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"You're probably taking like 3 weeks off my life everytime you do that."
"You're literally smoking a cigarette right now. Shut up."
Gerard took a stupidly long drag and blew it in Frank's direction from across the bed. He didn't breathe it in, he didn't breathe at all while they were in private. Vampires didn't need to. He just rolled his eyes. Gee laid flat on his bed, staring at the ceiling, eyes a bit glassy like they usually were after he let Frank feed on him. It took everything in Frank's power not to turn away. He hated how exhausted Gee was every time. He hated himself for it, despite how much Gee had reassured him that he was fine. He had been the one to offer in the first place. Frank had never had to feed on a stranger, he didn't even know what somebody else's blood would taste like. Gee's was like water to him, he was so used it to by now.
Frank dropped and gently slunk on all fours to curl up next to Gee. This was his favorite place to be. He didn't have to look at the signs of age creeping onto Gee's face. Didn't have to think about how in 30 short years, if he was lucky, he would have to make it without him. He thought about it anyways, of course. Gee moved his arm a bit to mindlessly play with Frank's hair.
"Smoking in bed is a bad idea," Frank remarked softly. "Always so worried about me," Gee replied, half laugh and half cough. "To think that you used to be the one dragging me along on all your sketchy night outings." Frank hummed softly. "You loved it." Gee sighed. "I did. Still do."
Frank sensed the wistfulness in his tone. He frowned to himself a bit. "I can't," Frank whispered, even though Gee had heard it a thousand times. He ached for it more than anything, missed the way they ran and hid from security guards in bushes. Missed when they felt like they would be young forever. It hurt worse every year, knowing that he would while he watched Gee get slower and wear out more easily. "You can," Gee said. "Just worried about losing me too soon." Frank had also heard this a thousand times before. One of their most common squabbles. Frank went silent. Dropping it before it started was the easiest.
The fan rattled overhead, uneven, like it was on the verge of giving out. Neither of them said anything for a while. Gee reached over and stubbed the cigarette out on the little tray by his nightstand, more force than it needed. Frank watched the smoke curl and die. The quiet stretched. Frank counted the fan's clicks out of habit, a tic left over from when counting things used to calm him down. It didn't work anymore. Nothing really did.
"Do you think about what I'll do?" Frank said finally, breaking his own promise to himself to not push it. "After." Gee's hand stilled in his hair. "You've never asked me that before," he said. Not sharp. Just surprised. "I ask you other things." Frank kept his eyes on the ceiling fan, not Gee. "Never that one." Gee was quiet long enough that Frank almost took it back. Almost said forget it the way he always did. But he didn't. "I don't know," Gee said eventually. Quiet. Honest in a way that didn't make Frank feel better. "I think about it. I don't have an answer, though. I don't think there is one."
"That's not comforting."
"I know." Gee's thumb moved against Frank's scalp again, slow. "You'll figure it out. You always do." Frank sat up. Something in his chest had gone tight and wrong.
"What if I don't figure it out," he said. "What if the answer is I never have to. What if the answer is you don't get old, you don't get slow, you don't—" He stopped himself. His hands were shaking, and he hated that they were shaking, hated that after all these years his body still betrayed him like it was new to this. Gee looked at him. Really looked, the glassy tiredness sharpening into something more alert. "Frank."
"I know what you're gonna say." Frank's voice choked on his own words. "I know you don't want it. I know." He wanted to cry, more than anything. His body wouldn't let him. That was the cruelest part of all of it all— years of grief with nowhere to go, no release valve, just a pressure that built and built with nothing on the other side. He bit down on his lip, sharp enough that it should have split, should have bled, and didn't. Even that was denied him. He hated what he was thinking. Hated that some small, starving part of him had been thinking it for years, quietly, underneath every reassurance he gave Gee, every time he said I would never. He would never. He'd told himself that so many times it had started to sound like a lie the second he thought it. Because here it was— the want, ugly and undeniable, rising up out of him like something he couldn't hold down anymore.
He wanted Gee to stop aging. Wanted the gray hair and the slower heartbeat and the cough that lingered too long after cigarettes to just stop, freeze, never progress another day. He wanted thirty years to stretch into forever. And he knew, he knew, that wanting it for Gee's sake was a lie he was telling himself, because underneath it was the truth: he wanted it so he wouldn't have to be alone. So he wouldn't have to learn how to keep existing in a world that didn't have Gee's voice in it anymore.
"Frank." Gee said, sitting up. His voice was careful now, watching him the way you'd watch something unpredictable. "Hey. Look at me." Frank didn't. Couldn't. His hands had started shaking again, and this time he didn't try to hide it. "I can't lose you," he said, and it came out smaller than he meant it to, stripped of any of the anger that should have been protecting him. "I can't. I've done the math a hundred times, I've tried to imagine it, and I can't, Gee, there isn't a version of it that doesn't end with me just letting the daylight take me or—" He stopped. Swallowed something that wasn't there.
Selfish. This was so selfish, wanting to curse the person he loved most into the same eternity that had already hollowed him out, just so he wouldn't have to face it by himself. And still. Still, some part of him had already decided what he was going to do. He could feel it happening, the wanting winning out over the knowing-better, a bomb with it's timer running out.
Frank winced a bit before turning around to face Gee. He was trying to smile, but Frank could see his eyebrow twitch, hear how fast his heart was beating. "You're scared of me," Frank said flatly. Gee blinked. He didn't have a response. He knew nothing he could say would calm him down; his living body betrayed him. "How long have we known each other, Gee? 25 years?" Gee stayed quiet. Frank dug his nails into his arm in a last ditch attempt to fight off the despair creeping into him.
"I love you, Gee," Frank said, his voice unable to hide how shattered he felt. "I love you too, Frankie," Gee responded softly, his voice quivering. His breath was staggered.
Frank moved before he could stop himself, some feral thing taking the wheel where reason had once sat. He was on Gee in an instant, not gentle the way he'd always been before, not careful. His hands found Gee's shoulders and pinned him back against the mattress with a force that knocked the air out of those aging lungs. "Frank—" Gee's voice came out sharp, surprised, but there was something else underneath it. Fear, yeah, but Frank could smell the adrenaline too, could hear how Gee's pulse kicked up from sixty to ninety in the span of a second. Fight or flight. Gee had never been the type to run.
Frank straddled him, knees digging into the mattress on either side of Gee's hips, and the position made his mouth go dry with want. He could feel Gee's heartbeat through everywhere they touched—thighs against thighs, chest hovering close enough to feel the heat radiating off him. Living heat. Mortal heat. "You don't get to leave," Frank breathed, and his voice didn't sound like his own anymore. It had dropped an octave, gone rough around the edges like gravel. "You don't get to just... die. Not when I can stop it." Gee's hands came up to push at Frank's chest, but there was no real strength behind it. Not enough, at least.
"Get off me," he said, but his voice cracked on the second word, and Frank could smell it now—the arousal threading through the fear, copper-sweet and undeniable. Gee had always been fucked up like that. Had always liked the dangerous parts of Frank best. "Tell me you don't want it," Frank growled, leaning down until his lips brushed Gee's ear, until he could feel the shiver that ran down Gee's spine like a physical thing. "Tell me you haven't thought about it when you're alone. Tell me you don't jerk off thinking about what it would feel like." Gee's breath hitched, and his hips bucked up involuntarily, seeking friction, seeking Frank. "You're a bastard," he whispered, but his fingers were curling into Frank's shirt now, gripping tight, pulling him closer instead of pushing him away.
Frank laughed, low and humorless, and dragged his mouth along Gee's jawline, not kissing, just tasting the salt of his skin, feeling the artery jumping beneath. "I'm hungry," he said, and it came out like a confession and a threat all at once. "God, Gee, I'm so fucking hungry for you. Always have been."
He bit without warning, not the neat puncture wounds of their usual, careful feedings but something messier, his teeth tearing just enough to make it hurt, to make it bleed freely. Gee cried out, a sound that started as pain and twisted halfway through into something else entirely. His back arched off the bed, pressing his throat harder against Frank's mouth, and Frank groaned against his skin, the vibration making Gee whimper. The blood was different this time. Not the controlled donation of a willing victim but something stolen, something taken. It tasted like copper and nicotine and Gee, always Gee, but there was a charge to it now—a current running between them that had never been there before.
Frank could feel Gee getting hard beneath him, could feel his own arousal pounding in time with Gee's heartbeat, and he ground down without thinking, seeking pressure, seeking more. "Stop," Gee gasped, but his hands were in Frank's hair now, holding him in place rather than pulling him away. "Frank, I'm scared, you have to—fuck—" Frank pulled back just enough to see him, to watch the way Gee's pupils had blown wide, the way his lips were parted and wet. Blood smeared across Gee's throat, down his collar, soaking into the collar of his shirt. Frank licked his lips and saw Gee's eyes track the movement, dark with something that looked like want and horror in equal measure.
"You want me to stop?" Frank asked, and he knew his eyes were black now, the whites swallowed by the hunger. He rolled his hips again, deliberately, watching Gee's face crumple with forced pleasure. "You want me to get up and walk away and let you keep getting older? Let you keep coughing in the morning and taking pills for your blood pressure and falling asleep in your chair at nine PM?"
"Yes," Gee lied, and they both heard it for what it was.
Frank reached down and wrapped a hand around Gee's throat, not squeezing, just holding, feeling the pulse rabbit against his palm. "I'm going to do it," he said, and his voice was barely human anymore. "I'm going to drain you until your heart stutters, and then I'm going to give it back. I'm going to make you like me, and you're going to hate me for it. You're going to hate me every night for the rest of forever." Gee's eyes were wet, tears spilling over without sound. "I'll hate you," he agreed, his voice wrecked. "God, Frankie, I'll hate you so much."
"Fine," Frank whispered, and he bit again, deeper this time, seeking the vein with intention rather than desperation.
Gee fought him then, for real, nails raking down Frank's back hard enough to tear fabric, hard enough that if Frank had been human, he would have bled. He bucked and twisted beneath Frank's weight, but he was almost 30 years older, and his body was already betraying him, already slowing down. Frank held him down with supernatural ease, drinking and drinking, feeling Gee's heartbeat start to falter, feeling the high of it, the terrible wrong righteousness. When he pulled back, Gee was gray, lips blue, eyes fluttering. Frank's hands were shaking again, but this time with the enormity of what he was about to do.
He bit his own wrist—not the theatrical tearing of flesh but a precise slice—and pressed it against Gee's mouth. "Drink," he commanded, his voice breaking. "Gee, please, drink. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Please don't leave me." Gee's eyes found his, clear and aware despite everything, and Frank saw the moment he gave up. Saw the resignation and the rage and the love, all twisted up together. His lips parted. His mouth closed around the wound.
Frank groaned, loud and obscene, as he felt the pull, as he felt his almost-but-not-quite blood leaving him and entering Gee, changing him, claiming him. It was better than any sex they'd ever had, more intimate than any moment in twenty-five years. He could feel them binding together, something deeper than marriage, deeper than law, a contract in darkness, something that encompassed every atom in both of their bodies.
Gee's hands stopped fighting and started clutching, pulling Frank's wrist harder against his mouth, drinking with desperation that matched Frank's own. Frank watched the color return to his face, but it was wrong now—too pale, too perfect, the flush of life replaced by something else entirely. The wrinkles didn't disappear, but they would, eventually. The gray in his hair would stay, a permanent reminder of what he'd been, what Frank had taken from him. When Gee finally pulled back, gasping, his eyes were black too. Empty and endless and furious. Frank collapsed beside him, his wrist already healing, and the guilt hit him like a truck, delayed but devastating. He had done it. He had actually done it.
He turned his head to look at Gee, to apologize, to beg for forgiveness, but the words died in his throat. Gee was staring at the ceiling, his chest still though he breathed out of habit.
"Gee," Frank whispered. Gee didn't answer. He just reached over, slowly, and picked up the cigarette pack from his nightstand. His hands were steady now. Perfectly steady. He put one between his lips and lit it with a lighter. He took a long, unnecessary drag.
"You taste like ash," he said finally, his voice different too. It was smoother, clearer, still sounded like his but with something cold underneath that had never been there before. "And I'm going to hate you until the sun burns out." Frank closed his eyes. "I know," he said. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be." Gee exhaled smoke toward the ceiling. "You got what you wanted, that's all that matters to you, right?"
Overhead, they heard the rickety fan stop.