The wind rattles through the shards of the broken window. All Crockett can do is stare. He’s paralyzed, unable to move but in unbearable pain as someone suckles from a wound on his neck. They broke it first so he couldn’t fight back, couldn’t protect himself or his tiny daughter crying and screaming on a woman’s hip in the corner.
He struggles to move but not a finger twitches. He wishes he could at least scream. A single tear drips from the corner of his eye.
“Aww, he’s crying,” someone coos, and kicks him in the ribs to make his lifeless body roll. The one feeding growls and digs her teeth in harder. He can hear his flesh rip. “Think it hurts?”
“I think he’s worried about the baby,” says the one holding Harper. She cries louder. “Don’t worry, she’s not even enough for a snack.”
Crockett has a moment to be grateful that his daughter will be spared this agony before another vampire finds a mouthful on his shoulder, tearing through his shirt to get to his warm, damp skin. He’s going to die, he suddenly realizes, and it’s going to fucking hurt.
Ava’s memory is full of hazy, empty spots when she starts to wake. She remembers yelling, remembers pain, remembers blood, remembers a deathly bitter taste in her mouth that lingers even now. The details, however, don’t come to mind. Just residual remnants of an ache in her whole body, stiffer and sharper across her throat. She doesn’t like this almost helpless feeling.
With a great amount of effort, she forces herself out of bed and brings tentative fingertips to her throat. Stiff. Crackly. Some part of her stops her from scratching at it as she stumbles toward the bathroom for a splash of cold water on her face and, maybe, something that can start to refresh her memories. She’s confused and out of it, two things she hates more than any other feeling in the world. Her feet are clumsy, strangely stiff beneath her. As if there’s no blood flowing through her overworked muscles any longer.
Every part of her feels gross. Icky. Like she fell asleep caked in the sweat and grime of the day, having neglected a shower, and went straight to her dirty sheets. Nothing makes sense. So she decides to get in the shower before turning on the lights, just to wake up and ease the burn of her body without having to look at it. She doesn’t want to see it. Feeling it is enough to make her feel sick some days with her skewed and fragile perceptions.
Something isn’t quite right, she can tell, as she washes her hair and it feels angrily stiff. Her neck screams in agony at her washing touch. And all of her skin doesn’t feel the same anymore, as if she’s touching herself through a layer of plastic. The pressure is there. The sensation is not.
Her body does not feel wet when she reaches for a towel out of habit, rubs it over her skin to dry off anyway. Routine can be a powerful thing, especially where she is concerned. It’s only then that she reaches for the lights, and she sees in the mirror what she has become.
The flush in her cheeks is gone, replaced by an unhealthy pallor that would worry her, had she been a patient in the cardiac ward. Her lips have turned a deep violet-red. And on her throat is a long gash, more healed than it should be considering she doesn’t remember getting it. The deep indent is scabbed over. However, when she tips back her chin to consider it better, the scab splits and a bead of dark red-black blood leaks out.
A stray fingertip catches it. Her blood is cold. She holds it to her lips, waiting. Thinking. Trying to understand. Ava smears it across her lips in a failed imitation of lipstick. Her entire body is wrong. Out of place. Hesitantly, she presses digits to the side of her neck. Where her vein is. Feeling. She tries for nearly five minutes, but despite her efforts, she is unable to find a pulse.
Like a ghost- which she well may be- she leaves the bathroom and stares at her room. Everything is the same, but there’s so much different within herself that it no longer feels like a sanctuary. Looking closer shatters its sanctity further, as she notices blood smears on her bedding and a dried handprint against the doorframe. Something happened to her, something that she may never be able to explain because of the gaps in her memory, and she’s close to just curling up in a ball to scream, cry, something for however long it takes for her mind to tell her what the fuck happened that she can’t remember.
Anger and pain, so much pain, fill her as she leaves the bedroom and its mess behind, only to come up with more questions. Spread out on her couch, head fallen back against the armrest, covered in blood, is Sarah. The entire lower half of her face, her neck, her stomach, and her hands are all caked, while smears trace on her chest and scratch among drips on her collarbones. She’s a mess like Ava’s room, and there’s a long, deep cut along her wrist. Splicing the vein. Still sluggishly bleeding. That should terrify her, or make her feel anything, but instead her feet carry her forward and she finds herself kneeling beside the couch.
She takes Sarah’s wrist in hers so gently, stroking her palm and cradling it close And then Ava closes her lips around the cut and sucks, filling her mouth with a taste not unlike the one she can remember, but has a sweetness to it that makes it pleasant. Sarah stirs beneath her, and she pulls back.
She doesn’t understand why she did that.
Ava looks up to see Sarah’s eyes fluttering open, a soft contrast to the stains on her unmarred skin. She can still taste the blood. It tasted like candy. Why did it? She might be going insane.
“You’re awake,” Sarah says softly, and uses her injured hand to cup Ava’s face as though she doesn’t mind what just happened. “How’re you feeling?”
“What’s wrong with me?”
Instead of answering, Sarah just smiles and sits up straighter, makes room on the couch for Ava to join her and ignoring the stains. The cut on Ava’s throat. The blood in her mouth. She swallows it instead of spitting it out, and stares at Sarah’s messy jeans.
“Nothing’s wrong with you, you’re safe now.”
When she kisses Ava’s forehead, her lips are ice cold. Immediately after, she kisses her on the mouth, pushes past her lips with her tongue in a way so many have demanded before her, and there’s something with the consistency of syrup now, coating her tastebuds in bitterness. It tastes ugly. She pulls away to cough. The substance drips down her chin, burning hot and smelling just as foul as it tasted.
“What was that?” she croaks.
“It’s venom. I’ve- you- you don’t remember?”
The tone of her voice makes her feel more ashamed, worried, than scared and overwhelmed. Ava studies her own hands. “The last thing I remember was walking into one of the ORs. There was no one in there.”
Sarah won’t meet her eyes anymore, instead electing to stand up and join her in observing Ava’s palms. The blood has settled into its lines.
“It’s okay. But right now, you need- you need rest. I’m going to go get you something to eat, so just lay down and rest. Your body’s going through a lot right now, okay? Just rest, I’ll take care of everything else.”
Another kiss, now to her cheek, and Sarah sweeps out the door with a million questions on her heels.
Sarah looks between them, confused and disoriented and caught up on the carnage splayed across the floor. Ava had promised no more kills like this in the house after what happened back in Chicago, but this body has become little more than entrails
“I’m glad he’s dead,” Ava answers. “Look at Sarah. Look what he did.”
They had been in a bar, hunting for food for the three of them. Drinking cocktails. Speaking lightly. Someone spiked Sarah’s drink. It’s not enough to knock her out when she’s so much more powerful with her new self, but it’s made her dizzy and confused enough to not remember how she got here, and to be mildly surprised by all the blood on her body.
Crockett puts his hand on Ava and she shoves him back. “He’s going to be missed. People saw him with you. And you know not to do this in my home!”
They’re going to fight.
Sarah’s knees fall to the floor and she crawls towards the mess on the carpet. Hungry. Her lips nearly close on what had been a wrist before Ava pulls her away and cradles her body close, too close.She is going to break.
She pretends not to hear him. All she can focus on is Ava in her arms, sticky and fragrant blood spilling everywhere on her own body and the floor. Someone wanted her dead. They slit her throat. And although Sarah’s pinching the carotid to try and slow it, she knows that there’s no way a human will survive this.
But Sarah isn’t human, and she can fix this. There’s time. She seals her lips around the center of the gash and lets go of the vein. So much blood. She’s not hungry, but she drinks eagerly because Ava tastes so wonderful, and if she has no blood, that gives Sarah time to fill her back up. To save her. Even it means turning her, despite never telling her what she is.
“Sarah,” Crockett repeats. “You shouldn’t do this.”
The blood flow peters out, and Ava is empty. She’s so pale as Sarah grabs a scalpel off the floor, blade stained with Ava’s blood, and carves into her own wrist. Her blood is darker and thicker, tinged with something not of this world.
“You don’t get it. The love I feel for her...”
She can’t finish as she holds her wrist against Ava’s chapped lips. At first it just bleeds, slowly making her dizzy, but then Ava swallows, drinks, gets the strength to latch onto her arm to still it as she replenishes her body.
Her eyes are glazed over when Sarah pulls away, blood smeared all around her face. She’s beautifully haunting. Sarah leans over her and kisses her, gives her a dose of venom to help with the pain of transitioning into her new state.
“You don’t understand what you’ve done.”
At that, Sarah turns and hisses, bares her sharp teeth at Crockett. “You don’t understand why I had to. Go.”
He holds his hands up in surrender and backs from the room, leaving Sarah alone with the half-ling soon to come into her own.
When Crockett Marcel got a job at Chicago Med, he had to disclose. It's the law and, in an emergency, they'd need to know. The only people who know for a fact that he's a vampire are Mrs. Goodwin, Dr. Charles, and Dr. Lanik
Crockett keeps a good handle on his hunger. Ish. On his nights off, he goes clubbing to get something to eat and a buzz from their alcohol laden blood. He always walks them home after. But he has to make sure he never comes to work hungry because it'll make his job a lot harder. And he does a good job.
Until he gets pulled into two days with only breaks to rest for a couple hours at a time, when he was already pushing it when his shift started.
A trauma patient comes in. From a car wreck. There's a lot of blood and Crockett, he has to lock himself in a supply closet so he doesn't do something he regrets
And things get complicated from there, especially Crockett's tentative friendship with Lanik.
It’s a strange place to relax. Sitting outside the ED, Jimmy eating a bag of vending machine pretzels and Crockett holding him close. It feels safe. He’s become less and less frightened over time-- he’s learned. Crockett won’t hurt him, and in fact is rather partial to kissing him senseless before and getting him off during a feeding.
“I miss those,” Crockett says in a far voice. “Haven’t had ‘em since the eighties.”
“You’re old.”
Crockett wrinkles his nose and nips lightly at Jimmy’s neck. “You’re just bitter I don’t age.”
They laugh, but Jimmy realizes the door that’s been opened, and he simply can’t leave things alone. So he clears his throat and looks out at the roads. “Do you miss being human?”
“I’ll be honest, I don’t remember it. I don’t remember living, it’s been- it’s been almost forty years.”
So long to be frozen in time and forced to drink blood to survive. It must be awful, painful. It’s an injury that has no fix, and Jimmy can’t come up with a single response that fits the situation. He wonders how many people Crockett has watched die.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’m not.”
Somehow, Jimmy doesn’t believe him. But he also doesn’t push.
He’s asked it a thousand times before they even reached this point, but still, Crockett asks again as he cooks a meal to pair with the heavy glass of wine he poured Jimmy the second they got here. His voice carries, accent thick, over the scent of southern comfort frying on the stove. All the research Jimmy’s done says he’ll be tired after, and if it’s true, he doubts he’ll want to eat. He even said as much. But Crockett insisted, and now has on a stupid apron that says “KISS THE COOK” like in old cartoons as he shakes the pan. It does smell good. Is this what people smell like to Crockett?
“Where’d you learn to cook? Since you don’t eat food?” he deflects.
Crockett pauses, head down.
“I wasn’t always this way.”
He leaves it at that, and sets a lid over the pan with ease before coming closer, looking less and less like the trauma surgeon and more and more like the creature of the night. His eyes, this close up, are more gold than brown, and his fangs seem longer, sharper, where they now dig into his plush bottom lip. Jimmy has the strangest impulse to kiss him. It’s downright insane to think about, with the weight of what’s about to happen. Crockett leans close, effectively pinning him against the counter, and smiles with his mouth but not his eyes.
“You should take this off,” he says, a hand toying with the collar of Jimmy’s shirt, “if you don’t want it stained.”
Maybe it’s his imagination, but Jimmy swears his voice dipped lower than usual. The air around them feels different as he undoes each button, slow and cautious, before shrugging out of his shirt. His tie was gone before he even got to Crockett’s apartment. Without warning, Crockett’s hands are on his chest, and they’re cold, much colder than a human’s should be.
One palm stays flat against Jimmy’s chest, firm and steady, while the other grips his chin gently and tilts his head back. He feels exposed, like this. Maybe that’s the point. His chest and throat are bare, and Crockett’s looking at him like he’s prey which, Jimmy supposes, he is right now. He swallows on reflex and Crockett has the audacity to huff out a laugh at him.
“Last chance to back out.”
Jimmy isn’t doing that. Not when there’s so much on the line, and he’s already lightheaded with Crockett’s proximity. Lips skim his throat in search of his carotid, because it’s the easiest place to feed for things like Crockett. He doesn’t know why he does what he does next, but he cups one hand around Crockett’s skull, threads his fingers through surprisingly soft hair and holds him close.
He’s about to say to get on with it, but then there’s a sharp pain in his neck, enough that he almost cries out. But before he can, his body seems to grow lazy on him, and the pain turns to warmth spreading out from his neck. His hand stays though, laced through Crockett’s hair. He watches him drink. Eyes shut, lips and tongue working against his neck to drain him, throat bobbing with each heavy swallow. He looks, in this moment, not like a monster, but like a man giving. Giving something. Affection. A hickey. Like he can hear Jimmy’s thoughts, Crockett tightens the seal of his lips enough that it just barely starts to hurt again.
As suddenly as he grew warm, Jimmy begins to feel cold. It starts in his fingers and toes, but quickly creeps up his limbs until it’s edging into his chest. He can’t move his hands. The fear strikes him that Crockett won’t stop, won’t be able to stop, and he’ll keep going until Jimmy collapses, drained, on the kitchen floor.
But then Crockett pulls back, and the instant his hands are gone, Jimmy nearly falls over. He’s dizzy, he realizes, and his body doesn’t feel like listening to his mind.
“You’re okay,” Crockett says, now holding a towel to his neck and cradling his face. Jimmy doesn’t remember him getting a towel. “It’s over. How’re you feeling?”
Jimmy means to answer, but he gets caught on the blood. Smeared on Crockett’s lips, caked onto his teeth. It’s dark and thick and, until recently, was in his body. He looks down at his own wrists and they seem like marble.
“Hey. Lanik. You with me?”
He tries to nod, but it hurts.
“Good enough. Hold this here-” Crockett grabs one of Jimmy’s arms and pushes his hand to his neck, “while I fix you a plate. You need to get something in you if you wanna recover.”
By some miracle, Jimmy holds the towel in his plate while Crockett fills a bowl with whatever was on the stove. It smells good, spicy. He knows what it’s called, but the name of the dish doesn’t come to him when he's out of it. The bowl thuds in front of him, but not quite on center, accompanied by a glass of apple juice. Before he can reach for it, there’s a forkful of food in front of his face.
Jimmy’s about to protest, but Crockett speaks first. “It’s just easier. You’re shaking, and you’re dizzy. This is for the best.”
He wants to argue but he’s tired. So he allows Crockett to feed him, even if whatever was made tastes like nothing with his dulled senses. Knowing Crockett, it’s probably a good thing because whatever he cooked is probably spicy. He doesn’t think throwing up because his body hates spice is a good next move.
Surprisingly, Crockett is tender with him. He feeds Jimmy the whole bowl and holds the glass for him. Afterward, he wipes his face with a napkin and peels the towel from his neck. There’s still some blood though, sticky and half-dry on Jimmy’s neck and chest and shoulder, enough that he feels like he needs a shower.
Crockett seems to have thought of that, though, and produces an antiseptic wipe to clean him with, even if it stings when he starts at the bite. By the time he pulls away, the white has become rusty, and Jimmy’s skin feels cold. Next comes a little gauze pad with a smooth dollop of soothing ointment applied to it. Putting it on, Crockett is almost painfully gentle. Smoothing down each piece of medical tape carefully, and stroking any skin his hands must trail over. It’s a lover’s touch from a monster.
“Do you want me to drive you home? Or do you wanna stay here?”
