Keeping a Reflection of You In Hindsight
Title: Keeping a Reflection Of You In Hindsight
Pairing(s): Brendon/Spencer, Pete/Patrick/Ashlee
Rating: PG-13 for thematic elements.
Warnings: Vampires! H/C! Vampire Character A has some issues with blood and having to drink it, so he doesn’t, and suffers physical effects. It could be triggering for readers with/recovering from EDs.
Word count: ~14,000
Summary: Brendon is surrounded by vampires. And not in a sexy or dangerous way, more like a “nobody else gets up before six in the evening so I have to do all the errands and yard work myself” way.
“I don’t think it’s a great plan, B,” Ashlee sighs, glancing over at him. “You know how protective Pete is of you, and you know he’ll just - “
“He’ll get it,” Brendon says firmly, reaching a hand out to guide Ashlee away from a small stream of sunlight beaming down onto the campus walkway. He looks up and scowls - the past winter was hell on UNLV’s UV-proof awnings, but seriously, it’s almost May. Shit should be fixed by now. He shifts his backpack more firmly onto his shoulders. “I’m not a kid anymore, and it’s not like I’m going to be that far away. We’ll still be in the same city.”
Ashlee turns to face him, and gives him the most morose pout she’s ever managed. It makes her look about eight years old. “Maybe I’ll miss having you down the hall,” she says, petulant, and Brendon snorts, giving her a grin in return.
“You can come visit,” he assures her, patting the top of her head. “And so can Patrick. Pete can’t, he’ll wind up breaking something.”
“Yeah, you get to tell him that part,” Ashlee says, rolling her eyes but looking a little less put out by the idea of Brendon living on-campus next semester. They walk in companionable silence til they get to the edge of the awning - Pete’s driver is waiting patiently at the end of the block, thirty feet away. Brendon automatically holds his hand out for Ashlee’s backpack, and helps make sure her fingertips and neck are covered for her. She roots around in her bag for her umbrella, and gives him a wan smile as she opens it up over her head. “Good?”
He hooks the backpack on her arm, and looks her over, making sure no skin is exposed. “Watch your toes,” he says dubiously, looking down at the peep-toe heels she insisted on wearing. “But yeah, you’re good. See you at dinner.” He turns to walk back to his last class of the day, then remembers and whirls back around. “Oh, hey, you won’t say anything to them, will you?”
“No, I won’t!” Ashlee calls over her shoulder. Brendon watches her safely into the car, then turns back around. He walks for a little - until he’s sure that Ashlee’s car has turned a corner and she can’t see him anymore - and then exhales a tiny little sigh as he steps out from under the relative coolness.of the awning, and tilts his head back, letting the sun fall onto his face.
-
His Liszt seminar ends at 4:45, and Brendon streaks out of the building, one of the first ones out of the door, bounding down the stairs and into the late afternoon sun. He has the next two hours to himself, which is rare enough to begin with, and he has them during the day, so he’s taken to ambling along the perimeter of the main quad until he finds a suitably isolated patch of grass, and flopping down onto it.
Today, though, there’s some frat rush bullshit happening - Brendon scowls at the scattered clusters of freshman guys dressed in penis costumes. They’re cheerfully handing out flyers - probably to some party over the weekend - to the pretty girls, but Brendon’s still wary of walking past all of them.
Thwarted, he huffs over to the closest vending machine and grabs a Sprite, swigging down half of it on his way back to the music building. If he can’t lounge around and work on his tan, then he might as well get some practice in for his senior recital.
He rounds the corner and sidles past a group of students, ducking down a service alley to use the back door of the building. The Sprite’s scratching at his throat and he’s pretty much done with it, so he lifts the lid of a green box and chucks it in.
“Ow, motherfucker,” the dumpster says. Brendon pauses, and turns back to it, and blinks. He shifts his weight, and then - he really can’t help himself, he has to see - he moves back over to the box and lifts the lid up high, peering inside.
“Hey! Jesus, what - “
There’s a scramble, and Brendon starts and almost slams the lid down on his fingers, barely catching it in time to see a flash of eyes and pale skin huddling back into the corner of the box. “Oh,” he says, feeling pretty stupid suddenly, because...did he really think that a green box had suddenly developed the ability to talk? “Oh, sorry,” he tells the kid in the dumpster, squinting at him, at the way he’s cradling his arm. “I didn’t mean to hit you.”
The kid - the guy, actually - levels Brendon this unamused look, and rolls his eyes. “Yeah, it really ruined my day,” he grumbles, sucking in a long breath as he presses his arm up to his chest. “Nailed by a soda bottle, that - oh, god,” he cuts off, kind of curling over his arm, closing his eyes (blue, Brendon thinks) for a moment. “Okay. ...okay.”
“Um.”
The eyes fly back open, and glare up at Brendon, hazy and - yeah, blue. “Close the goddamn lid, moron,” the guy flares, gesturing to Brendon with his good arm, and Brendon can’t help getting distracted by the one that’s hurt, it’s -
- huh, the wounds are weirdly familiar; they look exactly like when Pete got taken and held in LA, the red and blisters and cracking. Brendon looks back up at the guy, who looks seriously pissed now, and in pain, and pale, and suddenly things click.
“Oh. Oh shit dude, sorry, I didn’t realize,” he says, reaching to grab his backpack and swing it up and into the dumpster. He glances down, trying to find a foothold. “Look, scoot back towards the edge, I don’t wanna burn you again,” he says, gesturing toward the corner of the box, waiting until the guy gives him a look full of death and obeys before he hops up and over.
The lid slams down behind him, throwing them both into darkness, and Brendon fumbles in his pockets for his phone, pressing the touchscreen until it lights up, coating the tiny space in blue light. The guy blinks at him, and Brendon grins. “Here, give me your arm,” he says, beginning to rummage in his backpack for the first-aid kit Patrick made him carry, just in case there was an emergency with Ashlee. He crows when he finds it, and unzips it, tugging out the burn cream and looking back up. “You want to - whoa.”
The guy’s shivering, hunched back in the corner, and now that Brendon’s actually getting a good look at him, he looks - yeah, not good. Kinda...skeletal. Brendon reaches a hand out carefully, touches his knee, and the kid jerks back, opening his eyes a little. “Don’t,” he croaks, his eyes glassy in the terrible light of the phone, and Brendon worries at the corner of his lip.
“Hey, no, it’s okay,” he murmurs, scooting a little closer, actually starting to get nervous. Pete’s warned him about ferals, about not getting too close, but - it’s his fault the kid’s burned, he can’t just leave. “Hey,” he says, trying to keep his voice calm and soothing, “hey, what’s your name?” he asks, as he twists the top off of the burn cream and slides forward, shifting over boxes and paper and bags of shredded documents. He reaches for the guy’s arm and, after a long, anxious moment, the guy exhales and moves it into his grasp.
“Spencer,” the guy mutters, clenching his jaw and closing his eyes against the sting of the cream.
“Spencer,” Brendon repeats, nodding his head and wincing as he tries to rub in the cream as gently as he can. When he’s finished, he looks up, and pretends not to notice how Spencer’s breath is quick and shallow and pained. “I’m Brendon,” he says, and quickly looks back down, forcing himself not to take too much notice of...of anything. Certainly not lips or hair or eyes or long legs or anything.
“Brendon,” Spencer breathes, and he waits just til Brendon’s daring to peek up again to give him a small, lopsided, sweet smile. He closes his eyes, leans his head back against the wall of the dumpster. “You carry burn cream around just in case you happen upon a - a stranger in a dumpster?”
“Nah,” Brendon grins, sort of grateful it’s so dark in the dumpster - his blush probably isn’t as noticeable. “My parents are vampires, too.”
-
Brendon’s reconciled himself to the fact that he’s not going to get in any practice time today. He’s okay with it. What he’s not okay with is how it took him ten minutes of apologizing and cajoling to get Spencer to talk to him again. He’s also not okay with how low his phone battery is getting, and he’s not okay with the way Spencer’s still kind of shaking, and he’s not okay with how the shadows under Spencer’s eyes are so dark they look like he got punched. “When was the last time you ate?” he asks, cutting off Spencer’s rambling comparison of the different dumpsters around campus.
“ - ones at the administration building are the best,” Spencer keeps on, before Brendon’s words sink in and he opens his eyes again, looking annoyed (Brendon’s also reconciled himself to getting that look from Spencer). “None of your business.”
Brendon thinks about that for a second, and tilts his head. “Actually it kind of is my business, seeing as it would be really dumb of me to be hanging out in an enclosed space with a vampire so hungry he can’t think. I mean, I should probably know, if that’s the case.”
Spencer rolls his eyes, and closes them again. “Yeah, I’m like two minutes away from snapping completely and killing you; you might wanna leave.”
Brendon huffs, and digs in his bag one more time, producing a tiny bag of blood from an inside zip. He reaches, and uses one edge of the plastic packaging to poke Spencer’s arm. He stops, though, when that part of Spencer’s skin visibly cracks under the pressure. “Whoa.”
“Ow,” Spencer mutters, swiping his hand down against his arm, batting the bag away. Brendon cranes over and actually manages to grab Spencer’s hand as it flails, and he cringes at the way it sort of...crunches under his fingers, and presses the little IV bag of blood into his hand. Spencer slits his eyes open, looking uninterested until he actually manages to focus on what’s in his hand, and then he drops it in his attempt to sit up.
“Hey!” Brendon protests, diving for it as it slithers down into the cracks of the trash. “Aw, sh - “ he starts, sifting through papers for a minute until he manages to grab it again, uttering a triumphant little cry. He sits back up, and gives Spencer a glare. “Dude, what’s your problem? It’s - I mean, it’s O, everybody likes type - “
“Fuck, just - just shut up, god,” Spencer hisses, pressing back against the dumpster as far as he can, looking freaked out.
Brendon stares at him, completely confused. “Dude, are you okay?”
“Fucking - you’re just carrying around blood?” Spencer asks, his voice crawling higher and higher up with each word. “That’s - you do that? That’s normal?”
Brendon frowns. “Um, yeah, what part of ‘my parents are vampires’ did you not get?” He pauses. “My sister is too. ...Step. Step-sister. Actually kind of...foster sister? I don’t know, we grew up together and now she and Pete and Patrick have a thing and it’s all weird but there’s no way in hell I’m calling her Mom or anything and anyway yes,” Brendon says when he realizes he’s rambling, pulling himself up short, “yes, I carry around blood. For emergencies.” He pauses. “This is an emergency.”
Spencer stares at him.
“Look, it’s really not that strange and it works for them, so - ” Brendon starts testily, but then Spencer raises a hand pacifically, and takes the blood away from him.
“It’s nice of you to do that,” Spencer mumbles, looking down at the bag like it’s explosive. “For her.”
“She’s my sister,” Brendon says simply, shrugging a shoulder and giving him an expectant look. Spencer’s looking anywhere but at Brendon, though, and eventually Brendon gives up and sighs. “I’ve seen vampires eat before.”
“Yeah? So have I,” Spencer says flatly, setting the little bag down on his lap with a finality that makes Brendon groan. He struggles, but eventually manages to push himself unsteadily to his feet, and then he lifts the lid of the dumpster up a little.
Outside, the sun is gone behind the mountains, but the sky is still on fire. A few students are still straggling past on the sidewalk, and Brendon waits for a gap before he pushes himself out, and then turns to look back in at Spencer. “I’m going to wait outside til you’re done,” he threatens. “And I’ll know if you don’t drink it.”
He pretends not to hear the muttered okay, mom from inside, and reaches into his pocket for his phone again. He shuffles through his contacts for a minute, then hits “send” and brings the phone up to his ear. “Hey, Pete?”
-
Pete and Bob the driver show up exactly fifteen minutes later, and Brendon scrambles to his feet in front of the dumpster, holding his hands up at the dark look Pete’s giving him. “Whoa, I didn’t - “
“He’s in there?” Pete asks, short, and he doesn’t wait for an answer before he’s opening the dumpster, ignoring Spencer’s halfhearted hey! as he pulls himself inside. Brendon watches as Pete surges up towards Spencer, muttering something to him and waiting for a response. Spencer nods, looking nervous, and Pete reaches and hugs the shit out of him. Brendon only makes it to Spencer reaching up to give Pete’s back a tentative pat before Brendon has to look away.
He and Bob give each other sheepish smiles. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
There’s some whispering coming from the box, and then some more frantic whispering, and then Pete pokes his head up. “Hey, Bob, can you give us a hand? Busted ankle.”
Brendon folds his arms and stands up on his tiptoes, craning around til his and Spencer’s eyes can meet. He scowls. “You didn’t tell me that,” he accuses, pointing a finger. “He didn’t tell me that,” he tells Pete.
“It didn’t come up,” Spencer says, before Bob tugs the other side of the dumpster lid up. Spencer automatically jerks away, his eyes going wide and watchful for a few seconds before he realizes the sun’s down and it’s only the four of them, the rest of campus is deserted. It doesn’t keep him from glaring at Bob, though, who just looks amused.
“Sorry about this, little man,” he says, and then he reaches down into the dumpster, til he’s bent over in half, and grabs Spencer, and starts hauling him out. “The house is too far to walk.”
“Hey!” Spencer gasps, flailing a little, “Hey, wait, what?” He automatically glances over at Pete for assurance, as Bob manages to get him over the edge of the dumpster and staggers a little. “You said you knew a place I could go to. Um.” His eyes slip over to Brendon for a couple of seconds, and then focus more firmly on Pete. “Get better.”
Brendon tries not to pay attention to the way his stomach twists at that, and he looks over at Pete as well, giving him a flat, unimpressed stare.
Pete ignores Brendon in favor of shrugging a shoulder and giving Spencer a winsome little grin. “We’ve got a spare bedroom,” he explains cheerfully, his grin widening as Spencer catches on and starts struggling. “You can get better there.” And then he gestures for Bob to go ahead, and both he and Brendon watch as Spencer gets deposited in the backseat of the car and buckled in safely, still thrashing weakly and snarling at Bob, who doesn’t even look fazed.
“Thanks, seriously,” Brendon drawls, his arms still folded tight in front of his chest. He ducks his head, and refuses to look over at Pete. “He thought I was going to help keep him safe.”
“You are helping to keep him safe,” Pete says, his smile fading as he watches Bob shut the car door and light up a cigarette, a reward for hard work. After a moment, Pete turns and gives Brendon a hard, otherwise unreadable look. “He didn’t ask for it,” he mutters quickly, before raising a hand at Bob and starting towards the car.
Brendon gapes, and follows after him. “What d’you mean, he didn’t ask for it?” he hisses.
“I mean,” Pete says, whirling around to give him an annoyed look, “he didn’t ask to be turned. He got snatched and they turned him.” Pete looks over at the car, and then pokes Brendon in the chest. “And he didn’t want anybody else to know about that, so you pretend you don’t, got it?”
Brendon sucks in a quick breath, and scowls back, pushing Pete’s hand away as his skin goes hot with temper and then cold. “He didn’t want it?”
“Nope,” Pete says shortly, and then he gives Brendon a sickly little smile. “Funny how that happens sometimes.” And then he opens the car door, and immediately starts yelling cheerfully at Bob about keeping the goddamn mess in his own goddamn car at a goddamn minimum, jesus.
Brendon watches for a second, shifting his weight uneasily between one foot and the other, and then he heaves a sigh. He opens the back door and climbs in, giving Spencer an apologetic look as he slides onto his seat. “Hey.”
Spencer glares at him. Brendon thinks he probably deserves it.
“I didn’t know Pete was going to do that,” Brendon murmurs, studying his nails intently.
“Sure.”
“I didn’t,” Brendon insists, giving Spencer a pleading sort of look. He glances up at the front seat, where Pete and Bob are arguing about something, and then shifts a little closer to Spencer. “He gets kinda...I don’t know, he has to try to save everyone. It’s a thing.”
“I don’t need to be saved,” Spencer says shortly, folding his arms and leaning his head back against the car seat.
Brendon watches him, head tilted. “No offense, Spencer, but an hour ago you were starving, wounded, and trapped in a dumpster that smelled like printer ink. You needed some help.”
Spencer opens his eyes just enough to stare at Brendon, for long enough to make him fidget. “And don’t forget,” he finally sighs, “some asshole beaned me on the head with a Sprite bottle.”
“What a dick,” Brendon says, breaking into a relieved grin. “That’s, like, the worst day ever.” Encouraged, he reaches to give Spencer’s knee a pat, and pretends not to notice the way Spencer goes still at the touch. “How did you even wind up in a dumpster, anyway?”
Spencer rolls his eyes, but clears his throat. “Ran across a couple of assholes, got jumped. They did my ankle, left me in the quad. Dumpster was the first place I found that looked safe.”
Brendon whistles, low. “Dickheads. Want me to have them killed? Pete knows people,” he says, ducking his head in confidentially. “No one will suspect a thing.”
Spencer smiles, a wry little curl of his lips. “Hey, accidents happen all the time.”
Brendon gives him a quick chin-tilt, and winks. “Done. Leave it to me.”
At that, Spencer raises his eyebrow. “Like I left it to you earlier?” he asks, going kind of stiff. “That really worked well for me.” He doesn’t seem pissed off, though - more just resigned.
“It’ll be okay,” Brendon says, looking over at him. “You’ll like Patrick and Ashlee, and they can help get you better. And there’s a Wii in the spare room.”
Spencer exhales quietly, and shifts down into the seat, smiling a little. “Cool,” he breathes, leaning his head against the window.
“When you’re better, you want to have a bowling tournament?” Brendon asks, not even bothering to look away as Spencer closes his eyes, and presses his forehead against the glass. Brendon can feel it happening, the small aching twist to his stomach, the sweet hurt radiating up and out. Uh oh. “Spence?”
“Yeah, bowling would be good,” Spencer mumbles, gesturing with a hand tiredly. Brendon reaches over and grabs it, gently tucks it down between their legs, keeping their palms clasped together. They sit like that for a few miles, and then Spencer shifts and gives Brendon’s hand a squeeze. “Heartbeat,” he mutters simply, his lips twisting up in a tiny smile as he squeezes Brendon’s fingers in time with his pulse.
“Yeah?” Enthralled, Brendon scoots a little closer, watching Spencer’s hand. “You can feel it? That’s so cool!”
“Yeah,” Spencer mouths, his smile fading a little. His eyes open, and he glances over at Brendon, and down at their hands for a bit, before he stops squeezing.
“It’ll be okay,” Brendon pipes up, feeling incredibly stupid immediately after. Spencer glances up, and Brendon tries not to shrink away from the blankness of his eyes. “It will,” he insists, leaning towards him. Part of his brain knows he’s crowding Spencer and that that’s a really idiotic thing to do with a new vampire acquaintance, but Brendon can’t help it, it’s like his brain is hard-wired to do really dumb things, especially when confronted with the vampire equivalent of a baby bird. “Look, at the very least, you’ve got a place that actually has a roof now, and you’ve got a friend.”
And, oh - the smile’s coming back, and Brendon doesn’t even have time to feel like an idiot for laying himself open like that, Spencer’s smiling.
“Yeah?” Spencer sits up and gives Brendon a hopeful little look.
“Well, yeah,” Brendon scoffs, immediately trying to bluster to hide how delighted he is. “A man shares his dumpster with another man, he’s got a friend for life, yo.”
“Good to know,” Spencer says solemnly. And Brendon can’t help it - he ducks his head and starts snickering quietly.
A minute later, so does Spencer.
-
Of course they get Spencer to the house and get Andy over and everything goes to shit - Spencer’s ankle is resetting itself, but resetting wrong. Also he’s severely malnourished, dehydrated, in shock, and suffering from what looks like a mild case of PTSD, given the shaking and jumping at every little thing.
Brendon’s chatting idly with Spencer about which Beatle was the best Beatle (Spencer’s answer is Ringo. Nobody’s answer is Ringo. Brendon is determined to get to the bottom of this) when Pete and Patrick and Andy stride into the room, looking serious, and then Brendon looks back at Spencer and Spencer looks serious, and also kind of sick, and Brendon immediately argues and argues and argues to stay.
“You can’t just - “ Brendon shouts, getting in Pete’s face, but then he feels a tug on his sleeve and looks down. Spencer raises his eyebrows, and gives him a wry smile.
“You really don’t want to be here for this,” Spencer tells him, and Brendon deflates because - yeah, he really really doesn’t want to. He just doesn’t want to leave Spencer hurting and by himself.
“I think Ashlee wanted some help with her composition assignment,” Patrick offers, smiling cheerfully at the glare Brendon gives him. When he looks back over, Pete’s crouched beside the bed, talking quietly to Spencer, but they both have smiles on their faces. So Brendon only feels about seventy-five percent guilty when he walks down to the study to find Ashlee.
He slides onto the piano bench beside her and watches her play for a few seconds before joining in seamlessly. They play for a few minutes, long enough for Brendon to get lost in the music. And then there’s a long note-hold where Brendon can hear muffled screams coming from another room in the house, and he flubs the next couple of chords, before he just gives up altogether. He puts his hands down on his lap and leans his head on Ashlee’s shoulder, watching her fingers skim over the keys. She plays a little bit louder, and Brendon closes his eyes.
“He’ll be okay, honey,” she says, when the song’s finished.
“I know,” Brendon mutters, not moving his head.
“We’re resilient,” she says, turning to kiss his hair, and it’s so weird to him, suddenly, hearing Ashlee call herself a vampire. Hearing Ashlee identify with other vampires. Brendon remembers Ashlee showing up on their doorstep at ten a.m. on a Saturday, fourteen and red-eyed and red-haired and terrified because her family had thrown her out for going to one of Pete’s rallies. He remembers when Spencer’s room was Ashlee’s room, and she’d decorated her closet door with vintage movie posters, hung dried bouquets from the window. He remembers stealing her Lunchables in high school, wiping away her tears when crushes didn’t work out, and now she’s a vampire.
It’s a lot to take in.
“I’ve heard that,” he murmurs, finally sitting up, rubbing his neck. “You were resilient before, too.”
She flashes him a bright smile, and strikes a few dramatic chords. “That’s sweet.” She bangs out a few more chord changes before she settles into a pretty melody, halfway closing her eyes as she plays.
Brendon watches her for a second, and then he can’t stop himself any longer. “You wanted to turn, right?” He bites his lip, and winces - they’ve never talked about this.
Ashlee’s eyes open, and she glances over at him, and nods. “Yes, very much,” she says, oddly formal. “I wanted - “
“What’s it like?”
Ashlee stops, and raises her hands from the keys, and turns to give Brendon a narrow-eyed look. “Painful,” she says shortly. “And permanent, and you have only known that boy for two hours - “
“Jesus, Ashlee, no!” Brendon says, cringing back, holding his hands up in front of himself. “I was just asking!”
Ashlee snorts, and gives him an unfooled look. “Yeah, just asking. Just asking becomes just doing,” she says, before she catches herself and sits up a little, looking shocked. “My mom used to say that.”
Brendon tsks, and sits up, squeezing an arm around her shoulders. “I’m not going to just do anything,” he assures her. “I was just wondering.”
She raises an eyebrow at him, but doesn’t say anything, and goes back to playing.
-
Spencer sleeps for days, afterwards. Pete and Patrick both say it’s normal, especially considering the condition he was in, but Brendon and Ashlee both get quiet and a little nervous after the second day, tiptoeing outside of Spencer’s doorway and whispering to each other, afraid of waking him.
“He’ll wake up when he’s ready,” Patrick tells them at breakfast, yawning as he stumbles towards the coffeemaker. “Seriously, he’s fine.”
“Are you sure?” Ashlee murmurs quietly, her eyebrows raised towards the ceiling, and Brendon watches Patrick reach for Ashlee’s hand and twine their fingers together.
“He’ll be okay,” Patrick murmurs, moving around her to open the fridge and grab a bag of blood. Brendon makes a face, and looks down at his plate, poking at his tater tots - he’s gotten over the weirdness factor of eating dinner when everyone else is just waking up, but watching someone heat up a cup of blood in the microwave is still pretty gross. “Seen Pete?”
“He went out with Joe and Andy earlier,” Brendon supplies. “Said he’d be back late.”
Patrick rolls his eyes. “Of course.”
“He’ll be all right,” Ashlee says, using the same inflection Patrick did just a minute ago, giving him an arch smile. “He’ll come back when he’s ready.” She breaks into a grin, and waggles her eyebrows a little at the fuck you Patrick mouths to her, and Brendon rolls his eyes and stands. He puts his dishes in the sink and shoves his hands in his pockets, and heads for the stairs.
He hasn’t ever felt a particular desire to be turned or anything, but sometimes, living with three other vampires gets to him. He’s by himself a lot, lately, which is weird and sort of unnerving. The house is usually quiet when he’s awake. He’d never say as much to Ashlee, of course, but one of the main reasons he wants to move into the dorms on-campus is that there’d actually be people awake for him to talk to. He’s lonely.
Which is probably the reason Brendon finds himself gingerly pressing the door to Spencer’s room open, poking his head inside. Spencer’s lying silent and still on the bed, curled on his side a little, bracketed by a couple of IV drips - one of saline, one of blood (Andy had tried to explain to Brendon once why IVs still worked on vampires when they didn’t even have any circulation, but it had just ended up giving them both a headache). His skin doesn’t look so chalky, so much like paper anymore - more like milk, more like something alive. Brendon shuffles inside, and gazes at the door for a few seconds before biting his lip and closing it behind him. He turns back to Spencer, and exhales, his shoulders slumping.
“Hey,” he murmurs as he crosses in front of the bed, sliding into the empty chair beside Spencer. “Hey, hi. Mind if I sit here?”
He sits and looks for a few minutes. Spencer’s the first vampire he’s seen that strikes him as younger than himself, and it’s oddly appealing, getting to feel protective of someone. Brendon pulls the chair up closer and slides his elbows onto the edge of the bed, and feels pretty gross for brushing Spencer’s hair off his face, taking in how long his eyelashes look this way. “God, you are so pretty,” he says, conversational. “Seriously, you need to cut that shit out.”
He reaches down to pat Spencer’s hand, and keeps his palm there. “I am so creepy, dude,” he sighs, resigned, as he turns Spencer’s hand over and presses their palms together. Spencer’s skin doesn’t crackle or flake anymore, which is amazing - he feels real, now. “So, so creepy.”
Spencer doesn’t respond. Brendon stares at their hands for a few minutes, then leans down to rest his chin against the bed, eventually pressing his cheek against it and sighing heavily. “Everyone else in this house is in love with everyone else, and I haven’t even kissed anyone in over a year,” he grumbles into the down comforter. “It sucks. And it sucks being the only one who eats solids, and the only one who can do yard work.“
He rambles at Spencer for another fifteen minutes about the shitty state of the universe before he takes a breath, and then he moves Spencer’s hand closer to him, so that it’s almost touching his nose it’s so close. “ - and it sucks,” he finishes, sighing, “it sucks that now I get to feel left out at home, too. Awesome.”
He’s distracted from his self-pity party by a raspy sound above him, and when Brendon looks up, Spencer’s looking down at him curiously. “This is so after-school special, I’m going to puke,” he croaks, blinking tiredly as Brendon barks a laugh and surges up, checking him over.
Eventually, Brendon decides that yeah, Spencer is probably going to live, especially if Spencer’s protests about Brendon staring at him like a lab rat are any indication. “Seriously, creeper, cut it out,” Spencer grumbles, waving a hand feebly at Brendon’s face, trying to push it away. Brendon tugs his hand down and keeps it in his own, beaming.
“It’s alive!” he cheers, getting up so that he can sit on the edge of the bed and poke Spencer lightly, marveling at how now his skin has give to it. “Look at you! You’re not denting anymore!”
“Yeah, amazing,” Spencer manages, trying to sit up a little, rolling his eyes as Brendon fusses and helps prop up his pillows. He glances up, and blanches at the IV bag of blood hovering over him, and follows the IV with his eyes, down from the bag and into his arm.
“They’d give it to you if you were in a hospital,” Brendon says firmly, ducking down so that Spencer has to look at him. “Okay?”
Spencer nods, and looks back up, tilting his chin a little. “So.”
“So,” Brendon says, suddenly a little uncomfortable now that they don’t have Spencer’s state to talk about. He thinks for a moment, then brightens up. “Oh! So. Ringo Starr.” He pauses to grin while Spencer breaks into quiet chuckles, and leans forward, propping his chin on hand. “Explain yourself, and why your answer isn’t George Harrison like any right-thinking person’s would be.”
Spencer’s chuckles die off slowly, and he leans back, giving Brendon a fond smile that makes Brendon’s skin tingly all over. “I had a friend,” he says, quiet, “who would’ve said that too.”
-
Spencer Smith was twelve when he was taken. His parents lived on the outskirts of the city-state of Las Vegas, far enough away from the protection of the guards that when they were attacked one night, their community was completely destroyed. The last time he saw his sisters was the night he was snatched away, pulled out of bed and made to watch his parents being killed, drained by their attackers. He was given over to an old vampire couple, along with his best friend who’d been sleeping over that night. His sisters were probably given away to someone else, if they weren’t just killed, and Spencer hasn’t seen them since.
He and Ryan weren’t adopted, like Brendon and Ashlee were - they were more servants, cattle, and whipping boys for whoever was in the house and wanted some entertainment. Ryan took the brunt of the punishment until Spencer grew taller and broader, and then the lady of the house started eyeing both of them for other sorts of recreational activities. Spencer’d just turned eighteen.
That was when Ryan decided it was time for them to get out.
The plan was simple. They would just wait until the night of one of the clan’s parties, hold out until everyone was passed out, and then figure out a way to scale the fence to the desert outside. The fence was where Jon came in - he was the property of the neighbors, and had found a couple of weak places in the fences that could be cut through.
Spencer left most of the planning up to Ryan and Jon while he ran interference. They had grand plans; Jon had managed to find a transistor radio and kept going on about a program he’d found that could help them, but eventually Spencer had tuned out the dreams and focused on the reality of the situation: they needed to stay safe, stay quiet, and get out quick.
It was his own fault, really.
The day of the party he’d let the lady drain him too much, and he’d been saving up his food for the trip, so he was already pretty lightheaded. And then while Jon and Ryan were snipping the fence, he hadn’t been paying attention to his food like he should’ve. He’s pretty sure it got laced with something while he wasn’t looking.
So when Jon and Ryan came for him that night, he was too slow. And he was too big for the hole they’d made in the fence, and he’d made too much noise coming down the stairs. It’s lucky, really, that Jon and Ryan made it through. He wouldn’t have been able to live with himself if - yeah. They were lucky.
Anyway, so they - the family - caught him and kept him down in the basement for a while, and messed with him, and when they couldn’t find Jon and Ryan after a week or so, they turned Spencer. He’s not really sure which one did it, there wasn’t any light down there.
And then the night after, they shoved him out of the front gates and told him to start walking - it wouldn’t be long until sunrise and there wasn’t much shelter from the light in the desert.
And so he walked until he saw the city, and he managed to make it into one of the sewers right before the sun peered over the mountains. So that was lucky, too.
-
Brendon’s hands don’t stop shaking for two days, after Spencer starts talking.
-
Brendon notices first - when he brings up Spencer’s tray every night and every morning, Spencer grins and sits up and immediately asks how classes or practice are going. He’s lively and argumentative and Brendon falls for it every time - it isn’t until he leaves the room that he realizes he didn’t actually see Spencer eat anything.
He doesn’t really think anything of it for the first three or four days, especially considering Spencer’s uneasiness with Brendon seeing him eat anything during the whole dumpster episode. It isn’t until Brendon comes into his room one day and notices the sharper jut of Spencer’s cheekbones, the knobs of his wrists, and most shockingly, the dark circles under his eyes, that he actually suspects.
So he mentions something to Patrick, who mentions something to Pete, and one morning when he’s stumbling down the stairs, trying to comb his hair down out of the peaks they somehow formed last night, he happens upon Pete and Spencer glaring at each other in the kitchen, a mug sitting between them on the table.
Pete glances up and waves, which is obviously the kind of distraction Spencer was looking for, because he gets out of his chair and hobbles up the stairs (his ankle is still healing). Both Brendon and Pete cringe at the slam of a door a few seconds later, and Brendon starts to scowl. “What did you - “
“He’s so fucking stubborn,” Pete grumbles, reaching for the mug, contemplatively watching the steam curl off of it. “Even I wasn’t so stubborn, geez.”
“Pete,” Brendon groans, rolling his eyes. “Go to bed.”
“Yeah, okay,” Pete sighs, pushing the mug away, pouting a little. Then he tilts his head, and looks down at the mug and then up at Brendon.
Brendon glares. “Dude, if you can’t do it, why - “
“No, hey, try, okay?” Pete asks, not even bothering to pretend not to know what Brendon’s talking about. “He might listen to you.”
Brendon gives him a very, very skeptical look, and eyes the mug distastefully. “Yeah, and he might decide he wants to leave and embark on a career as a singing waiter, but what are the odds of that actually happening?”
“I dunno, can he sing?” Pete asks, raising his eyebrows.
“Pete.”
Pete rolls his eyes, folds his arms. “Look, just try. If you get him to do it, I’ll...do something, I don’t know, I’ll buy you something. What do you want?”
Brendon glares a little harder, and then actually thinks about this. “If I get him to do it, I want to live in the dorms next year,” he pronounces triumphantly. If Pete goes along with this, he won’t get to bitch about Brendon moving out, and if he doesn’t go along with it, Brendon can bitch about Pete valuing keeping Brendon under his thumb more than keeping Spence alive.
Brendon is a genius.
Pete’s eyes narrow, his hands steepling in front of him. “That,” he says slowly, “was a dick move, Bden.” And - yeah, that’s the voice of a Pete who’s hurt but trying not to show it.
Brendon is a shit. His smile immediately vanishes, and he looks down at the floor. “Sorry. I just - I was going to ask, but - “
“Yeah, Patrick told me,” Pete sighs, grinning crookedly at Brendon’s outraged gasp. “Still.” He looks down at his hands, traces over the ancient ink on his right arm for a second, and then looks up again. “Look, you can move into the dorms regardless. You’re a man now, I get it, you need your space. Plus I know it’s weird, the three of us, and - “
“No, it’s totally fine!” Brendon protests, quailing under the unsurprised look Pete gives him.
“I know it’s weird for you, Bren, how could it not be?” He gets up and grabs the mug, and crosses the room, squeezing an arm around Brendon comfortably. “But you always have a place here, you know that, right?”
“Yeah,” Brendon mumbles, leaning into Pete a little.
Pete cranes up to kiss the top of his head, and then hands the mug over, clapping Brendon on the back. “Love you, kiddo,” he says, and then he presses cold fingertips against the back of Brendon’s neck because he knows he hates it, and takes the stairs two at a time, headed for bed.
Brendon ruefully watches him go, and then looks down at the mug of blood, slowly growing colder in his hands. He makes a face, and then follows after Pete, taking the stairs slowly and carefully since he doesn’t want to get blood all over him.
-
If looks could kill, Brendon wouldn’t just be a corpse, he’d be a corpse that had been immolated by the fires of Spencer Smith’s unholy rage and was now nothing more than a fine ash. But he bites his lip and tilts his head down, looking up at Spencer from beneath his eyelashes. Basically pulling every trick that’s ever gotten Ashlee to do anything for him. “Please?” he asks again.
“No,” Spencer snaps, folding his arms, staring down at his crossed legs.
“Come on.”
“No.”
“Spencerrrrr - “
“Brendon, no,” Spencer snarls, and there’s a note of panic in the last word that makes Brendon back off a little, put the mug on the bedside table and move away.
He thinks for a moment, and then moves over to sit on the edge of the bed, poking at Spencer’s skin until Spencer huffs and scoots over a little, stretching his legs along the length of the bed. Brendon curls up to him, wrapping around him a little, ignoring Spencer’s little moue of exasperation (he knows it’s fake anyway, because Spencer slumps down into his hold easily). “Good?”
“Yeah, okay,” Spencer murmurs, closing his eyes for a moment, resting his head on Brendon’s collarbone. Brendon pats his arm, and then frowns and pats it again, a little harder. And then he sighs.
“You’re getting dent-y again,” he mumbles sadly, into Spencer’s hair.
“Mm?” Spencer moves a little, bringing his head up enough to look at him with tired eyes. Brendon presses his lips together and then looks down and pokes Spencer’s arm again. Both of them watch as the impression of Brendon’s finger stays in Spencer’s skin for the better part of a minute, before finally filling out again. Spencer sighs, and lets his head fall back down onto Brendon’s shoulder, and doesn’t speak.
“What’s going on, Spence?” Brendon finally manages to ask, shivering a little as Spencer huddles into him. “Why won’t you - you know what it would - “ Brendon realizes, with a jolt, that everything he wants to tell Spencer is either way too intimate or upsetting or both, and he shuts his mouth audibly, exhaling a long breath through his nose. Shaken, he presses his nose to Spencer’s hair and tries to make his breathing go normal. Usually he can think of something to say, but this time, he’s got nothing.
Somewhere near his neck, Spencer shudders, and presses in closer. “My mom,” he finally mutters, his voice a little wobbly. “It’s what I think of every - I see them taking my mom.” There’s a small pause, and Brendon holds on a little tighter as Spencer’s shoulders jump. “And it’s the same stuff, and now I have to drink it, and - “
“It’s not your mom,” Brendon murmurs, tugging him up closer. “Spence, it’s not your - “
“Yeah, I know, but it’s - it could be somebody else’s mom’s, and - “
“Spencer,” Brendon says, glad his voice decided to return for the moment, “this blood came from a blood bank. Someone voluntarily gave it, so that it could help you.”
“Yeah, but - “
“No, hey, listen to me.” Oh, hey, spoke too soon - Brendon’s voice cracks and is gone again, and he has to curl down next to Spencer’s ear. “Listen. Do you really think your mom would rather have you doing this to yourself? Making yourself sick? Making us - making us watch you get sicker and sicker?”
“Bren - “
“No, just,” Brendon whispers, his breath harsh in his own lungs as he forces the words out, “just listen. Do you think your mom wants you to die? Or do - do you think she’d rather see you get better? So you can help Pete find the people who did this to you - to your family and make sure it stops? Which do you think she’d rather see her son do?”
There’s a small silence, and then Spencer sucks in a rattly breath and chokes on a slightly hysterical-sounding laugh. “You’re such a dick,” he whimpers, reaching a hand up to rub over his eyes quickly. “Oh my god.”
Brendon chokes, and laughs a little too, pulling Spencer up to hug him properly. “Yeah, you love me,” he says, glad he can hide his face in Spencer’s shoulder so Spence can’t see his blush at that. “You love my awesome speeches.”
Spencer laughs again, and takes a deep, shaky breath, holding on tight to the back of Brendon’s shirt. “It was better than the one about the pros and cons of Pac-Man versus Mrs. Pac-Man,” he admits. “I’ll give it that.”
Brendon pulls away from Spencer enough to glare at him. “That one is a classic, I’ll have you know,” he informs Spencer. He grins down at the smile threatening to break Spencer’s face, and can feel his chest tightening and twisting, can feel the urge to just - to just close the distance between them.
So, he tugs away and reaches for the mug still sitting on the bedside table.
Spencer sobers a little as Brendon hands it to him, and gives him a quick, nervous glance as he cups it between his hands. “D’you want me to turn around?” Brendon asks kindly, squeezing his shoulder.
“No, just.” Spencer frowns a little, and then rolls his eyes at himself. “Seriously? A vampire scared of blood. I’m, like, the definition of not intimidating.”
“Probably,” Brendon agrees, giving him a quick grin and scooting closer, curling his arm around Spencer’s middle comfortably. He presses his cheek to Spencer’s shoulder, and feels him take a long, shuddery breath, and watches him raise the mug to his lips.
-
“When you weren’t a vampire,” Brendon starts, sprawling back on Spencer’s bed, halfheartedly killing zombies on the tv screen, “did you like crunchy peanut butter or creamy peanut butter?”
“What the fuck, Bden,” Spencer grumbles, twisting the controller in his hands, scowling as a shot flies over his shoulder. “Fuck, watch what you’re doing, that almost shot me.”
“Sorry,” Brendon mumbles, abashed, but then he gets back to his original point. “No, but seriously, answer the question. Which one did you like? Like, on sandwiches?”
Spencer frowns and tilts his head, considering the question. He bites his lip and mashes down hard with his fingers, smirking a little as another zombie kicks it. “I don’t...” he starts, frowning as he gets distracted by the screen. “Actually, I didn’t like peanut butter sandwiches,” he finally manages during a zombie lull. He pushes his hair out of his eyes, and gives Brendon a hectic grin. “They stuck to the roof of my mouth. It was gross.” He picks his controller back up when another zombie starts towards him. “I liked peanut butter cookies though, those were good.”
Brendon stares at him, completely bemused, and doesn’t even notice when a zombie grabs his character on the screen and starts to eat his brains.
-
“ - and Shane and Dallon kept arguing that Spiderman was more heroic because he, like, has more heart or some shit, and I was like motherfuckers, you need a superhero because some crazy villain’s got you tied to the Empire State building or something, you don’t want him to have heart, you want him to have a fucking jetpack,” Brendon says, punctuating his impassioned speech by accidentally flinging a spoonful of cereal at Spencer’s arm. “Oh, shit,” he says, slowly turning red. “Um, sorry, got kinda - “
“I’ll live,” Spencer assures him, using a paper towel to wipe himself and the table off. He smiles back at the huge grin Brendon shoots him, and props his chin back on his hand. “Anyway, jetpack.”
“Huh? Oh!” Brendon laughs, remembering, and looks down at his cereal, stirring it around a little before he continues his story. It means he misses the way Spencer’s head tilts a little to the right, and the way his eyes go kind of soft and happy, but maybe that’s for the best.
-
Brendon groans and flumps over on his mattress, pressing his face down into the pillow in vain hopes that it’ll send him back to sleep. When five minutes of that pass, however, he gives up and stumbles out of bed and down the hall towards the bathroom.
When he comes out, he automatically starts in the direction of his bedroom, but the sound of birdsong stops him. Brendon turns around and heads in its direction, frowning when it leads him to Spencer’s door.
He pokes his head in, curious, and gives Spencer a grin and a wave. Spence is propped up in bed, looking kinda tired - which is worrying - but he smiles and waves back, and tries to keep Pete’s old laptop balanced on his knees.
“Why are you still awake?” Brendon whispers, as he slips into the room, padding over to sit on the edge of Spencer’s bed. He tsks when Spencer just shrugs his shoulders, and then cranes to see what Spencer’s watching that’s making all of the racket.
Brendon exhales, and scoots up to the head of the bed when he realizes what he’s watching.
“I miss them,” Spencer mutters, shifting to give Brendon more room, angling the computer screen so that Brendon can see too. Brendon curls into him a little, and fixes the screen, and settles with his head on Spencer’s shoulder, as they both watch video after video of sunrises.
Part Two
Pairing(s): Brendon/Spencer, Pete/Patrick/Ashlee
Rating: PG-13 for thematic elements.
Warnings: Vampires! H/C! Vampire Character A has some issues with blood and having to drink it, so he doesn’t, and suffers physical effects. It could be triggering for readers with/recovering from EDs.
Word count: ~14,000
Summary: Brendon is surrounded by vampires. And not in a sexy or dangerous way, more like a “nobody else gets up before six in the evening so I have to do all the errands and yard work myself” way.
“I don’t think it’s a great plan, B,” Ashlee sighs, glancing over at him. “You know how protective Pete is of you, and you know he’ll just - “
“He’ll get it,” Brendon says firmly, reaching a hand out to guide Ashlee away from a small stream of sunlight beaming down onto the campus walkway. He looks up and scowls - the past winter was hell on UNLV’s UV-proof awnings, but seriously, it’s almost May. Shit should be fixed by now. He shifts his backpack more firmly onto his shoulders. “I’m not a kid anymore, and it’s not like I’m going to be that far away. We’ll still be in the same city.”
Ashlee turns to face him, and gives him the most morose pout she’s ever managed. It makes her look about eight years old. “Maybe I’ll miss having you down the hall,” she says, petulant, and Brendon snorts, giving her a grin in return.
“You can come visit,” he assures her, patting the top of her head. “And so can Patrick. Pete can’t, he’ll wind up breaking something.”
“Yeah, you get to tell him that part,” Ashlee says, rolling her eyes but looking a little less put out by the idea of Brendon living on-campus next semester. They walk in companionable silence til they get to the edge of the awning - Pete’s driver is waiting patiently at the end of the block, thirty feet away. Brendon automatically holds his hand out for Ashlee’s backpack, and helps make sure her fingertips and neck are covered for her. She roots around in her bag for her umbrella, and gives him a wan smile as she opens it up over her head. “Good?”
He hooks the backpack on her arm, and looks her over, making sure no skin is exposed. “Watch your toes,” he says dubiously, looking down at the peep-toe heels she insisted on wearing. “But yeah, you’re good. See you at dinner.” He turns to walk back to his last class of the day, then remembers and whirls back around. “Oh, hey, you won’t say anything to them, will you?”
“No, I won’t!” Ashlee calls over her shoulder. Brendon watches her safely into the car, then turns back around. He walks for a little - until he’s sure that Ashlee’s car has turned a corner and she can’t see him anymore - and then exhales a tiny little sigh as he steps out from under the relative coolness.of the awning, and tilts his head back, letting the sun fall onto his face.
-
His Liszt seminar ends at 4:45, and Brendon streaks out of the building, one of the first ones out of the door, bounding down the stairs and into the late afternoon sun. He has the next two hours to himself, which is rare enough to begin with, and he has them during the day, so he’s taken to ambling along the perimeter of the main quad until he finds a suitably isolated patch of grass, and flopping down onto it.
Today, though, there’s some frat rush bullshit happening - Brendon scowls at the scattered clusters of freshman guys dressed in penis costumes. They’re cheerfully handing out flyers - probably to some party over the weekend - to the pretty girls, but Brendon’s still wary of walking past all of them.
Thwarted, he huffs over to the closest vending machine and grabs a Sprite, swigging down half of it on his way back to the music building. If he can’t lounge around and work on his tan, then he might as well get some practice in for his senior recital.
He rounds the corner and sidles past a group of students, ducking down a service alley to use the back door of the building. The Sprite’s scratching at his throat and he’s pretty much done with it, so he lifts the lid of a green box and chucks it in.
“Ow, motherfucker,” the dumpster says. Brendon pauses, and turns back to it, and blinks. He shifts his weight, and then - he really can’t help himself, he has to see - he moves back over to the box and lifts the lid up high, peering inside.
“Hey! Jesus, what - “
There’s a scramble, and Brendon starts and almost slams the lid down on his fingers, barely catching it in time to see a flash of eyes and pale skin huddling back into the corner of the box. “Oh,” he says, feeling pretty stupid suddenly, because...did he really think that a green box had suddenly developed the ability to talk? “Oh, sorry,” he tells the kid in the dumpster, squinting at him, at the way he’s cradling his arm. “I didn’t mean to hit you.”
The kid - the guy, actually - levels Brendon this unamused look, and rolls his eyes. “Yeah, it really ruined my day,” he grumbles, sucking in a long breath as he presses his arm up to his chest. “Nailed by a soda bottle, that - oh, god,” he cuts off, kind of curling over his arm, closing his eyes (blue, Brendon thinks) for a moment. “Okay. ...okay.”
“Um.”
The eyes fly back open, and glare up at Brendon, hazy and - yeah, blue. “Close the goddamn lid, moron,” the guy flares, gesturing to Brendon with his good arm, and Brendon can’t help getting distracted by the one that’s hurt, it’s -
- huh, the wounds are weirdly familiar; they look exactly like when Pete got taken and held in LA, the red and blisters and cracking. Brendon looks back up at the guy, who looks seriously pissed now, and in pain, and pale, and suddenly things click.
“Oh. Oh shit dude, sorry, I didn’t realize,” he says, reaching to grab his backpack and swing it up and into the dumpster. He glances down, trying to find a foothold. “Look, scoot back towards the edge, I don’t wanna burn you again,” he says, gesturing toward the corner of the box, waiting until the guy gives him a look full of death and obeys before he hops up and over.
The lid slams down behind him, throwing them both into darkness, and Brendon fumbles in his pockets for his phone, pressing the touchscreen until it lights up, coating the tiny space in blue light. The guy blinks at him, and Brendon grins. “Here, give me your arm,” he says, beginning to rummage in his backpack for the first-aid kit Patrick made him carry, just in case there was an emergency with Ashlee. He crows when he finds it, and unzips it, tugging out the burn cream and looking back up. “You want to - whoa.”
The guy’s shivering, hunched back in the corner, and now that Brendon’s actually getting a good look at him, he looks - yeah, not good. Kinda...skeletal. Brendon reaches a hand out carefully, touches his knee, and the kid jerks back, opening his eyes a little. “Don’t,” he croaks, his eyes glassy in the terrible light of the phone, and Brendon worries at the corner of his lip.
“Hey, no, it’s okay,” he murmurs, scooting a little closer, actually starting to get nervous. Pete’s warned him about ferals, about not getting too close, but - it’s his fault the kid’s burned, he can’t just leave. “Hey,” he says, trying to keep his voice calm and soothing, “hey, what’s your name?” he asks, as he twists the top off of the burn cream and slides forward, shifting over boxes and paper and bags of shredded documents. He reaches for the guy’s arm and, after a long, anxious moment, the guy exhales and moves it into his grasp.
“Spencer,” the guy mutters, clenching his jaw and closing his eyes against the sting of the cream.
“Spencer,” Brendon repeats, nodding his head and wincing as he tries to rub in the cream as gently as he can. When he’s finished, he looks up, and pretends not to notice how Spencer’s breath is quick and shallow and pained. “I’m Brendon,” he says, and quickly looks back down, forcing himself not to take too much notice of...of anything. Certainly not lips or hair or eyes or long legs or anything.
“Brendon,” Spencer breathes, and he waits just til Brendon’s daring to peek up again to give him a small, lopsided, sweet smile. He closes his eyes, leans his head back against the wall of the dumpster. “You carry burn cream around just in case you happen upon a - a stranger in a dumpster?”
“Nah,” Brendon grins, sort of grateful it’s so dark in the dumpster - his blush probably isn’t as noticeable. “My parents are vampires, too.”
-
Brendon’s reconciled himself to the fact that he’s not going to get in any practice time today. He’s okay with it. What he’s not okay with is how it took him ten minutes of apologizing and cajoling to get Spencer to talk to him again. He’s also not okay with how low his phone battery is getting, and he’s not okay with the way Spencer’s still kind of shaking, and he’s not okay with how the shadows under Spencer’s eyes are so dark they look like he got punched. “When was the last time you ate?” he asks, cutting off Spencer’s rambling comparison of the different dumpsters around campus.
“ - ones at the administration building are the best,” Spencer keeps on, before Brendon’s words sink in and he opens his eyes again, looking annoyed (Brendon’s also reconciled himself to getting that look from Spencer). “None of your business.”
Brendon thinks about that for a second, and tilts his head. “Actually it kind of is my business, seeing as it would be really dumb of me to be hanging out in an enclosed space with a vampire so hungry he can’t think. I mean, I should probably know, if that’s the case.”
Spencer rolls his eyes, and closes them again. “Yeah, I’m like two minutes away from snapping completely and killing you; you might wanna leave.”
Brendon huffs, and digs in his bag one more time, producing a tiny bag of blood from an inside zip. He reaches, and uses one edge of the plastic packaging to poke Spencer’s arm. He stops, though, when that part of Spencer’s skin visibly cracks under the pressure. “Whoa.”
“Ow,” Spencer mutters, swiping his hand down against his arm, batting the bag away. Brendon cranes over and actually manages to grab Spencer’s hand as it flails, and he cringes at the way it sort of...crunches under his fingers, and presses the little IV bag of blood into his hand. Spencer slits his eyes open, looking uninterested until he actually manages to focus on what’s in his hand, and then he drops it in his attempt to sit up.
“Hey!” Brendon protests, diving for it as it slithers down into the cracks of the trash. “Aw, sh - “ he starts, sifting through papers for a minute until he manages to grab it again, uttering a triumphant little cry. He sits back up, and gives Spencer a glare. “Dude, what’s your problem? It’s - I mean, it’s O, everybody likes type - “
“Fuck, just - just shut up, god,” Spencer hisses, pressing back against the dumpster as far as he can, looking freaked out.
Brendon stares at him, completely confused. “Dude, are you okay?”
“Fucking - you’re just carrying around blood?” Spencer asks, his voice crawling higher and higher up with each word. “That’s - you do that? That’s normal?”
Brendon frowns. “Um, yeah, what part of ‘my parents are vampires’ did you not get?” He pauses. “My sister is too. ...Step. Step-sister. Actually kind of...foster sister? I don’t know, we grew up together and now she and Pete and Patrick have a thing and it’s all weird but there’s no way in hell I’m calling her Mom or anything and anyway yes,” Brendon says when he realizes he’s rambling, pulling himself up short, “yes, I carry around blood. For emergencies.” He pauses. “This is an emergency.”
Spencer stares at him.
“Look, it’s really not that strange and it works for them, so - ” Brendon starts testily, but then Spencer raises a hand pacifically, and takes the blood away from him.
“It’s nice of you to do that,” Spencer mumbles, looking down at the bag like it’s explosive. “For her.”
“She’s my sister,” Brendon says simply, shrugging a shoulder and giving him an expectant look. Spencer’s looking anywhere but at Brendon, though, and eventually Brendon gives up and sighs. “I’ve seen vampires eat before.”
“Yeah? So have I,” Spencer says flatly, setting the little bag down on his lap with a finality that makes Brendon groan. He struggles, but eventually manages to push himself unsteadily to his feet, and then he lifts the lid of the dumpster up a little.
Outside, the sun is gone behind the mountains, but the sky is still on fire. A few students are still straggling past on the sidewalk, and Brendon waits for a gap before he pushes himself out, and then turns to look back in at Spencer. “I’m going to wait outside til you’re done,” he threatens. “And I’ll know if you don’t drink it.”
He pretends not to hear the muttered okay, mom from inside, and reaches into his pocket for his phone again. He shuffles through his contacts for a minute, then hits “send” and brings the phone up to his ear. “Hey, Pete?”
-
Pete and Bob the driver show up exactly fifteen minutes later, and Brendon scrambles to his feet in front of the dumpster, holding his hands up at the dark look Pete’s giving him. “Whoa, I didn’t - “
“He’s in there?” Pete asks, short, and he doesn’t wait for an answer before he’s opening the dumpster, ignoring Spencer’s halfhearted hey! as he pulls himself inside. Brendon watches as Pete surges up towards Spencer, muttering something to him and waiting for a response. Spencer nods, looking nervous, and Pete reaches and hugs the shit out of him. Brendon only makes it to Spencer reaching up to give Pete’s back a tentative pat before Brendon has to look away.
He and Bob give each other sheepish smiles. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
There’s some whispering coming from the box, and then some more frantic whispering, and then Pete pokes his head up. “Hey, Bob, can you give us a hand? Busted ankle.”
Brendon folds his arms and stands up on his tiptoes, craning around til his and Spencer’s eyes can meet. He scowls. “You didn’t tell me that,” he accuses, pointing a finger. “He didn’t tell me that,” he tells Pete.
“It didn’t come up,” Spencer says, before Bob tugs the other side of the dumpster lid up. Spencer automatically jerks away, his eyes going wide and watchful for a few seconds before he realizes the sun’s down and it’s only the four of them, the rest of campus is deserted. It doesn’t keep him from glaring at Bob, though, who just looks amused.
“Sorry about this, little man,” he says, and then he reaches down into the dumpster, til he’s bent over in half, and grabs Spencer, and starts hauling him out. “The house is too far to walk.”
“Hey!” Spencer gasps, flailing a little, “Hey, wait, what?” He automatically glances over at Pete for assurance, as Bob manages to get him over the edge of the dumpster and staggers a little. “You said you knew a place I could go to. Um.” His eyes slip over to Brendon for a couple of seconds, and then focus more firmly on Pete. “Get better.”
Brendon tries not to pay attention to the way his stomach twists at that, and he looks over at Pete as well, giving him a flat, unimpressed stare.
Pete ignores Brendon in favor of shrugging a shoulder and giving Spencer a winsome little grin. “We’ve got a spare bedroom,” he explains cheerfully, his grin widening as Spencer catches on and starts struggling. “You can get better there.” And then he gestures for Bob to go ahead, and both he and Brendon watch as Spencer gets deposited in the backseat of the car and buckled in safely, still thrashing weakly and snarling at Bob, who doesn’t even look fazed.
“Thanks, seriously,” Brendon drawls, his arms still folded tight in front of his chest. He ducks his head, and refuses to look over at Pete. “He thought I was going to help keep him safe.”
“You are helping to keep him safe,” Pete says, his smile fading as he watches Bob shut the car door and light up a cigarette, a reward for hard work. After a moment, Pete turns and gives Brendon a hard, otherwise unreadable look. “He didn’t ask for it,” he mutters quickly, before raising a hand at Bob and starting towards the car.
Brendon gapes, and follows after him. “What d’you mean, he didn’t ask for it?” he hisses.
“I mean,” Pete says, whirling around to give him an annoyed look, “he didn’t ask to be turned. He got snatched and they turned him.” Pete looks over at the car, and then pokes Brendon in the chest. “And he didn’t want anybody else to know about that, so you pretend you don’t, got it?”
Brendon sucks in a quick breath, and scowls back, pushing Pete’s hand away as his skin goes hot with temper and then cold. “He didn’t want it?”
“Nope,” Pete says shortly, and then he gives Brendon a sickly little smile. “Funny how that happens sometimes.” And then he opens the car door, and immediately starts yelling cheerfully at Bob about keeping the goddamn mess in his own goddamn car at a goddamn minimum, jesus.
Brendon watches for a second, shifting his weight uneasily between one foot and the other, and then he heaves a sigh. He opens the back door and climbs in, giving Spencer an apologetic look as he slides onto his seat. “Hey.”
Spencer glares at him. Brendon thinks he probably deserves it.
“I didn’t know Pete was going to do that,” Brendon murmurs, studying his nails intently.
“Sure.”
“I didn’t,” Brendon insists, giving Spencer a pleading sort of look. He glances up at the front seat, where Pete and Bob are arguing about something, and then shifts a little closer to Spencer. “He gets kinda...I don’t know, he has to try to save everyone. It’s a thing.”
“I don’t need to be saved,” Spencer says shortly, folding his arms and leaning his head back against the car seat.
Brendon watches him, head tilted. “No offense, Spencer, but an hour ago you were starving, wounded, and trapped in a dumpster that smelled like printer ink. You needed some help.”
Spencer opens his eyes just enough to stare at Brendon, for long enough to make him fidget. “And don’t forget,” he finally sighs, “some asshole beaned me on the head with a Sprite bottle.”
“What a dick,” Brendon says, breaking into a relieved grin. “That’s, like, the worst day ever.” Encouraged, he reaches to give Spencer’s knee a pat, and pretends not to notice the way Spencer goes still at the touch. “How did you even wind up in a dumpster, anyway?”
Spencer rolls his eyes, but clears his throat. “Ran across a couple of assholes, got jumped. They did my ankle, left me in the quad. Dumpster was the first place I found that looked safe.”
Brendon whistles, low. “Dickheads. Want me to have them killed? Pete knows people,” he says, ducking his head in confidentially. “No one will suspect a thing.”
Spencer smiles, a wry little curl of his lips. “Hey, accidents happen all the time.”
Brendon gives him a quick chin-tilt, and winks. “Done. Leave it to me.”
At that, Spencer raises his eyebrow. “Like I left it to you earlier?” he asks, going kind of stiff. “That really worked well for me.” He doesn’t seem pissed off, though - more just resigned.
“It’ll be okay,” Brendon says, looking over at him. “You’ll like Patrick and Ashlee, and they can help get you better. And there’s a Wii in the spare room.”
Spencer exhales quietly, and shifts down into the seat, smiling a little. “Cool,” he breathes, leaning his head against the window.
“When you’re better, you want to have a bowling tournament?” Brendon asks, not even bothering to look away as Spencer closes his eyes, and presses his forehead against the glass. Brendon can feel it happening, the small aching twist to his stomach, the sweet hurt radiating up and out. Uh oh. “Spence?”
“Yeah, bowling would be good,” Spencer mumbles, gesturing with a hand tiredly. Brendon reaches over and grabs it, gently tucks it down between their legs, keeping their palms clasped together. They sit like that for a few miles, and then Spencer shifts and gives Brendon’s hand a squeeze. “Heartbeat,” he mutters simply, his lips twisting up in a tiny smile as he squeezes Brendon’s fingers in time with his pulse.
“Yeah?” Enthralled, Brendon scoots a little closer, watching Spencer’s hand. “You can feel it? That’s so cool!”
“Yeah,” Spencer mouths, his smile fading a little. His eyes open, and he glances over at Brendon, and down at their hands for a bit, before he stops squeezing.
“It’ll be okay,” Brendon pipes up, feeling incredibly stupid immediately after. Spencer glances up, and Brendon tries not to shrink away from the blankness of his eyes. “It will,” he insists, leaning towards him. Part of his brain knows he’s crowding Spencer and that that’s a really idiotic thing to do with a new vampire acquaintance, but Brendon can’t help it, it’s like his brain is hard-wired to do really dumb things, especially when confronted with the vampire equivalent of a baby bird. “Look, at the very least, you’ve got a place that actually has a roof now, and you’ve got a friend.”
And, oh - the smile’s coming back, and Brendon doesn’t even have time to feel like an idiot for laying himself open like that, Spencer’s smiling.
“Yeah?” Spencer sits up and gives Brendon a hopeful little look.
“Well, yeah,” Brendon scoffs, immediately trying to bluster to hide how delighted he is. “A man shares his dumpster with another man, he’s got a friend for life, yo.”
“Good to know,” Spencer says solemnly. And Brendon can’t help it - he ducks his head and starts snickering quietly.
A minute later, so does Spencer.
-
Of course they get Spencer to the house and get Andy over and everything goes to shit - Spencer’s ankle is resetting itself, but resetting wrong. Also he’s severely malnourished, dehydrated, in shock, and suffering from what looks like a mild case of PTSD, given the shaking and jumping at every little thing.
Brendon’s chatting idly with Spencer about which Beatle was the best Beatle (Spencer’s answer is Ringo. Nobody’s answer is Ringo. Brendon is determined to get to the bottom of this) when Pete and Patrick and Andy stride into the room, looking serious, and then Brendon looks back at Spencer and Spencer looks serious, and also kind of sick, and Brendon immediately argues and argues and argues to stay.
“You can’t just - “ Brendon shouts, getting in Pete’s face, but then he feels a tug on his sleeve and looks down. Spencer raises his eyebrows, and gives him a wry smile.
“You really don’t want to be here for this,” Spencer tells him, and Brendon deflates because - yeah, he really really doesn’t want to. He just doesn’t want to leave Spencer hurting and by himself.
“I think Ashlee wanted some help with her composition assignment,” Patrick offers, smiling cheerfully at the glare Brendon gives him. When he looks back over, Pete’s crouched beside the bed, talking quietly to Spencer, but they both have smiles on their faces. So Brendon only feels about seventy-five percent guilty when he walks down to the study to find Ashlee.
He slides onto the piano bench beside her and watches her play for a few seconds before joining in seamlessly. They play for a few minutes, long enough for Brendon to get lost in the music. And then there’s a long note-hold where Brendon can hear muffled screams coming from another room in the house, and he flubs the next couple of chords, before he just gives up altogether. He puts his hands down on his lap and leans his head on Ashlee’s shoulder, watching her fingers skim over the keys. She plays a little bit louder, and Brendon closes his eyes.
“He’ll be okay, honey,” she says, when the song’s finished.
“I know,” Brendon mutters, not moving his head.
“We’re resilient,” she says, turning to kiss his hair, and it’s so weird to him, suddenly, hearing Ashlee call herself a vampire. Hearing Ashlee identify with other vampires. Brendon remembers Ashlee showing up on their doorstep at ten a.m. on a Saturday, fourteen and red-eyed and red-haired and terrified because her family had thrown her out for going to one of Pete’s rallies. He remembers when Spencer’s room was Ashlee’s room, and she’d decorated her closet door with vintage movie posters, hung dried bouquets from the window. He remembers stealing her Lunchables in high school, wiping away her tears when crushes didn’t work out, and now she’s a vampire.
It’s a lot to take in.
“I’ve heard that,” he murmurs, finally sitting up, rubbing his neck. “You were resilient before, too.”
She flashes him a bright smile, and strikes a few dramatic chords. “That’s sweet.” She bangs out a few more chord changes before she settles into a pretty melody, halfway closing her eyes as she plays.
Brendon watches her for a second, and then he can’t stop himself any longer. “You wanted to turn, right?” He bites his lip, and winces - they’ve never talked about this.
Ashlee’s eyes open, and she glances over at him, and nods. “Yes, very much,” she says, oddly formal. “I wanted - “
“What’s it like?”
Ashlee stops, and raises her hands from the keys, and turns to give Brendon a narrow-eyed look. “Painful,” she says shortly. “And permanent, and you have only known that boy for two hours - “
“Jesus, Ashlee, no!” Brendon says, cringing back, holding his hands up in front of himself. “I was just asking!”
Ashlee snorts, and gives him an unfooled look. “Yeah, just asking. Just asking becomes just doing,” she says, before she catches herself and sits up a little, looking shocked. “My mom used to say that.”
Brendon tsks, and sits up, squeezing an arm around her shoulders. “I’m not going to just do anything,” he assures her. “I was just wondering.”
She raises an eyebrow at him, but doesn’t say anything, and goes back to playing.
-
Spencer sleeps for days, afterwards. Pete and Patrick both say it’s normal, especially considering the condition he was in, but Brendon and Ashlee both get quiet and a little nervous after the second day, tiptoeing outside of Spencer’s doorway and whispering to each other, afraid of waking him.
“He’ll wake up when he’s ready,” Patrick tells them at breakfast, yawning as he stumbles towards the coffeemaker. “Seriously, he’s fine.”
“Are you sure?” Ashlee murmurs quietly, her eyebrows raised towards the ceiling, and Brendon watches Patrick reach for Ashlee’s hand and twine their fingers together.
“He’ll be okay,” Patrick murmurs, moving around her to open the fridge and grab a bag of blood. Brendon makes a face, and looks down at his plate, poking at his tater tots - he’s gotten over the weirdness factor of eating dinner when everyone else is just waking up, but watching someone heat up a cup of blood in the microwave is still pretty gross. “Seen Pete?”
“He went out with Joe and Andy earlier,” Brendon supplies. “Said he’d be back late.”
Patrick rolls his eyes. “Of course.”
“He’ll be all right,” Ashlee says, using the same inflection Patrick did just a minute ago, giving him an arch smile. “He’ll come back when he’s ready.” She breaks into a grin, and waggles her eyebrows a little at the fuck you Patrick mouths to her, and Brendon rolls his eyes and stands. He puts his dishes in the sink and shoves his hands in his pockets, and heads for the stairs.
He hasn’t ever felt a particular desire to be turned or anything, but sometimes, living with three other vampires gets to him. He’s by himself a lot, lately, which is weird and sort of unnerving. The house is usually quiet when he’s awake. He’d never say as much to Ashlee, of course, but one of the main reasons he wants to move into the dorms on-campus is that there’d actually be people awake for him to talk to. He’s lonely.
Which is probably the reason Brendon finds himself gingerly pressing the door to Spencer’s room open, poking his head inside. Spencer’s lying silent and still on the bed, curled on his side a little, bracketed by a couple of IV drips - one of saline, one of blood (Andy had tried to explain to Brendon once why IVs still worked on vampires when they didn’t even have any circulation, but it had just ended up giving them both a headache). His skin doesn’t look so chalky, so much like paper anymore - more like milk, more like something alive. Brendon shuffles inside, and gazes at the door for a few seconds before biting his lip and closing it behind him. He turns back to Spencer, and exhales, his shoulders slumping.
“Hey,” he murmurs as he crosses in front of the bed, sliding into the empty chair beside Spencer. “Hey, hi. Mind if I sit here?”
He sits and looks for a few minutes. Spencer’s the first vampire he’s seen that strikes him as younger than himself, and it’s oddly appealing, getting to feel protective of someone. Brendon pulls the chair up closer and slides his elbows onto the edge of the bed, and feels pretty gross for brushing Spencer’s hair off his face, taking in how long his eyelashes look this way. “God, you are so pretty,” he says, conversational. “Seriously, you need to cut that shit out.”
He reaches down to pat Spencer’s hand, and keeps his palm there. “I am so creepy, dude,” he sighs, resigned, as he turns Spencer’s hand over and presses their palms together. Spencer’s skin doesn’t crackle or flake anymore, which is amazing - he feels real, now. “So, so creepy.”
Spencer doesn’t respond. Brendon stares at their hands for a few minutes, then leans down to rest his chin against the bed, eventually pressing his cheek against it and sighing heavily. “Everyone else in this house is in love with everyone else, and I haven’t even kissed anyone in over a year,” he grumbles into the down comforter. “It sucks. And it sucks being the only one who eats solids, and the only one who can do yard work.“
He rambles at Spencer for another fifteen minutes about the shitty state of the universe before he takes a breath, and then he moves Spencer’s hand closer to him, so that it’s almost touching his nose it’s so close. “ - and it sucks,” he finishes, sighing, “it sucks that now I get to feel left out at home, too. Awesome.”
He’s distracted from his self-pity party by a raspy sound above him, and when Brendon looks up, Spencer’s looking down at him curiously. “This is so after-school special, I’m going to puke,” he croaks, blinking tiredly as Brendon barks a laugh and surges up, checking him over.
Eventually, Brendon decides that yeah, Spencer is probably going to live, especially if Spencer’s protests about Brendon staring at him like a lab rat are any indication. “Seriously, creeper, cut it out,” Spencer grumbles, waving a hand feebly at Brendon’s face, trying to push it away. Brendon tugs his hand down and keeps it in his own, beaming.
“It’s alive!” he cheers, getting up so that he can sit on the edge of the bed and poke Spencer lightly, marveling at how now his skin has give to it. “Look at you! You’re not denting anymore!”
“Yeah, amazing,” Spencer manages, trying to sit up a little, rolling his eyes as Brendon fusses and helps prop up his pillows. He glances up, and blanches at the IV bag of blood hovering over him, and follows the IV with his eyes, down from the bag and into his arm.
“They’d give it to you if you were in a hospital,” Brendon says firmly, ducking down so that Spencer has to look at him. “Okay?”
Spencer nods, and looks back up, tilting his chin a little. “So.”
“So,” Brendon says, suddenly a little uncomfortable now that they don’t have Spencer’s state to talk about. He thinks for a moment, then brightens up. “Oh! So. Ringo Starr.” He pauses to grin while Spencer breaks into quiet chuckles, and leans forward, propping his chin on hand. “Explain yourself, and why your answer isn’t George Harrison like any right-thinking person’s would be.”
Spencer’s chuckles die off slowly, and he leans back, giving Brendon a fond smile that makes Brendon’s skin tingly all over. “I had a friend,” he says, quiet, “who would’ve said that too.”
-
Spencer Smith was twelve when he was taken. His parents lived on the outskirts of the city-state of Las Vegas, far enough away from the protection of the guards that when they were attacked one night, their community was completely destroyed. The last time he saw his sisters was the night he was snatched away, pulled out of bed and made to watch his parents being killed, drained by their attackers. He was given over to an old vampire couple, along with his best friend who’d been sleeping over that night. His sisters were probably given away to someone else, if they weren’t just killed, and Spencer hasn’t seen them since.
He and Ryan weren’t adopted, like Brendon and Ashlee were - they were more servants, cattle, and whipping boys for whoever was in the house and wanted some entertainment. Ryan took the brunt of the punishment until Spencer grew taller and broader, and then the lady of the house started eyeing both of them for other sorts of recreational activities. Spencer’d just turned eighteen.
That was when Ryan decided it was time for them to get out.
The plan was simple. They would just wait until the night of one of the clan’s parties, hold out until everyone was passed out, and then figure out a way to scale the fence to the desert outside. The fence was where Jon came in - he was the property of the neighbors, and had found a couple of weak places in the fences that could be cut through.
Spencer left most of the planning up to Ryan and Jon while he ran interference. They had grand plans; Jon had managed to find a transistor radio and kept going on about a program he’d found that could help them, but eventually Spencer had tuned out the dreams and focused on the reality of the situation: they needed to stay safe, stay quiet, and get out quick.
It was his own fault, really.
The day of the party he’d let the lady drain him too much, and he’d been saving up his food for the trip, so he was already pretty lightheaded. And then while Jon and Ryan were snipping the fence, he hadn’t been paying attention to his food like he should’ve. He’s pretty sure it got laced with something while he wasn’t looking.
So when Jon and Ryan came for him that night, he was too slow. And he was too big for the hole they’d made in the fence, and he’d made too much noise coming down the stairs. It’s lucky, really, that Jon and Ryan made it through. He wouldn’t have been able to live with himself if - yeah. They were lucky.
Anyway, so they - the family - caught him and kept him down in the basement for a while, and messed with him, and when they couldn’t find Jon and Ryan after a week or so, they turned Spencer. He’s not really sure which one did it, there wasn’t any light down there.
And then the night after, they shoved him out of the front gates and told him to start walking - it wouldn’t be long until sunrise and there wasn’t much shelter from the light in the desert.
And so he walked until he saw the city, and he managed to make it into one of the sewers right before the sun peered over the mountains. So that was lucky, too.
-
Brendon’s hands don’t stop shaking for two days, after Spencer starts talking.
-
Brendon notices first - when he brings up Spencer’s tray every night and every morning, Spencer grins and sits up and immediately asks how classes or practice are going. He’s lively and argumentative and Brendon falls for it every time - it isn’t until he leaves the room that he realizes he didn’t actually see Spencer eat anything.
He doesn’t really think anything of it for the first three or four days, especially considering Spencer’s uneasiness with Brendon seeing him eat anything during the whole dumpster episode. It isn’t until Brendon comes into his room one day and notices the sharper jut of Spencer’s cheekbones, the knobs of his wrists, and most shockingly, the dark circles under his eyes, that he actually suspects.
So he mentions something to Patrick, who mentions something to Pete, and one morning when he’s stumbling down the stairs, trying to comb his hair down out of the peaks they somehow formed last night, he happens upon Pete and Spencer glaring at each other in the kitchen, a mug sitting between them on the table.
Pete glances up and waves, which is obviously the kind of distraction Spencer was looking for, because he gets out of his chair and hobbles up the stairs (his ankle is still healing). Both Brendon and Pete cringe at the slam of a door a few seconds later, and Brendon starts to scowl. “What did you - “
“He’s so fucking stubborn,” Pete grumbles, reaching for the mug, contemplatively watching the steam curl off of it. “Even I wasn’t so stubborn, geez.”
“Pete,” Brendon groans, rolling his eyes. “Go to bed.”
“Yeah, okay,” Pete sighs, pushing the mug away, pouting a little. Then he tilts his head, and looks down at the mug and then up at Brendon.
Brendon glares. “Dude, if you can’t do it, why - “
“No, hey, try, okay?” Pete asks, not even bothering to pretend not to know what Brendon’s talking about. “He might listen to you.”
Brendon gives him a very, very skeptical look, and eyes the mug distastefully. “Yeah, and he might decide he wants to leave and embark on a career as a singing waiter, but what are the odds of that actually happening?”
“I dunno, can he sing?” Pete asks, raising his eyebrows.
“Pete.”
Pete rolls his eyes, folds his arms. “Look, just try. If you get him to do it, I’ll...do something, I don’t know, I’ll buy you something. What do you want?”
Brendon glares a little harder, and then actually thinks about this. “If I get him to do it, I want to live in the dorms next year,” he pronounces triumphantly. If Pete goes along with this, he won’t get to bitch about Brendon moving out, and if he doesn’t go along with it, Brendon can bitch about Pete valuing keeping Brendon under his thumb more than keeping Spence alive.
Brendon is a genius.
Pete’s eyes narrow, his hands steepling in front of him. “That,” he says slowly, “was a dick move, Bden.” And - yeah, that’s the voice of a Pete who’s hurt but trying not to show it.
Brendon is a shit. His smile immediately vanishes, and he looks down at the floor. “Sorry. I just - I was going to ask, but - “
“Yeah, Patrick told me,” Pete sighs, grinning crookedly at Brendon’s outraged gasp. “Still.” He looks down at his hands, traces over the ancient ink on his right arm for a second, and then looks up again. “Look, you can move into the dorms regardless. You’re a man now, I get it, you need your space. Plus I know it’s weird, the three of us, and - “
“No, it’s totally fine!” Brendon protests, quailing under the unsurprised look Pete gives him.
“I know it’s weird for you, Bren, how could it not be?” He gets up and grabs the mug, and crosses the room, squeezing an arm around Brendon comfortably. “But you always have a place here, you know that, right?”
“Yeah,” Brendon mumbles, leaning into Pete a little.
Pete cranes up to kiss the top of his head, and then hands the mug over, clapping Brendon on the back. “Love you, kiddo,” he says, and then he presses cold fingertips against the back of Brendon’s neck because he knows he hates it, and takes the stairs two at a time, headed for bed.
Brendon ruefully watches him go, and then looks down at the mug of blood, slowly growing colder in his hands. He makes a face, and then follows after Pete, taking the stairs slowly and carefully since he doesn’t want to get blood all over him.
-
If looks could kill, Brendon wouldn’t just be a corpse, he’d be a corpse that had been immolated by the fires of Spencer Smith’s unholy rage and was now nothing more than a fine ash. But he bites his lip and tilts his head down, looking up at Spencer from beneath his eyelashes. Basically pulling every trick that’s ever gotten Ashlee to do anything for him. “Please?” he asks again.
“No,” Spencer snaps, folding his arms, staring down at his crossed legs.
“Come on.”
“No.”
“Spencerrrrr - “
“Brendon, no,” Spencer snarls, and there’s a note of panic in the last word that makes Brendon back off a little, put the mug on the bedside table and move away.
He thinks for a moment, and then moves over to sit on the edge of the bed, poking at Spencer’s skin until Spencer huffs and scoots over a little, stretching his legs along the length of the bed. Brendon curls up to him, wrapping around him a little, ignoring Spencer’s little moue of exasperation (he knows it’s fake anyway, because Spencer slumps down into his hold easily). “Good?”
“Yeah, okay,” Spencer murmurs, closing his eyes for a moment, resting his head on Brendon’s collarbone. Brendon pats his arm, and then frowns and pats it again, a little harder. And then he sighs.
“You’re getting dent-y again,” he mumbles sadly, into Spencer’s hair.
“Mm?” Spencer moves a little, bringing his head up enough to look at him with tired eyes. Brendon presses his lips together and then looks down and pokes Spencer’s arm again. Both of them watch as the impression of Brendon’s finger stays in Spencer’s skin for the better part of a minute, before finally filling out again. Spencer sighs, and lets his head fall back down onto Brendon’s shoulder, and doesn’t speak.
“What’s going on, Spence?” Brendon finally manages to ask, shivering a little as Spencer huddles into him. “Why won’t you - you know what it would - “ Brendon realizes, with a jolt, that everything he wants to tell Spencer is either way too intimate or upsetting or both, and he shuts his mouth audibly, exhaling a long breath through his nose. Shaken, he presses his nose to Spencer’s hair and tries to make his breathing go normal. Usually he can think of something to say, but this time, he’s got nothing.
Somewhere near his neck, Spencer shudders, and presses in closer. “My mom,” he finally mutters, his voice a little wobbly. “It’s what I think of every - I see them taking my mom.” There’s a small pause, and Brendon holds on a little tighter as Spencer’s shoulders jump. “And it’s the same stuff, and now I have to drink it, and - “
“It’s not your mom,” Brendon murmurs, tugging him up closer. “Spence, it’s not your - “
“Yeah, I know, but it’s - it could be somebody else’s mom’s, and - “
“Spencer,” Brendon says, glad his voice decided to return for the moment, “this blood came from a blood bank. Someone voluntarily gave it, so that it could help you.”
“Yeah, but - “
“No, hey, listen to me.” Oh, hey, spoke too soon - Brendon’s voice cracks and is gone again, and he has to curl down next to Spencer’s ear. “Listen. Do you really think your mom would rather have you doing this to yourself? Making yourself sick? Making us - making us watch you get sicker and sicker?”
“Bren - “
“No, just,” Brendon whispers, his breath harsh in his own lungs as he forces the words out, “just listen. Do you think your mom wants you to die? Or do - do you think she’d rather see you get better? So you can help Pete find the people who did this to you - to your family and make sure it stops? Which do you think she’d rather see her son do?”
There’s a small silence, and then Spencer sucks in a rattly breath and chokes on a slightly hysterical-sounding laugh. “You’re such a dick,” he whimpers, reaching a hand up to rub over his eyes quickly. “Oh my god.”
Brendon chokes, and laughs a little too, pulling Spencer up to hug him properly. “Yeah, you love me,” he says, glad he can hide his face in Spencer’s shoulder so Spence can’t see his blush at that. “You love my awesome speeches.”
Spencer laughs again, and takes a deep, shaky breath, holding on tight to the back of Brendon’s shirt. “It was better than the one about the pros and cons of Pac-Man versus Mrs. Pac-Man,” he admits. “I’ll give it that.”
Brendon pulls away from Spencer enough to glare at him. “That one is a classic, I’ll have you know,” he informs Spencer. He grins down at the smile threatening to break Spencer’s face, and can feel his chest tightening and twisting, can feel the urge to just - to just close the distance between them.
So, he tugs away and reaches for the mug still sitting on the bedside table.
Spencer sobers a little as Brendon hands it to him, and gives him a quick, nervous glance as he cups it between his hands. “D’you want me to turn around?” Brendon asks kindly, squeezing his shoulder.
“No, just.” Spencer frowns a little, and then rolls his eyes at himself. “Seriously? A vampire scared of blood. I’m, like, the definition of not intimidating.”
“Probably,” Brendon agrees, giving him a quick grin and scooting closer, curling his arm around Spencer’s middle comfortably. He presses his cheek to Spencer’s shoulder, and feels him take a long, shuddery breath, and watches him raise the mug to his lips.
-
“When you weren’t a vampire,” Brendon starts, sprawling back on Spencer’s bed, halfheartedly killing zombies on the tv screen, “did you like crunchy peanut butter or creamy peanut butter?”
“What the fuck, Bden,” Spencer grumbles, twisting the controller in his hands, scowling as a shot flies over his shoulder. “Fuck, watch what you’re doing, that almost shot me.”
“Sorry,” Brendon mumbles, abashed, but then he gets back to his original point. “No, but seriously, answer the question. Which one did you like? Like, on sandwiches?”
Spencer frowns and tilts his head, considering the question. He bites his lip and mashes down hard with his fingers, smirking a little as another zombie kicks it. “I don’t...” he starts, frowning as he gets distracted by the screen. “Actually, I didn’t like peanut butter sandwiches,” he finally manages during a zombie lull. He pushes his hair out of his eyes, and gives Brendon a hectic grin. “They stuck to the roof of my mouth. It was gross.” He picks his controller back up when another zombie starts towards him. “I liked peanut butter cookies though, those were good.”
Brendon stares at him, completely bemused, and doesn’t even notice when a zombie grabs his character on the screen and starts to eat his brains.
-
“ - and Shane and Dallon kept arguing that Spiderman was more heroic because he, like, has more heart or some shit, and I was like motherfuckers, you need a superhero because some crazy villain’s got you tied to the Empire State building or something, you don’t want him to have heart, you want him to have a fucking jetpack,” Brendon says, punctuating his impassioned speech by accidentally flinging a spoonful of cereal at Spencer’s arm. “Oh, shit,” he says, slowly turning red. “Um, sorry, got kinda - “
“I’ll live,” Spencer assures him, using a paper towel to wipe himself and the table off. He smiles back at the huge grin Brendon shoots him, and props his chin back on his hand. “Anyway, jetpack.”
“Huh? Oh!” Brendon laughs, remembering, and looks down at his cereal, stirring it around a little before he continues his story. It means he misses the way Spencer’s head tilts a little to the right, and the way his eyes go kind of soft and happy, but maybe that’s for the best.
-
Brendon groans and flumps over on his mattress, pressing his face down into the pillow in vain hopes that it’ll send him back to sleep. When five minutes of that pass, however, he gives up and stumbles out of bed and down the hall towards the bathroom.
When he comes out, he automatically starts in the direction of his bedroom, but the sound of birdsong stops him. Brendon turns around and heads in its direction, frowning when it leads him to Spencer’s door.
He pokes his head in, curious, and gives Spencer a grin and a wave. Spence is propped up in bed, looking kinda tired - which is worrying - but he smiles and waves back, and tries to keep Pete’s old laptop balanced on his knees.
“Why are you still awake?” Brendon whispers, as he slips into the room, padding over to sit on the edge of Spencer’s bed. He tsks when Spencer just shrugs his shoulders, and then cranes to see what Spencer’s watching that’s making all of the racket.
Brendon exhales, and scoots up to the head of the bed when he realizes what he’s watching.
“I miss them,” Spencer mutters, shifting to give Brendon more room, angling the computer screen so that Brendon can see too. Brendon curls into him a little, and fixes the screen, and settles with his head on Spencer’s shoulder, as they both watch video after video of sunrises.
Part Two