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Crowded enough, no light above
How could I not tear you apart?
Charles thinks he should maybe have a harder time believing Edwin, when he tells him.
Only, it makes sense, doesn’t it? It sort of—fits, all told. Makes all those odd little bits of Charles's new mate make sense; the ones that he might’ve just swept under the rug otherwise.
Edwin’s uniform is way older than the uniforms St. Hil’s students wear these days. Now that Charles knows what to put it up against, he can tell it's more like the uniforms in those alumni photos they have in glass cases outside the dining hall—the ones from way back before the war—which fits what Edwin told him just about perfectly. Charles wonders if he went back to have a closer look at those photos, if he’d see Edwin’s face in any, all grainy black-and-white.
The bloke certainly talks like he’s from 1916. He’s all… perfectly-crisp syllables and big posh words Charles only ever sees in the encyclopedias.
And—
Well, he looks the part, doesn’t he? Pale skin, pale eyes, dark hair; sharp, angular features. Properly regal, he is. Like something off the cover of those raunchy supernatural romance novels Charles sees in the storefronts when he’s out on the town with his mates.
Not for the first time, Charles sees those pale eyes dart down to his neck, and an odd little shiver goes down his spine.
He’s so bloody cold, still.
“So,” he says, pulling the heaped-up piles of blankets closer ‘round his shoulders. “You’re a vampire, then?”
Edwin gives an odd little not-wince at the word. He’s done that a couple times now, at a couple different things. His whole body goes sort of tense, like he’s trying to keep it from wincing, and his eyes shut for a bit too long to call it a blink, and his hands ball up into little fists, there in his lap.
“I have been attempting to find an alternative explanation,” he says eventually, all slow and measured. Then, after a bit longer, he sighs—a real put-upon sort of sigh, making it even more obvious he doesn’t do much breathing the rest of the time—and looks down at his fingers as they slowly unfurl. “But… that does seem to be the case.”
Charles grins at him over the old oil lamp flickering between them.
“That’s aces,” he says. “You’re a bit like… Dracula, then, yeah?” At a look from Edwin that can only be described as scandalized, Charles backtracks. “Was Dracula around in 1916?”
“Bram Stoker published Dracula in 1897,” Edwin says primly. “I am simply questioning the comparison.”
“Right,” Charles says with a little huff. “That’s fair dues. Suppose he is a lot older than you.” He mentally calls up an image of the stereotypical Dracula—great big fangs, widow’s peak, big flaunty cape—and slots it in next to Edwin. “And, uh… more theatrical, maybe.” When that doesn’t get much of a reaction—and Charles gets a bit uncomfortable, realizing he’s been staring at Edwin longer than he should—he coughs and switches courses. “Have you got any abilities?”
Edwin cocks his head, dark brows furrowing. “Abilities?”
Charles shrugs. “Yeah, like… I dunno, walking through walls?” A beat. “Could Dracula walk through walls?”
Edwin just looks at him, askance. “No, Charles, he could not.”
“That must’ve been one of the adaptations, then.” At Edwin’s increasingly incredulous face, Charles laughs—and it turns into a bit of a cough, towards the end, and Edwin’s face gets all these worried creases in it, but it feels good, doesn’t it? Laughing, even if it burns a bit. “There’ve been loads, mate. Never read the original, did I? Only saw the movie.”
Edwin blinks at that for a moment, before taking it in stride and barreling on. “Yes, well, if you had read the novel, you would have found that the Count most certainly could not walk through walls. Nor can I.”
“Right,” says Charles.
Edwin watches him a bit more. The pressure of his eyes feels heavy, like something hot spilling over Charles’s skin—something he wants to keep there. Something he wants on him, for as long as he can get it.
The feeling’s a bit like being hunted. Not in a bad way, though.
Charles shakes it off when Edwin finally speaks. Bloody hell, he’s out of it, isn’t he?
“However,” says Edwin. “There are some… more enjoyable attributes of my existence that I have noticed.”
“What?” Charles prods. When Edwin only looks thoughtful, he huffs, leaning towards him across the little crate they’ve made into a makeshift table. “Come on, you don’t say that and then not show a bloke. That’s just teasing!”
“Well,” says Edwin. “Alright. I suppose I could give a small demonstration.” He’s all prim with it, when he’s saying it, but when it comes to it—there’s something younger in his eyes, just then; something bright and a little nervous and excited. He’s happy to be showing off something cool about himself, and he’s happy to show it off to Charles.
So Charles sits back in his little cocoon of blankets, arms huddled in around his middle, grinning while he waits.
Edwin clears his throat and stands, sort of fluffing out his jacket lapels with a couple of sharp tugs, and—
And he goes over to one of the empty bookshelves by the wall and bloody lifts the whole thing over his head like it’s nothing.
Charles laughs out loud. He doesn’t even care that it burns, or that his chest rattles after, or that his ribs get shot through with a sudden, sharp jab of pain that makes him think maybe those kicks from his mates did more than just bruise. He pastes over his wince with a grin, and Edwin smiles right back—and bloody hell, but his smile’s about the loveliest Charles has ever seen on a bloke: all dimples, big and wide and a bit shy, like he’s properly pleased with himself but trying not to show it. The thought feels dangerous, but then—there’s no one else here, is there? And Charles gets the feeling it’s safe enough with Edwin.
“No bleeding way,” he says. “You’re having me on!”
“I am not,” says Edwin, hefting the bookshelf into his other hand. Then, taking it in both, he sets it carefully back down on the floor, right where it was before.
The rest of the night goes on about like that. Edwin shows Charles all the other wicked stuff he’s figured out he can do. He’s got super speed, apparently—that or outright teleportation, but he claims he was just going too fast for human eyes to follow—and he can turn bits of himself into mist (“So yes, a bit like Dracula, I suppose,”) but says he hasn’t been able to manage it with more than just his hand yet. He says he’s started being able to tell the age of things just by touching them, and then he rests his hand on the lid of a little chest by the wall and pronounces it to be around seventy years old.
It’s more than just that, though. When Edwin sits back down, he’s sitting next to Charles instead of across from him, and Charles can’t help but lean against him, just a bit. He tells Edwin about the boy he was protecting—about how his friends turned their fists on him, instead, when he tried to stop them—and Edwin tells him about the bullies they had in 1916.
Edwin tells Charles about coming back. He doesn’t say where from, but he says he got taken somewhere else for a while, says it took him decades to escape, and his glazed eyes are enough for Charles to know it must’ve been properly rough. He talks about how different everything felt than from when he'd been alive before; how he started hiding here during the day when he realized he couldn’t be out in the sun anymore. It used to be a boys’ dorm, he says, back when he went to St. Hil’s.
The longer Edwin talks, the more Charles can—see it, sort of, peeking out from under his skin. The paleness that looked so ethereal before is a bit more corpse-like, now. His cheeks have gone all hollow, and his eyes are drawn heavy under the weight of dark circles. He parts his lips ‘round some word or another—Charles isn’t really hearing them all that clearly, anymore—and a couple of what look like fangs come peeking out, the points tinted a rusty red.
Charles looks closer and sees two little dark spots on Edwin’s bottom lip, almost like the skin there’s been split and scabbed over. And when Edwin looks at Charles—when he looks over, and his gaze flicks down to Charles’s throat, dragging, like he’s trying not to but can’t really help it—Charles swears his eyes’ve gone red.
He looks tired.
He looks hungry.
And, see—
See, Charles knows how this goes. He might not’ve known vampires were real before tonight, but he knows the stories, doesn’t he? And if vampires are real, then all those stories about them are probably a little bit real, too. Or at least, they started from somewhere real. And the vampires in the stories didn’t get famous for quietly killing and drinking the blood out of rabbits and squirrels and things before making them little graves out back of the old dorms, like Edwin says he’s been doing—though maybe they ought to have.
Maybe that’s how it’s meant to be. Maybe most vampires just live off roadkill or deer or what have you, and it’s only the real sadists that get themselves spun into myths and novels and horror films, like—like the Zodiac killer, or Jeffrey Dahmer, and all those serial-killing blokes. But Charles doesn’t think Edwin would be looking so knackered if that was the case. Doesn’t think he would be swallowing, and looking away, and pursing his lips in ways he hadn’t been before, like he's trying to keep something tucked away inside. Don’t seem like the sorts of things someone who’s getting enough to eat would do, do they?
“S’alright, mate,” Charles says. He swallows down a wince, ‘cuz talking’s making his chest ache proper, now. “You don’t have to hide ‘em.”
Edwin looks up at him, briefly shocked before it fizzles out into something sad.
“I didn’t want to scare you,” he says softly, after a bit. Something in Charles’s chest aches a little more, at that—something he thinks isn’t so physical as it is the feeling of his heart breaking just a bit—‘cause the way Edwin’s saying that makes it sound like he’s scared of himself enough for both of them.
“You’re not,” Charles says—croaks, really. “You—don’t. I think they’re mint, honestly.”
Edwin looks at him and frowns, but he looks less sad and more confused, which Charles takes as a win. “Mint?”
Bloody hell. 1916—Charles keeps forgetting.
“You know, like—cool,” he says. Shit, did they say cool in 1916? Probably not. “Or rad.” Not that either. “Good, like—fascinating.” He remembers something he read in an old detective novel once, from about the 1920’s. Near enough to Edwin's time, that. “Spiffing?”
“I cannot say I agree,” Edwin says after a tick. He looks down at his hands, then sideways at Charles again, gaze dragging up his neck until he reaches his eyes—and he smiles. Not big and gummy like before; it’s a little smile. Shy. “But I am… glad. Glad you are not afraid.”
He’s got a bit of a lisp, Charles finds, when he’s speaking around the fangs. Cute, Charles thinks, and doesn’t bother shoving it down as far as he usually would.
“You don’t seem like much to be afraid of,” he means to say—but he opens his mouth and feels something wicked seize up in his chest, and instead of words, he’s spewing out a round of thick, hacking coughs. He’s had a couple of these fits already, but this one’s about the worst—rattling his chest proper and making hot tears pool in the corners of his eyes as he doubles over the little wooden crate.
There’s a hand at Charles’s back, rubbing soothing circles as he coughs up what feels like half his lungs. Another presses him a soft white handkerchief he raises shakily to his mouth when the fit finally stops. It comes away red, and there’s drops on the table that shine a bit in the flickering light of the lantern.
Charles doesn’t mean to say it. But his thoughts keep going all slow and heavy, and he’s starting to have trouble telling apart when he’s just thought something and when he’s gone and said it, too. There’s a tiny, scared part of him that knows what that means; has done, if he’s honest, since not too long after Edwin found him.
“I’m dying, aren’t I?”
He looks at Edwin, and Edwin looks away—but not before Charles sees a pained look flash across his face.
That’s all Charles needs, really.
“It’s alright,” he says, looking down at the blood-speckled handkerchief in his hands. He sees Edwin turn towards him again, but he doesn’t look back just yet. Just runs his thumb over one of the red spots; holds it up to the light and sees the color even clearer. “I mean, I’ve always sort of… s’just life, innit?”
He’s always sort of wondered, is what he thought but really didn’t mean to say, if he might die young. He didn’t think he would, really—he meant to get out; meant to stick it out under his dad’s roof for as long as he could, then run off to whatever uni would give him a big enough sports scholarship—but there was a little part of him, every time his dad shoved him down the stairs or smashed a beer bottle over his head or brought the belt out, that wondered if one of these days it’d go too far. He’d get a nasty infection they wouldn’t catch until too late, or he’d hit his head wrong against the kitchen counter, or he’d break his neck instead of his arm falling down his bedroom stairs.
He just didn’t think it’d happen after he’d already been sent off, is all.
“I’m sorry,” Edwin says, and he sounds properly dismal. “I should have… I wish I could have stopped them. But when I saw what was happening, it was already too late.”
“Not your fault, is it?” Charles says, leaning over to nudge his shoulder until he stops looking so sad. “And, anyway, I’m glad you’re here now. Would’ve been pretty lonely, up here all on my own.”
Edwin looks at him, and he seems—shocked, a bit. Like he still can’t believe Charles actually likes having him around.
Charles feels a pang of sadness, then, and it’s—it’s for his own life, yeah, of course it is. But it’s also ‘cuz he’s starting to think he really would have liked to be Edwin’s friend, after this. Edwin’s properly mint, even without all the vampire stuff—and not for nothing, but it seems like he likes Charles, too. Really likes him. He isn’t just tolerating him ‘cause girls like him and he’s good at sports.
Charles could have come out here to visit Edwin after his classes let out. He could have brought him books from the school library so he’d have more to read than those dingy old magazines piled up in the corner, and smuggled up blankets to make a fort so they’d both be warm. He could’ve shown Edwin his favorite comic books—the ones his mates always sort of laughed at when he brought them up ‘cause they were kids’ stuff—and told him about his mum. He would’ve kept coming ‘round until Edwin stopped looking so shocked; until Charles being his friend wasn’t something he felt like he had to question, anymore. Until it was something that just was.
“I’m glad, too,” Edwin says softly—and it sounds a hell of a lot like I was lonely, too.
Charles tilts his head and smiles, and like clockwork, he watches Edwin’s heavy gaze slide down his throat. It makes something go all shivery in his belly—that hunted feeling rising up again—‘specially when Edwin’s lips part, and the rusty tip of a fang peeks out along with his tongue.
“I don’t mind, y’know,” Charles says softly.
Edwin’s eyes are slower, now, to snap up to his face. They’re properly hazy, and—red, yeah, blood-red. Deeper than Charles’s blood on the handkerchief.
“What?” He asks, and his voice is well rough.
He’s fading, too—even worse than before. Red eyes and gaunt cheeks and sharp teeth he can’t quite seem to talk around. And that’s just no good, is it? Doesn’t seem right, to let him sit there and starve when Charles is already on his way out.
“If you’re hungry,” Charles says at length. He shifts his shoulder until he can feel a fold of blanket slip off, and he tells himself he’s not showing off on purpose, it’s just ‘cause he’s getting hot, but—bloody hell, maybe he is, just a little. He thinks maybe it could feel nice, is all, to have Edwin get all close to him; to have Edwin put his hands on him, and to have those lips and teeth on his neck. “You can… Y’know. Drink from me.”
Edwin reels back, at that, straightening into his old prim posture and looking ahead like’s been whipped for it.
“No,” he says, sharp, and shakes his head. “No, I… I will not do anything of the sort. I will not—take that from you. Not when you are already suffering so tremendously. I—I am sorry if I have made you feel—“
“You haven’t made me feel anything,” Charles cuts in, tilting closer again. Come back, he wants to say, a bit stupidly. “And I’m not suffering that much, mate. I’m not even cold anymore.”
That must’ve been the wrong thing to say. Edwin’s face twists up again, and something about stages of hypothermia floats through Charles’s mind.
He sits back. “That’s… that’s not good, is it?”
Eyes shut tight, Edwin shakes his head.
Charles hasn’t got any idea what to say to that. There’s something ugly welling up in him, hot and angry and corrosive, that has him wanting to cry out loud, or maybe start throwing things, and he doesn’t want to be feeling it at all. He doesn’t want to think about the lads he thought were his friends throwing rocks at him, or about the fact that he’s dying ‘cause of them, or about all the things he’ll never get to do. He just wants to be here in the old St. Hil’s attic with Edwin. He just wants this to be his.
“Well,” he says eventually. “Still don’t feel too bad, do I? It… doesn’t feel as bad as I expected.” He swallows ‘round the burning in his chest; ‘round the aching, throbbing, pounding in his head. He looks up from his lap and nudges Edwin again. “And you’re looking a little worse for wear, mate.”
Edwin opens his mouth, protest ready to go in the furrowed line of his brows—bloody excellent brows he’s got; more expressive than they’ve got any right to be, Charles keeps thinking—but Charles cuts him off before he can say it. “I want to help. No use letting us both waste away, is there?” He gives himself a little private cheer for not choking up, saying that bit out loud.
“…I don’t want to hurt you,” Edwin admits quietly.
“You won’t,” Charles says.
Edwin looks at him, incredulous—
But whatever he sees on Charles’s face makes him stop. He looks back down at his hands and swallows tightly.
“I… haven’t drank from a person before,” he says. “I wouldn’t know how to…”
Charles smiles. “Well, that’s alright. I don’t know either, do I? You can practice with me. It’ll be both our first times.”
Edwin gives him a sort of sad, complicated look. But then he looks at the dwindling lantern, and he looks down at Charles’s throat, and he says, “Alright.”
“Alright?”
His eyes meet Charles’s. “Yes. Alright.”
Charles’s heart jumps up into his throat.
“Right, then,” he says.
Edwin shifts to kneeling while Charles leans himself back against the wall. Charles wants to reach out—wants to pull Edwin into him—but he thinks that might be a bit much right off the bat. As it is, he just lowers his knees out from under the blankets, so Edwin can get as close as he needs.
“This alright?” he asks.
Edwin’s watching him with dark eyes. He nods. He looks—shy, almost, and suddenly Charles is thinking about the house parties he used to go to over the hols. Sometimes he’d meet someone he liked there, and if they were for it, he’d sneak them off someplace quiet for a bit of a snog. It was always all hesitant, searching hands, clumsy mouths, and quiet checking in until they settled into a rhythm.
Not too far off from this.
Carefully, Edwin lifts his hands and starts easing the layers of blankets down Charles’s arms. Charles helps him out with a shrug, trying not to shiver too obviously at the fleeting brushes of Edwin’s knuckles over his skin.
They’re properly close, now. Charles could probably count Edwin’s eyelashes if he wanted to. But right as he’s decided to give it a go, Edwin is shifting again—closer, closer.
One hand, cool as glass, settles on Charles’s shoulder; the other comes up to cup the base of his skull. It’s bloody brills, being held like that, but it doesn’t last long. Edwin switches to gripping his bicep a second later.
“S’alright,” Charles slurs, reaching out to try and pull him back to where he was. Only, he hasn’t got much strength left in him, and his hand winds up falling sort of pathetically at Edwin’s elbow.
It’s alright, though. Edwin holds him again.
Charles’s hand slips further, back to cling at Edwin’s shoulder blade, and that’s alright, too.
Edwin’s fingers are snug ‘round the back of his neck. They’re coaxing his head to tilt left, now, and he does his best to follow along. Then Edwin’s nosing soft up his throat, and he shudders, listing further.
There’s a soft, hesitant gust of air just under Charles’s ear—
A twitch of thumb at his collarbone—
And two sharp, stinging pinpricks as Edwin bites down.
It doesn’t hurt like Charles expects. There’s pain, sure—enough to make him gasp a bit and curl his fingers in the back of Edwin’s jacket—but it’s not really a bad pain; more like when that punk lad pierced his ear for him at a Rolling Stones concert. There’d been the quick pressure of the needle going in, then a low throbbing as Charles’s skin shifted around the intrusion. Nothing next to the belting he got when his dad saw the safety pin hanging in his ear that night, anyway.
Charles reckons Edwin’s got something in his fangs that helps with the pain, ‘cause even that’s gone right quick. The burn fades, and the throbbing dulls to a hum, and he starts feeling… sort of nice, actually. He slumps back against the wall, letting it spread all through him: slow, warm, and foggy, like he’s dissolving in a hot bath.
Charles opens his mouth, ‘cause he needs to tell him, doesn’t he? Edwin should know it doesn’t hurt, what he does. He deserves to know it doesn’t hurt. But the words don’t go much of anywhere past Charles’s tongue. He ends up just sort of gasping into the air and pawing at Edwin with hands that don’t much work anymore.
After a while, Edwin draws his teeth out and seals his lips over the spot he’s bitten open. His tongue laps over the weeping wounds once, twice; he makes a soft, shattered noise and nuzzles even closer.
God, but if Charles is gonna die young, he’s glad it’s happening like this. He’s not spinning out alone on his bedroom floor, his dad’s angry work boots and his mum’s too-scared slippers tapping out off-time drumbeats overhead. He’s helping a kind, fit boy get fed, and he’s being held like no one's held him in bloody ages.
He can’t remember the last time he was held like this, if he’s honest. Can’t remember if he ever was.
Charles feels it creeping in, the longer Edwin’s on him. Whenever he opens his eyes, the room gets blurrier, and there’s black spots dancing bigger and bigger, there in the corners.
He hopes Edwin does alright, after he’s gone. Hopes he doesn’t beat himself up too much. Hopes he finds someone who’ll like him as much as Charles has; someone who’ll stick around long enough to get him used to it.
Edwin deserves someone who’ll stick around.
Charles sort of feels like he might float away if Edwin stops touching him. There’s all these words drifting around in his head. He wants to say Goodbye, and I’m sorry, and Thank you. He tries to think of what his last words were, but he can’t really remember them. He hopes they were good ones.
The spaces of warm, dark nothing get longer and longer, and the specks of awareness get fewer and further between. Charles can tell he hasn’t got much time left. There’s a part of him that gets all tight in his chest at the thought—the same part of him that still wants to cling with everything he’s got; the part that wants to say I’m scared, and It’s not fair—but even that’s gone small and quiet now. Mostly, he just feels—
Peaceful.
Held.
Safe.
The last thing Charles remembers with any sort of clarity is this: Edwin unlatches from his neck and swipes his tongue over the bite a couple times more, then shifts them about until Charles is cuddled in against his side. Or, that’s how it feels, anyway. Edwin’s thumb sort of pets over his neck, and there’s a low, lyrical sound that Charles thinks might be his voice, slipping over the whispery rustling of pages. It’s just—brills, really. Like when he was little still, and his mum would read to him until he fell asleep all tucked under the covers, before his dad decided he was too old for that sort of thing.
Just like then, the dark closes in. The voice fades out. The weight under Charles’s head disappears; the weight wrapped around him does, too.
There’s the attic, and a heartbeat gone slow as tar, and thoughts slipping off like snakeskin—
And then there’s nothing at all.
.
.
.
Charles wakes up to a burning sun.