Courage (Part 1/2) for spidergloss
Author: neery
Title: Courage
Recipient: spidergloss
Skaters/Pairings: Johnny Weir/Evan Lysacek
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 19,000
Warnings: torture, issues of consent
Prompt: vampire hunter AU
Disclaimer: The events portrayed in this story are fictional and do not reflect on the actual people written about.
A/N: Beta'd by strongplacebo
Summary: Johnny was weird enough that him turning into a vampire hardly made a difference.
The only thing to fear is fear itself, Evan reminded himself, letting the familiar mantra soothe his nerves. But his hands were still shaky and clammy with sweat when he knocked on Johnny's hotel room door.
It took a while before Johnny opened the door, blinking blearily, pillow creases on his cheek and his hair tousled. "The fuck, Evan? It's the middle of the night. What do you want?"
"Can I come in? Please," he added when Johnny hesitated. "It's four am, I wouldn't be asking if it wasn't important."
"Sure," Johnny said after a moment, stepping back to let him in.
Evan swung his black duffle bag onto the table and reached inside, wrapping his hand in soft fabric. "I really need you to take a look at this. Please," he said, making his face as guileless and pleading as he could. He waited until Johnny was close, bending over so he could look into the bag, confused and distracted, before he drew his hand out and pressed the soaked cloth over Johnny's mouth and nose.
Johnny yelled and started struggling, but Evan got a good grip on his hair and managed to hold him, muffling his noises with the thick fabric, ignoring the way Johnny was clawing at his arm. It only took a few seconds for Johnny's movements to become sluggish and weak, and then he was collapsing in Evan's arms.
Evan caught him and carefully lowered his slack body to the floor. He sat back and rubbed his arm, wincing. Johnny's nails had left bloody furrows in the skin, and they stung like fuck. That didn't matter now, though. Johnny was sprawled loosely on the carpet, his mouth a little open and his arms relaxed by his side. He looked as if he'd just fallen asleep, young and pretty and completely vulnerable.
Evan was praying when he lowered his head to Johnny's chest, as intently and desperately as he'd ever prayed for anything. But God wasn't listening. He couldn't hear a heartbeat. He listened for a long time, longer than he usually did - the drug could slow people's hearts down, he told himself, maybe it was just that, maybe - and then he searched Johnny's neck and wrists for a pulse, too, even though he already knew he wouldn't find anything.
Evan closed his eyes for a moment. He hadn't been sure. Johnny was weird enough that him turning into a vampire hardly made a difference. He'd always worn giant sunglasses everywhere, and the way he'd started covering his entire skin in layers of fabric in the summer heat might have been some sort of fashion statement; it was hardly the first time Evan saw him like that.
But Evan had had vampires on the mind anyway, with all those corpses turning up. When he'd seen Johnny carelessly walk out into the sun without his glasses for once and wince away from the light like someone in real pain, he'd gotten suspicious enough to start watching carefully, and the hints had added up. He hadn't wanted to be right.
Usually, this was when he'd stake them. Evan was pretty strong and he'd had a fair bit of hand-to-hand training, but vampires had supernatural strength on their side and he didn't like to risk getting hurt. It interfered with his skating. So this was how he did it: trick them, drug them, make very sure he hadn't just caught a human with a bunch of weird ticks, and then put a stake through their chest while they were unconscious. He pretty much had it down to an art by now.
But he'd never had to do it to anyone he knew. Looking down at Johnny's peaceful sleeping face, Evan felt guiltily glad that he didn't have to go through with it yet. Johnny had been turned recently enough that there was a chance his Maker might still be around, teaching him the ropes, and if that was the case, Evan needed to know where to look for him. Especially since he was probably the one responsible for all the corpses turning up wherever the tour went.
Of course it might be Johnny killing those people, but even as a vampire, Evan couldn't imagine Johnny slaughtering someone like that. He didn't have that kind of sadistic streak. Maybe he was being naïve, but as long as there was an easy alternate explanation, Evan was giving him the benefit of the doubt.
He wrestled Johnny's limp body into the tracksuit he'd brought along, smugly glad at how well he'd planned ahead: Johnny's closet was standing open, and Evan could see that pretty much everything he owned was too tight or too complicated to dress an unconscious person in without help.
He slung Johnny's body over his shoulder with a grunt of effort. He was pretty heavy for a guy his size.
Leaving the hotel was nerve-wracking. The corridors were deserted this late at night, but you never knew when someone might wander out of their room and he had no idea how he'd explain why he was carrying an unconscious body around. Thankfully he got out without anyone seeing them. He dumped Johnny into the passenger seat of his car with a sigh of relief.
******
The family had safe houses like this all over the country, although Evan had never had to use one before. He carefully chained Johnny's hands and feet to the bed in the basement and then settled down to wait.
Johnny woke up slowly, rubbing his cheek against the pillow, making sleepy little noises. It seemed like a good moment to try to get him to talk. "Shh, it's okay," Evan said in a soothing voice, stroking the hair out of Johnny's face. "Johnny, I need you to tell me who turned you into a vampire, okay?"
Johnny sluggishly blinked his eyes open, squinting up at him. "Evan?" he mumbled, sounding confused.
Evan kept petting him. Johnny was still muzzy enough to lean his face into Evan's palm. "Tell me who turned you into a vampire," Evan repeated gently.
"What? Evan? What's going on?" Johnny was slowly coming fully awake. Evan pulled his hand back before he could get himself bitten.
"Johnny. Tell me. Who made you a vampire?"
"What? Evan, what are you talking about, there's no such thing as vamp-" Johnny broke off with a sharp intake of breath as he tried to sit up and the manacles on his wrists held him down, spread-eagled on the bed. He looked up his arms at the chains connecting him to the bedposts, then down to the shackles on his legs, and finally around the dim basement room. It was set up like a prison cell, no windows, just bare stone walls, one narrow bed, a toilet and sink, and a dresser all the way on the other side of the large room.
Johnny's eyes went wide. "What the fuck is going on here?"
"I need you to tell me who turned you into a vampire," Evan repeated stubbornly.
If he hadn't already known the truth, the look on Johnny's face would have given him away, even though he wiped it away after a second of surprise. "Evan, there's no such thing as vampires," Johnny said, in the soothing, patient tone of someone talking to the dangerously insane. He was a decent actor, Evan had to give him that. "Is this the nervous breakdown we've all been waiting for? Do you need more sleep or something? Get a grip, get me out of these chains, and I won't even tell the police you've finally tried to Tonya Harding me a year after our last competition."
"You can stop pretending. I know exactly what you are," Evan told him, tapping Johnny's chest, right where his heart wasn't beating.
Johnny's eyes went wide for a moment. He laughed nervously. "Well. Okay then. Look, I don't know what you've heard, or seen on TV or whatever, but I've never killed anyone and I never will. You can let me go, I won't hurt you."
"It's funny how all of you say that, and yet the corpses keep piling up. No, don't bother," he said when Johnny opened his mouth to protest again. "I believe you, actually. They turned you, what, two months ago? Three? You started out as a good guy. I can believe that it'd take a while to get to you. But I need to know who made you, because someone is killing people and it's probably your Maker."
"What do you are, some kind of vampire hunter?" Johnny asked, and then laughed incredulously when Evan shrugged. "You're kidding me. You. Right."
"You don't have to believe me," Evan said, keeping his tone casual, even though Johnny's disbelief stung his pride. What the fuck was so unbelievable about him being a hunter? He was strong, smart, and willing to train as hard as it took. He did just fine, even if he couldn't devote as much time to it as the rest of the family did, not if he wanted to keep skating. "If you think this is such a joke, it won't hurt if you tell me, right? All I need is a name and some idea where to find him and I'm letting you go."
"Oh, go fuck yourself," Johnny said, glaring at him and then demonstratively turning his head away.
"Fine, be that way. But you're not getting out of here until you tell me," Evan told him.
"Well, this is going to get awkward and messy pretty fast then. I have to pee," Johnny said.
Evan walked over to the dresser and grabbed the little key on top of it. He double-checked that he was far enough past the white line painted on the floor and then tossed the key to Johnny.
"This is going to unlock everything but the shackle on your leg," he told Johnny, who was already fighting to get his manacles unlocked. It was kind of awkward at that angle, but doable. It took Johnny a few minutes, but he managed to get himself out of everything but the long chain connected to his left ankle. He gave up on that one with a frustrated look and lunged at Evan, stopping with a murderous glare when the chain brought him up short right on the painted line, safely halfway across the room.
"I plan ahead," Evan told him smugly, although to be fair, he wasn't the one who'd come up with this particular set-up. "The chain is long enough to get to the toilet," he told Johnny, who looked angry enough to spit.
"Are you at least going to turn your back?" Johnny hissed.
Evan shrugged. "Sure." There wasn't anything on that side of the room that could be used as a weapon. Everything but the pillow was bolted to the floor.
He waited until he could hear Johnny washing his hands and then turned back around. Johnny stared back at him with his arm crossed. "So now what? You want to come over here and chain me back up?" he said, giving him a challenging smirk. Evan was pretty sure that they both knew that Johnny could take him in a fair fight.
"Nope," Evan said. He grabbed dart gun from the dresser and pointed it at Johnny. "Now you can either go and chain yourself up again, or I'll tranq you and do it for you."
Johnny's eyes went wide. He looked nervous for the first time. "Evan, don't do this," he said carefully. "This isn't you. I don't know what you've heard, but we really don't kill anyone. You know me, you know I wouldn't. Put that gun down and we can talk about this."
Evan bit his lip. This entire situation sucked. He'd never had to talk to one of them before, never known one of them as a human. He knew that what the family did was the right thing, that they'd saved countless lives, and he had the pictures of those poor mutilated corpses on his laptop if he needed to remind himself. But he hated having to do this to Johnny, who probably wasn't even lying. He probably didn't know what his Maker had done; he always tended to believe the best of people, even if he should know better.
"Just tell me who turned you and I'll let you go," he lied.
Johnny sighed, and Evan could see him getting angry again. "No. They haven't killed anyone either. Evan, you have to believe me. This is crazy."
"Get back on the bed," Evan told him.
Johnny stubbornly stayed where he was. Evan was pretty sure he wasn't getting through to him this way. "Okay then. Last warning," he said, and when Johnny just stood there, arms crossed, obviously not believing that he'd actually go through with it, he pulled the trigger.
The dart gun had given him no end of trouble at first, but after he'd put in a couple hundred hours of practice, he'd gotten pretty good with the thing. He caught Johnny neatly in the shoulder, even though he tried to dodge at the last second.
Johnny yelled, more in anger than pain, Evan thought, and ripped the dart out of his shoulder with a determined grunt.
"Sit down before you fall over," Evan told him quickly.
Johnny hissed at him, pure rage in his eyes. "You fucking asshole." He stood there, hip cocked, glaring at him, even while Evan could see his eyes going unfocused.
"Sit down," Evan told him again, wincing when Johnny collapsed to the floor a few seconds later. "I did warn you," he said, gently picking up Johnny's unconscious body and putting him back on the bed, biting down on the sting of guilt. This was important. People were being killed out there.
*******
Johnny woke up with a start this time, instantly awake and angry, rattling his chains. He winced a little at the clanking sound. The drugs had probably given him a headache.
Evan sat down on the edge of the bed. Johnny tried to shift away, but Evan had pulled the chains pretty tight this time, and he couldn't move much. "Just tell me. Please," Evan said. "Your Maker, he's not just killing these people, he's torturing them. I've got to stop this." Evan put all his sincerity into his voice, but Johnny was obviously angry now and not in the mood to cooperate.
"Go fuck yourself. They've never killed anyone in their life. Even if those people are being killed by vampires, and I really doubt it, there's more than two of us in the world, you realize? If there's a psycho murderer out there, it's not me and it's not the vampire who turned me. I'm kind of starting to wonder about you though."
"All the victims have been killed in cities the tour has stopped in. Whoever's doing this is following us around. If you know any other vampires on this tour except for you and your Maker, feel free to tell me."
Johnny's eyes went wide. So he hadn't known about that. Whoever that guy was, he probably had Johnny wrapped around his little finger. Johnny seemed the type to fall for a mysterious dark stranger; he'd probably think the whole creature of the night thing was romantic.
Evan sighed. "Come on, I really don't want to have to do this the hard way." He started unbuttoning Johnny's shirt. Johnny's entire body went tense. Evan could hear the chains rattling as he fought to get away, straining against the cuffs.
"Take your fucking hands off me!"
Evan ignored him. He pushed the shirt to the side, baring Johnny's chest, while Johnny cursed and screamed at him, and then picked up his stake from the floor. He showed it to Johnny: hard, polished wood, with a razor-sharp metal tip, to make it easier to punch through skin and muscle to the heart. Johnny abruptly went silent.
"I'm sorry, I hate to do this, but I really need to know his name," Evan said, placing the stake above Johnny's heart. "Tell me now."
"You're not going to kill me," Johnny said with total conviction.
"You didn't think I'd shoot you, either."
"Okay, you're slightly crazier than I ever thought, but that was still a tranq gun. There's a lot of difference between that and killing someone."
"I've killed vampires before," Evan said, pressing the stake down a little firmer. Johnny went very still, pushing his back into the bed to get away from the pressure on his skin.
"Evan, please, can't you see how crazy you're acting? You can't just threaten to kill people because you think they might possibly know someone who might possibly have committed a crime. There's a reason the police doesn't work like that. Let me go and we'll try to figure it out together."
"Tell me," Evan said, and then he set his teeth and pressed the stake in hard enough to draw a trickle of blood. Johnny made a shocked, pained sound, curling in on himself as much as he could, trying to get away from the pain. Evan let up a little. Johnny drew a deep, shaky breath.
"For God's sake, in case you're actually too crazy to have noticed, 'Tell me what I need to know, or I'll kill you' is actually not a great threat, because if you kill me for not telling you, you'll never know!" he yelled, his voice shaking with anger and pain. He gave Evan a defiant glare. "Plus I still don't believe you'll kill me. And even if I did, I wouldn't tell you."
Evan sighed and took the stake away. Johnny was right, of course; it wasn't a very good threat. Vampiric healing was already taking over, sealing the shallow cut. Evan watched, fascinated. He'd never gotten to see this up close before. In less than a minute the skin was completely healed, not even a scar left.
He got up and started cleaning the blood off the stake. "You're not getting out of here until you tell me. You're pretty young, I bet you still need to drink all the time. You'll be really thirsty soon. And you might want to think about how the longer you take, the more people are going to die."
"Go fuck yourself," Johnny told him tiredly, his head turned away. Evan shrugged. He let a little more slack into Johnny's chains, not enough to let him move around much, but enough hat his muscles probably wouldn't cramp up too much overnight, and then left him alone.
There was a bedroom upstairs and a fully-stocked kitchen, so he wouldn't have to leave his captive. The tour was on break for a little while; he didn't have anywhere to be for the next couple days.
Some time today people were going to realize that Johnny was gone. His stomach clenched a little, thinking of how scared Patti would be. He'd always liked her. She didn't deserve to get caught up in this. She probably didn't even know that her son had been turned. Hell, Johnny hadn't deserved any of this either.
Johnny waited until Evan had been gone for ten minutes and then he started screaming for help. Evan winced, but didn't go back down to stop him. No one was going to hear Johnny out here. The walls were thick and the thickly wooded area around the house was all private property. The family had been doing this for a long time; they knew their business.
Evan tried to catch a little sleep, but it wasn't really happening. Johnny kept screaming for a long time before he exhausted himself. Evan listened to him with his chest clenching up tight. He was doing the right thing, he reminded himself. He needed to stop the killing.
******
Johnny was wide awake when Evan came down the stairs the next day, watching him anxiously. "Are you going to let me out now?" he asked.
"Are you going to tell me what I need to know?"
"I won't. Keeping me in here isn't going to change my mind."
"We'll see," Evan said. He tossed Johnny the little key again, plus a toothbrush and fresh clothes this time, and turned his back while Johnny took care of business.
They ended up facing off again afterwards. "Are you going to lock yourself back up this time or do I have to do it again? I don't really care, I've got all the tranq darts I need. I get the feeling they give you a headache, though."
Johnny gave him an angry look, but finally he stiffly walked over to the bed and chained himself up. Evan watched him, surprised. Johnny was stubborn as fuck. He hadn't expected him to give up this easily. This was probably part of some sort of plan. He double-checked that everything was on tight and all the locks were properly closed, and pocketed the key again.
He left Johnny alone for almost the entire day, only checking in a few times to see if he needed anything, or finally felt like answering his question. Johnny alternately tried to reason with him, pleaded, or cursed.
Evan distracted himself with a punishing workout, training with the weights for hours, until all his muscles were sore and shaking with fatigue. He kept an eye on the internet, but so far, not even the gossip blogs had anything on Johnny's disappearance. Probably the police were trying to keep it under wraps for now.
Johnny gave him a careful smile when he checked in for the last time that night, like someone trying not to set a psycho off. "Could you stay for a while? Talk to me? I'm going kind of stir crazy down here."
That was kind of what Evan was going for, but he still felt almost physically sick with guilt, seeing the thinly veiled desperation on Johnny's face. "Sorry," he said. "You know what I want to hear."
Johnny snorted bitterly. He was staring at Evan's arm. Evan followed his line of sight, to where he'd been idly scratching the mosquito bite on his biceps. He'd broken the skin and there was a tiny drop of blood smeared over his arm. Evan scratched harder, bringing a little more blood to the surface. "Hungry?" he asked. "All you've got to do is tell me, and you can have all the blood you want. I'll even let you bite me."
"Fuck off," Johnny said. When he opened his mouth to speak, Evan saw his fangs for the first time; sharp, inhuman predator teeth. It made it easier to turn and walk out.
*******
He brought a bag of blood down with him in the morning. He carefully poured some of it into a glass, wrinkling his nose at the iron smell, and held it so Johnny could see it. "I know you're hungry. Stop torturing yourself and tell me and I'll let you drink."
Johnny raised an eyebrow at him. "I'm not the one torturing me. And I would have thought a vampire hunter would know better. We don't drink dead blood. Once it's out of the body and cooled down, it's no good."
Evan tried to hide his surprise. He hadn't known that, and he should have. But then he had a lot of gaps in his knowledge about vampires, a lot more than most hunters. It had always seemed easiest to concentrate on killing them. He didn't want to learn about vampire society, about the way they lived. It seemed easier not to have to think of them as people, going about their daily lives. Probably most of them had hobbies, families, friends. He didn't want to think about that. He knew that sort of stuff about Johnny and it was making everything so much harder.
He looked down at the glass in his hand, dubious. "Would it help if I heated it up a little?"
Johnny shuddered. "I think if you heat that up, you're going to get a really disgusting congealed mess. But feel free to give it a try, it's your microwave."
"So you only drink from humans and you're expecting me to believe that you've never hurt anyone?"
"I've never killed anyone. I don't need that much blood. I spread my feeding out over three people and I don't need more than they can spare. It's not that hard to find three friends who don't mind helping you out."
Evan couldn't imagine being close enough to anyone that he'd feel comfortable asking them to drink their blood. But Johnny had always had tons of friends; it wasn't that hard to believe that some of them might be crazy enough to let him.
Evan put the glass down on the dresser and picked up a knife instead. Johnny was watching him warily. Evan clenched his teeth and drew it down his forearm, away from any major arteries, starting a thin trickle of blood. He held his arm out to Johnny. "That better?" he asked, smiling when he saw Johnny licking his lips, fangs poking out long and sharp in the corners of his mouth. “You know what you have to do, if you want it.”
Johnny was straining at his chains, trying to get closer. Evan could have sworn he already looked thinner, but he had to be imagining that. Or maybe not; he didn't know how fast vampires died without blood. The young ones had to feed pretty often, he knew that much.
He tilted his arm a little, let a single drop of blood land on Johnny's lips. Johnny licked it off eagerly, straining for more, and then caught himself, flushing furiously, looking humiliated. He turned his head away with an obvious effort.
"Quit it, Evan. I can't tell you what you want to know, no matter what you do. Please, just let me go. My family's got to be terrified by now."
"I'm sorry," Evan said, his voice cracking a little. He turned and fled upstairs.
*******
By the next day, it was obvious that Johnny was losing weight, much more quickly than a human would. He’d always been thin, so it wasn’t like he had a lot of spare fat to lose; his cheek bones were sticking out and the thin skin under his eyes looked fragile and bruised.
He was also obviously thoroughly fed up with captivity, cursing and spitting at Evan whenever came in to threaten, bribe, beg, or reason with him. Evan came stupidly close once, careless, and Johnny's fangs sliced a long bloody furrow down his arm. Johnny smirked at him, his eyes full of rage, and slowly, smugly licked the blood off his teeth.
It was pissing Evan off. He wasn't the bad guy here. Johnny was protecting a crazy serial killer, whether he knew it or not, and Evan was trying to save people's lives. It wasn't fair of Johnny to try and make him feel like this.
He stomped upstairs for the night and threw himself down on the couch, angry and frustrated. He really needed that name and Johnny obviously wasn't going to cooperate; but he didn't know if he could do what it would take to make him.
He called his mother that night. "Does it ever get to you?" he asked her hesitantly. He didn’t really like admitting weakness in front of Tanya.
"The vampires? Of course they do. Sometimes you get a young one that hasn't gone evil yet, that's always hard. But you have to remember that you're doing the right thing. They all kill eventually." She hesitated. "Do you need me to come out there and help? You don't have to do this on your own. We were hoping you’d be able to handle it, of course, but it’s your first time doing something like this. No one’s going to think less of you if you need a little help.”
"No! No, I can handle it, it's fine," Evan said hastily, startling himself with the vehemence of his denial. Probably it would be the smartest choice to take her up on her offer. Tanya wouldn't hesitate to do what needed to be done. He could hand Johnny off to her. She’d get that name out of him, and then she’d give Johnny a merciful end, and Evan wouldn’t ever have to think about this again. He didn’t really want to think about why that idea made him feel so anxious.
“You’re not having scruples, are you? That vampire’s going to hit again soon, we’re running out of time,” she said.
“I’m not! I’ve got this!” he said. There wasn’t any reason to have scruples about this. Johnny had been a nice guy, but that guy was dead now. All vampires killed eventually. Someone out there was killing right now and Evan could stop him. He could do this. He could do everything that needed to be done if he set his mind to it.
He ended the call filled with determination. They were running out of time. Tomorrow, he was going to make Johnny talk.
*******
Evan woke up to find a new email in his inbox. “There’s been another victim”, the subject line told him mercilessly. The police report was attached, with photos in color and high definition. Evan made himself read every horrible detail, look carefully at every gruesome close-up of the victim’s wounds and embraced the nauseous feeling of guilt spreading through his stomach. This was his fault. If he hadn’t hesitated and fucked around for days because he couldn’t bring himself to do anything harder than leaving Johnny hungry, that man would still be alive now.
He clung to the guilt when he walked into the basement, steeling himself against the way Johnny flinched back a little in his chains when he saw Evan’s expression. He thought of the horrible pictures and put all his anger into his voice. “We’re out of time. Either you tell me now-“
“Or what?” Johnny asked, defiantly holding Evan’s eyes.
Evan sighed, exasperated and angry and nervous. “Fuck, don’t make me do this,” he said. “Just tell me.”
Johnny didn’t respond.
“Have you ever seen Buffy? What happens when they throw holy water on the vampires?” Evan pulled on heavy gloves and drew a vial of clear liquid out of the dresser.
“You mean like their skin starts melting and smoking? I hate to disappoint you, but it doesn’t actually work like that,” Johnny said. He was smirking at Evan, condescending. Evan took the familiar stab of helpless anger, hung on to it, added it to the guilt. He could do whatever needed doing.
“I know holy water doesn’t,” he said. “You know what does though? Acid.”
He uncapped the vial very carefully, wincing away from the acrid smell. Johnny’s nostrils flared and he instinctively moved back a little in the chains. There was something cautious in his expression now, but he still looked more defiant and pissed off than anything else.
"What, you're going to torture it out of me now?" he said, still with that mocking edge to his tone. Evan grit his teeth. It was obvious that Johnny didn't believe he'd be capable of it, but he could do it, if Johnny gave him no other chance.
"Last chance, Johnny. I mean it this time."
Johnny shook his head. Evan had to set the vial down on the dresser so he'd have his hands free. He hadn't actually thought this through very well. He hadn't wanted to think about it at all. He yanked Johnny's sweatpants down while Johnny glared at him, helpless and really fucking pissed off. Evan expected another flood of cursing, but Johnny took a deep breath and visibly forced his anger down.
"What are you doing, Evan?" he asked, his voice almost gentle. "Look at yourself! You've had me chained up in here for days, you're scaring my family to death with this, and now you're threatening me with torture. This isn't you. Whatever happened, you need to snap out of it and think about what you're doing."
Evan shook his head. He didn't have to listen to any of this. People are dying, he reminded himself, and Johnny's protecting their murderer. "Last warning. Tell me," he said, giving Johnny a bit more time to think it over, and then he clung tight to every ounce of determination he'd worked up, steeled himself and splashed the liquid over Johnny's thigh.
Johnny's eyes went wide with shock. Evan looked away from the betrayed look on his face. Johnny really hadn't thought he'd go through with it.
For half a second, nothing at all happened, and then Johnny's muscles went bowstring tight. "Oh God," he whispered, disbelieving. Evan's chest clenched up miserably at the sound of pain in his voice. Johnny arched his back and started yanking at the chains so hard he almost lifted himself clear off the bed, fighting to get away with blind desperation. The skin on his thigh looked like it was melting, blackening and sloughing off in pieces.
Johnny wasn't even screaming, just making a horrible keening noise in the back of his throat, as if he couldn't draw the breath to scream. There were tears running down his face and blood trickling out from under the cuffs, where he'd torn the skin fighting to get away. Out of all the horrible things Evan had seen in his life, nothing had ever even come close to this.
Evan watched him for a long, stunned moment, struck dumb with horror. He finally managed to shake himself out of it and frantically ran for water, pouring glass after glass over the wound, trying to dilute the acid, until the speed of vampiric healing finally outstripped its ability to cause damage and the wound started closing, torturously slow. He collapsed to his knees beside the bed, stroking Johnny's sweat dampened hair, trying to offer a little bit of comfort. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm so sorry."
Johnny didn't even seem to notice him. He was still fighting his chains, weakly, almost automatically, convulsive shudders running down his body. It took almost ten eternal minutes until he finally settled down, falling limply to the mattress, heaving for air. He was sobbing almost soundlessly, exhausted, his entire body shaking with it.
The bottle of acid was still open beside the bed. Evan picked it up with a shudder of revulsion, carefully screwing the cap back on. Johnny' entire body flinched at the sloshing liquid sound. "Oh God, no. Please don't. Evan, please, I can't take that again, please, I can't tell you," he begged, his voice breaking, almost incoherent with terror.
"I won't! It's okay, I won't ever do that again. I'm so sorry," Evan said, cringing with guilt. He put the bottle back into its dresser drawer, out of sight. He never wanted to see the horrible thing again, but God knew what would happen if he tried to pour that shit down the drain.
He knelt down by Johnny's side again, but this time when he reached out, Johnny flinched away from him. "Don't touch me. Get your fucking hands off me!" he yelled, pulling away as far as the chains would let him.
"I'm so sorry," he said again, reaching for Johnny's shoulder. "I didn't think it would be like that, I didn't mean to… Oh god, I'm sorry."
Johnny hissed at him, fangs extended, his face almost unrecognizable with fear and rage. "Get the fuck away from me! Leave me alone! Leave me the fuck alone!" he screamed, in a hoarse, broken voice. Evan turned away and fled.
He collapsed on the couch, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. His face was wet. He turned on the TV so he wouldn't have to hear himself think, sat quietly through hours of daytime reality TV and couldn't have named a single show he'd watched afterwards.
Johnny's disappearance was on the news now, the reporters talking about the death threats he'd received a year ago, about how controversial he was. And then they showed a short video of Patti begging people to call if they had any news of Johnny at all, her voice breaking and her eyes swimming with tears. Evan sat through all of it, almost numb with guilt.
He didn't let himself go downstairs all day. If Johnny wanted space, the least Evan could do for him after all that was let him have it.
The need to check on Johnny finally became too strong to resist some time late in the evening. Johnny was lying with his back to the door, curled up on his side as much as he could. He didn't even stir when Evan came in. Evan tiptoed closer.
Johnny had squirmed out of his pants almost entirely, so they were tangled around his ankles. His thigh hadn't healed up properly, Evan realized with a pang of sorrow; he'd just expected that it would, after the way the cut on his chest had closed up instantly without a scar. But then, this had been a much larger wound. The skin was discolored and pitted, knots of scar tissue tangling all over his thigh.
He'd thought Johnny was sleeping, but he had his eyes open, staring blindly at the wall. Evan put a cautious hand on his shoulder and Johnny twitched a little, trying to pull away with a weak, sluggish movement. Evan took a closer look, suddenly scared. Johnny's face was pale and sunken, his lips dry and cracked. "Oh, fuck, I'm sorry," Evan whispered, touching Johnny's cheek. Johnny's eyes fell closed.
Evan knew that the days without food had been consuming Johnny's reserves. Healing himself must have taken a huge amount of energy and he obviously hadn't had enough to spare. Evan was pretty sure that unless he did something now, Johnny was going to die.
Evan got a knife and sat down on Johnny's bed, clenching his fingers around the hilt to stop the trembling. He took a deep breath and drew the tip down his forearm.
Johnny turned towards the smell of blood with an obvious effort. He barely seemed to have the strength to lift his head; after a moment, he let it fall back down to the pillow, his eyes tracking the drops of blood running down Evan's forearm. Evan tilted his arm and let the blood run towards Johnny's mouth. He caught it on his tongue, hungrily licking his lips.
After a minute or so, his head lolled to the side and his eyes fell closed, blood still dripping down his chin; he didn't even bother licking it away. For one terrified moment Evan really thought he was dead, but Johnny's chest was still rising and falling in a regular rhythm.
It seemed weird that Johnny still breathed in his sleep, when Evan was pretty sure he didn't actually have to; but probably it took a while for your brain to get over a habit like that. He was desperately grateful now for the sign of life. Or, well, whatever passed for life in a vampire.
Evan carefully wiped the blood off Johnny's face with a wet cloth. Johnny didn't even stir. The sheets really needed changing, but to do that he'd have to unchain Johnny while he was right next to him. If Johnny recovered in time to wake up and attack him…
It went against everything Evan had been taught about safety, but Johnny was obviously weak as a kitten right now, both his face and his leg were lying on dried bloodstains, and it suddenly seemed unbearably cruel to do that to Johnny, who was just as obsessive about cleanliness as Evan was.
Johnny didn't wake up or move at all; his body was completely limp in Evan's arms while he maneuvered him around. Only once, when Evan was trying to pull his pants back up and brushed the scarred skin with his hand, Johnny twitched and made a quiet, pained sound in his sleep. Evan flinched harder than Johnny did.
He spent the night in a chair by Johnny's side. Every couple of hours Johnny would wake up enough to drink a little more blood. Evan's forearm was covered in cuts, crusted over and painful as fuck, but Johnny was slowly recovering: he'd gained a little color back and he seemed a little stronger every time he woke up.
*******
Evan woke up slowly, blinking his sticky eyes open with an effort. God, he felt like he could sleep for day or so. His entire body hurt. He slowly picked his head up and then came fully awake with a start in the middle of stretching his aching neck. He pushed himself upright so fast he almost fell off the chair. Evan had no memory of it at all, but he must have fallen asleep some time in the middle of the night, half on his chair and half on Johnny's bed, his head propped up on his arms. His hair had been brushing Johnny's side, that's how close he'd ended up sleeping. God, he must have been really stupendously tired to have decided that would be a good place to fall asleep.
Johnny was watching him stretch his aching, creaky joints with a glint of malicious pleasure in his eyes; finally alert and awake again, at the worst possible moment.
"How are you doing?" Evan asked awkwardly, already cringing internally in preparation for the answer.
Johnny shrugged. There was still something tired about his movements. "Like shit. Alive, no thanks to you."
Okay, that was a little rich. "I've been letting you drink my blood all night long!" Evan said. "You'd be dead now if it wasn't for me. Really dead, not just undead."
"You've been starving me and torturing me and now you want me to be grateful that you didn't just stand by and watch me die? Well done, Evan, I'm so proud of you. You're a regular philanthropist. I'd pat you on the back, but my hands are kind of tied right now."
"Great. If you've got enough energy to be sarcastic, I'm just going to assume you don't need any more blood, then," Evan snapped, feeling petty and helplessly angry and like he wanted to stomp out of the room in a huff. Johnny had always been good at making him feel that way, but you'd think it shouldn't still be possible while he was tied up, weakened and completely at Evan's mercy.
"Aww, did you want me to beg?" Johnny cooed, undeterred by Evan's anger. He didn't ever fucking know when to quit and stop fucking with people. "Please, Sir, may I have some more?" he said, staring up at Evan with big pleading eyes, the very picture of the sad starving orphan. He'd even done the English accent.
Evan grit his teeth. How did Johnny always manage to cast him as the villain of the piece? It would serve him right if Evan went upstairs and left him hungry. But he really didn't want to come down later and find Johnny unconscious again. He sliced the knife down his arm, almost too hard - okay, that really hadn't been a good outlet for his anger, ouch, fuck - and took a petty pleasure in the fact that part of the first gush of blood got all over Johnny's chin and cheeks.
Johnny was smirking, though, victorious. Evan hadn't realized how tense Johnny had been until his shoulders suddenly relaxed. So he had been scared, then, at least a little; but he obviously knew that he'd won now.
Evan had been careful to keep his arm out of reach of Johnny's fangs. Johnny leaned up a little when the flow of blood ran dry and Evan immediately pulled away. There were still a few drops of blood clinging to his skin.
"Let me lick that off, it'll heal better," Johnny said.
"What? No!" Evan said, clutching his arm to his chest.
Johnny rolled his eyes. "Too scary? What do you think I'm going to do? I guess I could open an artery and let you bleed to death, but then I'd have to starve to death in a room with your rotting corpse. I'm not that desperate for revenge."
"Too weird!" Evan said, but Johnny was still giving him that amused, challenging glare and Evan could hear him mentally laughing at Evan's wariness. He slowly stretched out his arm and Johnny leaned up and licked a long stripe over the wound, perfunctory, almost clinical, and it didn't feel as weird as Evan had been afraid it would. There was a tingling feeling at the spot after Johnny drew back, though, and he could actually see the skin starting to knit back together.
"Oh," he said.
Johnny laughed at him. "Do you want me to do the other ones, too?"
"I. Uh. No?" he said, still staring at his arm. It felt really strange, and the thought of letting Johnny do that to his other wounds was weirding him out a little.
Johnny shrugged. "Suit yourself."
********
Evan let him drink again the next day. He tried not to think too much about what he was doing. He'd pretty much given up on getting any information out of Johnny. If he hadn't talked while he was half out of his mind with fear and pain, he certainly wasn't going to do it now.
Johnny wasn't scared of him anymore. Evan was pretty sure he'd realized how hard Evan had crossed his own limits, and that he wasn't going to be able to bring himself to do it again.
Johnny watched him pick up the knife. "Just let me bite you. You're just making it worse for yourself," he said.
Evan hesitated. He was pretty sick of cutting himself, but…
"Are you scared? Come to me, honey, I promise I'll make it so good for you," Johnny cooed, in a deep, husky bedroom voice, and Evan knew it was a mockery, but it still sent a shiver down his spine.
"Don't you ever shut up?" he snapped at Johnny. Johnny shrugged.
"Not really, no."
Evan hesitated. He was horribly curious what it would feel like, even though he knew he shouldn't. He added this to the long list of things he was currently very carefully not thinking about and slowly knelt down next to the bed, letting Johnny have his arm.
He'd expected the bite, steeled himself for pain, but instead Johnny started licking the underside of his wrist. Evan blinked. "What are you doing?"
"Making sure it won't hurt. Did you want me to just ram my big fangs right inside you, baby? That's a lot to take all at once," he said in a low, suggestive voice. His tongue was hot and slippery on Evan's skin and he smirked triumphantly when Evan flushed bright red.
Evan abruptly realized what Johnny was doing. This was revenge. He was trying to make him uncomfortable, and he'd probably count it as a victory if he managed to freak Evan out so much he'd run away, even if he had to go hungry for it. Evan wasn't going to give him the satisfaction.
His skin was going numb and tingly where Johnny was licking him and when Johnny finally bit down, it was a dull, blunted pressure, hardly any pain at all; the eerie sensation of his skin parting for Johnny's teeth, and then the ticklish touch of Johnny's lips and a firm, steady suction.
Evan shivered, his entire body curling in towards the sensation. His cock was hardening, pulsing with every heartbeat where it pressed against the zipper of his jeans.
"Stop it," he said, after a minute or two. He had no idea how much Johnny had taken, or if it would be safe to keep going, but Johnny was drinking fast, greedily, and everything about this was freaking him out.
Johnny gave him an angry look, obviously still hungry, but he pulled his fangs out after a moment. He licked the wound closed again, but this time he wasn't perfunctory about it at all. "Did you like that? Being… penetrated by a vampire?" he whispered, his breath cold on Evan's damp skin, and then he dragged his tongue over the chilled places, soft and wet, utterly obscene. "That's got to be the ultimate taboo, for a hunter. Did it turn you on?"
He doesn't know, Evan told himself desperately. With the way he was kneeling, there was no way Johnny could see how hard he was, and his jeans were heavy enough that they'd probably hide it, anyway. Johnny was just guessing, he couldn't know how desperately turned on Evan was right now. He just had to stay cool, deny him the satisfaction of a reaction, and…
Johnny dragged his fangs over Evan's wrist, a single burning line across the sensitized skin, and Evan's entire body shuddered. He yanked his arm back. "That's enough," he said, his voice rising embarrassingly, and Johnny was laughing while he stumbled to his feet and stalked out, trying to cling to the tattered remains of his dignity.
*******
"So how did you end up a vampire hunter, anyway? You're not really the heroic type," Johnny said.
Evan glared at him. Johnny was perched on the bed with his legs crossed, playing idly with the chain around his ankle. Evan didn't usually chain him to the bed anymore. He wasn't even really trying to interrogate Johnny any more, so the only reason he had to get close to Johnny now was when he was letting him drink.
They'd gotten stuck in a stand-off. Evan wasn't letting Johnny go, but he couldn't bring himself to hurt him anymore, either; so he spent a lot of time sitting around the basement on his side of the white line, occasionally trying half-heartedly to talk Johnny into helping him find his Maker after all, while Johnny limped angrily around the room, dragging his leg, or sat on his bed and needled him, doing his very best to make Evan as uncomfortable as humanly possible.
The scar on Johnny's thigh was healing a little bit more every time he fed, but the skin still looked horrible, knotted and cratered. He hadn't regained much weight either, and the bruises on his wrists and ankles didn't seem to be healing at all, as if his body was saving the energy for the most serious of the wounds. Evan felt a pang of guilt every time he looked at him. Johnny obviously wasn't getting as much blood as he needed, but Evan was starting to feel lightheaded every time he got up too fast. He didn't think he could spare much more than he was already giving.
"It's like the family business," Evan said. "We've been doing it for generations. They weren't happy when I wanted to go into skating instead, but I really wanted it, so they finally let me. I do some hunting on the side when I can, or when they really need me."
Johnny tilted his head. "I never thought you cared about skating all that much," he said.
"What, are you kidding me? I love to compete!" Evan told him, confused. "I've worked my ass off for my medals. Why would I do that, if I didn't really care about winning?"
Johnny pulled a weird face, like someone who'd bitten into something distasteful and was trying not to show it. Whatever. By this point Evan had pretty much accepted that he'd never understand Johnny.
Evan pushed himself to his feet and then had to grab the chair back, dizzy, his vision swimming with dark spots.
"You okay?" Johnny asked. "You need to drink more. Are you taking iron supplements like I told you?"
Evan laughed. Johnny was always a bit of a motherhen with his friends, but it was kind of hilarious that he couldn't even resist the urge to mother the guy holding him captive. Johnny frowned at him. "It's not a joke. You're going to get anemic and you're my only source of food in here."
"So sweet of you to care," Evan said sarcastically.
"What, did I just hurt your feelings? For God's sake, Evan. You can be my friend, or you can keep doing things that hurt me. Pick one."
"Right," Evan said tiredly. He turned to leave.
"Wait!" Johnny said quickly. He still really hated to be left alone. Evan couldn't blame him; the boredom had to be killing him, and he was probably freaking out about his family, too, who had to be going crazy with worry. Evan didn't really like to spend too much time alone with his thoughts these days either. He could see Johnny casting about for a neutral topic of conversation, although he apparently gave up on neutral pretty soon, because what he finally said was: "Have you killed a lot of vampires?"
"No," Evan said, sinking back down into his chair. "Hunting's really something that you need to devote yourself to one hundred and fifty percent if you want to do it well, and I never had that sort of time. It's not like most vampires are that easy to find and I never had time to do much research. I mostly got the crazy, careless ones. I don't think I've ever killed a vampire that wasn't leaving a really obvious trail of corpses."
It had always been something he was a little ashamed of. He hated being bad at things, and this was the family tradition; it was important. He knew his parents wished he was more invested in being a hunter, although they'd mostly accepted his skating once he'd started bringing home medals and money. But Johnny's shoulder relaxed when he said it. Of course, Johnny was still too young to know that there was no such thing as a harmless vampire.
They all kill eventually, Evan reminded himself. It would be way too easy to delude himself into thinking that maybe Johnny, at least, might be different. His personality hadn't seemed to change at all since he'd been turned, and the thought of Johnny Weir ever killing anyone seemed preposterous. But it would happen eventually, Evan knew; it was one of the first things he'd ever been taught, by some of the best hunters in the world; surely if anyone knew for sure, it would be them. But Johnny was completely convinced his Maker had never hurt anyone, and Evan really didn't want to have that argument again.
"Get some sleep," he told Johnny, and found himself fleeing upstairs again.
Part 2
Title: Courage
Recipient: spidergloss
Skaters/Pairings: Johnny Weir/Evan Lysacek
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 19,000
Warnings: torture, issues of consent
Prompt: vampire hunter AU
Disclaimer: The events portrayed in this story are fictional and do not reflect on the actual people written about.
A/N: Beta'd by strongplacebo
Summary: Johnny was weird enough that him turning into a vampire hardly made a difference.
The only thing to fear is fear itself, Evan reminded himself, letting the familiar mantra soothe his nerves. But his hands were still shaky and clammy with sweat when he knocked on Johnny's hotel room door.
It took a while before Johnny opened the door, blinking blearily, pillow creases on his cheek and his hair tousled. "The fuck, Evan? It's the middle of the night. What do you want?"
"Can I come in? Please," he added when Johnny hesitated. "It's four am, I wouldn't be asking if it wasn't important."
"Sure," Johnny said after a moment, stepping back to let him in.
Evan swung his black duffle bag onto the table and reached inside, wrapping his hand in soft fabric. "I really need you to take a look at this. Please," he said, making his face as guileless and pleading as he could. He waited until Johnny was close, bending over so he could look into the bag, confused and distracted, before he drew his hand out and pressed the soaked cloth over Johnny's mouth and nose.
Johnny yelled and started struggling, but Evan got a good grip on his hair and managed to hold him, muffling his noises with the thick fabric, ignoring the way Johnny was clawing at his arm. It only took a few seconds for Johnny's movements to become sluggish and weak, and then he was collapsing in Evan's arms.
Evan caught him and carefully lowered his slack body to the floor. He sat back and rubbed his arm, wincing. Johnny's nails had left bloody furrows in the skin, and they stung like fuck. That didn't matter now, though. Johnny was sprawled loosely on the carpet, his mouth a little open and his arms relaxed by his side. He looked as if he'd just fallen asleep, young and pretty and completely vulnerable.
Evan was praying when he lowered his head to Johnny's chest, as intently and desperately as he'd ever prayed for anything. But God wasn't listening. He couldn't hear a heartbeat. He listened for a long time, longer than he usually did - the drug could slow people's hearts down, he told himself, maybe it was just that, maybe - and then he searched Johnny's neck and wrists for a pulse, too, even though he already knew he wouldn't find anything.
Evan closed his eyes for a moment. He hadn't been sure. Johnny was weird enough that him turning into a vampire hardly made a difference. He'd always worn giant sunglasses everywhere, and the way he'd started covering his entire skin in layers of fabric in the summer heat might have been some sort of fashion statement; it was hardly the first time Evan saw him like that.
But Evan had had vampires on the mind anyway, with all those corpses turning up. When he'd seen Johnny carelessly walk out into the sun without his glasses for once and wince away from the light like someone in real pain, he'd gotten suspicious enough to start watching carefully, and the hints had added up. He hadn't wanted to be right.
Usually, this was when he'd stake them. Evan was pretty strong and he'd had a fair bit of hand-to-hand training, but vampires had supernatural strength on their side and he didn't like to risk getting hurt. It interfered with his skating. So this was how he did it: trick them, drug them, make very sure he hadn't just caught a human with a bunch of weird ticks, and then put a stake through their chest while they were unconscious. He pretty much had it down to an art by now.
But he'd never had to do it to anyone he knew. Looking down at Johnny's peaceful sleeping face, Evan felt guiltily glad that he didn't have to go through with it yet. Johnny had been turned recently enough that there was a chance his Maker might still be around, teaching him the ropes, and if that was the case, Evan needed to know where to look for him. Especially since he was probably the one responsible for all the corpses turning up wherever the tour went.
Of course it might be Johnny killing those people, but even as a vampire, Evan couldn't imagine Johnny slaughtering someone like that. He didn't have that kind of sadistic streak. Maybe he was being naïve, but as long as there was an easy alternate explanation, Evan was giving him the benefit of the doubt.
He wrestled Johnny's limp body into the tracksuit he'd brought along, smugly glad at how well he'd planned ahead: Johnny's closet was standing open, and Evan could see that pretty much everything he owned was too tight or too complicated to dress an unconscious person in without help.
He slung Johnny's body over his shoulder with a grunt of effort. He was pretty heavy for a guy his size.
Leaving the hotel was nerve-wracking. The corridors were deserted this late at night, but you never knew when someone might wander out of their room and he had no idea how he'd explain why he was carrying an unconscious body around. Thankfully he got out without anyone seeing them. He dumped Johnny into the passenger seat of his car with a sigh of relief.
******
The family had safe houses like this all over the country, although Evan had never had to use one before. He carefully chained Johnny's hands and feet to the bed in the basement and then settled down to wait.
Johnny woke up slowly, rubbing his cheek against the pillow, making sleepy little noises. It seemed like a good moment to try to get him to talk. "Shh, it's okay," Evan said in a soothing voice, stroking the hair out of Johnny's face. "Johnny, I need you to tell me who turned you into a vampire, okay?"
Johnny sluggishly blinked his eyes open, squinting up at him. "Evan?" he mumbled, sounding confused.
Evan kept petting him. Johnny was still muzzy enough to lean his face into Evan's palm. "Tell me who turned you into a vampire," Evan repeated gently.
"What? Evan? What's going on?" Johnny was slowly coming fully awake. Evan pulled his hand back before he could get himself bitten.
"Johnny. Tell me. Who made you a vampire?"
"What? Evan, what are you talking about, there's no such thing as vamp-" Johnny broke off with a sharp intake of breath as he tried to sit up and the manacles on his wrists held him down, spread-eagled on the bed. He looked up his arms at the chains connecting him to the bedposts, then down to the shackles on his legs, and finally around the dim basement room. It was set up like a prison cell, no windows, just bare stone walls, one narrow bed, a toilet and sink, and a dresser all the way on the other side of the large room.
Johnny's eyes went wide. "What the fuck is going on here?"
"I need you to tell me who turned you into a vampire," Evan repeated stubbornly.
If he hadn't already known the truth, the look on Johnny's face would have given him away, even though he wiped it away after a second of surprise. "Evan, there's no such thing as vampires," Johnny said, in the soothing, patient tone of someone talking to the dangerously insane. He was a decent actor, Evan had to give him that. "Is this the nervous breakdown we've all been waiting for? Do you need more sleep or something? Get a grip, get me out of these chains, and I won't even tell the police you've finally tried to Tonya Harding me a year after our last competition."
"You can stop pretending. I know exactly what you are," Evan told him, tapping Johnny's chest, right where his heart wasn't beating.
Johnny's eyes went wide for a moment. He laughed nervously. "Well. Okay then. Look, I don't know what you've heard, or seen on TV or whatever, but I've never killed anyone and I never will. You can let me go, I won't hurt you."
"It's funny how all of you say that, and yet the corpses keep piling up. No, don't bother," he said when Johnny opened his mouth to protest again. "I believe you, actually. They turned you, what, two months ago? Three? You started out as a good guy. I can believe that it'd take a while to get to you. But I need to know who made you, because someone is killing people and it's probably your Maker."
"What do you are, some kind of vampire hunter?" Johnny asked, and then laughed incredulously when Evan shrugged. "You're kidding me. You. Right."
"You don't have to believe me," Evan said, keeping his tone casual, even though Johnny's disbelief stung his pride. What the fuck was so unbelievable about him being a hunter? He was strong, smart, and willing to train as hard as it took. He did just fine, even if he couldn't devote as much time to it as the rest of the family did, not if he wanted to keep skating. "If you think this is such a joke, it won't hurt if you tell me, right? All I need is a name and some idea where to find him and I'm letting you go."
"Oh, go fuck yourself," Johnny said, glaring at him and then demonstratively turning his head away.
"Fine, be that way. But you're not getting out of here until you tell me," Evan told him.
"Well, this is going to get awkward and messy pretty fast then. I have to pee," Johnny said.
Evan walked over to the dresser and grabbed the little key on top of it. He double-checked that he was far enough past the white line painted on the floor and then tossed the key to Johnny.
"This is going to unlock everything but the shackle on your leg," he told Johnny, who was already fighting to get his manacles unlocked. It was kind of awkward at that angle, but doable. It took Johnny a few minutes, but he managed to get himself out of everything but the long chain connected to his left ankle. He gave up on that one with a frustrated look and lunged at Evan, stopping with a murderous glare when the chain brought him up short right on the painted line, safely halfway across the room.
"I plan ahead," Evan told him smugly, although to be fair, he wasn't the one who'd come up with this particular set-up. "The chain is long enough to get to the toilet," he told Johnny, who looked angry enough to spit.
"Are you at least going to turn your back?" Johnny hissed.
Evan shrugged. "Sure." There wasn't anything on that side of the room that could be used as a weapon. Everything but the pillow was bolted to the floor.
He waited until he could hear Johnny washing his hands and then turned back around. Johnny stared back at him with his arm crossed. "So now what? You want to come over here and chain me back up?" he said, giving him a challenging smirk. Evan was pretty sure that they both knew that Johnny could take him in a fair fight.
"Nope," Evan said. He grabbed dart gun from the dresser and pointed it at Johnny. "Now you can either go and chain yourself up again, or I'll tranq you and do it for you."
Johnny's eyes went wide. He looked nervous for the first time. "Evan, don't do this," he said carefully. "This isn't you. I don't know what you've heard, but we really don't kill anyone. You know me, you know I wouldn't. Put that gun down and we can talk about this."
Evan bit his lip. This entire situation sucked. He'd never had to talk to one of them before, never known one of them as a human. He knew that what the family did was the right thing, that they'd saved countless lives, and he had the pictures of those poor mutilated corpses on his laptop if he needed to remind himself. But he hated having to do this to Johnny, who probably wasn't even lying. He probably didn't know what his Maker had done; he always tended to believe the best of people, even if he should know better.
"Just tell me who turned you and I'll let you go," he lied.
Johnny sighed, and Evan could see him getting angry again. "No. They haven't killed anyone either. Evan, you have to believe me. This is crazy."
"Get back on the bed," Evan told him.
Johnny stubbornly stayed where he was. Evan was pretty sure he wasn't getting through to him this way. "Okay then. Last warning," he said, and when Johnny just stood there, arms crossed, obviously not believing that he'd actually go through with it, he pulled the trigger.
The dart gun had given him no end of trouble at first, but after he'd put in a couple hundred hours of practice, he'd gotten pretty good with the thing. He caught Johnny neatly in the shoulder, even though he tried to dodge at the last second.
Johnny yelled, more in anger than pain, Evan thought, and ripped the dart out of his shoulder with a determined grunt.
"Sit down before you fall over," Evan told him quickly.
Johnny hissed at him, pure rage in his eyes. "You fucking asshole." He stood there, hip cocked, glaring at him, even while Evan could see his eyes going unfocused.
"Sit down," Evan told him again, wincing when Johnny collapsed to the floor a few seconds later. "I did warn you," he said, gently picking up Johnny's unconscious body and putting him back on the bed, biting down on the sting of guilt. This was important. People were being killed out there.
*******
Johnny woke up with a start this time, instantly awake and angry, rattling his chains. He winced a little at the clanking sound. The drugs had probably given him a headache.
Evan sat down on the edge of the bed. Johnny tried to shift away, but Evan had pulled the chains pretty tight this time, and he couldn't move much. "Just tell me. Please," Evan said. "Your Maker, he's not just killing these people, he's torturing them. I've got to stop this." Evan put all his sincerity into his voice, but Johnny was obviously angry now and not in the mood to cooperate.
"Go fuck yourself. They've never killed anyone in their life. Even if those people are being killed by vampires, and I really doubt it, there's more than two of us in the world, you realize? If there's a psycho murderer out there, it's not me and it's not the vampire who turned me. I'm kind of starting to wonder about you though."
"All the victims have been killed in cities the tour has stopped in. Whoever's doing this is following us around. If you know any other vampires on this tour except for you and your Maker, feel free to tell me."
Johnny's eyes went wide. So he hadn't known about that. Whoever that guy was, he probably had Johnny wrapped around his little finger. Johnny seemed the type to fall for a mysterious dark stranger; he'd probably think the whole creature of the night thing was romantic.
Evan sighed. "Come on, I really don't want to have to do this the hard way." He started unbuttoning Johnny's shirt. Johnny's entire body went tense. Evan could hear the chains rattling as he fought to get away, straining against the cuffs.
"Take your fucking hands off me!"
Evan ignored him. He pushed the shirt to the side, baring Johnny's chest, while Johnny cursed and screamed at him, and then picked up his stake from the floor. He showed it to Johnny: hard, polished wood, with a razor-sharp metal tip, to make it easier to punch through skin and muscle to the heart. Johnny abruptly went silent.
"I'm sorry, I hate to do this, but I really need to know his name," Evan said, placing the stake above Johnny's heart. "Tell me now."
"You're not going to kill me," Johnny said with total conviction.
"You didn't think I'd shoot you, either."
"Okay, you're slightly crazier than I ever thought, but that was still a tranq gun. There's a lot of difference between that and killing someone."
"I've killed vampires before," Evan said, pressing the stake down a little firmer. Johnny went very still, pushing his back into the bed to get away from the pressure on his skin.
"Evan, please, can't you see how crazy you're acting? You can't just threaten to kill people because you think they might possibly know someone who might possibly have committed a crime. There's a reason the police doesn't work like that. Let me go and we'll try to figure it out together."
"Tell me," Evan said, and then he set his teeth and pressed the stake in hard enough to draw a trickle of blood. Johnny made a shocked, pained sound, curling in on himself as much as he could, trying to get away from the pain. Evan let up a little. Johnny drew a deep, shaky breath.
"For God's sake, in case you're actually too crazy to have noticed, 'Tell me what I need to know, or I'll kill you' is actually not a great threat, because if you kill me for not telling you, you'll never know!" he yelled, his voice shaking with anger and pain. He gave Evan a defiant glare. "Plus I still don't believe you'll kill me. And even if I did, I wouldn't tell you."
Evan sighed and took the stake away. Johnny was right, of course; it wasn't a very good threat. Vampiric healing was already taking over, sealing the shallow cut. Evan watched, fascinated. He'd never gotten to see this up close before. In less than a minute the skin was completely healed, not even a scar left.
He got up and started cleaning the blood off the stake. "You're not getting out of here until you tell me. You're pretty young, I bet you still need to drink all the time. You'll be really thirsty soon. And you might want to think about how the longer you take, the more people are going to die."
"Go fuck yourself," Johnny told him tiredly, his head turned away. Evan shrugged. He let a little more slack into Johnny's chains, not enough to let him move around much, but enough hat his muscles probably wouldn't cramp up too much overnight, and then left him alone.
There was a bedroom upstairs and a fully-stocked kitchen, so he wouldn't have to leave his captive. The tour was on break for a little while; he didn't have anywhere to be for the next couple days.
Some time today people were going to realize that Johnny was gone. His stomach clenched a little, thinking of how scared Patti would be. He'd always liked her. She didn't deserve to get caught up in this. She probably didn't even know that her son had been turned. Hell, Johnny hadn't deserved any of this either.
Johnny waited until Evan had been gone for ten minutes and then he started screaming for help. Evan winced, but didn't go back down to stop him. No one was going to hear Johnny out here. The walls were thick and the thickly wooded area around the house was all private property. The family had been doing this for a long time; they knew their business.
Evan tried to catch a little sleep, but it wasn't really happening. Johnny kept screaming for a long time before he exhausted himself. Evan listened to him with his chest clenching up tight. He was doing the right thing, he reminded himself. He needed to stop the killing.
******
Johnny was wide awake when Evan came down the stairs the next day, watching him anxiously. "Are you going to let me out now?" he asked.
"Are you going to tell me what I need to know?"
"I won't. Keeping me in here isn't going to change my mind."
"We'll see," Evan said. He tossed Johnny the little key again, plus a toothbrush and fresh clothes this time, and turned his back while Johnny took care of business.
They ended up facing off again afterwards. "Are you going to lock yourself back up this time or do I have to do it again? I don't really care, I've got all the tranq darts I need. I get the feeling they give you a headache, though."
Johnny gave him an angry look, but finally he stiffly walked over to the bed and chained himself up. Evan watched him, surprised. Johnny was stubborn as fuck. He hadn't expected him to give up this easily. This was probably part of some sort of plan. He double-checked that everything was on tight and all the locks were properly closed, and pocketed the key again.
He left Johnny alone for almost the entire day, only checking in a few times to see if he needed anything, or finally felt like answering his question. Johnny alternately tried to reason with him, pleaded, or cursed.
Evan distracted himself with a punishing workout, training with the weights for hours, until all his muscles were sore and shaking with fatigue. He kept an eye on the internet, but so far, not even the gossip blogs had anything on Johnny's disappearance. Probably the police were trying to keep it under wraps for now.
Johnny gave him a careful smile when he checked in for the last time that night, like someone trying not to set a psycho off. "Could you stay for a while? Talk to me? I'm going kind of stir crazy down here."
That was kind of what Evan was going for, but he still felt almost physically sick with guilt, seeing the thinly veiled desperation on Johnny's face. "Sorry," he said. "You know what I want to hear."
Johnny snorted bitterly. He was staring at Evan's arm. Evan followed his line of sight, to where he'd been idly scratching the mosquito bite on his biceps. He'd broken the skin and there was a tiny drop of blood smeared over his arm. Evan scratched harder, bringing a little more blood to the surface. "Hungry?" he asked. "All you've got to do is tell me, and you can have all the blood you want. I'll even let you bite me."
"Fuck off," Johnny said. When he opened his mouth to speak, Evan saw his fangs for the first time; sharp, inhuman predator teeth. It made it easier to turn and walk out.
*******
He brought a bag of blood down with him in the morning. He carefully poured some of it into a glass, wrinkling his nose at the iron smell, and held it so Johnny could see it. "I know you're hungry. Stop torturing yourself and tell me and I'll let you drink."
Johnny raised an eyebrow at him. "I'm not the one torturing me. And I would have thought a vampire hunter would know better. We don't drink dead blood. Once it's out of the body and cooled down, it's no good."
Evan tried to hide his surprise. He hadn't known that, and he should have. But then he had a lot of gaps in his knowledge about vampires, a lot more than most hunters. It had always seemed easiest to concentrate on killing them. He didn't want to learn about vampire society, about the way they lived. It seemed easier not to have to think of them as people, going about their daily lives. Probably most of them had hobbies, families, friends. He didn't want to think about that. He knew that sort of stuff about Johnny and it was making everything so much harder.
He looked down at the glass in his hand, dubious. "Would it help if I heated it up a little?"
Johnny shuddered. "I think if you heat that up, you're going to get a really disgusting congealed mess. But feel free to give it a try, it's your microwave."
"So you only drink from humans and you're expecting me to believe that you've never hurt anyone?"
"I've never killed anyone. I don't need that much blood. I spread my feeding out over three people and I don't need more than they can spare. It's not that hard to find three friends who don't mind helping you out."
Evan couldn't imagine being close enough to anyone that he'd feel comfortable asking them to drink their blood. But Johnny had always had tons of friends; it wasn't that hard to believe that some of them might be crazy enough to let him.
Evan put the glass down on the dresser and picked up a knife instead. Johnny was watching him warily. Evan clenched his teeth and drew it down his forearm, away from any major arteries, starting a thin trickle of blood. He held his arm out to Johnny. "That better?" he asked, smiling when he saw Johnny licking his lips, fangs poking out long and sharp in the corners of his mouth. “You know what you have to do, if you want it.”
Johnny was straining at his chains, trying to get closer. Evan could have sworn he already looked thinner, but he had to be imagining that. Or maybe not; he didn't know how fast vampires died without blood. The young ones had to feed pretty often, he knew that much.
He tilted his arm a little, let a single drop of blood land on Johnny's lips. Johnny licked it off eagerly, straining for more, and then caught himself, flushing furiously, looking humiliated. He turned his head away with an obvious effort.
"Quit it, Evan. I can't tell you what you want to know, no matter what you do. Please, just let me go. My family's got to be terrified by now."
"I'm sorry," Evan said, his voice cracking a little. He turned and fled upstairs.
*******
By the next day, it was obvious that Johnny was losing weight, much more quickly than a human would. He’d always been thin, so it wasn’t like he had a lot of spare fat to lose; his cheek bones were sticking out and the thin skin under his eyes looked fragile and bruised.
He was also obviously thoroughly fed up with captivity, cursing and spitting at Evan whenever came in to threaten, bribe, beg, or reason with him. Evan came stupidly close once, careless, and Johnny's fangs sliced a long bloody furrow down his arm. Johnny smirked at him, his eyes full of rage, and slowly, smugly licked the blood off his teeth.
It was pissing Evan off. He wasn't the bad guy here. Johnny was protecting a crazy serial killer, whether he knew it or not, and Evan was trying to save people's lives. It wasn't fair of Johnny to try and make him feel like this.
He stomped upstairs for the night and threw himself down on the couch, angry and frustrated. He really needed that name and Johnny obviously wasn't going to cooperate; but he didn't know if he could do what it would take to make him.
He called his mother that night. "Does it ever get to you?" he asked her hesitantly. He didn’t really like admitting weakness in front of Tanya.
"The vampires? Of course they do. Sometimes you get a young one that hasn't gone evil yet, that's always hard. But you have to remember that you're doing the right thing. They all kill eventually." She hesitated. "Do you need me to come out there and help? You don't have to do this on your own. We were hoping you’d be able to handle it, of course, but it’s your first time doing something like this. No one’s going to think less of you if you need a little help.”
"No! No, I can handle it, it's fine," Evan said hastily, startling himself with the vehemence of his denial. Probably it would be the smartest choice to take her up on her offer. Tanya wouldn't hesitate to do what needed to be done. He could hand Johnny off to her. She’d get that name out of him, and then she’d give Johnny a merciful end, and Evan wouldn’t ever have to think about this again. He didn’t really want to think about why that idea made him feel so anxious.
“You’re not having scruples, are you? That vampire’s going to hit again soon, we’re running out of time,” she said.
“I’m not! I’ve got this!” he said. There wasn’t any reason to have scruples about this. Johnny had been a nice guy, but that guy was dead now. All vampires killed eventually. Someone out there was killing right now and Evan could stop him. He could do this. He could do everything that needed to be done if he set his mind to it.
He ended the call filled with determination. They were running out of time. Tomorrow, he was going to make Johnny talk.
*******
Evan woke up to find a new email in his inbox. “There’s been another victim”, the subject line told him mercilessly. The police report was attached, with photos in color and high definition. Evan made himself read every horrible detail, look carefully at every gruesome close-up of the victim’s wounds and embraced the nauseous feeling of guilt spreading through his stomach. This was his fault. If he hadn’t hesitated and fucked around for days because he couldn’t bring himself to do anything harder than leaving Johnny hungry, that man would still be alive now.
He clung to the guilt when he walked into the basement, steeling himself against the way Johnny flinched back a little in his chains when he saw Evan’s expression. He thought of the horrible pictures and put all his anger into his voice. “We’re out of time. Either you tell me now-“
“Or what?” Johnny asked, defiantly holding Evan’s eyes.
Evan sighed, exasperated and angry and nervous. “Fuck, don’t make me do this,” he said. “Just tell me.”
Johnny didn’t respond.
“Have you ever seen Buffy? What happens when they throw holy water on the vampires?” Evan pulled on heavy gloves and drew a vial of clear liquid out of the dresser.
“You mean like their skin starts melting and smoking? I hate to disappoint you, but it doesn’t actually work like that,” Johnny said. He was smirking at Evan, condescending. Evan took the familiar stab of helpless anger, hung on to it, added it to the guilt. He could do whatever needed doing.
“I know holy water doesn’t,” he said. “You know what does though? Acid.”
He uncapped the vial very carefully, wincing away from the acrid smell. Johnny’s nostrils flared and he instinctively moved back a little in the chains. There was something cautious in his expression now, but he still looked more defiant and pissed off than anything else.
"What, you're going to torture it out of me now?" he said, still with that mocking edge to his tone. Evan grit his teeth. It was obvious that Johnny didn't believe he'd be capable of it, but he could do it, if Johnny gave him no other chance.
"Last chance, Johnny. I mean it this time."
Johnny shook his head. Evan had to set the vial down on the dresser so he'd have his hands free. He hadn't actually thought this through very well. He hadn't wanted to think about it at all. He yanked Johnny's sweatpants down while Johnny glared at him, helpless and really fucking pissed off. Evan expected another flood of cursing, but Johnny took a deep breath and visibly forced his anger down.
"What are you doing, Evan?" he asked, his voice almost gentle. "Look at yourself! You've had me chained up in here for days, you're scaring my family to death with this, and now you're threatening me with torture. This isn't you. Whatever happened, you need to snap out of it and think about what you're doing."
Evan shook his head. He didn't have to listen to any of this. People are dying, he reminded himself, and Johnny's protecting their murderer. "Last warning. Tell me," he said, giving Johnny a bit more time to think it over, and then he clung tight to every ounce of determination he'd worked up, steeled himself and splashed the liquid over Johnny's thigh.
Johnny's eyes went wide with shock. Evan looked away from the betrayed look on his face. Johnny really hadn't thought he'd go through with it.
For half a second, nothing at all happened, and then Johnny's muscles went bowstring tight. "Oh God," he whispered, disbelieving. Evan's chest clenched up miserably at the sound of pain in his voice. Johnny arched his back and started yanking at the chains so hard he almost lifted himself clear off the bed, fighting to get away with blind desperation. The skin on his thigh looked like it was melting, blackening and sloughing off in pieces.
Johnny wasn't even screaming, just making a horrible keening noise in the back of his throat, as if he couldn't draw the breath to scream. There were tears running down his face and blood trickling out from under the cuffs, where he'd torn the skin fighting to get away. Out of all the horrible things Evan had seen in his life, nothing had ever even come close to this.
Evan watched him for a long, stunned moment, struck dumb with horror. He finally managed to shake himself out of it and frantically ran for water, pouring glass after glass over the wound, trying to dilute the acid, until the speed of vampiric healing finally outstripped its ability to cause damage and the wound started closing, torturously slow. He collapsed to his knees beside the bed, stroking Johnny's sweat dampened hair, trying to offer a little bit of comfort. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm so sorry."
Johnny didn't even seem to notice him. He was still fighting his chains, weakly, almost automatically, convulsive shudders running down his body. It took almost ten eternal minutes until he finally settled down, falling limply to the mattress, heaving for air. He was sobbing almost soundlessly, exhausted, his entire body shaking with it.
The bottle of acid was still open beside the bed. Evan picked it up with a shudder of revulsion, carefully screwing the cap back on. Johnny' entire body flinched at the sloshing liquid sound. "Oh God, no. Please don't. Evan, please, I can't take that again, please, I can't tell you," he begged, his voice breaking, almost incoherent with terror.
"I won't! It's okay, I won't ever do that again. I'm so sorry," Evan said, cringing with guilt. He put the bottle back into its dresser drawer, out of sight. He never wanted to see the horrible thing again, but God knew what would happen if he tried to pour that shit down the drain.
He knelt down by Johnny's side again, but this time when he reached out, Johnny flinched away from him. "Don't touch me. Get your fucking hands off me!" he yelled, pulling away as far as the chains would let him.
"I'm so sorry," he said again, reaching for Johnny's shoulder. "I didn't think it would be like that, I didn't mean to… Oh god, I'm sorry."
Johnny hissed at him, fangs extended, his face almost unrecognizable with fear and rage. "Get the fuck away from me! Leave me alone! Leave me the fuck alone!" he screamed, in a hoarse, broken voice. Evan turned away and fled.
He collapsed on the couch, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. His face was wet. He turned on the TV so he wouldn't have to hear himself think, sat quietly through hours of daytime reality TV and couldn't have named a single show he'd watched afterwards.
Johnny's disappearance was on the news now, the reporters talking about the death threats he'd received a year ago, about how controversial he was. And then they showed a short video of Patti begging people to call if they had any news of Johnny at all, her voice breaking and her eyes swimming with tears. Evan sat through all of it, almost numb with guilt.
He didn't let himself go downstairs all day. If Johnny wanted space, the least Evan could do for him after all that was let him have it.
The need to check on Johnny finally became too strong to resist some time late in the evening. Johnny was lying with his back to the door, curled up on his side as much as he could. He didn't even stir when Evan came in. Evan tiptoed closer.
Johnny had squirmed out of his pants almost entirely, so they were tangled around his ankles. His thigh hadn't healed up properly, Evan realized with a pang of sorrow; he'd just expected that it would, after the way the cut on his chest had closed up instantly without a scar. But then, this had been a much larger wound. The skin was discolored and pitted, knots of scar tissue tangling all over his thigh.
He'd thought Johnny was sleeping, but he had his eyes open, staring blindly at the wall. Evan put a cautious hand on his shoulder and Johnny twitched a little, trying to pull away with a weak, sluggish movement. Evan took a closer look, suddenly scared. Johnny's face was pale and sunken, his lips dry and cracked. "Oh, fuck, I'm sorry," Evan whispered, touching Johnny's cheek. Johnny's eyes fell closed.
Evan knew that the days without food had been consuming Johnny's reserves. Healing himself must have taken a huge amount of energy and he obviously hadn't had enough to spare. Evan was pretty sure that unless he did something now, Johnny was going to die.
Evan got a knife and sat down on Johnny's bed, clenching his fingers around the hilt to stop the trembling. He took a deep breath and drew the tip down his forearm.
Johnny turned towards the smell of blood with an obvious effort. He barely seemed to have the strength to lift his head; after a moment, he let it fall back down to the pillow, his eyes tracking the drops of blood running down Evan's forearm. Evan tilted his arm and let the blood run towards Johnny's mouth. He caught it on his tongue, hungrily licking his lips.
After a minute or so, his head lolled to the side and his eyes fell closed, blood still dripping down his chin; he didn't even bother licking it away. For one terrified moment Evan really thought he was dead, but Johnny's chest was still rising and falling in a regular rhythm.
It seemed weird that Johnny still breathed in his sleep, when Evan was pretty sure he didn't actually have to; but probably it took a while for your brain to get over a habit like that. He was desperately grateful now for the sign of life. Or, well, whatever passed for life in a vampire.
Evan carefully wiped the blood off Johnny's face with a wet cloth. Johnny didn't even stir. The sheets really needed changing, but to do that he'd have to unchain Johnny while he was right next to him. If Johnny recovered in time to wake up and attack him…
It went against everything Evan had been taught about safety, but Johnny was obviously weak as a kitten right now, both his face and his leg were lying on dried bloodstains, and it suddenly seemed unbearably cruel to do that to Johnny, who was just as obsessive about cleanliness as Evan was.
Johnny didn't wake up or move at all; his body was completely limp in Evan's arms while he maneuvered him around. Only once, when Evan was trying to pull his pants back up and brushed the scarred skin with his hand, Johnny twitched and made a quiet, pained sound in his sleep. Evan flinched harder than Johnny did.
He spent the night in a chair by Johnny's side. Every couple of hours Johnny would wake up enough to drink a little more blood. Evan's forearm was covered in cuts, crusted over and painful as fuck, but Johnny was slowly recovering: he'd gained a little color back and he seemed a little stronger every time he woke up.
*******
Evan woke up slowly, blinking his sticky eyes open with an effort. God, he felt like he could sleep for day or so. His entire body hurt. He slowly picked his head up and then came fully awake with a start in the middle of stretching his aching neck. He pushed himself upright so fast he almost fell off the chair. Evan had no memory of it at all, but he must have fallen asleep some time in the middle of the night, half on his chair and half on Johnny's bed, his head propped up on his arms. His hair had been brushing Johnny's side, that's how close he'd ended up sleeping. God, he must have been really stupendously tired to have decided that would be a good place to fall asleep.
Johnny was watching him stretch his aching, creaky joints with a glint of malicious pleasure in his eyes; finally alert and awake again, at the worst possible moment.
"How are you doing?" Evan asked awkwardly, already cringing internally in preparation for the answer.
Johnny shrugged. There was still something tired about his movements. "Like shit. Alive, no thanks to you."
Okay, that was a little rich. "I've been letting you drink my blood all night long!" Evan said. "You'd be dead now if it wasn't for me. Really dead, not just undead."
"You've been starving me and torturing me and now you want me to be grateful that you didn't just stand by and watch me die? Well done, Evan, I'm so proud of you. You're a regular philanthropist. I'd pat you on the back, but my hands are kind of tied right now."
"Great. If you've got enough energy to be sarcastic, I'm just going to assume you don't need any more blood, then," Evan snapped, feeling petty and helplessly angry and like he wanted to stomp out of the room in a huff. Johnny had always been good at making him feel that way, but you'd think it shouldn't still be possible while he was tied up, weakened and completely at Evan's mercy.
"Aww, did you want me to beg?" Johnny cooed, undeterred by Evan's anger. He didn't ever fucking know when to quit and stop fucking with people. "Please, Sir, may I have some more?" he said, staring up at Evan with big pleading eyes, the very picture of the sad starving orphan. He'd even done the English accent.
Evan grit his teeth. How did Johnny always manage to cast him as the villain of the piece? It would serve him right if Evan went upstairs and left him hungry. But he really didn't want to come down later and find Johnny unconscious again. He sliced the knife down his arm, almost too hard - okay, that really hadn't been a good outlet for his anger, ouch, fuck - and took a petty pleasure in the fact that part of the first gush of blood got all over Johnny's chin and cheeks.
Johnny was smirking, though, victorious. Evan hadn't realized how tense Johnny had been until his shoulders suddenly relaxed. So he had been scared, then, at least a little; but he obviously knew that he'd won now.
Evan had been careful to keep his arm out of reach of Johnny's fangs. Johnny leaned up a little when the flow of blood ran dry and Evan immediately pulled away. There were still a few drops of blood clinging to his skin.
"Let me lick that off, it'll heal better," Johnny said.
"What? No!" Evan said, clutching his arm to his chest.
Johnny rolled his eyes. "Too scary? What do you think I'm going to do? I guess I could open an artery and let you bleed to death, but then I'd have to starve to death in a room with your rotting corpse. I'm not that desperate for revenge."
"Too weird!" Evan said, but Johnny was still giving him that amused, challenging glare and Evan could hear him mentally laughing at Evan's wariness. He slowly stretched out his arm and Johnny leaned up and licked a long stripe over the wound, perfunctory, almost clinical, and it didn't feel as weird as Evan had been afraid it would. There was a tingling feeling at the spot after Johnny drew back, though, and he could actually see the skin starting to knit back together.
"Oh," he said.
Johnny laughed at him. "Do you want me to do the other ones, too?"
"I. Uh. No?" he said, still staring at his arm. It felt really strange, and the thought of letting Johnny do that to his other wounds was weirding him out a little.
Johnny shrugged. "Suit yourself."
********
Evan let him drink again the next day. He tried not to think too much about what he was doing. He'd pretty much given up on getting any information out of Johnny. If he hadn't talked while he was half out of his mind with fear and pain, he certainly wasn't going to do it now.
Johnny wasn't scared of him anymore. Evan was pretty sure he'd realized how hard Evan had crossed his own limits, and that he wasn't going to be able to bring himself to do it again.
Johnny watched him pick up the knife. "Just let me bite you. You're just making it worse for yourself," he said.
Evan hesitated. He was pretty sick of cutting himself, but…
"Are you scared? Come to me, honey, I promise I'll make it so good for you," Johnny cooed, in a deep, husky bedroom voice, and Evan knew it was a mockery, but it still sent a shiver down his spine.
"Don't you ever shut up?" he snapped at Johnny. Johnny shrugged.
"Not really, no."
Evan hesitated. He was horribly curious what it would feel like, even though he knew he shouldn't. He added this to the long list of things he was currently very carefully not thinking about and slowly knelt down next to the bed, letting Johnny have his arm.
He'd expected the bite, steeled himself for pain, but instead Johnny started licking the underside of his wrist. Evan blinked. "What are you doing?"
"Making sure it won't hurt. Did you want me to just ram my big fangs right inside you, baby? That's a lot to take all at once," he said in a low, suggestive voice. His tongue was hot and slippery on Evan's skin and he smirked triumphantly when Evan flushed bright red.
Evan abruptly realized what Johnny was doing. This was revenge. He was trying to make him uncomfortable, and he'd probably count it as a victory if he managed to freak Evan out so much he'd run away, even if he had to go hungry for it. Evan wasn't going to give him the satisfaction.
His skin was going numb and tingly where Johnny was licking him and when Johnny finally bit down, it was a dull, blunted pressure, hardly any pain at all; the eerie sensation of his skin parting for Johnny's teeth, and then the ticklish touch of Johnny's lips and a firm, steady suction.
Evan shivered, his entire body curling in towards the sensation. His cock was hardening, pulsing with every heartbeat where it pressed against the zipper of his jeans.
"Stop it," he said, after a minute or two. He had no idea how much Johnny had taken, or if it would be safe to keep going, but Johnny was drinking fast, greedily, and everything about this was freaking him out.
Johnny gave him an angry look, obviously still hungry, but he pulled his fangs out after a moment. He licked the wound closed again, but this time he wasn't perfunctory about it at all. "Did you like that? Being… penetrated by a vampire?" he whispered, his breath cold on Evan's damp skin, and then he dragged his tongue over the chilled places, soft and wet, utterly obscene. "That's got to be the ultimate taboo, for a hunter. Did it turn you on?"
He doesn't know, Evan told himself desperately. With the way he was kneeling, there was no way Johnny could see how hard he was, and his jeans were heavy enough that they'd probably hide it, anyway. Johnny was just guessing, he couldn't know how desperately turned on Evan was right now. He just had to stay cool, deny him the satisfaction of a reaction, and…
Johnny dragged his fangs over Evan's wrist, a single burning line across the sensitized skin, and Evan's entire body shuddered. He yanked his arm back. "That's enough," he said, his voice rising embarrassingly, and Johnny was laughing while he stumbled to his feet and stalked out, trying to cling to the tattered remains of his dignity.
*******
"So how did you end up a vampire hunter, anyway? You're not really the heroic type," Johnny said.
Evan glared at him. Johnny was perched on the bed with his legs crossed, playing idly with the chain around his ankle. Evan didn't usually chain him to the bed anymore. He wasn't even really trying to interrogate Johnny any more, so the only reason he had to get close to Johnny now was when he was letting him drink.
They'd gotten stuck in a stand-off. Evan wasn't letting Johnny go, but he couldn't bring himself to hurt him anymore, either; so he spent a lot of time sitting around the basement on his side of the white line, occasionally trying half-heartedly to talk Johnny into helping him find his Maker after all, while Johnny limped angrily around the room, dragging his leg, or sat on his bed and needled him, doing his very best to make Evan as uncomfortable as humanly possible.
The scar on Johnny's thigh was healing a little bit more every time he fed, but the skin still looked horrible, knotted and cratered. He hadn't regained much weight either, and the bruises on his wrists and ankles didn't seem to be healing at all, as if his body was saving the energy for the most serious of the wounds. Evan felt a pang of guilt every time he looked at him. Johnny obviously wasn't getting as much blood as he needed, but Evan was starting to feel lightheaded every time he got up too fast. He didn't think he could spare much more than he was already giving.
"It's like the family business," Evan said. "We've been doing it for generations. They weren't happy when I wanted to go into skating instead, but I really wanted it, so they finally let me. I do some hunting on the side when I can, or when they really need me."
Johnny tilted his head. "I never thought you cared about skating all that much," he said.
"What, are you kidding me? I love to compete!" Evan told him, confused. "I've worked my ass off for my medals. Why would I do that, if I didn't really care about winning?"
Johnny pulled a weird face, like someone who'd bitten into something distasteful and was trying not to show it. Whatever. By this point Evan had pretty much accepted that he'd never understand Johnny.
Evan pushed himself to his feet and then had to grab the chair back, dizzy, his vision swimming with dark spots.
"You okay?" Johnny asked. "You need to drink more. Are you taking iron supplements like I told you?"
Evan laughed. Johnny was always a bit of a motherhen with his friends, but it was kind of hilarious that he couldn't even resist the urge to mother the guy holding him captive. Johnny frowned at him. "It's not a joke. You're going to get anemic and you're my only source of food in here."
"So sweet of you to care," Evan said sarcastically.
"What, did I just hurt your feelings? For God's sake, Evan. You can be my friend, or you can keep doing things that hurt me. Pick one."
"Right," Evan said tiredly. He turned to leave.
"Wait!" Johnny said quickly. He still really hated to be left alone. Evan couldn't blame him; the boredom had to be killing him, and he was probably freaking out about his family, too, who had to be going crazy with worry. Evan didn't really like to spend too much time alone with his thoughts these days either. He could see Johnny casting about for a neutral topic of conversation, although he apparently gave up on neutral pretty soon, because what he finally said was: "Have you killed a lot of vampires?"
"No," Evan said, sinking back down into his chair. "Hunting's really something that you need to devote yourself to one hundred and fifty percent if you want to do it well, and I never had that sort of time. It's not like most vampires are that easy to find and I never had time to do much research. I mostly got the crazy, careless ones. I don't think I've ever killed a vampire that wasn't leaving a really obvious trail of corpses."
It had always been something he was a little ashamed of. He hated being bad at things, and this was the family tradition; it was important. He knew his parents wished he was more invested in being a hunter, although they'd mostly accepted his skating once he'd started bringing home medals and money. But Johnny's shoulder relaxed when he said it. Of course, Johnny was still too young to know that there was no such thing as a harmless vampire.
They all kill eventually, Evan reminded himself. It would be way too easy to delude himself into thinking that maybe Johnny, at least, might be different. His personality hadn't seemed to change at all since he'd been turned, and the thought of Johnny Weir ever killing anyone seemed preposterous. But it would happen eventually, Evan knew; it was one of the first things he'd ever been taught, by some of the best hunters in the world; surely if anyone knew for sure, it would be them. But Johnny was completely convinced his Maker had never hurt anyone, and Evan really didn't want to have that argument again.
"Get some sleep," he told Johnny, and found himself fleeing upstairs again.
Part 2