rivers_bend

Title: Let the Darkness Lead You Home
Author: rivers_bend
Band(s): My Chemical Romance (with cameos from Cobra, Black Cards, Gym Class Heroes, and Ryan Ross)
Pairing(s): Frank/Gerard (background Mikey/Pete)
Word Count: 49,500
Rating: NC17

Warnings: This story contains vampire-related violence including graphic mentions of blood and blood drinking (both violent and eroticized), and some on-screen death. Only original (and mostly unnamed) characters die in any permanent way. Brief mentions of an animal injury. Some humans in this verse are controlled or owned by vampires, but all sexual activity is consensual.

Summary: Vampires are in charge and most of the humans on earth are prey, so Frank Iero's parents have him train as a cyber tech to protect him. Leaving the family he's born into may have saved his life, but his parents never could have expected the lengths he'd go to in order to find a new family to call home.

There is amazing art for this story here and an amazing mix here



When he turns on his monitor, Frank can't see anything but shifting blacks, and even in the darkness has to brighten his screen to max to make out the shadows he knows Gerard can discern as clearly as Frank can see his own hands at noon. It looks like Captain Gabe has taken Gerard hunting. They're in the woods and the moon is new— perfect time for infrareds, but Gerard isn't using them. Then the screen flares bright in the black of the lab, blinding Frank before he can blink. Spots dance behind his lids as he murmurs, "lights, ten percent," but when he opens his eyes again the spots fade, and he can see the red and orange shapes moving through the blue-green columns of trees. A black square in the corner of the monitor shows him what the camera can pick up of Gerard's unaltered vision, but Frank's eyes are glued to the dozen or more red figures he can see in the center of his screen. Frank really did it. This is so fucking cool.

As the red shapes get closer, Frank sees there are more like two dozen of them, and he wonders if Central has game parks or if the prey population there is just particularly stupid. Either way, clearly neither the captain nor Gerard will end the night hungry. As Frank watches, Gerard blinks momentarily to x-ray view—useless in such dim lighting—then back to infrared. He must be still getting used to the eye movements it takes to control the new alt. Frank wonders if he'll get it on his own or if he'll want Frank to make adjustments.

A green-grey blur shoots across Gerard's field of vision, and seconds later the red-orange humans scatter. Frank finds his own head following as Gerard moves his, tracking first one then another of the blobs before zeroing in on one moving toward him off to his right. The flashes Frank can see of Gerard's hands and wrists as he runs are green tinged with yellow—Gerent Travis is obviously keeping his guest better fed than he's keeping his captain if Gerard is that warm. In seconds, the blob quadruples in size, then fills the screen completely as Gerard grabs it by its arms and pulls it close enough to bite.

Frank is used to moments of black interrupting his view as Gerard closes his eyes in rapture at the first taste of blood, but the infrared alt works through his lid, and Frank can see every second of the feed as Gerard's victim cools from deep crimson to orange, orange to yellow, like a macabre sunrise. When Gerard pulls away, widening his field of vision, Frank can see his hands glowing bright on the human's now-dim shoulders. He's not prepared for the sight of Gerard literally flushed with blood.

It's not that he doesn't know Gerard is hotter after feeding. Making a point or asking a question, he's touched Frank's hands and arms, and Frank has to touch him when he does his implants, so he's felt his skin cold, cool, and warm, but this—god, this—is hot. This alt is either the best or worst idea Frank's ever had.

He hopes it goes better than the roommate debacle when he was sixteen and hacked into the school's housing computer to get paired with the grad student he'd had a crush on for two years. Frank had ended up spending a lot of time pretending to be asleep while Omar fucked his girlfriend not very quietly in a bed less than four feet from Frank's head.

If Gerard were looking at him now, Frank's skin would be nearly white, boiling over as he imagines those blood-hot hands wrapped around his wrists, holding him immobile. In person, the gerent has only ever treated Frank with respect, but on screen there is no hint that Gerard is anything but a monster; he's not bound by even the lax and sloppy human morals that remain from the days before, and he could at any moment turn on Frank. As a gerent he's not subject to the vampire laws that forbid eating the tech-rank humans or the pets. He could provoke an uprising if he ate enough people belonging to his subjects, but Frank is his. Frank's fate rests entirely in his hands.

And to feel those hands on him, hot like a human but with Gerard's vampire strength—it's hard to breathe just thinking about it. Frank knows it's fucked up, but the whole fucking world is fucked up, and he doesn't know any other way to be.

On the monitor, Gerard lets his meal go, and Frank gets a glimpse of it crumpling to the ground before Gerard turns, his focus back on the living humans now tiny specks scattered in the distance. They must be half a mile away; the range Frank achieved is beyond even his wildest expectations. He is a fucking genius.

One of the specks grows bigger, closer and closer still, getting taller and thinner until Gerard blinks his infrared vision off, and Frank's screen goes dark. He plays with his monitor settings until he gets enough contrast to recognize the lanky captain from an angle that must mean he's putting an arm around Gerard's shoulder. Captains have rank, but even so, Mikey would never touch another gerent like that, so casually. Frank's met Gabe, though—even installed a music mod behind one ear for him nine months ago—and Gabe stands even less on protocol than the Ways, whose ideas of propriety are based more on family loyalty than the ancient laws. Frank doesn't like seeing anyone but Gerard's brother Mikey touching him that way, and hates that Gerard lets him get away with it, even though he knows that Gerard would never risk angering Gerent Travis by insulting his captain, and that he has a grudging fondness for Gabe besides. He watches several more minutes as they weave through the trees, but Gerard never looks down or over at Gabe, and Frank eventually heads for the tanks where he's been growing nerve fibers in a new medium. He's hoping to get to the point soon where he can grow them right on the circuits, and it's looking like this formula could be the trick.

**


Dusk is Frank's favorite time of day at Eastern's compound. When he was little, it meant time to put away his bike and his toys, go inside and be coddled, and he hated the setting sun. But now it means the household's waking up soon and Frank will have new footage to edit and problems to solve, and if Gerard isn't too busy, he sometimes comes down personally to see what Frank is up to. Now Frank thinks sunset is beautiful. His rooms are on the back of the house, facing west, and he installed overrides on the centrally-controlled shutters so he can watch from his living room as the sky turns pink and orange over the trees.

But tonight he's in his windowless lab across the hall already, parts and tools spread out around him, racing against the setting sun a time zone away in Central. It's not a complicated job, but he promised Captain Mikey that it would be done ASAP, and Frank's never broken a promise to him in almost fifteen years. He's calibrating a couple of headsets so they work with the in-ear comms already installed in the regular compound security team, and he would be done already except he's added new features since they last had temps in-house, so there's more testing to do than usual. The sooner he gets the testing done, the sooner he can get to his vid monitors to see if Gerard might hunt again with the infrareds. Frank never should have designed the lab with them so far from the testing station.

It's been days since Frank saw Gerard in the flesh. He hasn't turned on his recorder once since crossing Central's border, and without tape coming in, Frank's addicted to the streaming feed. When Gerard's logging footage every day, or in and out of the lab, Frank sometimes goes a week or more without watching him live, and even when Gerard's around but too busy or not in the mood to be recorded, Frank is usually careful, trying to limit himself to an hour or two a night, three at most, because he doesn't know if even his magic touch with tech would be enough to save him if the gerent found out that Frank could watch him that way. But since Gerard trusts his brother to keep things running smoothly while he's away, he hasn't been in touch, and the only contact Frank has with him is watching his world through the alts installed in his eyes.

Mikey comes down with the temps just in time to catch the ping Frank set to alert him to rising time at Central's compound. Thank fuck it's just an alarm and he didn't set the monitors to auto-on with Gerard's live feed, because Mikey's too familiar with Gerent Travis and Captain Gabe, knows Gerard doesn't record in the other zones, and he'd figure out pretty quickly that Frank's streaming Gerard's alts.

Frank walks the vamps through the various coms settings, double-checks with Mikey that he's dialing them in to the right channels, and keeps his back to his monitors the whole time. He almost has them out the door when Mikey stops.

"When you're in the Gerent's house, you show respect to the techs," he says to the guards, who've already turned away from Frank. "When one of them does something for you, you say 'thank you.'"

It's clear Mikey doesn't miss the look the guards shoot each other before they say, "Yes, Captain," and then, lips curled in matching sneers, "thanks, tech."

Obviously Frank isn't going to need to make space in his calendar to upgrade these guys from headsets to implants.

"I appreciate you taking the time, Frank," Mikey says after he's ushered the temps out into the hall. "And Gee said to tell you he loves the infrareds. He can't wait to get home and get a hunt on tape."

It's all Frank can do not to grin like a fool and tell Mikey how fantastic it looks on screen. The kill-vid junkies are going to throw money at them to keep the infrared videos coming. "Good," he says, keeping his feet planted against the pull of his monitors. "Great. I'm glad they work."

"Best thing we ever did, bringing you in." Mikey claps Frank on the shoulder, gives it a squeeze.

Frank can't disagree.

He was five years old when he built his first mod. When it made his mother cry, he thought he'd upset her, and only understood much later that she was simply happy her son had a skill useful to the vamps and might have a future safe from becoming a vampire's next meal.

He'd snuck outside to play while his mom was at the store and his dad was napping. A street-ragged mutt darted out in front of a speeding car, and the bumper clipped her left flank, knocking her under the tires, crushing one back leg completely. By the time his mother got home, he'd bandaged up the dog's leg and was feeding her water out of his favorite bowl.

Frank's mom had never let him keep any of the stray dogs that wandered the streets after their owners were killed, but she hadn't been able to say no to one whose blood-streaked head was cradled in her son's lap. Not when Frank looked up at her with wet eyes and said, "Her name's Princess." She helped Frank get her in the car and took her to the vet where they removed her left hind leg.

"Dogs are pretty good about adjusting," the vet promised when he let them pick her up again. She'll probably be able to walk after a fashion.

But that wasn't enough for Frank, and he built her a new leg with parts he found in the garage. It was a crude fix, clunky and ill-fitting, but over the years Frank kept improving it when he wasn't working on other projects, and by the time he left for Rutgers when he was twelve, Princess could control her bionic leg with enough precision to scratch her ears.

When he was growing up his family had scrimped, saved and stolen to get him supplies, and when he'd gotten to college it felt like he'd died and gone to tech heaven. When he finished his thesis, he didn't want to graduate, sure that whoever hired him wouldn't have have the things the school labs had for him to work with.

But the slim vampire with blood-red hair and hazel eyes that seemed able to divine all Frank's secrets who sat down across from him at the recruitment fair and said, "You're younger than I thought you'd be, but I read your work on in-eye cameras, and you're the man we need," turned out to be Eastern's gerent himself, and Frank learned that even the best tech school in the country was on meager rations compared to the royal compound. And he still gets everything he needs. Except time to check his monitors undisturbed.

"Thanks, Mikey," he says. "Best for me, too."

With one last squeeze, Mikey lets him go, and Frank's finally alone. He orders the lights to dim as he crosses to the bank of monitors against the far wall.

**


Although Gerard went to Central with on foot and with only one bodyguard, he comes back with an entourage. Unsurprisingly, given Central's dominance in the transport-tech field, they arrive in a brand-new hover, gold and black with the Central Zone's seal on the underside. Gerard jumps down first, flinging himself at his brother, nearly knocking him over, and then clinging just a little bit longer than usual. Mikey pats him on the back and gives him a curious look, but doesn't seem fazed when Gerard clutches his arm as he introduces their guests.

The hover's pilot is the vamp who came with Gabe when he got his music mod, and two more vampires climb out behind him. Frank wonders if they're mother and daughter, they look so much alike, with their dark reddish hair, olive skin, and deep brown eyes. Gerard introduces the younger looking one as Mizuki—Frank guesses she was nineteen or twenty when she was turned—and the older one as Miyako.

"They're here for you, Frank," Gerard adds as his bodyguard steps over to pick up their bags.

The last two off the shuttle wear pet's bands. Frank recognizes the girl from her last visit. She sticks close to the driver's elbow and doesn't say anything. The other pet is a man about Frank's age, near his height, and covered with a similar number of tattoos. But he's broad across the shoulders in a way Frank could never be, even if he spent as many hours in the gym as he now does in front of his monitors, and his hair is short in the back and over his ears where Frank has let his grow almost to his shoulders.

Gerard beckons the man over and introduces him directly to Mikey. "This is Pete. He's a gift from Captain Gabe. He said to tell you you'll like him."

"A pet?" Mikey says doubtfully. Plenty of vampires in Eastern have pets, but Gerard and Mikey have never been partial to keeping any themselves and they tacitly discourage the other vamps living in the compound from having any.

"I prefer Pete to pet," Pete says, flashing a toothy smile in Mikey's direction like he's not meeting a strange vampire for the first time. Like Mikey doesn't own him now. Frank would count him brave, but maybe he's just really good at reading the temperature of a room, because Mikey actually smiles back at his impudence.

"Pete," Mikey says, holding his hand out to shake—an old-fashioned gesture that confuses Pete for a moment before he reciprocates. Now it's Gerard's turn to look at his brother askance, but Mikey doesn't even seem to notice.


When Mizuki and Miyako come down to Frank's lab the next night, he's surprised to hear they want to volunteer for alts that are barely beyond the circuit-building phase. But he was hashing out the theory with Gerard a few nights before he left, and apparently Gerard was excited enough about the idea to brag on Frank's inventions in Mizuki and Miyako's hearing.

It was trouble with human trafficking along the border with Southern that gave Frank the idea originally. The kidnappers were working during the day to avoid Mikey's soldiers, and Mikey made an off-hand comment about wishing he could see through the eyes of the humans he was sending out to gather information. At the time Frank fixed them up with paired goggles—cameras on the humans' and monitors on the vamps'—but the idea of figuring out a way to get one person's visual information into another person's brain without external monitors kept niggling at Frank and wouldn't let go. He's been working on it for months, and was just starting to think of asking Gerard for a body to test the hookups on, but apparently he gets volunteers instead. No matter how much he protests that he's nowhere near ready for conscious subjects, the vamps counter that they don't care about the risk.

"Just listen to their story, Frank," Gerard breaks into the middle of Frank's third set of arguments. "You'll want to help them."

"I didn't say I wouldn't—"

"Mizuki is my little sister," Miyako interrupts.

"Only three minutes younger," Mizuki adds with a smile that says they've told this story more than once. "Not that you'd know that now."

"My little sister. The other half of me. And she was taken right from under my nose."

Which goes a way to explaining Gerard's clinging to Mikey in the driveway. Despite the fact that Mikey's totally kick-ass and respected by every vamp Frank's ever met, Gerard is still totally overprotective of him.

"I was the one who went off with the boy with the pretty hair while you were getting us drinks. It wasn't your fault."

"I shouldn't have let you—"

Trying to get things back on track, Gerard takes up the story. "It was the old days when we were still underground. It took Miyako almost twenty years to find her sister."

Frank had gathered that from the way Miyako looks twice her twin's age. "So if you can see through the other one's eyes, you'll never lose each other again?" he asks.

"Exactly." Their voices blend perfectly.


Miyako insists on going under the knife first, her sister by her side watching Frank's every move with a scowl on her face. As if that weren't nerve-wracking enough, Gerard has pulled Frank's lab stool over from its place by his electron microscope so he can have a view of the proceedings too. It shouldn't be any more stressful than any of the scores of other times Frank's done this—he's only starting with the camera alts, after all—but he knows the receivers are next, and he hasn't even tried them on a corpse yet.

Then, as he's setting up his tray practically under Gerard's nose, he realizes that he might notice Frank's using the same camera Gerard has in his own eye. Only this time he knows it has streaming because that's the whole point. Gerard doesn't seem to be paying attention to anything but his guests though.

"You ready?" Frank asks Miyako to cover the shaking in his hands.

"Ready," she answers, squeezing her sister's arm as Frank lowers the retractor to her exposed eyeball.

Frank falls into the rhythm of his work, adjusting to the split vision in his goggles—five-times magnification on the left, feed from his fiberoptic camera on the right—the muscles in his hands making tiny adjustments as he hooks lab-grown nerves to bio-nerves, able somehow that he never could explain to work on this scale directly instead of being stuck with the gross movements the human hand should be capable of. Calmed by the routine, Frank realizes that even with tech-enhanced vampire vision, Gerard could never have identified the circuits anyway. The whole thing is hardly larger than a flea, and the differences between this design and the camera-only version are literally microscopic. That, at least for now, is not an alt Gerard has found a reason to desire.

The camera installations go smoothly, and Frank sends the vampires off to hunt with their host while he calibrates the receivers which he'll install tomorrow night. Gerard beams at him as they file out, stopping to give the back of Frank's neck a squeeze, and something about it reminds him so much of his father that Frank's heart lurches.

"You okay?" Gerard asks, bending fractionally closer so he can look Frank in the eyes.

"Yeah," Frank says, shrugging him off. "I'm fine." Frank has little enough desire to examine the complicated feelings he has for his gerent when he's by himself. When Gerard is looking right at him, he has none.

"Remember to sleep at some point. And eat something," Gerard says. Frank sometimes thinks Gerard is distrustful of how easily a human can ignore his body's needs. Which is either ironic or makes perfect sense, given that what scares humans most about vampires is how utterly driven their needs make them. Frank doubts however, that vampires find a human's relationship to his needs nearly as fascinating as Frank finds a vampire's.

"I will," Frank says, because he always tries to be well rested and fed before doing surgery. And he won't be able to do much with Miyako and Mizuki's tech once they're sleeping anyway.

Gerard pats his arm, says, "Good," and follows his guests out the door.


The next night doesn't go as well. Frank has no problems with the installation, but neither Miyako nor Mizuki can see through her sister's camera. With the x-ray and infrared it just superimposes over the body's visual input, but with two different image sources that would give you double vision, so Frank designed it so you could see the other person's input only when you closed your eyes. Instead, the vamps are seeing blackness. He does what adjustments he can with them there, but as daylight approaches, he has to admit defeat.

"Well," Gerard says clapping Frank on the shoulder heartily, "back to the drawing board." He has the false jovial tone of Frank's least favorite professor from his early days in tech school. The tone the guy got just before he'd tell you that you read the wrong chapters and got an F on your midterm.

"I'm sorry," Frank says again, though he's said it a hundred times tonight already. "It might be that the sensors need the light stimulus on the optic nerve to fire images at the brain, or—"

"You'll figure it out, Frank," Gerard says. It sounds much more like a command than a reassurance.

Before Frank can say anything else, the three vampires have melted out into the hall.

He stays up all day going over the data, his designs, old notes from earlier inventions, and even hacks a remote access to the Rutgers system to see if any new research is being done there, but he doesn't have answers good enough to satisfy Gerard and his guests by the time the sun sets again. When no one has come to his lab by an hour after nightfall, Frank checks Gerard's live feed. Just from the quality and angle of the light, Frank knows Gerard's at his desk, and then a ledger slides into view, numbers in long columns that Gerard taps idly with a pen. Not on his way down, then. Exhausted, stomach growling, Frank goes to his apartment and makes himself something to eat.

The plan is to finish his dinner—lunch? Breakfast? Frank isn't sure how many meals he skipped—and go back to the lab to keep working. The twins probably want to get home, and Gerard promised them that Frank could deliver. He's sure he's almost there, the answer's just around the corner. Instead, Gerard finds him some time later curled into a ball in the corner of his sofa, sound asleep, throw pillow clutched to his chest.

"What are you doing here?" Gerard asks once Frank's responded enough to the hand on his ankle to actually open his eyes.

"Shit," Frank says, trying to scramble at least semi-upright. "I was gonna go back after I ate something, but somehow I fell asleep." He scrubs at his face with both hands, gets his feet on the floor. "I'll just—"

But Gerard sits down in Frank's armchair, knees casually splayed, one arm flung out to the side. "Surely your bed is more comfortable. And warmer. If you're going to make a habit of sleeping on the couch, you need a blanket."

"A— what?" Frank says. The lab. The twins. The tech. What the fuck, blankets?

"I didn't mean to bother you. I thought you were usually awake at this hour."

Frank doesn't have a fucking clue what time it is, but if Gerard's up, it's fair to say it's an hour Frank's usually awake.

"Yeah," Frank says. "I— Lemme get some coffee, and I can get back to work. I didn't mean to make Miyako and Mizuki wait."

"Oh," Gerard says, waving the hand he'd had resting on his stomach. "They all went home at sunset. The twins say thank you by the way."

Frank rubs his face again, tugging his ears this time too for good measure. "The alts work now?" he asks. He's ninty-nine percent sure he couldn't have accidentally done something remotely to make them functional, but there's always a tiny chance.

"No." Gerard stands and heads for Frank's kitchen area. "But they appreciate you not making them wait until you'd done more tests before you let them try out the new tech. Now they know they'll be first in line when you get it working."

"Okay," Frank says, parsing through that. "They will. Absolutely." The twins aren't mad at Gerard. Gerard isn't mad at Frank. Gerard is… Gerard is pulling the bag of coffee beans out of Frank's freezer and walking them over to where his grinder and coffeemaker are sitting on the counter. "What are you doing?" Frank blurts.

"You said you needed coffee. I fucking miss coffee. It's not the same if I drink it now."

To the best of his memory, Frank's never seen any of the vampires eat or drink anything but blood. Apparently they can, though. "I can make it," Frank says, finally propelling himself to his feet. Jesus. Twenty-four hours without food or sleep leaves him with a worse hangover than an evening spent with a bottle of Jack. He used to be able to pull all-nighters, take a nap and get up good as new. Fuck getting old.

"I've got it. You've got a good old-fashioned setup here. Sit." He points at the kitchen table. Frank does as he's told.

"Mikey and I used to drink so much coffee we had to shoplift beans." Gerard stops talking while the grinder roars and shivers under his palm, but continues as soon as it stops. "That was my first clue something was wrong, actually. He mostly slept all day anyway. But he stopped drinking coffee."

Not that Gerard never babbles—he absolutely does—but usually it's about some project, or something he's asked Frank about. He doesn't usually talk about himself, and Frank is having trouble following. "Mikey stopped drinking coffee?"

Gerard ignores the question while he gets everything ready. He knows his way around the machine like it's his own, and also where Frank keeps his mugs and which is his favorite. He does have to ask how much sugar Frank wants, which stops Frank heading too far down the track of certainty that Gerard has installed cameras in Frank's apartment. Though he's still gonna check once Gerard leaves. Not that the gerent doesn't have the right to monitor anywhere in his compound, but Frank would like to know where any cameras are. And where Gerard got them, since Frank knows the location of all the ones he's made.

"At least they didn't take him," Gerard says, once he's got the water in and there's nothing else to do. He's not really answering the question, but Frank senses he's not changing the subject either. "I don't know how Miyako survived that."

"Oh," Frank says, finally connecting the dots. It should take more than just the smell of coffee to wake him up, but the human brain is fucking weird. "Mikey was turned first?"

"I was busy at work, commuting to the city every day, but I could have paid more attention to who he was hanging out with. It was just starting to get trendy, getting vamps to turn you, and a lot of the kids in the music scene were doing it."

The coffee is starting to drip in earnest now, a steady stream of rich brown liquid pouring into the glass carafe. Frank's nose is twitching. He's not the only one. But Gerard sits down in the chair closest to the counter, his back to the pot. "It was three or four days before I noticed anything different."

"Mikey was a musician?" He's never asked to have a music mod, said anything about Frank's drum kit the few times he's been in Frank's apartment. Frank's seen him with the bulge of a music player in his pocket, watched through Gerard's eyes as he bobbed his head to an unheard beat, but it never occurred to Frank that Mikey actually played.

"He fooled around a little, but mostly he was a fan. Did some promotions stuff. I don't know. I wasn't paying enough attention." Gerard's sleeves tonight are longer than his arms, and he tugs the right one down with his left hand, folding it over his fingertips, then pushing them out through the fold.

He does it again, and a third time, before Frank asks, "So how did you get turned?"

"Smells like the coffee's ready," Gerard says.

Before Gerard can continue waiting on him in his own kitchen, Frank jumps up and pours coffee into the prepared mug. "You made enough for ten people," he says. "Do you want some? Or is it not the same in that way where it's gross?"

"I'll just smell yours." Gerard lifts his nose a little and sniffs in example. It's just a joke, a bit of conversational byplay, but even from the other side of his monitors, Frank recognizes the angle of Gerard's head, the slight movement he makes as he scents his prey.

Frank's fingers are suddenly ice against the heat of the mug, and the skin on his neck and shoulders creeps with goosebumps. Can Gerard taste coffee in the blood of his victims if they've been drinking it? Can he smell it on their skin? Does the caffeine cross over to buzz in his brain?

"Frank?" Gerard says. And he's sniffing again, but not playing this time. Sniffing like he smells something he likes. "Frank? Why are you afraid?"

His habit of threading two fingers through the handle of his mug saves Frank from dropping it, but when he lurches in shock, he splashes coffee down one arm and all over the floor.

"Nothing. I'm not— Ow! Fuck." He's not afraid. Not exactly. Gerard wouldn't—

Faster than Frank can see, Gerard's out of his chair, kneeling at Frank's feet, dropping a towel he got from somewhere onto the spill of coffee, and cradling Frank's burned wrist in both hands. Lifting it toward his—

"What?" Frank says helplessly as Gerard's mouth closes on the reddened flesh.

But there's no prick of fangs, no pain, just a gentle drawing sensation, and the weirdly cool press of a pointed tongue. It soothes the burn, not like ice, but like the good aloe lotion Frank still buys because it was always in the bathroom when he was little. "What?" he says again, his voice shaking badly.

The suction increases, pulling Frank's skin against the smooth, flat surfaces of Gerard's human teeth for just long enough to make Frank's guts twist hot and low, then with a last lick Gerard releases him. Thank fuck he stands after that, so he's not face to face with Frank's totally inappropriate boner.

"Better?" Gerard asks, eyes searching Frank's for something Frank doesn't begin to have the brain power to guess at right now.

"I— What did—" Frank bends his wrist, twisting his hand to pull at the skin, but it doesn't hurt anymore. When he looks, the redness is gone.

"It's an enzyme," Gerard says, taking Frank's mug out of his lax grip, setting it on the counter. "Healing properties. Breaks down almost instantly if you take it out of our mouths though. The US army tried mining vampires for their spit back in the 1960s for use on the battlefields, but all it got them was a bunch of pissed off vamps."

Before Gerard's time—if Mikey was turned in the vampire-trend population swell before the revolution, it's fifteen or twenty years before they were even born—but Gerard is full of anecdotes about vampire history, and probably knows as much about 1950 or 1880 as he does about 2040. "Huh," Frank says, flexing his wrist again. Were the labs like Frank's? Probably not. No computers back then, at least not anything like what he has now. They were probably in bunkers deep underground somewhere, damp walls, flickering lights, vampires chained to metal tables while men in fatigues with short-clipped hair pried their jaws open with steel tools, dripped blood into their mouths to get the juices flowing, sucked—

"Maybe coffee's a bad idea," Gerard interrupts. "Why don't you go to bed. Get some real sleep."

"I'm fine," Frank says. He has questions. Things he wants Gerard to tell him. "I can sleep later."

"Now," Gerard says. His grip on Frank's arm isn't tight, but Frank knows he couldn't break it. "Sleep."

Frank lets Gerard push him toward his bedroom.

**



Frank sleeps for sixteen hours and then eats like he hasn't seen food in a month. He's going to go back to the lab, but he remembers what Gerard said about Mikey being in the music scene back in the days before, and ends up heading for the closet in the hall and pulling out his uncle's old guitar. He never got very good at it, since his life at Rutgers didn't leave him free time to practice and school holidays didn't give him much time to improve, but he plays often enough now that his fingers remember the chords, and playing clears his head, lets circuit designs work themselves out.

After making sure the hall door is bolted in case any insomniac vamps are wandering around, Frank opens his shutters and windows to the day and sits himself in a patch of autumn sunlight, trusting the breeze will keep him cool. His Dad's drums are sitting in the corner, better than the guitar for head-clearing when Frank's frustrated or pissed off, or for making him feel closer to his dad when he needs that, but today Frank wants the precision of the pain in his fingertips, not a full-body workout.

The E string needs replacing, and as Frank removes the old one, fits the new one in its place, he wonders. What did Mikey dabble in? Frank can't see him behind a kit. Maybe guitar. Or keyboards. He and Gerard both have the fingers to play keys. There isn't a keyboard in the compound as far as Frank knows, but they could get one. Frank could build one if he got the right parts. Bob, who comes around sometimes to help Frank with sound effects on the movies, plays the drums, and they've jammed together a few times, but Frank misses the family get togethers where they'd play for hours, until his fingers and wrists protested. His family was always so careful, avoiding the places vamps tended to feed, staying in after sunset whenever they could, Frank always figured they'd be around forever. But his mom never thought to worry about a corner-store at nine-thirty in the morning, and walked right into a robbery. One night they were all together, celebrating Frank's twenty-first birthday, and three days later she was dead. Frank's dad was taken by a vamp outside a bar less than a week after the funeral.

"He didn't want to live without your mother," Frank's uncle told him, like that was supposed to be comforting. Frank was skeptical of the theory, but after that recklessness seemed to run in the family. By the time he turned twenty-three, Frank was the only Iero left.

He thought for a while that he'd never be able to play again, but keeping music locked away didn't make him miss them any less, and eventually his guitar and then the drums made it back into his living space. He should ask Mikey if he wants to play sometime.

Once he's gotten the guitar back in working order, Frank picks out the song his mom used to sing to him when he had trouble sleeping. He doesn't get it quite right, but he does it again, and then again, until it sounds the way he remembers it. The sun is dipping below the tops of the trees when he puts the instrument carefully back in its case. His brain hasn't solved the vision problem, but he's got an idea for a change in the nerve-conduction matrix he's working on.


When his lab door swishes open a few hours later, Frank has his eyes glued to the viewscreen of his spectroscope.

"I brought you something," Gerard says, and Frank spins on his stool.

Gerard is standing just inside the doorway, a small, plump, grey-haired woman limp in his arms. But Frank looks closer, at the raw wound on her neck, the healthy glow of Gerard's skin which is completely absent in hers, and corrects himself. A small, plump, grey-haired body in his arms.

"Oh," Frank says. "Right." He's used to it now, Gerard, or sometimes one of the others, bringing him bodies. But it had been a shock at first. In the post-revolution world, fresh corpses are not hard to come by. The prey doesn't have a choice about their bodies being used for science, though their families can claim them afterwards if they choose. In college, if Frank wanted to dissect an eyeball or plastinate the nerves to the heart, he could go down to cold storage, pull open one of the drawers marked with a new-haul tag, and get what he wanted. Here, they come fresh.

"She didn't have glasses, so I hope her eyes are good enough for what you need," Gerard continues, moving to place the body on Frank's dissecting table.

Even though humans aren't allowed alts, the vamps don't bother policing vision mods as long as they only correct short-sightedness or replace the need for reading glasses. It's not always easy to tell how old a victim was, but this one looks old enough Frank's pretty sure she's had some kind of surgery. Though who knows. Maybe whatever it is will provide him with the key he needs to get the damn feedback to work.

"Thanks. I'm sure she'll be fine."

He expects Gerard to leave then, go meet with his brother or work on one of his many projects, but instead Gerard gestures toward the trio of comfortable chairs in the corner. "Will it bother you if I stay?" he asks.

"I need to finish what I was doing here," Frank says. "Not sure how exciting it'll be."

"That's okay," Gerard answers. He pulls a small pad out of the inside pocket of his jacket, grabs one of the pens off Frank's desk as he passes, and settles himself. "You don't have to entertain me."

It takes a while to get used to having someone else there, but after the third time Frank looks over and finds Gerard engrossed in whatever he's doing in his notebook, he starts to relax a little, and he eventually loses himself again in the maze of axons and dendrites on his viewscreen.

"Yes!" Frank hisses when he finally gets conduction across as well as down his sample matrix, and he jumps when Gerard answers, "Success?"

"Fuck, you scared me." Frank clutches his chest with hands aching from hours of tiny movements.

"So I see." Gerard's nostrils flare under eyes wide with amusement.

Ignoring the way that doesn't exactly make his heart stop racing, Frank turns his gaze to his dissecting table and notices that the body's gone. "Where—?"

"I put her in the refrigerator. You looked busy."

"Sorry," Frank says. It was rude to ignore his gerent's wishes, even if they were only implied by the gift of a body and weren't explicit orders. "I wanted to finish what I was doing before my sample atrophied."

"No rush," Gerard says. "I told them it took four years before you got the infrareds to compensate for a vamp's fluctuating body temperature, but that was totally worth the wait. They aren't expecting miracles."

It feels all backwards to have done live tests first. Usually they're the last step, vamps brought to him in shackles, sentenced to go under his knife for crimes Frank doesn't always understand. It was disconcerting as hell at first, cutting open someone's head while they spit invective in his face, but the supply of criminals is what had allowed him to move from mods to alts: x-ray vision, infrared—move beyond cameras to tech worked into the vampires' brains that changed how they could see.

"I'll get to it tomorrow night," Frank says, letting his eyes settle on the fridge for a moment to fix it in his mental agenda.

"I used her as a model," Gerard tells him, "so it's not like she went to waste."

He was drawing, then, not making lists. "Well, that's—" Frank doesn't know what the expected response is to learning he was manipulating human nerves while a vampire king sat behind him using a freshly drained corpse for life drawing practice, so he trails off. He mostly just wants to see the sketches. He's only ever seen Gerard's art on his monitors.

"I'd better get upstairs," Gerard says, tucking his notebook away.


He doesn't return the next night, but he's back the night after that, and the next one, and then two nights later. If Frank's busy, Gerard mostly stays quiet, but when Frank's just puttering, Gerard asks him questions.

"Is everything okay with— everything?" Frank finally asks when he's seen Gerard more in two weeks than he's seen him in any given two-month time in fifteen years.

"Sure. Mikey's just, he and Pete have been getting to know each other."

Frank doesn't see what that has to do with him.

"He's a good pet apparently."

And oh. Oh. Getting to know each other in the kind of way where Gerard's presence would be cock blocking.

"Have you ever had a pet?" Frank braves asking.

"When I first became Gerent. It was expected. But when someone's in your bed because it's required of them— It's not really my thing."

Frank cannot imagine being in Gerard's bed and not being one-hundred percent enthusiastic about it. But he's a tech, and that's not in a tech's job description, so he can't really put himself in a pet's shoes. Besides which, it's not like he's going to tell Gerard that.

"Right," he says, nodding a little.

"You're more interesting than my empty study," Gerard says. "But if I'm bothering you, I can do something else."

"No," Frank says. Gerard in person is actually less distracting than Gerard on his monitors most nights. "No. It's fine."

Gerard does come down less after a while, three or four nights a week instead of five or six, but Frank doesn't get to go back to watching him via his alts, because half the time he doesn't show, Pete comes down instead.

He and Pete sometimes watch old movies, or Pete drags him up to pester Gerard's mechanic, Ray, into letting them sit in Gerard's cars, where Pete spins elaborate road-trip fantasies peppered with anecdotes from the traveling he's actually done. He makes it sound exciting, and while Frank's in the passenger seat, he feels a longing to see the country. But as soon as he's back in his lab, or on his sofa with his stuff around him, Frank wonders why he'd want to be anywhere else.

**



Despite a promising start with the old woman Gerard brought him, and several other attempts on other corpses, Frank doesn't come up with anything he thinks is worth trying on a vamp, though he does use a vampire Mikey's men brought in to test his nerve matrix. He hasn't found any practical applications yet, but it's satisfying to watch all the muscles in the vamp's back twitch at once when Frank applies a pinpoint electric current. When Mikey tells Frank that the guy is here because he tried to burn another vamp's pet alive, it's even more satisfying to watch him writhe and scream in Mikey's hold when Frank turns the current up to max.

"That worse than having your hand cut off, Karl?" Mikey asks the vamp once he's stopped screeching.

"No!" Karl cries, but from the look of panic in his eyes and the way he barely flinched when Frank lifted the skin off his back to lay the matrix down, Frank suspects he's lying to get out of another round of shocks.

"You okay leaving it in, Frankie?" Mikey asks. "Karl didn't learn much from his last punishment. His hand grew back in a couple of weeks." Mikey looks at Frank's current box. "And have you got a spare one of those?"

"Sure," Frank says. Vampires drain humans to survive. But a burned corpse doesn't yield any blood; that's just killing for fun. Karl needs to learn a lesson.

"If you can't think of any other use for this matrix thing, I think we've got one." Mikey keeps one hand in the restraining harness he brought his prisoner down in, and holds the other out for Frank's current box. "Let me know if I can bring you any other repeat offenders."


All other projects get put on hold when the first infrared video they release gets more downloads in twenty-four hours than any of their other titles have gotten in a week. Frank's working every hour he can making circuits and installing them in the group of vampires they use for hunt vids, though Gerard does come down and threaten to physically carry Frank to bed when he doesn't think he's getting enough rest. Whether it's fortunately or unfortunately Frank can't decide, but he never actually makes good on his threat.

Three weeks gets all the vid vamps upgraded, and then they're working flat-out getting the video processed. Bob comes in to help, and Frank misses having Gerard to himself, asking about Frank's designs, or just sketching quietly in the corner. With Bob around, he's either hovering and demanding constant status updates, or Frank won't see him for days. But when they break for food, Bob will come over to Frank's apartment and kick around on the drums, and sometimes they'll get Pete to come down and play with them, rapping along to Frank's noodling on the guitar, or keeping ragged time on a bass he dug up somewhere, and their company mostly makes up for Gerard's mercurial moods.

Things finally calm down again in January when demand for vids settles back to normal, and Western's gerent, Greta, hires Bob away to work on one of her pet projects. Gerard heads out on a trip around the zone, checking in with his lieutenants, showing his face, reminding the vampires that they have a gerent to answer to. And probably, if other years are anything to go by, adding to his classic car collection along the way. As with his trip to Central in the fall, he doesn't bother recording his kills, so Frank's back to watching his live feed when he's got the lab to himself. Except instead of staring with rapt attention the way he used to, Frank often just has it on in the background, trying to recreate the feeling of having Gerard in the lab with him. Since he can only see what Gerard's seeing and can't actually look at Gerard, though, it's not the same.

**



Winter in Eastern can be cold and snow-bound or grey and wet, but this year is combining the two, leaving the ground a miserable muddy quagmire half the time and slick with black ice the rest. The recordings are coming in with so many slips and falls that Frank asks Gerard if they shouldn't just capitalize on it, try to make the vids funny on purpose.

"There was a show when me and Mikes were little." Gerard closes his eyes and tips his head back, making his throat impossibly long. Frank tries very hard not to think about how much he'd like to bite it. It helps remembering that Gerard is a vampire and could kill him in seconds.

"TV show?" Frank asks when Gerard seems frozen.

"Yeah. These guys would like, punch each other in the nuts 'til they puked. Jackass. That was it. It was really popular. This is kind of the same thing, I guess."

"Kind of?" The video Frank has cued up right now shows a man trying to run across an icy parking lot, his legs flying out from under him, making him skid halfway under a car. The vampire has to pull him out to get to his neck. From the shake in the camera it's clear she's laughing.

"Either way," Gerard says, "do it. You always make the right decisions about this shit."

The comedy vids don't do as well as the infrareds, but they do gain a rabidly loyal following. Frank still prefers the straight-up hunts, though, and is grateful when spring finally arrives.

**



Now that Pete and Mikey are past their honeymoon period and winter's over, Gerard rarely comes to Frank's domain before nine, and more often it's after midnight, but Frank's just pulling his lunch off the stove a little after seven when the alarm on his wrist chimes softly to let him know someone's in his lab. Before he has time to give the voice command to turn on the screen in the corner of the kitchen to see who it is, Gerard's there in the doorway, nostrils flaring, one hand holding a rolled sheaf of papers, the other fluttering excitedly around his face. "Frank," he says, "Frankie. You're here."

Frank doesn't say of course he's here or ask where else he might be—Gerard sometimes forgets his own orders, like that Frank isn't supposed to leave the compound unless accompanied by one of the Ways or any two of the six lieutenants Gerard's decided he trusts with his most valuable human. Frank would never take advantage of his forgetfulness, but he doesn't want to remind him of it, either.

"Yes," Frank says, setting his bowl of soup and toast to the side so he can give Gerard his full attention.

"No, no," Gerard says, when he notices. "Eat. Let me show you what I found." He gestures Frank toward the kitchen table, and sits down across from him.

Frank had assumed Gerard's papers were his own drawings of some new tech he wanted Frank to try, but when he unrolls them, it turns out to be an old magazine of some kind. There's a figure all dressed in red on the cover, and, as best Frank can tell upside down and with Gerard obsessively smoothing his hands over the page, the words The Amazing Spider-Man emblazoned across the top.

"What is it?" Frank asks when Gerard just looks at him expectantly, hands still restless.

"It's a comic book! Spiderman. He has these great web shooters."

So, tech after all. Frank keeps his smile to himself. He can't imagine why a vampire would need to shoot spiderwebs. Probably just because Gerard wants to know if he can. Gerard is flipping through the pages, clearly looking for something. When he finds it, his face lights up. "See?" he says, spinning the book around so Frank can look too, but being careful to keep it out of range of Frank's soup.

"You want me to make you web shooters?" Frank peers at the picture. The red-clad figure is bound to a hulking shape by a silvery thread spreading out into a net, his free hand outstretched with a second thread emerging from his wrist.

"Maybe for Mikey. That seems something more— A captain might find that more useful."

Frank can see how an old-west sheriff like in some of the movies salvaged from his dad's hard drive when Gerard had taken him to get his parents' things would benefit from web shooters, but Mikey has fangs, and hands strong enough to rip out a man's windpipe as easily as Frank lifts his spoon to his mouth. He doesn't need webbing to catch a human. And no matter how clever Frank is with tech, there simply isn't any substance on earth that both can be stored as a liquid and has the tensile strength to contain a vamp that doesn't want to be contained.

"Mmmm," Frank says, using his mouth full of toast to mask his skepticism.

"And look!" Gerard flips to a new page and flashes it at Frank, but then turns it back so he can find something else before Frank's eyes can even register what he's seeing.

Frank shovels food in his mouth as fast as he can in case Gerard wants to decamp to the lab and get started right away, but as he watches, Gerard's page turning slows, and he stops on a double-page spread that seems to be a fight scene, tracing one finger over the lines of ink. "I had so many of these when I was— before," he says softly enough Frank has to strain to hear him. Gerard doesn't look up. "I even drew. Not these, but—"

"But…" Frank says softly when Gerard doesn't continue.

"It was a long time ago." Gerard shuts the book and pushes it aside. "And that wasn't why I came, actually. We can look at that later. Gerent Ulrich wants to hire your services. Infrared mods. Can you be ready in an hour?"

"Infrared's an alt," Frank says. No matter how many times Frank tells him, Gerard doesn't seem to get the distinction between alts and mods. "Alts are wired into your nerves. Mods are like Captain Gabe's music player, or the universal key in Mikey's hand."

"An alt," Gerard murmurs, and then at a more normal volume says, "So, an hour?"

Infrared is getting more popular amongst Gerard's friends, and Frank mentally catalogues the contents of his lab. "I have everything I need," he says once he's sure that's true. "He can come any time."

"We'll have to pack it up," Gerard corrects him. "Gerent Ulrich doesn't leave his compound. I'll send Pete down to help you."

Frank wishes Gerard would stay and help him, or stay and watch, talk to him some more, but Gerard probably has a lot to attend to so soon after sundown, especially if they're going to travel tonight. "I do want to see the—" Frank struggles for a second to recall the word— "comic book," he says. "I'm not sure how practical— But the book itself. Will you show it to me?"

Gerard's face lights up again and he puts the book carefully in the inside pocket of his waistcoat. "We can do it as soon as we're back. I'm not letting Ulrich get his filthy hands on it."

By the time Frank's blinked, Gerard is gone.

Frank keeps his lab meticulously organized, so he would actually rather not have Pete's help with packing, but he doesn't mind the company.

With uncharacteristically wild hair and a huge-ass grin on his face, Pete shows up about fifteen minutes after Gerard disappears. "Gerard said you need me?" he says.

Frank tries not to be jealous that it looks like Gerard had to drag Pete out of bed to get him here. At least Frank is sure the one he dragged him from wasn't Gerard's. Gerard may never have taken Frank to his bed, but Frank has never seen him take any other human there, either.

"You can lay out those cases on the table," Frank says, shaking off all thoughts of beds and bedmates. Pete does as he's told.

Pete's a lot more help than Frank expected, and they get the packing done in just over half an hour. He seems to know quite a lot about tech, and more than a pet has reason to about mods.

"I was in engineering-school for a while," Pete answers when Frank asks him about it. "But before I could qualify for tech status, my dad was killed, and my mom was sick. She needed me. Gerent Travis' scouts found me when I was trying to hitchhike back to campus, and took me to the compound. I was Captain Gabe's for a while, and then they sent me here. So, no more school for me."

Frank files that information away to think about. With a tech-obsessed gerent who doesn't place much stock in the status to be gained by having pets, there might be some kind of apprentice program to be worked out here. "How did I not know this before?" Frank asks.

"More interesting things to talk about than failed dreams," Pete answers, tone suspiciously light.

"But—" Frank says.

"Gotta get back upstairs. Hope you have a good trip south. That's the one zone I've never been to."

That reminds Frank he never got to hear the end of Pete's story about the time Gabe took him to Western Zone to see Gerent Greta, but Pete's gone before Frank can ask for the rest of the tale.

With the twenty minutes or so Frank has left after Pete leaves, he double checks his cases to make sure he hasn't forgotten anything, and packs a bag of snacks, because vamps are notorious for forgetting that humans need actual food to keep them going. Gerard doesn't take offense at being reminded, but Gerent Ulrich is an unknown quantity. There's no time to check Gerard's live feed. He's most likely doing something boring to watch, like organizing things for the trip, and he could come down early to make sure Frank is ready. It's not worth the risk of getting caught. That doesn't stop Frank from imagining him sitting in his favorite chair, or at the desk in his office, looking at his comic book again, his long narrow fingers stroking the pages the way he sometimes strokes Mikey's hair. The way he sometimes touches his own skin after Frank's opened it up, put tech inside, and watched it heal seamlessly.

His eyes closed, lost in thought, Frank doesn't hear Gerard come in.

"Are you ready?"

Gerard's voice is pitched low, in a way Frank suspects is meant to avoid alarming him, but Frank's eyes fly open and his heart starts racing anyway, because there is nothing reassuring about suddenly finding yourself less than arm's reach from a vampire, not even (or perhaps especially) one you're currently envisioning yourself in the arms of.

It's disconcerting seeing the blink-shift into x-ray vision from the outside and not as a change in monitor view, but the trigger mechanism is Frank's design and he'd recognize it anywhere. Whatever Gerard sees—the rush of Frank's blood through the arteries in his neck, the valves of his heart snapping open and closed, something else Frank's never caught on screen because it only makes sense in a vampire's brain maybe—puts a slow, sly smile on Gerard's face. Frank doesn't step back, doesn't tilt his head in supplication, doesn't get to his knees or close his eyes. With every ounce of will he has, he says, "Ready," and holds Gerard's gaze.

"Good," Gerard says, voice still low. "It's a long drive."

Frank breaks then, turning toward the pile of cases, moving to carry them up to the car, but Gerard's hand on his shoulder stills him. "The boys will get those," he says. "You just have one last thing to do."

Before they'd go see his grandparents, Frank's mom always said, Potty, Frankie, it's a long drive. He knows that's not what Gerard means, but he can't think—

"Here," is the only warning he gets before Gerard's unwinding a pale silk scarf from around his wrist and wrapping it over Frank's eyes. His eyes.

Frank feels his lips pursing, ready to ask what Gerard is doing, but there's no air in his lungs to make a sound. He tells his hands to move, take the blindfold off, but they only twitch uselessly at his side. Frank has seen things no human brain should have to process, but he's never been so scared as he is right now, having his vision taken away.

"Alright," Gerard says, his voice steady, normal, like he's just handed Frank some tool he'd asked for. "Now we're ready."

Latching onto the words, Gerard's tone, Frank manages to drag air past the cotton filling his throat—it's a blindfold, not a gag, Frankie. You can breathe—and move enough to grab for Gerard pressed close behind him. He gets a handful of stiff brocade, the waistcoat Gerard's still wearing, and he clings to it, not at all mindful of the expensive cloth. He concentrates on the feeling of Gerard's hand as it traces from Frank's shoulder down to the twist of fingers and fabric, giving him a hand to hold instead. That unlocks Frank's legs, but his heart's still rabbit fast in his chest as Gerard starts them walking forward.

Darkness is not the problem, Frank reminds himself. He spends plenty of time in the dark, and can navigate his lab by memory, proprioception, touch. And Gerard hasn't let him go. Is still holding his hand, has an arm around Frank's shoulders. Frank breathes, brings his lab to mind. The stainless steel table they must be passing on his right, the bank of monitors to the left, the servers in their cooling towers against the far wall. The door in front of them, seven steps away, now six, five—

But somewhere Frank miscalculated, and he stumbles at the threshold where the tiles in his lab butt up against the thick carpet in the hall beyond, and his heart drops before swooping up to choke him. The noise Gerard makes huffs in Frank's ear, and that shouldn't be his best clue that he's still standing, but it is. And then Gerard's letting go, making Frank whimper as his only solid point of reference is removed, but there's no time to protest further before Frank's lifted off the ground completely, one whipcord arm beneath his knees, another across his back. Somehow Frank's flailing arms find their way around Gerard's neck without causing any damage. Frank can't say he's never imagined similar scenarios, but there was more sex in them, and less of the sensation of drowning under a waterfall.

He concentrates on breathing. Oxygen in, carbon dioxide out, blood swirling around his alveoli in its capillaries, gas exchange happening without him even thinking about it. He wonders if one day it will be possible to make alts sensitive enough to see that happening. Would seeing that make a vampire hesitate, fascinated? Or would it just make him hungrier? Make him sink his teeth in faster, suck harder, swallow more greedily. Frank breathes again, smells ink and cigarettes and the scent that's just Gerard which Frank can best describe as wintery, though that's not even close, not really. He feels his heart rate slow. He wonders if Gerard is still watching it. 

"Why—" he starts, trusting his lips to work now, but before he can finish his question, Gerard stops walking, says, "The four cases by the door in Frank's lab, and be careful with them." Clearly he's not talking to Frank. Two figures brush past Frank's feet, heading back the way Gerard came, and Gerard hitches him higher in his grip and starts moving again, gait choppier this time. Frank realizes they're climbing. Twenty-one stairs. Odd number. Red, black, green and gold carpet, more worn in the center than at the edges. Two and a half inches of dark wood either side of the runner, hairline gap between the step and the baseboards where the house has settled over the years, starting about half-way up. But Frank can't remember if it's the ninth step or the tenth, or maybe the eleventh. He should be able to remember. 

"Why—" he says again. Why the blindfold, why is Gerard carrying him, why is this more frightening than watching Gerard hunt and kill? 

"Gerent Ulrich," Gerard says, as though he knows what Frank means. As though that explains everything. They're at the top of the stairs now, ten more feet to the front door, past Gerard's office on the left and the front parlor on the right. 

Frank isn't sure if Gerard will put him down now that they've navigated the worst of the obstacles, but he keeps Frank in his arms, murmurs thank you to someone—Mikey, probably, since the words are tinged with more affection than he uses with the others—and Frank feels a gust of fresh air against his cheeks.

Suddenly aware of how much of his body must be protruding either side of Gerard's narrow frame, Frank hopes Mikey's opened both the double doors that give onto the wide stone steps, because Gerard hasn't slowed. There's no crack against his skull, no sharp pain in his ankle bone, just the sensation of descent followed by the crunch of gravel. More murmuring, not Gerard this time, and then the sickening lurch of pitching forward.

Except he doesn't fall. Gerard's arms support him until he's settled into the clutch of oiled leather that means they're taking the GTO.

Frank's surprised. Ulrich is an old vampire—possibly an Ancient—and Frank has heard enough talk to know the other gerents fear him, so he figured they'd be taking the limos and doing the whole proper royal entourage thing. But the GTO means just the two of them, Gerard driving himself. A gerent shuttling a human passenger. Only it isn't like that. Could never be like that, but especially with Frank blindfolded. Gerard is doing Gerent Ulrich the honor due a more senior gerent of delivering a package to him personally. Frank is just a package.

Frank's services. Gerard would never give him— He would have said. Wouldn't have seemed— Gerard is ambitious and Frank is valuable and he's not a pet to be passed on. And they would have— Gerard would have asked him to pack more of his things.

"Gerard?" Frank asks, wishing he could hide the panicked note in his voice better. But the only answer is the thunk-click at his elbow. "Gerard?" Frank asks again, and he was wrong before. The first time was merely plaintive. Frank's right hand flies to the door, scrabbling for the handle, and his left reaches out for the gear stick, the dash, the wheel, desperately seeking to sharpen the picture in his memory, give him something reassuring.

His hand finds Gerard's wrist, and Gerard says, "Frank." His tone is stern, clipped, should not be the reassurance Frank's looking for, but it is.

"Gerard," he says again, a whisper this time. He wills his fingers to uncurl. One breath, another, oxygen feeding his brain, his muscles, and his hands starts to give, releasing Gerard's arm so he can put the keys in the ignition with a soft jingle, turn them with a click-click-roar.

More air hits Frank's lungs, thick with the smell of exhaust, and then Gerard's hands are on him again, his near thigh, his far shoulder, but that's not his hand, it's his forearm, his hand moving next to Frank's head, and oh. The seatbelt. Which Frank hadn't even thought to put on, decades of habit and muscle memory short-circuited by being blind. "Buckle up, Frankie," Gerard says in his ear while his hands slot the latch into the buckle. "I'm in the mood to drive."

Vamps can move fast under their own steam, faster than anything that ever rolled off Detroit's production lines, faster even than the hovers. But Gerard still gets a thrill from going pedal to the metal on the open road. Sometimes he comes down to Frank's lab after, hair wind-wild, a glow in his eyes that Frank's used to seeing paired with the blood-flush of feeding, saying, Imagine it. Just imagine it. Sand as far as the eye can see. No cars, no vamps, no people, no nothing. Just space. And sunlight. All that desert. And Frank knows Gerard was driving through trees and factories under the barely visible smudge of stars, because he was watching through Gerard's eyes as he did it, but he can imagine the great deserts out west in Gerent Greta's zone, the hills and basins, the baking heat that Gerard will never again feel on his skin. He's hoped that Gerard might take him out like that some time, not just on utilitarian journeys designed to get from point A to point B and back. Now he's just hoping this isn't his only chance, because if he can't see the joy on Gerard's face, there isn't much point.

The car starts rolling, the engine not quite drowning out the sound of the tires on the driveway, then both sounds are overtaken by the scream of guitars as Gerard turns on the stereo.

Frank feels buffeted by the noise at first—it breaks down the shell he was building to ground himself—but then the music itself becomes a cocoon, gives edges to the world he's traveling through, keeps a rough and ragged time.

After a while, Gerard starts singing snatches of songs, a word or two, a line, and every time he does it feels like a touch, a reminder of the space Gerard's occupying in the bubble Frank's made for himself, bordered by the plastic and metal of the door on one side, the carpet of the center console rough against his knuckles as he runs his fingertips along the seat edge on the other. The bubble expands to take in the rest of the car, the road they're driving on that Frank can't see any of. His fingers race over the same surfaces again, redrawing lines, and Frank keeps breathing. He never realized the illusion of control that having use of all his senses gave him until one was taken away.

They drive for hours, Frank tuning out then sharply in again, wondering if Gerard is watching him, if he's even remembered Frank's here, or if he's lost in his own bubble of road and speed and sound, or whatever thoughts live inside his head. He's not using his alts, Frank knows, because they talked for hours one night about how Gerard can see clearly with them even at running speeds, but can't see at all while he's driving. He wanted Frank's theories on physics and neurology, asked questions for hours even though Frank didn't really have any answers. So if he is watching Frank now, it's only the nervous twitching of Frank's fingers, whatever he can see of Frank's pulse through the fall of hair over Frank's neck. He can't see into Frank's heart.

The last segment of their journey is marked by twists and turns and the rumble of roads so bad no car more than eighty years old—not even one as fastidiously maintained as Gerard's—has the shocks to handle them without nearly jarring a guy's teeth out of his head. Weirdly, it makes Frank feel better than the smooth ride of the highway. His hands settle in his lap, and he barely twitches when Gerard turns down the music and says, "We're almost there."

But then the car rolls to a stop, and Gerard doesn't turn off the engine. There's a change in the air that means the window's gone down, and the sound of voices, harsh and demanding but unintelligible to Frank, punctuated by Gerard's calm assent and the occasional "no". Without warning, the door next to Frank is ripped open, and strange hands wrap around his head. He wants to scream, lash out, but he just stills, a stone statue hoping against hope that the air in his lungs will last until the hands are done with his face.

"He's been blindfolded since before we left the house," Gerard says, definitely a gerent, but one aware he's speaking to the underlings of a man who outranks him. His words do cause the fingers on Frank's face to gentle and stop poking him, moving instead to test the knot at the back of his head. "And I took the route proscribed." With that, the hands move away and start pulling at Frank's seatbelt as though to make sure it's not just there for show.

"We'll need the vid," a gruff voice by Frank's head says, and Frank feels Gerard lean sideways, hears movement on the dash in front of him, and realizes there's been a camera trained on him the whole journey. One of the ones he designed to hide on Gerard's desk and let Mikey sit in on meetings, probably. Ulrich, or his captain, or any number of his security team will be able to see every time Frank flinched or gasped or bit his lip. Every time he turned his head toward Gerard out of habit like there was anything for him to see except the creamy darkness of a silk and bamboo blend.

A rough hand shoves Frank toward the center of the car, and the door slams again. More voices, only the word, "Go," standing out, and that accompanied by the slap of a hand wearing rings on the roof of the car. Frank wonders if the vamp will get to keep his rings if the paint is scratched. Or his hand if there's a dent. That depends on how important he is to Gerent Ulrich probably.

It's another ten minutes, maybe even twenty, before they stop a second time, and it should be enough for Frank to relax again, but he can still feel the strange vampire's hands on him, can't stop thinking about all those voices—four or five vamps at least— and whatever passes for a guard's tower in this zone, all of them inside, watching Frank's terror on an endless loop. He shies away when hands fumble at his hip to undo his seatbelt, even though he can feel his door is still closed, and at least part of his brain knows it's Gerard.

"We just need to get inside," Gerard says, voice low and liquid like he wants to calm Frank, but with a ribbon of tension under it that just ratchets Frank's nerves higher. "Do you want to walk? I'll lead you. There's three steps up to the door like at home. Or I can carry you again."

Frank refuses to be carried into the house of another gerent. He's not sure his legs will hold him, but he's not giving them a choice. "I'll walk," he says, little more than a dry croak.

Despite the cracked words, Gerard hears him, pats his thigh, murmurs, "Stay there for a minute," and pushes his own door open. While he walks around the car, Frank wiggles his toes, squeezes the tendons at the top of his knees, gives his legs a silent pep talk, so by the time Gerard's opening Frank's door and reaching in to help him out, he stays on his feet with no more support than Gerard's hand cool and heavy at the small of his back.

Like before, Gerard reaches across his own body to hold Frank's hand while he keeps an arm around Frank's waist, only this time he keeps up a running commentary, saying, "Twelve feet to the stairs, now eight… three, two, now the next step is up, a little higher than our front stairs, good, and again, one more," and Frank hopes there's no welcoming committee watching them, though he knows there must be. With luck, from a distance, it doesn't look too much like Gerard's coddling him.

"Sire," a woman's voice says from Gerard's far side when they've taken six steps from the top of the stairs. "Gerent Ulrich is in his parlor. I'll show you in."

"Captain Bebe," Gerard answers. "Thank you."

They pause, and Frank hears the thunk of a heavy latch giving way and the creak of a hinge left just rusty enough for atmosphere, then three more steps and he's standing on a carpet even plusher than Gerard and Mikey's. The door shuts again and Frank thinks, now, now he'll take the blindfold off, but Gerard just tugs him along, seven, eight, nine steps, a right turn, and then, finally then, he lifts his hands to Frank's face, pushes the blindfold up and away.

Frank's lashes are gummy, and he can't see at first, but before he can raise his hands to rub his eyes, Gerard is there, his thumbs wiping gently at the stickiness, so the only thing Frank can see when his vision clears is the shock of Gerard's blood-red hair against his bone-pale skin.

"You look hungry," comes a voice, breaking through the sound of Frank's heartbeat. And it must be Gerent Ulrich's, but Frank can't move from under Gerard's fingertips, can't look away from his eyes. "Let me get you someone to drink."

Gerard at least should be turning away now, to nod at Gerent Ulrich, let him play host, but his gaze keeps roving over Frank's features, his fingertips grazing Frank's ears, the line of his jaw, and he says, "Frank hasn't eaten in hours. He needs food. Nothing with milk. Soup would be welcome, some bread."

"I see," the voice from over Gerard's shoulder says. Frank's sure he detects amusement there. Gerard's palms slide down to Frank's throat as Ulrich says more quietly, "See what the pets are having for dinner, and bring some for the tech. He can eat in here with us." Gerard finally lets Frank go, steps aside, turns so they're both facing the gerent. Frank bows as he's been taught, and Gerard inclines his head as is fitting.

"I'll assume you're not squeamish, tech," Ulrich continues as though his guests didn't spend several minutes ignoring him. "I've seen your movies."

"They're my movies," Gerard corrects, guiding Frank toward a small sofa and sitting down next to him. "But no, he's not squeamish."

Frank isn't sure if Gerard is speaking for him because he wants Frank to stay silent or if he thinks Frank can't speak, but in case it's the former, he doesn't add to the conversation. Not that Gerard is wrong. Frank was still a teenager when he went to live in the Way's compound, and has made hundreds of snuff vids in the years since, seen hundreds more kills than that on the live feeds. He was thirteen the last time a kill made him vomit. Vampires are what they are and they do what they need to do to survive. In a different world, a different life, Frank wouldn't be forced to view half his fellow humans like gazelles in a lion's hunting grounds, but this is the life he's been given, and the human psyche is nothing if not adaptable.

But Gerard hasn't ever fed with Frank right there in the room. Frank's never had to listen.

The man who comes in with a tray has a pet's marker around his wrist. He's tall and slim, though not as tall as the gerent. Somewhere, Frank thinks, between Mikey and Captain Gabe, who tops Frank's five-and-a-half feet by at least ten inches. The pet kneels at Ulrich's feet and waits for a hand on the back of his head before he sets the meal on the low table in front of Frank. When it's settled to his satisfaction, he crawls back and sits on the floor at the gerent's side. Never having dined with vampires before, Frank isn't sure what the etiquette is with regards to waiting.

"Please," Gerard says, two fingers light on Frank's elbow. "Start."

Frank lifts the lid to find a dark stew studded with potato and carrots, served with hand-cut biscuits. He does most of his own cooking, but rarely bothers getting this fancy. His mouth floods in anticipation of the first bite, but still he hesitates, not wanting to upset Gerent Ulrich or make Gerard look bad. Gerard prods his elbow again, less gently this time, and Ulrich says, "My pets assure me the cook is excellent. Please do start. Bebe will be back shortly with something for your master."

Frank eats.

The food is, as promised, amazing, thick and savory, but not so rich that it aggravates a stomach twisted with adrenalin. The table is an awkward height, and once his belly realizes it's getting food it's hard not to get down on the floor and just put his face in his plate. He does his best to eat with the manners his mother taught him, though, to look like a competent tech. Someone a vampire should trust to put alts on his optic nerves. He's finished half his stew when the captain returns with a woman about Frank's age and a man a few years younger. From the blank stares and the scars on their necks, arms, and thighs, Frank gleans they're feeders, not prey.

"Wasn't sure how hungry you are," Ulrich says, gesturing the three into the room. "Or if you have a preference."

Frank does his best to keep his eyes on the meal in front of him, leave Gerard to his. Gerard discourages feeders in their zone, preferring prey to get a chance to live their own lives before they're hunted, says that gives all of them an equal chance of survival. Frank has wondered if it's also because kill vids have a much higher price than feeding vids, but Gerard's distaste for the thralled snacks presented to him is clear to Frank. It isn't written on his face, and Frank's sure from the relaxed pose Ulrich maintains that he believes Gerard's pleased smile, but from where he's sitting, Frank can see the muscles tense at the back of Gerard's neck, feel the twitch of the fingers he has resting next to Frank's thigh. And he knows all Gerard's smiles. He'll eat because he needs to, and because it's polite, but he won't be changing his policy any time soon.

Carefully, Frank breaks his biscuit, dips a piece in the gravy, lifts it to his mouth with a hand cupped underneath to avoid drips. As he chews, he focuses on the large chunk of carrot cut on a diagonal floating in the center of his bowl. But his peripheral vision is good, and he can't help seeing Gerard shift slightly, Bebe step forward with the man in front of her, held out for Gerard to take. Frank can't help but be thrown when Gerard doesn't stand, but stays next to him and lets the boy kneel between his feet. In his surprise he turns. Not enough to be staring, but enough to see clearly when Gerard takes the boy's arm and lifts it to his lips. Enough to see Gerard's fangs descend and his mouth go wide, sink into the tender skin just below the boy's elbow.

The boy whimpers, writhes, but he doesn't try to pull away. The woman at Bebe's side makes a soft sound. Jealousy, sympathy, random coincidence, Frank can't tell. But his eyes only flick to her for a moment before they're back on the tableau less than two feet from his own unscarred elbow. He can smell the blood, even over the herbs in his stew. And Gerard isn't slurping exactly, but there's a wet sound that isn't in any of the sound-effects files they use for vids, and he can hear Gerard swallowing. His cheeks are covered by his hair, but his lips are deep red, and the hands holding the boy's limb are flushing the palest rose.

"That's probably—" Bebe starts, then, "If you'd like more, sire, this one is at full capacity."

Frank feels Gerard startle before he sees it, all his muscles tensing before he drops the boy like a silver chain. "I— Sorry." The boy's still bleeding. Not the sluggish trickle Frank's used to seeing on the corpses bled almost dry, but a thick red flow, wide as Gerard's mouth, spreading a little as it heads toward his fingers. As quick as he jumped away, Gerard grabs him again, retracting his fangs before he starts to lap at the wound.

Every hair on Frank's arms, his thighs, the back of his neck, stands on end as he watches Gerard's tongue, watches the blood slow its flow, the ragged gashes start to close. He knew, somewhere in his mind, that this must be possible, because feeders exist, and he knows Mikey drinks from Pete, but seeing it is— Seeing it— He—

A sound from across the room breaks through Frank's craze, makes him drop his spoon onto the tray with a clatter. Before Gerard can look up and catch him staring, Frank shifts his attention to whatever made the sound. He finds Gerent Ulrich watching him, his face a picture of smug amusement while his pet's head bobs in his lap. Which, Frank shouldn't be watching that, either.

"You have a bedroom, Sire," Bebe says, the honorific somehow sounding both more and less respectful when she's addressing Ulrich instead of Gerard. "And dawn is approaching. Shall I show our guests to their rooms?"

"Room. The Willow Suite, I think." He makes no move to stop his pet.

"We don't—" Gerard says, looking from Ulrich to Frank, his eyes wide. He still has blood on his chin, drying now and starting to crack. The boy he fed from is curled up small against the arm of the sofa, idly rubbing his newest scar with one thumb. The blood Gerard didn't clean from his arm is only dried at the edges. Where it's thickest at the center, it still glistens in the lamplight. Frank should be concentrating on the conversation Gerard and Ulrich are having about rooms, because it's obviously distressing Gerard, but there's a lot of blood, and he can't stop looking at it.

"He's not a pet!" Gerard punctuates his exclamation by grabbing Frank's arms and waving his wrists, unadorned with a pet's bands, in Ulrich's direction. "He has no duty to sleep at the foot of my bed like—"

"Or in it?" Ulrich drawls.

"I don't mind where I sleep," Frank interrupts, because once Gerard starts shouting, things tend to deteriorate. They need to keep Ulrich's good will. And the fee he'll pay for the alts isn't exactly unwelcome, either.

"Frank," Gerard says, turning toward him, fingers slipping from Frank's forearms down to his hands. "You're the best cybertech in the country. You don't have to let him treat you like you're less than that."

"Now now, Gerard, you're going to hurt his delicate human feelings." Ulrich's pet has stopped blowing him, but is still between his thighs, chin propped on Ulrich's stomach while Ulrich strokes his hair. The position is useful for covering what Ulrich's gaping trousers are not, but it still makes Frank's skin itch. Particularly where Gerard is touching him.

"I'm not— What?" Gerard's saying.

"If a pretty boy like that offers to share your bed, the polite thing to do is let him."

Frank desperately wants Ulrich to stop talking. Now if Frank does offer to share Gerard's bed, Gerard will believe that he's only doing it to stay on their host's good side. "No hurt feelings," he says in a rush. "If a suite is what you have to offer us, we'll take it gladly. My gerent needs his sleep, of course, and I want to be well rested for your procedure tonight."

"But—" Gerard says.

Squeezing Gerard's fingers, Frank stands. "Thank you." He nods to the gerent and turns to the captain, gaze carefully slipping past the feeder still on the floor and the second one who's moved to a chair in the corner. "You said you'd show us to our room?"

"I like you," Ulrich says from his chair. "I like him, Gerard. If you're ever looking for a new home for him…"

Gerard moves too fast for Frank to see. One moment he's between Frank and Bebe, the next he's standing practically on top of Ulrich's pet, hands on the arms of Ulrich's chair, leaning right in his face. "He is not for sale," Gerard growls. "He has a home. He has a home. And tell your men, next time one of them touches him without asking first, I will rip off his hands."

For the flash of a second, Frank's sure Ulrich is going to tear Gerard's head from his body, but he only laughs. "Oh, I'm sure you will," he says.

Ulrich is still chuckling as Bebe leads Gerard and Frank from the room.

The Willow Suite is not randomly named. Or is perhaps not randomly decorated. Either way, it's fucking impressive. And crazy. The tree is directly opposite the door, and it takes Frank a moment to realize it's actually a bed. The trunk is an elaborately carved headboard, and the branches, which reach to and descend from the ceiling, form a canopy that nearly hides the mattress. The cot at the bed's foot is a fallen log, oak Frank thinks, the coverlet a thatch of moss. His grandmother had a shelf of paper-and-ink books in her living room. The bed looks almost exactly like the illustration of Alice before the rabbit hole. Minus Alice.

"The washroom is on the right, Ryan's bringing your bags, and there's a bell here if you need anything else." Bebe gestures perfunctorily around as she speaks, then steps back, placing herself between them and escape.

"We need a room for Frank," Gerard insists.

"There is nothing in the room he could use to harm you while you sleep, sire, and I would be happy to search his luggage personally."

Frank's skin goes cold like when he was watching Gerard lick closed the feeder's wound, only this time there's no frisson of want underneath it. "I wouldn't—"

Gerard spins toward her, jaw set. "I do not fear for my safety. Frank is— That is not the issue."

With every word heavy with controlled anger, it's impossible for Frank to tell if Gerard laid more stress on 'my' or on 'safety'. Should Frank be afraid? Or is there something else Gerard is scared of?

"There are no other rooms," Bebe says as though she's told the lie hundreds of times before. "The compound is very popular with visitors this time of year."

"Fine," Gerard says, her bored tone doing more to convince him to back down than any number of angrier arguments would have. "Fine. Just remind your gerent that he is the one who wanted my tech to provide him with alts, and he is the one who refused to come to Frank's lab which is perfectly equipped to perform the procedure, and Frank is not obligated to—"

Frank lays a finger on Gerard's wrist. "It's fine, Gerard." He remembers they're in a house that stands on ceremony. "Sire. It's fine."

Before Gerard can get up another head of steam, there's a tap on the door frame and a lanky boy appears, Frank's overnight bag in one hand, Gerard's valise in the other. In his skinny velvet suit, he looks hardly strong enough to hold them, but when he glances up past the spikes of hair artfully arranged over his eyes, Frank sees he's a vampire, not a pet. From the adoring way he looks at the captain and the fond glance she gives him in return, however, Frank suspects he's even younger in vampire years than he appears in human ones.

When Frank reaches out to take the bags, Ryan flares his nostrils, his look goes cold, but he relinquishes his burden after only a moment's hesitation. Then his head swivels in Gerard's direction, and like a thrown switch his features are the picture of worship. Gerard doesn't seem to notice, but Bebe says, "That will do, Ryan, thank you. We've our own beds to get to before the sun comes up."

Before Frank can say thank you for the bags or anything else, they're gone, leaving Frank and Gerard alone.

"We can leave," Gerard says as soon as the door shuts. "I have to—" he waves a hand at the bed— "obviously, but when the sun sets, we can go. You don't have to—"

"Why would we go?" It's seventy-thousand dollars for infrared alts, and that's if Frank does them in his own lab. He's sure Gerard negotiated traveling fees and whatever else on top. But apparently he's thinking it's not enough.

"He has no respect for you. He can't just— Ugh! No one else can do what you do. He needs to respect you."

"Gee—" Frank takes a step closer to where Gerard is pacing back and forth. Maybe Frank shouldn't use Mikey's nickname for him when he's like this. "Gerard. I'm a human. He's an Ancient." Close enough. "He's never going to respect me. I didn't expect him to."

Gerard veers off the rut he's wearing in the carpet and goes to investigate the fallen log, pulling back the mossy cover and poking around underneath. "This isn't even a bed. He can't expect anyone to sleep on this."

Frank is sure Gerard is exaggerating, but when he goes to look, it is just a canvas tarp stretched across the log's hollow. From the show the gerent and his pet were putting on in the parlor, he doubts Ulrich wants his pets tempted to sleep as far away as his feet, but he just says, "It's fine."

That gets a skeptical look before Gerard's off to wade through the fabric branches to test the situation with the bed. "At least this is a mattress," he mutters more to himself than Frank.

Since he moved into the king's compound, Frank has spent most of his limited socializing time with vamps. But he's only ever seen them during darkness hours, and he doesn't know that much about what they're like as the sun rises. Since Pete's been around he's heard more, but the dude's not that much into the kiss and tell, and they have plenty of other stuff to talk about. He's never mentioned that vamps go a little crazy before bed time, but that doesn't mean it isn't true.

"I am totally fine. Seriously, Gerard, I can sleep anywhere." It's not even a lie. When you're six years younger and a foot shorter than most of the guys you're in school with, you learn to adapt.

"You can't, Frank. It's a log. The bed is huge, and there are plenty of pillows. We can make a dividing line with them down the middle and still have enough room."

Frank laughs. Because, seriously? "A line of pillows? Do you sleep bite?" Frank tries not to dwell too much on the fact that his main objection to that would be the sleeping, not the biting. He knows his place and what his parents sacrificed to make sure he never had to feel the slice of a vampire's fangs, feel his heart pumping faster and faster, desperately trying to get blood to his brain, feeding a vampire instead.

Gerard glares at him, but it's the glare he gives to Mikey, not the one he gives someone whose arm he's about to break, so Frank's laugh peters out on a giggle instead of stopping dead in his throat. "I don't want you to feel uncomfortable, Frank," he says, still looking stern, but Frank's pretty sure there's the curl of a smile threatening at one corner of his mouth.

"I don't feel uncomfortable. I don't feel disrespected. I feel tired, and you need to sleep, so let's just do this thing."

"I can't hurt you while the sun is up," Gerard promises.

Frank doesn't know what to say to that, so he gives him his most reassuring smile and takes his bag in the direction of the bathroom. He has stew stuck in his teeth, and he stinks of nervous sweat. If he takes a shower, that gives Gerard enough time to fall asleep without fretting over whether or not he's making his tech genius nervous. One thing Frank does know for a fact about vampires' sleeping habits is that if they don't sleep they can get sick. It happened to Mikey a few years after Frank moved into the compound, and Gerard nearly went 'round the bend with worry. Frank will not be responsible for making Gerard sick this far from home.

When he comes back to the bedroom, the overhead lights are off, but the willow tree is glowing from within. It's crazily beautiful and he wishes he had his goggles so he could record the image to look at later. They're in his cases of equipment wherever those got off to though, so he'll have to just remember it. Assuming Gerard would have left the lamp on at Frank's side of the bed, he heads for where the light is brightest and parts the leafy canopy. He wasn't wrong that this is the side Gerard left for him, though for a moment Frank wonders if maybe Gerard decided to sleep in the log or something. He's so far over that he must be partly hanging off the edge of the mattress, and he's hard to see.

He's not sleeping like an old-fashioned movie vampire—arms crossed over his chest like a corpse at a wake—and Frank's a little surprised to discover that he'd sort of assumed he would be. Which doesn't even make sense. He's always known vamps sleep in beds not coffins, have no problems with garlic, that they're a lot more human than Bram Stoker would suggest. And in a lot of ways less human. That's what Frank notices now.

Carefully, maybe a little afraid Gerard won't know it's him if Frank accidentally wakes him, Frank peels back the covers and slides between the sheets. Gerard doesn't stir. Like, at all. There's no flutter of eyelashes, no hint of movement at his throat, no steady rise and fall of his ribs. The feeding flush is gone from his cheeks and the hand resting on the pillow by his face, so his skin is deathly pale against the leaf-green cotton. Without windows, the room is lacking any air to coax the wisps of hair over his forehead or around his ears into movement, so there's not even that illusion of life. And yet. Whatever it is that makes a vampire clearly a vampire, even with his fangs retracted and a feed flush on his skin, is still there in sleep, and there's no question Frank's sharing a bed with a monster not a corpse.

"Gerard?" Frank says softly, but still there's no response.

Emboldened by the silence, Frank moves a little closer, then a little closer still, until he's almost in the center of the bed where a line of pillows would be if Gerard had had his way. He lies on his side, a mirror image of his bedmate, knees slightly bent, one hand resting on the mattress near his stomach, the other curled up by his chin. Frank's eyes feel grainy, irritated by the hours under the blindfold and the too-warm air in Gerent Ulrich's compound, but he can't bring himself to turn off the light. He doesn't get to watch Gerard very often, and it's hard to look away.

After a while, his eyes close on their own and he slips into sleep.


When he wakes up, the light is still burning over his shoulder, but now only Gerard's ear and the edge of his jaw are glowing because Frank has moved closer as he slept, casting the rest of him in shadow. Before he thinks better of it, Frank pushes the lock of hair that's fallen across Gerard's face behind his ear, his fingers lingering on the cool of Gerard's temple. When he realizes what he's doing, Frank leaps back, but neither his advance nor his retreat garner any response, so he tells his breathing and his heart rate to slow the fuck down, settles back on his pillow. All the commotion made Gerard's hair fall back in his face again, and, more slowly this time, Frank pushes it back.

It's not the first time Frank's touched Gerard's hair, but it's the first time outside his lab, the first time he's done it without the running commentary he gives all the vamps he's working on. He doesn't like to surprise a vampire, especially not when he has a scalpel in his hand.

Frank's heard it said that people look more innocent when they sleep, more childlike. Gerard looks like he's killed a thousand men and women and just happens to be wearing the skin of a twenty-five-year-old. His face is unlined, but no softer in repose than when he's awake.

With a touch light enough not to break even the hair-fine wires on an old-fashioned circuit, Frank traces Gerard's eyebrow, the line of his cheekbone, the edge of his lip. He leaves his fingers there for a moment and only realizes once his chest starts to hurt that he's holding his own breath waiting for Gerard to inhale. Frank looks at the chrono on his wrist cuff. Half past four, which is when he usually gets up if he's gone to bed at sunrise, but he has no idea where the kitchens are here, and doubts Ulrich's hospitality stretches to unknown humans wandering around unsupervised, so he might as well get some more sleep. He figures it will take a while, but somehow he's out again almost as soon as he closes his eyes.

When Frank wakes a second time it's with his heart in his throat. The room is dark the way his own rooms, with screens always glowing, never are, but he can feel someone—something—looming over him. "Gerard?" Frank whispers, but it's barely a croak. Whatever it is in front of him—god he hopes it is Gerard—touches his throat, the hollow where his collar bones meet. Frank's own hand flies to meet the fingers touching him, tracing their shape, feeling for the charcoal-roughened skin Gerard has around his cuticles, the shape of his nails Frank knows as well as his own.

"Your heart beats so slowly when you're sleeping," Gerard says, his voice soft in the darkness. "It's almost twice as fast now."

The charitable might say the sound Frank makes is a laugh, but fear and relief war in his throat, leaving him gasping brokenly. Dislodging Frank's touch, Gerard's fingers trail along his left collar bone and settle over his pulse. "It's so strong."

"Yeah," Frank manages. "Well, I hope so."

"You're redder than usual." Gerard's fingers stroke up and down, up and down the side of Frank's neck. It's sending goosebumps down Frank's spine in waves, distracting him from what the words mean, making him wonder how Gerard can see him blushing in the dark. "So much hotter."

Right. The infrareds. Gerard sounds— He sounds different. Frank wonders if vampires ever wake up hungry. Gerard really didn't have a meal yesterday; it was more like a snack. He doesn't often feed before one or two, and there are nights Frank knows he doesn't feed at all, so he won't, Frank's almost certain, lean in, put his lips where his fingers are rubbing, sink his fangs into Frank's throat.

But he could. He could sip, suckle, feed on Frank's blood thrumming so hot under his skin, just take enough to tide him over until Gerent Ulrich grants him another meal, close the wounds when he's done. Frank wonders how much it hurts when a vampire bites. Is it the pain of the cut on his head when he fell off the wall behind his parents' house, or the pain of tattoo needles pushing ink under his skin? He concentrates on how the darkness feels like something solid so he won't think about how he always goes back to his rooms after a visit to the tattoo artist, takes himself in hand, focuses on the burn of his new tattoo as he jerks himself hard and brutally fast.

"Frank?" Gerard says, his hand stilling, palm flat where the blood rushes closest to the surface. "Are you afraid?"

"Nooo," Frank says carefully. "Yes? Not really afraid." He's scared of the dark after being blindfolded earlier, but mostly he's terrified by how desperate he is for Gerard to bite him, or fuck him, or bite him while he's fucking him, and that's not safe and it's not right and he shouldn't be thinking like that. Not ever, and especially not while Gerard is right there, touching him, in a fucking bed. This isn't vamp vision in HD, Frank tucked up in his lab, Gerard out there somewhere feeding on humans whose lot in life it is to be prey. This isn't risky like stopping to jerk off when he knows Gerard and Mikey are waiting for him to finish editing together the latest videos for upload. Now that he's seen it first hand, heard it, he wants to be a meal, even though that would risk everything he's worked for since he was five years old.

"Your heart doesn't always beat like this when you're awake," Gerard says. "But when I blindfolded you, and in the car, with the guards— Do you want me to turn on the light?"

Frank is pretty sure that's not going to help, except Gerard will have to stop touching him to do it. Probably. He'll need to roll away from where Frank's heart is pounding, get farther from where Frank's cock is thick and heavy in his pajamas, hidden, Frank hopes, in the general pocket of heat he has around his body under the quilts. "Yes," he says. "Yes, please."

Only Gerard doesn't roll away to reach the light on his own side of the bed. He leans over Frank instead, the weight of his chest tipping Frank onto his back, crushing him against the mattress as Gerard leans the last half inch to reach the lamp, and Frank's frozen, his heart not beating at all now.

"There," Gerard says as light floods the willow cave they're in. And now he'll move, let Frank up, let him flee to the other side of the bathroom door. But Gerard stops, still hovering over Frank's body, weight half on one elbow as he brushes Frank's hair back with the other hand. "Better?" He blinks, eyes shooting left to return his vision to normal before examining Frank's face like he's looking at one of his sketches.

Frank nods, not trusting his tongue.

"We can still leave if you want. We don't need Ulrich's money in our coffers."

Gerard's hand is still in his hair, but Frank can't answer that with a yes or no, so he swallows, says, "It would be nice, though. And we don't want to provoke him." The Southern Zone is twice the size of Eastern, and Gerard has much better things to do with his time than deal with a war.

That, finally, gets Gerard moving, settling back on his own side of the bed to glower. "Fucking Ulrich," he grumbles. "I don't know why I ever agreed to this in the first place."

"Because the money would be nice and we don't want to provoke him," Frank repeats. And now that Gerard's a safe distance away, he can't help adding, "And you like having the most in-demand cybertech in all the zones."

Gerard's glower falters and Frank fights his own grin as a smile creeps in at the edges of Gerard's mouth. "I—" Gerard starts. He narrows his eyes, but lets the smile take over the rest of his face. "Well, you are. You're the best. No one else can do what you do."

"Let's get up then, and I can do it, and we can get home."

A gong sounds while Frank's shaking off after his waking piss, making him jump a little. Still skittish then; he's going to have to get that under control before he lets Ulrich under his knife. Worse than walking away without doing the work would be severing the gerent's optic nerve. There's healing and healing, and even when you're a vampire, nerves don't always grow back the same as they were before. The gong's followed by a buzz and a clattering rumble like a hundred electric window shields rolling up at once. Since Frank hasn't seen anything but the parlor, the bedroom suite and the hall between them, he has no idea how many windows the house has, but the workings are enough pull on the power to make the bathroom light dim and flicker for a moment. Frank wonders if they're far enough out Ulrich's running on gennies or if this is just another bit of atmosphere like the creaking front door.

"Ryan is here to take you to breakfast if you're ready." Gerard's voice is muffled by the heavy paneling, but Frank thinks he detects a hint of concern there. "Coming," he calls, even as he's reaching for the door's handle.

The best word to describe Gerard is 'hovering', and it makes Frank glow warmly and feel nervous in equal parts. Ryan is in pinstripes tonight and looks even more frail than he had yestermorning. Frank wonders what Bebe saw when she looked at him that made her turn him, assuming he read the looks right and she's his maker. It's not like back in the days Frank's grandparents told him about, before the revolution, when every bored teenager or desperate housewife begged to be turned, and the vampires' numbers doubled, quadrupled, became great enough that they could no longer be contained. Ryan is the picture his grandmother painted of one of those disaffected youths, but there must be something more about him not obvious on the surface, because nowadays, vampires are much more selective, seeing no need to create more competition for themselves. In fifteen years at the Way's compound, Frank has only known of two turnings by the twenty or so vamps who live on the grounds.

"Is everything alright?" Frank asks Gerard, whose gaze is flickering over Frank's face as though looking for damage.

"Ryan says he'll take you to the kitchen while I join Ulrich for a hunt, but I would like to know where you are while I'm gone."

"I'll be fine," Frank says, wanting to reassure. It would be insanely stupid of Ryan, or any of Ulrich's household, to cause Frank harm after the gerent went to all the trouble of bringing Frank here to work on him. Especially before the work was done. Frank won't mind if Gerard stays as close as he wants once Ulrich has what he's after, but he really isn't worried right now. Still, it warms Frank to the bone that Gerard wants to keep such a close eye on him.

"He'll be fine," Ryan says, sounding bored. "Cook is only allowed to poison people on Tuesdays and Thursdays."

It's a stupid joke, but Frank's lip is twitching regardless, until Gerard's hand shoots out, fastening around Ryan's neck. "It is Thursday," Gerard growls, lifting Ryan an inch off the floor. Ryan doesn't struggle or raise a hand to defend himself. He smiles. A small, satisfied smirk that makes Frank want to punch him right in the mouth. When Gerard sees it, he drops him, making him stumble, but not wiping the glee of having gotten Gerard's attention off his face.

"Your maker may appreciate your insolence," Gerard says, "but I do not."

"My maker appreciates my cock," Ryan drawls, cupping the bulge at his crotch. "She won't mind if you want to appreciate it too."

Forget his mouth, Frank wants to punch him in the nuts. He takes a step toward Ryan, fist clenched, but before he even realizes that he means to follow through on his urge, Gerard has an arm around Frank's waist, pulling him back against Gerard's chest. "I'll come with you to the kitchen," Gerard says, "and then Ryan can take me to the gerent."

The kitchens are at the other end of the house, down two flights of stairs, and are made up of three huge rooms, each of them larger than Frank's whole apartment at home. Ryan leads him to a table set for at least thirty people, and most of the seats are occupied. A dozen or so of them wear a pet's marker on their bare arms, and many of the rest wear uniforms Frank has only seen in old British period movies set in houses with large staffs. Since Ryan seems to be doing the tasks that would usually fall to a butler, Frank wonders what these people do here, though they are all in long sleeves, so perhaps they're just a different kind of pet, their bracelets hidden under their clothes. He doesn't ask. Ryan pulls a chair out for him next to a woman with a mechanic tech's crest on her shirt, her dark red hair done up in tight braids, and across from a sun-wizened man in the dirt-stained clothes of a garden tech. They both nod at Frank and carry on eating what looks like oatmeal drizzled with honey.

"Laura will take you upstairs when you're done," Ryan tells him, gesturing to the woman on the far side of the gardener. She's young, maybe even in her teens, and isn't wearing a pet's marker or a tech's patch on her black sweatshirt. Frank doesn't ask about her, either. She gives Frank a flat stare, narrows her eyes at Ryan, and stuffs nearly a whole piece of toast into her mouth.

"I'll see you later," Gerard says, squeezing Frank's shoulder briefly. His fingers are like ice where they brush Frank's neck at the edge of his collar.

"Happy hunting," Frank says. His words elicit another look from Laura, this one speculative, possibly amused, but still guarded.

Frank eats a bowl of oatmeal, three pieces of toast, and two bowls of fruit before he feels like the unsettled hole in his stomach is filled. He hasn't been around this many humans at once since he left school. At home there's just James and Jarrod—Mikey and Gerard's day guards—Pete, Ray, Christa and her team of four or five people who help her take care of the grounds, and Bob, who comes and goes, only showing up once or twice a year. They're friendly enough, but Frank doesn't spend much time with them. On the rare occasion they share meals, it's outside where Frank has space to breathe, or they'll get together in twos or threes to have a beer, play some cards, watch one of Frank's dad's old films salvaged from the days before. Here, no one is talking, so it's not the cacophony meal times were at college, but Frank can still feel the press of so many breathing, sweating, heart-pumping bodies around him, and he'll be glad if he and Gerard don't have to stay another day.

"You done?" Laura asks as Frank wipes his mouth on the napkin provided with his plate. Her tone walks the fine line between deferent and insolent. That seems to be a theme in Ulrich's compound, and Frank is glad anew that he was hand-picked by Gerard for the Eastern Zone when he finished his schooling. And not just because New Jersey is his home and he doesn't ever want to leave it again.

"I'm done," Frank says.

She doesn't lead him back to the stairs, instead taking him down one long hall then another, past tightly closed doors, old oil paintings, and strange wall hangings Frank would like to look more closely at under other circumstances. It seems Ulrich is a collector. No wonder Gerard didn't want him to get his hands on the comic book he found.

"Here," Laura says eventually, stopping outside a pair of steel swing doors topped with wire-reinforced windows set just above Frank's head height. They are completely incongruous in the stately manor trappings of the rest of the house. Frank detects a whiff of fresh paint and sawdust.

"Did he build an operating theater for this?" he asks.

"Well, you are operating on him, aren't you?"

Technically, Frank supposes he is, but it's not like vampires can get infections and die or anything. When he's not in his lab, he's more used to working on repurposed dining-room tables than in anything like the room straight out of turn-of-the-century medical dramas he sees when Laura pushes open the doors.

No one is there except Ulrich's pet from last night, now wearing pale-green scrubs and a paper hat, washing his hands at a large steel sink in the corner. "Um," Frank says, because, alt installation is not a team sport.

"Vampires have a flair for the dramatic," Laura says quietly. "The pet's here as set dressing. Not to assist you."

Frank can't argue with that dramatic thing, so he says nothing, just heads to the recently vacated sink to wash his own hands. Which is when he realizes that everything in the room is scaled to the gerent's height. The gerent who is probably fifteen inches taller Frank. He's gonna need a fucking stool to work at the operating table in the middle of the room.

Ignoring Laura's giggles as he turns away from the chest-high sink and grabs a handful of paper toweling to dry his hands, Frank casts around the room until he finds his cases arranged on a series of shelves in the corner. To his relief, they haven't been opened.

"Should I fetch Ulrich?" Laura asks.

"I have to get my stuff ready," Frank says. "Give me half an hour?"

Frank breathes deeply for the first time since Ryan came to get him for breakfast when the pet follows Laura out the door.

It only actually takes Frank about fifteen minutes to open all his cases and check that nothing got broken or lost in transit, which gives him time to figure out that the operating table, unlike the sink, is on a hydraulic lift and can be lowered enough that Frank will be able to see what he's doing. He lays out his tools and the circuits, leaving the chip that would give him live feed capabilities in its case. He's seen enough of Ulrich's world to last him. He doesn't want to see it through Ulrich's eyes, even if it might be politically useful someday. He's just examining the wheeled equipment tray, wondering if he wants one for his own lab, when there's a commotion at the door and it bursts open.

Ulrich strides in, arms outstretched, his pet on his heels, and before the doors swing shut behind them, Frank has time to see Gerard struggling on the other side of them, Captain Bebe holding him tight by the arms. "What's going on?" Frank demands before he can think better of it.

"Your master seems to think we're mistreating you," Ulrich drawls. "I assured him you were fine, but he insisted on seeing for himself. Only authorized personnel are allowed in the theatre, so when he wouldn't accept my assurances, it was necessary to restrain him."

Ulrich towers over Frank, whipcord thin but in the way where he'd be strong even if he were only human. As a vampire, he could throw Frank through a wall, or crush him like a bug under his palm. But Gerard wouldn't try to fight off another gerent's captain without a reason, so Frank only hesitates a moment before saying with as much steel as he can muster, "I authorize him."

The pet flinches at Frank's words, but Ulrich just laughs. "Oh, do you?"

"If your pet is going to be here playing nurse, I want my master here, too." Frank is glad he's not holding any of his instruments, so he can put his hands in his pockets to hide their shaking.

"How adorable," Ulrich says. He watches Frank until Frank's starting to wonder if he already has some kind of alt that allows him to see under Frank's skin, but just before Frank drops his gaze, he says, "Fine. Trey, fetch the boy's master for us, will you?"

Trey scowls at Frank from behind his master's back, but does as he's told. Gerard is fuming as he comes in the room, but he doesn't say anything to the other gerent, just heads for Frank and squeezes his shoulders, moving down his arms like he's checking for broken bones. Frank wants to ask what the hell happened on his hunt with Ulrich, but he just murmurs that he's okay, reaching up to give Gerard's hand a squeeze back.

"Shall we get started?" Ulrich says.

The installation itself is anticlimactic after the show leading up to it, though Frank spends the whole time expecting Ulrich to try to leap off the table while Frank's got a probe in his eye socket, or Trey to upset all his carefully organized supplies. Gerard lurks just out of arm's reach in Frank's peripheral vision, Trey sits motionless across the table, clutching Ulrich's hand, and Ulrich lies perfectly still despite all the poking and prodding Frank has to do to get the tech attached to his optic nerves. Frank's never had a patient who was so immune to being worked on, but he's never done alts on a vampire even a tenth of Ulrich's age, which could explain it. Frank's previous record for installing infrareds was three hours, twenty-nine minutes. This time it only takes two hours, fifty-six.

"There," Frank says as he drops the last probe onto the tray, sweat sticking his clothes to his back, hands stiff with tension. "Let that settle for a few minutes, then you can sit up, and I'll show you the mechanism for switching views."

Gerard must have seen him do twenty of these operations before, and usually he chats with the vamp on the table while they wait for the healing to finish, leaving Frank to start his cleanup, but this time he's at Frank's side as soon as he steps back, massaging his hands, telling him softly what a good job he did, like maybe Frank doesn't know that he fucking rocked it.

"Yeah," Frank says, wondering what the fucking hell is going on, but letting Gerard keep up the massage because it feels really good. "It went well."

"Excellent," Ulrich says expansively, spreading his arms wide again from his spot on the table, nearly knocking his pet off the little stool he's sitting on. "Excellent!" He sits up smoothly, completely ignoring Frank's protests. "I heal a hundred times faster than your master there," he says. "I regrew this arm in less than a day." He shoves his right arm in Frank's face. "Fishing boats. Very dangerous."

Frank wouldn't mind putting Ulrich in a boat—one without any kind of hold or cabin—and pushing him out to sea. A few days in the sun, and Frank would never have to see his annoying face again. "I'm sure," he says mildly, then, before Ulrich can continue to regale him with tales of his healing prowess, continues, "Are you in normal vision now?"

"Vampire vision," Ulrich corrects, but settles down with a show of active listening.

"Good. Now close your eyes and look sharply right for a second then open them."

Ulrich does as he's told. When he opens his eyes again, it's all Frank can do to hold his ground. The look the gerent gets on his face when he can see Frank in infrared drips with hunger. A cold, feral hunger that sends Frank's stomach dropping to his knees.

Gerard must see it too, because in the time Frank's taken a single shaky breath, he's pulled Trey around the table in front of Ulrich and pushed Frank out of reach. He's just in time. Ulrich dives on Trey, fangs bared, tearing into his throat with a snarl. Trey screams, a single high-pitched sound broken off by a second snap of Ulrich's jaws. This is no wound that will heal with a few licks from a vampire tongue. When Ulrich lifts his head to bite again, tearing apart Trey's shirt to get to his heart, Trey's head lolls, nearly severed from his body like he was attacked by a wildcat, not a vampire. Frank has never seen anything like this on his monitors.

It's terrifying, but Frank can't escape the room. He's pressed against the wall, Gerard's back nearly crushing his chest, hands cupped around Frank's fists twisted in Gerard's shirt at his waist. Frank can hear Gerard sniffing—the scent of blood must be overwhelming with his enhanced senses—but he doesn't ease up, doesn't leave any part of Frank vulnerable to attack. As much as Frank would love to flee, he knows better than to run from a vampire, and he's glad to have one he trusts between him and the monster he's created.

"What the fuck," Frank breathes in Gerard's ear. Gerard just shakes his head, a tiny motion Frank might miss if he didn't have his face pressed to Gerard's neck. He hears the door swing open, Bebe's voice sharp and stony, saying, "Your Majesty, we have guests!" and the snarling slurping sounds stop. Frank dares to peer through Gerard's hair over his shoulder.

Ulrich's pet has been reduced to a few scraps of blood-soaked fabric and a pile of meat. It looks like Ulrich literally tore him limb from limb. Frank tries to breathe, but can't get enough air past the restriction on his lungs, so he pushes Gerard forward just an inch. "What the fuck," he says again. Gerard shifts his head, and Frank realizes that he's lined himself up perfectly so his cold dead body is completely between Frank and Ulrich.

Ulrich's head swivels from his ravaged pet to the captain of his guard to where Gerard has Frank trapped. "Look left," Gerard says, and for a second Frank thinks Gerard is talking to him, but Gerard repeats himself, louder, commanding, "Close your eyes and look hard left." Amazingly, the kneeling gerent does, taking himself back to normal vampire vision.

"He was so filled with blood," Ulrich says, staring at the mess he made, wiping gore off his face with a sleeve.

"Of course he was filled with blood," Bebe snaps. "He was human."

"But I could see it. It was right there." Ulrich's looking at her now like maybe all of this is her fault. Frank doesn't move a muscle.

"You watched the infrared vids," she says, stern but not disrespectful. "You saw what the humans look like through the alts. We talked about this."

With a last look at the remains of his pet, Ulrich stands. "Damn it," he says. "That boy had absolutely no gag reflex." He doesn't so much as glance in Frank and Gerard's direction before sweeping out of the room.

"I hope your things aren't too much of a mess Mr. Iero," Bebe says, and gives them a little bow before backing out of the room after her master.

As soon as the door shuts behind her, Frank shoves Gerard off him. "No, seriously, Gerard, what the fuck? What the fuck did I do to him? He just fucking ate his pet! Like chewed him up and swallowed him! Who does that?"

"You didn't do anything," Gerard says, his voice all calm and reasonable and making Frank even angrier. "Sometimes the ancients—"

"Fuck the ancients. Fuck that. Last night that guy was sucking his cock and tonight he got his throat ripped out. Right after I installed the alts. Don't fucking try to tell me there's no connection." All Frank can see is the red of Trey's blood. He wants to get the fuck out of here. He wants to forget the kid's name. He wishes he never knew it.

"Frank," Gerard says, trying to reach out for him. But Frank jerks away.

"I'm wishing I didn't fucking know his fucking name right now," he shouts. "How fucked up is that? Like if I didn't know his name that might make this okay. It's not fucking okay. Don't tell me it's fucking okay."

"Frank," Gerard says again, and this time he moves too fast for Frank to sidestep, wraps Frank up in his arms. Frank only fights for a moment before he lets Gerard hold him up.

They stay like that while Frank catches his breath, while his heart rate slows and his limbs stop shaking. Fucking adrenalin. Fucking crazy-ass wild vampires.

"Let's get your things and leave," Gerard murmurs into Frank's hair when Frank starts wriggling loose.

"Fuck my things. I don't want my things," Frank mutters, but he's stepping out of Gerard's hold to gather up his instruments even as he says it. He doesn't wash them, or worry about them going in the right compartments, and he knows he's going to regret it when they get home, but he could not fucking care less right now. He's not going to stay here a minute longer than he has to.
 
"Come on," Gerard says as Frank's closing the last case. "We'll get someone to bring those down to the car. Let's go." Frank nods and Gerard picks him up again like he'd done when Frank was blindfolded. It's less frightening when Frank can see him coming, until Gerard gets them out in the hall and starts moving at speed.

It's like what Frank imagines riding a roller coaster in a wind tunnel would be, and Frank can't breathe or see anything more than a blur, but then it's over, and they're standing in a wide front hall under a ceiling that soars three stories above their heads.

"You're going to need this," says a man's voice from behind Frank. He turns to see a vampire in a British army uniform circa the first world war holding out the scarf Gerard had used to blindfold him on the way here.

"No," Gerard says. "I'm not." Frank's heart, which had begun to pound in anticipation of another descent into darkness, stutters.

"House rules," the soldier says, still holding the horrible thing outstretched.

"You can take your house rules and shove them up your phony English arse," Gerard says, arm still around Frank's shoulders. "Have someone bring our bags to my car."

"House rules," the vamp says again, but he drops his hand this time.

"Bags. My car," Gerard repeats, and opens the front door.


It's less than five minutes after Frank climbs into the passenger seat that the vamp dressed as a soldier, and Ryan, still in his pinstriped suit, come down the steps loaded down with all the bags, and Frank watches in the side-view mirror as Gerard helps them load first the cases and then the duffles into the trunk. As they finish, the soldier hands the scarf to Gerard. Fucking pushy bastard. Even as Gerard takes it willingly, Frank trusts he won't use it again. Because Gerard is stubborn and angry, and he wouldn't do anything right now that would make the Southern gerent happy. But Frank's fingers still wrap around the door handle as he watches Gerard run the fabric through his fingers just at the edge of the framed reflection. "He won't," Frank finds himself whispering.

Like Gerard heard him, he stops playing with the scarf and loops it around Ryan's neck, tucking the ends into his suit jacket, patting him on the chest. Ryan fakes a swoon, and his friend takes advantage of the momentum and pushes him onto his ass. Gerard misses the byplay he caused though, because he's already climbing in the car.

As they zoom down the drive, Frank turns in his seat to raise both middle fingers at the house. "Good fucking riddance!" he shouts over the music blasting from the speakers.

Gerard doesn't slow at all as they hit the gate, and when Frank catches sight of the wide eyes of the vamps in the guard house, he starts laughing and can't stop. He's howling, slapping his thighs, and then there are tears streaming down his face, snot slicking his upper lip, and he starts wondering if he's ever gonna quit. Gerard's wondering the same thing, clearly, because twenty or so minutes past the compound border, he pulls over, turning down the music, and grabs Frank, gives him a shake.

Frank tries to stop, he does, and he manages to take one deep breath, but then he thinks about how shocked the guards looked and he's off again. Through his gasps and his tears, Frank's dimly aware of Gerard pushing his seat back, fumbling with their seat belts, before he hauls Frank onto his lap, wedging him past the steering wheel so he can pin him against the door with his body, wrap Frank tight in his arms.

"Shhh," he says. "Frankie, shhh. It's okay."

Frank fucking knows it's okay. It's just funny. But trapped by Gerard's body, Frank starts to get a grip, and the laughter peters out.

When Frank can finally breathe again, Gerard wipes his cheeks with the tail of his shirt, frames Frank's face with his hands and looks at him carefully. The moon is bright enough that Frank can see Gerard's features, but he wonders how much more detail Gerard can see of him.

"What are you looking at?" Frank finally asks when he can't take the scrutiny for another second.

"You don't smell scared anymore," Gerard answers.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Gerard leans closer, close enough so his nose is touching the hollow between Frank's collar bones, and sniffs deeply. "Just the leftover. In your sweat. But your skin smells okay."

Pushing him back, Frank mutters, "I get it alright? I stink."

"Is that what I said?" Gerard goes back in, snuffling his way along the line of Frank's collar like a fucking puppy. And jesus, really? Frank's gonna get hard right now? Stinking of fear and sweat and sitting in a fucking vampire king's lap in a car stopped on the side of a deserted road?

"Fuck you," Frank says, pushing him away again. His dick holds at a little stiff, and he silently tells it to fucking keep it that way.

"You started laughing and you smelled like you did in that operating room when— When."

"Did not." But what the hell does Frank know? He doesn't have a vampire nose. "Did not," he says again for good measure.

"Okay," Gerard says. "If you say so." He doesn't even pretend to sound convinced. But he does deposit Frank back on the passenger side, which is something. As he's adjusting his seat, he eyes the clock on the stereo. "We're going to have to stop for the day," he says. "Even running, I'm not sure I could make it before sunup, and besides, I'm not leaving you to drive home alone."

Frank should have thought of that. Should have realized that they wouldn't be able to make it home. He shouldn't have made Gerard leave so late. "Where will we stop?" he asks. He hasn't been outside a zone compound for more than a few hours in years. Does Gerard have friends they could stay with? Someplace with shutters or a basement or a bunker?

"We'll find a hotel. Even in the backwaters they should all have shutters." Gerard doesn't sound concerned, so Frank tries not to worry. If there's one thing vamps are good at, it's self preservation.

"Okay," he says. Frank's throat is tight from all the laughing. Which is weird. That's never happened to him before.

"We have a few more hours anyway. Enough to get across Southern's border." Gerard turns the music up again then, but not quite loud enough that Frank misses him adding, "I hope."

Gerard opens the car's engine full throttle, and Frank tries to enjoy watching him drive, but Gerard never gets the abandoned look on his face—his mouth stays set and tight, his shoulders hunched—and eventually, despite his best efforts, Frank's eyes drift shut and he sleeps.

When he wakes, the sky off to his right is starting to edge pink, and fuck, Gerard's pushed it too far, the sun's coming up and they're still in the car. But they're turning into a lot, passing a sign that says Dew Drop Inn in flickering neon. Frank can see metal shutters rolled up above the windows, but still, this doesn't look like someplace all that safe for vampires.

"Where'r'we?" he mutters, clearing his throat and turning down the music before he repeats himself so Gerard can actually hear him.

"We're about twenty miles from the Eastern Zone," Gerard says, angling the car into an empty spot near the large window sporting a sign that says Vacancies. "I would have stopped sooner, but this is the first place I saw with proper shutters."

"Do you want me to get us a room?" Frank asks. If they don't get a lot of vampires out this way, it might be better if a human dealt with the owners. Gerard looks around, maybe seeing what Frank sees—that none of the windows are covered even though dawn is breaking—maybe using his infrareds to see that all the bodies on the other side of the walls are warm. Frank doesn't know and doesn't want to waste time asking. "I'll go," he says.

Gerard shoves a wad of bills into his hand, says, "Go. Yes."

Frank only gets one room, even though he suspects Gerard will argue with him. He doesn't trust the shutters, and wants to be close by if any light starts shining through. "North facing if you have it," he says to the bone-tired looking woman behind the counter. Been driving all night."

After tapping at her computer for a minute, she says, "Sure," and gets a keyblank out and runs it through her machine. "Room one oh four, round the back. We got those shutter things, case'a vampires, too. They'll block the light for you."

"Great," Frank says. "Thanks." He almost asks for a second key, but it's not like Gerard's going to go wandering around a motel after sunup anyway, so he just hands over the cash and nods. The sky's getting lighter with every second. "Don't need a receipt," he says, and runs for the door.

Gerard, thank god, is sitting behind the wheel when Frank gets back to the car, not standing there laden with bags or anything. "Around the back," Frank says, a little breathless. "We can park right outside, I assume. One oh four." Gerard zips around the corner of the building, parking sloppily outside their room.

"You go," Frank says, slapping the key into Gerard's palm. "Close the shutters. I've got the bags." The way the building's shaped and how the trees line the property, this side of the motel is still in full darkness, but Frank doesn't want to take any risks. He watches until Gerard gets inside and he hears the whirring clanking sound that means the shutters are closing before he gets their duffles out of the trunk and follows his master through the door.

The controls for the shutters are right next to the window, and like they have all the time in the world, Gerard is just standing there, finger on the switch. Frank doesn't ask what the fuck he's doing. He notices that the bathroom is set in the back corner, windowless, and that it has a bath tub. "Hey," he says. "Can you go run me a bath? I'd like to soak some of this sweat off." By the time he's finished asking, he's got his fingers covering Gerard's on the controls and is edging him away with his hip.

"Okay," Gerard says, actually going, to Frank's surprise. "Do you want bubbles or anything if I can find any?"

Frank snorts. "Do I look like I want bubbles? Fuck no. Water. Hot." He watches Gerard go, trying to hurry him along with the power of his thoughts, pressing as hard as he can on the switch, like that might make the shade rumble closed any faster. Fucking things must be ancient if you've got to keep your hand on the controls the whole time. Frank's never been anywhere that didn't have automatic shutters on computer-controlled timers, with two or three backup systems in place just in case. This is fucking ridiculous. It would be quicker to do it with a hand crank. But Gerard's in the bathroom now, fiddling with the taps, the door almost completely shut behind him. He's safe.

After what feels like an hour, the bottom of the shutter drops into the well at the base of the track, and Frank takes his hand off the controls, flexes it. Despite the ancient mechanism, he can't see any cracks or chinks in the shutter itself, and the room is black except for where a sliver of light streams through the cracked bathroom door. He lets himself relax a fraction.

"How's the bath coming?" he calls, fumbling for a light switch between the window and the door.

"You'll have to come test the water. It looks fucking awesome with the infrareds, but I have no idea how that translates to a comfortable temperature for you."

Ulrich's eyes filled with ravenous hunger, Trey's blood spraying across the operating table, dripping onto the floor, Gerard's ribs crushing Frank against the wall—

And here's Gerard using the tech to test bath water. "Okay," Frank says faintly, fingers finding the light switch at last, flicking it on to weakly illuminate half the bed and a rickety table with an old-fashioned phone on it.

The thundering sound of water gushing from ancient pipes shuts off, leaving the plink-plink sound of a drip in an enclosed room and the ragged noise of Frank's breathing to fill the silence. "You coming?" Gerard says, pulling the door open enough to reveal him on his knees, one hand swirling in the water, gaze trained on whatever patterns it's making. Frank wonders if it looks like a bath filled with blood. His fingers twitch uselessly towards monitors that are still a few hundred miles and a day away. Seeing the world through Gerard's eyes is getting to be too much of a habit. And, honestly? Frank's had enough of blood baths tonight. He doesn't need to look at that shit.

"Yeah," Frank says, putting one foot in front of the other. "Coming."

They navigate past each other in the tiny space, and Frank expects Gerard to leave the room, get in bed, but he wedges himself in the corner as Frank bends down to test the water with his fingertips. "You gonna go to sleep?" Frank asks, dipping his hand farther in. It's perfect.

"I'll keep watch," Gerard answers.

Which doesn't make any sense. "Why would you— The sun's coming up. You need your sleep. Nothing's gonna happen to me in a locked hotel room."

"I'm fine," Gerard says. "We're not back in Eastern yet. You never know."

Frank sees Mikey's face, hollow and grey, his fingers like sticks despite the blood his brother carefully fed him, all because he couldn't sleep. "No," he says, louder than he means to. "No. I can take a bath tonight if you feel like you have to stay with me."

"Don't be ridiculous. How long can you possibly be? A few hours isn't going to make any difference."

"I'm not going to take hours," Frank says. He only asked for the bath to get Gerard out of the window. Though now it's there, a good soak does sound nice.

"Well then," Gerard says. "Perfect. Do you need anything from your bag?" He's got his hand on the door like he's leaving. Which is good, because even though maybe it shouldn't—he's seen Frank's bones, his veins and arteries, the shapes he is under his clothes—it feels weird to think about undressing while Gerard just watches.

Frank asks for his toiletries kit and sweat pants, and when Gerard leaves to fetch them, he closes the door. He's sinking under the water when he realizes that he probably could have asked Gerard to keep watch from outside.

When Gerard comes back, though, he doesn't stare, but busies himself at the counter, unpacking Frank's shampoo and soap and toothbrush, folding his sweats and the shirt he slept in last night to make a neat pile of them.

"Do gerents very often—" Frank starts, still finding it hard to find the words, though they're easier to say to Gerard's back than they would be to his face. "Do they often eat their pets?"

Gerard turns so he's facing the wall at Frank's feet, his profile harsh under the bathroom's fluorescent lights. "You didn't do that to Ulrich. He's never cared about the laws."

With one hand, Frank scoops water up onto his chest and watches it run down again. "Not that a gerent has to follow the laws anyway."

"I follow the laws," Gerard says.

That should be reassuring, but it makes Frank's skin itch with frustration. Gerard is proper all the fucking time, treating Frank with the courtesy due a tech of his stature, like Frank's a fucking machine. Not that he wants to be a pet like Trey, used, ignored, destroyed at his master's whim, but something. Gerard talks to him, about Mikey, his art—Frank's sure Ulrich never talked to his pets like that. But he'd sure as hell look at them if they were there, all hot and naked in a bath right next to him. And why the fuck is Frank even thinking about that right now? He just watched a man get ripped to pieces.

Frank grabs a washcloth and the anemic bar of hotel soap and starts scrubbing at where the sweat dried itchy between his legs.

"Mikey says the new soundboard came yesterday," Gerard says, still not looking at Frank.

Frank scrubs harder, down his legs and up over his belly, not sure if he's more pissed at Gerard for changing the subject or at himself for being upset about one death. He sees death every day. It's not like he doesn't know what vampires are. He shouldn't have delusions.

"Why?" Frank says.

"Bob said you needed it."

"Why do you follow the laws?" The gerents don't police one another, and Mikey would never interfere with anything his brother wanted to do. There's no reason Gerard couldn't rip Frank's throat out right now, sleep off daylight in that bed out there and drive north as soon as the sun set, leaving Frank's body in a tub of cold, pink water for the housekeeping staff to find. "What does it matter?"

Gerard does look at him now, eyes flat and fiery at the same time in a way Frank usually associates with Mikey. "I follow the laws because they're fair. Because they keep the balance."

Frank can't seem to stop the jerky movements with the washcloth, so he's scrubbing under his arm when he snaps, "But why do you even care? People aren't going to stop fucking. There's still like five billion of us. Are you that worried about killing off your food source?"

"We aren't all Ulrich," Gerard says in the voice that gets lieutenants scrambling to do what they're told. "He hasn't been human in two thousand years. I doubt he can remember. I can."

Frank expected some political speech or statistics about population shifts. Something he could argue with. But what the hell is he supposed to say to that? "Can you fucking wash my back then?" is what comes out of his mouth.

Gerard barks a short laugh, losing the flat glare, and drops to his knees on the bathmat.

There's a momentary struggle for the washcloth, because Frank can't actually believe he said that out loud and his brain tells him Gerard's trying to stop him from getting clean, but once he realizes that he did, and Gerard took him seriously, he surrenders it.

"How do you wash your back at home?" Gerard asks, moving the soapy cloth in small circles over Frank's skin.

"Shower," Frank answers. "Water pressure." He's pretty sure no one has washed his back like this since he went away to school. "I have a loofah on a stick if I'm really dirty."

It feels like Gerard is washing off Trey's blood, even though Frank knows he didn't get any on his skin. When Gerard rinses Frank's back and moves up to his neck, Frank says, "Do I still smell like fear sweat? Like you said in the car?"

Gerard sniffs, face right next to Frank's ear. "You smell like hotel soap. Water with too many minerals. Rust." He moves closer, nose almost touching the scorpion on Frank's neck. "The ink in your skin."

"Okay," Frank says, trying desperately not to shiver. "Good to know." Gerard's been this close to him. Closer. Tonight even. But not while Frank's been naked. "Okay," Frank says again, hardly more than a breath.

"Were you going to wash your hair?"

Frank was definitely going to wash his hair. He's much less convinced Trey's blood didn't spatter there while Gerard was dragging him out of range. "I—" he says. "Yes. But I can—" He does not need help with that. He's not a fucking fairytale princess. And Gerard's not his handmaiden.

"I used to wash Mikey's hair," Gerard says unexpectedly, his hands still on Frank—on his neck and his right shoulder. "When we'd dye it, or a few times when he got so drunk he puked in it."

Frank can't imagine Mikey drunk. Especially not drunk enough to puke in his own hair. "Is that a—" Frank says. "Do you want to wash mine?"

"I used to hate having to shower. But sometimes I miss that. The two of us in the bathroom in the basement, air all steamy, no one bothering us."

Frank takes that as a yes. "Okay," he says.

Gerard reaches for the shampoo he took out of Frank's kit instead of the hotel stuff, and Frank's grateful, because if the shampoo smells like the soap, he's not a fan. "Dunk," Gerard says, pushing Frank gently down until his head's under water.

When Frank reaches up to swish the water through the sweat-matted hair at the back of his neck and his forehead, Gerard's already there, fingers combing through the tresses while he supports Frank's skull. It's fucking weird, and Frank's not sure what to do about it, so he just clings weakly to the edge of the tub until Gerard lifts him up again. His nose wasn't under water, but he can't help wondering if it were if Gerard would have remembered that Frank needs to breathe air.

"Mikey had to wash pig shit out of my hair once," Gerard says as he lathers Frank's scalp.

"Pig shit?" Frank can't see Gerard, who's behind him, but he feels like he's talking to the same vampire who showed him the book about a man who shoots webs from his wrists.

"There was a lot of vodka, and a dare, and I passed out while I was trying to walk along a fence. They hosed me down right there in the barn, but the shit was still clumped in my hair when we got home. He stuck with it until it was all gone, though."

Frank isn't even a little surprised at this news, though it's strange to think of the Ways as kids. The age Frank was when he came to live with them maybe. Frank's always thought of them as older, born decades before his parents even met, the leaders of the household he came to as a teenager, but doing the math now, Frank's outstripped them. By five, maybe even six human years in Gerard's case, more in Mikey's. Gerard will always look like this, and Frank will just keep getting older.

"Dunk again?" Gerard says, interrupting Frank's thoughts. "Or do you want to just rinse off in the shower?"

"Yeah," Frank says, needing a minute alone. "I'll do that."

Gerard gives Frank's hairline one last skritch, rinses his hands in the bath, and rises smoothly to his feet. "I'll turn the bed down," he says, and leaves Frank to his own devices.

Frank can't tell if that means he's turning the bed down and coming back, or turning it down and getting in, or some other option that hasn't occurred to Frank, so he rinses off as quickly as possible, gives himself a cursory swipe with a towel, and pulls on his sweats and t-shirt. There's no sound from the other room, so he opens the door while he's rubbing his hair dry to make sure Gerard didn't somehow silently burst into flame or anything.

Gerard's on the far side of the bed, staring at it intently. It's too dim for Frank to read the expression on his face, but his body language says he's not happy with what he sees.

"Everything okay?" Frank asks.

Gerard's head whips up, and Frank's pretty sure he's adjusting back to normal vision. "Fine. Just checking for bedbugs."

Frank's pretty sure even he is not good enough to make infrareds sensitive enough to pick up bedbugs in a heated hotel room, but maybe Gerard can see shit like that with the x-rays. "It looks like you found some," he says. And if they're in the bed, they're on the floor, and he really fucking does not want to bring bedbugs back to the compound.

"No," Gerard says. "It's clean."

Which means Gerard is glaring at the bed about something else. "So..." Frank says.

"Are you okay with that side?" Gerard is still being strange.

"Gerard, is the bed boobie trapped? I don't have to sleep. We can— I don't know, make up a bed for you in the bath or something, and I can sit in the car, or go find a diner, a cafe, I don't know. What's— "

"I knew what he was like. I shouldn't have taken you there." Gerard jerks back the covers, climbing awkwardly under them, giving up on all pretense that his problem is with the bed. Frank crawls in on his side, even though he was going to get his hair a little drier before he got cozy with his pillow.

"You knew he would..." Frank trails off, not sure if he means to end the sentence try to kill me, or eat his own pet in front of us.

Gerard reaches for Frank's knotted hands, covering both of them with one of his own. It's a strangely human gesture, and Frank's gotta say it's not the same when the hand on yours is so very cold. He has to resist the urge to try to chafe it warm again the way his grandfather used to do for his grandmother when she'd spent too long out in the garden without her gloves.

"I didn't know what he'd do, but I've seen how he is with his pets, the games he makes them play, the way he hunts. His zone is nowhere to take a human you value."

If it weren't for Gerard's hand on his, the way his knees are brushing Frank's, the way Gerard is staring at their fingers almost laced together, Frank would think Gerard just meant how much money Frank's skills bring in. But it's like Gerard is trying to comfort him. "We got out," Frank says. "I'm okay."

"I would kill anything or anyone that tried to take you, unless that would just put you at more risk, you know that, right?" Gerard says.

To take him? Is that why Gerard was freaking out in the hallway outside the operating room? Did Ulrich threaten to take Frank somehow? "Okay," Frank says. When a vampire says he would kill for you, it doesn't sound like hyperbole. Ulrich is still alive because he's hundreds of times stronger than the vampires of Gerard's generation, and Gerard didn't want to risk Frank further.

"I know," Frank says. But he still doesn't really understand what's going on.

"We'll be home tomorrow," Gerard says, squeezing Frank's hand. "Get some sleep." Gerard takes his hand back, closes his eyes, and goes deathly still.

It's impossible for Frank to believe that it was only yesterday he was lying in the willow bed watching Gerard sleep. Today he can't look at him, his monster's face devoid of everything that makes him human. Frank waits a few more minutes to make sure he's not going to stir, and then leaves Gerard alone in the bed.

With a north-facing room and Gerard on the far side of it, it's probably safe for Frank to sneak out the cracked open door, but he doesn't want to risk it. Nor does he want to sit in the car or go for a walk in a strange place with people who don't even have automatic sun shutters. Instead he takes his pillow and the bedspread Gerard folded down before getting into bed, and curls up in the boxy armchair in the corner. It's not remotely comfortable, but Frank can breathe there. He can think.

**



A series of thumps wakes Frank from a fitful doze, bringing his head jerking up from where it's tipped sideways onto the back of the chair. The room's black as fucking pitch, which means either Gerard turned off the light next to the bed or the bulb blew while they were sleeping. "G'rard?" Frank calls, tongue as stiff as his neck.

"Nothing," Gerard says. His voice is coming from the bathroom. There's another thump, softer this time, and Frank recognizes it as one of the plastic bottles from his travel kit.

"You don't have to pack for me," he says, stretching. The chair he fell asleep in should be two feet or so from the light switch. He just needs to stand, reach to his left.

Then there's a much bigger thump, the kind made by muscles and bone hitting tiles, and Frank doesn't even try for the light, just dives toward where he's sure the bathroom door is.

He misses it, but only by an inch, then catches the jam with his fingertips and manages to grope his way to the handle in less than a second, yanking open the door, hissing Gerard's name and hitting the lights all at once. He's not sure what he expected—Gerard flat on his face, maybe—but things don't look too dire. Gerard is on the floor, but sitting up, mostly, propped against the side of the bath, knees up to his chin. His skin is ashen, but Frank's choosing to blame the old-fashioned fluorescent lights until proven otherwise.

"Your night vision not as good as you thought?" Frank says, hoping that's it. They left the bathmat on the floor, and there are bottles, Gerard could have tripped.

"I'm just a little hungry," Gerard says, fingers gripping tight to his shins. "I may need you to drive until we're back in Eastern and I can hunt.

What the fuck. Frank can drive, though he hasn't been behind the wheel in years, but they're in a hotel full of people. Why does Gerard need to wait until they're back over the border? Plus, "I thought Ulrich took you to eat when I was having breakfast at Southern." Frank takes a few steps closer, peering down at Gerard's face.

"Go back," Gerard snaps. "Back in the bedroom. Please, Frank."

Surprised, Frank does lurch back, but only half a step, and then he goes to his knees so he's on Gerard's level. He's not leaving his gerent alone like this.

"Frank," Gerard says again, a strain in his voice Frank can't categorize.

"Fuck that. If you need food we're getting you food. How did this happen?" Vampires need to feed every forty-eight to seventy-two hours, Frank knows, or they get desperate, ravenous, and if still denied, weak and shaky, before the pain sets in. One of Mikey's men brought in a vamp he found in the woods on patrol one night, and she wouldn't stop screaming until they poured blood down her throat. Frank cannot fucking deal with Gerard screaming like that.

"You have to—" Gerard's hand shoots out and closes around Frank's wrist. "Go, Frank. Just go. I don't want to—"

Jesus. Jesus. Gerard doesn't need to hunt. He needs to feed right fucking now, and he's scared he's going to bite Frank. It should be Frank who's scared, but it's Gerard. And that's the last piece falling into place.

"Do it," Frank says. "Just do it. I'd rather—" Fucking hell, what is he saying. "I'd rather you didn't kill me, if you can, just, maybe like the feeder at the compound, but whatever you have to do."

"No," Gerard says, but he's pulling Frank closer. Close enough that Frank's chest is touching Gerard's knees. "You're a tech. You're my tech. I can't—" Frank can hear him sniffing, just like he did in the car, and Frank wonders which is stronger, Frank's fear or his want.

"Now," Frank says, his mouth barely an inch from Gerard's cheek. "While you still have some control." Fuck, he hopes it's not too late already. He wants this so fucking much he can't breathe, but he doesn't want to die.

"I'm sorry," Gerard says, spreading his legs and pulling Frank down between them. "I'm sorry, Frankie." And then his face is buried in Frank's neck. Frank has just enough time to get two handfuls of Gerard's shirt before he feels fangs.

The tales of being bitten are from his childhood, nightmare stories of monsters come to devour you in the dark. With few pets and no feeders at the compound, Frank hasn't heard a lot of survivors sharing stories about what it's like since he came to live with the Ways. But no one could possibly find the words for this anyway.

It hurts. So fucking much. Like a hundred-thousand tattoo needles all at once. Like a brand. Like razor-sharp teeth sinking in and then tearing to get at more of your heart's blood. It hurts like a high. Like falling off a cliff and flying. Like a jagged fingernail catching at your piss slit when you're just about to come. And fuck, fuck, fuck, why did Frank agree to this, it's awful, and it's never going to end, and he doesn't want to die, because he wants to do this again. Wants to feel Gerard's fangs in his arms and his thighs, right up high where his femoral artery runs so close to the surface and Gerard would have his face pressed up against Frank's most vulnerable skin.

Oh, god, he's fucked. He's so fucking fucked. He is not fucking normal. He isn't even thralled.

And shit, he can't hold his head up anymore. Where are Gerard's hands? Gerard was holding his head a minute ago— Why do his shoulders ache so much? His fucking shoulders, like his arms are being twisted off. Hurts much more than his neck. That hardly hurts at all anymore. A gentle throb. A sting, like someone's wiping skinned knees with a wet washcloth. Like a dog licking your face when you fall off your skateboard and cut your chin on the street. Gerard. Licking. Healing properties. Closing the wounds like he did for the feeder in Ulrich's parlor while Frank ate beef stew. Gerard didn't kill him. Doesn't want him to die.

The pain in Frank's shoulders eases, and he realizes it's Gerard's fingers loosening their vise grip. Hands slide across his back, down his body, and Frank can't move, can't open his eyes, but he's being lifted off the floor, carried, laid down on something soft. Words float past his ears, but he can't catch them. Fingers on his face, his throat, his hair, a whole hand heavy in the middle of his chest. He feels his heart beating against it, one-two-three-four-five, quick, but not racing. Feels wet against his lips, cold, thin. Not blood. The words coalesce, "Drink, Frankie. Come on. You have to drink for me. Just a few sips. Nice cool water. Drink."

When Frank parts his lips, a few rivulets of water spill over his tongue. Somehow he catches them before he chokes, swallows instead. "That's it, Frankie," the voice says. "Just a little more." Frank drinks more.

The water is good, but the bed is comfortable, and Gerard's hand is heavy, and Frank sleeps.

**



A knock on the door rouses Frank with a start, except his eyes stay shut and he doesn't move. It's just his brain racing, danger danger danger. Everything else weighs a thousand pounds. Voices, dipping and swooping, door shutting, and then the smell. Holiday kitchen, the sting of a slapped hand when he snuck a taste, eating 'til he wanted to pop. Struggling, Frank gets his eyes open enough to to see Gerard standing between the bed and the chipped desk, two large plastic bags in his hands. His face is shadowed in the dim bedside lamp, and he's backlit by the fierce glow of the parking lot lights streaming through the un-shuttered window. "Whaa—" Frank asks, wanting to know what time it is, if he's kept them from leaving in the window of opportunity that will get them home safely before sunrise. He could have slept for minutes or a week.

"I took too much," Gerard says softly, setting the bags down, reaching into the near one. "You need to eat something."

Fuck. Gerard fed on him. How could he have forgotten that? How much is too much? Frank feels like shit run over, but he doesn't feel like he's dying. 'Course, he's never died before, so how the hell does he know what that feels like? "'Kay," he says. Whatever smells like that needs to be in his mouth.

A half-liter carton and two boxes come out of the first bag, and the second one looks just as loaded. Frank is depleted, but he still only has one stomach. How long does Gerard expect them to be staying? "How—" he says, but can't finish because it takes all his breath to deal with Gerard lifting him, even gently, and depositing him on a pile of pillows.

The carton is minestrone soup, and smells even better right under Frank's nose. Less good spilled on his shirt, but Frank isn't used to being fed, and Gerard probably hasn't dealt with a spoon in decades. They get a rhythm going after a few false starts, and once Frank's eaten half the carton, he feels better enough to take the spoon out of Gerard's hand and do it himself. Gerard doesn't back off though, stays perched on the edge of the bed next to Frank's hip blinking creepily through his alts and normal vision, one hand loosely on the carton like he thinks Frank might drop it, the other on Frank's thigh.

"Can you just— not?" Frank asks once he's chased down the last bean with his spoon. He flicks a finger in the direction of Gerard's eyes, glad to feel like he's got control over little movements like that again. "I'm pretty sure I'm fine." It's the first thing either of them have said since Gerard started feeding him.

"There's spinach and nettle pie, too," Gerard says, blinking to normal vision and staying there. "I think it has potatoes in it."

It sounds delicious and explains the mouth-watering pastry smell, but Frank just ate two helpings of a soup filled with beans, vegetables, and chunks of meat. "What time is it?" Frank asks. "If we leave now can we make it home tonight?"

"You need rest."

There's enough food in those bags for Frank to rest for at least three days. In the mean time, what is Gerard going to eat? Because Frank's gonna be okay, but his bone marrow is already going to have to go into overdrive as it is. "I can rest in the car. I just want to go home."

"I don't know if Mikey can find you someplace by morning, but we'll get you something as quick as we can," Gerard says.

"Someplace for what?" Frank has everything he needs in his lab, including a whole case of BloodPlus injections he ordered after the first time Pete came to see him pale and wide-eyed and high as a kite after letting Mikey feed off him four nights in a row.

"For you to live," Gerard answers, like this should be obvious. "We'll find you someplace safe, let you take whichever of the lieutenants you like best."

Frank envisions a flood, a bomb blast, a failed cooling unit leading to a fire—all the things that might have happened to his lab while they were gone to make it uninhabitable, and then he realizes that Gerard thinks he doesn't want to live at the compound anymore.

"I thought the line of pillows down the middle of the bed was the most ridiculous you could get, but I was so, so wrong."

"But I broke the contract." Gerard should not look his most human when he's frowning, but he does.

Frank tries to remember the exact wording in a tech's boilerplate—it was something his parents read to him often when he was young and there was a time he knew it all by heart—something about a vampire cannot ask, demand, nor compel by any means direct or indirect, blah blah whatever. "I offered. I told you to."

"But—"

"Gerard. What time is it?"

Frown deepening, Gerard mumbles, "Almost midnight."

They're less than four hours from home, and this time of year the sun doesn't rise until 5:30. "Load up the car."

Gerard glares at him, but Frank glares back until Gerard stands up.

The whole time he's shoving things in bags and ferrying them out to the trunk, Gerard tries to convince Frank that one tech snacking session has overthrown the whole world order, and Frank can only be happy if he lives out his days exiled to some far reaches of the Eastern zone. All of which is total bullshit. But Frank's tired enough to experiment with letting Gerard getting all the drama out of his system unopposed for now, and hashing this out when they're back on home turf.

When Frank lets Gerard give him another glass of water, the arguments slow down, but Frank loses ground again when he goes to walk to the car and lurches sideways, nearly braining himself on the bedside table before Gerard catches him. "I'm okay," Frank blurts, expecting Gerard to pick him up like he did when Frank was blindfolded, but Gerard just leaves an arm around him, supporting him to walk on his own while he listens to Gerard lecture about the dangers of permanent brain damage when a human loses too much blood. Frank opens his mouth to point out that napping for a couple of hours is not the same as ceasing all respiratory and cardiac function, but Gerard's manhandling him into the car where the radio's already playing, so he shuts it again.

Determined to curtail Gerard's self-flagellation, as soon as they hit the highway Frank cranks the stereo as loud as it will go. The vertigo has passed, but he still feels floaty, and it's good to curl up in the seat and let his head loll against the headrest as the tires eat up the road.

Even in the flickering highway lights, Frank can see Gerard change as they cross over into Eastern, an easing in the tightness around his mouth, a loosening in his grip on the wheel. Frank gives it another ten miles or so, until they're approaching a town, warehouses on the outskirts where the humans hold late-night raves that are popular vampire hunting grounds, then he turns down the music.

"I can wait while you hunt," he says over the buzzing sound in his ears. "We have time."

Gerard's head snaps to the right and he looks at Frank like Frank just suggested they stop for a sun tan.

"I know I wasn't enough for you. Not if you were starving." Frank doesn't get what the big deal is. Even if they only count the times Gerard knows about, Frank's watched him feed hundreds of times. Waiting for a while in a comfy car with a feast of his own to munch on is so not a problem.

"I'm fine," Gerard says, and he doesn't slow as they pass the exit for the warehouse district. He looks okay, tense again but not like when Frank found him on the bathroom floor, so Frank lets it go.

Mostly. "What happened while I was in the kitchens at Southern?" he asks.

Gerard's hand twitches toward the volume dial, but he thinks better of turning it back up. "I didn't want to give him the satisfaction," he says.

Frank can still picture the smirk on Ulrich's face when Gerard half drained the feeder, but he doesn't get what Gerard means.

"It's not unknown amongst the other gerents that I don't encourage feeders in Eastern, but I've never declined when one's offered to me. Ulrich obviously noticed my distaste though." Gerard's jaw clenches, and for a minute Frank thinks that's it. But then, "He has pens," Gerard says.

Frank assumes Gerard isn't talking about the kind you write with. "Pens?" Frank says when Gerard seems disinclined to continue.

"Scores of people, whole families, huddled in the dirt. Crying. Trying to protect the children. All of them stinking of terror. Not sharp clean fear, but layers and layers of it, bone deep, stronger than the filth they were wallowing in. All of them waiting there for a vampire to reach in, pluck one of them out to devour while the rest watched. No thrall, no choice, no chance to get away. He knew I would hate it."

Frank shudders despite the heat blasting out of the vents. Feeders, pets, game parks—Frank thought he'd seen all the ways vampires have of making humans easier to feed from. He prays no vamp he's ever put a camera in records a meal at Southern's compound. "So you didn't—"

"I turned around and walked away. Which is when he told me if he wasn't satisfied with the work you did, you might see the inside of the pen before the night was through."

That possibility is more than Frank can deal with thinking about right now, so his brain skips over it. "He could run down any human faster than they could blink, couldn't he? Why keep them in pens like that?"

"Maybe after two thousand years, he got tired of running."

Tired, at least, is something Frank can relate to.

The music stays low, and his thoughts drift: to the warehouses lost in the rear view, packed with people who know that everyone who goes in isn't coming out alive, but do it anyway; the way the vids he makes with the longest chase scenes sell better with human and vamp audiences alike than even the ones with the most drawn-out kills; Gerard on the bathroom floor, telling Frank to go even as he pulled him closer. Maybe he wanted Frank to run. Maybe blood isn't as good if it's sitting there waiting for you.

"Should I have run tonight before I let you bite me? Would that have made it better?" Frank didn't think about what Gerard's reaction to to that might be, and he has to grab the dash as they swerve going a hundred and ten on the highway. Fortunately there aren't many other cars out tonight, and Gerard's been driving the GTO forever and gets her under control quickly.

"Frank," Gerard says.

But he's started now, and Frank doesn't want to stop. "Is that why you don't like feeders? Is there something in our blood when we run?"

"No," Gerard says, flicking a glance at Frank before focusing on the road again. "That's not— You were fine. Perfect. It's— I'm grateful. Thank you."

"Or is it the kill? I can run for you next time if you want, but I don't think I want to die."

The car stutters as Gerard shoots him another look, but doesn't lurch. "What? Frank. There's not— I told you already. There's not going to be a next time. You're a tech. You don't owe me anything."

Frank fingers the spot on his neck Gerard fed from. The skin is tender, and it aches like a bruise the day before it surfaces, but it makes him feel Gerard's arms around him again, feel his ribs moving under Frank's fists as he swallowed. It doesn't feel like a debt. "It's not about owing you," he says.

"Well then why would you— What I did was selfish. I used you."

"I'm okay with it. Really."

"Frank!" Gerard flaps a hand in frustration. "This is what I was telling you about. Brain damage. I fed on you. You became a tech to avoid all that. What I want doesn't— You stepped up in an emergency and I appreciate it. But it won't lower my regard for you if you don't offer to do it again."

Frank could argue this all night, or at least until they got home, but Gerard just said, what I want, and Frank's gonna think about that for a while instead.

**



When they get back to the compound an hour before sunrise, Frank's dozing in his seat and Gerard's mumbling along to the music he's turned back up to chest-shaking levels. Mikey, Pete, and Mikey's day-guard Jarrod are waiting for them on the steps, two of Mikey's lieutenants flanking the door behind them. Frank worries for a moment that something's happened—maybe Ulrich sent a gang of his guards to get Frank—but Pete and Mikey are smiling, and he realizes that the muscle is there to carry all Frank's things back down to the lab. Mikey probably just missed his brother.

It's Pete who comes to help Frank out of the car, and he brushes a finger over the newly healed skin on Frank's neck. "Nice," he whispers when he puts an arm around Frank to steady him. "Shoulda known it would take you two getting away to make him realize."

"Realize what?" Frank asks, because Gerard doesn't seem to have realized anything, and Frank's never talked to Pete about what he wants from Gerard. But Pete just gives him a conspiratorial look and slaps him on the shoulder.

"I've got your boy, here, sire," he says to Gerard. "These brutes can get his bags."

This makes Mikey beam and Gerard glower before saying, "Can you stay with him today? Make sure he's okay?" Belatedly, he turns to his brother and asks, "He can stay with him, right?"

"You're the boss," Mikey says mildly, and Frank's about to protest that he doesn't need a babysitter, but Mikey winks at Pete so Frank figures the two of them are on his side already and Pete will leave him alone if he asks. What Gerard doesn't know won't hurt him.

Frank tries to stop at his lab on the way by, but Pete bundles him along right to his apartment. "I know where you keep the BloodPlus," he says when Frank resists. "And your lab will still be there after you get some more sleep." Which is true, Frank knows, but he doesn't have to like being told where to go and what to do.

"Fine," he grumbles when there's no give at all in Pete's hold. "I'll just sit and do nothing while you wait on me."

"Just like I sat there and let you bring me tea and that nasty fucking beef paste sandwich and then stab me in the ass with your needles full of vitamins or whatever."

"It's EPO and minerals mostly," Frank corrects him, but he does sit on his bed when they get there.

"Whatever. Blood juice. Stay here. If you're good I'll bring you something from one of those bags of food I saw Jarrod getting out of the car. I'm not the kind of asshole who makes a dude eat beef paste."

Because he's pretty sure Pete would tell him not to, Frank climbs in the shower while he's waiting. There are a few dicey moments where he thinks he might pass out, and he has to put up with Pete standing outside the door telling him he's an idiot and if he doesn't come out now Pete's gonna come in there and get him, but he's got a towel rail to hold on to, and he's pretty sure Pete won't make good on his threats, and the water feels too good for him to regret the decision.

The steam makes him high enough that he doesn't protest when Pete insists on doing the injection for him, or when Pete does his overly familiar thing and tucks him under the covers, dropping a smacking kiss on his forehead. "Here," Pete says, setting a smooth black cylinder about the size of Frank's thumb on his bedside table. "Button on the top sends an alert to Mikey's cuff. You can borrow it. I'll keep an ear open for you and be down here in a flash if you need anything."

Frank is pretty sure he's never seen the thing before. "Where'd you get it?"

"Made it," Pete says. "Piggybacked off the security comms network. Had some trouble a few months ago out near the borders, and I wanted to be able to call for help if it happened again."

"I would've made you something." That's Frank's job after all.

"I know. But I miss doing this kind of shit. Hope you don't mind."

If Pete likes making tech as well as designing it, Frank might have to put him to work. "Nope," he says, thinking about offering Pete jobs to do. But they'll have to talk about it more after Frank gets some sleep. He's too tired now to keep his eyes open.


Ten hours of sleep and accelerated red blood cell production have Frank feeling good as new by nightfall. Except that he can't concentrate on anything but how smooth the new skin on his neck feels under his fingertips, and how Gerard's live feed never shows him near the stairs leading down to the lab level. While he unpacks his cases and cleans his instruments, he watches Gerard's hands flit in front of his face as he talks to a serious and then obviously exasperated Mikey, and sorely regrets that he never put a live feed in Mikey's alts, so he can't see Gerard directly. He scrubs down the whole wetwork side of his lab even though it hasn't seen any action since the last time he did it, thinking maybe it's like a watched pot and if he turns his back on his monitors, Gerard might come down to see him. No such luck.

His apartment is next. Once he's put on a load of laundry, scrubbed the bathroom, and washed the dishes, Frank goes to find Pete and give him his alert button back. He'd originally hoped the errand might give him a chance to run into Gerard, but when he checks the feed again, he finds Gerard away from the compound looking at close-packed buildings Frank doesn't recognize.

If he's out looking for a new place for Frank to live, Frank might have to kill him.

"Frank!" a voice calls from the patio between the groundskeepers' quarters and the greenhouse as soon as Frank steps through his french doors. "Come up here and eat something." It sounds like Pete.

When he gets out of the glare of the house's floodlights, Frank can see smoke spiraling up between the buildings, and recognizes the smell of charcoal in the air. "You're not gonna try and feed me anything scary, are you?" he shouts back across the slope of the lawn.

Pete starts walking up to meet him. "You fucking wish. But my dick's spoken for. 'Less you need it to practice on for your vampire lovaaah."

Frank doesn't get Pete's sudden obsession with the status of Frank and Gerard's relationship. "Nothing like that happened, though."

"Why?" Pete asks, falling even with Frank and turning to walk the rest of the way to the greenhouse with him. "I've seen the way you look at him and bite your tongue not to ask me what it's like with Mikey. I'd have thought you'd be all the fuck over that first chance you got."

"Yeah," Frank says. "Well. He doesn't want to give me a chance."

Pete's laughter is loud and sudden, prompting Ray to pop up from behind the grill belching smoke in the corner of the courtyard. "What?" he says, making Pete laugh harder.

Frank looks at Ray, looks at Pete, and shrugs.

"Christa's getting the meat," Ray says. "She left me in charge of this." He waves his hand through the smoke.

"I told him he's got to open the vents and cover it, but he wouldn't listen." Pete grabs a tool and starts poking at the underside of the grill. Frank still wants to know why he was laughing so hard.

Preceded by two of her crew carrying an urn that smells like hot chocolate, Christa comes out of the quarters carrying a covered tray. "You two are useless with that," she says, laughing up at Ray. "Put this down over there. Let me do it." Once freed of her burden she takes the tool from Pete and smacks him on the ass with it. "You, go keep Frank company." She turns and gives Frank a smile. "Hey, Frank. I was going to send one of the boys down for you, but Pete said you were busy with the gerent."

"Nope," Frank says. Does everyone think he's fucking Gerard? "You're stuck with me."

The rest of the landscaping team shows up then and everyone starts bustling around the grill or the table laden with bottles of wine and bowls of what Frank assumes is more food. Even though there are less than a dozen people, Frank feels like he's in the way, so retreats to the far side of the patio where there's a low planter with a wide seat around it. Pete appears with two mugs of chocolate. Handing one to Frank, he sits.

"I didn't mean to laugh, but Frank, come on. The guy thinks you hung the moon."

"Because I make him like ten million a year. But I'm a tech. He doesn't look at me as someone to fuck."

"Pretty sure he does, dude."

And Pete would know this how exactly? "How would you even know?" He doesn't mean to sound like an asshole, but Pete doesn't look offended.

"Because his brother spends a fuck of a lot of time wondering out loud why the guy's not boning you already, so I assume he knows something about it we don't. Gerard tells him everything. And seriously. You guys should do it already, because these conversations take up time Mikey and I could be bumping uglies."

"Thank you for that image." Frank's dick is not ugly, thank you very much, and he bets Gerard's isn't either.

Pete just grins at him.

"You're kind of an asshole," Frank says.

"You're kind of a chicken shit. At least my ass is getting laid."

"Come eat," Ray calls. "Before these vultures pick the bones clean."

"Saved by the bell," Pete says, pushing Frank to his feet.


Once there's food in his belly, Frank's mood improves, and he stops feeling so out of sorts with the crowd and disgruntled about Pete's teasing. It turns out one of the gardeners is an old movie buff, and she and Frank spend more than an hour comparing their collections and making plans to exchange files, and over dessert Frank joins the conversation Ray, Pete, Christa, and Ray's apprentice are having about live music versus recordings. Maybe it's Pete being there to jolly Frank into socializing, or maybe it's the contrast between this small group of people and the creepy table full of them at Southern, but Frank doesn't feel quite as separate from everyone as he usually does.

The party's still going strong as sunrise approaches, but Frank says his goodbyes in time get back to his apartment before the shutters close. There is a light lock on the north side of the main house, but it's a long way around, and Frank would rather go through his own doors.

"I'll walk with you," Pete says trotting to catch up with him when he's half-way up the lawn. "Wanted to see Mikey before he goes to sleep anyway."

"You bragging?" Frank asks, but it doesn't have any heat.

"I'm just saying. If you didn't have a problem with him biting you, and clearly you didn't, then I think you should tell him what you want and not walk away until he gives it to you."

Frank opens his door and ushers Pete in ahead of him. "It's not that easy. Gerard isn't Mikey."

"Truer fucking words," Pete says, turning to give Frank a sympathetic half-smile and a "Sleep tight," before heading through the door into the hall and up to Mikey's rooms.


Frank intends to do as he's told—about the sleeping. Not the other thing. Pete's deluded about the other thing being a good plan—but it doesn't work out. As soon as he's under the covers and the lights are out, the other thing is all he can think about. After several hours of fitfully rolling over and back again, flipping his pillow and smoothing out the sheets, he gives up. The screen on his nightstand tells him it's 12:04.

He isn't hungry, and he doesn't want to work, drumming is too noisy, guitar is too much effort, and his eyes are too sore to feel like reading. He just wants— It's like he's living in a fucking cave. He needs to take a walk.

The sun is blinding when he rolls the shutters up, but it's the sharp kind of pain that's relieved by rubbing hard at his eye sockets, and feels better than the tired ache that was there before. Frank pulls on his clothes from last night, toes into his sneakers, and pushes out into the sunshine.

Past the garage, the greenhouse, the low apartments housing the groundskeeping staff, down beyond the garden, Frank hits the path that leads into the woods. Summers when he was little he used to go nut brown in the sun, but it's been too many years now, and it's a relief to step into the trees. The pale spring green of the leaves is just starting to darken, and the shade is dappled on the black of his hoodie and the muddy trail. The air is damp and verdant in his nose, reeking of not-lab, making him breathe deeply to try to catch the nuanced odors. Mushrooms, dirt, something blooming, the slightly mineral smell of the brook he can hear off to his left. And that's just with his human senses. What must Gerard be able to smell out here? Frank lifts his wrist to his nose, sniffs his skin, trying to tell the difference between where he's inked and where he's not, but he doesn't really smell like anything. Maybe a hint of smoke from the barbecue, a trace of detergent from his freshly-washed sheets.

He can't smell obsession, the constant feel of Gerard's hands on him, his fangs sinking into Frank's neck. Can't smell the way having a taste of what he's wanted for so long has changed his desire into something sharp and barbed. It should smell different. And what the fuck is he doing, standing in the woods sniffing his arm like a freak. This part of the path is flat and well maintained, and Frank takes off at a run.


Breathless, soaked with sweat, doubled over the fist balled into the stitch in his side, Frank feels better finally. What happened in the hotel, and at Ulrich's compound, what's been happening since Gerard with his ridiculous hair and expansive gestures sat down across from Frank at the recruitment table at Rutgers, isn't a knot in Frank's chest anymore. A tangle, still, sure, but there's room to get his fingers in and tug. And Gerard said he wanted. Wants. Frank. In his own, keep-away-for-your-own-good way, but fuck that. Frank gets to decide what's good for him and what's not. He needs to get back to the house. If he can just figure out where the hell he is.


James has been Gerard's day guard and business accountant since before Frank came to Eastern's compound, so he knows Frank's loyalties, even though for the most part they keep opposite hours. Frank's only a little worried that James won't let him into Gerard's suite.

"He's sleeping," James says when Frank appears in the small room that does double duty as office and antechamber.

Frank nods, glances at the tightly-shuttered window, nods again. The sky was just changing color when he came inside; he has half an hour, maybe forty minutes, until the shutters rumble open. He isn't going to wait that long. "I won't wake him," he promises. But he intends to be the first thing Gerard sees when he opens his eyes.

"He won't like it if I let you in," James says.

"I know. But—"

"And Mikey won't like it if I don't. Gerard is my gerent, but Mikey's technically boss to all of us in security, so I think maybe I have some discretion here."

"Really? You're— Thanks." Bouncing on his toes, Frank waits for James to reach for the button that unbars the door. Apparently Pete wasn't lying about Mikey thinking Frank is good for his brother.

"You promised not to wake him, though," James says, giving Frank his sternest look before finally starting the great steel bar sliding back.

"Thanks, man," Frank says, edging closer so he's ready to open the door as soon as it's free.

"He doesn't have anything on his schedule until eleven thirty," James tells him, grinning.

Frank can't quite grin back, because stubborn and blind as Gerard is, it could easily take a lot more than five hours to convince him he's got to bite Frank again. Or touch him. Or something. But he gives James the best smile he can muster before darting through the heavy doors into Gerard's chambers.

It's pitch black as soon as the door shuts again behind him. Frank has never been in Gerard's bedroom before, but there have been nights he didn't turn off his monitors after Gerard came back from hunting, nights he's watched—feeling ashamed but not stopping—until Gerard came to his rooms, climbed into bed. He closes his eyes now, relaxes, puts himself in Gerard's field of vision.

Bed straight ahead, in the center of the room, a huge carved thing Frank doesn't want to hit a knee on. Probably six feet away, maybe eight. Closet off to the right, bigger than Frank's kitchen, jackets, vests and shirts hung in rows, pants, jeans and t-shirts stacked on shelves, and then belts, scarves and shoes in their own section at the back. Overhead lighting. Frank's never been bright-blinded by Gerard turning it on, so if he keeps the door mostly shut it should give him enough light to guide him without waking Gerard up. Keeping one finger on the wall, Frank makes his way to where the closet door should be. It's farther than he expects, but of course Gerard always cuts a hypotenuse where Frank is taking the right-angle route. There's not a sound in the room besides the whisper of skin against wallpaper and the hush of Frank's breathing. Gerard might not even be here except that Frank can feel him with every inch of his skin.

The door frame takes him by surprise, but he gets the knob on the first try, and eases the door open enough to fit a hand inside to grope for the light switch. It's higher than any of the switches in Frank's apartment, but Gerard's rooms are in an older part of the house and built on a much grander scale. Frank keeps his eyes closed while he turns it on and doesn't open them until he's eased the door almost all the way shut again. It's two or three minutes of fiddling with the door and letting his eyes adjust before he's got the right balance of light and shadow so he can see the shape of Gerard in the bed. He remembers a chair in the corner by the window, and he considers sitting there and waiting, but that doesn't feel close enough. Gerard is a creature of instincts. Frank doesn't want to give him time to think. He needs to be right there for Gerard to smell and see and touch before his misguided sense of propriety comes back online.

So instead, Frank takes off his shoes and mud-spattered jeans and climbs up to sit near Gerard's knees.

It's hard for Frank to keep his promise. Now he's decided on a course of action, he wants to act. Instead, he tucks his hands into the folds of his knees and waits. This move was his, but the next belongs to Gerard.

If there's a clock in the room, Frank can't recall Gerard ever looking at it, and he can't see it now in the dim lighting. He left his wristcuff in his rooms when he went for his walk. But he probably killed ten minutes waiting for the door to open and getting the closet light on, seven at a conservative guess, so the shutters should open in something like twenty-five minutes, triggering Gerard to wake up. Frank starts counting his own breaths to pass the time.

He's at 311 when the whirring starts, gears turning to pull the chains that lift the shutters in their tracks. The shadows on Gerard's face shift as he inhales sharply and opens his eyes. "Frank," he says before his gaze even has a chance to shift to where Frank's sitting. In nothing but briefs and a t-shirt, Frank must reek of his run. That, and anticipation, frustration, the way he's gotten half hard watching the shadow between Gerard's slightly parted lips as he slept.

"Frank?" Gerard asks this time, taking an even deeper breath.

Frank doesn't answer him, just thinks hard about everything he wants Gerard to do to him right now and lets his smell speak for itself.

"The rules." Gerard sits up, edging away, putting space between them.

Fuck the rules. Fuck them so fucking much. Frank pulls his hands out from behind his knees and puts them behind his back, tilting his head so his pulse throbs in the moonlight. Gerard's almost out of the bed, one foot on the floor, three or four feet away from Frank now, but he's frozen, gaze right where Frank wants it.

When he moves, it's too fast for Frank to see. One second he's sure he's going to have to say something, and the next he's flat on his back, legs tangled under the press of Gerard's hips, hands pinned either side of his head, Gerard growling into his neck.

"Mmph," Frank says, the surprised squeak pushed from his chest by Gerard's weight, and then, "Yes," nothing more than a whisper as he presses up into Gerard's mouth.

Gerard's lips part and he sucks hard at Frank's skin, not piercing it, but pulling the blood to the surface. It burns, makes Frank dizzy, makes him struggle to free his hands or his legs, anything to hold on to Gerard, anchor himself, figure out which way is up. But Gerard doesn't give an inch, doesn't even push back where Frank's desperately trying to rut his hard cock up against Gerard's soft belly.

"Fuck, Frank. Frankie, you taste so good." Gerard mumbles the words against Frank's collar bone, nuzzling his nose against what already feels like a massive bruise. "You can't come in here and just taste like that."

"I can if I want you to fucking bite me already, fuck. Gerard, you are fucking— Just fucking do it."

Gerard's sharp inhale sends cold air rushing over Frank's wet skin, shivering through his shoulders and down his spine. "Please," Frank says, and Gerard listens.

Being bitten where he's already bruised is agony. Exquisite lightning making Frank jerk taut, rigid under Gerard's body. The sound he makes is lost in Gerard's moan, and then becomes a moan of his own as Gerard starts licking instead of sucking. "No," Frank says, wanting Gerard to take this from him. Wanting to give it. He can't spend another sleepless day all tangled up in need.

"Shh," Gerard says. "Shh. I want you to be— I want— I need to know I can control myself with you. If you want this there are ways, things— If I only take a little at a time we can make it last. It's even better than you running."

Through the fading pain in his neck, Frank tries to parse what Gerard just said. "Are you— Did you just offer me vampire foreplay?"

Gerard huffs a noise Frank can't classify. "You're still not a pet. It doesn't have to be sex. It can just be—" he says.

"It fucking does have to be sex," Frank says, getting what little leverage he can to push his dick harder against Gerard's stomach. "I don't want to be your damn pet. I want you to fucking fuck me." The few fumbling attempts at sex Frank made in college didn't exactly rock his world, but he's done more than enough experimenting on his own since to know what he likes.

"So fucking demanding," Gerard says, but that's not a no.

"You can't just bite a guy and leave him hanging," Frank says, managing to get more bravado into his voice than he expected.

"Demanding," Gerard mutters again, and this time it sounds like a yes.

He kneels up slowly, letting Frank's arms go, watching his face as he pushes Frank's shirt up over his head. "I used to design these," he says, running a fingertip over the tree on Frank's chest. "Before. Seemed so permanent at the time compared to drawing in paper. But it's probably eaten by worms now, or all burned up."

Frank looks down past the fabric bunched up under his chin and then helps pull his shirt over his head. "None of them turned?" He wants Gerard's clothes off too, but Gerard's too busy tracing lines of ink.

Finally, just when Frank's decided that these tickling touches are all he's going to get, Gerard asks, "How did you convince James to let you in?" He splays his hands on Frank's ribs, squeezes just hard enough to make Frank's breath catch, strokes down to his waist.

"I—" Frank can't remember for a minute. "He said, Mikey. That—"

Gerard either gets Frank's meaning or actually does not give a single fuck why James let Frank into his room, because done playing, he hooks his fingers in Frank's briefs, pulls them carefully over his cock, kneewalks backwards so he can get them down Frank's legs and off. He stares at Frank's face the whole time, eyes boring right to the heart of what makes Frank tick. Coherent conversation is off the table.

"Men smell so much stronger than vamps," Gerard says, pushing Frank's legs apart and settling between them. "I'd forgotten."

"You—" Frank's hands hover either side of Gerard's head but it doesn't seem right to touch, so he drops them back to the bed. "You've been sniffing me since we left Southern. How did you forget?"

"Not here." Gerard nuzzles into the sweat-damp crease of Frank's groin. "Not like this."

And that's so true. Gerard had his head pretty close to Frank's pits, but he hasn't had his face right there next to Frank's cock. "Mmmhmmngh," Frank says.

The nuzzling turns to licking and soft, sucking kisses that go on and on, covering the tops of Frank's thighs, his hips, move right up to the base of his cock, the edge of his sac, and any moment, any second, he expects Gerard to bite, or actually touch his fucking junk, because he's already put up with the teasing and his legs are shaking with the strain of anticipation. "Gerard," he groans, "please," and he can't keep his hands to himself anymore, someone has to fucking touch his dick.

But Gerard intercepts him, puts Frank's hands in his hair instead. And that's when he bites. Frank yells, surprised after all, and damn, that does not hurt any less than his neck, but his dick jumps, precome slipping out to smear along his belly, and his hips thrust, pushing Gerard's fangs deeper. It's even better when Gerard's fingers finally wrap around him, short quick tugs a counter to the languid suckling.

When he stops to lick the wound closed, he slows, gives Frank's dick a few long twisting pulls that make him want to writhe and thrust. "You," Frank gasps, "are a fucking tease."

"Told you I was gonna make it last," Gerard says.

"I hate you."

"I can tell," Gerard replies, squeezing Frank's cock, rubbing the resulting slick over the head with his thumb.

"No, real—" Frank starts, but Gerard sinks his fangs in again, and Frank can only hiss, "Yesssss."

This time Frank thinks Gerard's just gonna use his grip to keep Frank still, but then he starts moving again, strokes just tight and fast and long enough that Frank's almost convinced again Gerard has spy cameras in his apartment. "Oh," he says. "Oh, fuck. I—" and he'd wanted Gerard's cock, but this works too. They can— later.

He kicks when he comes, hard, and the pain where Gerard's biting him is blinding for a second before it starts to fade, Gerard licking him as he strokes Frank through the last of his orgasm.

When the bleeding's stopped and Frank's tongue works again, he says, "Do you kiss?" Because hands down best sex of his life, but Frank likes kissing too. And he'd like to know if that's gonna be on the agenda.

"Oh, fuck, Frankie, fuck," Gerard says, and he's there, face an inch from Frank's own. "Yes. I— You smelled so good I forgot."

"It's—" Frank tries to wave a hand in a way that means he's totally cool with the forgetting, because wow, but it's more of a weak flap.

Not that Gerard notices, because oh, yes. He definitely kisses. With the same single-minded intensity as when he feeds, hands framing Frank's face, lips and tongue flushed hot with Frank's blood. And if there was anything on earth that could make Frank get it up again, that would be it, but he's spent, so he just kisses back, hands cupping Gerard's shoulder blades, the tiny sliver of his brain not in a post-orgasm haze or thinking about how many years he's waited for this, wondering how he's going to get Gerard's clothes off.

Like with tracing Frank's tattoos and licking every inch of his pelvis, Gerard seems to have endless patience with kissing. But Frank gets his breath back, and eventually the tingling abates in his extremities, and he remembers that his fingers are good for more than idle rubbing along the edges of Gerard's spine. He doesn't get Gerard's shirt off, because Gerard won't release his mouth, but he gets it shoved up enough to get skin against his ribs and to get at the tie holding up Gee's pajama pants.

Frank made no promises at all to make things last, and makes no attempts at finesse. He cups Gerard's dick, surprised at how wet the fabric is against the back of his hand as he goes in, how slick Gee is already. He wonders if that's a vamp thing or just a Gerard thing, but either way it's awesome, because there's no need to lick his palm or worry about too much friction; he can just go fast and hard, work the shaft and the head and back down again in one silky glide until Gerard gives up kissing and just presses his face to Frank's jaw, clings to his shoulders, thrusts into Frank's grip.

"I'm sorry," Gerard says while Frank's wiping his hand on Gerard's pants. "You wanted me to fuck you. And I should have kissed you before I—"

"You can apologize when you break my magnifying glass, or spill my coffee in my keyboard, but no apologizing for orgasms."

"But I—"

"No." Frank covers Gerard's mouth with his palm. The palm he just wiped jizz off of, not very thoroughly. When Gerard starts tonguing it, it feels like he's licking Frank's dick, and Frank wonders if he might get it up again after all.

**



There's a four-day period where Frank spends almost every waking moment in Gerard's bed—and most of his sleeping moments, too—but when James stops putting off Gerard's appointments, Frank goes back to his lab. There's a stack of editing to catch up on, but no new install requests have come in. Frank isn't sure whether or not to be grateful. He'd like something to wipe Gerent Ulrich's installation from his mind, but he'd also like some time before he has to do that again.

Though once Gerard gets some of his backlog cleared and starts coming down and asking if Frank has a minute, Frank is extremely grateful that there's nothing more important than getting a few more vids up for download for him to be doing. Someone's bound to have a job for him soon, one that can't be interrupted for sex breaks.


According to Mikey, he shut his wrist monitor in the car door by mistake. But vampires don't tend to be clumsy that way, and Pete seemed overly concerned that it had possibly been crushed beyond repair, so Frank suspects Pete got as tired of Mikey constantly checking it as Gerard sometimes does, and found a more permanent solution than locking it in a desk drawer for a couple of hours. Not that it matters either way. Frank has the parts to fix it, and he's been wanting to try out some of his new circuits on something that gets the kind of use Mikey gives his tech, but can never get the guy to give it up long enough for Frank to work on it. If he'd thought of it, he'd have slammed it in a car door himself.

Gerard comes in as Frank's examining parts under his scope, sorting them into piles of keep and toss. "I'm not here to interrupt," he says before Frank's smile of greeting has even settled on his face. "I know Mikey wants that back ASAP. I just wanted to watch you work."

Frank is not convinced that's going to be feasible, since though it hasn't even been two weeks, he's already conditioned to stop whatever he's doing and climb into Gerard's lap or drag him to the nearest bed whenever Gerard walks into a room, but now's as good a time as any to get back to some semblance of normal operations—Gerard is in charge of the whole Eastern Zone after all, and can't spend all night every night having sex. "Okay," he says, using his tweezers to put the broken bundle of wires on the scope's stage into the toss pile. "Pull up a chair."

Frank expects Gerard to choose one of the comfortable chairs in the far corner, or maybe one of the wheeled chairs from the desk with all of Frank's monitors. But he perches on the stool in front of Frank's electron microscope, which is about six inches from Frank's right elbow. "Gerard," Frank says, because he's right there, and fuck Mikey and his wrist monitor, Frank wants to touch him.

"I'm not even here," Gerard says. He scoots the stool back a fraction of an inch. "Ignore me."

Right. Right. Frank'll get on that immediately. But he does try his best, and it helps that Gerard isn't breathing, that there's no body heat leeching off him into Frank's personal space, and by keeping his gaze on the pile of tech to his left or looking through his scope, Frank manages to almost do as he's told.

Until Gerard leans in and presses the flat of his tongue to the scorpion on Frank's neck. Frank completely mangles the part he's holding in his tweezers and gouges a divot out of the edge of the stage with their pointy tips. "Fuck," he breathes, dropping everything he's holding to grip the edge of the table, keep from just clawing at Gerard's shirt. Gerard said to ignore him. Frank's gonna try. Even when Gerard licks from the scorpion's head up beyond its tail. Even when he doesn't stop there, but moves back down again, lapping at the tatt like a kitten with a bowl of milk.

The sound Frank makes comes from high in his throat and he can feel it vibrating against Gerard's tongue. Any second he's going to feel the prick of teeth, the press of Gerard's lips, but he doesn't.

"Your ink tastes like iron," Gerard whispers, the words moving against Frank's skin. "Like blood. When you're warm, I can smell it from across a room."

"You're not—" Frank takes a deep, shuddering breath. "You're not across the room."

"No." Gerard brings a hand up to Frank's jaw, fingers and thumb tilting Frank's head. "I'm not."

And now. Now is when he's going to bite Frank. To feed. And Frank's ready for it, even though the stool he's on feels frail between his legs, and Gerard doesn't have an arm around him, is just holding him steady by the five points of contact on his face, and he's not sure he won't crumple to the floor. But Gerard just keeps licking, soft-wet-rough, until adrenalin and the sensation turn Frank's joints to water anyway.

"Gerard," Frank says again, a breath, a plea, his spine curling sideways to press his throat closer to his master's fangs.

"Later," Gerard says softly, pulling away, leaving Frank's skin wet and cold, raw feeling.

"No," Frank says without meaning to, his voice small and petulant.

"Later," Gerard repeats, moving away. "You have work to do. And the sun's almost up. Come join me when you're finished, and when the sun sets I'll let you give me your blood."

"Fucking tease," Frank grumbles. But he's saying it to an empty room.

**



Now that Frank comes up to his room most days, Gerard leaves his closet light on when he goes to sleep. He's also started undressing before getting in bed, which seemed crueler before Frank realized that it's much more difficult than he thought to wake a sleeping vampire, and if he's careful, he can touch. The door is angled so Gerard's face is in shadow, but his chest is lit softly, and Frank strips his own clothes off as he crosses the room to lick it. His tongue finds the smooth-skinned place just below Gerard's left nipple where last night Frank clawed half-moons, and he fingers the place on his own side where he still bears the marks from Gerard's nails. He wants to nibble, to follow Gerard's ribs down to where the sheet cuts across his waist, pull it lower, but Frank's learned that touching Gerard's dick crosses the line of what won't wake him, so he climbs into the bed and curls up with his back against Gerard's side, tucking his shoulder into Gerard's armpit. He's asleep by his third inhale.


Though the shutters are nearly silent, Frank wakes when they start to glide open. Gerard's still pressed against his back, but his arm is moving on Frank's chest, no longer dead weight. When Frank takes a sharp breath as Gerard's thumb catches a nipple, Gerard turns, fitting his hips to Frank's ass, his cock a soft weight nudging at Frank's cheeks. "Still want me to bite you, Frankie?" he whispers when Frank wiggles a little.

Frank just twists his head to give Gerard better access.

He bites low on Frank's neck, where it starts to curve out toward his shoulder, where the blood doesn't run so close to the surface; he's taking his time. Frank jumps at the initial pain, his body going rigid in Gerard's arms, but as Gerard suckles, strokes Frank's hip, gathers Frank's hands against his chest, Frank softens into the curve of Gerard's body.
 
"Mmm," Gerard hums, his mouth working slow in time with the shallow thrust of his hips.
 
Frank wants to press up into Gerard's fangs, wants to grind against Gerard's cock swelling harder between Frank's thighs, wants to reach down and stroke himself, but those are all distant desires lost in the high from the throb of his pulse against Gerard's lips. "More," he whimpers, leaving it up to Gerard what he wants more of.
 
Still sucking slowly, Gerard sinks his teeth in a fraction deeper, shifts them both so his dick's riding slick in Frank's crack, nudging up against his balls, and he cups Frank's dick to his belly, the press of his palm a sweet friction each time he rocks forward.
 
"Frankie," he says, pulling back enough to murmur against Frank's skin. "Gonna let me fuck you."
 
The words and Gerard's tongue skating the edges of Frank's wound make him shiver. "Do it," he says. He'd spread his legs for it, turn ass up, but Gerard's wrapped around him too tight for that. All he can do is clench his thighs against the thrust of Gerard's cock, twist his wrists a little in Gerard's grip.
 
"Shh," Gerard soothes. "I've got you."
 
But Frank wants to be taken, not held. A twist of Frank's hips hardens Gerard's fingers, makes him push rather than guide, and Frank only has time to drag in a shaky breath before one knee's pressed to his chest and Gerard's breaching him, nothing but the blood-fueled precome slicking his cock to smooth the way. Frank goes tense, instinct kicking in before he can stop it, and there's a moment where they're both pushing and getting nowhere, but then Gerard bites him again, between his shoulder blade and his spine, and Frank goes lax, letting Gerard inside. 

Wrapped up in Gerard like this, Frank feels tiny against vampire strength and speed and want, but huge in Gerard's focus, and it's like he's swelling and shrinking, swelling and shrinking, a heart beating heavy and full in the ribcage of Gerard's limbs. He's going to burst, be squeezed to nothing, feed Gerard forever, disappear. pleasepleaseplease, he's saying, but there aren't any words. All he can hear is the rush of blood in his ears. He's flying, scattered like dust in space, crushed by all the world's oceans, and he needs, needs something so he can breathe again.

"Harder," he gasps with the last air in his lungs, and Gerard stops suckling at Frank's blood, yanks him back into the next thrust, but it's not enough, so Gerard pulls Frank's hands up and his leg down, and rolls them so he's pounding into Frank from above. Frank's still pinned, hands above his head, thighs spread wide by Gerard's knees, but he can move with Gerard's rhythm, rock his dick against the sheets, feel friction, sweat, blood cooling on his back, and it's so fucking good.

Gerard makes a sound between a growl and a purr and grinds hard into Frank's ass, shuddering as he comes. And fuck, Frank was so close. But Gerard hauls him up so they're kneeling, Frank's back to Gerard's chest, and still buried deep, filling him up, jerks Frank off.


"Fuck," Frank breathes once Gerard's lowered him to the bed again. That was. Frank's pretty sure he actually left his body at the beginning there. "Wow."

"I keep thinking you're going to break, and you never break," Gerard says. Frank can't tell if he's glad or disappointed about this.

"Not yet," he says a little warily, even though he's almost certain that Gerard wouldn't want to break him. Not beyond repair at least.

That gets a smile and Gerard's hand smoothing down his back to his ass. "You're perfect."

"Don't you forget it," Frank answers a little more breathlessly than he intended.

"You should get some more sleep. I have a conference call." Gerard pushes a sweaty strand of hair off Frank's face, tucking it behind his ear. "I'll send Pete up in a while with some BloodPlus."

"I'm fine," Frank says, because he's fine. And he has shit to do.

"Sleep," Gerard repeats. "And BloodPlus. Or we can't do that again later. And I want to do that again later."

Frank's not actually sure he can survive two orgasms like that in one night, but he has no intention of arguing any further.


Pete doesn't get to Gerard's room before Frank's gotten up, but he does find Frank later in his lab. "I already took the BloodPlus," Frank says before Pete can open his mouth.

"I figured," Pete says. "It's addicting getting fucked while they feed, isn't it."

"He told you that? Ugh. He's the master of oversharing."

Settling on the stool next to where Frank's working, Pete punches him companionably in the arm. "He was just excited that you liked it. And wanted to make sure I understood how important it was to give you your injection."

Frank rolls his eyes, but he can't help smiling a little, because of course Gerard would have to explain to Pete why. Just telling him to do it wouldn't be enough.

"Anyway. I was talking to Christa, and I had an idea for a way to help her with watering the vegetable gardens. Wanted to know if you might have the parts."

Frank's first instinct is to ask Pete what his idea is and say he'll do it for him, but he has been meaning to see what else Pete can actually do with tech, and it would be great to have a hand in the lab. "Sure," he says. "What do you need?"

They only find half the parts necessary to upgrade the sprinkler system, so Frank adds the rest to the list of things he's running low on and calls up to ask if Mikey can spare anyone to take them shopping. "Someday I'd like to walk around without a guard," Pete says. He prods at the band around his wrist. "Isn't the damn jewelry supposed to protect us?"

Between Frank's parents, the campus gates at Rutgers, and the rules of Eastern's compound, Frank has never ventured into any of the cities or shopping districts on his own. "No pet's marker or tech's insignia is going to protect you from a vampire hungry enough to be stupid. Doesn't matter who your master is. And we have free run of the compound." He could never take being stuck in his apartments, but between the main house, the grounds and the outbuildings, he's never felt trapped here.

"'S not the same," Pete mutters, but he doesn't press his point.

The intercom beeps with Mikey getting back to them. "I'll take you," he says. "Meet me on the driveway in five minutes."

"Fuck," Frank and Pete say in unison once the line's disconnected. Mikey is a terrible driver. "See if he'll let you drive," Frank says. "He likes to make you happy."


Shopping with Mikey and Pete is a lot more fun than going on his own with two surly vamps who clearly feel like they have better things to do than babysit the gerent's pet tech. Mikey does let Pete drive, and he asks questions about what they're doing for the sprinklers, and gives Pete a fond, proud look that nearly matches the ones his brother gives Frank sometimes. Frank really isn't sure why Pete's complaining. If they were out in the world, they could be a vamp's dinner tomorrow with nothing to say about it. But then, Frank's never been a pet. Maybe it would be better for Pete if he could get a tech's badge and take off the bracelets.

"You still need new clothes?" Mikey asks Pete once they've finished with the things on Frank's list. "You need to get back, Frankie?"

Frank doesn't need to get back, and he just tore a hole in his favorite sweater the other day, so wouldn't mind hitting the clothes stores. "We've got time," he says.

But he might not have said that if he'd had any idea how much time clothes shopping with Mikey Way could take. Frank's always headed for the rack holding whatever he came in for, grabbed something if he saw it, left if he didn't. But Mikey stops just inside the door and starts going through everything methodically, pulling things out and piling them in Pete's arms until a sales person notices and comes over to get them a dressing room. Since Mikey seems to have had the same five shirts on rotation as long as Frank can remember, he's thrown, but Pete seems unfazed, so Frank does his best to roll with it.

"The jacket the gerent wanted should be in on Friday," the clerk says when she comes back for the second armload of outfits. And that makes more sense. Mikey's just shopping for Pete the way he's used to doing with Gerard. Frank could spend hours watching Gerard draw, or listening to him talk about history, and he's still really hoping they'll go driving again without the blindfold or the anemia or the deadline, but Mikey can keep the clothes shopping.

Pete tries on everything ever made, and Mikey buys him half of it, Frank finds a cardigan that's almost as soft as his old one, and they head for home.


It takes almost a week to redo all the automated systems for the garden, but Pete's idea saves time and water, and Christa's thrilled with it. They even get hugs from Ray, who is always happy when Christa's happy. It's easy to work with Pete, despite—or hell, maybe because of—the way he thinks in completely different ways than Frank. He got more computer classes than engineering under his belt before he ended up at Central as Gabe's pet, so he's not as good at building stuff from scratch, but he's got a hell of an instinct for cross-application and a willingness to think outside the box that more schooling would probably have trained out of him. In a lot of ways working together is like being back at Rutgers for Frank, but with a lot less stress, and a lot more sex in his down time.

**



Looking up from his book to make eye contact with Gerard, who's going through the district reports, Frank asks, "Who do we have to talk to to get Pete granted tech status?"

"Me," Gerard says. "And Pete. Maybe Mikey, technically, since Pete's his pet, but mostly Pete. And you. Since you're the one who's been training him."

Frank manages to keep his amusement at Gerard's compulsive over-explanation to a small smile. "So we don't have to go to a board of directors or anything is what you're saying."

Gerard smiles back, aware that Frank's laughing at him. "Nope. I can do whatever I want. Privilege of the office."

"Awesome," Frank says. "You should do me. Reports are boring."

"Reports are necessary," Gerard says, mouth curling down on one side. "But I should be done in an hour."

"Fine," Frank says. "Fine." He raises his book so it hides his grin, and palms his dick. "We'll just be here waiting for you to finish."

"Troublemaker," Gerard mutters, and lets his fangs show for a moment, a threat that looks more like a promise, before getting back to work.

**



The shutters are still down and the darkness is barely broken by the crack of light around the closet door when Frank wakes up breathless, heart pounding, dick hard, mouth brassy with the remembered taste of blood. He's half on Gerard already, pulling himself closer even as he swims to consciousness, tangling his fingers in Gerard's hair, snugging one thigh between his legs, biting his chest. That wakes Gerard up, and he tries to throw Frank off, but the hold Frank has in his hair, on his arm, is too tight, and before he can make a second attempt, he realizes who's in his bed and stills.

"Frank," he says, "what—"

But Frank's still in the grip of his dream, and Gerard's words have no more effect than his hands. A warning rumbles in Frank's throat and he bites harder, sucking at Gerard's skin as he works it with his teeth, digging into Gerard's triceps with fingers already aching with the strain. When Gerard puts a hand on his back, Frank moves his teeth to a spot right in the center of his neck, where his pulse would be throbbing if he had one, and grinds his dick against Gerard's hip.

"Frank?" Gerard's hands are bracketing Frank's ribs now, making Frank's skin feel too tight. His eyes are too big for their sockets, his jaw hurts, his junk hurts, everything is wrong. "Frank."

"No," Frank mutters, pushing Gerard's arm harder down into the bed, pulling his head to the side. "Just, I need." Frank doesn't know what he needs.

"Here," Gerard says. "Let me—" When he goes to lift Frank off this time he's gentle, and Frank does let him, even though every instinct is telling him not to let Gerard out from under him. As soon as he's free from Frank's hold, Gerard turns on his belly. "You can fuck me," he says.

And that's not— That's not what they do. "I'm sorry," Frank says, realizing only now that he just woke a vampire up in the middle of the day. Gerard should be sleeping.

"No," Gerard says. "Do it."

Even now, fully awake, dream haze faded, Frank wants to. So when Gerard says it again, he gives in to the desire, crawls onto Gerard's back, pushes his dick into the space between Gerard's legs. He means to just rut a little, get used to the feeling before he fingers Gerard open, but Gerard's scent fills his nostrils and his mouth floods with saliva and he's biting again before he can think not to, mindlessly grinding against Gerard's ass.

His hands find Gerard's, make knots of their fingers, and he uses his weight to bear Gerard down into the bed. When Gerard bites him, even with fangs retracted, he leaves a line of wheals and bruises on Frank's skin, but hard as he bites, Frank can't leave a mark. His hips work in frustration, driving his cock into the clutch of Gerard's thighs, heating the space with the friction. A part of Frank's aware that Gerard's working with him, trying to make this good, and he wants to snap at him, tell him to stop giving it up so easy, but if Gerard actually fought back, Frank would be pinned underneath him before he could blink, so he just digs his fingernails harder into Gerard's palms, gets a fresh grip on the flesh under Gerard's left shoulder blade with his teeth, and rides his frustration out until he can finally come.

He collapses afterwards, cheek resting on the still damp but already faded bite mark on Gerard's back, feeling better but not satisfied. "C'n we go back to sleep?" Gerard asks, words rumbling against Frank's chest. Frank nods as best he can in this position, and uncurls his cramping fingers from their grip on Gerard's hands. "Y'can stay there," Gerard says, and before Frank can answer, he drops into the dead stillness of vampire sleep.

Gerard isn't nearly as comfortable to lie on asleep as he is awake, and Frank feels sticky and gross besides, so he rolls off. He hasn't slept enough, but there'll be no going back now, so he keeps rolling right off the bed, pads to the hidden door in the corner that leads to Gerard's shower room and gets right under the spray without even waiting for it to warm up first. The cold blast makes him gasp, makes his muscles seize, pinpointing all the aches, but as he lets it splash on his face it clears his head, makes him feel like maybe he fits inside his skin after all. It gets hot much more quickly up here than down in his apartment, and he's letting the heat seep into his bones when the last of the weirdness leaves him.

What the fuck, he thinks, scrubbing shampoo into his hair, stretching out the stiffness in his jaw. What's he doing waking up gnawing on Gerard like Princess used to with Dad's old slipper? Pinning Gerard down like Frank's the one who's—

It doesn't matter. Just a weird dream.



Frank nods to James as he sneaks out of Gerard's room to go back downstairs, relieved that he's not the kind of guy who gets offended if Frank's not in the mood to stop and chat. He's just fit his wrist cuff to the door's key slot when a voice from the lab doorway makes him jump.

"Hey, Frankie, where you been?" It's Bob, sitting backwards on one of the wheeled chairs.

"Upstairs." Frank gets the door unlocked. "I'll be over in a few minutes. I just need—"

But Bob's at his elbow, following him into the apartment, saying "What the fuck?" as he fingers the ends of Frank's still-damp hair where they've soaked his shirt. "When did you get demoted to pet?"

That's too much for Frank, and he spins in the tight space of the doorway, tries to shove Bob back into the hall, but it's a bad angle to push someone who outweighs him by seventy pounds, and Bob hardly moves while Frank ends up stumbling over his own feet and into the back of his armchair.

"Jeeze, Frank, I was kidding about the pet thing, but don't try to tell me you're not letting him fuck you. It's all over you."

Frank doesn't want to be followed, and he doesn't want to be touched, and what he does with Gerard is his own fucking business. "Get the fuck out," he says, trying to keep his voice steady. "And stay out of my lab. You're nothing but hired help around here. Your choice."

Bob stands up straighter, and he takes a step forward instead of back. "Fuck yes, it's my choice. I'm not gonna be a lap dog for those things."

This time Frank has momentum and leverage on his side and when he lands on Bob he knocks him down. "They're not things," he grunts as his fist connects with Bob's left cheekbone.

"The fuck, Frank?" Bob mumbles through the hand clutching his face. But when Frank pulls back to hit him again, Bob manages to get it together to throw him off.

"They're not things," Frank repeats, pushing upright, but not trying to attack again. "They're people who happen to be vampires."

"You're touched in the head as well as the dick." Bob eyes him warily and gets to his feet. "Heard what happened to you in Southern. How do you get from that to 'they're people'?"

Frank doesn't have to explain himself to some fucking jerk who doesn't even have a zone of his own, but apparently his mouth didn't get that message. "Ulrich is— That's different. He's a fucking sicko. When has Gerard ever been anything but nice to you? When has Mikey? Any of the others? They pay you on time, give you rooms for as long as you want them, recommend your work when the other vamps ask for references. Bet they treat you better than most of the fucking so-called humans you know. So I repeat. Get the fuck out."

"Jesus, Iero. Get some more sleep. Sounds like you need it." Bob moves like he's gonna try to reach for Frank's arm.

"Get. The fuck. Out."

Bob goes.

**



Six days after Frank's fight with Bob, Gerard's out at the western edge of the zone doing nothing even a little bit interesting to watch, so Frank's killing time running routine diagnostics when Pete walks into the lab and says, "What's up? We wanna jam before Bob has to head out tomorrow."

Frank looks past him to where Bob's lurking over his shoulder. He can't tell if the shadow on Bob's cheekbone is bruise, or just the light. "What're you doing with Pete?" Frank says. "Thought you didn't like pets."

Pete's shoulders jerk; he flicks a glance back at Bob and gives Frank a look.

"Fuck you," Bob says. "I never said I don't like pets. I just— Last time I was out this way, you weren't doing the deed with the gerent. Took me by surprise. Then you fucking flew off the handle and jumped my ass."

"Didn't fly off the handle." Frank didn't. Bob shouldn't have said that shit.

"Dude, you gave him a black eye," Pete says. "What'd you say to him anyway, Bryar? You never told me."

"He was talking shit about Gerard and Mikey. You would've punched him too."

"I wasn't. Christ. Pete, I told you this was a bad idea. Ray'll play with us. He's got those old bongos I can use."

"What were you saying about Mikey?" Pete asks. Fuckin' right. Pete knows they're not things. He gets it.

"Was just saying they're vamps. Not a big deal. Seriously."

Pete's face scrunches up. "They are vamps. You know they're vamps, Frank. Gerard hasn't brainwashed you, has he?"

"He didn't say 'vamps'. He said 'things'. Like they weren't ever just like you and me."

Bob's eyebrows are saying see? when Pete turns toward him. Frank can't tell if Pete sees or not though, because he says, "Mikey was like me maybe," his tone somewhere between placating and joking around. "But I'm pretty sure Gerard wasn't ever like anyone. That dude's a law unto himself."

Frank can't argue with that. He's far too complicated for someone who sees him as seldom as Bob to know anything about, and the people who matter understand. Gerard, and Mikey, Pete. Fuck Bob's opinion anyway. Frank's not in the mood to have his feathers smoothed, but he's not really in the mood to keep fighting, either. Bob's not around that often, and it is fun to jam with him. "Sorry I punched you in the face," Frank says. "Just because you were being a dick, I didn't need to stoop to your level."

"Nice apology, asshole," Bob says, but his mouth is quirking a little. "Sorry I insulted your vampire boyfriend."

"We all friends again?" Pete says, looking back and forth between them.

"Sure," Bob says.

"Sure," Frank agrees.

But when they call Ray to come down and bring his guitar, Frank wants to see if Mikey's free too, and it feels like with Bob sitting behind the drum kit, he can't. That doesn't feel much like friendship.

They play until nearly sunup, until Frank's fingertips are raw, and he tries all night to get lost in the music, but it never happens.

**



When Gerard hunts with Mikey, he rarely uses his alts. They're efficient together, moving fast side by side, only splitting off at the last second before grabbing their prey. Tonight they take a pair of girls smoking outside the back door of a 24-hour diner. Frank catches a glimpse through Gerard's eyes of his girl's cigarette tumbling to the asphalt and then nothing but the black of the inside of his eyelids. But Frank doesn't need to see now; he can feel.

Frank's spine knows the twisting response to the prick of fangs, his heart how hard to beat to fill a mouth with blood. But his tongue knows too, the taste of it, his hands how hard to grip, his body learning by osmosis both sides of the equation. He can feel the girl's blood coating the insides of his cheeks, smell the copper tang and the night and the smoke. Fuck. Fuck.

Shoving away from his desk, Frank flees the lab and spends an hour banging the fuck out of his drums. The noise and the sweat burn through him, clear his head, and as a bonus unlock the piece that his brain's been stuck on trying to get in-ears with a longer range without making them bigger. What happened at the monitors was a blip. An idle fantasy that only felt real. In-ears are actually real, and with better range would be even more useful.

After sponging the worst of the sweat off his face and grabbing a cup of coffee, Frank heads back to the lab, and he's lost in his scope and micro-soldering iron when Gerard's voice comes dangerously calm from across the room.

"What the fuck am I looking at, Frank?"

The circuit he just spent an hour painstakingly building probably gets destroyed when Frank drops everything to spin around in his chair, but it doesn't matter, because Gerard is looking at himself looking at himself in Frank's monitor. How did Frank forget to turn it off?

"I—" Frank says, and then he's dangling a foot off the floor in front of the screen, Gerard's bruising grip on his biceps, with Gerard's face right there.

"I'm not in recording mode." Gerard sets Frank down with a thump, but he doesn't let go. "Why are you recording me when I'm not in recording mode. How are you recording me when I'm not in recording mode?"

"No!" Frank says. "No. It's not recording. I wouldn't— It doesn't record. There isn't even any way to record off that feed. Three layers of firewalls and a 272b scrambler."

"Then what is it?" Gerard's fingers tighten with every word and then loosen suddenly, making Frank stumble backward. He catches sight of the movement out of the corner of his eye. It's fucking weird to see himself on the monitor. Not the same at all as seeing Mikey or James or Jarrod. He barely recognizes his own face.

"It's just for me," he says, tearing his gaze away from the screen to look Gerard in the eye. "Once we— Fuck. Once we fitted most of the household with cameras, you started using yours less. And I. I couldn't stand it, wondering all the time what you were doing, where you were. Worrying that something— I don't know. And you wanted the feed from the perimeter cameras, and I wondered if I could make something like that smaller. Small enough to fit in the vision alts."

"So, when?"

"I installed it with your x-ray."

"Years then." Gerard pulls a chair over and sits like this conversation is too much for him to take standing up. "You've been spying on me for years."

Under the circumstances, it's too weird standing while Gerard sits, but all the other chairs are too far away, so Frank lowers himself to the floor. "I haven't been spying. I've been watching. Trying to—" Live vicariously through you. Learn what it's like to be a vampire. "It can't be news to you that I have a thing." Frank gestures, encompassing Gerard's existence. "But I don't think you get it's not a new thing."

"What have you seen?" The bite of fury is gone from Gerard's voice, but what's left is far from idle curiosity. Frank wants to move closer, wants to touch, but he stays where he is.

"Mostly I watch you hunt." Gerard's eyes narrow. "And sometimes, sometimes I watch you draw, or read. I just— I know I shouldn't."

"Does anyone else know about this?"

"Not even Pete." That had been a close call, but Frank knows Pete believed him when he said it was old footage. Gerard watches him for a minute, and when Frank holds his gaze, he's pretty sure he sees the tiniest flicker of a smile on the edge of his mouth.

"You know it's creepy as fuck installing spy cameras inside a dude's head, right?" Gerard leans over and plucks Frank off the floor, sets him in his lap. The smile gets a little bigger. "Really? You were worried about me?"

Somehow, though Frank's bones are trying to dissolve with relief, he finds the coordination to wrap his arms around Gerard's back. "Not—" Gerard likes that Frank's been spying on him. He likes it. "I mean, you're a gerent. Rulers are always more vulnerable to like, revenge plots and shit."

"Years. You've been stalking me for years. And you never made a move." Frank doesn't even have to check Gerard's face to know that's delight in his voice. Vampires are fucking weird.

"You're a gerent, did I mention that? And until everything with Ulrich, you didn't exactly seem open to move-making."

Gerard glances over at the monitor. "But you're still watching?"

"Not every day." Frank doesn't mention how much of a cutback that is. "But when you hunt— I like it."

Gerard beams down at him and gathers him close. "Where did I find you, Frankie?"

Frank means to retort, "Rutgers," but first he's breathless with motion, and then he's flat on his back on his bed with Gerard's tongue in his mouth.


When Frank wakes up, ass and throat and groin still feeling sensitive and used in that way he'll never get enough of, Gerard is watching him from his place as Frank's pillow, looking very pleased with himself. "Yes," Frank says, digging his chin into Gerard's sternum a little so he knows Frank's not letting him get away with being a smug bastard, "that was totally amazing. Stop smirking."

Gerard stops, his face going pinched and stern for the flash of a moment before he breaks out the dopey grin Frank will also never get enough of. "You're the amazing one, Frankie. I never thought a human would be so, you're so— All I have to do is touch you and I feel like you're feeding me already. You're so alive."

"What if I—" Frank says. Just to see what Gerard will answer. "What if I weren't? Alive. What if I were a vamp?"

"You're not," Gerard says, too quickly for Frank's liking. "I won't let anyone do that to you."

Which, duh. Obviously Gerard isn't going to let another vampire turn Frank. "But if I were asking you to. If I wanted— Would you still— would we still be this?" Frank counts on the whole naked and plastered together with come and flecks of dried blood thing to clue Gerard in to what this means.

"You don't want to be a vampire." He sounds insultingly certain.

And Frank was mostly kidding. Didn't even really know he was going to say it. Because it's just a fantasy. A blip. But Gerard doesn't know that, and he doesn't have to sound so sure.

Frank pushes up on his palms so he's looking down into Gerard's face instead of up at him. "Is that you telling me I have to choose between being with you and being like you?"

That makes Gerard frown. "But you're a tech, Frankie."

If Frank never hears the word tech out of Gerard's mouth again it will be too fucking soon. "And you were an art student. And now you're a king."

"Technically, the title of king is passed down through a familial line of succession. And there's no—"

"Oh for fuck's—" Frank rolls off Gerard and wraps the sheet around his shoulders, sitting down by Gerard's feet where he won't be tempted to strangle him. Or kiss him into submission. "I don't actually care what the difference between a king and a gerent is. My point is that we don't have to spend our lives doing only one thing."

"But you're a genius. You're the only one who can do some of the things you do. And when you get turned— It was years before I could draw again. And it's still not the same as it was before."

Jabbing Gerard in the calf with his toes, Frank says, "But what I actually asked you is if you would still want to do this with me if I were a vampire."

"Always," Gerard says. "But it's different."

"That's all you had to say." The sun is going to be up soon, and it's not a good idea for Gerard to sleep in Frank's quarters; his are safer. Untangling the sheet from around his legs, Frank gets up. "That's all I wanted to know."

Gerard follows as he heads for the bathroom. "I don't think you're listening to me."

Frank sneaks a glance at the clock. Ten minutes 'til shutters, another ten after that before James is down here looking for his charge. "That's because I'm not," he says. "Almost sunup. I'm gonna take a shower. You probably want to get upstairs."

"Frank," Gerard says, but Frank steps into the bathroom and closes the door behind himself.

**




Gerard pretends they never had the conversation.

When he's licking Frank's blood off his lips, pushing into him, telling him how good he tastes, how hot and soft and perfect he is, Frank doesn't even mind. But then he's back down in his lab sitting in front of his monitors, and it's an itch under his skin he can't dig out.

He tries watching all the hunt footage he has time for, and tries not watching any. But now that he's said it out loud, neither tack makes him think any less about being turned.

Once he stops thinking of it as a blip it starts to feel like something that's inevitable. As inevitable as tech school was from the minute he rescued Princess.

But more than a month after Frank first tried to talk to Gerard about it, he still hasn't figured out how to bring it up again. Maybe tonight, after Gerard wakes up. He'll just dive in, not give himself a chance to second guess his words. In the meantime, Pete needs to get his ass out of Mikey's bed and down to the lab so they can go over the new code they've been working on for the shared-vision circuits.

Like thought summoned him, Pete appears on silent feet, loose hands around Frank's throat to shake him hello. "You have the best of both worlds right here," he says in lieu of a standard greeting. "Why change it?"

"Why change what?" Not that it isn't obvious. Apparently Frank is the only one Gerard isn't talking to about Frank bringing up being turned. Not that Mikey's everyone, but still. Fucking Gerard and his fucking mouth.

Pete taps the screen where a vamp Frank barely remembers as one in a string he installed cameras on is frozen mid pounce. Frank's been synching sound effects to footage while he waits. "You really think that bastard chose to be that?"

"Sure," Frank says, ducking out from under the hand Pete still has on his neck. "It's a two-way street."

Not getting the hint that Frank wants to drop it, Pete wraps both arms around Frank's shoulders, pressing his cheek to Frank's ear. "You can still have a head-on collision on a two-way street, Frankie. And that's one car crash you can't walk away from."

Pete's strong, but Frank knows where all the nerves are in his wrists, and he digs in with sure fingers, breaking Pete's embrace and wheeling his chair out of range. "Point is you do. You get to walk away forever," he says.

Wising up, Pete doesn't try to follow. He's still fucking talking though. "You think Mikey wouldn't take it back if he could? You think Gerard wouldn't?"

"I think what the fuck business is it of yours?" He doesn't need this shit. Not from Pete.

"I think you're my fucking friend and you're thinking with your dick."

Fuck him if that's what he thinks. What the fuck does he know anyway? "When my dick's involved, that's the only time I don't want to do it. I've been at this a lot longer than you have. Don't fucking tell me what I want."

"Just tell me you've really thought it through."

"I don't really have time to do those circuits right now," Frank says. "I have editing to do."

"You're a defensive little shit, but you're my fucking friend, Frank. I'm allowed to worry about you."

"Fuck you, Pete." Frank turns his back on him even though it means he's looking at a blank wall.

"Yeah," Pete answers. "Not that kind of friend."

He doesn't say anything else, and after a minute Frank cases the room in the reflections in the cooling towers and sees the lab is empty.

"Not what I meant," he mutters to himself and goes back to the audiofiles of screams and shouts and running feet.


Gerard appears not long after sunset. Frank's still pissed off and really not in the mood, but Gerard didn't come to sniff around. "Mikey said you and Pete think you've solved the shared vision problem. There's a conference in New York in a couple of weeks and the twins want to come with the Central contingent and have you try again. Will you be ready?"

"Pete thinks we're closer than I do. The best we've got still has a strobe effect."

"Two weeks, though. Sixteen nights, really. If I promise not to distract you too much?" Gerard grins like he has no intention of ceasing any of his distractions. "I'll at least promise not to give you any more work to do."

Frank really wishes he wouldn't grin like that. It makes it hard to stay pissed off. Hard, but not impossible. "Not sure Pete's talking to me, anyway, which, thanks for that. Do you have to tell Mikey every single thing we talk about?"

"What?" Gerard looks genuinely confused.

"Pete knows I asked you to turn me. I can only assume he heard it from your brother, since you're the only one I've discussed it with."

"Oh," Gerard says. Guilt doesn't sit well at all on a vampire's face.

"Yeah," Frank says. "Oh." Frank gets out of his chair and hops up to sit on one of the tables so he's at Gerard's level.

"I didn't tell him so much as I didn't deny it when he asked me."

"How would he even know to ask you? Does he have my room monitored or something?"

"No. We wouldn't— No, Frank. He's just. He's Mikey. He always knew what was bugging me. Even when we were kids."

"So I'm something that's bugging you now? Fantastic."

"That's not what I—" Gerard steps closer, reaches out to touch Frank's arm, but drops his hand when Frank flinches away. "I hate saying no to you, Frank. It's always been so easy to give you everything you wanted, but I can't do this."

"You mean you won't," Frank says, pushing off the table and past Gerard toward the lab's door. "And you're treating me like I'm still the seventeen-year-old kid you met at a college fair." He turns back to see Gerard looking at him, mouth open like he's about to argue. "No. Don't fucking deny it. I've been human longer than you ever were, and I've been living with vampires almost half my life. Been living with you. Fucking trust me when I say I know more than you could imagine about what I'm choosing here."

"Frank," Gerard says, but it's not capitulation.

"No," Frank answers, and slams the lab door behind him.


The music from Frank's speakers is making the windows vibrate, and Frank's spraying sweat every time he brings his drumsticks down, but he can't get lost in the music; he can still see the messages popping up on his screen in the corner. With a grunt, he throws a stick at it, but it only bounces off the wall. He hauls the hem of his t-shirt up to wipe his face and reaches for another stick, but he's thrown or broken them all but the one he's holding in his left hand. He brings that one crashing down on the ride cymbal before throwing it after its mate.

"Music: three," he says, bringing the stereo down to background-noise levels. "Shopping list: drumsticks. Inbox: font sixty." The messages get big enough to read from across the room. They're all from Pete, and they're all minor variations on open your fucking door. "Inbox: delete," Frank says.

"Don't fucking delete my messages," Pete calls through Frank's door. "I just want to talk to you about the strobe problem. Won't bring up your desire to become a blood-sucking fiend, I promise."

Christ, Pete's an asshole. "You're an asshole," Frank calls back, loud enough to be heard over the music.

"I'm the asshole who's gonna solve your fucking strobe problem though. Open up."

"Hall door: unlock," Frank says grudgingly.

True to his word, once he's inside, Pete doesn't bring up vampires once. He's jumping around, hands waving, spitting equations and design adjusts at Frank so fast Frank can't keep up. "Let's take this to the lab," Frank interrupts when Pete finally pauses to breathe.

"This time I really think it's gonna work," Pete says, reaching for the door.

They're tweaking and testing, tweaking and testing until well past sunrise, but finally they get five test feeds in a row without so much as a flicker.

"I've gotta sleep, dude," Pete says when they're done grinning at each other. "You gonna get Gerard to bring us a body tonight to try it on, or should I ask Mikey?

Frank's grin disappears like it was never there. He doesn't want to ask Gerard for anything, but there's no point complaining that Gee's treating him like he's seventeen and then acting like a petulant kid to prove him right. Their relationship is a separate issue from Frank's job. "I'll ask," he says. "With luck we're gonna need Mikey to bring us a prisoner soon anyway."

"Fuck, yeah, we are," Pete crows, raising his hand for a high five, coaxing Frank's smile back.

They part ways in the hall, but when Frank gets his door open and sees the mess he made sulking earlier, he turns around and heads for Gerard's rooms. He might as well start being the bigger man now. Besides, he sleeps better when Gerard's there.

**




If Gerard is surprised to find Frank in his bed when he wakes up, he covers it by rolling Frank under him and kissing him maddeningly slowly until Frank's grappling at his hair, his shoulders, his ass, rutting up into him, trying to get more. Which, since that's pretty similar to most of the other evenings for the last several months, is either a great cover, or indicates Gerard didn't take Frank's fit of pique personally.

Before Frank can come, there's a knock on the door, and James is calling, "Sorry, sire, it's the harbormaster. I think you should talk to him."

"Stay," Gerard says, nipping at Frank's neck, fangs retracted. Then adds, "Please," when he's half off the bed.

"You're going to give James an eyeful," Frank answers, eyes on Gerard's naked ass. He's not planning on moving anyway. He only got into bed two hours ago. Another good thing about being a vampire: he'd get a lot more sleep.

Gerard pulls a pair of pants off a chair and tugs them on as he crosses the room. "I'll be right back."

Frank doesn't get to find out if Gerard keeps his promise because he's asleep again before his dick even goes soft.


The in-situ tests Frank and Pete do that night on the body Gerard brings them go well, and whatever the trouble was at the harbor provides them with three vampire subjects a few days later, and they're ready when Mizuki and Miyako get there. During the redesign Pete and Frank figured out how to get sending and receiving on one chip, so Frank takes everything out and starts again. Pete did one of the installs in the prisoners and did a great job, but no one's ready to ask vampires from another zone to let a pet perform surgery on them. Especially not when they already know and trust Frank's work. Frank's definitely going to have to talk to Gerard and Mikey again about reclassifying Pete to tech status, though.

The mechanism for switching to receiving mode is a sharp glance up, and Frank's about to open his mouth and give the twins instructions when he flashes back to Gerent Ulrich and what happened when he activated his alts. "Um," he says instead, his own eyes finding Gerard. Neither of the women have given any indication that they're likely to snap and start thrill-killing, but it makes Frank feel better that Gerard's only a few feet away. He takes a deep breath and blows it out.

"Okay, Mizuki, turn and look at that screen there, Miyako, close your eyes for me." He motions to Pete to call up the test image. "Alright, keep them closed and roll your eyes up to the ceiling."

Miyako does as she's told and lets out a short squeal. Frank hopes he's right in reading it as delight.

"Ane, are you okay?" Mizuki says, swiveling rapidly to look at her sister.

"Ooh, don't turn like that," Miyako says, eyes still screwed shut. "Is that really what I look like?"

Gerard and Pete give Frank twin thumbs up.

"My turn, my turn," Mizuki demands.

"How do I turn it off?" Miyako turns her face toward Frank.

"Just open your eyes. That resets it to sending only."

The twins trade off, and then back again, never letting go each other's hands.

"We'll just let you practice," Frank finally says, and the three of them leave the sisters alone.

"You need me for anything else?" Pete asks once they're out in the hall. "Because they're having pizza up at quarters tonight, and I'm starving."

"Nah," Frank says. "You go eat pizza."

Pete takes the stairs two at a time.

"That must have appealed to your stalker self," Gerard says, tracing Frank's jawline with a finger and tugging him toward his apartment by one belt loop.

"I would totally do that with you if I thought you'd let me." No point in lying.

"You could close your eyes and watch your own face while I fucked you." Gerard's voice is low and he's nuzzling under Frank's ear and fumbling behind himself for the doorknob. This is a bad idea.

"Gee, we can't—" Frank mumbles, but he's having trouble remembering why. Then there's a crash from the lab and he remembers. Guests. Right there. Probably getting hungry after having Frank work on them half the night.

"Fuck. Better take them hunting," Gerard says, lips still brushing Frank's neck.

"Yes." Frank adjusts his dick in his pants. "You'd better. I don't want starving vamps loose in my lab."

"You gonna watch us hunt?" Gerard asks, eyes on Frank's bulge.

"Rather watch you fuck me. Too bad it's illegal to install alts on a human."

Gerard pointedly ignores the dig.

**



As summer tips into autumn and the nights start to get longer, Gerard ignores sarcasm, hints, and flat-out requests to discuss it with a skill that would be impressive if it didn't make Frank want to scream. They're also having more sex than they have since they started fucking, because that seems to be Gerard's favorite subject-changing tactic. Frank is going to be thirty-three in less than a month. It doesn't matter, not really, but it's a point in time. A deadline. And going through Gerard isn't working, so Frank comes up with another plan.

He finds Mikey in the garage, watching Pete help Ray hoist the engine out of an old Roadster Gerard found in an abandoned house up by Sarasota Springs. Mikey's up in the rafters, perched at the edge of the storage loft, indulgent smile on his face as Pete struts and sweats and lifts heavy things. The guys are making enough noise, and it's far enough away, that if Frank climbs up there to join him, Pete and Ray won't overhear.

Mikey watches silently as Frank picks his way up the rickety ladder and over the scattered half-rusted Frank doesn't know what to sit down beside him. "Nice view," Frank says in greeting.

"It is," Mikey agrees, smile tugging at his mouth again as his comment is timed to Pete bending over to pick something up off the floor, ass in the air.

"That too," Frank says.

Never a believer in idle smalltalk, Mikey lets that hang there until Frank spits out what he came for.

"Would you turn him if he asked?" Frank finally asks.

There's a beat while the guys unhook the engine from the hoist and send the chains rattling back along their track. "He'd never ask," Mikey says.

"Well yeah," Frank agrees. The idea of immortality freaks Pete the fuck out. "But if he did."

"Depends why he wanted it, I guess."

"What if it was me? What if I'm the one who wanted it."

Mikey's head swivels toward him so smoothly he looks like an owl. "Would I turn you. That's what you're asking me?"

"Honestly, I've given up getting your stubborn-ass brother to even talk to me about it."

"Yeah," Mikey says. "No. There are ways to kill vampires, and my brother, stubborn ass that he is, knows every single one of them."

"Gerard would never kill you." Gerard would never harm a hair on his brother's head. Which is why Mikey's the perfect one to ask to do this.

"Pretty sure that if I so much as wet a fang with your blood he wouldn't even stop to remember that we shared a mother."

"What if you told him I asked you? What would he do then?" Frank tries to sound like this wasn't his plan all along, but he's pretty sure Mikey sees right through him.

"Probably throw something. Rant about how you don't know what you're asking, don't know what you want. Accuse me of trying to manipulate him." Mikey arches an eyebrow in Frank's direction. "Not that he'd be wrong about that last part. Which is what you're really asking me to do, isn't it?"

Fucking Mikey.

"Yeah," Frank says, picking a splinter off the railing between his legs.

"Why do you want to be a vamp?"

Frank doesn't really want to tell Mikey this any more than he wants Mikey instead of Gerard to turn him, but maybe it will help. "It's what I know," he says. "And he's— you're my family."

"And you've told him this?"

Frank snorts. "A hundred fucking times. Sort of. Have you ever tried to tell Gerard something he doesn't want to hear?"

Mikey just looks at him. Of course. Stupid question. But Mikey's had like sixty years more practice. Plus, Gerard doesn't have biting or handjobs in his avoiding-conversations-with-Mikey arsenal.

"He always shuts me down. Either pulls the I don't know my own mind thing, or starts in on how turning me would deprive the world of my great fucking genius or some shit, or he, you know, distracts me."

"This is between you and him," Mikey says. "But I'll see if I can get him to listen."

**



Three nights after his conversation with Mikey, Frank's checking out his face in the reflective glass of his cooling towers, wondering if he needs to shave or if he can get away with another day, half listening to Gerard debating the merits of releasing a greatest hits video with clips from their most downloaded movies, when apropos of nothing Gerard says, "If you want any more tattoos, you'd have to get them before I turned you," appearing at Frank's side mid-sentence to trace the ink on his left wrist.

Fearing that turning to look at him will change Gerard's meaning somehow, Frank keeps staring at his own face. "You'll do it?" he asks, voice remarkably steady.

"I said 'if'." Pushing up Frank's sleeve, Gerard scratches lightly at the stars on his forearm. "'If' isn't yes."

"If I want more tattoos you said. Not if you turn me. But that's a good point. The one thing I hadn't thought about."

"There's a lot you haven't thought about. Or you wouldn't want to do this."

Frank doesn't tell Gerard to fuck off. He doesn't kick him. He doesn't junk-punch him. He's proud of himself. Without pulling his arm from Gerard's loose hold, Frank edges back so he's leaning calmly, casually on the edge of the nearby desk. "I get that you maybe didn't do a lot of thinking before you turned, but I've had fifteen years to see what I'm getting myself into."

"You won't be human anymore. You lose all that." Gerard lifts Frank up and sits him on the desk so he can settle between his knees, forearms propped on Frank's shoulders. "You wake up and it's gone."

Grateful Gerard's in a t-shirt tonight and not one of his skin-tight vests, Frank gets his hands on the skin of Gerard's back, smooth and soft and cool. "I think about killing. What it would be like to rip a person's throat out with my teeth. The taste of the blood, the sound of their last breath leaving their body. At least you do it to survive. It's you or them. I'm just— I know what feels more monstrous to me."

Gerard's hands cup the back of Frank's head. "But you don't do it. You're not out there killing people, Frank. Thinking about it's not the same. Fuck. I used to think about killing people all the time. The drones on the subways, the assholes— It's not the same as doing it. Doing it and loving it. We are monsters. Don't kid yourself."

"Ninety-two percent of our sales are to human customers. They throw money at us to keep them supplied with fresh carnage." Frank gives Gerard a wry smile, changes tack. "If I'm a vampire at least I don't have to get old and withered while you stay young and hot forever."

"You'll still be hot when you're eighty," Gerard says. "Tiredest cliche in the book, becoming a vamp to stay pretty."

"What about becoming a vamp to stay with your family?"

"Touche."

"Yeah," Frank says. "But I'm actually talking about me. You're my family. My parents— They'd want me to have family." Frank chokes on the words a little. His mom couldn't have known what it would mean to send Frank to live with vamps; she'd never met one. But she's been dead for as long as Frank lived under her roof. She died proud of what her son had accomplished.

"You have me," Gerard says. "You already have me."

"And that would have been enough for you after Mikey?"

"I'll think about it," Gerard says. "You think about those tattoos."


Frank does think about them. He asks around, does some research, finds the best portrait specialist in the country. Of course, she's on the west coast. He's trying to figure out how long he'll have to go for, if it will be worth it or if he should find someone closer, but Gerard offers to fly her in and she agrees. He even helps Frank choose from the pictures of his grandparents, his parents, his uncle, lends his artist's eye to help Frank figure out placement.

"Do you miss them?" Gerard asks, holding a printout of Frank's grandfather against Frank's shoulder.

"Every day." Which is true. They're all still with him in their own ways. "But they'd be dead whether or not I was here, and I don't regret any of this." Frank gestures, trying to encompass his lab, the compound, his life.

"What would they think, their faces on a vampire's arms?"

Tough question, but it's not like Frank hasn't thought about it. "They won't know. And it's me. No matter what I do they're my history. They'd like that I'm proud of that."

"You can always change your mind," Gerard says.

"I've never changed my mind about a tattoo in my life."

"I meant about turning," Gerard says, and puts down Frank's grandfather before picking up his mother, laying that on Frank's forearm and giving it an uncertain frown.

"I know," Frank says, because this is the tenth time they've had that conversation, and he suspects they'll have it a hundred more by the time his tattoos heal. "And if I do, you'll be the first to know. I promise."


Gerard refuses to watch Frank get inked, which is ridiculous, considering how often he stabs Frank with his teeth and drinks his blood. "I just can't, okay?" Gerard says when Frank pushes it.

"Would you rather I didn't get them?" Frank's gonna get them anyway, but he's curious.

"No! I like them. I just don't—"

"He puked everywhere when I got mine," Mikey says, making Frank jump. Sneaky bastard, creeping up behind them. "Still squeamish about needles. Why do you think he always makes sure someone else is around if he thinks you need a hand with the BloodPlus?"

The glare Gerard gives his brother is epic.

"Don't give me that look," Mikey says, squeezing next to Gerard on the sofa. "I bet Frank thinks it's adorable. Do you think it's adorable, Frank?"

Frank totally thinks it's adorable. "I don't need an audience," Frank reassures Gerard, patting his knee. "Never had one before."


It takes a week to have his family inked into his skin. Pete ends up sitting in on some of the sessions, watching carefully in a way Frank suspects is leading to Pete getting some new ink of his own, but mostly it's just Katherine and Frank and the ghosts of his ancestors. Gerard examines each one closely as Frank unwraps it, but he's not allowed to touch, not after he couldn't help licking the first night, and Frank had to have half his grandmother's hair re-done because Gerard healed the ink right out of his flesh.

"Why the rush?" Katherine asks the third evening as she's inking his uncle onto his side, trying not to lean on Frank's red and aching arm that she'd worked on the day before. "The money your master's paying me, I would have been more than happy to come out a few times, spread it out a little."

Frank's not sure what it's like for artists in Western—here they can get tech status even if their art is really only useful to humans the way a tattoo artist's is, but that might be Gerard's soft spot for artists—so he isn't sure how Katherine feels about vamps when they're not paying for her services. "I felt the need," he says. "And I have a pretty high pain threshold."

"That's true enough," she answers, and changes the subject. Frank's grateful. He doesn't want to have to explain himself to a stranger.

**



"What if you can't do alts anymore?" Gerard asks, watching Frank rub tattoo ointment into his grandfather's face the night after they send Katherine home. "Is Pete ready?"

"Pete's ready," Frank says, moving on to his mom. "I'd let him work on me."

"We'll lose most of the business from the other zones, of course. You have such a great reputation. And you really pioneered—"

"Gerard. Why are you so sure I'm going to lose it?" He's never explained what happened to his drawing skills when he turned.

"What you do is art. And art is part of what dies."

Frank isn't convinced. "But—"

"Besides. No one wants another vamp working on them. Techs are human for a reason."

"What's the reason though?"

"Everything isn't better when you're a vampire, Frank," Gerard says. "I wish you'd listen to me."

"Everything isn't better when you're not a vampire, either. Think about your life after Mikey turned. If he'd been a vamp and you'd just been you. Commuting to the city, fantasizing about killing the drones on the subway. If you can tell me that you genuinely wish that's how it went down, I'll think about changing my mind."

"I wish Mikey'd never turned," Gerard says, frowning.

"No deal. He turned. Do you wish you stayed human while he was a vampire."

Gerard's frown deepens, but he finally says, "No. I couldn't leave him to go through that alone."

"There. I told—"

"But it's different now. I'm not alone. Vamps, humans, everything's different now."

"Not the point," Frank insists. "You love him. I love you. Besides. You're the fucking Gerent of the Eastern Zone! Tell me that woulda happened if you stayed a drone. Yeah, I'm a great fucking tech. But I'm gonna make a kick-ass advisor to the king, too. Just wait." Done with his ointment, Frank flings himself in Gerard's lap and tucks his face in Gee's neck.

"Fuck advisor, you can be the king's concubine."

"Hell, no," Frank says. "You're totally making an honest woman out of me."

Gerard pushes Frank back a bit so he can look him in the eye. "What you want is a lot more permanent than that. You're bound forever to your maker, no divorce."

This isn't the first time Frank's heard that, but it's the first time he's really listened. "Who turned you?" he asks.

Gerard's always skirted the question, but this time he doesn't hesitate. "Mikey."

"And who turned Mikey?" Frank's never noticed anyone who Mikey seems particularly bound to, other than Gerard. And maybe Pete.

"Gabe."

That would actually explain a few things. "But they aren't…" Frank's not sure how to finish.

"The bond takes different forms. And it can change over time. But until one of you dies, it's never broken."

"You're not actually putting me off, you know." Frank says, tucking his head back under Gerard's chin, licking gently at his collar bone.

"Figures," Gerard answers, and pulls Frank closer.

**



They wait for Frank's tattoos to heal, and then Gerard has to head to the northern border for a few days, and when he gets back, he tries to think of another reason they should wait. But Frank says, "Tonight. You promised, and let's just do it tonight." He's done all the thinking about it he wants to do. He will actually be eighty before Gee turns him at this rate.

Gerard grumbles, and tries to stare Frank down, but in the end he gives in. "Okay," he says. "We'll do it."

Frank doesn't think to ask what it involves, and Gerard doesn't think to tell him. It's not until Frank's nearly drained, eyes too heavy to stay open, and Gerard's whispering, "Drink. Drink for me Frankie," in his ear as he presses something flat, warm and wet to Frank's lips, that he realizes, of course, he needs to drink Gerard's blood. He can't find the coordination to do as he's told, but his mouth fills anyway, and he swallows on reflex. And again. And then Gerard's teeth are back at his throat and he's gulping loud in Frank's ear. It would be easier if Frank could reach up, hold Gerard's arm to his mouth, but the best he can do is prod gently at the wound with his tongue, do his best not to slip away.

And then darkness.


Frank wakes up starving. A snarling, snapping, clawing hunger that eats at his bones and his belly, that turns every pore into a gaping maw screaming for food. He fights with the sheet covering him, tears at his clothes, at his hair, and when Gerard lands on him, pinning his hands away from his face, Frank figures out how to breathe and the scream comes out of his lungs. Gerard's mouth is moving, but all Frank can hear is the sound of his body's need. Heaving, he throws Gerard off and is on him faster than thought, teeth—fangs—tearing into his neck. His mouth fills with blood, but it's wrong. Sluggish and tepid and not what he needs.

He's ripped away from his meal, viciously strong hands around his throat yanking him halfway across the room. His master, his mate, is lying there on gory sheets, and Mikey's voice is saying, "You fucking idiot. Did you forget he'd need to eat?"

Frank's vision greys and when it clears again they're moving, Gerard and Mikey dragging him along by the arms, past the compound's gates, so fast that everything should be a blur, but it's not. Frank can see. And smell. God, the smells. Food is close and getting closer. Frank can taste it.

They come upon a parking lot filled with cars, a stream of people exiting the adjacent building toward them. Frank breaks Gerard and Mikey's hold and flies. The people scatter, some heading back inside the building, others diving for their vehicles, but two or three stand still, just staring, and Frank takes the nearest one down. There's nothing graceful or smooth about the process; it isn't pretty. Footage of this would never make it to tape. But all Frank's thinking about is how hungry he is, and a flying tackle is the quickest way to the guy's throat.

The blood is raw, fierce, vibrant on his tongue, and Frank can't get enough. He wants to drink forever.

Too soon there is no more no matter how hard he sucks, how tightly he presses the man's flesh to his face. But there're more good smells nearby, living, vital, human smells dominating the oil and asphalt and automotive steel. Frank leaps, landing on the hood of a jeep, and spies someone huddled by the back tire of a car two rows over. He's on her almost before she can look up at the sound of the impact he made on the metal, and this time he drags her up to his mouth instead of feeding on the ground like a dog. She cries out once as he bites, but she doesn't struggle, never makes another sound. Frank can feel it this time when her life evaporates, when she becomes literally nothing more than a bag of blood. He squeezes her, sucks harder, gets two more swallows before he drops the body next to the tire where she'd tried to hide. All that blood thrums through him, pounding against his skin from the inside, making him feel slick, oiled up, ready.

Gerard's scent gets stronger, and he's there, by Frank's side, reaching for him. And that's what Frank wants now, after his meal. He wants to rut and fuck and roll with him, use the strength he has, feel Gerard push back. "Fuck, Gee. Fuck. You didn't tell me. You didn't tell me how good it is."

"I know, Frankie," he says, pulling Frank into a crushing embrace. "I know. But sun'll be up soon. We've gotta get back."

And when Gerard says the words, Frank can feel it. The pull of sunrise, a bone-deep exhaustion calling him to bed. But first he needs to run.

Still clutching Gerard's arm, he goes, neither noticing nor caring which direction he's headed. Gerard keeps pace with him smoothly, and Mikey's there on his other side, hair pushed off his face by their speed. Buildings, trees, cars flash past, and Frank keeps waiting for his lungs to burn in his chest, for his heart to start pounding with exertion, but there's nothing. Just the riot of smells every time he forces in a breath, the barely-there sound of their feet on the ground, and the feel of Gerard's fingers twined with his.

"You didn't tell me!" Frank yells into the air rushing past them as he puts on an extra burst of speed.

It felt like the others were following him, but they must have been guiding him too, because they end up back at the compound and Frank doesn't have a fucking clue how. They slow at the gates, and are walking by the time they hit the front stairs. There's no twinge in Frank's muscles, not a hint of the shakes. If he didn't need his bed so badly, he could run for a week.

"Sleep," Mikey says sternly once they're inside. He glares at both of them. "I mean it. No fucking till nightfall. Frank needs to sleep."

"I'm not stupid," Gerard grumbles, but he doesn't meet Mikey's eyes. Frank hears the shutters, ten times as loud with his vampire hearing. It feels like his bones are going to break with how badly he needs to shut down.

"Bed," he says. "Bed bed bed. Where is it."

There's just time to hear Mikey say, "See?" as Gerard scoops Frank up and whisks him to their room.

**



When Frank wakes again, the hunger's there, but it's an ache, not a ravening beast. "You can have a mouthful," a voice says from the edge of the bed, and Frank turns to find Pete standing there, one of the throwing blades from the display in Gerard's office held loose in his right hand. He smells like food. Without conscious thought, Frank's up and surging toward him.

"Fuck, no," Pete says, glaring, blade now at arm's length. Gerard has both arms wrapped around Frank's chest, is gripping Frank's wrists tight.

"I've got him," Gerard says. "It's okay."

Frank struggles in his hold, but while he has more success than he would have two days ago, he can't break it.

"This was a bad idea," Pete says, still pointing his knife at Frank's face. Frank doesn't understand what's happening.

"Shh, Frankie, shh," Gerard says, pressing his cheek to Frank's ear. That's when Frank realizes that he's thrashing his head side to side as well as still trying to fight out of Gerard's grasp. He goes limp, but it only lasts a second before he's straining toward Pete again.

"I don't want to eat you," Frank says, trying to sound reassuring. But he does. He wants to rip Pete's throat out and gulp down every drop of blood. He doesn't want to kill him. Or hurt him. But, food.

"It's just the first few nights, Frank. It gets better soon. I promise," Gerard says, voice buzzing right in Frank's ear.

While Frank's calmer, Gerard shifts so his legs bracket Frank's hips, one calf pins Frank's thighs. Frank tries to relax, but Pete's scent is so strong.

"I'm not coming anywhere near his fangs," Pete says, backing up one step, then another. "I know I said— But look at him."

Last week Pete wrestled Frank to the ground and licked his face like a puppy while Frank laughed and tried to slap him off. Frank's brain knows that, knows Pete is his friend, but all Frank feels is need.

"I can't take him out like this," Gerard says. Frank doesn't know why not. Taking him to feed would solve everything. "What if he saw Ray. Or Christa, or one of the others before I got him off the grounds."

"Fuck you," Pete snaps.

"Here." Gerard shifts again, gets both Frank's wrists in one hand, holds his other out in Pete's direction. "I'll feed him. You can stay over there."

"Have you got him like that? He's not going to escape, is he?"

Frank uses every ounce of control he can summon to go still as death. Gerard's legs wrap more tightly around him; he gets a better hold on Frank's wrists. "I promise," he says.

Pete still looks skeptical, but he turns the blade on himself, cuts into the meat of his arm. The iron stench of blood overwhelms Frank's senses, but Gerard is a steel cage. He stretches his free hand closer to Pete, and Pete leans forward to meet him, letting the blood oozing from the cut drip into Gerard's cupped palm. Frank hears the growling a second before he realizes he's the one making it.

"Shhh," Gerard says again, and then he's bringing the blood up to Frank's lips, letting him taste.

It's warm, still alive, though not as good as it was last night fresh from the source, and Frank dives at it, pushing his face into Gerard's hand, chasing the taste with tongue and lips. He cuts himself on his fangs, bites the fleshy base of Gerard's thumb, and the taste changes, makes him pause. "More?" he says, reassured that he can even speak, that he's not crazed with the taste.

"A mouthful you said. Gerard, you said a mouthful." Pete has his hand pressed to the cut on his arm and he doesn't look happy.

"That was more like half a mouthful," Gerard says.

"You are lucky I owe you, Frank Iero," Pete says and squeezes a little more blood to the surface. Frank wants it still, needs it, but it doesn't feel like torture to wait for Gerard to bring it to him.

This time he's careful not to use his fangs, just to lap it up, let the taste fill his mouth. It's counter to all the logic he can muster that just a taste of what he needs would make him anything other than desperate for a full meal, but he can look at Pete now, can say, "Thank you."

"Let me heal that for you," Gerard says to Pete when Frank relaxes back against his chest, but Pete won't come any closer.

"Your mouth is right next to his mouth, so no thanks," Pete says. "I'll be fine. Mikey can do it."

"I thought we weren't going to tell Mikey," Gerard says. Which makes no sense at all, because Gerard tells Mikey everything.

"Well, you lied about him not wanting to eat me, I lied about not telling Mikey." Pete shrugs. "It's not like he won't forgive you."

Frank twists so he can see Gerard's face. He looks perturbed, but not angry. "Yeah," Gerard says. "Okay. He'll know anyway. He always does."

"Go get him some real food, man," Pete says, and then he's gone.


Frank follows Gerard, though before they get up to speed it's hard—even with Pete's blood to tide him over—not to break off every time they pass a human scent. Running is no less amazing than it was the night before, a riot of smells and sensations, a rush of power and purpose. Needy as he is, they hit the warehouse district almost too soon; Frank's legs still want to fly. Until the scent of hot throbbing dance floor hits his nose, and all he wants to do is feed.

There's a pair of bouncers on the door, and Frank thinks they'll have to take them first, but Gerard grips Frank's elbow, walks him right past them into the heat and flashing lights. "You okay?" he asks, not loosening his hold even a fraction. "We'll find you the right one."

All of them are right, all filled with life, with blood, and Frank doesn't see what they're waiting for, but but he lets Gerard guide him through the bodies to the back of the building where the lights don't penetrate. How will he know? How will Gerard know? But then a sharper scent breaks through the redolence of blood, and Gerard's pulling a girl with neon cord woven into her hair and thick paint around her eyes into Frank's reach.

On tape, it's always blink-and-you'll-miss-it from a vamp sighting his prey to sinking his fangs in, but Frank has time to feel the give of her skin over muscle, the thickness of her muscle over bone, smell the fruit and the liquor in the cocktail she was drinking and the grease base of her eyeliner, as he drags her close enough to bite.

She's hot in his hands, under his lips, and she tastes sweet and tangy and rich. He's aware of the music, of Gerard beside him feeding too, of the darkness and the oblivious crowd. His throat and tongue and lips are working to catch all the blood spilling into his mouth as her heart beats faster and more weakly against his chest the more he drinks. He's thirsty, so thirsty, but the desperation of his first feed isn't there, and as he lets the girl's body fall into the corner, he doesn't want another victim. He's thrumming, eyes wide, jaw loose, universe sized. His ears buzz, the people around him fade, and Gerard is the only thing that feels real.

"You okay?" Gerard asks again. Frank nods and takes his hand. He's never been more okay in his life.

As they step back into the sweeping lights, Gerard's flushed with blood, nearly glowing with it, even without infrareds, and he's looking at Frank from under the deep-burgundy slash of hair across his face. He's beautiful in ways Frank's never seen before. Sound rushes back in and the music pounds in Frank's chest like a heartbeat.

Gerard starts weaving his way back toward the doors, but Frank stops him. "Dance with me," he says. He hasn't danced since college. Jammed, thrown himself around and rocked the fuck out, but he hasn't danced. "Dance with me!" he says again when Gerard just looks at him.

Time stretches out on the wail of a single lyric, and Frank's sure, for a minute, a year, a lifetime, that Gerard wants to take it back. Wants to make Frank human again, take all this away. Then a smile breaks across Gerard's face, feral and sweet and delighted all at once. He leans in, licks the corner of Frank's mouth, gives him a quick kiss, and time starts up again.

With a laugh welling up in Frank's chest, they throw themselves into the press of bodies, and dance.

~fin~