffs; he's pushed the sleeves up and Luis can see the goosebumps on his arms. "I dunno," he says easily.
"I could take you for that coffee," Wesley says quietly. "Or breakfast, or whatever. If you want."
"I do," Luis says. He smiles at Wesley. Wesley smiles back.
They go to a diner.
There are florescent lights and black and white tiles and the menu is full of greasy, fried things that Luis would've killed to be able to eat back in Uruguay.
"What do you eat?" Wesley asks. "Super rare burgers? Raw steak?"
Luis laughs. "Nah," he says. "I prefer small children."
Wesley looks appropriately shocked for a second, but then Luis's deadpan fails and they both crack up. "Seriously, though," Wesley pushes.
"Nothing, really," Luis says. "I mean, I can eat, it's not a physical thing? I just don't need to."
Wesley orders eggs and toast. Luis orders the potato leek soup that's listed under the specials for the day.
"Potato leek?" Wesley asks. His eyes are crinkled at the corners. Luis wants to reach forward and smooth them out with his thumb.
"It's a thing," Luis says. "My brother." He waves his hand around.
"Jeffrey likes cream of mushroom," Wesley says.
"That's disgusting," Luis says, and then worries that he's overstepped an unspoken boundary. Relief washes over him when Wesley cracks a grin.
"Yeah, I tell him that all the time," Wesley shrugs. "What can you do?"
Luis thinks of Jeffrey lying on his hospital bed with tubes sticking out of his nose and arms. He thinks of how easy it would be, just a few minutes and then Wesley's brother would be walking again. Jeffrey's B+, Luis knows from looking at his charts.
He can't, though. He promised his mother he wouldn't, and Luis keeps his promises.
They fall into a routine.
Luis likes routines. He likes visiting the rooms in the oncology ward in a specific order each night (he always goes to Jeffrey's last, so he can stay there after he's checked the charts). He likes that he and Wesley go to breakfast every few mornings. He likes that sometimes Wesley falls asleep while they watch Cash Cab. He takes to bringing an extra blanket to Jeffrey's room. He usually just drops it unceremoniously over Wesley when he gets up to finish his rounds but sometimes, if the air conditioning's on high or Wesley isn't wearing a jacket, he actually unfolds it and spreads it over the Dutchman.
"Do you not get cold?" Wesley asks him.
"Nope," Luis says.
"Are you already cold? Like, always?"
"Nope," Luis says. Wesley reaches over from his chair and puts his palm on Luis's forearm. Luis can feel the blood rushing under Wesley's skin. "I just kind of stay the same all the time, I guess." Wesley's fingers curl around his arm, gripping it.
"Okay," Wesley says. His voice is quiet.
"You're warm," Luis says, just to have something to say.
"'Cause of the blanket," Wesley tells him. "Thanks for that."
"No problem," Luis shrugs. Wesley's still holding on to his forearm. Luis reaches up with his free hand and presses his thumb to the crinkles at the corner of Wesley's eye.
"What are you doing?"
Luis drops his hand. "I don't know," he says. "I've wanted to, so."
"Okay," Wesley says. He lets go of Luis's arm, but when he sits back down and Luis resettles beside him, perched on the bedside table, Wesley puts his hand on top of Luis's folded ones and keeps it there.
A week later, Luis pokes his head into Jeffrey's room and the bed is empty.
It takes him about fifteen minutes to track down his charts and jog to the ICU. He has the unit number scribbled on the back of his hand in felt-tipped pen, but he doesn't need it, because Wesley's pacing the hallway.
"Hey," Luis pants. He puts his hand on Wesley's shoulder. "Hey, are you okay?"
Wesley looks exhausted. There are dark circles in rings under his eyes and he looks paler than usual. Worry lines are creased into his forehead. Luis rubs his thumb over the bone of Wesley's shoulder.
"Is he okay? Do you know anything?" Wesley's voice is hoarse.
What Luis knows is that Jeffrey's blood hasn't smelled right since the first week he went into the room. What Luis guesses is that he's got a week or so, before-
"I. Wes, I'm sorry," Luis says, and it kills him that he can't go into the ICU and fix this.
Wesley crumples forward and Luis locks his arms around Wesley's torso, holding him up. "Okay," Wesley says. His voice is more of a whisper than anything. Luis thinks he might be trying not to cry. "Okay."
They still go to breakfast.
"What do you do?" Luis asks. He eats a fruit cup and has a water bottle of AB+ on the table next to his plate. "Like, normally. For a living."
Wesley pokes at his omelet. "I teach," he says. "And I coach the football team."
"I used to play football," Luis says. "Before."
"Could you not, after?"
Luis eats a strawberry. "No," he says. "I mean, I guess here I could, but not in Uruguay. South America changed a lot of laws. The one for football was about unfair advantage, I think."
"Is there one?"
"Nah," Luis says. He offers a piece of pineapple to Wesley. Wesley takes it and chews on it slowly. "I'm not any faster now than I was before."
"Can I," Wesley starts to ask as they get up to leave. "Where are you headed now?"
"Home," Luis tells him. "You can come."
Luis fumbles his keys a few times before jiggling the front door unlocked. His house is small but fairly bright, with lots of windows that Luis usually leaves open. He likes to watch the sun come up when he's awake early. Wesley stands in the doorway, stiffer than Luis has ever seen him, while Luis goes around the house closing the windows; he doesn't want Wesley to get too cold.
"You can come in," he says. "There's food- not a lot of it, but you're welcome to whatever you find."
The kitchen is just a breakfast table with one chair, a stove, and a refrigerator. Luis pulls one of the living room chairs up to the table. Wesley sits down, and Luis takes a water bottle out of the refrigerator. He goes to the potted plants lined up by the window and sprinkles water in them. His basil plant is starting to unfurl its leaves.
"What do you grow?" Wesley asks.
"Herbs, mostly," Luis tells him. "Basil, rosemary, the usual. They smell good."
"Do you smell…extra?" Wesley asks.
Luis sits down in the living room chair and leans back. "Kind of. I can smell blood, always. But apart from that, it's pretty normal? Like how when you haven't had a stuffy nose in a while and you can smell everything."
He remembers back in Uruguay, right after, how he thought he'd be faster and stronger. He remembers challenging his brothers to arm wrestling over and over again, losing each time.
"Do you cook anything with them?"
"I make leek soup with dill sometimes," Luis says.
Wesley looks away when Luis drinks some AB+ straight from the bottle. Luis realizes that he's always had it in an opaque water bottle, never something see-through like the jug it comes in.
"Sorry," Luis says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
"It's okay," Wesley says. He looks at the tiny bit of smeared blood on Luis's knuckles. "Does it taste good?"
"I like it," Luis shrugs. "It was my blood type, before, so it's my favorite now."
"Do you think," Wesley asks, "that if Jeffrey had some- some good blood or something, that he'd get better?"
Luis puts the bottle back in the refrigerator. He can't look at the bald hope in Wesley's eyes so instead he focuses on Wesley's hands, folded together on top of the table. His thumbs twitch every now and then.
"No," he says. "Not drinking it. But Wesley, the hospital's probably already tried transfusions."
"I know," Wesley says. He sounds tired again. "You can call me Wes, you know. Only my mother calls me Wesley."
Luis sits back down. "Well, I'm not your mother."
"No," Wesley says. He reaches forward and smears the blood around Luis's knuckles with his thumb. "You aren't."
Luis squeezes Wesley's hand and thinks, don't ask me to do it, because I would.
"So," Luis says. "There are these group meetings that I go to." Wesley looks at him expectantly. "There's one today," Luis continues. "It's usually just- well. Vampires. But if you want to come, you can." He thinks, say yes. He thinks, I want you to hear what I have to say.
"Are you talking?"
"Mmhmm," Luis says.
"Okay. I'll come."
"Hi, I’m Luis," Luis says. He sees Wesley fighting back a grin as the group choruses his name back. "Five years, four months." He looks at Wesley for a second and then looks down at his hands. He makes fists and then releases them. Takes a deep breath. "When I was still in Uruguay," he starts. He stops to swallow. He feels hyper-aware of everyone watching him. "I, uh. We didn't live in a great area, and my brother's fiancé one day, she uh. She was in a drive-by, basically. This was right after I changed, and I felt like I had to so something, I guess. In my head it was like because I could do something, that meant I had to. Change her, I mean. I thought I had to. 'Cause she wasn't going to make it.
"I was going to, but then my mama came outside. She saw everything and she freaked out- I think she thought I was just going for the blood, but I'm not really sure. Anyway, she pulled me away and that afternoon we went to my first group meeting. I promised her I wouldn't ever change anyone."
Wesley looks at him strangely as he sits down.
"Thank you, Luis," the group leader says.
"I would never ask you," Wesley tells Luis as they leave the meeting. He's quiet, but his voice doesn't shake. Luis forces himself to look at him. He sees only apology in Wesley's eyes.
"I know," Luis says. "I just. I don't know. I wanted you to know."
Wesley takes a week off of work. He sleeps on Luis's couch, and Luis gets used to him padding around the house in sweatpants and no t-shirt. His shoulders are broad and his back is muscular and Luis finds himself coming downstairs early to watch the way his skin looks golden when the sunrise hits it.
"You coach, right?"
Jeffrey's still in the ICU. Luis has a feeling that he'll stay there, until. But he isn't positive, because he and Wesley mostly sit outside the unit. Luis can't smell Jeffrey from this far away.
"Football? Yeah." Wesley's flipping through the sports section of the newspaper.
"Can I come to a game?" Luis asks.
Wesley looks up. He smiles at Luis, but it only takes up about half of his face. "Sure, yeah," he says. "It'll be nice for the kids to have someone come watch."
Luis asks around the hospital and finds out that Jeffrey doesn't have much longer.
"Do you want to know?" He asks Wesley one night. They're sitting outside of Jeffrey's room. Wesley leans his head against the wall and drums his fingers on the arms of his chair. Luis paces the hallway. He wants to change out of his scrubs.
"No," Wesley answers. "Let's go to breakfast, okay?"
They go to the diner and stay there until noon. Their waitress is new; she frowns when Luis pulls out his water bottle full of AB+.
"Hey, man!"
Luis waves into the computer at his brother. "Hey," he says. He smiles wide enough for all of his teeth to be visible. "How's it going?"
They babble for an hour about nothing, about how Luis's other siblings are doing. About Uruguay. Luis learns that there's a new activist movement springing up in the cities, trying to get visitation rights for vampires and their families. They talk about school, how his brother works two jobs to pay for tuition because the rest of their siblings are too young to help out and his mom can't take on any extra shifts.
"Poli sci," he says when Luis asks what his major is. "Gonna write some new laws for you."
"Keep me posted," Luis says. His chest feels constricted. He kind of wants to cry. "I'll come visit as soon as I can, okay?"
His mother comes on after a little while and tells him that he looks pale. She asks if he's been eating enough and if he's still going to group.
"Yeah, I am," he tells her. "I brought a friend a few weeks ago."
"A friend?" She asks. Her lips purse. Luis knows it's a question.
"Wes," he says. "He's. He's Wesley."
His mother smiles at him. He has her dimples. "Good," she says. "I'm glad you have him."
He doesn't tell her that it isn't like that. If anyone in his family ever had any type of special power, it was his mother. Luis doesn't question her.
"I love you," he tells her. "I miss you."
"Hi, I'm Wesley," Wesley says. Luis keeps his eyes on him the whole time, does his best not to blink. "I'm not, uh. I'm human." They make eye contact and Luis nods at him a tiny bit. "My brother. He died yesterday night. He was sick." Wesley speaks in short sentences, taking long pauses. Luis makes eye contact with him and holds it. "He was a football player, before. Had a trial for an American team and everything. Even when he was sick, we always watched matches together. I guess-" He pauses again, takes a deep breath. Luis is white-knuckling the arms of his chair. "I don't know what to say. His name was Jeffrey."
"Thank you, Wesley," the group leader says.
Instead of sitting back down, Wesley picks up his jacket and heads for the door. Luis doesn't think twice about following him.
"Hey," he says. He finds Wesley leaning against the door of his car, breathing like he'd just run a marathon. "Hey, are you okay?" It's a stupid question, but Luis doesn't know what else to ask.
"No," Wesley says. Luis reaches for him and lets Wesley push his face into his shoulder. "Can we go to yours?" Wesley asks. Luis nods. He reaches into the pocket of Wesley's jacket and grabs his keys.
"I'll drive," he says.
"You can come to the funeral, if you want," Wesley offers.
Luis unscrews the cap to his bottle of AB+ and then puts it back on. He repeats the action a few times. "I don't want to intrude," he says quietly.
"Please," Wesley asks, and Luis tells himself that it's because of how desperate Wesley sounded that he said yes even though he knows he'd probably say yes to anything Wesley asked of him.
"Okay," he says. "I'll be there."
It's a somber affair. Luis has only been to one funeral before, his brother's fiancé's. He puts on a suit and sits next to Wesley, who gives a speech and doesn't cry.
He doesn't cry through the whole ceremony. He doesn't cry afterwards, when people line up to express their condolences to him and his family. Luis feels awkward, sitting in a pew in the back and waiting for Wesley to extract himself.
Wesley and his mother come over to him after most of the other guests have left.
"This is Luis," Wesley says. Luis reaches out and shakes Wesley's mother's hand. "He was, uh. He helped take care of Jeffrey."
Wesley's mother does cry. Her face is broad and open and motherly and she pulls Luis into a hug as a few tears drip out of her eyes. She gathers him to her and hugs him tightly. "Thank you," she says. She releases him and tries to smooth the wrinkles out the sleeves of his suit.
They go to their diner, still wearing their suits. They don't talk much; Luis doesn't know what to say.
Wesley doesn't cry until they get back to Luis's house. Luis waters his herbs and gives Wesley his privacy for a few minutes, and then he pulls a few beers out of the refrigerator and goes into the living room.
Luis doesn't get drunk; it would take a lot more than a six-pack to get him anything beyond tipsy. Wesley does, though. He's a sleepy, clingy drunk. They watch reruns of Cash Cab and Wesley drapes himself over Luis's shoulders and falls asleep halfway through the third episode.
Leaving him on the couch with a blanket isn't an option. Luis nudges him awake until he sits up, and then he half-drags, half-carries Wesley up the stairs and unfolds the futon. He brings some blankets and a pillow out of the closet and drapes them over Wesley. He takes the couch for himself, not sure if Wesley would appreciate waking up next to him.
He wakes up to Vanna White muted on the TV. He looks around groggily for a second, legs tangled in the blanket, before realizing that he'd been asleep.
"So I guess vampires do sleep," Wesley says. He's sitting somewhere near Luis's feet. Luis sits up and blinks rapidly a few times.
"Yeah, sometimes," he shrugs. "Mostly when we're bored."
"You didn't have any Advil, so I went and bought some," Wesley tells him. There's a plastic bag from the corner store sitting on the coffee table. "I got you some, well. I got you something to drink, too." He seems uncomfortable talking about the blood. Luis doesn't entirely blame him. "You like AB+, right?"
"Right," Luis says. "How'd you know?"
Wesley shrugs. "It says so on the label of the bottles you drink."
He doesn't seem to want to talk about Jeffrey, so Luis doesn't ask. Instead, they have breakfast (toast for Wesley, AB+ for Luis) and Wesley borrows Luis's car to go to work.
"The kids have a match this weekend," he says before he leaves.
"I'll be there," Luis tells him. Wesley smiles before he gets into the car.
The pitch Wesley's team plays at is nicer than any of the pitches Luis had played on in Uruguay. Mostly he'd played in the streets, but there was a dirt field a few blocks away and when he started playing in school, they sometimes travelled to play other teams who had grass growing on the pitch.
This one is nice, green and cut evenly, with stark white lines.
Wesley's team wears light blue, so Luis feels in place with his sky blue Forlán jersey that his brother had saved for a year to get him for Christmas.
The pitch is behind the school. There's one set of bleachers. Most of the spectators are parents, wearing school sweatshirts and caps. Luis stands next to the bleachers and jumps up and down cheering whenever Wesley's team is on the ball. He heckles the ref like they used to back in Uruguay and one of the parents asks him which player is his kid.
"None," Luis says, startled. "I'm, uh. Friend of the coach." He grins sheepishly.
The woman shrugs and smiles and tells him it's nice to have more fans coming out to matches.
"Tell Coach Sneijder he has all of our sympathies," she says. Luis nods. He thinks of how Wesley doesn't want to talk about it and thinks, not yet. He'll tell Wesley once he's calmed down, maybe.
"Of course," he tells the woman.
Wesley's team wins. The other team protests because one of Wesley's players stopped a shot with his hand.
"He's going to be upset," Wesley says as they drive home.
"No," Luis says. He's buzzing with energy. "He kept the team in it. He should be proud. They had a chance on the penalty, it's not like it went unpunished."
"Strong feelings, yeah?" Wesley says. "You have any personal experience with getting handballs?"
Luis laughs. "My brothers made me play keeper sometimes, so, you know. The reflex was there."
"Were you any good?" Wesley asks.
The truth is that Luis was really good at football. He was good enough to seriously think about going to trials in the cities and actually making a living. He was good enough that his mother took an extra shift at work to pay for him to play for a travel team the year before he changed. He was good enough that he felt guilty for having changed, for not being able to play anymore, because football was going to be their way up.
"I don't know," he shrugs. "I guess."
"We should play sometime," Wesley suggests. He sounds cautious. "Jeffrey and I used to practice together a lot. It was fun."
Luis reaches over the center console and puts his hand on Wesley's thigh. Wesley's warm even though his jeans. Luis squeezes lightly. "That'd be nice," he says.
Luis buys an extra toothbrush and puts it in the mug in the bathroom. Some of Wesley's clothes make their way into Luis's closet. When he goes grocery shopping, Luis finds himself picking up foods he knows Wesley likes along with his leeks and AB+.
They don't talk about the hospital. Luis doesn't tell Wesley that there's another patient in Jeffrey's room, a younger kid whose blood doesn't smell quite so stale. Wesley starts sleeping during Luis's shift, but he sets an alarm in time to meet Luis at their diner for breakfast before work a few times a week.
"Hi, I'm Luis," Luis says. The group echoes him. Wesley isn't there this time; he's come to a few since he spoke, but his team sometimes has games during the meetings. Luis doesn't mind. "Five years, five months. I talked to my mom yesterday. We don't talk a lot because she doesn't have a computer so we can only Skype when my brother comes home from university. She wanted to make sure I was still coming to group so I told her I'd talk today." The group laughs with him. "I, uh. You remember Wesley. He's the first person I've gotten close with, since changing. Like, I've been able to make friends, but he's the first person that I'm actually tight with.
"It's nice, but it's also scary? 'Cause you know, what happens when he gets old and I don't? I mean, I know we get old eventually but it takes so much longer and with Wesley it's like- we're on the same wavelength, and I want it to stay that way, so. I don't know. It's a day by day thing, I guess, but I just wanted to say it because saying it makes it more real."
"Thank you, Luis," the group leader says. Luis sits down.
They play football on the pitch behind Wesley's school.
It starts off as one-on-one, chasing each other all over the pitch and taking horribly placed shots. Wesley takes the ball to a corner flag and practices corner kicks for a while. Luis heads two of them in properly. They take penalty kicks, and Wesley makes Luis play keeper until Luis doubles over on the ball and refuses to let him have it back. He gets all five of his penalties past Wesley.
They play with each other, too, one touch passing all up and down the pitch. Wesley's passes are crisp and precise.
He dribbles into the box, Luis trailing behind him, and dodges an imaginary defender before firing a perfect back heel to Luis, who takes one touch and slams the ball into the top corner of the empty net. He runs towards the corner flag with his arms out, hollering like a kid. Wesley follows him, and when Luis turns around, it's perfectly natural for him to jump into Wesley's open arms, wrapping his legs around Wesley's waist and crushing Wesley's head to his chest.
"Hey," Wesley pants. "Hey, you have a heartbeat."
Luis stops hollering. "I do?"
"Yeah, it's just really slow," Wesley says. His ear is pressed to Luis's sweaty t-shirt. Luis laughs.
"Awesome," he says, and when Wesley picks his head up, it's perfectly natural for Luis to bend down and kiss him.
Wesley's lips are chapped. Luis scrapes his front teeth over Wesley's bottom lip more on accident than anything, and Wesley jolts his head back.
"Sorry," Luis says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He feels self-conscious, still clinging to Wesley. Wesley's hands span his back, holding him up.
"Do you have fangs?" Wesley asks, and Luis thinks, oh. He grins, wide enough that all of his teeth are visible.
"Yeah," he says. He flicks his tongue up to his canines. "Those ones. Not the front ones."
"Okay," Wesley says. He leans into Luis's space and whispers against his cheek, "don't use them, okay?" before he kisses Luis.
Luis thinks, only if you asked.
Luis asks to work in the oncology ward permanently.
"I got a 99 on my last exam," Luis's brother tells him the next time they skype.
"That's awesome, man," Luis says. Wesley pads through the living room on the way to the kitchen, trying not to make too much noise. "Hey, hang on one sec," Luis tells his brother. He gets up and grabs Wesley's elbow. "Come say hi?"
"I don't want to intrude," Wesley says, and Luis remembers how he felt a few weeks ago, going to Jeffrey's funeral. He shrugs.
"You don't have to," Luis tells him. "But I'd like it if you met them. My brother and my mama. Only if you want, though."
Wesley gets a glass of water and then follows Luis back to the couch.
"This is my brother," Luis says, pointing at the screen. He smiles. "This is Wes."
He sees how Wesley's hands are clenched tightly at his sides. He scoots closer to Wesley on the couch and slides one of his arms around Wesley's waist. "Heard you're studying poli sci," Wesley says.
"Yeah? Luis told you?"
Wesley snorts. "He doesn't shut up about you," he says. Luis knocks him with his shoulder. "Oh hush, it's cute."
Luis makes a face, but doesn't fail to notice how Wesley slowly starts to relax.
"It's nice to meet you," Luis's mom says when she takes the computer. Luis beams at her. "Make sure Luis is getting enough to eat, okay? And don't let him skip group."
"I promise, ma'am," Wesley says. Luis's mom clicks her tongue.
"You don't need to call me ma'am, sweetie," she says, and Luis hooks his chin over Wesley's shoulder.
Luis likes gardening.
It's warmer now, so he moves his potted herbs outside and spends a few hours on a Sunday morning pulling up weeds. The sun is warm on the back of his neck (sometimes Luis thinks he might be like a lizard now, cold-blooded; he only ever feels a change in temperature when he's in direct sunlight) and the dirt is soft underneath his fingers. He transplants his basil and rosemary and thyme and gets dirt rubbed into the knees of his jeans.
"Hey, I got you something," Wesley says. Luis startles a little. He squats back onto his heels and squints up at Wesley, who throws a packet of seeds at Luis.
"Thanks," Luis says. He reads the label of the package. Leeks.
Wesley squats down next to him, so Luis hands him a trowel and lets him dig the first hole. They press the seed into the dirt together and cover it back up. Then Luis grabs one of the dandelions he'd pulled up earlier and throws it at Wesley. The clump of dirt stuck to its roots explodes on Wesley's shirt. He sputters a little.
Luis laughs and leans forward, kisses Wesley in the garden outside his house.
"Is this okay?" Wesley asks. His voice is muffled by Luis's neck. Luis grunts and digs his fingers into Wesley's side, resisting the urge to pull off his t-shirt.
"Yeah," he says. Wesley goes back to sucking a mark onto the side of Luis's neck. His teeth come out to scrape over the skin and Luis bucks his hips. "Yeah, definitely okay." Wesley bites down harder, hard enough to hurt a little bit. Luis pushes his hands up underneath Wesley's shirt and skims them up Wesley's ribcage until he finds Wesley's nipples.
He pinches and twists until Wesley detaches himself from his neck. Wesley looks at the mark he made, satisfied.
"Humans bite, too," he says, grinning. Luis surges up and half-tackles Wesley back down onto the bed. He gets a hand down Wesley's pants and jacks him off quickly. He feels like a teenager, eighteen and jerking off with his best friend because he'd never been interested in any of the neighborhood girls.
"Not like this," Luis smiles. He tugs the collar of Wesley's t-shirt aside to expose his collarbone and lowers his mouth. He scrapes his front teeth over the bone and Wesley arches up into him.
"I know I said not to use them," Wesley grunts, and Luis knows he's talking about his canines. "But you could. If you wanted to. A little."
Luis twists his wrist and flicks his thumb over the head of Wesley's cock. He has to tilt his head at an awkward angle because of his overbite, but he gets one of his canines into Wesley's flesh. He drags it down gently, just enough to tear the skin, and then pulls it out. He moves his hand on Wesley's cock to cup his balls. He's close, Luis can tell by how quickly his blood is rushing under his skin.
A tiny drop of blood wells up at Wesley's collarbone. Luis dips his head back down and licks at it. Wesley moans. It tastes good.
"You're AB+," Luis hums. He works just the head of Wesley's cock and Wesley comes with a shout.
"It's your favorite, right?" Wesley asks after he comes down. He reaches for Luis's pants, and Luis thinks, you're my favorite.
Luis becomes a regular at the soccer matches. The parents of Wesley's players know him by name and he sits on the bleachers now, making conversation with some of the. He buys a baseball cap with the school's crest on it and makes a point to show up for every home game.
"The kids were asking where you were tonight," Wesley tells him one night. Luis had missed the match because he had to be at work early to finish his paperwork.
"Tell them I'll stop by early next time to make up for it," Luis says.
The kids know about Jeffrey. So do their parents. Every time Luis goes to a match, parents as him to pass their condolences and support on to Wesley.
"Maybe," he suggests one day, "the kids should do it instead of me. Dedicate the season to him or something, he was a footballer. Win a trophy for him."
Wesley joins an activist group.
"You don't need to do that," Luis tells him. "I know you need something to do and all, but I don't need you to."
"I wanted to," Wesley says. They're in the garden. It's warm outside. Luis leans closer to Wesley. He can smell Wesley's blood under the scent of the dirt and herbs. It's a comforting mixture. Wesley has tiny freckles across his nose and cheekbones.
"Okay," Luis shrugs. He tugs on Wesley's sleeve. "You're gonna get a farmer tan like that."
Wesley laughs. "Are you suggesting I take it off?"
"Yeah, maybe," Luis says. "If you want."
When Wesley tugs the t-shirt over his head, Luis can see the tiny bruise on Wesley's collarbone. He reaches out and presses his finger against it. "Much better."
They settle into a new routine. Instead of hanging around the hospital all night, Wesley dozes and Luis watches TV when he gets home from work. In the mornings, they get breakfast at the diner and then Luis goes home to garden while Wesley heads to the school. More often than not, Luis goes to football practice with Wesley. He plays five-a-side with the kids at the end of the practices and warns Wesley when he can sense one of them getting sick.
"You're like a frog," Wesley says. Luis laughs. Wesley's head moves up and down with his chest. Wesley's breath comes out in hot puffs against Luis's nipple, and Luis puts a head on the base of Wesley's skull to direct him gently towards it. Wesley obliges and nips at Luis's nipple, sucking on it for a moment.
"How am I like a frog?" Luis asks.
"It's because," Wesley starts. He detaches himself from Luis's skin, tilts his head, and presses his ear against Luis's chest. "It's the thing with your heart, I mean."
"What thing?"
When he changed, Luis had assumed that his heart had just stopped beating. He hadn't felt a pulse in years. "Like how I can hear it right now," Wesley says. He taps his finger against Luis's wrist in time with Luis's heartbeat. It's impossibly slow, too slow to keep a human alive.
"That doesn't make sense," Luis says. "I don't have blood."
They've experimented with this. Wesley can bite him and leave teeth-marks, but Luis's skin doesn't bruise. When he cuts himself chopping leeks or scrapes his knees playing football, the skin peels back, but he doesn't bleed.
"I know," Wesley says. "But you're a vampire, you aren't supposed to make sense."
Luis adjusts his body, kicking out one of his legs so that Wesley can settle more solidly on top of him. "Okay," he says. "But frogs?"
"One of my students did his biology report about frogs," Wesley says. He squirms a little on top of Luis until Luis's hipbone isn't sticking into his stomach awkwardly. "They hibernate during the winter, and their heartbeats stop."
"So I'm in permanent hibernation?" Luis chuckles a little.
"Except now," Wesley points out.
Luis digs his fingers into Wesley's shoulders and tugs until Wesley hauls himself up to be eye-level with Luis. "You're telling me that you're my summertime?" He can't keep the laugh out of his voice.
"Sure," Wesley says. "It sounds corny when you say it out loud, but. Yeah."
"Okay," Luis says. "I'm like a frog."
Wesley's football team has a winning season and ends up getting into the quarterfinals of the local league.
Luis has been adopted as an assistant coach. Wesley buys him a school jacket and he shows up to the huddles before matches.
"We're gonna win it," the team captain says. The boys cheer. "For Jeffrey. And Coach, and Luis, but for Jeffrey."
They win their quarterfinal match.
"Why are they doing it for Jeffrey?" Wesley asks Luis as they drive home.
"I think," Luis shrugs, "they're doing it for you, but. Jeffrey was a footballer, right?" Wesley nods. "So like. They win a football tournament for you in his memory."
"You've thought about this a lot," Wesley comments.
"Yeah," Luis says. "I may have suggested it."
Wesley doesn't say anything for a long minute. His jaw is clenched, but he doesn't have the steering wheel in a death grip, so Luis knows he isn't angry. "Thank you," he says, finally.
Luis reaches over and squeezes Wesley's thigh.
The leeks start to show leaves in the garden. Luis sets up garbage bags over them when it rains really hard and makes sure the to uproot all of the weeds that get within a foot of them.
One morning, he comes back from the hospital to find Wesley squatting in the garden with a trowel, weeding.
Luis leaves his bag in the car and walks up behind Wesley. He slides his hands over Wesley's sweaty shoulders and hums. "Hey," he says.
Wesley drops the trowel and stands up. His skin is getting tanner now that the sun is out more often. The tiny freckles across his nose blur into each other. He puts a hand on the side of Luis's face and Luis can feel the layer of dirt being smudged into his skin. He can feel Wesley's AB+ blood pulsing through his hand, stronger in his thumb, which rubs circles over Luis's cheekbone. When Wesley leans up and kisses him, Luis bites at the inside of his lip just enough to get a few drops of blood out. Wesley surges against him and Luis sighs, content.
"Hey," Wesley says when they pull apart. "We should take this inside."
Luis forgets his bag in the car.
"If you don't win, it's okay," Wesley tells his team on the bus to their semifinal. "It's been an amazing season, I'm proud to have been your coach."
Luis thinks, it's not okay. They have to do this. They have to win.
They don't.
They lose 5-3. Privately, Luis thinks the second goal was offside, but he refrains from heckling the ref when he sees that Wesley doesn't look upset about it.
"You did good," Wesley tells the kids. They look forlorn, sad. "I'm proud of you. Thank you guys," he says. "We'll get 'em next season."
Luis can't tell if it's fake bravado or if he actually means it, so he just puts his hands in his pockets and nods along.
"How are you doing?" Luis asks when they get back to the house.
"I'm okay," Wesley says, and for the first time since Jeffrey died, Luis believes him. "I'm a little disappointed, but I'm okay. You?"
"I wanted to win it," Luis says. "You deserve it. But if you're good, I'm good."
"Hi, I'm Luis." The group mumbles it back to him. "Five years, seven months."
"So there's this guy. Wesley." Luis gestures in Wesley's direction. Wesley grins and ducks his head. "I, uh. I like him a lot. And he's done a lot for me- the activist group he joined is working on getting visitation rights for vampires and their families in countries where there aren't any, so hopefully we'll get to visit my family soon. I'd like that. Anyway, I'm not really sure what happens next, because nobody really knows what happens to vampires? We haven't been around long enough to find out, so. But I don't think about that as much as I used to, 'cause it's good the way it is."
"Thank you, Luis," the group leader says when Luis pauses for too long. Luis shrugs and sits down. Wesley's hand makes its way into his lap and Luis leans against him.
Most of the time, Wesley fucks Luis. Most of the time, it's a sensory overload for Luis to fuck Wesley, to feel his blood rushing all around his body. Sometimes they try it, though, mostly when Wesley's tired and his body is pliant.
It's never any less of a rush for Luis, pushing his cock into Wesley's body and having his own pleasure drowned out by the sensation of Wesley's blood pounding through his body.
"Hey, you okay?" Wesley asks. He reaches up and grips at Luis's shoulder. Luis grins down at him, wide enough that all of his teeth are visible.
"I'm good," Luis says.
Wesley runs his thumb along Luis's lower lip. Luis licks at it, and Wesley pushes it into his mouth slowly, seeks out his canines. He pushes against the sharp point of the tooth until a drop of blood wells up on the pad of his finger. Luis moans and licks at it.
"You can, if you want," Wesley says. He presses his thumb more firmly against the tooth until there's a steady trickle of blood dripping into Luis's mouth. "Use them."
Luis comes, sucking on Wesley's bleeding thumb. He slithers down Wesley's body afterwards and blows him, the taste of his come and blood mingling in his mouth.
"I was serious," Wesley says after they've both come down. "You can."
Luis pushes his face against Wesley's neck, feels the pulse there. He licks at the spot, and Wesley shivers. He thinks, if you ask, I will.
"I know."
notes
1. infinite thank you goes to luxover for beta reading this and talking through many aspects of it and for generally being absolutely amazing and unbelievably wonderful! it wouldn't ever have been finished without you.
2. part of this was loosely based on the story of diane geppi-aikens and the 2003 loyala university women's lacrosse team
"Hi, I'm Luis." He waits for the chorus of Hi, Luis before he continues. "It's been, uh. A couple years, now. Five, I think. It's been five years."
Luis usually zones out during meetings. They aren't mandatory- no parole officer ever told him he had to go or anything like that. Attending is something he's been doing since he first changed- since Uruguay, when his mother had to drive him two hours to the nearest meeting, and even though they couldn't really afford travelling like that once a week, she'd insisted because she thought it would help him stay human.
"I was nineteen," he says. "In Uruguay, living with my family, and one day I stayed out playing football too long and on my way home-" Luis coughs. He doesn't go into any more detail than that. Most of them at the meeting have heard the story before, anyway. It was what he'd talked about two months ago, and there wasn't exactly a swelling population in Amsterdam. "Anyway, my brother, he uh. He hates leeks, but we never threw away food because there were seven of us kids, so. Yeah, so whenever my mom cooked anything with leeks in it, he gave them to me because I couldn't really taste anymore." He pauses. "In a way it was easier after I changed? Because then mom didn't have to get as much food. But I always ate my brother's leeks so that we weren't wasting food. It's not like I go grocery shopping very often now-" He laughs a little, and a few of the group follow suit. "But when I do I always buy leeks."
"Thank you, Luis," the group leader says. Luis nods and sits down.
He's never been exactly sure why the meetings are run the way they are. None of them are addicts, they just. Aren't human. Luis guesses it was this or activism. There are a few activist groups floating around, more here in Amsterdam than back in Uruguay, but Luis has no interest in joining them. As long as he can keep going to work and has his little house and can watch football on the weekends, he doesn't really care about the legality of it all.
Mostly Luis comes to the meetings because of his mother, but it's nice to know that there are others.
On his way home, Luis stops at the corner store to pick up a few bottles of AB+.
He isn't sure why AB+ is his favorite. He thinks it's maybe because that was his blood type back when he was still human, but he doesn't really care. This part, going into a store and sifting past beer cans at the refrigerators in the very back until he can find the right bottles, this is the strangest part of his life still.
They didn't sell it in Uruguay.
Well, they did at first, and then they didn't. They stopped selling it and they kicked Luis out of school and rumors had been flying that they were setting up separate communities so that vampires wouldn't come in contact with people. Luis left before that happened.
Here, he buys his bottles of AB+ and goes home and watches a few episodes of House.
"Hey, how's it going?" Luis aims a disarmingly bright smile at Maarten, who shakes his head.
"Same old, same old," Maarten says. He and Luis have been in the same program at the university hospital since Luis moved to Amsterdam. "Getting reassigned today."
Luis frowns. Oddly, he's liked working in the maternal care unit for the past few months. "Yeah? Where are you?"
"Anesthesiology," Maarten tells him. "The list was emailed, didn't you check?"
Luis fumbles for his phone. He saves an email from his brother and deletes two from his landlord. "Oncology ward," he reads.
The first thing he does is volunteer to take the graveyard shift. "I don't sleep much," he explains.
Luis keeps a garden.
It's not a big affair. He doesn't read any gardening magazines, and he only has basic cable so he doesn't watch any shows, either. But every few days he likes to go outside and pull up weeds and keep things tidy. Mostly he grows herbs. He likes the way they smell.
Most of the patients sleep during Luis's shift. He wanders through the ward on rounds every now and then. He couldn't find any AB+ at the corner store this week, so his water bottle is full of B+, instead. It doesn't taste as good.
"Hello?" Luis turns around. There's a guy wearing street clothes peering out of one of the doors. "Can you help me out for a second? Sorry," the guy says.
"Sure," Luis answers. He smiles. Relief breaks over the guy's face and Luis goes into the room.
"It's stupid," the guy says. "He was watching TV and then he fell asleep and I can't figure out how to turn it off."
"No problem," Luis shrugs. He takes the chair from next to the bed and stands on it to reach the power button that's hidden on the back of the TV.
"Thanks," the guy says. Luis clambers down from the chair. "I'm Wesley. That's my brother, Jeffrey."
"I'm Luis," Luis says. He puts the chair back next to the bed. "You an insomniac or something?"
Wesley shakes his head. "Nah, just had some coffee after dinner."
"If you want," Luis offers, "I can put a pot on in the break room."
At group the next week, Luis listens to someone named Klaas talk about not having seen his son in three years. When he gets home, he putters around the garden for a while, pulling up a few dandelions, and then he sends an email to his brother. skype sometime? he asks. miss you.
He knows it's stupid, but Luis fills up two thermoses of coffee before he starts his rounds. He pretends to sip at one (he likes the smell of coffee just fine, but it's too acidic for his taste. He tried mixing O- in it once but it ended up more disgusting than it began) and carries the other in the crook of his elbow.
"You a caffeine addict or something?"
Luis grins, all teeth and dimples. "Maybe," he says. He puts his clipboard down on the hook outside the door and offers the second thermos to Wesley.
"I guess you'd have to be, working this shift," Wesley ponders. He takes the thermos and salutes Luis with it before drinking from it.
"Eh," Luis grunts noncommittally. "Not really."
"Insomniac, then?" Wesley holds the door to his brother's room with his foot. He leans against it with one shoulder. He's shorter than Luis.
"Something like that," Luis says, thinking of how he only has a futon in his bedroom and he cat-naps a few times a week when he has nothing else to do.
Wesley takes a step back into the room but he keeps holding the door open. Luis hesitates for a moment, but steps over the threshold when Wesley quirks the corner of his mouth into something like an invitation. He pretends to take a sip of his coffee and runs his tongue over his teeth as he puts the thermos down.
When he first changed, he thought that somehow his teeth would, too. They didn't, not really. His front teeth still stick out and overlap just slightly. It makes for an awkward angle on the rare occasion that he actually wants to use his canines.
"You okay?" Wesley asks. Luis realizes he must've been contorting his face to touch his teeth. "You don't have to- I just thought. You know, it'd be nice for both of us to have some company or something."
"Yeah," Luis says. He smiles, almost wide enough to see his canines. "I'm good. Are you? If you're good, I'm good."
Luis likes cop shows and hospital dramas. He also likes the occasional daytime soap opera, but those usually aren't on at two in the morning. Wesley tends more towards game shows. He doesn't like Wheel of Fortune very much, Luis learns, but his favorite is Cash Cab.
It usually reruns a few episodes at a time between one and three, so Luis comes into the room then. They watch it with the volume on low and sometimes Wesley misses the answers to questions. (Luis always hears them, but most of the time he pretends he doesn't, unless Wesley looks particularly disappointed.)
"We were in New York once," Wesley says one night. He points at his brother, sleeping on the bed. His skin is pale and almost translucent.
He has leukemia, which Luis knows from filling out his charts. He thinks it's ironic that he spends most of his time now with a leukemia patient and his brother.
"Did you go on Cash Cab?" Luis asks. Wesley snorts.
"No, do you know how many cabs there are in that city?"
Luis doesn't.
"Thirteen thousand eight-oh-seven," Wesley tells him. "That's how many. Besides, we walked."
"Why were you there?"
On the screen, the host asks a group of drunken girls who wrote the Declaration of Independence. They don't know.
"Jeffrey had a football trial, or spot in the draft, however it works over there," Wesley says. His face lights up, proud. "New York Red Bulls."
Luis thinks of kicking a football around in his back yard in Uruguay, how he always wanted to be a striker but sometimes he'd have to be keeper for a match or two to appease his siblings. Sometimes, when Luis watches football on the weekends, he thinks to himself I could've done that. If everything had been different, he thinks.
"Nice," he says, and lets out a low whistle. Wesley laughs.
They fall into a habit of "When we go to New York-" and "But when we're on Cash Cab, we're taking the video bonus, okay" and even though Luis knows he can never go to New York, because America just updated their vampire rights laws to prevent foreigners from visiting or immigrating (rumor was that they'd been having problems with Canadian vampires, according to one of the women at Luis's group), it's a nice thought to settle in to.
One night when Luis comes to Jeffrey's room, Wesley is sleeping.
His legs are kicked out in front of him and he's slumped in the chair. His head lolls back and rests precariously against the edge of Jeffrey's bed. He looks- small, Luis thinks. He looks small. His arms are crossed over his stomach.
Luis stands next to him for a second, contemplating waking him up, but decides against it.
Instead, he puts the extra cup of coffee on the table next to the chair and retreats.
He comes back a few times over the course of his shift. Wesley shifts positions once or twice, turning onto his side (his shirt rides up a little bit and Luis catches a glimpse of muscled abdomen that isn't as pale as it should be for late winter in Amsterdam) and then uncrossing his arms. The next time he comes back, Wesley is gone, but there's a post-it note on the empty travel mug. thanks, i owe you one now, it says. Luis folds it up and puts it in his pocket.
"What do you do during the day?" Wesley asks one day.
Luis shrugs. He thinks, garden. Go to meetings. Buy blood at the corner shop. "I Skype my family sometimes," he says.
"In Uruguay, right?"
"Yep."
"Why'd you leave?"
Jeopardy is on the TV. Jeffrey has extra tubes sticking out of his arms tonight. Wesley looks tired. Luis shifts uncomfortably.
"Was it for school?"
It's an out, but Luis doesn't take it. "No," he says carefully. "It was, uh. Because they were going to make laws putting vampires into separate communities."
"Yeah, I heard about that, but- oh," Wesley says. Luis watches him for a reaction; after a second, Wesley smiles. "So that's why you don't sleep, yeah?"
Luis smiles, big and bright enough to match the grin that splits Wesley's face open. Luis thinks, I want to see him smile like that all the time. "Yeah," he says. Keeps smiling.
"So that coffee I owe you," Wesley says. "I'm gonna guess it won't actually be coffee, then."
"Hi, I'm Luis," Luis says. The group repeats it back to him like they do every time he speaks. "Five years and a few months."
He fidgets. "I told someone, last week," he says. "A human. He, um. I met him at work. He didn't ask or anything, I just didn't want to lie. And it was nice, I guess. It was good. He didn't make a big deal out of it." Luis shoves his hands into his pockets. "His name's Wesley. I think he might prefer Wes, but I'm not actually sure. He said he wanted to buy me coffee." He takes a deep breath. "His brother's dying, and I feel really shitty about that. Because I could- you know. Change him. But I can't. And it sucks."
"Thank you, Luis," the group leader says.
Luis sits down. He feels better and worse at the same time.
"How is it, in oncology?" Maarten asks one day when they both show up to the hospital early to do paperwork.
Luis thinks of going to Jeffrey's room every night and watching Cash Cab. He thinks of the way Wesley's forehead scrunches up when he thinks really hard about something. He thinks of how he brings a thermos full of AB+ for himself and a travel mug of coffee for Wesley every night now.
"It's good," he says.
"What are you doing later?"
It's a Friday night- well, Saturday morning. Luis shrugs. He's wearing scrubs and white orthopedic-looking shoes. Wesley's wearing jeans and an Ajax sweatshirt with frayed cuffs; he's pushed the sleeves up and Luis can see the goosebumps on his arms. "I dunno," he says easily.
"I could take you for that coffee," Wesley says quietly. "Or breakfast, or whatever. If you want."
"I do," Luis says. He smiles at Wesley. Wesley smiles back.
They go to a diner.
There are florescent lights and black and white tiles and the menu is full of greasy, fried things that Luis would've killed to be able to eat back in Uruguay.
"What do you eat?" Wesley asks. "Super rare burgers? Raw steak?"
Luis laughs. "Nah," he says. "I prefer small children."
Wesley looks appropriately shocked for a second, but then Luis's deadpan fails and they both crack up. "Seriously, though," Wesley pushes.
"Nothing, really," Luis says. "I mean, I can eat, it's not a physical thing? I just don't need to."
Wesley orders eggs and toast. Luis orders the potato leek soup that's listed under the specials for the day.
"Potato leek?" Wesley asks. His eyes are crinkled at the corners. Luis wants to reach forward and smooth them out with his thumb.
"It's a thing," Luis says. "My brother." He waves his hand around.
"Jeffrey likes cream of mushroom," Wesley says.
"That's disgusting," Luis says, and then worries that he's overstepped an unspoken boundary. Relief washes over him when Wesley cracks a grin.
"Yeah, I tell him that all the time," Wesley shrugs. "What can you do?"
Luis thinks of Jeffrey lying on his hospital bed with tubes sticking out of his nose and arms. He thinks of how easy it would be, just a few minutes and then Wesley's brother would be walking again. Jeffrey's B+, Luis knows from looking at his charts.
He can't, though. He promised his mother he wouldn't, and Luis keeps his promises.
They fall into a routine.
Luis likes routines. He likes visiting the rooms in the oncology ward in a specific order each night (he always goes to Jeffrey's last, so he can stay there after he's checked the charts). He likes that he and Wesley go to breakfast every few mornings. He likes that sometimes Wesley falls asleep while they watch Cash Cab. He takes to bringing an extra blanket to Jeffrey's room. He usually just drops it unceremoniously over Wesley when he gets up to finish his rounds but sometimes, if the air conditioning's on high or Wesley isn't wearing a jacket, he actually unfolds it and spreads it over the Dutchman.
"Do you not get cold?" Wesley asks him.
"Nope," Luis says.
"Are you already cold? Like, always?"
"Nope," Luis says. Wesley reaches over from his chair and puts his palm on Luis's forearm. Luis can feel the blood rushing under Wesley's skin. "I just kind of stay the same all the time, I guess." Wesley's fingers curl around his arm, gripping it.
"Okay," Wesley says. His voice is quiet.
"You're warm," Luis says, just to have something to say.
"'Cause of the blanket," Wesley tells him. "Thanks for that."
"No problem," Luis shrugs. Wesley's still holding on to his forearm. Luis reaches up with his free hand and presses his thumb to the crinkles at the corner of Wesley's eye.
"What are you doing?"
Luis drops his hand. "I don't know," he says. "I've wanted to, so."
"Okay," Wesley says. He lets go of Luis's arm, but when he sits back down and Luis resettles beside him, perched on the bedside table, Wesley puts his hand on top of Luis's folded ones and keeps it there.
A week later, Luis pokes his head into Jeffrey's room and the bed is empty.
It takes him about fifteen minutes to track down his charts and jog to the ICU. He has the unit number scribbled on the back of his hand in felt-tipped pen, but he doesn't need it, because Wesley's pacing the hallway.
"Hey," Luis pants. He puts his hand on Wesley's shoulder. "Hey, are you okay?"
Wesley looks exhausted. There are dark circles in rings under his eyes and he looks paler than usual. Worry lines are creased into his forehead. Luis rubs his thumb over the bone of Wesley's shoulder.
"Is he okay? Do you know anything?" Wesley's voice is hoarse.
What Luis knows is that Jeffrey's blood hasn't smelled right since the first week he went into the room. What Luis guesses is that he's got a week or so, before-
"I. Wes, I'm sorry," Luis says, and it kills him that he can't go into the ICU and fix this.
Wesley crumples forward and Luis locks his arms around Wesley's torso, holding him up. "Okay," Wesley says. His voice is more of a whisper than anything. Luis thinks he might be trying not to cry. "Okay."
They still go to breakfast.
"What do you do?" Luis asks. He eats a fruit cup and has a water bottle of AB+ on the table next to his plate. "Like, normally. For a living."
Wesley pokes at his omelet. "I teach," he says. "And I coach the football team."
"I used to play football," Luis says. "Before."
"Could you not, after?"
Luis eats a strawberry. "No," he says. "I mean, I guess here I could, but not in Uruguay. South America changed a lot of laws. The one for football was about unfair advantage, I think."
"Is there one?"
"Nah," Luis says. He offers a piece of pineapple to Wesley. Wesley takes it and chews on it slowly. "I'm not any faster now than I was before."
"Can I," Wesley starts to ask as they get up to leave. "Where are you headed now?"
"Home," Luis tells him. "You can come."
Luis fumbles his keys a few times before jiggling the front door unlocked. His house is small but fairly bright, with lots of windows that Luis usually leaves open. He likes to watch the sun come up when he's awake early. Wesley stands in the doorway, stiffer than Luis has ever seen him, while Luis goes around the house closing the windows; he doesn't want Wesley to get too cold.
"You can come in," he says. "There's food- not a lot of it, but you're welcome to whatever you find."
The kitchen is just a breakfast table with one chair, a stove, and a refrigerator. Luis pulls one of the living room chairs up to the table. Wesley sits down, and Luis takes a water bottle out of the refrigerator. He goes to the potted plants lined up by the window and sprinkles water in them. His basil plant is starting to unfurl its leaves.
"What do you grow?" Wesley asks.
"Herbs, mostly," Luis tells him. "Basil, rosemary, the usual. They smell good."
"Do you smell…extra?" Wesley asks.
Luis sits down in the living room chair and leans back. "Kind of. I can smell blood, always. But apart from that, it's pretty normal? Like how when you haven't had a stuffy nose in a while and you can smell everything."
He remembers back in Uruguay, right after, how he thought he'd be faster and stronger. He remembers challenging his brothers to arm wrestling over and over again, losing each time.
"Do you cook anything with them?"
"I make leek soup with dill sometimes," Luis says.
Wesley looks away when Luis drinks some AB+ straight from the bottle. Luis realizes that he's always had it in an opaque water bottle, never something see-through like the jug it comes in.
"Sorry," Luis says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
"It's okay," Wesley says. He looks at the tiny bit of smeared blood on Luis's knuckles. "Does it taste good?"
"I like it," Luis shrugs. "It was my blood type, before, so it's my favorite now."
"Do you think," Wesley asks, "that if Jeffrey had some- some good blood or something, that he'd get better?"
Luis puts the bottle back in the refrigerator. He can't look at the bald hope in Wesley's eyes so instead he focuses on Wesley's hands, folded together on top of the table. His thumbs twitch every now and then.
"No," he says. "Not drinking it. But Wesley, the hospital's probably already tried transfusions."
"I know," Wesley says. He sounds tired again. "You can call me Wes, you know. Only my mother calls me Wesley."
Luis sits back down. "Well, I'm not your mother."
"No," Wesley says. He reaches forward and smears the blood around Luis's knuckles with his thumb. "You aren't."
Luis squeezes Wesley's hand and thinks, don't ask me to do it, because I would.
"So," Luis says. "There are these group meetings that I go to." Wesley looks at him expectantly. "There's one today," Luis continues. "It's usually just- well. Vampires. But if you want to come, you can." He thinks, say yes. He thinks, I want you to hear what I have to say.
"Are you talking?"
"Mmhmm," Luis says.
"Okay. I'll come."
"Hi, I’m Luis," Luis says. He sees Wesley fighting back a grin as the group choruses his name back. "Five years, four months." He looks at Wesley for a second and then looks down at his hands. He makes fists and then releases them. Takes a deep breath. "When I was still in Uruguay," he starts. He stops to swallow. He feels hyper-aware of everyone watching him. "I, uh. We didn't live in a great area, and my brother's fiancé one day, she uh. She was in a drive-by, basically. This was right after I changed, and I felt like I had to so something, I guess. In my head it was like because I could do something, that meant I had to. Change her, I mean. I thought I had to. 'Cause she wasn't going to make it.
"I was going to, but then my mama came outside. She saw everything and she freaked out- I think she thought I was just going for the blood, but I'm not really sure. Anyway, she pulled me away and that afternoon we went to my first group meeting. I promised her I wouldn't ever change anyone."
Wesley looks at him strangely as he sits down.
"Thank you, Luis," the group leader says.
"I would never ask you," Wesley tells Luis as they leave the meeting. He's quiet, but his voice doesn't shake. Luis forces himself to look at him. He sees only apology in Wesley's eyes.
"I know," Luis says. "I just. I don't know. I wanted you to know."
Wesley takes a week off of work. He sleeps on Luis's couch, and Luis gets used to him padding around the house in sweatpants and no t-shirt. His shoulders are broad and his back is muscular and Luis finds himself coming downstairs early to watch the way his skin looks golden when the sunrise hits it.
"You coach, right?"
Jeffrey's still in the ICU. Luis has a feeling that he'll stay there, until. But he isn't positive, because he and Wesley mostly sit outside the unit. Luis can't smell Jeffrey from this far away.
"Football? Yeah." Wesley's flipping through the sports section of the newspaper.
"Can I come to a game?" Luis asks.
Wesley looks up. He smiles at Luis, but it only takes up about half of his face. "Sure, yeah," he says. "It'll be nice for the kids to have someone come watch."
Luis asks around the hospital and finds out that Jeffrey doesn't have much longer.
"Do you want to know?" He asks Wesley one night. They're sitting outside of Jeffrey's room. Wesley leans his head against the wall and drums his fingers on the arms of his chair. Luis paces the hallway. He wants to change out of his scrubs.
"No," Wesley answers. "Let's go to breakfast, okay?"
They go to the diner and stay there until noon. Their waitress is new; she frowns when Luis pulls out his water bottle full of AB+.
"Hey, man!"
Luis waves into the computer at his brother. "Hey," he says. He smiles wide enough for all of his teeth to be visible. "How's it going?"
They babble for an hour about nothing, about how Luis's other siblings are doing. About Uruguay. Luis learns that there's a new activist movement springing up in the cities, trying to get visitation rights for vampires and their families. They talk about school, how his brother works two jobs to pay for tuition because the rest of their siblings are too young to help out and his mom can't take on any extra shifts.
"Poli sci," he says when Luis asks what his major is. "Gonna write some new laws for you."
"Keep me posted," Luis says. His chest feels constricted. He kind of wants to cry. "I'll come visit as soon as I can, okay?"
His mother comes on after a little while and tells him that he looks pale. She asks if he's been eating enough and if he's still going to group.
"Yeah, I am," he tells her. "I brought a friend a few weeks ago."
"A friend?" She asks. Her lips purse. Luis knows it's a question.
"Wes," he says. "He's. He's Wesley."
His mother smiles at him. He has her dimples. "Good," she says. "I'm glad you have him."
He doesn't tell her that it isn't like that. If anyone in his family ever had any type of special power, it was his mother. Luis doesn't question her.
"I love you," he tells her. "I miss you."
"Hi, I'm Wesley," Wesley says. Luis keeps his eyes on him the whole time, does his best not to blink. "I'm not, uh. I'm human." They make eye contact and Luis nods at him a tiny bit. "My brother. He died yesterday night. He was sick." Wesley speaks in short sentences, taking long pauses. Luis makes eye contact with him and holds it. "He was a football player, before. Had a trial for an American team and everything. Even when he was sick, we always watched matches together. I guess-" He pauses again, takes a deep breath. Luis is white-knuckling the arms of his chair. "I don't know what to say. His name was Jeffrey."
"Thank you, Wesley," the group leader says.
Instead of sitting back down, Wesley picks up his jacket and heads for the door. Luis doesn't think twice about following him.
"Hey," he says. He finds Wesley leaning against the door of his car, breathing like he'd just run a marathon. "Hey, are you okay?" It's a stupid question, but Luis doesn't know what else to ask.
"No," Wesley says. Luis reaches for him and lets Wesley push his face into his shoulder. "Can we go to yours?" Wesley asks. Luis nods. He reaches into the pocket of Wesley's jacket and grabs his keys.
"I'll drive," he says.
"You can come to the funeral, if you want," Wesley offers.
Luis unscrews the cap to his bottle of AB+ and then puts it back on. He repeats the action a few times. "I don't want to intrude," he says quietly.
"Please," Wesley asks, and Luis tells himself that it's because of how desperate Wesley sounded that he said yes even though he knows he'd probably say yes to anything Wesley asked of him.
"Okay," he says. "I'll be there."
It's a somber affair. Luis has only been to one funeral before, his brother's fiancé's. He puts on a suit and sits next to Wesley, who gives a speech and doesn't cry.
He doesn't cry through the whole ceremony. He doesn't cry afterwards, when people line up to express their condolences to him and his family. Luis feels awkward, sitting in a pew in the back and waiting for Wesley to extract himself.
Wesley and his mother come over to him after most of the other guests have left.
"This is Luis," Wesley says. Luis reaches out and shakes Wesley's mother's hand. "He was, uh. He helped take care of Jeffrey."
Wesley's mother does cry. Her face is broad and open and motherly and she pulls Luis into a hug as a few tears drip out of her eyes. She gathers him to her and hugs him tightly. "Thank you," she says. She releases him and tries to smooth the wrinkles out the sleeves of his suit.
They go to their diner, still wearing their suits. They don't talk much; Luis doesn't know what to say.
Wesley doesn't cry until they get back to Luis's house. Luis waters his herbs and gives Wesley his privacy for a few minutes, and then he pulls a few beers out of the refrigerator and goes into the living room.
Luis doesn't get drunk; it would take a lot more than a six-pack to get him anything beyond tipsy. Wesley does, though. He's a sleepy, clingy drunk. They watch reruns of Cash Cab and Wesley drapes himself over Luis's shoulders and falls asleep halfway through the third episode.
Leaving him on the couch with a blanket isn't an option. Luis nudges him awake until he sits up, and then he half-drags, half-carries Wesley up the stairs and unfolds the futon. He brings some blankets and a pillow out of the closet and drapes them over Wesley. He takes the couch for himself, not sure if Wesley would appreciate waking up next to him.
He wakes up to Vanna White muted on the TV. He looks around groggily for a second, legs tangled in the blanket, before realizing that he'd been asleep.
"So I guess vampires do sleep," Wesley says. He's sitting somewhere near Luis's feet. Luis sits up and blinks rapidly a few times.
"Yeah, sometimes," he shrugs. "Mostly when we're bored."
"You didn't have any Advil, so I went and bought some," Wesley tells him. There's a plastic bag from the corner store sitting on the coffee table. "I got you some, well. I got you something to drink, too." He seems uncomfortable talking about the blood. Luis doesn't entirely blame him. "You like AB+, right?"
"Right," Luis says. "How'd you know?"
Wesley shrugs. "It says so on the label of the bottles you drink."
He doesn't seem to want to talk about Jeffrey, so Luis doesn't ask. Instead, they have breakfast (toast for Wesley, AB+ for Luis) and Wesley borrows Luis's car to go to work.
"The kids have a match this weekend," he says before he leaves.
"I'll be there," Luis tells him. Wesley smiles before he gets into the car.
The pitch Wesley's team plays at is nicer than any of the pitches Luis had played on in Uruguay. Mostly he'd played in the streets, but there was a dirt field a few blocks away and when he started playing in school, they sometimes travelled to play other teams who had grass growing on the pitch.
This one is nice, green and cut evenly, with stark white lines.
Wesley's team wears light blue, so Luis feels in place with his sky blue Forlán jersey that his brother had saved for a year to get him for Christmas.
The pitch is behind the school. There's one set of bleachers. Most of the spectators are parents, wearing school sweatshirts and caps. Luis stands next to the bleachers and jumps up and down cheering whenever Wesley's team is on the ball. He heckles the ref like they used to back in Uruguay and one of the parents asks him which player is his kid.
"None," Luis says, startled. "I'm, uh. Friend of the coach." He grins sheepishly.
The woman shrugs and smiles and tells him it's nice to have more fans coming out to matches.
"Tell Coach Sneijder he has all of our sympathies," she says. Luis nods. He thinks of how Wesley doesn't want to talk about it and thinks, not yet. He'll tell Wesley once he's calmed down, maybe.
"Of course," he tells the woman.
Wesley's team wins. The other team protests because one of Wesley's players stopped a shot with his hand.
"He's going to be upset," Wesley says as they drive home.
"No," Luis says. He's buzzing with energy. "He kept the team in it. He should be proud. They had a chance on the penalty, it's not like it went unpunished."
"Strong feelings, yeah?" Wesley says. "You have any personal experience with getting handballs?"
Luis laughs. "My brothers made me play keeper sometimes, so, you know. The reflex was there."
"Were you any good?" Wesley asks.
The truth is that Luis was really good at football. He was good enough to seriously think about going to trials in the cities and actually making a living. He was good enough that his mother took an extra shift at work to pay for him to play for a travel team the year before he changed. He was good enough that he felt guilty for having changed, for not being able to play anymore, because football was going to be their way up.
"I don't know," he shrugs. "I guess."
"We should play sometime," Wesley suggests. He sounds cautious. "Jeffrey and I used to practice together a lot. It was fun."
Luis reaches over the center console and puts his hand on Wesley's thigh. Wesley's warm even though his jeans. Luis squeezes lightly. "That'd be nice," he says.
Luis buys an extra toothbrush and puts it in the mug in the bathroom. Some of Wesley's clothes make their way into Luis's closet. When he goes grocery shopping, Luis finds himself picking up foods he knows Wesley likes along with his leeks and AB+.
They don't talk about the hospital. Luis doesn't tell Wesley that there's another patient in Jeffrey's room, a younger kid whose blood doesn't smell quite so stale. Wesley starts sleeping during Luis's shift, but he sets an alarm in time to meet Luis at their diner for breakfast before work a few times a week.
"Hi, I'm Luis," Luis says. The group echoes him. Wesley isn't there this time; he's come to a few since he spoke, but his team sometimes has games during the meetings. Luis doesn't mind. "Five years, five months. I talked to my mom yesterday. We don't talk a lot because she doesn't have a computer so we can only Skype when my brother comes home from university. She wanted to make sure I was still coming to group so I told her I'd talk today." The group laughs with him. "I, uh. You remember Wesley. He's the first person I've gotten close with, since changing. Like, I've been able to make friends, but he's the first person that I'm actually tight with.
"It's nice, but it's also scary? 'Cause you know, what happens when he gets old and I don't? I mean, I know we get old eventually but it takes so much longer and with Wesley it's like- we're on the same wavelength, and I want it to stay that way, so. I don't know. It's a day by day thing, I guess, but I just wanted to say it because saying it makes it more real."
"Thank you, Luis," the group leader says. Luis sits down.
They play football on the pitch behind Wesley's school.
It starts off as one-on-one, chasing each other all over the pitch and taking horribly placed shots. Wesley takes the ball to a corner flag and practices corner kicks for a while. Luis heads two of them in properly. They take penalty kicks, and Wesley makes Luis play keeper until Luis doubles over on the ball and refuses to let him have it back. He gets all five of his penalties past Wesley.
They play with each other, too, one touch passing all up and down the pitch. Wesley's passes are crisp and precise.
He dribbles into the box, Luis trailing behind him, and dodges an imaginary defender before firing a perfect back heel to Luis, who takes one touch and slams the ball into the top corner of the empty net. He runs towards the corner flag with his arms out, hollering like a kid. Wesley follows him, and when Luis turns around, it's perfectly natural for him to jump into Wesley's open arms, wrapping his legs around Wesley's waist and crushing Wesley's head to his chest.
"Hey," Wesley pants. "Hey, you have a heartbeat."
Luis stops hollering. "I do?"
"Yeah, it's just really slow," Wesley says. His ear is pressed to Luis's sweaty t-shirt. Luis laughs.
"Awesome," he says, and when Wesley picks his head up, it's perfectly natural for Luis to bend down and kiss him.
Wesley's lips are chapped. Luis scrapes his front teeth over Wesley's bottom lip more on accident than anything, and Wesley jolts his head back.
"Sorry," Luis says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He feels self-conscious, still clinging to Wesley. Wesley's hands span his back, holding him up.
"Do you have fangs?" Wesley asks, and Luis thinks, oh. He grins, wide enough that all of his teeth are visible.
"Yeah," he says. He flicks his tongue up to his canines. "Those ones. Not the front ones."
"Okay," Wesley says. He leans into Luis's space and whispers against his cheek, "don't use them, okay?" before he kisses Luis.
Luis thinks, only if you asked.
Luis asks to work in the oncology ward permanently.
"I got a 99 on my last exam," Luis's brother tells him the next time they skype.
"That's awesome, man," Luis says. Wesley pads through the living room on the way to the kitchen, trying not to make too much noise. "Hey, hang on one sec," Luis tells his brother. He gets up and grabs Wesley's elbow. "Come say hi?"
"I don't want to intrude," Wesley says, and Luis remembers how he felt a few weeks ago, going to Jeffrey's funeral. He shrugs.
"You don't have to," Luis tells him. "But I'd like it if you met them. My brother and my mama. Only if you want, though."
Wesley gets a glass of water and then follows Luis back to the couch.
"This is my brother," Luis says, pointing at the screen. He smiles. "This is Wes."
He sees how Wesley's hands are clenched tightly at his sides. He scoots closer to Wesley on the couch and slides one of his arms around Wesley's waist. "Heard you're studying poli sci," Wesley says.
"Yeah? Luis told you?"
Wesley snorts. "He doesn't shut up about you," he says. Luis knocks him with his shoulder. "Oh hush, it's cute."
Luis makes a face, but doesn't fail to notice how Wesley slowly starts to relax.
"It's nice to meet you," Luis's mom says when she takes the computer. Luis beams at her. "Make sure Luis is getting enough to eat, okay? And don't let him skip group."
"I promise, ma'am," Wesley says. Luis's mom clicks her tongue.
"You don't need to call me ma'am, sweetie," she says, and Luis hooks his chin over Wesley's shoulder.
Luis likes gardening.
It's warmer now, so he moves his potted herbs outside and spends a few hours on a Sunday morning pulling up weeds. The sun is warm on the back of his neck (sometimes Luis thinks he might be like a lizard now, cold-blooded; he only ever feels a change in temperature when he's in direct sunlight) and the dirt is soft underneath his fingers. He transplants his basil and rosemary and thyme and gets dirt rubbed into the knees of his jeans.
"Hey, I got you something," Wesley says. Luis startles a little. He squats back onto his heels and squints up at Wesley, who throws a packet of seeds at Luis.
"Thanks," Luis says. He reads the label of the package. Leeks.
Wesley squats down next to him, so Luis hands him a trowel and lets him dig the first hole. They press the seed into the dirt together and cover it back up. Then Luis grabs one of the dandelions he'd pulled up earlier and throws it at Wesley. The clump of dirt stuck to its roots explodes on Wesley's shirt. He sputters a little.
Luis laughs and leans forward, kisses Wesley in the garden outside his house.
"Is this okay?" Wesley asks. His voice is muffled by Luis's neck. Luis grunts and digs his fingers into Wesley's side, resisting the urge to pull off his t-shirt.
"Yeah," he says. Wesley goes back to sucking a mark onto the side of Luis's neck. His teeth come out to scrape over the skin and Luis bucks his hips. "Yeah, definitely okay." Wesley bites down harder, hard enough to hurt a little bit. Luis pushes his hands up underneath Wesley's shirt and skims them up Wesley's ribcage until he finds Wesley's nipples.
He pinches and twists until Wesley detaches himself from his neck. Wesley looks at the mark he made, satisfied.
"Humans bite, too," he says, grinning. Luis surges up and half-tackles Wesley back down onto the bed. He gets a hand down Wesley's pants and jacks him off quickly. He feels like a teenager, eighteen and jerking off with his best friend because he'd never been interested in any of the neighborhood girls.
"Not like this," Luis smiles. He tugs the collar of Wesley's t-shirt aside to expose his collarbone and lowers his mouth. He scrapes his front teeth over the bone and Wesley arches up into him.
"I know I said not to use them," Wesley grunts, and Luis knows he's talking about his canines. "But you could. If you wanted to. A little."
Luis twists his wrist and flicks his thumb over the head of Wesley's cock. He has to tilt his head at an awkward angle because of his overbite, but he gets one of his canines into Wesley's flesh. He drags it down gently, just enough to tear the skin, and then pulls it out. He moves his hand on Wesley's cock to cup his balls. He's close, Luis can tell by how quickly his blood is rushing under his skin.
A tiny drop of blood wells up at Wesley's collarbone. Luis dips his head back down and licks at it. Wesley moans. It tastes good.
"You're AB+," Luis hums. He works just the head of Wesley's cock and Wesley comes with a shout.
"It's your favorite, right?" Wesley asks after he comes down. He reaches for Luis's pants, and Luis thinks, you're my favorite.
Luis becomes a regular at the soccer matches. The parents of Wesley's players know him by name and he sits on the bleachers now, making conversation with some of the. He buys a baseball cap with the school's crest on it and makes a point to show up for every home game.
"The kids were asking where you were tonight," Wesley tells him one night. Luis had missed the match because he had to be at work early to finish his paperwork.
"Tell them I'll stop by early next time to make up for it," Luis says.
The kids know about Jeffrey. So do their parents. Every time Luis goes to a match, parents as him to pass their condolences and support on to Wesley.
"Maybe," he suggests one day, "the kids should do it instead of me. Dedicate the season to him or something, he was a footballer. Win a trophy for him."
Wesley joins an activist group.
"You don't need to do that," Luis tells him. "I know you need something to do and all, but I don't need you to."
"I wanted to," Wesley says. They're in the garden. It's warm outside. Luis leans closer to Wesley. He can smell Wesley's blood under the scent of the dirt and herbs. It's a comforting mixture. Wesley has tiny freckles across his nose and cheekbones.
"Okay," Luis shrugs. He tugs on Wesley's sleeve. "You're gonna get a farmer tan like that."
Wesley laughs. "Are you suggesting I take it off?"
"Yeah, maybe," Luis says. "If you want."
When Wesley tugs the t-shirt over his head, Luis can see the tiny bruise on Wesley's collarbone. He reaches out and presses his finger against it. "Much better."
They settle into a new routine. Instead of hanging around the hospital all night, Wesley dozes and Luis watches TV when he gets home from work. In the mornings, they get breakfast at the diner and then Luis goes home to garden while Wesley heads to the school. More often than not, Luis goes to football practice with Wesley. He plays five-a-side with the kids at the end of the practices and warns Wesley when he can sense one of them getting sick.
"You're like a frog," Wesley says. Luis laughs. Wesley's head moves up and down with his chest. Wesley's breath comes out in hot puffs against Luis's nipple, and Luis puts a head on the base of Wesley's skull to direct him gently towards it. Wesley obliges and nips at Luis's nipple, sucking on it for a moment.
"How am I like a frog?" Luis asks.
"It's because," Wesley starts. He detaches himself from Luis's skin, tilts his head, and presses his ear against Luis's chest. "It's the thing with your heart, I mean."
"What thing?"
When he changed, Luis had assumed that his heart had just stopped beating. He hadn't felt a pulse in years. "Like how I can hear it right now," Wesley says. He taps his finger against Luis's wrist in time with Luis's heartbeat. It's impossibly slow, too slow to keep a human alive.
"That doesn't make sense," Luis says. "I don't have blood."
They've experimented with this. Wesley can bite him and leave teeth-marks, but Luis's skin doesn't bruise. When he cuts himself chopping leeks or scrapes his knees playing football, the skin peels back, but he doesn't bleed.
"I know," Wesley says. "But you're a vampire, you aren't supposed to make sense."
Luis adjusts his body, kicking out one of his legs so that Wesley can settle more solidly on top of him. "Okay," he says. "But frogs?"
"One of my students did his biology report about frogs," Wesley says. He squirms a little on top of Luis until Luis's hipbone isn't sticking into his stomach awkwardly. "They hibernate during the winter, and their heartbeats stop."
"So I'm in permanent hibernation?" Luis chuckles a little.
"Except now," Wesley points out.
Luis digs his fingers into Wesley's shoulders and tugs until Wesley hauls himself up to be eye-level with Luis. "You're telling me that you're my summertime?" He can't keep the laugh out of his voice.
"Sure," Wesley says. "It sounds corny when you say it out loud, but. Yeah."
"Okay," Luis says. "I'm like a frog."
Wesley's football team has a winning season and ends up getting into the quarterfinals of the local league.
Luis has been adopted as an assistant coach. Wesley buys him a school jacket and he shows up to the huddles before matches.
"We're gonna win it," the team captain says. The boys cheer. "For Jeffrey. And Coach, and Luis, but for Jeffrey."
They win their quarterfinal match.
"Why are they doing it for Jeffrey?" Wesley asks Luis as they drive home.
"I think," Luis shrugs, "they're doing it for you, but. Jeffrey was a footballer, right?" Wesley nods. "So like. They win a football tournament for you in his memory."
"You've thought about this a lot," Wesley comments.
"Yeah," Luis says. "I may have suggested it."
Wesley doesn't say anything for a long minute. His jaw is clenched, but he doesn't have the steering wheel in a death grip, so Luis knows he isn't angry. "Thank you," he says, finally.
Luis reaches over and squeezes Wesley's thigh.
The leeks start to show leaves in the garden. Luis sets up garbage bags over them when it rains really hard and makes sure the to uproot all of the weeds that get within a foot of them.
One morning, he comes back from the hospital to find Wesley squatting in the garden with a trowel, weeding.
Luis leaves his bag in the car and walks up behind Wesley. He slides his hands over Wesley's sweaty shoulders and hums. "Hey," he says.
Wesley drops the trowel and stands up. His skin is getting tanner now that the sun is out more often. The tiny freckles across his nose blur into each other. He puts a hand on the side of Luis's face and Luis can feel the layer of dirt being smudged into his skin. He can feel Wesley's AB+ blood pulsing through his hand, stronger in his thumb, which rubs circles over Luis's cheekbone. When Wesley leans up and kisses him, Luis bites at the inside of his lip just enough to get a few drops of blood out. Wesley surges against him and Luis sighs, content.
"Hey," Wesley says when they pull apart. "We should take this inside."
Luis forgets his bag in the car.
"If you don't win, it's okay," Wesley tells his team on the bus to their semifinal. "It's been an amazing season, I'm proud to have been your coach."
Luis thinks, it's not okay. They have to do this. They have to win.
They don't.
They lose 5-3. Privately, Luis thinks the second goal was offside, but he refrains from heckling the ref when he sees that Wesley doesn't look upset about it.
"You did good," Wesley tells the kids. They look forlorn, sad. "I'm proud of you. Thank you guys," he says. "We'll get 'em next season."
Luis can't tell if it's fake bravado or if he actually means it, so he just puts his hands in his pockets and nods along.
"How are you doing?" Luis asks when they get back to the house.
"I'm okay," Wesley says, and for the first time since Jeffrey died, Luis believes him. "I'm a little disappointed, but I'm okay. You?"
"I wanted to win it," Luis says. "You deserve it. But if you're good, I'm good."
"Hi, I'm Luis." The group mumbles it back to him. "Five years, seven months."
"So there's this guy. Wesley." Luis gestures in Wesley's direction. Wesley grins and ducks his head. "I, uh. I like him a lot. And he's done a lot for me- the activist group he joined is working on getting visitation rights for vampires and their families in countries where there aren't any, so hopefully we'll get to visit my family soon. I'd like that. Anyway, I'm not really sure what happens next, because nobody really knows what happens to vampires? We haven't been around long enough to find out, so. But I don't think about that as much as I used to, 'cause it's good the way it is."
"Thank you, Luis," the group leader says when Luis pauses for too long. Luis shrugs and sits down. Wesley's hand makes its way into his lap and Luis leans against him.
Most of the time, Wesley fucks Luis. Most of the time, it's a sensory overload for Luis to fuck Wesley, to feel his blood rushing all around his body. Sometimes they try it, though, mostly when Wesley's tired and his body is pliant.
It's never any less of a rush for Luis, pushing his cock into Wesley's body and having his own pleasure drowned out by the sensation of Wesley's blood pounding through his body.
"Hey, you okay?" Wesley asks. He reaches up and grips at Luis's shoulder. Luis grins down at him, wide enough that all of his teeth are visible.
"I'm good," Luis says.
Wesley runs his thumb along Luis's lower lip. Luis licks at it, and Wesley pushes it into his mouth slowly, seeks out his canines. He pushes against the sharp point of the tooth until a drop of blood wells up on the pad of his finger. Luis moans and licks at it.
"You can, if you want," Wesley says. He presses his thumb more firmly against the tooth until there's a steady trickle of blood dripping into Luis's mouth. "Use them."
Luis comes, sucking on Wesley's bleeding thumb. He slithers down Wesley's body afterwards and blows him, the taste of his come and blood mingling in his mouth.
"I was serious," Wesley says after they've both come down. "You can."
Luis pushes his face against Wesley's neck, feels the pulse there. He licks at the spot, and Wesley shivers. He thinks, if you ask, I will.
"I know."
notes
1. infinite thank you goes to luxover for beta reading this and talking through many aspects of it and for generally being absolutely amazing and unbelievably wonderful! it wouldn't ever have been finished without you.
2. part of this was loosely based on the story of diane geppi-aikens and the 2003 loyala university women's lacrosse team