Left Alone 6: Regeneration
Tropes/content warnings: M for mature themes overall. vampire whumpee, male whumpee, non-binary caretaker, general morbidity. There will be a lot of play with, and discussion of, the concept of consent in this series, as it applies to many topics. There will be angst. Vampire biting can be painful, platonic, or NSFW and I'm not sure what direction that will take, but Tolly will definitely continue to fantasize about subtextually or literally sex-murdering Arden, as vampires often do.
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Part 5: Bearing Gifts
Black Tolly stood and walked around the rug with gallon in one hand and glass in the other and resettled himself in front of the threshold of his cell, cross-legged across from Arden. For a moment they regarded one another. He watched the mortal once again go through a cycle of fast breathing, forced slow breathing, looking at him and then away as they worked at the idea that a dead man was talking to them. Then they turned to pull a plastic shopping bag out of the crate.
“I got some cleaning wipes and a trash bag you can tie shut,” Arden said. “There’s not a Big and Tall here in town, so I went to the thrift store and just tried to guess at sizes. I washed everything this morning. I hope it’s dry. I couldn’t find the iron. I know it’s not what you’re used to - ”
In spite of the condition of my clothing, young Arden has noticed that it was tailored. This is more observant than one might have credited.
“Arden,” Tolly interrupted, and now his voice at last rewarded his attempt at conveying gentleness of tone. The relief he felt was tremendous. Something of himself had come back. “I am used to the rags I have been wearing for ten years. You didn’t have to do anything at all. Whatever you have brought me, it will be welcome.”
Arden was red to the ears as they used the ruler to nudge the bag over the line. Tolly collected it carefully and looked inside, setting aside the wipes and the trash bag. His fingers touched a polycotton blend as he picked delicately with his talons. It was more or less dry, a little stiff from hanging: a white button-down shirt. There were black dress pants with a plastic belt. There were black socks and tangas, which were new with labels, so the town’s thrift store must be a Goodwill and not a Value Village now. There was a gray blazer that was almost new.
The socks were soft, the first pleasant thing he had felt in years. Before Nicholas had tricked him, he wouldn’t have used them to buff an automobile. Now he rubbed them between his fingers as if they had been the finest silk in the world. All of it had been made for someone wider than Tolly’s normal proportions even before he had shriveled up, but it would cover him, and it would feel wonderful compared to what he had now. “Thank you,” he whispered. In spite of himself, there was a lump in his throat. Get hold of yourself, idiot.
He drank his second glass of blood. It tasted no better than the first. A curious crawling movement on his scalp became hair growing on his head, slowly pushing its way from the follicles, so blond that it was almost white. His flesh began to fill out slowly, wrinkled, hideous in a way that could not be explained by aging, but approaching something human. For a moment he could smell himself again, the hint of old incense gradually becoming less bitter and more appealing.
“I’ll get some dry shampoo tomorrow,” Arden said. Now, as Black Tolly’s senses gradually expanded, their exhalation told him everything they had eaten that day. It wasn’t difficult to parse out, just the morning’s sweetened coffee and long-past sour hints of some kind of bottled protein drink. Their pores breathed out the faint scent of an unfamiliar medication – no, not unfamiliar. It was herbal. Cayenne, salt, St. John’s Wort. Witchbane.
Did Arden know it was witchbane? Tolly had been expecting some sort of antidepressant or anti-anxiety medication, or at least an unhealthy amount of caffeine. The descendant of Nicholas Telep does not know their family’s history, did not know I was here, yet still they suppress what they have inherited. I think perhaps someone has been trying to keep them from the truth.
They must not be entirely succeeding, or Arden was not remembering to take the medication. The scent of them hinted of adrenaline, unsurprising in the present moment, but also of stale fatigue, the sort of thing that could not entirely wash off. Trouble sleeping. The Outside calls to them, but they don’t know what it is.
They were looking away from him again. He hadn’t blinked in too long. He was out of practice.
“I got this. That rug can’t be comfortable.” Arden hauled a sleeping bag out of the box, a tight roll of flannel and plastic outer coating, and pushed it over to Tolly. As he reached for it his hand came within inches of theirs, and across the barrier he felt the warmth of their flesh. He would swear he could hear their heart beating now, faint and far away.
Tolly caught himself running his fingers over the flannel lining of the hood, mesmerized by the physical sensation of touching the soft fabric. He set it aside with the shopping bag.
“I’m sorry,” he said, managing to force a small, strange smile onto his withered lips. “It’s just – ”
“It’s been a long time,” Arden said. “I get it. I hate stiff fab – that’s not important. Look.” They turned quickly to reach into the bottom of the tub and pull out a stack of books. Tolly recognized them immediately as he reached out to carefully collect them. They were from the library upstairs: the collected Sherlock Holmes, a travel volume from the eighties about Germany, Marguerite de Valois, an occult studies book that Nicholas had once called quaint, and what looked very much like the collected Chanur saga by C.J. Cherryh. Arden must have grabbed things at random.
“I didn’t know what you would like. If there’s something specific, I can get it for you,” Arden said.
Tolly turned over a few pages of the travel guide with its color photographs, rapt. A single tear plashed onto the dust jacket. He wiped it away before it could leave a stain. He was water again now, wet eyes, wet throat. He must be careful of that.
“Thank you,” he said hoarsely. “Forgive me, I - ” he shook his head. How could he explain the constant battle of wills between them, how Nicholas had kept taking away his privileges and his things for trying to trick him, trying to find a way to have him, trying to escape? The threat he presented had been real -
Just like the threat he presented to Arden.
"I will read all of them," he said. "I will treat them with care. This, this is." His hand caressed the flannel again, then the page, eyes looking down at it in something like awe. "Thank you. I cannot possibly express to you how precious this is to me."
“My uncle locked you in the basement and left you to die down here,” Arden said. “I think it’s probably the least I can do.”
Tolly looked at them from where he now sat, travel guide still clutched in his clawed hand like a lifeline. The hair that had come loose around Arden’s face was limned in dim gold light, almost silver, like the halo of a saint. How had he never seen it before?
He did not want them less. Oh no. Now he was more aware of every detail of them than before, and that made it worse. But now guilt wrung his heart along with the rest. How could he have even thought of surrendering them to his thirst when they were capable of this, unasked, unsought for? He rose to move the books and lantern and sack to the desk, away from the blood. Now he moved without pain, joints working properly for the first time in years and years, but he was more careful not to go too fast.
And more importantly, with his back to them they wouldn’t see him trying not to be unmanned again. There would be time for stupid sentimentality later. For now, he sat back down on the floor and took his third glass of blood. Maybe it would ease the pressure of Arden being so close. He didn’t want them to leave yet.
“I never knew he was like this,” Arden said. “He was nice to me. But this, this is unforgivable.”
“I wouldn’t go as far as that,” Tolly said. They looked at him directly now, obviously thinking he was insane. Or maybe they were staring because he was changing again. Years were gently rolling away from his face. The third glass had brought back enough flesh to make his features recognizably human, he could tell as he ran his hand along his own cheek. He still looked like a man who had died elderly of some wasting illness, but at least he looked like a man.
“There were reasons for what he did,” Tolly said.
“What reasons?”
“He knew I wanted him,” Tolly said. “He was irresistible to many, was your uncle. I was not immune.”
“I – oh.” Tolly watched them contemplate this subject and then firmly push it to one side. “My parents didn’t like me talking to him. I used to sneak out and come over here when I was in high school sometimes,” Arden said. “Sometimes we’d talk, or garden, or he’d play the piano.” Their face contorted for a second, eyes pressed tightly shut. “Oh, god. You were down here that whole time, weren’t you?”
“Since you were about eight years old, it would’ve been,” Black Tolly said. “He didn’t want me to know about you. When I asked who he was playing for, he said he was having men over.” He was genuinely amused by that, tilting the glass to and fro in his hand as he rested his wrist on his knee. “I believed him, too. A point to you, Nicholas.” He toasted Arden ironically with the fourth glass of blood before he downed it. That made a half-gallon.
Now his skin grew smooth, deceptively soft-looking. His white hair hung heavy and straight to his shoulders. He looked a younger corpse than before. Perhaps he might have been in his fifties, to look at him. He had a nose now, aquiline and slightly crooked. He had eyelashes. He had lips that covered his teeth and had a real shape. But he was white, white as snow, a color living flesh would never have without makeup, and he was still gaunt and hollow. Even an albino would be pink from the blood under the skin. Every drop Tolly had taken in had been spent like base coin, already burnt away by the process of healing. That was all right. He still had a half-gallon to go, he told himself, stifling the beginning of panic. And he could have Arden bring the rest tomorrow, if he needed it.
“I never even really knew him,” Arden said slowly.
“No more did I, it seems. He tricked me into his ritual very easily,” Tolly said. He shrugged one shoulder. “And he bound me here, so that he could bleed me at his leisure. An undead’s blood has certain properties. Did you never wonder why he always looked so young?”
“I thought it was plastic surgery! He always said it was!”
Tolly considered that for a moment. “Reasonable, I suppose. He was well-to-do. One doesn’t naturally assume there is a monster in the basement.”
“I don’t think you’re a monster,” Arden offered cautiously. “I’d feed you, too, if you want. It seems fair when he took so much from you.”
“Absolutely not,” Tolly said. He was more in control of his tone now, but the edge was there beneath the careful enunciation. “As I am now, I wouldn’t trust myself outside of this room, not for one second. You saw what happened the first time I saw you.”
“You’d kill me?” Arden said, startled.
“Immediately,” Tolly said. “And without hesitation. You wouldn’t suffer, of course.” His voice caressed the syllables. “I have ways of ensuring this. But I have not tasted human blood in twenty years, and in this moment, I am utterly without the ability to control myself. I am not human. I am not alive. I am not safe.” He leaned forward slightly, as close to the edge as he could physically get. Arden did not lean away, but he could see them breathing harder, nostrils dilated.
“What the Hell am I supposed to do?” Arden asked. “With all of that? What do you want?”
“It’s because I am grateful for all you’ve done for me that I tell you this, Arden. It is vitally important that you understand,” Black Tolly said. “I want you safe from me.” He didn’t want that at all. He wanted to drink every last drop of them, to see their last moments of ecstasy and know they were his, consumed by pleasure, never knowing they were dying. But giving in to that would mean being trapped in here forever, and he was more master of himself every minute.
Arden nodded slowly. One hand reached for the tub. They’re leaving. Make them stay, say something!
“You’re not like other people, you know,” Tolly said. “You’ve always known, haven’t you? Do you hear them outside of the world, the lost ones? Do they call you by strange names and beg you to let them in?”
“Stop,” Arden breathed. They scooted backward away from him, hurriedly grabbing at the plastic handles of the tub.
“It’s not a disease. It’s your birthright,” Tolly said. “Nicholas had a ring that could silence them, protect him from them. It would serve you better than the witchbane you’re taking.”
They didn’t answer, shaking their head, either in disagreement or in general negation of the entire subject. Arden climbed to their feet a little too fast and stood swaying for a second, shaking their head. Then they hurried away, hauling the empty tub and the other gallon of blood.
“Eat something,” Tolly called after them. The basement door slammed.
Part 7: Riddles
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