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The bed in the inn-room was warm, and Owen had never felt so empty. He’d been watching Legs tread the creaking floorboards for the past ten minutes, the sounds the most calming thing he’d heard in days, and would’ve been irritated that the man had sat down, but couldn’t bring himself to feel much of anything anyway. He had always liked being cold by nature – never needing a fire or another human’s warmth to survive, the self-sufficiency had been immensely attractive in his loneliness. He looked up abruptly at the sound of glass on glass, and saw that Legs was pouring the provided bottle of mead out into the two glasses on the tray.
It had been two days since Legs had dragged him out from hell. That was the only way he could describe it, for he wasn’t sure what had happened, only that one moment he had been descending and the next he was half-dead in his arms, and unbearably, unbelievably human once again. He was sure that his initial death hadn’t been imaginary, which made the prospect of Louis’s disappointment all the more terrible, and now that he was alive again, he wasn’t sure what to do. He felt unbearably jealous of Legs, who still possessed the tantalising cold of the Gift, and somehow seemed unhappy about it.
There was a clink, and he was dragged from his thoughts by a presence beside him. Legs had placed the first glass of mead on the stool beside the bed.
“It’ll warm you up,” he said, an unwanted promise. Owen shook his head, and he frowned. “You must be freezing. Owen, drink, please.”
Drink. At that moment, such a devastating desire gripped Owen that he sat up and stared at Legs with desperation plain in his demeanour. “Turn me,” he said.
“What?”
“Turn me,” Owen said again, desperation flowing into something animalistic and wretched. “Please, Legs. I’ll do anything, whatever you say, but turn me. I can’t bear it. You have to turn me.”
“I don’t want to turn you,” Legs responded, “I don’t want to be a vampire at all, and I’m still angry at you for turning me in the first place.”
Despite their absence, Owen was struck with an incomprehensible want to bare his fangs. “You are foolish to be angry,” he said. “It was two birds and one stone – you had the opportunity to kill me without sullying your innocence further. My death meant your humanity was attainable again.”
Legs looked at him for a very long moment with deep emotion on his face, and then turned on his heel and left the room. The door swung and clicked and was shut, leaving Owen alone again.
He thought for a long time, about all of the ways he could convince Legs to turn him. Perhaps he could find a way to cure him, and hold it above his head. Legs had none of his scientific equipment here, and if Owen could find some way to brandish the cure before him and propose a swap… Or, he could always bait him to bite him. Surely there were buttons he could press, or perhaps he could kill every animal in the near vicinity and wait for Legs to become so hungry that he was the only option.
When Legs opened the door again, Owen had already hidden a small knife under the bed’s pillow – acquired from the pewter cutlery laid out on the inn’s standard tray, and hopefully not to be missed. He decided that it was quicker to tempt the other man with the scent of blood than find a way to use the cure against him. He really couldn’t wait. Humanity killed him more than vampirism ever had.
“I’m sorry for leaving so suddenly, Owen,” Legs told him very calmly. “I was… struck by your words. I needed a moment to compose myself.”
“My words?” Owen hadn’t spoken much in the time they had spent together. Really, the begging for the Gift back was the most he’d said since Legs had found him. “What did I say that was so offensive?”
Legs hesitated. Already, that had Owen’s hackles rising – a sign of dishonesty, wasn’t it? Was Legs really gearing up to lie to him? “Owen,” he said finally, “I think we need to talk.”
“I don’t think we need to talk,” Owen said immediately.
“I am going to disregard that,” Legs responded, and sat himself on the end of the bed beside him. “I believe that you are under the impression that I want you dead, or that I should want you dead.”
Annoyance sparked. Owen’s hand was on the knife underneath the pillow, and he itched to grab it and drag it along his skin, to feel fangs in his neck and to come back to life. If he couldn’t have Louis, he would have Legs, he thought, and was surprised, but before he could question it he was brought firmly back to reality by Legs’s words.
“When you turned me,” Legs was saying, looking very calmly into his face, “I was angry for more than one reason.”
Owen arched an eyebrow.
“If I wanted to become human again,” said Legs, “and I did, and I do… then you would have to die.”
He paused, scanning over Owen as if waiting for a reaction.
Owen frowned. “Yes,” he replied. “I know.”
Legs sighed. “What I’m saying, Owen, is that that was the torture for me.”
Owen’s hand was itching on the knife. He wanted so badly. He wanted.
“The torture was choosing between your life and my humanity,” Legs said, exactly as Owen swiped the knife out from under the pillow and braced it to his arm. His wrist was caught just as he began to swipe, and Legs was above him.
“What are you doing, Owen?” Legs murmured, and Owen grabbed all his strength and moved fast, ripping himself out of his grip and slashing at his arm, which was immediately grabbed and pinned above his head as Legs knocked the knife out of his hand and launched it across the room.
For one long moment the only sound was heavy, laboured breathing. Owen’s head spun. He could smell his own blood, and the metallic scent wasn’t so tantalising when you weren’t engineered to like it. Legs’s eyes were dilated, and he was staring at him.
“Owen,” he said, “I will not turn you.”
No. Owen tried not to let his panic show. “You want to, though,” he said quickly. “It smells so good, and you haven’t turned anyone yet, isn’t it just so tempting?”
“Owen–”
Panic. Real panic, because Owen couldn’t be a human for the rest of his life. He’d kill himself again, but he had a feeling that Legs would drag him out of hell for a second time. “And you’re so hungry,” he whispered, “You’re so hungry. Don’t you want to know what it would feel like?”
Legs lowered his head, like a symbol of defeat, until it just about grazed Owen’s chest when he breathed out. He said Owen’s name again, like a sigh.
“Please, Legs,” Owen said, louder, bordering on hysterical. “Can’t you – I mean, come on,” he was laughing now, shaking with it, “I promise I taste good, Legs, is that what this is? Are you too good for this? We both know you aren’t, we’re the same, Legs, we’re the same – please don’t let me die a human, just-”
“Owen,” Legs interrupted, the seventh time he’d said that in the last few hours Owen noted, but it was so hurt that he stopped talking on instinct. His heart was still beating so fast, though, and he was still so frightened. He could feel his heartbeat in his arm.
“Please,” he murmured. Legs drew back, drawing himself up tall with clear effort, and crossed the room to where his leather satchel sat on the table, the one Owen remembered containing that little book he always wrote his notes in. His heart sank. “Please, Legs, I-”
“Stop talking,” Legs said very quietly, and evidently as evenly as he could. He took out a roll of white bandages from the bag. A familiar sight. Then, a tiny bottle of antiseptic. Owen looked away.
Owen didn’t flinch at the antiseptic, but he found himself close to a physical reaction while Legs spoke to him, wrapping the bandages carefully around his already scarred arm. The trip to hell had seemingly prevented his disease from continuing, but hadn’t removed the textured scars now spanning his limbs. “I am not going to turn you into a vampire,” Legs said very quietly while he bandaged him, “And I am not going to be a vampire for much longer. Tomorrow, I am going to leave, and I am not going to tell you where I am or who I am with, but when I come back, I will be a human.”
There were tears in Owen’s eyes. A pitiful, disappointing sight. How human of him.
“I’m not going to leave you alone, Owen,” Legs told him. “There’s a reason I dragged you out here. I’m not leaving you.”
“Of course not,” Owen said weakly. “You don’t want that on your conscience.”
Legs sighed. “You make it your mission to misinterpret my every word, Owen,” he said, and then he took Owen’s face in his hands and put his own against it, kissing him softly. When he drew back, Owen reeled in confusion, and something fond he still wasn’t sure about.
But Legs did not look at him expectantly. Instead, he simply made certain that the bandage was not too loose or too tight, and retrieved the knife from the floor to clean and place back on the tray. He made himself at home on the chair in the corner, selfless in a way Owen knew stemmed from his past. Tentatively, he spoke.
“Legs,” he said, and oh how he hated the frail nature of his humanity, it shone through in every little thing, “There would be no problem if you slept on the mattress as well. I see no reason for you to hurt yourself curled up like that.”
Legs only looked at him in that same way that he had after kissing him, in that way that reminded him so of Louis so many years ago, and agreed, and slipped underneath the blanket with him. He radiated coldness, and Owen gravitated to it, not close enough to touch, but close enough to feel.
In the morning, he found that he was curled overtop of Legs, half horizontal, as if he was trying to dispel all of the heat from his body. Against his better judgement, he settled on pretending that he had never woken up, and waited for Legs to wake and carefully detach himself to leave.