With All My Best Intentions (1/2)
Title: With All My Best Intentions (1/2)
Rating: Um... probably best to go with NC-17.
Wordcount: ~13k
Warnings: Vampires, sex, blood/biting during sex, lesbian vampire jokes most decidedly in bad taste... Frankly, this fic is silly and gross and if you're bothered by blood, descriptions of sex, bad jokes, or any combination thereof, you probably don't want to read it. If you are googling yourself, your brothers, your bandmates, or your friends, and have found this? Don't read keep going. Unless you're Gabe Saporta, and then please, enjoy yourself, you're most likely going to be amused.
Summary: There are a few vampires in Atlanta. They’re… Well, they’re weird. Everyone's weird, but they don’t bother to hide it. When Kevin asks about it, Bill says it’s because they’ve learned that it’s a waste of time. Hiding the weird things. Because they’ve realized that everyone does them, so they think it’s stupid to act like they don’t. Even the other things, the *actually* weird things, they don’t hide anymore either. Kevin has had too many conversations with Biscuit to count where she’s just cheerfully picking her nose, or digging in her ear, or hitting on girls on their period because she can smell the blood on them. (Kevin goes to college. Mike, Bill, and Jen Stone are vampires. Insanity ensues.)
Characters: Kevin Jonas, Mike Carden, Bill Beckett, Jennifer Stone (aka Biscuit), Gabe Saporta, Selena Gomez, Gerard Way.
Notes: Lots of thanks to both of my marvelous betas, bayoumaharajah, for overall plot-and-timeline help, and sly_fuck for very encouraging enthusiasm and line-by-line commentary. ^__^ Also, seriously, guys, this is basically vampire pron. Don't read it if that bothers you.
Author’s Note: This isn’t the sort of thing I would *want* vampires to be, exactly. It’s just that it’s what I think would happen, if actual people suddenly needed to drink blood and had a very difficult time dying. It *is* sort of gross-people are gross. If you’re not okay with gross, I don’t suggest reading it. There’s sort of graphic sex, and lesbian vampire period jokes, blood play, and Bill Beckett and Jennifer Stone being totally creepy vampires. And yes, I did just say Jennifer Stone. Harper wants to EAT YOU.
*cough*
Anyways. Read on, if none of that bothers you.
--
An Introduction to Vampire Lore By Selena Gomez:
There’s something about actual people. Actual people are gross. Actual people are weird. Actual people are stupid and awkward and they screw up a lot. Actual people pick their noses, forget to brush their teeth and put on deodorant, and smell their hands over and over to check if there’s anything foreign and therefore weird-smelling on them. Actual people have to pee during intimate moments, get inconveniently timed illnesses, get acne in places other than their faces, and always have hair growing somewhere they wish it wouldn’t-or, alternately, can’t get it to grow in places that they wish it would. Actual people want things, some of which are silly or embarrassing, and don’t go after them-out of fear, of repercussions, or the way they will be perceived, or basic and unequivocal rejection. They don’t always get what they want, and so often it’s because of fear, mortal or social.
So what happens if, suddenly, an actual person, with actual fears and desires, who farts in their sleep and burns toast when they’re cooking, just like everybody else, was impervious to harm? Couldn’t die, except in the presence of some very specific things? They’d still be that same, weird, awkward, greedy, simple and grossly complicated actual person that they were before, but the element of fear? That’d be gone. Maybe it’d stick around for a little while, out of a natural sense of shame or etiquette, but after a while? No, it goes away. When there are no real consequences for actions perceived as dangerous, fear dissipates.
There aren’t a lot of vampires. If there were, they’d maybe rule the world by now. Or, they might, if they forgot their petty human desires and diversions, and if the ones who turned into vampires were people who wanted that, or had the skills for that, to begin with. But mostly they don’t, and there are only maybe a few hundred, scattered over the world.
No one knows when the virus started, but it picked up in the first decade of the 21st century. It only affects individuals with a certain mutation, and maybe there were more people with that mutation in those years-maybe it’s the microwaves. Hippies keep saying those things are going to kill the human race. Maybe they are. But the virus struck a few people in the country, then in the city, and it picked up pace, and people started to notice. There are less of them, the vampires, overseas-maybe other countries don’t use so many microwaves.
The virus made people who were sick miraculously better; there were stories of cancer cures and instantaneous recoveries for coma patients. No one called it a virus then-not until the first coma patient got it into his head to get up and go outside. A few of the first ones burnt themselves to death, scorching their skins, lungs, and eyes until they died. Waves of them died of malnutrition before it occurred to anyone to test them and see why. There’s no overwhelming urge, no “vant to dreehnk your blood” feeling to start with. It’s more like those cravings you get, where you’re hungry, but nothing really sounds good until you find that thing that your body was looking for. They didn’t figure it out until a kid in Chicago cut his hand and his babysitter kissed it better and then nearly drank the kid dry. Then all the ones with the virus-or, okay, a lot of them-went out and started killing people and drinking their blood, because they thought they had to, or were supposed to. Just goes to show you the way people go crazy at the first opportunity.
A bunch of those died, too, from people canny enough to shove pieces of wood through their chests, or people who managed to hold them off until sunrise. Getting the virus doesn’t give you super strength, super speed, any of that-it just makes you as fast and strong as you could be if you were as healthy as it’s possible for you to be. That tends to be way faster than most people, who are usually a long ways off from healthy, even if it’s not to the point that they notice the inconvenience. So a lot of them died-until the doctors or scientists or whoever the hell does that stuff came out with a statement that said that the “virally infected” only needed a pint or so of blood a month to survive. So the “afflicted” came back, all contrite for having eaten their friends and family and everything, and started buying blood from blood banks and acting mostly like regular people. And then a lot of those died, because people with the virus can only digest fresh blood, straight out of the source. There was uproar, of course, but most people with the virus didn’t have a lot of trouble finding food. There are these little venom sacs that develop over the canines, so if they bite people, the venom seeps in. It’s not a deadly thing-it’s a mild paralytic, slowing movement and wearing off over a few hours, that has the totally awesome side effect of being a crazy powerful aphrodisiac. So it’s not like people were unwilling victims-no, they were lining up to get bitten.
Once it was proven that there were no negative side effects, as long as the “vampire” had decent dental hygiene, anyway, most of the fuss died down. No one without the mutation could be “turned,” not like vampires in the movies, and there weren’t that many left, anyways, so eventually it faded from the news. Mostly, they don’t kill people-if they over-eat, they get sick and bloated and move slowly for days. Most of them ended up in big cities, where it isn’t unusual for there to be eccentrics who don’t go outside, where young people pass unnoticed-although not all of them are young, being restored to peak physical condition tends to make people look young-and where there are plenty of people for them to snack on without having to deal with a social backlash.
There are a few in Atlanta. They’re… Well, they’re weird. We’re all weird, but they don’t bother to hide it.
--
--
--
When Kevin asks about it, Bill says it’s because they’ve learned that it’s a waste of time. Hiding the weird things. Because they’ve realized that everyone does them, so they think it’s stupid to act like they don’t. Even the other things, the actually weird things, they don’t hide anymore either. Kevin has had too many conversations with Biscuit to count where she’s just cheerfully picking her nose, or digging in her ear, or hitting on girls on their period because she can smell the blood on them. He’s mostly stopped being creeped out by it, but there are still days where it makes him want to gag. There are also times when Bill calls Bis “Jennifer, darling,” and Bis threatens to peel all his skin off and pour lemon juice on it while it grows back, and Bill shudders like maybe she’s already done it once or twice. She’s just plain strange.
Bill’s in Kevin’s Art History class, and he’s one of them. He and Biscuit are the only two Kevin knows, but they hang around with a couple of others, Kevin knows. Bis and Bill were dating when they got the virus, but they’re not, now. Kevin knows they still fool around sometimes-“Just to do somebody else who isn’t going to break,” Bis has told him, more than once, in that relaxed and mildly disturbing way she has-but mostly they’re friends. Bis scares Kevin a little; he thinks she was maybe weirder than most people even before the change.
But Bill. Bill and Kevin hang out a lot, right, and Kevin mostly doesn’t feel like Bill’s going to eat him.
--
Kevin is out late. He knows he shouldn’t be, because Auburn is a creepy street to be on after dark, but it’s late September, and it gets dark pretty early, and there’s cheap Chinese food a block away. He didn’t come to GSU for the awesome night life-he came because it was as far away from California and New Jersey as he could get, and, really, because Selena asked him to. Selena is Kevin’s best friend, ever in the world, and he’s probably going to marry her, someday, when she realizes that he’s a boy, and when he stops being weirded out by boobs. It’s not a gay thing, he knows-he asked Bill. Bill told him it was totally normal for a guy of Kevin’s age to not want to touch squishy piles of fat on girls’ chests. Kevin would feel slightly better about the whole thing if Bill hadn’t been giggling the whole time.
But Selena had wanted to come to Georgia, of all places, because she had a cousin or an elementary school friend or something here, Kevin was never really clear, but she was adamant, and Kevin had nowhere else especially in mind, so he came with her. And now here he is, walking on Auburn Avenue at eight at night, which doesn’t sound that late, except that when you live in Atlanta, you realize that it’s a commuter city, and that all the respectable people are out of the city by six at night, and you’re left with creepers, college students, and the occasional tourist too dumb to notice that half of everything is closed. Kevin double-checks his pepper spray, fiddling with the trigger, and breathes a sigh of relief as he steps up to Wok and Roll.
He picks up his and Selena’s orders without hassle, and thanks God for the five-dollar student menu. He’s relaxed and sort of hungry, and he takes a deep breath of the only-slightly-polluted-for-a-city air as he steps outside. He’s more confident, now that he has his food, which he knows is stupid, but he’s almost home.
So, of course, that’s when a drunk guy stumbles into him and says, “Fuck, man, that smells good.”
Kevin holds his breath for a minute, not exactly sure what the appropriate response is. In orientation, they told all the students to just ignore the homeless people asking for things, because they might get violent or something-at that point, Kevin and Selena were passing notes, and he hadn’t paid a lot of attention. And this guy isn’t exactly asking for money, and Kevin isn’t sure he’s even homeless. Just really, really drunk and kind of smelly.
“Can I-um. Can I help you?” he asks the guy, feeling for the pepper spray canister in his pocket, just in case.
The guy is leaning against the wall of a closed restaurant, blinking sleepily at Kevin. He starts to say something, pauses, and pulls out a slightly battered cigarette from his pocket. He lights it and takes a drag, the tip glowing orange in the darkness.
“That’ll kill you, you know,” Kevin blurts out before he knows what he’s saying. Just like his mother, god. He’s turning into his mother, and that’s a terrifying thing to think about, so Kevin isn’t going to.
The guy snorts and shakes his hair out of his eyes. It’s long and dark and scraggly, and, upon further inspection, Kevin is pretty sure he isn’t a hobo at all, because he’s clean-shaven and his jeans and t-shirt aren’t any grosser than Kevin’s own after a day or so of wear. Which isn’t actually saying a lot, because Kevin wears his clothes down like a boy with three brothers does. “I don’t think I have to worry about it,” the guy says, and Kevin jerks back into the moment.
“Everybody says that, and then they’re surprised when they have lung cancer.” God, Kevin’s mom is just popping out of his mouth left and right. Apparently, non-hobos who are drunk as all heck bring out his mothering instincts, which is weird enough that Kevin doesn’t want to examine it.
The guy flashes a grin, and runs a hand through his hair. “Kid, I’m not worried. It’s not really your problem, anyways, is it?”
Kevin’s about to reply with something along the lines of, “Well, why are you even talking to me, you weird not-hobo guy?” when the guy just doubles over and throws up. Kevin watches, stomach churning, as the guy finishes and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, straightening up.
“Sorry about that,” the guy says, like he hadn’t just puked everywhere, but had just accidentally bumped Kevin in an elevator, then extends the not-vomit-mouth-wiping hand for Kevin to shake. “I’m Mike. Carden.”
Kevin cautiously takes the hand and shakes it. “Kevin. Um, Jonas. Kevin Jonas.”
Mike grins at him, like a hungry cat would probably grin at a mouse with broken legs, if cats could grin. “I know you,” he says, slowly, like he’s making sure, while he searches Kevin’s face and doesn’t let go of Kevin’s hand.
Kevin tugs his hand away and jams it into his pocket, uncomfortable. “I’m pretty sure you don’t. I don’t really know anyone here.”
Mike’s grin broadens. “You do-you know friends of mine. Beckett. Bill. You’re in a class with him, you hang out. And Stone, she talks about you. She said you smell like kittens.”
That does actually sound like something Biscuit would say, and this guy clearly knows better than to call her by her first name, which suggests that he probably does actually know both of them. Kevin nods, once, carefully. “I do know them, but, uh, I don’t know you. And I really need to get this food back to my friend. She’s waiting on me.” They said, in orientation, that if someone’s messing with you, they’re more likely to go away if you say that you’re expected somewhere. He’s not sure that that applies to friends of friends who are very drunk and who are-are leaning in, clearly trying to smell you and see if your smell in any way resembles kittens. Kevin shifts, uncomfortable.
“No chance you could show me the way to the dorms, kid? Jonas,” Mike adds, smiling in a way that is distinctively creepy, in a sort of bizarrely friendly way.
“Which dorms? Are you meeting someone?”
Mike shrugs. “Something like that. Beckett and I were going to get dinner, he asked me to meet him at the common somethings.” He jerks his head towards Wok and Roll. “I’m starving, but he’d kick my ass if I ate without him.”
That makes Kevin suspicious. “Bill doesn’t eat,” he says, slowly. “And he really doesn’t eat out.”
Mike’s grin goes all pointy in the corners. “Sure he does. We go out to eat together all the time. We like the same sort of foods.”
Kevin feels sort of cold. Well, that would explain the whole vomiting-and-then-acting-like-it-wasn’t-awkward thing. “Right,” he says, stalling a little. “The-uh, Commons, you’re looking for the Commons. I’m, um, not actually going there? But it’s that way and up a couple streets.” He points towards the Commons, the nice dorms, then gestures in the other direction. “But, uh, my friend and I live in the Lofts. They’re the, uh, the other way. If you’ll excuse me-“
Mike grabs Kevin’s pointing hand and yanks hard. Kevin stumbles up against him, and the whole world suddenly smells like horrible cheap liquor and cigarettes. Mike takes a deep breath near Kevin’s ear and mumbles something that might be “kittens.”
“Look,” Kevin says, panicking now, “I don’t think I’d be very tasty, and I really am expected, so Selena’ll call the cops if I’m not back soon, and oh my god are you licking me what the-“ Mike is nuzzled up to Kevin’s neck, lapping at his jugular like a cat at cream.
“You’re really fucking squirmy, kid,” he says, sliding one hand down Kevin’s back pocket, and holding Kevin in place with the other around his waist. He pulls out Kevin’s pepper spray and snorts. “Also really poorly equipped for someone who knows vampires. Don’t you carry a stake or anything?”
Now Kevin is just confused. “Wh-I’m just trying to go home, can you stop licking me, and I normally have a stake, but I was just running like three minutes down the street, okay, and can you please let me go? Don’t you think Bill will be mad if you eat one of his friends?”
Mike chuckles into Kevin’s now-damp neck. “No, it’s not like he hasn’t done it once or twice. And I’m not going to eat you, relax. Maybe just have a snack.”
Kevin had relaxed minutely at the “not going to be eaten” part, but he stiffens again at the “snack” bit. “Seriously, could you not? I’m kind of a germaphobe and I don’t really want someone’s teeth in my skin, especially not someone drunk who just threw up everywhere and oh my god, stop that.” Mike is nipping at the juncture of Kevin’s neck and shoulder, and sparkling pinpoints of pleasure are seeping in through his skin. Venom, right, Bill told him about that. It’s the venom. He is in no way normally aroused by being accosted by drunk hobo-like vampires. Not that it matters, or anything, cause, hey, this is kinda nice.
Just when Kevin is half-numb and pliable in Mike’s arms, starting to think, hey, maybe a snack wouldn’t be too terrible, right?-just then, a cell phone goes off in the distance. Or maybe not the distance. Kevin thinks it’s maybe in his pocket. Or maybe that’s Mike’s pocket?
It’s definitely Mike’s pocket, because Mike yanks it out, and barks an irritable, “What?” into it.
It’s a crappy cell phone, and Kevin is jerked back into full consciousness by the tinny sound of a pissed-off Bill. He still can’t move properly, it’s like he’s in molasses, but he’s mildly reassured at the sound of Bill’s voice.
“Yeah, yeah, Beckett, leave off,” Mike grumbles. “I’m on my way.” He snaps the phone shut, jamming it back into his pocket. “You’re in luck, kid,” he says, smirking a little again. “Beckett’s a pissant, but he’s got dinner waiting. Run along home now.” He peels himself away from Kevin, and Kevin tries to listen, tries to run the heck home now, but his legs aren’t listening, and suddenly aren’t holding up at all.
Mike is looking down at him from very far away, and Kevin realizes that he’s on his back, on the concrete.
“Oh, fuck,” Mike says, rolling his eyes, and Kevin would chastise him, because how much does a guy really need to use profanity, anyway? But he can’t really talk, either, just sort of whimper.
Mike crouches down and yanks Kevin over his shoulder. “You are so fucking lucky I don’t feel like pissing Beckett off tonight, he’s a scrappy bastard. You really do smell like kittens.” He snorts and throws the butt of his cigarette away. “Kittens,” he says, again, like it’s something horrible and mystifying. “Fucking kittens.”
Kevin tries not to giggle. He thinks he’s maybe hysterical.
--
Mike takes him to Beckett, because Beckett knows the kid and probably also knows how to get him home.
This might, however, Mike reflects as Beckett scolds him and Stone tries to stuff her hands down his pants, have been a bad decision. He should have just eaten the kid and been done with it.
But when Beckett’s stopped shouting and waving his arms around and making obscene hand gestures that probably would make at least some sense if Mike was paying attention, the three of them take the kid to his building and leave him with the startled girl Jonas blearily claims is “Sellie, awesome, Leeeeeena.”
As Mike goes back and has dinner with Beckett and Stone-a blushing Freshman trying really hard to be sexy and not make pained faces while they feed off her-he feels a kind of pang and wishes that he’d at least tasted the kid. It’s not like he’s gonna be able to get that close again, and Stone was right, he smells like innocence and sugar and kittens. It’s mouth-watering.
It doesn’t hurt that the kid is stupidly cute. Stupidly. With his fucking poodle hair and his big, blinking doe eyes. Mike kind of wants to kill something, it’s so cute.
--
Kevin doesn’t have a roommate. His roommate was a quiet, sort of grumpy guy named David, and two weeks into the semester, he moved into the Honors dorms, and Kevin was left alone, not unhappily, with a concrete cell of a room, and two beds.
He might as well have a roommate, though, because Selena stays in the other bed every other night, and keeps him up, chattering. Not that Kevin usually minds. They’re totally going to get married someday. However, today, Selena will never stop making fun of him for nearly being killed during his first semester at college. Kevin will never live it down.
“You weren’t even nearly killed like a normal person,” she giggles, snorting into her cereal the next morning. “Weren’t mugged, or hit by a car, or raped by scary hobos. You almost got eaten. Who even does that?” Never mind that Selena doesn’t know any vampires, has never met Bill or Biscuit, and has no idea how utterly terrifying they can be. Actually, knowing Selena, she’d probably enjoy it.
“Hey, Selena?” Kevin says tiredly, not even looking up from his oatmeal.
“Yeah?”
“Shut the crap up.” Kevin finishes his breakfast, scowling, while Selena dances around his dorm, making fake vampire I’m-gonna-eat-you faces and giggling.
--
“So,” Kevin says to Bill as he slides into his seat in the Art History room the next night, “your friend. He tried to eat me.”
Bill snickers. “I think if he’d actually tried, he would’ve managed, my dear Jonas. He just nibbled a bit. Don’t get your panties in a twist.”
“Get my-“ Kevin huffs. “Shut up, you.”
Bill winks at him. “I think he likes you. Want me to set something up, hmmmm?”
Kevin makes a face. “I’m not gay, Bill, good lord.”
Bill stops smirking for a minute, stares at Kevin like he has two heads, and then bursts out laughing.
Kevin scowls at him until he composes himself-it takes a couple minutes. “And what is so funny?”
Bill sniggers a little more, then says, very seriously, “Right, Jonas. Of course you’re not.”
Kevin glares again. “That’s right, I’m not.”
“Okay,” Bill agrees solemnly, then giggles quietly until Professor Gunhouse comes in.
--
When Bill and Kevin leave Art History, Kevin sees a familiar frame leaning up against the railing of the steps.
“Oh, no,” he says to Bill, because there is no way he’s going anywhere with Bill if that weirdo is coming along. Kevin has no desire whatsoever to be nibbled on again.
Bill just rolls his eyes and ignores all Kevin’s protests, grabbing Kevin’s sleeve and towing him along as he goes up to Mike. “Carden,” Bill greets him, grinning.
“Beckett,” Mike replies, then, “Kid. Jonas.” He nods at them as a greeting, and falls into step with them as they walk up the street towards the cluster of restaurants near the Aderhold building. Kevin keeps his head down and the hood of his jacket up-maybe if Mike doesn’t see his neck, he won’t try to lick it again.
Mike and Bill talk the whole way, and Kevin mostly tunes it out. He doesn’t really want to like this guy, and from what snippets he hears, he thinks he might, if they had an actual conversation when Mike wasn’t trying to sink his teeth into Kevin.
“Where do you want to eat, my poodle-y friend?” Bill asks him as they approach Aderhold.
Kevin shrugs. “Don’t really care.”
Bill gives him a long look. “Kevin. You’re the only one eating actual food. You have to pick.”
And then Kevin feels kind of stupid, because, right, vampires. They drink blood. Bill only steals Kevin’s food when he feels like being annoying. Kevin scans the row of restaurants, most of which are closed-they mostly close at five, and Art History is a six o’clock class. It’s almost eight, now. “I guess the Landmark is really the only option, this time of night, anyways,” he says, and leads the way into the diner.
Mike and Bill trail behind, and Kevin tries to remember how to be hungry.
--
Mike is everywhere after that. He’s always glued to Bill, and Kevin is also kind of glued to Bill, because he doesn’t know anyone else, other than Selena, who has started hanging around someone named Gabe. Except Biscuit, and hanging out alone with Biscuit just seems like asking for trouble. The last time he tried it, he showed up at her apartment, and she answered the door with blood all over her mouth and her hands, and there was a naked and completely un-bitten girl laying on her coffee table, giggling, and Kevin had run, fast and far, and had tried to never, ever think about what that meant again. That probably hadn’t helped with the whole thing where he’s terrified of girl parts. Which Bill also tells him is perfectly normal, but Kevin’s starting to think that it’s possible that Bill isn’t as entirely sincere as Kevin would like to think.
Bill’s sincerity aside, Mike is around basically all the time. Eventually, Kevin stops being as jittery around him, because it’s hard to be afraid of someone whose butt you kick at Mario Kart as often as Kevin does Mike, and because Mike is actually sort of less creepy than Bill, most of the time. For one thing, his arms aren’t nearly as long, and he’s not constantly trying to drape them, or the rest of himself, over Kevin. He also doesn’t constantly relate Kevin’s appearance to that of a poodle, which, honestly, is refreshing, because he’s the only one of Kevin’s friends who doesn’t. Although calling them friends might be kind of a stretch. But by mid-October, it’s less of a stretch and more of a little shift.
Kevin actually kind of likes him. As a friend, and everything. He makes sure not to be around him alone- Bill’s always there, or Biscuit, or both, but mostly, Mike doesn’t fill him with terror or anything anymore.
--
Kevin likes cold weather. It’s his favorite weather, because it mostly happens in winter. And in winter, there’s Christmas, and all of the awesome stuff that goes with Christmas. Like scarves and sweaters and boots and mittens. Kevin loves mittens. He’s wearing his favorite pair. They’re red, with little silver snowflakes all over them in rubber, so he can grab things. They’re awesome.
He’s still kind of chilly, though. In Georgia, it doesn’t snow at the start of November-it just rains. It rains horrible, freezing, endless rain, and Kevin is decked out in a scarf and mittens and big, puffy boots, but he’s still soaked to the skin, and it’s dark and cold and still raining. He’s waiting on the bus in front of the Student Center, but they take forever when the weather is bad, and he’s starting to think that maybe it’ll be easier to just walk.
Someone bumps his shoulder. Kevin scoots away and turns, about to apologize for being in the way, and looks up into dark, smiling eyes and a fringe of dark hair. “Mike,” he says, and for a minute, his heart stutters in his chest. But Mike doesn’t look like he’s planning on trying to bite Kevin at the moment, so he adds, “Hi.”
Mike smirks, in that sort of vaguely threatening, but mostly just sort of sweet way, and presses something big and warm into Kevin’s mittened hands. He looks down-it’s a steaming paper cup from Saxby’s.
Kevin feels kind of retarded that his first thought is, He’s kind of a sweetheart, and that he only remembers to think, Maybe he’s just trying to butter me up so he can eat me later, after he’s thought about how nice Mike’s eyes are for a minute. “I-thanks,” he remembers to say, blushing a little.
Mike’s smile widens, eating his face up with a grin. It’s almost goofy, and when he rubs his red nose awkwardly, like any other guy trying to do something nice and getting caught at it, it definitely is. “It’s, uh. It’s hot chocolate. You seemed like the type for that sort of thing.”
Kevin feels his face redden. He is exactly the type; hot chocolate is his favorite. “Yeah,” he says, trying not to sound like a total moron. “Thanks.”
“Yeah,” Mike says, and bumps Kevin’s shoulder again. This time, Kevin doesn’t move away.
--
They wait for a while, but the bus doesn’t come. Kevin drinks his hot chocolate on the walk to the dorms, and when they get there, he’s feeling un-terrified enough that he doesn’t even hesitate to invite Mike up to watch a movie.
Mike ducks his head and rubs at the back of his neck, and after a minute, he looks at Kevin and says, “Yeah, okay.”
“I’ll invite Selena, too, and you can meet her, ” Kevin adds quickly, because he realizes that maybe it sounds like… something else.
Mike’s smile only falters a little, and he nods. “Cool.”
--
Mike and Selena get along, in a quiet sort of way. They don’t really talk, but they talk to Kevin, both of them, and it’s sort of like all being friends.
When Selena goes with Kevin and Mike to Bill’s apartment, though, it’s sort of terrifying.
Bill answers the door in what are most definitely girl’s purple corduroys and a bright pink hoodie. “Cardin, Poodle-muffin, you brought me a snack!” he says delightedly, patting Kevin on the head and ushering him, Mike, and Selena inside.
She stands just inside the doorway, looking up at Bill. Bill is sort of stupidly tall, so she has a long way to look, but if they were going to fight, Kevin would probably put his money on Selena. She fights dirty; Kevin knows this from experience. “You’re very long,” she says, finally.
Bill nods. “And you have breasts.”
She nods back solemnly. “Sometimes. Are you planning to try to eat me?”
“Only in a way you’ll enjoy, little nugget of radiance,” he says, as cheerful as crazy people always are.
Selena nods, like she’s considering this. “If you try anything, I’ll gut you with a coffee mug and feed you your own lungs.”
Bill beams. “I’m really very attracted to you right now,” he says, and kisses her hand.
Selena sniffs and lets him. “As well you should be.”
Kevin just curls up on Bill’s couch, next to Mike, but carefully not touching, and watches. His friends are weird. He’s sort of afraid of what will happen when he puts Bis and Selena in the same room.
--
Kevin has never actually gotten drunk. Mike and Bill like to drink-a lot, really, he’d say it was unhealthy if they were actually capable of dying like regular people-and Selena keeps trying to get him to go to parties with her and her… Gabe. Kevin thinks he’s probably supposed to be jealous of Gabe, since Kevin eventually wants to marry Selena and have lots of adorable children with her, but Gabe is just sort of like a darker, more rubbery version of Bill, as Selena put it, and Kevin has a lot of trouble having a problem with him. He feels like he should probably try, though, which is why, at the party that Selena has finally managed to drag him to, after he’s about four red plastic cups of something sugary to the wind, he’s standing-wavering, more like-in front of Gabe, hands on his hips.
“You-you’re creepy. And dating Selena. And probably kissing with tongues and stuff.” He pokes a finger into Gabe’s chest. Gabe is tall. Gabe is hilariousl tall. Kevin giggles.
Gabe nods. “Probably. Has anyone ever told you that you have lovely hands, little poodle man? Because you do. You should touch me inappropriately with them.” He waggles his eyebrows and swivels his hips a little bit.
Kevin blinks for a minute. Possibly several minutes, because when he stops, Gabe is gone, and he’s sort of drifting sideways, and he thinks, very clearly, Why does everyone think I’m gay, and But he’s dating Selena, and I should really introduce him to Bill, before he feels nauseous and has to lay down, right there, on the floor.
--
Bill answers the door to his apartment in a pair of what are most definitely women’s cream-colored silk pajama bottoms and a green smoking jacket. Bill is strange like that.
“Jonas,” he says, slightly bleary, which means he’s drunk, having sex, or hungry, because vampires don’t actually sleep at this time of night. That would be silly, it’s like noon for them.
Kevin pushes past him, into the apartment, and collapses onto the couch. Gabe waits in the doorway, Selena slung over his shoulder.
Bill looks at Kevin, furrows his brows, and then looks at Gabe. He looks at Gabe for maybe a little too long, and Kevin tries not to giggle, because Gabe is looking back, and Selena will never let him hear the end of it if he giggles in public, even if she’s asleep. Knowing her, she’d hear it anyways.
“I’m drunk,” Kevin announces, because it’s the only way to concisely explain why he’s barging into Bill’s apartment while wearing girl’s jeans and smelling like grenadine.
Bill nods. “I see that. And Miss Gomez appears to share your fate. And you are…?” he trails off, looking at Gabe. They’re about the same height, but Bill still looks like he’s looking up at Gabe, which would be funny if Kevin weren’t already laughing so hard.
“Gabe,” Gabe says, and Kevin thinks that that’s sort of funny, too. “But I like your limbs, and you have hair like a pretty girl, so you can call me whatever you like. Would you like to be naked?”
Bill grins. “Oh, I like you.” Kevin knew he would. They’re the same sort of smarmy. Gabe might not be a vampire, he’s too tan, but he might as well be, because he’s weird.
Gabe grins with half of his mouth, and says, “I’m going to take that as a yes,” and starts making out with Bill, with Selena still slung over his shoulder.
And it’s totally not hot, it absolutely isn’t, and Kevin should totally be affronted on behalf of his someday-wife. But he’s mostly sleepy, and he doesn’t actually remember why he told Gabe to take them here, but he did, and he thinks it was maybe something about not wanting the desk attendant at the dorms to realize that he was drunk and only eighteen, not that she’d mystically know he was drunk, or how old he was, now that he thinks about it.
He drifts off, barely shifting when Gabe dumps Selena on top of him and starts going down on Bill on the floor. Absently, he wonders where Mike is. Lately, Mike is always sort of… around.
--
When Kevin wakes up, his mouth tastes like something died in it. Also, Selena is asleep on his stomach, and Gabe and Bill are missing entirely. And Mike is sitting on Kevin’s ankles, staring at him like he’s maybe thinking about eating him again.
“Mike,” Kevin says, cautious. His head is throbbing.
Mike grins. “You were so drunk, Jonas, it was beautiful.”
Kevin rolls his eyes. Mike is weird. Deeply weird, and when did he even get here? Kevin has no recollection of anything after Bill opening the door in his Oscar Wilde outfit. “Yeah, I’m sure it was. Can you get off my ankles, please?” His mom always taught him to be polite. He supposes it still applies when vampires are sitting on you at-he looks at his watch-two in the afternoon, mocking you for your previous inebriation.
Mike shakes his head. “I’m disturbingly comfortable, kid. Your ankles are sort of squishy. Also, your girlfriend is drooling, and it’s fascinating to watch.”
Kevin looks down, and sure enough, there’s a string of drool flowing from Selena’s mouth into the shoulder of his shirt. “That’s disgusting,” he says, a little bewildered. She doesn’t respond, only whuffles a little in her sleep. Mike sniggers.
“You want coffee?” he asks, after a minute, and Kevin blinks at him.
“Do you even drink coffee?” he asks, curious. He didn’t think vampires drank anything but blood, and, he supposes, alcohol. Now that he thinks about it, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be able to drink coffee, too.
Mike shrugs. “Not really. Mostly I just like the smell. Like bacon, and onions. I didn’t like onions, even before the virus. Just the smell.” He gets off of Kevin’s ankles, and there’s a moment of slightly painful bliss as the blood rushes back into Kevin’s toes.
Kevin follows him into Bill’s kitchen. “Mushrooms are like that for me. I love the smell of them frying, but I gag if I eat them.” As Mike starts the coffee and gets two mugs down from the cabinet over the stove, it occurs to Kevin that Mike seems weirdly familiar with the apartment, like he lives there. Then he wonders where Mike lives. “Where do you live?” he asks, because if vampires can act like there’s nothing awkward about anything ever, then so can Kevin.
Mike runs a hand through his hair, looking as close to awkward as vampires ever get. “Here and there. Mostly here. Sometimes I stay other places.” He hops up onto the counter, and a hole in the knee of his jeans rips a little further as his knee pokes through it. “Bill’s got an extra room, though, so, yeah, mostly here.”
“But you don’t-I mean, Bill never said. He didn’t even talk about you, before.” Kevin had been to Bill’s apartment, once or twice, before he met Mike. The only people to ever be there were Biscuit, who practically lived there unless she was sleeping with someone, when she went back to her own tiny apartment, and Gerard, who Kevin had thought was a vampire, but who was actually just an art major. It had surprised him how similar the effects of the two things were, though.
“I was away,” Mike says, grimacing. “Stone and I had a falling out for a while, she was maybe trying to kill me, you know. The usual shit.”
Kevin’s kind of impressed. He’s thought before that it’s a good thing he’s on Biscuit’s good side, because she’s scary, in the adorable sort of way that makes her even more terrifying. “Why was she mad at you?”
Mike rolls his eyes. “She’s a girl, they get pissed about everything.” After Kevin just stands there, waiting, Mike sighs and gives in. “Alright, so I maybe had a bite of her boyfriend or something.” Catching Kevin’s accusing glare, he adds, “No harm done! He was there, I didn’t know they were hooking up, we were drunk, he asked me to, it wasn’t a big deal. She swore blood vengeance and kept trying to leave me out in the sun. Beckett told me to piss off until she’d cooled down; I did. That’s it.”
Kevin snorts. “He asked you to? I can’t imagine a boyfriend of Biscuit’s doing that-everyone’s scared of her.”
“If you’re fucking Stone, you have to like to live dangerously,” Mike says, a glint of something in his eyes.
“And to have you-what, sleep with him, feed off him? That’s any better?” Kevin makes a face. “You’re just as bad as she is. You’re all… creepy.”
“He’s much worse, poodle, don’t let the bastard tell you differently,” Bill says, ambling into the kitchen. His entire chest is covered in hickeys and scratches, and he looks disgustingly pleased about it. Gabe follows, looking just as terrible, if twice as cheerful, and there are bite marks in his neck, and in the crook of his elbow. Kevin remembers the horrible sex noises he fell asleep to, and decides that he doesn’t want to be around for the fallout when Selena wakes up and tries to stake Bill. He sort of wants to feel guilty, because it’s sort of his fault, since he had them come here, but he’s too tired and his head hurts too much for him to be bothered.
“I’m not worse,” Mike says, affronted. “I don’t have tits. It’s not possible for me to be worse.”
“Oh yes. I forgot to mention,” Bill says sarcastically, “You and Jonas can bond over your mutual fear of breasts and female genitalia. Fucking weird, the both of you.”
Kevin pouts at him. “You said it was perfectly normal.”
Gabe snorts, nipping at the shell of Bill’s ear while Bill gets two more mugs down and starts to pour the coffee.
“Yes, dear Jonas, it’s perfectly normal. For budding homosexuals.” Bill rolls his eyes and drinks half his mug in one gulp, not seeming to care at all that the coffee is still steaming.
Kevin glares. “I’m not gay, Bill, we’ve been over this.”
Bill grins impishly. “Neither am I. And the difference between us is that I have sex with women and love their breasts.”
Gabe raises an eyebrow. “You have sex with women?”
Bill raises one right back, putting his hands on his hips. “And that isn’t your girlfriend out there?”
“You have a point,” Gabe concedes. He scratches his chin for a moment. “Does it count as gay if you have lady hair?”
Bill shrugs, falsely nonchalant. “I’ve no idea. Do you count as a man if you fuck like a girl?”
Gabe narrows his eyes. “Oh, bitch, it is on now,” he says, and rams Bill into the door of the pantry. Kevin politely rescues Bill’s coffee mug from his flailing hand as Gabe jams his hands into the front of Bill’s pajama pants.
“Sweet, extra coffee,” Mike says, and steals the cup.
“I thought you only liked the smell?” Kevin says, trying very hard to ignore the sounds from the other side of the very small kitchen.
Mike drains Bill’s cup. “Well, normally. Now, I’m torn between bleaching my brain and getting you off through your girl jeans, and I’m thinking that coffee will probably help me make the decision.”
Kevin blinks at Mike’s completely serious face, ducks his head, and flees the room. He bumps Selena on his way out, who looks over his shoulder into the kitchen and yells, “Fuckers, stop doing that in the kitchen! You’re gonna get slobber everywhere, god.”
Kevin thinks that maybe all of this is a little over his head.
--
Part 2: frankie-ann.livejournal.com/8080.html
Rating: Um... probably best to go with NC-17.
Wordcount: ~13k
Warnings: Vampires, sex, blood/biting during sex, lesbian vampire jokes most decidedly in bad taste... Frankly, this fic is silly and gross and if you're bothered by blood, descriptions of sex, bad jokes, or any combination thereof, you probably don't want to read it. If you are googling yourself, your brothers, your bandmates, or your friends, and have found this? Don't read keep going. Unless you're Gabe Saporta, and then please, enjoy yourself, you're most likely going to be amused.
Summary: There are a few vampires in Atlanta. They’re… Well, they’re weird. Everyone's weird, but they don’t bother to hide it. When Kevin asks about it, Bill says it’s because they’ve learned that it’s a waste of time. Hiding the weird things. Because they’ve realized that everyone does them, so they think it’s stupid to act like they don’t. Even the other things, the *actually* weird things, they don’t hide anymore either. Kevin has had too many conversations with Biscuit to count where she’s just cheerfully picking her nose, or digging in her ear, or hitting on girls on their period because she can smell the blood on them. (Kevin goes to college. Mike, Bill, and Jen Stone are vampires. Insanity ensues.)
Characters: Kevin Jonas, Mike Carden, Bill Beckett, Jennifer Stone (aka Biscuit), Gabe Saporta, Selena Gomez, Gerard Way.
Notes: Lots of thanks to both of my marvelous betas, bayoumaharajah, for overall plot-and-timeline help, and sly_fuck for very encouraging enthusiasm and line-by-line commentary. ^__^ Also, seriously, guys, this is basically vampire pron. Don't read it if that bothers you.
Author’s Note: This isn’t the sort of thing I would *want* vampires to be, exactly. It’s just that it’s what I think would happen, if actual people suddenly needed to drink blood and had a very difficult time dying. It *is* sort of gross-people are gross. If you’re not okay with gross, I don’t suggest reading it. There’s sort of graphic sex, and lesbian vampire period jokes, blood play, and Bill Beckett and Jennifer Stone being totally creepy vampires. And yes, I did just say Jennifer Stone. Harper wants to EAT YOU.
*cough*
Anyways. Read on, if none of that bothers you.
--
An Introduction to Vampire Lore By Selena Gomez:
There’s something about actual people. Actual people are gross. Actual people are weird. Actual people are stupid and awkward and they screw up a lot. Actual people pick their noses, forget to brush their teeth and put on deodorant, and smell their hands over and over to check if there’s anything foreign and therefore weird-smelling on them. Actual people have to pee during intimate moments, get inconveniently timed illnesses, get acne in places other than their faces, and always have hair growing somewhere they wish it wouldn’t-or, alternately, can’t get it to grow in places that they wish it would. Actual people want things, some of which are silly or embarrassing, and don’t go after them-out of fear, of repercussions, or the way they will be perceived, or basic and unequivocal rejection. They don’t always get what they want, and so often it’s because of fear, mortal or social.
So what happens if, suddenly, an actual person, with actual fears and desires, who farts in their sleep and burns toast when they’re cooking, just like everybody else, was impervious to harm? Couldn’t die, except in the presence of some very specific things? They’d still be that same, weird, awkward, greedy, simple and grossly complicated actual person that they were before, but the element of fear? That’d be gone. Maybe it’d stick around for a little while, out of a natural sense of shame or etiquette, but after a while? No, it goes away. When there are no real consequences for actions perceived as dangerous, fear dissipates.
There aren’t a lot of vampires. If there were, they’d maybe rule the world by now. Or, they might, if they forgot their petty human desires and diversions, and if the ones who turned into vampires were people who wanted that, or had the skills for that, to begin with. But mostly they don’t, and there are only maybe a few hundred, scattered over the world.
No one knows when the virus started, but it picked up in the first decade of the 21st century. It only affects individuals with a certain mutation, and maybe there were more people with that mutation in those years-maybe it’s the microwaves. Hippies keep saying those things are going to kill the human race. Maybe they are. But the virus struck a few people in the country, then in the city, and it picked up pace, and people started to notice. There are less of them, the vampires, overseas-maybe other countries don’t use so many microwaves.
The virus made people who were sick miraculously better; there were stories of cancer cures and instantaneous recoveries for coma patients. No one called it a virus then-not until the first coma patient got it into his head to get up and go outside. A few of the first ones burnt themselves to death, scorching their skins, lungs, and eyes until they died. Waves of them died of malnutrition before it occurred to anyone to test them and see why. There’s no overwhelming urge, no “vant to dreehnk your blood” feeling to start with. It’s more like those cravings you get, where you’re hungry, but nothing really sounds good until you find that thing that your body was looking for. They didn’t figure it out until a kid in Chicago cut his hand and his babysitter kissed it better and then nearly drank the kid dry. Then all the ones with the virus-or, okay, a lot of them-went out and started killing people and drinking their blood, because they thought they had to, or were supposed to. Just goes to show you the way people go crazy at the first opportunity.
A bunch of those died, too, from people canny enough to shove pieces of wood through their chests, or people who managed to hold them off until sunrise. Getting the virus doesn’t give you super strength, super speed, any of that-it just makes you as fast and strong as you could be if you were as healthy as it’s possible for you to be. That tends to be way faster than most people, who are usually a long ways off from healthy, even if it’s not to the point that they notice the inconvenience. So a lot of them died-until the doctors or scientists or whoever the hell does that stuff came out with a statement that said that the “virally infected” only needed a pint or so of blood a month to survive. So the “afflicted” came back, all contrite for having eaten their friends and family and everything, and started buying blood from blood banks and acting mostly like regular people. And then a lot of those died, because people with the virus can only digest fresh blood, straight out of the source. There was uproar, of course, but most people with the virus didn’t have a lot of trouble finding food. There are these little venom sacs that develop over the canines, so if they bite people, the venom seeps in. It’s not a deadly thing-it’s a mild paralytic, slowing movement and wearing off over a few hours, that has the totally awesome side effect of being a crazy powerful aphrodisiac. So it’s not like people were unwilling victims-no, they were lining up to get bitten.
Once it was proven that there were no negative side effects, as long as the “vampire” had decent dental hygiene, anyway, most of the fuss died down. No one without the mutation could be “turned,” not like vampires in the movies, and there weren’t that many left, anyways, so eventually it faded from the news. Mostly, they don’t kill people-if they over-eat, they get sick and bloated and move slowly for days. Most of them ended up in big cities, where it isn’t unusual for there to be eccentrics who don’t go outside, where young people pass unnoticed-although not all of them are young, being restored to peak physical condition tends to make people look young-and where there are plenty of people for them to snack on without having to deal with a social backlash.
There are a few in Atlanta. They’re… Well, they’re weird. We’re all weird, but they don’t bother to hide it.
--
--
--
When Kevin asks about it, Bill says it’s because they’ve learned that it’s a waste of time. Hiding the weird things. Because they’ve realized that everyone does them, so they think it’s stupid to act like they don’t. Even the other things, the actually weird things, they don’t hide anymore either. Kevin has had too many conversations with Biscuit to count where she’s just cheerfully picking her nose, or digging in her ear, or hitting on girls on their period because she can smell the blood on them. He’s mostly stopped being creeped out by it, but there are still days where it makes him want to gag. There are also times when Bill calls Bis “Jennifer, darling,” and Bis threatens to peel all his skin off and pour lemon juice on it while it grows back, and Bill shudders like maybe she’s already done it once or twice. She’s just plain strange.
Bill’s in Kevin’s Art History class, and he’s one of them. He and Biscuit are the only two Kevin knows, but they hang around with a couple of others, Kevin knows. Bis and Bill were dating when they got the virus, but they’re not, now. Kevin knows they still fool around sometimes-“Just to do somebody else who isn’t going to break,” Bis has told him, more than once, in that relaxed and mildly disturbing way she has-but mostly they’re friends. Bis scares Kevin a little; he thinks she was maybe weirder than most people even before the change.
But Bill. Bill and Kevin hang out a lot, right, and Kevin mostly doesn’t feel like Bill’s going to eat him.
--
Kevin is out late. He knows he shouldn’t be, because Auburn is a creepy street to be on after dark, but it’s late September, and it gets dark pretty early, and there’s cheap Chinese food a block away. He didn’t come to GSU for the awesome night life-he came because it was as far away from California and New Jersey as he could get, and, really, because Selena asked him to. Selena is Kevin’s best friend, ever in the world, and he’s probably going to marry her, someday, when she realizes that he’s a boy, and when he stops being weirded out by boobs. It’s not a gay thing, he knows-he asked Bill. Bill told him it was totally normal for a guy of Kevin’s age to not want to touch squishy piles of fat on girls’ chests. Kevin would feel slightly better about the whole thing if Bill hadn’t been giggling the whole time.
But Selena had wanted to come to Georgia, of all places, because she had a cousin or an elementary school friend or something here, Kevin was never really clear, but she was adamant, and Kevin had nowhere else especially in mind, so he came with her. And now here he is, walking on Auburn Avenue at eight at night, which doesn’t sound that late, except that when you live in Atlanta, you realize that it’s a commuter city, and that all the respectable people are out of the city by six at night, and you’re left with creepers, college students, and the occasional tourist too dumb to notice that half of everything is closed. Kevin double-checks his pepper spray, fiddling with the trigger, and breathes a sigh of relief as he steps up to Wok and Roll.
He picks up his and Selena’s orders without hassle, and thanks God for the five-dollar student menu. He’s relaxed and sort of hungry, and he takes a deep breath of the only-slightly-polluted-for-a-city air as he steps outside. He’s more confident, now that he has his food, which he knows is stupid, but he’s almost home.
So, of course, that’s when a drunk guy stumbles into him and says, “Fuck, man, that smells good.”
Kevin holds his breath for a minute, not exactly sure what the appropriate response is. In orientation, they told all the students to just ignore the homeless people asking for things, because they might get violent or something-at that point, Kevin and Selena were passing notes, and he hadn’t paid a lot of attention. And this guy isn’t exactly asking for money, and Kevin isn’t sure he’s even homeless. Just really, really drunk and kind of smelly.
“Can I-um. Can I help you?” he asks the guy, feeling for the pepper spray canister in his pocket, just in case.
The guy is leaning against the wall of a closed restaurant, blinking sleepily at Kevin. He starts to say something, pauses, and pulls out a slightly battered cigarette from his pocket. He lights it and takes a drag, the tip glowing orange in the darkness.
“That’ll kill you, you know,” Kevin blurts out before he knows what he’s saying. Just like his mother, god. He’s turning into his mother, and that’s a terrifying thing to think about, so Kevin isn’t going to.
The guy snorts and shakes his hair out of his eyes. It’s long and dark and scraggly, and, upon further inspection, Kevin is pretty sure he isn’t a hobo at all, because he’s clean-shaven and his jeans and t-shirt aren’t any grosser than Kevin’s own after a day or so of wear. Which isn’t actually saying a lot, because Kevin wears his clothes down like a boy with three brothers does. “I don’t think I have to worry about it,” the guy says, and Kevin jerks back into the moment.
“Everybody says that, and then they’re surprised when they have lung cancer.” God, Kevin’s mom is just popping out of his mouth left and right. Apparently, non-hobos who are drunk as all heck bring out his mothering instincts, which is weird enough that Kevin doesn’t want to examine it.
The guy flashes a grin, and runs a hand through his hair. “Kid, I’m not worried. It’s not really your problem, anyways, is it?”
Kevin’s about to reply with something along the lines of, “Well, why are you even talking to me, you weird not-hobo guy?” when the guy just doubles over and throws up. Kevin watches, stomach churning, as the guy finishes and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, straightening up.
“Sorry about that,” the guy says, like he hadn’t just puked everywhere, but had just accidentally bumped Kevin in an elevator, then extends the not-vomit-mouth-wiping hand for Kevin to shake. “I’m Mike. Carden.”
Kevin cautiously takes the hand and shakes it. “Kevin. Um, Jonas. Kevin Jonas.”
Mike grins at him, like a hungry cat would probably grin at a mouse with broken legs, if cats could grin. “I know you,” he says, slowly, like he’s making sure, while he searches Kevin’s face and doesn’t let go of Kevin’s hand.
Kevin tugs his hand away and jams it into his pocket, uncomfortable. “I’m pretty sure you don’t. I don’t really know anyone here.”
Mike’s grin broadens. “You do-you know friends of mine. Beckett. Bill. You’re in a class with him, you hang out. And Stone, she talks about you. She said you smell like kittens.”
That does actually sound like something Biscuit would say, and this guy clearly knows better than to call her by her first name, which suggests that he probably does actually know both of them. Kevin nods, once, carefully. “I do know them, but, uh, I don’t know you. And I really need to get this food back to my friend. She’s waiting on me.” They said, in orientation, that if someone’s messing with you, they’re more likely to go away if you say that you’re expected somewhere. He’s not sure that that applies to friends of friends who are very drunk and who are-are leaning in, clearly trying to smell you and see if your smell in any way resembles kittens. Kevin shifts, uncomfortable.
“No chance you could show me the way to the dorms, kid? Jonas,” Mike adds, smiling in a way that is distinctively creepy, in a sort of bizarrely friendly way.
“Which dorms? Are you meeting someone?”
Mike shrugs. “Something like that. Beckett and I were going to get dinner, he asked me to meet him at the common somethings.” He jerks his head towards Wok and Roll. “I’m starving, but he’d kick my ass if I ate without him.”
That makes Kevin suspicious. “Bill doesn’t eat,” he says, slowly. “And he really doesn’t eat out.”
Mike’s grin goes all pointy in the corners. “Sure he does. We go out to eat together all the time. We like the same sort of foods.”
Kevin feels sort of cold. Well, that would explain the whole vomiting-and-then-acting-like-it-wasn’t-awkward thing. “Right,” he says, stalling a little. “The-uh, Commons, you’re looking for the Commons. I’m, um, not actually going there? But it’s that way and up a couple streets.” He points towards the Commons, the nice dorms, then gestures in the other direction. “But, uh, my friend and I live in the Lofts. They’re the, uh, the other way. If you’ll excuse me-“
Mike grabs Kevin’s pointing hand and yanks hard. Kevin stumbles up against him, and the whole world suddenly smells like horrible cheap liquor and cigarettes. Mike takes a deep breath near Kevin’s ear and mumbles something that might be “kittens.”
“Look,” Kevin says, panicking now, “I don’t think I’d be very tasty, and I really am expected, so Selena’ll call the cops if I’m not back soon, and oh my god are you licking me what the-“ Mike is nuzzled up to Kevin’s neck, lapping at his jugular like a cat at cream.
“You’re really fucking squirmy, kid,” he says, sliding one hand down Kevin’s back pocket, and holding Kevin in place with the other around his waist. He pulls out Kevin’s pepper spray and snorts. “Also really poorly equipped for someone who knows vampires. Don’t you carry a stake or anything?”
Now Kevin is just confused. “Wh-I’m just trying to go home, can you stop licking me, and I normally have a stake, but I was just running like three minutes down the street, okay, and can you please let me go? Don’t you think Bill will be mad if you eat one of his friends?”
Mike chuckles into Kevin’s now-damp neck. “No, it’s not like he hasn’t done it once or twice. And I’m not going to eat you, relax. Maybe just have a snack.”
Kevin had relaxed minutely at the “not going to be eaten” part, but he stiffens again at the “snack” bit. “Seriously, could you not? I’m kind of a germaphobe and I don’t really want someone’s teeth in my skin, especially not someone drunk who just threw up everywhere and oh my god, stop that.” Mike is nipping at the juncture of Kevin’s neck and shoulder, and sparkling pinpoints of pleasure are seeping in through his skin. Venom, right, Bill told him about that. It’s the venom. He is in no way normally aroused by being accosted by drunk hobo-like vampires. Not that it matters, or anything, cause, hey, this is kinda nice.
Just when Kevin is half-numb and pliable in Mike’s arms, starting to think, hey, maybe a snack wouldn’t be too terrible, right?-just then, a cell phone goes off in the distance. Or maybe not the distance. Kevin thinks it’s maybe in his pocket. Or maybe that’s Mike’s pocket?
It’s definitely Mike’s pocket, because Mike yanks it out, and barks an irritable, “What?” into it.
It’s a crappy cell phone, and Kevin is jerked back into full consciousness by the tinny sound of a pissed-off Bill. He still can’t move properly, it’s like he’s in molasses, but he’s mildly reassured at the sound of Bill’s voice.
“Yeah, yeah, Beckett, leave off,” Mike grumbles. “I’m on my way.” He snaps the phone shut, jamming it back into his pocket. “You’re in luck, kid,” he says, smirking a little again. “Beckett’s a pissant, but he’s got dinner waiting. Run along home now.” He peels himself away from Kevin, and Kevin tries to listen, tries to run the heck home now, but his legs aren’t listening, and suddenly aren’t holding up at all.
Mike is looking down at him from very far away, and Kevin realizes that he’s on his back, on the concrete.
“Oh, fuck,” Mike says, rolling his eyes, and Kevin would chastise him, because how much does a guy really need to use profanity, anyway? But he can’t really talk, either, just sort of whimper.
Mike crouches down and yanks Kevin over his shoulder. “You are so fucking lucky I don’t feel like pissing Beckett off tonight, he’s a scrappy bastard. You really do smell like kittens.” He snorts and throws the butt of his cigarette away. “Kittens,” he says, again, like it’s something horrible and mystifying. “Fucking kittens.”
Kevin tries not to giggle. He thinks he’s maybe hysterical.
--
Mike takes him to Beckett, because Beckett knows the kid and probably also knows how to get him home.
This might, however, Mike reflects as Beckett scolds him and Stone tries to stuff her hands down his pants, have been a bad decision. He should have just eaten the kid and been done with it.
But when Beckett’s stopped shouting and waving his arms around and making obscene hand gestures that probably would make at least some sense if Mike was paying attention, the three of them take the kid to his building and leave him with the startled girl Jonas blearily claims is “Sellie, awesome, Leeeeeena.”
As Mike goes back and has dinner with Beckett and Stone-a blushing Freshman trying really hard to be sexy and not make pained faces while they feed off her-he feels a kind of pang and wishes that he’d at least tasted the kid. It’s not like he’s gonna be able to get that close again, and Stone was right, he smells like innocence and sugar and kittens. It’s mouth-watering.
It doesn’t hurt that the kid is stupidly cute. Stupidly. With his fucking poodle hair and his big, blinking doe eyes. Mike kind of wants to kill something, it’s so cute.
--
Kevin doesn’t have a roommate. His roommate was a quiet, sort of grumpy guy named David, and two weeks into the semester, he moved into the Honors dorms, and Kevin was left alone, not unhappily, with a concrete cell of a room, and two beds.
He might as well have a roommate, though, because Selena stays in the other bed every other night, and keeps him up, chattering. Not that Kevin usually minds. They’re totally going to get married someday. However, today, Selena will never stop making fun of him for nearly being killed during his first semester at college. Kevin will never live it down.
“You weren’t even nearly killed like a normal person,” she giggles, snorting into her cereal the next morning. “Weren’t mugged, or hit by a car, or raped by scary hobos. You almost got eaten. Who even does that?” Never mind that Selena doesn’t know any vampires, has never met Bill or Biscuit, and has no idea how utterly terrifying they can be. Actually, knowing Selena, she’d probably enjoy it.
“Hey, Selena?” Kevin says tiredly, not even looking up from his oatmeal.
“Yeah?”
“Shut the crap up.” Kevin finishes his breakfast, scowling, while Selena dances around his dorm, making fake vampire I’m-gonna-eat-you faces and giggling.
--
“So,” Kevin says to Bill as he slides into his seat in the Art History room the next night, “your friend. He tried to eat me.”
Bill snickers. “I think if he’d actually tried, he would’ve managed, my dear Jonas. He just nibbled a bit. Don’t get your panties in a twist.”
“Get my-“ Kevin huffs. “Shut up, you.”
Bill winks at him. “I think he likes you. Want me to set something up, hmmmm?”
Kevin makes a face. “I’m not gay, Bill, good lord.”
Bill stops smirking for a minute, stares at Kevin like he has two heads, and then bursts out laughing.
Kevin scowls at him until he composes himself-it takes a couple minutes. “And what is so funny?”
Bill sniggers a little more, then says, very seriously, “Right, Jonas. Of course you’re not.”
Kevin glares again. “That’s right, I’m not.”
“Okay,” Bill agrees solemnly, then giggles quietly until Professor Gunhouse comes in.
--
When Bill and Kevin leave Art History, Kevin sees a familiar frame leaning up against the railing of the steps.
“Oh, no,” he says to Bill, because there is no way he’s going anywhere with Bill if that weirdo is coming along. Kevin has no desire whatsoever to be nibbled on again.
Bill just rolls his eyes and ignores all Kevin’s protests, grabbing Kevin’s sleeve and towing him along as he goes up to Mike. “Carden,” Bill greets him, grinning.
“Beckett,” Mike replies, then, “Kid. Jonas.” He nods at them as a greeting, and falls into step with them as they walk up the street towards the cluster of restaurants near the Aderhold building. Kevin keeps his head down and the hood of his jacket up-maybe if Mike doesn’t see his neck, he won’t try to lick it again.
Mike and Bill talk the whole way, and Kevin mostly tunes it out. He doesn’t really want to like this guy, and from what snippets he hears, he thinks he might, if they had an actual conversation when Mike wasn’t trying to sink his teeth into Kevin.
“Where do you want to eat, my poodle-y friend?” Bill asks him as they approach Aderhold.
Kevin shrugs. “Don’t really care.”
Bill gives him a long look. “Kevin. You’re the only one eating actual food. You have to pick.”
And then Kevin feels kind of stupid, because, right, vampires. They drink blood. Bill only steals Kevin’s food when he feels like being annoying. Kevin scans the row of restaurants, most of which are closed-they mostly close at five, and Art History is a six o’clock class. It’s almost eight, now. “I guess the Landmark is really the only option, this time of night, anyways,” he says, and leads the way into the diner.
Mike and Bill trail behind, and Kevin tries to remember how to be hungry.
--
Mike is everywhere after that. He’s always glued to Bill, and Kevin is also kind of glued to Bill, because he doesn’t know anyone else, other than Selena, who has started hanging around someone named Gabe. Except Biscuit, and hanging out alone with Biscuit just seems like asking for trouble. The last time he tried it, he showed up at her apartment, and she answered the door with blood all over her mouth and her hands, and there was a naked and completely un-bitten girl laying on her coffee table, giggling, and Kevin had run, fast and far, and had tried to never, ever think about what that meant again. That probably hadn’t helped with the whole thing where he’s terrified of girl parts. Which Bill also tells him is perfectly normal, but Kevin’s starting to think that it’s possible that Bill isn’t as entirely sincere as Kevin would like to think.
Bill’s sincerity aside, Mike is around basically all the time. Eventually, Kevin stops being as jittery around him, because it’s hard to be afraid of someone whose butt you kick at Mario Kart as often as Kevin does Mike, and because Mike is actually sort of less creepy than Bill, most of the time. For one thing, his arms aren’t nearly as long, and he’s not constantly trying to drape them, or the rest of himself, over Kevin. He also doesn’t constantly relate Kevin’s appearance to that of a poodle, which, honestly, is refreshing, because he’s the only one of Kevin’s friends who doesn’t. Although calling them friends might be kind of a stretch. But by mid-October, it’s less of a stretch and more of a little shift.
Kevin actually kind of likes him. As a friend, and everything. He makes sure not to be around him alone- Bill’s always there, or Biscuit, or both, but mostly, Mike doesn’t fill him with terror or anything anymore.
--
Kevin likes cold weather. It’s his favorite weather, because it mostly happens in winter. And in winter, there’s Christmas, and all of the awesome stuff that goes with Christmas. Like scarves and sweaters and boots and mittens. Kevin loves mittens. He’s wearing his favorite pair. They’re red, with little silver snowflakes all over them in rubber, so he can grab things. They’re awesome.
He’s still kind of chilly, though. In Georgia, it doesn’t snow at the start of November-it just rains. It rains horrible, freezing, endless rain, and Kevin is decked out in a scarf and mittens and big, puffy boots, but he’s still soaked to the skin, and it’s dark and cold and still raining. He’s waiting on the bus in front of the Student Center, but they take forever when the weather is bad, and he’s starting to think that maybe it’ll be easier to just walk.
Someone bumps his shoulder. Kevin scoots away and turns, about to apologize for being in the way, and looks up into dark, smiling eyes and a fringe of dark hair. “Mike,” he says, and for a minute, his heart stutters in his chest. But Mike doesn’t look like he’s planning on trying to bite Kevin at the moment, so he adds, “Hi.”
Mike smirks, in that sort of vaguely threatening, but mostly just sort of sweet way, and presses something big and warm into Kevin’s mittened hands. He looks down-it’s a steaming paper cup from Saxby’s.
Kevin feels kind of retarded that his first thought is, He’s kind of a sweetheart, and that he only remembers to think, Maybe he’s just trying to butter me up so he can eat me later, after he’s thought about how nice Mike’s eyes are for a minute. “I-thanks,” he remembers to say, blushing a little.
Mike’s smile widens, eating his face up with a grin. It’s almost goofy, and when he rubs his red nose awkwardly, like any other guy trying to do something nice and getting caught at it, it definitely is. “It’s, uh. It’s hot chocolate. You seemed like the type for that sort of thing.”
Kevin feels his face redden. He is exactly the type; hot chocolate is his favorite. “Yeah,” he says, trying not to sound like a total moron. “Thanks.”
“Yeah,” Mike says, and bumps Kevin’s shoulder again. This time, Kevin doesn’t move away.
--
They wait for a while, but the bus doesn’t come. Kevin drinks his hot chocolate on the walk to the dorms, and when they get there, he’s feeling un-terrified enough that he doesn’t even hesitate to invite Mike up to watch a movie.
Mike ducks his head and rubs at the back of his neck, and after a minute, he looks at Kevin and says, “Yeah, okay.”
“I’ll invite Selena, too, and you can meet her, ” Kevin adds quickly, because he realizes that maybe it sounds like… something else.
Mike’s smile only falters a little, and he nods. “Cool.”
--
Mike and Selena get along, in a quiet sort of way. They don’t really talk, but they talk to Kevin, both of them, and it’s sort of like all being friends.
When Selena goes with Kevin and Mike to Bill’s apartment, though, it’s sort of terrifying.
Bill answers the door in what are most definitely girl’s purple corduroys and a bright pink hoodie. “Cardin, Poodle-muffin, you brought me a snack!” he says delightedly, patting Kevin on the head and ushering him, Mike, and Selena inside.
She stands just inside the doorway, looking up at Bill. Bill is sort of stupidly tall, so she has a long way to look, but if they were going to fight, Kevin would probably put his money on Selena. She fights dirty; Kevin knows this from experience. “You’re very long,” she says, finally.
Bill nods. “And you have breasts.”
She nods back solemnly. “Sometimes. Are you planning to try to eat me?”
“Only in a way you’ll enjoy, little nugget of radiance,” he says, as cheerful as crazy people always are.
Selena nods, like she’s considering this. “If you try anything, I’ll gut you with a coffee mug and feed you your own lungs.”
Bill beams. “I’m really very attracted to you right now,” he says, and kisses her hand.
Selena sniffs and lets him. “As well you should be.”
Kevin just curls up on Bill’s couch, next to Mike, but carefully not touching, and watches. His friends are weird. He’s sort of afraid of what will happen when he puts Bis and Selena in the same room.
--
Kevin has never actually gotten drunk. Mike and Bill like to drink-a lot, really, he’d say it was unhealthy if they were actually capable of dying like regular people-and Selena keeps trying to get him to go to parties with her and her… Gabe. Kevin thinks he’s probably supposed to be jealous of Gabe, since Kevin eventually wants to marry Selena and have lots of adorable children with her, but Gabe is just sort of like a darker, more rubbery version of Bill, as Selena put it, and Kevin has a lot of trouble having a problem with him. He feels like he should probably try, though, which is why, at the party that Selena has finally managed to drag him to, after he’s about four red plastic cups of something sugary to the wind, he’s standing-wavering, more like-in front of Gabe, hands on his hips.
“You-you’re creepy. And dating Selena. And probably kissing with tongues and stuff.” He pokes a finger into Gabe’s chest. Gabe is tall. Gabe is hilariousl tall. Kevin giggles.
Gabe nods. “Probably. Has anyone ever told you that you have lovely hands, little poodle man? Because you do. You should touch me inappropriately with them.” He waggles his eyebrows and swivels his hips a little bit.
Kevin blinks for a minute. Possibly several minutes, because when he stops, Gabe is gone, and he’s sort of drifting sideways, and he thinks, very clearly, Why does everyone think I’m gay, and But he’s dating Selena, and I should really introduce him to Bill, before he feels nauseous and has to lay down, right there, on the floor.
--
Bill answers the door to his apartment in a pair of what are most definitely women’s cream-colored silk pajama bottoms and a green smoking jacket. Bill is strange like that.
“Jonas,” he says, slightly bleary, which means he’s drunk, having sex, or hungry, because vampires don’t actually sleep at this time of night. That would be silly, it’s like noon for them.
Kevin pushes past him, into the apartment, and collapses onto the couch. Gabe waits in the doorway, Selena slung over his shoulder.
Bill looks at Kevin, furrows his brows, and then looks at Gabe. He looks at Gabe for maybe a little too long, and Kevin tries not to giggle, because Gabe is looking back, and Selena will never let him hear the end of it if he giggles in public, even if she’s asleep. Knowing her, she’d hear it anyways.
“I’m drunk,” Kevin announces, because it’s the only way to concisely explain why he’s barging into Bill’s apartment while wearing girl’s jeans and smelling like grenadine.
Bill nods. “I see that. And Miss Gomez appears to share your fate. And you are…?” he trails off, looking at Gabe. They’re about the same height, but Bill still looks like he’s looking up at Gabe, which would be funny if Kevin weren’t already laughing so hard.
“Gabe,” Gabe says, and Kevin thinks that that’s sort of funny, too. “But I like your limbs, and you have hair like a pretty girl, so you can call me whatever you like. Would you like to be naked?”
Bill grins. “Oh, I like you.” Kevin knew he would. They’re the same sort of smarmy. Gabe might not be a vampire, he’s too tan, but he might as well be, because he’s weird.
Gabe grins with half of his mouth, and says, “I’m going to take that as a yes,” and starts making out with Bill, with Selena still slung over his shoulder.
And it’s totally not hot, it absolutely isn’t, and Kevin should totally be affronted on behalf of his someday-wife. But he’s mostly sleepy, and he doesn’t actually remember why he told Gabe to take them here, but he did, and he thinks it was maybe something about not wanting the desk attendant at the dorms to realize that he was drunk and only eighteen, not that she’d mystically know he was drunk, or how old he was, now that he thinks about it.
He drifts off, barely shifting when Gabe dumps Selena on top of him and starts going down on Bill on the floor. Absently, he wonders where Mike is. Lately, Mike is always sort of… around.
--
When Kevin wakes up, his mouth tastes like something died in it. Also, Selena is asleep on his stomach, and Gabe and Bill are missing entirely. And Mike is sitting on Kevin’s ankles, staring at him like he’s maybe thinking about eating him again.
“Mike,” Kevin says, cautious. His head is throbbing.
Mike grins. “You were so drunk, Jonas, it was beautiful.”
Kevin rolls his eyes. Mike is weird. Deeply weird, and when did he even get here? Kevin has no recollection of anything after Bill opening the door in his Oscar Wilde outfit. “Yeah, I’m sure it was. Can you get off my ankles, please?” His mom always taught him to be polite. He supposes it still applies when vampires are sitting on you at-he looks at his watch-two in the afternoon, mocking you for your previous inebriation.
Mike shakes his head. “I’m disturbingly comfortable, kid. Your ankles are sort of squishy. Also, your girlfriend is drooling, and it’s fascinating to watch.”
Kevin looks down, and sure enough, there’s a string of drool flowing from Selena’s mouth into the shoulder of his shirt. “That’s disgusting,” he says, a little bewildered. She doesn’t respond, only whuffles a little in her sleep. Mike sniggers.
“You want coffee?” he asks, after a minute, and Kevin blinks at him.
“Do you even drink coffee?” he asks, curious. He didn’t think vampires drank anything but blood, and, he supposes, alcohol. Now that he thinks about it, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be able to drink coffee, too.
Mike shrugs. “Not really. Mostly I just like the smell. Like bacon, and onions. I didn’t like onions, even before the virus. Just the smell.” He gets off of Kevin’s ankles, and there’s a moment of slightly painful bliss as the blood rushes back into Kevin’s toes.
Kevin follows him into Bill’s kitchen. “Mushrooms are like that for me. I love the smell of them frying, but I gag if I eat them.” As Mike starts the coffee and gets two mugs down from the cabinet over the stove, it occurs to Kevin that Mike seems weirdly familiar with the apartment, like he lives there. Then he wonders where Mike lives. “Where do you live?” he asks, because if vampires can act like there’s nothing awkward about anything ever, then so can Kevin.
Mike runs a hand through his hair, looking as close to awkward as vampires ever get. “Here and there. Mostly here. Sometimes I stay other places.” He hops up onto the counter, and a hole in the knee of his jeans rips a little further as his knee pokes through it. “Bill’s got an extra room, though, so, yeah, mostly here.”
“But you don’t-I mean, Bill never said. He didn’t even talk about you, before.” Kevin had been to Bill’s apartment, once or twice, before he met Mike. The only people to ever be there were Biscuit, who practically lived there unless she was sleeping with someone, when she went back to her own tiny apartment, and Gerard, who Kevin had thought was a vampire, but who was actually just an art major. It had surprised him how similar the effects of the two things were, though.
“I was away,” Mike says, grimacing. “Stone and I had a falling out for a while, she was maybe trying to kill me, you know. The usual shit.”
Kevin’s kind of impressed. He’s thought before that it’s a good thing he’s on Biscuit’s good side, because she’s scary, in the adorable sort of way that makes her even more terrifying. “Why was she mad at you?”
Mike rolls his eyes. “She’s a girl, they get pissed about everything.” After Kevin just stands there, waiting, Mike sighs and gives in. “Alright, so I maybe had a bite of her boyfriend or something.” Catching Kevin’s accusing glare, he adds, “No harm done! He was there, I didn’t know they were hooking up, we were drunk, he asked me to, it wasn’t a big deal. She swore blood vengeance and kept trying to leave me out in the sun. Beckett told me to piss off until she’d cooled down; I did. That’s it.”
Kevin snorts. “He asked you to? I can’t imagine a boyfriend of Biscuit’s doing that-everyone’s scared of her.”
“If you’re fucking Stone, you have to like to live dangerously,” Mike says, a glint of something in his eyes.
“And to have you-what, sleep with him, feed off him? That’s any better?” Kevin makes a face. “You’re just as bad as she is. You’re all… creepy.”
“He’s much worse, poodle, don’t let the bastard tell you differently,” Bill says, ambling into the kitchen. His entire chest is covered in hickeys and scratches, and he looks disgustingly pleased about it. Gabe follows, looking just as terrible, if twice as cheerful, and there are bite marks in his neck, and in the crook of his elbow. Kevin remembers the horrible sex noises he fell asleep to, and decides that he doesn’t want to be around for the fallout when Selena wakes up and tries to stake Bill. He sort of wants to feel guilty, because it’s sort of his fault, since he had them come here, but he’s too tired and his head hurts too much for him to be bothered.
“I’m not worse,” Mike says, affronted. “I don’t have tits. It’s not possible for me to be worse.”
“Oh yes. I forgot to mention,” Bill says sarcastically, “You and Jonas can bond over your mutual fear of breasts and female genitalia. Fucking weird, the both of you.”
Kevin pouts at him. “You said it was perfectly normal.”
Gabe snorts, nipping at the shell of Bill’s ear while Bill gets two more mugs down and starts to pour the coffee.
“Yes, dear Jonas, it’s perfectly normal. For budding homosexuals.” Bill rolls his eyes and drinks half his mug in one gulp, not seeming to care at all that the coffee is still steaming.
Kevin glares. “I’m not gay, Bill, we’ve been over this.”
Bill grins impishly. “Neither am I. And the difference between us is that I have sex with women and love their breasts.”
Gabe raises an eyebrow. “You have sex with women?”
Bill raises one right back, putting his hands on his hips. “And that isn’t your girlfriend out there?”
“You have a point,” Gabe concedes. He scratches his chin for a moment. “Does it count as gay if you have lady hair?”
Bill shrugs, falsely nonchalant. “I’ve no idea. Do you count as a man if you fuck like a girl?”
Gabe narrows his eyes. “Oh, bitch, it is on now,” he says, and rams Bill into the door of the pantry. Kevin politely rescues Bill’s coffee mug from his flailing hand as Gabe jams his hands into the front of Bill’s pajama pants.
“Sweet, extra coffee,” Mike says, and steals the cup.
“I thought you only liked the smell?” Kevin says, trying very hard to ignore the sounds from the other side of the very small kitchen.
Mike drains Bill’s cup. “Well, normally. Now, I’m torn between bleaching my brain and getting you off through your girl jeans, and I’m thinking that coffee will probably help me make the decision.”
Kevin blinks at Mike’s completely serious face, ducks his head, and flees the room. He bumps Selena on his way out, who looks over his shoulder into the kitchen and yells, “Fuckers, stop doing that in the kitchen! You’re gonna get slobber everywhere, god.”
Kevin thinks that maybe all of this is a little over his head.
--
Part 2: frankie-ann.livejournal.com/8080.html