One Regret to Live Through [3/3]
Part 1 | Part 2 | Masterpost
He isn’t stupid, though. He starts suspecting that Ian isn’t being entirely… honest with him. The thing is, it’s hard not to notice, the way his eyes are a bloody red or how he drinks less of the bagged blood (although, most of them don’t drink it very often, but still). Ian takes less when they go hunting, but he looks at his top, looks the same way he did when they met for the first time. When he was feeding only on animal blood he was taking less and his skin was so pale it was almost see through and he had dark rings under his eyes. Now he’s just. He’s pale, but the dark circles are gone, he’s stronger and faster but he’s taking less and less and that’s not how it works.
The obvious answer is that he’s taking a little “something something” on the side.
Danny isn’t mad. He’s disappointed, but he isn’t mad. He’d hoped that if he slipped up he’d at least tell him. It’s not like he doesn’t know what he’s going through, he does. He did it, he slipped up, he knows what it’s like. The scent of human blood lingers on Ian’s skin, and he can smell it, no matter how careful Ian is when he’s taking from them. It’s not something he wants to think about, because Ian is one step away from a lie. He doesn’t want to ask because he’s not sure that Ian would tell him the truth if he did.
It’s not in his nature to be the suspicious kind of boyfriend-partner-mate. He’s not the controlling type; he doesn’t need to know everything that Ian is doing every second of every day. But the excuses he’s making are getting more and more far-fetched the longer he hides the fact that he’s not only hunting animals. He’s making excuses, and finally Danny has to follow him, he has to know, because this is the third time in six months that Ian has said that a friend from his old coven is going to be in the area and that he wants to go see him and talk about “old times.”
Old times his ass.
He follows him when he leaves, follows the red Ferrari out of town and out of state. He uses one of the older cars, a Range Rover from 2003 that actually belonged to Rian before he upgraded to a 2009 model. Ian drives fast, passing through the town in Virginia that they stopped in once upon a time. He swallows hard, stopping the car at a gas station when Ian stops and parks at the same café that they people watched from, pretending to drink a diet Pepsi. Danny keeps tabs on him from a distance, standing in a book store and watching him from over shelves and the tops of books.
Ian sits at a table in the corner of the café, next to a window. He can see from across the street and to the right the condensing ice in the cup, dripping down the side and collecting in a pool of water on the table. His mate isn’t even doing anything, just staring blankly at the fizzy drink in the glass like it has all the answers to life. Danny wishes he could see what was happening in his head, what he was doing and thinking. He wonders if his someone from his old coven is even going to meet him, or if that’s just another cover up for hunting.
A perky blonde waitress stops by Ian’s table, cocks her hip to the side and smiles a dazzling smile at him. Danny stills, a travel book poised in the air as he watches. He knows that he has nothing to worry about, that what they have and are is much more than Ian flirting with a waitress at some dingy diner in the middle of a hick town, but still. He’s smiling that smile and he can see in his head the way his eyes glitter at her, and he knows what she feels like, she feels like a million fucking bucks, because he’s so pretty and all of his attention is on her. That’s what Danny feels like almost every time Ian so much as looks at him.
She twirls her hair around one finger, lips pulled into a wide smile, and Danny doesn’t know why he feels so jealous of her, of how she’s looking at Ian like he’s the prey, like she’s the predator preying on an innocent. She has no idea what she’s getting herself into; part of Danny wants to warn her away so she doesn’t get hurt, or worse - killed. The other part of him wants to let her do it, because that is his mate she’s shamelessly flirting with, pushing out her chest and flipping her hair over her shoulder in a flicking motion that (in Danny’s opinion) makes her look like she has a tick in her neck.
The girl finally leaves; Danny doesn’t miss the look she throws at Ian over her shoulder, or the way she leans over and writes a ten digit number onto a napkin. Danny thinks that either she’s what Ian’s decided on as his prey, or he’s going to throw the number away and never think of it again. He really, really hopes that he throws the number away, because if he keeps it… One of Danny’s biggest fears is that he isn’t enough for Ian, because he knows that unlike himself, Ian plays for both teams, and while he could easily compete with any other guy, he could never compete with a girl because they have things that he doesn’t.
It’s dark outside by the time Ian leaves his place, and Danny has walked around the whole bookstore at least five times and spent thirty dollars on some books he hasn’t read yet. He’s in the coffee shop part of the book store, with a cappuccino in a mug on the table in front of him and a Nicholas Sparks book in his hand. He doesn’t see Ian leave; he’s reading, glancing away every so often to check and see that Ian is still sitting there (he does feel guilty about spying on him like this, but what else can he do if Ian isn’t being honest with him?) and he looks down, looks up about five minutes later to see that his mate isn’t seated in the corner booth anymore. He can see the waitress taking orders from the booth over, so that might be a good thing.
Danny isn’t worried about Ian leaving the town; he knows the way he hunts (used to hunt in the same way) and he’ll probably be at a club, or join a group of people who have booze and drugs and girls and guys who are easy on the eye and easier for sex. He doesn’t bother with his car, just walks down the streets and rakes his eyes out for a parked red Ferrari that sticks out like a sore thumb in a small town like this.
He hasn’t been worried about walking around a town at night since he was human; if anyone tries to mug him he could knock them out before they could even ask for his wallet. He could kill them faster and smoother and cleaner than a hired assassin.
The car is parked, half in the shadows of a four story building, the other half washed in the yellow-orange light that spills from a street light above. Danny peers into the window as he passes by, sees a book and an empty blood bag in the passenger seat. He straightens up, looks to the left and to the right and then to the left again. He’s looking for a club or a bar or something, somewhere with people who are in less-than-sober states which make them easy victims. His ears prick up (similar to a dog or a wolf) and he focuses on the sounds, filtering them through until he can pick out a steady beat coming from some sort of a club that doesn’t sound further than a couple of blocks south.
It’s a ten dollar cover fee, and Danny hands the bouncer a fifty dollar bill and then walks into the bar without a second looks at him. Fifty dollars is the smallest he has. It’s smokey inside of the bar; from cigarettes and pot and a smoke machine that tinges the air grey and makes it almost hard to see through. Danny takes a seat in a corner of the bar, leans in close to the bartender and orders a beer in an overly loud voice. He’s hidden by the shadows of bad lighting and covered by smoke machines. He picked out where Ian was almost as soon as he sat down, grinding on some redhead girl on the dancefloor. The lights make him look pale, and he looks like he’s glowing as his hands slide down the girls hips to rest at the tops of her thighs, near the hem of a black dress that’s almost showing too much skin.
His fingers tighten on the edge of the stool he’s perched on, jealousy flaring low and hot in his gut. He watches carefully, the way Ian ducks his head and his lips brush her ear as he most likely asks if she wants to go somewhere else, somewhere a little more private? His insides clench and he’s angry and hurt and jealous; he knows that Ian wouldn’t cheat on him, it’s more the fact that he doesn’t trust him enough to tell him what he’s doing and go behind his back and flat out lie to him.
(Okay, he’s a little worried that Ian is going to cheat on him. But only a little.)
The redhead and Ian thread their way through the crowd of people bouncing and grinding to a song with a fast bass line. Ian’s hand is curled around her wrist, his other hand holding onto her hip like he doesn’t want to let her go in case she runs away. The girl won’t run though, he knows what Ian looks like and when he wants to be persuasive there is practically no denying him anything. He watches them leave through the door Danny came in fifteen minutes ago, Ian’s hand resting on the girl’s lower back as he leads her to either his car or some dark alleyway.
Danny waits ten minutes to follow him out; he leaves his drink untouched on the counter, and by the time he’s taken three steps away from it some desperate soul has whisked it away. It could have been laced with roofies and someone would probably have taken it anyway. Stupid fucking humans. He ignores the people who grab his ass and whisper obscene things in his ear as he walks by, side stepping the bouncer by the door. He turns left, and there’s an alley and he can hear voices and something that sounds like moaning coming from his left. He doesn’t want to look. Danny really, really, really does not want to look.
The alleyway is dark, but Danny is a vampire. His eyes dilate until he can see clearly, two figured leaned against a wall. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out what’s happening there: Ian’s arms are braced against the brick, bracketing the girl in between his body. His head is ducked, face turned away from Danny but he knows that it’s him. Her hands are curled tightly in his hair and the girl looks pale, so pale. The column of her neck is bared, visible over Ian’s shoulder and through a curtain of red hair. Danny can see a line of blood, just a trickle, falling to land in the dip between her collarbones.
His mouth is dry, and he turns and runs before Ian can realize that he’s there. Danny drops his car keys twice before he can pull himself together to push the button to unlock the car. He trembles a little as he sits in the drivers seat, hands on the steering wheel. He’s not sure what he’s more: hurt or angry. His eyes sting a little, and if he was capable of crying he knows there would be hot angryhurt tears sliding down his cheeks right now. Danny is hurt and upset and on top of all of that he’s embarrassed because he didn’t know and Ian didn’t tell him and he’s so angry that he didn’t.
Dark forests fly past outside the windows as he floors the gas pedal. The silver car streaks down the highways and when he gets to the coven he slams the breaks so hard the whole car jerks forward. Doors slam against walls behind him; he’s a ball of fucking fury, angry at everyone and the world and most of all, he’s angry at Ian.
He swings the bedroom door open with such force that the hinges break; it leaves a dent in the wall and he doesn’t fucking care. The only things running through his head is red hot anger because he isn’t good enough for Ian to tell him the fucking truth. He’s been fed lies for months and months and he honestly thought that Ian was doing so well and that he hadn’t slipped up and wow, he’s going to do this on a clean run. The fact that he lied is worse than the multiple slip ups.
The closet doors break too, the wood splitting when they hit the walls. The only sounds are the crash bang of things flying around the room and hitting walls and breaking. A picture frame of them that was taken a few weeks after they met is lying on the floor, face down, glass cracked and splintered. There’s a duffel bag on the bed and he’s throwing things into it, anything that his fingers touch that belongs to Ian: his jacket and the stupid Christmas sweater with the raindeer on it and his fucking Harry Potter books and the pants that Danny bought for him. He’s aware of the fact that the rest of the coven are all standing outside of the doorway, watching his crazed frenzy with something like awe, because they’ve never once seen him like this, never once seen his temper get this bad.
They all hear the front door open and then close with a click, and Danny gets even angrier at that, grabs the duffel bag by the handles and throws it with everything he has at the wall. It connects with a solid thud, falls down to the floor and then he spins around, fingers closing around the yellow lamp that’s on his side of the bed. He chucks it just as Ian steps through the crowd of people and it hits him squarely in the chest, breaking on impact and then shattering once it hits the floor.
Ian says, “Oh.”
“Fuck you,” Danny spits, and on sight, he’s much, much angrier than he was earlier. “You’ve been fucking lying to me Ian. Why, you could have told me the fucking truth.” Red is tinting his vision, he’s this close to just clawing Ian’s face off and he doesn’t know why he’s so mad and upset and pissed off but he is.
“I don’t -” Ian takes a step back, hands out in front of him as if to surrender. “It was just -” He keeps breaking off, and he can practically feel the anger rolling off of Danny in waves. Underneath that anger though, he knows him well enough, he knows him almost as much as himself, that there is hurt and humiliation hidden underneath all this anger. He doesn’t want to have this conversation with an audience. “You were so proud and happy; I didn’t want to burst your bubble.”
He throws something else, but he’s running out of things to throw. This one is a pillow, and it hits his chest with a hollow thump. “No, don’t even pin this on me. I didn’t do anything it would have been okay to tell me. We all slipped up you don’t need to be fucking perfect, Ian.” He rubs at his face which is burning, his whole body feels a lot warmer than it has since he was turned almost sixty years ago. “I just. If you lied to me about this; about what you were feeding on and where you were going and who you were going to meet, I don’t know what else you were lying about. I can’t trust you like this.”
“What about Pete, hm? You weren’t exactly upfront about your past with this guy. I feel like I’m the only one who doesn’t know about you and your fucking sire.”
The others kind of fall back, they take a step back because the tension in the room just increased tenfold, his temper flaring. He almost flushes, if he were human he would. “No, this is nothing like that. I didn’t lie to you about him, I never had any reason to bring it up until you outright asked me and I never fucking lied.” Matt is standing at the front of them, Rian and Zack and Jeff just behind, fully prepared to pull them apart if it comes down to it. He is beyond a shadow of a doubt that they could kill each other.
“Then how the fuck does Gabe know? And the rest of his coven? Because I asked them last time we saw them, and they all seemed pretty fucking friendly with your sire.”
“That’s because he lead that coven until it got too big. Then he split it up and left Gabe in charge of the bigger half. Quit fucking questioning me on this, I’m the one who’s supposed to be pissed off here, not fucking you.”
“How come I can’t be angry too? How do I know that you’re not seeing Pete again or doing things behind my back?”
Matt steps forwards this time, looking angrier than Ian’s ever seen him. “He’s not going behind your back, Ian Planet.” His voice is dangerously smooth, like the calm before a storm.
Danny strides forwards, two longs steps, and swings his arm back, punching him in the jaw. “Fuck you. Fuck you fuck you fuck you. I want you to fucking leave. I never want to fucking see you again.” His fist hurts. The pain will go away in a matter of moments, but it’s like the residue of a bruise, sore and green and aching. “I never ever want to see you again so help me God.”
The whole emotional spectrum pans out across Ian’s face in a matter of seconds. He schools himself into a stone cold look, eyes going flat. “Fine,” he says. “Whatever.” Ian reaches up with one hand to touch the spot where Danny punched him, and then he turns on his heel, and leaves the room, walking through the group of vampires that are gathered outside the door, head held high the whole time.
Everything is quiet for a second, and then Danny seems to collapse in on himself. If Matt wasn’t right there he’d probably hit the bare wooden floor. As it is, he catches him and gets him to sit on the bed. Danny’s chest aches, he feels sore and empty and hollow, like someone just ripped his heart out and stepped on it.
“You cold have told me,” Matt says, sitting down next to him. “I would have done it for you. I could have told him shit about protecting the coven and how he can’t hunt around here.” He looks up as he hears footsteps, and the room is filled with people, until Matt shakes his head minutely and ticks it in the direction of the door. “It’s my job, that’s what I’m supposed to do.”
“No,” he says hoarsely, staring blankly at the picture frame that’s lying face down on the floor. “I had to do it.” The last five minutes are playing on a constant loop in his head; it’s like a reel of film that’s stuck and keeps playing the same scene over and over and over. Yelling and smashing and breaking and punching and yelling. His eyes sting with tears he can’t cry. “I had to do it,” he repeats in a quieter voice, and then falls against Matt, hiding his face in his shoulder as his body shakes with dry sobs.
“It’s for the best,” Matt says quietly, sliding his arm around his shoulder and pulling him forward, rocking him gently. He’s like a small child after a nightmare, shaking apart, shaking into a million pieces.
“Yeah,” Danny echoes miserably. “It’s for the best.”
A/N: So um this is the end of the first part and I just started the second one so it’ll probably be a couple of weeks before I start posting the second part. I really, really, really hope that if you’ve been a silent reader up until here you leave at least an anon comment on here or on my tumblr or something with what you think.