@thesadsaint asked: “Do you really think there is even the slightest chance they won’t see it?“
potc starters || accepting
He’s getting worse again.
Geoffrey has spent enough time around the Sad Saint to see the patterns -- against his better judgement perhaps, as though something in the exchange of blood has bound them. Or maybe there’s a deeper kinship there that the hunter would simply prefer to write off as some biological sense of obligation. Either way, a handful of months have passed since Geoffrey’s own reawakening, since he drank of the Saint’s blood and offered his own in return. In that time he’s come to learn the limitations of his own hunger, how long he can go without feeding before the gnawing chasm opens up somewhere between his gut and his heart. A reasonable time is the answer -- and he’s certain his fortitude will only strengthen with time and practice and patience.
Sean, though, is well ahead of him in the martyr department, which is hardly a surprise given everything else he knows about the man. That he hadn’t taken his fill when the hunter bared his bloody forearm had been obvious at the time, and becomes increasingly clear as the symptoms previously displayed only dissipate a short while before making themselves known once more. His knuckles are cracked and oozing, the bandages he wears a constant shade of sickly red. And that’s nothing to say of the sores around his temples that now creep their way down to his neck. His mind seems more addled, and Geoffrey watches as he shakes his head minutely and fumbles over a prayer he must have recited a thousand times. Often enough not to falter.
“Hampton...” For a moment the eyes that meet his feel unfamiliar, though they’re the same pale shade Geoffrey’s gotten used to seeing. But there’s a glassiness to them, a lack of recognition in unfocused pupils -- and it lasts only a moment, only a breath, before Sean is again shaking his head and mumbling an apology. When he looks down at his hands, at the rosary tangled between wounded fingers, it grants an apparent moment of clarity. And he asks, sounding caught between fear and delirium, if Geoffrey thinks there’s a chance that the denizens of his night shelter won’t notice the state that he’s in.
He could lie. He could tell Sean that all seems well enough, that no one will catch notice of the inhumanity seeping in along the edges. That he’ll be fine. Just like he’d try to offer some semblance of comfort to one of his own if they were in dire straits. But here there are consequences. Here there’s the matter of Sean losing himself, slipping away into the hunger, rotting from the outside in. And God help him but he’s come to like the man in the time they’ve spent together -- like him and respect the work that he does. Killing him would bring more trouble than it’s worth, and if he won’t kill him before he can descend then it seems only fair that Geoffrey yank him back from that starving precipice in some other way.
“You look like something the cat brought in and forgot about for a few days. So I’d say no chance it goes unnoticed.” People might not know the reason for Sean’s condition, but the signs of it are all but impossible to ignore. Sighing, mentally berating himself for what he’s about to offer, Geoffrey fixes the Saint with an even stare. “Starving yourself won’t help anyone, Hampton. And seeing as you aren’t the type to ask, that makes me the one who has to offer.” He sets to rolling up his sleeve, not waiting for the protest. “Better it be me than one of those poor bastards you tend to. And I’d like to assume I taste a touch better than a corpse.”
