Swan Song
pairing: Remmick x POC Reader
summary: As a vampire out in the present-day west, you take space on the stage of a local bar, playing the keys for a griot; however, on the night of your final performance, you're approached by a man who wants exactly what you're leaving behind.
or…
Remmick approaches you at the local bar you play at.
part 2
contains: vamp!reader, emphasis on tension, blood drinking, (blood kink if you squint), smoking, sexual themes, no use of y/n, modern au.
word count: 3k
notes: in this fic, i’m implying that once a griot is turned into a vampire, they can’t summon their ancestors since i’m running on the theory that remmick was a filídh back in his day, but he lost his ability to conjure spirits after he was turned. walk with me.
Music flowed alongside the barren streets that night, each sound swimming out of each open club.
But just a little deeper within the small town hid another bar, sitting cunningly behind the brick walls of vacant stores: a former prohibition-era speakeasy that still carried that title on its front window. And what bubbled from inside attracted the same old townsfolk who knew this place still existed.
On stage, you could never fight the wrinkle on your nose, nor could you fight the nodding of your head when your fingers caressed the keys, playing for the one woman in town who could hypnotize you with just her voice alone. Every weekend you let it wash over you.
Hell, you bathed in it.
You drank in her voice. You drank in the kick drum that accompanied the snare’s metal rim and the closed hi-hat that bridged each gap between the beat, fusing together like a jigsaw puzzle—the soothing, yet vivacious rhythm merging with the lifeless beat in your chest.
And you drank in the hands of the guitarist and bassist on each side of you, their fingers sliding against the neck of their guitars; their fingers strumming and plucking at the strings that seemed to grapple your limbs, seizing you on the platform.
Not that you were eager to leave.
The music was why you came here, and the band were why you stayed.
But even so, you knew you had to go.
For fifteen years you performed at this bar, and though no one questioned why you began to look like the youngest in a band full of forty-something-year-olds who knew you to be the oldest, you realized that insisting you had a really good sunscreen wasn’t going to work anymore.
Regardless of all this, you kept putting it off, telling yourself, “Just a couple more weeks,” which turned into a couple more months, and eventually another year.
This had to be your last night.
“Alright, y’all,” huffed your lead singer, who despite being breathless, maintained her honey-smooth voice. With a handkerchief, she elegantly wiped off the sweat glistening on her forehead, glancing back at all the musicians behind her. “This is gonna be our,” she inhaled, “last song of the night.”
Last song of the night.
When the music slowly reached its end, you basked in the atmosphere one last time, scanning the crowd sitting ahead of you, swaying their heads and tapping their feet against the concrete floor or their fingers against their respective tables.
Then you observed the other crowd—intangible, yet wholly present, engaging in an incorporeal, cultural anachronism that somehow seemed to fit almost perfectly in this time and space.
No.
They transcended it.
Nevertheless, they vanished, as they always did. But this time around, you didn’t know when you were going to see them again.
Gloomily, your fingers abandoned the keyboard and you ended up outside the bar attempting to light the cig tucked between your lips, the purple neon light above flashing on the back of your head as you leaned on the short, black metal gate wrapping around the front of the small building.
“Fuck,” you muttered, the lighter failing to do its only job.
From inside, you could still hear the guitarist playing for a few extra minutes. Most of the time you’d stay back with him, rousing remnants of the melodious aroma left by the night’s session before you officially packed up.
Tonight you couldn’t do it…because if you did, you knew you wouldn’t be able to bring yourself to leave.
“Allow me,” came a voice with an arm stretched out, a brass lighter in hand.
Belonging to the sudden voice, you saw, was a man—his dark hair damp from the summer heat. Clad on his body was a dark plaid button-up that looked just a little too big on his frame, and attached to his back was a guitar, its strap diagonal across his chest.
Naturally, you leaned in, his lighter finding its way just below your mouth and his other hand cupping over the flame even though the air stirred quietly. But the second he took another step closer, that very air curdled into something else; into something you hadn’t felt since the night you were infected.
You could feel his gaze latch onto you as he lit the cigarette between your lips, the tip glowing. Quickly, you glanced at him before you pulled apart, turning away from the man as you blew the smoke out from your nostrils.
In that time, neither of you failed to recognize the flicker of something vaguely familiar behind your eyes.
“Thanks,” you uttered, leaning back against the fence. Cordially, you held out the cig in the brunette’s direction. Silently, he declined, putting up his palm before removing the guitar from his body and placing it on the concrete column beside him.
He was an unwelcome presence, and perhaps he knew that.
To your detriment, you didn’t say anything.
“So, uh,” he scratched his stubbled cheek, clocking your keyboard in its carrying bag beside you, upright against the gate, “you the one on the keys, huh?”
“I was.” You cocked your head towards the bar. “This your first time comin’ to see the show?”
“I stroll around town every once and a while. S’pose I never got the chance to come in. Y’all play real nice though.” The man leaned against the gate and peered at the large window a few feet behind the barrier. “And whoever’s singin’...yeah, she’s got a voice on her, don’t she?”
You took another drag and blew out the side of your mouth, nodding fervently.
“Everyone calls her Whiskey,” you replied, also turning back, catching the subject of your conversation talking to folks inside who were just as mesmerized as the both of you. “Never heard anyone like her.”
Facing away from the window, you took a gander at the man instead, catching something else in his eye—a glint of hunger followed by an infernal glow that matched the cherry of your cigarette…only darker.
“Your accent,” you tried to change the subject. “You’re not from here, are you?”
He fixed his gaze back on you. “North Carolina.”
You hummed. “You’re far from home.”
“Like ya wouldn’t believe,” he laughed vacuously, tilting his head towards your friend. “Y’know, I’ve been meaning to meet her for some time now. Heard her so much, I gotta know what she’s like.”
You sighed. “Well, you go on and meet her then.”
He lifted an inquisitorial finger on his lower lip. “Maybe you could introduce me to her?”
You pointed your thumb back. “I was about to leave after this actually—”
“I’m sure you could invite me in real quick.” He inched closer to you. “I’d hate to be impolite.”
You licked your lips. “Right.”
Index finger and thumb softly pinching your cigarette, you took one last drag before dropping it to the ground and crushing it with your shoe. What a waste, you thought.
Only briefly you peered through the window, assuring everyone inside was well-distracted by each other before grabbing the stranger’s throat, shoving him away from witnessing eyes and into the tunnel under a bridge nearby, until his back slammed into the brick wall, both of your bodies engulfed in warm darkness.
Although he appeared to be surprised, a grin slowly formed on his lips, teeth as sharp as yours—maybe even sharper—revealing themselves under the partial fluorescence of the violet neon sign.
He snickered. “Was wonderin’ when you’d break.”
You edged closer to his face. “What do you want?”
“You know what I want.” His hand steadily made its way to your wrist, wrapping his fingers around it. “That's why you’re here all the time, right? Just wanna have what you’re havin’. No need to be greedy.”
Your brows furrowed. “She can’t summon shit if she’s dead. I’d know.”
“Then she won’t have to be.” He shook his head, slightly inclining his face to yours. “You could let me in. And I could play witch’all.”
“I’m not in the band anymore.”
“All the more reason for me to join,” he insisted, his grip on your wrist tightening as he bent your arm away from him. “I could fill in.”
Your mind couldn’t process the speed he moved in.
One minute you had him on the ropes, or so you thought, and the next your own back was against the opposite wall of the tunnel with his hand on your throat this time, caging you with his body.
“Y’know, I’ve been watchin’ ya for a while now,” he rasped, his hand so high up your neck, straining your head to bend back. “Feastin’ on rats, livin’ a life of hunger and desperation—I mean, it’s sad really.”
You made an effort to push against him, but he was far stronger than you. Perhaps even older, you feared.
“I’m not the one who’s desperate,” you grunted.
His other hand firmly planted on your chest, pressing you even further against the hard surface behind you. “But you’re hungry, ain’tcha?”
He jutted his chin to the bar across from the tunnel, every warm being inside the bar broiling in the humid, cramped room.
The vampire took a big whiff. “Ya gotta be starvin’.”
Feebly, you turned away from the sight of the very people you congregated with most nights, indeed famished.
He leaned his slick forehead onto your temple, his thumb softly caressing your jaw, his nail gently scraping against your skin. “Ya can’t keep torturin’ yourself.”
In this moment you realized it was easier to resist listening to your stomach when there was no one there to tell you otherwise.
“How’d you even find this place?” You heaved, attempting to focus on the lamp post on the other side of the tunnel, trying to ignore the sapid smell of bodies oozing out across from you.
“A musician likes a bit of inspiration from time to time,” answered the stranger. “But when a voice like that reaches a man’s ears…ya can’t ignore it.”
You felt the light huff of air from his nose.
“You certainly didn’t,” he carried on, turning your head back towards him. “I mean, look atcha—ya still here.”
You scowled. “What, you’ve been watching me this whole time?”
“Now don’t get it twisted. I came here for the music. For her. Findin’ my own kind though, that was a plus.”
My own kind.
“I’m nothin’ like you,” you told him.
The inner corners of his brows crinkled and the sides of his mouth gently raised. “Oh yeah? What’s this then?”
He removed the hand he had on your chest and used his thumb to roughly wipe off the thick saliva you hadn’t realized was trickling from your mouth.
He scrutinized the liquid on his thumb, chuckling. “Nothin’ like me, huh?”
Your eyes glided to the curved ceiling of the tunnel, unable to let yourself witness the very instincts you’d been muffling away for years.
The man licked your saliva off his tongue before laying a hand on the wall beside your ear. “I’m here for the same reason as you are—I just wanna see my people again.” The man’s grip on your neck began to loosen, though he didn’t let go. “We’re the same, you and I.”
Your gaze reluctantly dropped onto him.
Through the shadows you could see his pupils uncannily dilate, his scarlet irises limited to a glint. And in the sympathetic bleakness of his stare, much too dark to find a reflection of anything, you still managed to see yourself buried somewhere in there, no matter how much you dared to deny it.
“Tell ya what,” the man began.
Gently, he released his grip on your neck, instead laying his palms on your shoulders, dusting off nothing in particular, then adjusting the neckline of your shirt.
You didn’t move.
“I’ll leave this place,” he told you, his fingers lingering around your collarbone. “Hell, I’ll leave your beloved Whiskey alone.”
Finally his touch left your body, which should have been a relief, until his claw-like nail slit against his wrist, his eyes fixated on you while his own blood tantalizingly leaked from the self-inflicted wound. And although the scent of crimson fluid from a living being laid incomparable to the leftovers of the undead, the years you spent chasing after rodents made the sight of his wrist look like a home cooked meal.
“If you join me,” he bargained, his other hand now placed on the back of your neck. “We could travel together.
Even with the smallest movements of his wrist, the vampire stood entertained by your mouth, in a restrained manner, chasing its direction.
He squeezed his hand into a fist, sending more blood out of his laceration. “Clearly, you’re all packed up and ready to go. We can...find someone else to help us. Help me—” he paused for a moment—“and yourself find our people. Find a band to play with. It’ll be fun.”
The longer you watched his wrist, the hazier your mind grew, and everything that wasn’t pouring out of his skin blurred in your field of vision.
The vampire snaked his hand away from your neck and back up to your mouth, taking a hold of your chin to wipe more of the drool that pooled over your bottom lip. “What d’ya say, hm?”
Eventually, his voice fizzled away once your teeth rushed after his wrist, biting into his flesh and sucking what tasted like stale nectar, but nectar nonetheless. And once his blood touched your tongue, the consequential guilt you’d feel after chasing the people inside the bar had faded into the back of your mind; the thrill of their blood rushing vigorously into your mouth, diverting the very conscience you allowed to guide you for decades.
“That’s it,” cooed the stranger, cupping the back of your head while your moans stifled against his skin, both of your hands clutching his forearm. “That’s it.”
He knew whatever he said to you—it didn’t need to be true—would slip past you once you’d eaten. Just one drop of sanguine delight was enough to pull you away from yourself, overcome by a spell that was produced from your own numinous hunger. It didn’t matter if he told you Whiskey was safe. Your newly returning thirst, he thought to himself, would neglect whatever concerns you had over her.
Finally you released your canines from his wrist, tilting your mouth to the ceiling, deeply inhaling what resembled fresher and colder oxygen into your lungs, and accessing a sudden burst of energy surging through your veins.
He took a step closer, glancing at your red lips, tapping your cheek. “There’s more food inside. Nice and ripe for the takin’.”
You couldn’t remember much else from that night. Frankly, you didn’t want to.
You lost.
You blocked out the screams. You blocked out the feedback from your old friend’s electric guitar; his pleads as you ravenously approached him. You blocked out the regrettable invitation you had drunkenly offered the vampire whose name was Remmick. And even after the slaughter, you followed the wicked man, too guilty to believe you deserved to do anything else.
He was right, you concluded. You were the same.
But the one thing you could remember—the only thing you permitted yourself to remember—demanded yourself to remember was the beastly “Run” rumbling from the depths of your blood-coated throat in front of a frightened Whiskey whose heels scuffed against the floor as she slid back toward the broken steps of the stage, viewing the man you had spoken to several times before laying on the floor below you—a river of red streaming from his shredded neck.
Whiskey did run. You didn’t know if she survived or not; if Remmick caught up to her, or if any of the people you turned in the bar found her. You only hoped she made it out. And if she did, maybe, just maybe, you hadn't completely lost.
That same night, Remmick found you crouched over another victim, the bottom half of your face dripping; your neck stained with red, alongside your clothes; the warm light of the bar gleaming against your cold, gray eyes. The elder vampire kneeled beside you, and he took either side of your cheeks, surveying your current state, pleased.
Was he pleased with you or himself? It didn’t matter.
Everyone around the two of you laid still, not yet awakened by the burden you and Remmick had thrust upon them.
And inebriated by the woman you just drank from, you didn’t pull away from him. Despite the shame that quietly loitered beneath your stomach, there was something liberating about seeing a monster in front of you that wasn’t in a mirror or every piece of glass that you passed.
“We gon’ have a lotta fun together,” he whispered, staring at a bullet of blood running down your chin before his lips met your skin, sucking teasingly at the red honey, thirstily searing a trail from your jaw to your neck, gluttonous for your prey’s remainders.
Innately, you tilted your head, opening up space for him with a sigh, placing your hands on his arms while his mouth traced upwards, returning to your chin, then pausing when he hovered over your mouth. A hand of his landed on the nape of your neck while he slid his tongue along his serrated teeth, waiting.
He didn’t have to wait for long.
You mimicked the man, indulging in his scraps with a long lick on his moist skin gliding from the bottom to the top of his neck, eagerly skipping his chin in order to capture his lips instead, lost in a frenzy you hadn’t experienced in a long time.
Remmick moaned against you pleasantly as you forced your tongue into his mouth, tasting him and every unconscious person around you. You nearly pushed your body against his, close to straddling the man who diminished everything you worked for, until you pulled away, panting.
The vampire hummed curiously, wiping the blood from your cheek with his thumb.
With effort, you ventured to drag yourself down from your high by looking at everybody around you. But an obscure ache within you prevented you from separating from your catalyst just yet, because regrettably, you wanted more. And when he understood that, he took advantage of it.
He encouraged you to seek for more—thirst for more.
And you did. But never without the penance of guilt that came with the sin you cyclically committed.
