to taste your beating heart (8)
warnings: implied abuse, mild blood and injury, non-graphic blood drinking, vamp thralls, assumptions/miscommunication, lmk if i missed any
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Anx hadn’t really believed the hunters about the whole ‘protecting the innocents’ thing.
Sure, he believed they believed it, but that didn’t necessarily make it true. There were all sorts of ways to ‘save’ someone, and there were all sorts of reasons to deem someone guilty instead of innocent. Especially if that someone happened to be a monster.
Hunters were hunters. They could try and use pretty words to conceal the truth of their occupation all they wanted, but it wouldn’t fool Anx.
They’d realize he couldn’t give them what they wanted soon enough, and then he’d be fair game; subject to however they actually treated the other vamps they ran into.
That’s what he’d thought, anyhow.
After having a coven head waltz into their house like he owned the place, convene for a private meeting with them, and then walk back out without a single threat issued or drop of blood spilled, though, he was beginning to re-evaluate his initial impression.
The entire situation had been so jarring and strange that he’d almost doubted its authenticity for a second, but there was no faking the scent of a coven head. Especially not one as well-established as... Janus.
(Something about the name scraped at him, like sandpaper against skin. It wasn’t the same sharp, piercing pain of ‘Virgil’, but it was disorienting nonetheless.)
He wouldn’t have thought a coven head was even capable of getting through an entire meeting without any blood spilled, especially a meeting with humans. Especially one where the humans in question seemed to spend half the time blatantly bickering with him.
If it had been his coven head that had been treated with such disrespect from beings as reviled and lowly as hunters…
He didn’t even like these humans, but the thought made him shudder.
Things were different around here, clearly. Everyone else already knew the rules, and he’d been left scrambling to catch up before it cost him.
“Fangtastic Four, are you even listening?” One of the insane humans in question prodded him in the side, eliciting an automatic low hiss.
Instead of looking even remotely threatened, Roman moved his finger up to point at Anx’s face instead.
“I’m over here putting my sweat, blood, and tears— mostly the blood, actually— into making sure you don’t wither away into a particularly pointy-toothed husk, and you aren’t even paying attention!” he accused, frowning theatrically at him.
What was this guy even talking about?
“Nope,” Anx replied, popping the 'P' with a casual air that would have gotten him cuffed at best by any older vamps in the coven. “I checked the kidnapee contract and ‘listen to my captor’s ramblings’ wasn’t on there. Add more fine print next time.”
Roman gaped at him for a moment, before pulling back slightly, his lips twisting with something Anx couldn’t read. In the next moment, he had returned to ranting, dramatic flourishes included. “I cannot believe you’re trying to pull the ‘poor, abducted victim’ card when you literally tried to take a bite out of Patton.”
Anx’s shoulders hunched slightly against his will, still waiting for the other shoe to drop even as he opened his mouth to snipe back. “Hey, I just call them how I see them. I was brought to a basement while unconscious, I can’t leave, and I’m wearing handcuffs. Facts are facts.”
Roman sighed exaggeratedly, a flicker of discomfort crossing his face. “Yes, well, don’t try to mind-control and-slash-or murder me during this whole bloodsucking thing, and we can discuss alternatives to the cuffs.”
As though the cuffs were the main problem.
“I feel like maybe you’re missing the bigger picture here,” Anx said, before the rest of the sentence registered. “Wait, you’re serious?”
Midway through the process of rolling his sleeve up to expose his vein, Roman raised a deeply judgmental eyebrow at him. “Have you been paying attention at all since my brother left?”
No, not really. Between the lingering haziness of his forced metal retreat and the bizarre fuzzy-feeling instincts that Remus had somehow activated, he’d been just disoriented enough for the conversation going on around him to go in one ear and out the other, leaving little to no actual impact on his brain. Something about research?
Somehow, he got the feeling that the others didn’t actually know Roman had decided to do this now. Letting a moderately untrustworthy vampire feed from him for the first time didn’t seem like the sort of thing they’d let him do alone.
This did explain why they’d returned to the room with the containment circle, though. His nose crinkled at the cloying smell of the runes, and he eyed the inactive circle with distaste.
He could already see the way things would go. He’d get to feed for precisely as long as they deemed necessary, probably the bare minimum required to keep him alive, and the moment he overstepped, all Roman would have to do was yank his arm back over that line and let the burn of the ward do the punishing for him.
What was the point of pretending this was an extension of trust, then? From within the circle, even if he did try to thrall Roman, he wouldn’t be able to escape.
“Hello? Tall, Dark, and Stormy, can we get on with it?” Roman cut into his thoughts, waving a hand in front of his face. Anx barely resisted the urge to bite it. “If you keep spacing out, you’re going to give me performance anxiety.”
“Performing? For what audience?” Anx snorted, and then watched with bemusement as Roman planted himself on one of the halloween-themed beanbag chairs.
“For an actor like me, all the world’s a stage,” he retorted, flapping his bared arm at Anx expectantly. “Now hurry up before I start developing stage fright.”
“What, you want to do it there?” he asked, brow furrowing as his gaze briefly slid over to the convenient, risk-free containment spell that was only a meter away. He was kidding, right?
“Remus said I would faint, and I’m fairly sure he was bullshitting me, but not sure enough to risk cracking my head open,” Roman replied dryly. “I’ve never actually done this bit before, you know.”
That wasn’t really what he’d been talking about, but whatever. It wasn’t like he was going to be the one to insist he be trapped, even if it was the obvious smart decision.
Anx tentatively sank into the matching purple beanbag chair next to the hunter, and wrapped his hand around the wrist of Roman’s arm, which had been helpfully (read: obnoxiously) shoved into his space.
Despite Roman’s faux-casual words, his heart was thumping a little too fast for him to be anywhere near relaxed. An actor, indeed.
Anx checked the doorway again, searching for shadows under the crack or the subtle turning of the knob. Any signs that the other two were waiting to pounce. Anything at all that indicated he was currently walking into the world’s most obvious set-up, other than his own panicked mind.
Nothing.
He frowned, eyes darting back down to the free meal he was being offered, and then sighed. Whatever the catch was, he might as well take advantage of the offer while he could.
Roman shifted antsily, darting glances at Anx from the corner of his vision. “Do you always take this long to— ow!”
—
Roman barely resisted the urge to twitch away as Anx sunk his teeth in, both from pain and indignation alike.
The pain faded only a second or two later, his lower arm going pleasantly numb, but he still felt like Anx could have been a little gentler about it. He would have appreciated a warning, at least!
He opened his mouth to say as much, and found that the part of his brain dedicated to coherent words seemed to have scuttled out of reach while he wasn’t looking.
Everything was a bit distant, now that he thought about it, like all his senses had been wrapped in a hazy layer of gauze. The realization caused a strange swoop in his stomach, but he couldn’t figure out what to do about it.
It was hard, thinking like this. All the important thoughts seemed to slip between his fingers and get lodged in hard to reach places like grains of sand. He blinked several times in rapid succession.
That seemed a little bit not good. Maybe he should have gotten one of the others to chaperone after all.
Anx was lifting his head now, gaze bouncing around the room like a hunted deer before finally settling on Roman.
Roman could feel the vamp’s nervousness, his gut-clenching anticipation, as though it was his own. He could feel the expectation of pain that hovered over his head like a guillotine, ever-present and automatic.
(Had Patton been able to tell just how wrung-out Anx was during his own stint under thrall? It explained the sympathy, at least.)
He also felt the moment that Anx realized that the thrall bond had snapped thoroughly into place between them. That for all his posturing, Roman wasn’t anywhere near experienced enough to throw it off or even resist it.
Anx could strip away his free will with the simplest of commands, and he wouldn’t be able to do a thing about it.
He knew this was bad, logically. There was a part of him that was freaking out, but it had been confined to a small corner of his brain and cut off from the rest of him.
Physically, though, he’d never been more relaxed. His heart thumped along a steady metronome, his breaths coming deep and easy. According to his body, there was nothing to worry about.
His body was a dirty traitor, and there would not be any replenishing spa days for it in his near future.
Assuming he still had a future.
His fingers twitched again, and Anx followed the motion, still holding onto his arm with those icy fingers.
He stared at Roman’s sluggishly-bleeding bite mark for a long moment, worrying at his lip with a conflicted expression. Roman tried very hard to feel concerned about the likelihood that he was about to be drained by a vampire, and mostly failed.
“This is so stupid,” Anx muttered, and moved Roman’s arm back over to his side, releasing it.
In the same moment, Roman felt a mental tug, like an intangible line had been pulled taut, and then with a snap, the bond was severed.
For a few long seconds, he sat there, stunned by the sudden wave of sadness he felt at the rejection.
In the next moment, his survival instincts snapped back into place like a lock clicking, and he sucked in a sharp gasp of air, his heart rate kicking up belatedly as adrenaline surged through him. He fumbled for the dishtowel he’d brought and quickly wrapped it over the bite, just as an extra precaution.
“There. I played nice,” snapped Anx, his posture defensive as he watched Roman take big, gasping breaths. “Are you satisfied? Do I get to go home now?”
Roman held up a finger in a silent request for him to wait, still trying to shake the lingering effects of the bond. His whole body had gone from relaxed putty to rigid plastic in less than a second, and it was more than a little disorienting.
It had the added bonus of letting him actually think about his answer for a few moments, instead of letting the knee jerk response he wanted to give tumble out of his mouth. (This is your home.)
“We brought you here because we thought you were V– our friend,” he corrected hastily. “And because we thought you were in danger, and needed a safe place.”
“I’m not him.” Virgil’s glares had always been scathing, but the unnatural purple irises added a whole new layer of eerie.
“Yeah, we picked up on that much,” Roman said curtly, ignoring– for now– the way he’d noticed a hundred little mannerisms that Anx and Virgil shared. “But the rest of it, I’m not so sure we were wrong about.”
Anx blinked, his defensiveness stopped in its tracks by Roman’s easy agreement. “What?”
“Anx,” Roman said, the name strange in his mouth. “Were you in danger? If you went… went home, would it be a safe place?”
For a brief, telling moment, Anx hesitated.
“Of course it’s safe,” he snapped, a beat late. “Safer than I am in a den of hunters.”
Roman worked his jaw, trying not to dwell on all the signs he’d seen that the opposite was true. If Anx had retained even half of Virgil’s stubbornness, there was no point in arguing in circles to try to force him to change his mind.
A different tactic, then.
“If you stay with us for a while, we could at least help you recover some of your memories. You can’t tell me you’re not curious about your life before turning at all.”
Anx’s lip curled up in a half-snarl. “I can tell you that, actually. What came before doesn’t matter, anyways. That’s the whole reason why vamps lose memories after turning.”
“Uh,” Roman blinked, genuinely thrown off. “Not to be contrarian, but that’s not true? Remus was turned, and he probably remembers more stories about our childhood than I do.”
Mostly so he could embarrass Roman at every opportunity, but still.
“I’ve actually never heard of memory loss as a symptom of being turned,” he added, trying not to let his concern crease his brow too obviously.
Anx had gone statue-still, and Roman bit his lip for a second before reaching out to set a tentative hand on his arm. “Are you–?”
“Don’t touch me,” Anx snarled, and in the next moment, he was on his feet and then bolting out the door.
Roman sat upright with some half-formed intention of going after him, or at least letting the others know that their resident vampire was upset, and then promptly flopped back against the beanbag as the world spun nauseatingly around him.
Right. Blood loss. He’d just text them then.
Letting his head fall back, he stared at the deep purple walls of the room and tried very hard to not think about how much he missed Virgil, and mostly failed.