Chapter Text
“I may have a heart that no longer beats in my chest but I am not immune to your barbed words, Tozier.”
Richard shrugged, and watched Edward leave the room. The alcohol that swam in his stomach rapidly began to turn his mind foolish. He stood up, half intending to follow the sulking vampire out of the room, but instead found himself wandering over to the decanter of wine, and he poured himself another large glass. And then another, and another and another until he found himself lying prostrate on the floor, arms slung above his head clumsily, laughing at something he couldn’t quite explain.
An hour later, or perhaps two, Richard couldn’t be sure, the door creaked open and the sound of heavy footsteps filtered into the room. Richard opened his eyes, and saw Edward hovering over him, eyebrows knitted and face scrunched in an expression of hybrid concern-surprise.
“You’re still here,” Edward said plainly, leaning down to gently pry the glass from between Richard’s fingers.
“My wine! You can’t take my wine, that’s --” Richard hiccupped, “that’s not very nice.”
“I thought you would have left, I assumed you’d --”
“Where would I have gone? I don’t --” Richard hiccupped again, “I don’t know where anyone is, you killed them all!”
At that, Edward jumped back slightly, releasing the very gentle grasp he had on Richard’s hand, leaving it to flop to the ground with a loud thwack.
“No! No, no,” Richard said, in an attempt to backtrack, “I mean, you ate them? Is that, is that better? Ate?”
Edward chuckled, a deep, syrupy sound that sent a jolt of static up Richard’s spine, setting the tiny hairs on his arm on end.
“I suppose you are correct, I did, technically, consume some of them. You are a bizarre little thing, aren’t you.”
“Little?!” Richard gasped indignantly, and rolled onto his side before pushing himself up. He wobbled on his legs like a new-born deer, but Edward’s arm shot out, and grasped him around the waist. “I’m taller than you! Much taller than you, actually.”
“Careful. Yes, yes, fine. Not little, you’re very --”
“You’re little, you know. The littlest vampire. Were people really scared of you?”
“Terrified,” Edward replied, solemnly, and helped Richard stumble back towards the couch.
“I wouldn’t be scared of you -- I mean, I’m not scared of you, I’m just --”
“Just what?”
“Confused, and a little bit --” Richard yawned, “a little bit tired.”
“Quite right, it’s nearly nightfall. You must rest.”
“Hey, hey why -- why aren’t you asleep? Don’t vampires have to sleep during the day? Isn’t that sort of your whole deal?”
“My whole deal?” Edward parroted, amused. “Yes, well. I suppose that is usually our whole deal, but, at this present moment my body uh -- well, it doesn’t want to sleep.”
“Oh. What does it want to do?” Richard asked, and watched curiously as Edward stepped away from him, just barely, before his eyes darkened.
“The bond, between us, is so powerful, so strong, that even though we barely know each other, my body wants to -- do other things. To -- to you.” Edward said, gesturing vaguely at Richard, who pulled one of the cushions up to his neck.
“No, not -- not those things”
“No, Edward, I don’t -- I’m not -- I don’t want to --”
“Richard, look at me,” Edward implored, sitting down next to Richard on the couch, and grasping both of Richard’s hands in his. “I would never, will never, do anything that you don’t want me to. I’m not --” Edward dropped Richard’s hands, and stood back up, “I’m not a monster”
“I didn’t say you were, I just… This whole thing. It’s bizarre. I’m flushed with alcohol and twice as stupid as I normally am, and this, well, this isn’t something you just get used to”
“I am aware of that,” Edward snapped, before rubbing a hard across his face harshly. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to snap at you. This is a lot to process, for both of us. You need to rest, please let me help you to your room”
Richard didn’t protest. He let Edward slot his arms around his shoulders, and let himself be hauled to his feet. They walked slowly through the twisting corridors, Richard’s legs trembling under his own weight.
“This place is too big for just you, Eds.”
“Eds?”
“Edward, y’know, your name. It’s too long, and I’m too -- too drunk to say it. So now, you are Eds.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Yes you do,” Richard insisted, poking Edward on the cheek, “You’re Eds, the littlest vampire”
“Stop calling me that!”
“What? Eds? Or little?”
“Both!” Edward groaned, and he swotted at Richard’s finger that was still pushed into the soft swell of his cheek.
“Fine, fine. No Eds, and no little. You can be Edward the Terrible, Edward the Undeadward, Edward the Blood-Thirsty, or --”
“Eddie.”
“Pardon?”
“You can call me Eddie. That’s what -- My mother used to call me that.” Edward – Eddie – said, and he pushed Richard gently through the large door at the end of the corridor.
“Eddie, huh? Well -- I’m Richie, nice to meetcha,” Richie said, sticking his hand out. Eddie stared at it blankly, before gingerly taking it in his own.
“Nice to meet you, Richie.”
A strange, ethereal noise woke Richie that night, a noise that floated through the mansion, dancing in and out of each of the rooms like smoke. It was a beautiful sound, a siren's call to Richie’s restless soul, and it tugged at him, dug its claws into his flesh, deep into his gut, and it tugged.
Despite still being in the throes of his alcohol-fuelled stupor, Richard hauled his legs over the side of the large bed, feet landing flat on the floor with a dull thud. The sound grew louder, and louder still, until it was practically screaming, as if the house itself was howling some imagined pain that Richie couldn’t understand.
Before he could convince his leaden feet to move, to go in search of the origin of the noise, Richie’s head began to pound with such ferocity that he fell back, and was consumed by the insatiable appetite of sleep.
When the morning sun began to pour into the bedroom, Richie awoke with no recollection of the haunting lament that had woken him in the dead of night. Whilst his memories did not remain, the violent pounding of his head did, accompanied by a swirling tempest in his gut that pressed on his stomach and threatened to send him sprinting to the bathroom.
A brisk knock on the door spiked Richie’s heart-rate, before a cautious voice called out,
“Richard? I mean -- Richie? Have you woken yet? It’s nearly noon”
Memories of the night before flooded back to Richie, exacerbating his already tender head.
“Yes, yes, I am awake. I’ll -- What do you want me to do? I mean, what are we doing? What -- What’s the plan?”
Eddie snickered from behind the door, a raspy, rattish sort of sound.
“I want you to come downstairs, when you are modest and ready. You insisted I leave the room post haste last night because, and I quote, I sleep butt naked, Eds, butt naked. I have some food you can eat to help settle your stomach”
“Food?” Richie called out, “Do you mean food food or, um …”
“I mean food food, you oaf. I’m not going to force feed you blood, if that is what concerns you”
“No, I didn’t, well, yes, I suppose I was rather concerned”
Richie stumbled to his feet, ignoring the lusty beckoning of the plush, downy bedding, and he began to shove and wiggle his uncoordinated limbs into the clothes he had been wearing the day before. “I am modest, if you want to come in, you can”
Immediately, and before Richie had managed to properly get the undershirt over his head, Eddie burst into the room, eyes trained steadily on Richie’s pale, and exposed, chest.
“Oh, I mean -- nearly modest,” Richie stuttered, pulling the shirt down.
“Yes, well,” Eddie said, voice ocean-calm, “you may follow me down, I fear you may get lost on the way to the kitchens”
Without another word, Eddie stalked out of the bedroom, but not before Richie saw the faintest hints of a flush paint his cheeks.
True to his word, Eddie lead Richie down a rabbit’s warren of labyrinthine corridors and stairways that twisted round and round like old, gnarled tree roots. The kitchen was hidden away in the bowels of the house, at the end of what Richie imagined to be the longest corridor in the world, followed by a descent down a seemingly never ending stone staircase. Finally, Eddie stopped in front of an inconspicuous looking door, and pushed it open, revealing the biggest kitchen Richie had ever seen. The gas stove was lit, and a large copper pot was sat on it, bubbling away, and the smell of cooking vegetables had filled the air.
“Vegetables?” Richie asked, and he watched as Eddie walked over to the pot, and began to stir.
“Yes, vegetables. You need the goodness after last night, you drank far too much”
“Well forgive me for panicking after being told that, one, I was in the presence of a creature of the night and, two, that said creature of the night was bound to my soul through a sort of metaphysical force that ‘I couldn’t even understand so don’t ask,’” Richie mimicked, hanging back in the doorway.
Eddie rolled his eyes. “You’re difficult.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“Do you want any of this, or not?”
“Depends. What is it?”
“It’s a vegetable stew, one of the only meals that my mother used to prepare for me herself. It’s called --”
“Ghiveci,” Richie interrupted, with a grin that Eddie returned.
“Yes! Do you know it?”
“Yes, my father used to bring me bowl after bowl of it when I was taken ill, and sometimes I’d feign sickness just so he’d make it for me.”
“Your father? Are you close with him?” Eddie asked, as he spooned the stew into two large bowls.
“Yes, very much so. I -- I suppose he will be worried about me.”
“Perhaps,” was all Eddie said in response, setting down one of the bowls in front of Richie. “Now, eat.”
Richie ate. The stew was good, a hearty, meaty broth with large chunks of tender vegetables floating in it, and, much to Richie’s bemusement, Eddie was slurping it up with an enthusiasm that matched his own.
“So,” Richie began, “you can -- you can still eat, uh, human food?”
Mid-way through lifting a spoonful of tender potato to his mouth, Eddie let the vegetable slop back into the bowl with a splash.
“Richard. This is growing tiresome”
“What?! I’m not trying to offend you, I’m just -- curious”
“I have no problem with your curiosity, the more you learn now, the better, I suppose, but must you insist on drawing the line between you and I so harshly?”
Richie blinked.
“I shall not ask anything else of you, I will not ask you to stay, I will not ask you to like me, but do please stop calling everything I am not, everything I cannot do, human. I am acutely, painfully, aware of what I am. I do not need you to remind me.”
The asparagus stalk turned sour in Richie’s mouth, and he swallowed, but a lump remained petulantly lodged in his throat. Eddie, sat across from him, was hunched over his own bowl of rapidly cooling stew. He wouldn’t look up at Richie, and continued to solemnly spoon his food into his mouth.
“Eddie?"
No response, just the clinking of cutlery against china.
“Eddie? Please don’t ignore me.”
More clinking of cutlery, this time accompanied by obnoxious slurping.
“Eddie I’m sorry, you’re not -- you’re not a monster.”
“How do you know?” Eddie spat, finally looking up at Richie with wild eyes. “How do you know? You have no idea who I am, or what I am. What I’ve done. Now you’re here, because -- because I didn’t die like I was supposed to, and now it’s all… it’s all wrong”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“The bond.” Eddie said, plainly, “That metaphysical bond I said I wouldn’t explain to you. The reason I said that, the reason I wouldn’t tell you, is because it’s my fault it’s like this, that the bond is so … concentrated”
“Concentrated? I’m lost, Eds.”
Eddie sighed, pushed the bowl away and cradled his head in his hands.
“I didn’t die like I was supposed to because I was turned. Those motherfuckers turned me, and then I didn’t die. Most people, they don’t meet the person they’re bonded to. They live thousands of years apart, or even if they are born in compatible eras, they never meet. One lives in China and the other in England. That’s how it usually is. But ours, our bond, it’s wrong.”
“Wrong?”
“Wrong,” Eddie confirmed with a short nod of his head. “I didn’t die, so the bond became … stronger. More concentrated. It caused those headaches you get, and it drives me wild with … a sort of craving. A need.”
“I’m still lost, how exactly is that your fault?” Richie said, leaning forwards until he could, if he tried, grab Eddie’s hand in his.
“I’m the one that got turned, I’m the one that didn’t die,” Eddie said, staring at Richie as if the answer was obvious, as if his immortality was his fault, his burden to bare, and his alone.
“Look. Eddie, look,” Richie implored, standing up and rounding the table so he was crouched in front of Eddie, who looked down at him with a mildly panicked expression.
“I’ve only known you for, hell, one day and one night, but I know, despite all rationality telling me to get the fuck out of here as fast as my legs can carry me,” Richie said, eliciting a wet sounding laugh from Eddie, “I know, in here,” Richie grabbed at Eddie’s hand and placed it on the left side of his chest, directly above his rapidly beating heart, “I know, in here, that you’re not a monster”
Eddie let his hand rest gently on Richie’s heart for a few seconds, before drawing it back with a small, caged smile.
“You are very kind, Richard. Now, help me wash the dishes.”
They made quick work of the dishes, with Eddie plunging his hands into the soapy water to clean them, before he handed them to Richie who dried them off with a soft piece of cloth.
“I haven’t eaten a vegetable for nearly two-hundred years, I’d almost forgotten what a carrot tasted like,” Eddie said.
“Really?”
Eddie nodded. “Yes. Whilst the taste is nice, nutritionally, it does nothing for me. It would be the same as you just drinking bowl after bowl of bone-broth. It tastes good, but you’d wither away soon enough”
“So, you get your nourishment from --”
“Blood, Richie. Yes, I drink blood.”
“Human blood?”
“Look,” Eddie turned around, crossing his arms over his chest, leaving a small trail of suds on the floor. “I’m not going to lie to you, or pretend that the maintenance of my life doesn’t cause suffering to others. I exist mostly on a diet of sheep blood, but -- there are only so many months that will tide me over. I do, occasionally, and not without guilt, venture beyond the confines of this town.”
“To find people to eat?”
“I prefer drink, as I do not actually -- uh -- eat them. I drink their blood, but yes. To find people.”
“Huh,” Richie said, mulling the notion over in his head. Here he was, standing in front of a man, a vampire, who had just readily admitted to killing people to drink their blood, and here he was, standing in front of a vampire, without the slightest sprouting of the seeds of panic in his stomach.
“Huh.”
“Is that it, huh?” Eddie said sceptically, and Richie shrugged.
“I mean, yes. I’m not -- I’m not scared? Or, even remotely freaked out? Which, in itself, is freaking me out. I am scared of the fact that I am not scared. Is that normal?”
Eddie laughed, syrupy and warm, and placed a hand on Richie’s shoulder. “I have no idea.”
The rest of the day passed slowly, like running through sand. After tidying up the kitchen, Eddie ushered Richie back upstairs and back to the room where they’d drank the night before, the evidence of which still stood on the table, the sight of the rich, burgundy wine turning Richie’s stomach.
“What -- what now?”
“Well,” Eddie said, as he walked over to the large, wooden bookcase before he ran his finger across the dusty spines of the many, many books housed on it, “that’s sort of up to you.”
“Me?”
“Yes. I would normally be asleep now, and would only arise when the sun begins to sink beneath the horizon, but, as I’ve explained --”
“Ah, the whole your body wants to do things to me issue.”
Eddie shuddered, before he grinned, a smile slightly too wide, with too many teeth on show, the smile of someone who hasn’t smiled for centuries, the smile of someone with a mouth full of fangs.
“Yes, that issue. I have many many books, and, as long as you promise not to pull up any of the plants, I have a -- Well, I have a garden.”
“You mean, the grounds?”
“Sort of. I have a… vegetable patch.”
Richie paused, before shaking his head. “You, creature of the night --”
“Stop calling me that!”
“Edward, stalker of the living, devourer of necks --”
“I’m warning you--”
“You have a vegetable patch,” Richie laughed, collapsing backwards on the couch, and he held his stomach as he laughed, for fear that he would explode from sheer joy.
“I’m failing to understand what’s so funny about me growing my own potatoes!” Eddie said, crossing his arms across his chest as he leant against the wall.
“Everything about that is funny. Everything,” Richie said, still laughing. “You don’t even eat them! Why do you grow them?”
“It’s … something to do, I suppose. I get bored, moping around this ridiculous building on my own.”
“So I have permission to go and look at your potatoes then?”
“Yes, but don’t you dare pick any of my tomatoes, I’ve counted how many --”
Before Eddie could finish his sentence, Richie had grabbed the nearest book from the shelf, and had skittered out of the room, and had begun to charge down the hallway, not knowing exactly how to get out of the building and into the grounds, but enjoying the air rushing past his ears and the slight burn of his lungs. After turning this way and that, and getting hopelessly lost for nearly fifteen minutes, Richie managed to find his way outside. The air was frigid, and it whipped at his skin with tiny hands. The book now slotted firmly in his back pocket, Richie began wandering the grounds, rubbing dead leaves between his hands and throwing rotten twigs into the air as high as he could, sending them soaring like birds before they inevitably fell to the ground with a sickening crack.
Before long, Richie found the vegetable patch, nestled neatly in the corner of the grounds under the safety of a large, grandfatherly oak. The patch was divided up into orderly rows, six in total, each row with a different crop of vegetables sprouting from the earth. Potatoes in the first, carrots in the second, cucumbers in the third and so on. To annoy Eddie, Richard plucked a juicy looking tomato from the vine and popped it in his mouth, sweetness exploding over his tongue as he crunched into the plump fruit. As he walked around the plots, he noticed that at the end closest to the bordering wall there were little handwritten signs propped up on wooden stakes, written in elaborate, curling cursive letters, indicating which vegetable was growing there, and what date they had been planted. Richie was taken aback by how normal Eddie’s handwriting was, how normal the whole ritual must have been, when Eddie had written out the names of his plants, had hammered the stakes into the soil, had presumably sat back on his haunches and admired his handiwork. Yes, the whole thing was so normal, it forced Richie to sit down and breathe, in and out, in and out, until his heart-rate slowed and he could see more than three feet ahead of him.
“Must you insist on drawing the line between you and I so harshly?”
Eddie’s words echoed in Richie’s brain, a cacophony of sound that forced Richie to listen to it, that insisted he drink in its message, that insisted he allow the message to percolate, to ferment in his stomach.
“Must you insist on drawing the line between you and I so harshly?”
After he had inspected all of Eddie’s vegetables, tried and failed to open the locked door of the small shed, and eaten a few more of Eddie’s tomatoes for good measure, Richie wandered out onto the huge lawn. The lawn was overgrown but not wildly so, and had wildflowers littered across it sporadically. The grass was plush and bouncy beneath his feet, and it didn’t take much persuading until Richie pulled the book out of his back pocket and lay down. He spread himself out like a cat, and began to read.
"Richie? Richie, wake up, you’re covered in grass”
When Richie blearily blinked his eyes open, his immediate reaction was to believe that he had, in fact, gone blind. All he could see was nothingness, an oppressive blankness that stretched on for miles and miles, until Eddie’s illuminated face floated into view.
“Rich, how long have you been asleep?”
Asleep. Richie didn’t remember falling asleep, but now that his eyes had become accustomed to the dark, and he could see Eddie standing there, wrapped in a thick, black overcoat and holding a large, hand-crank torch, that was the most obvious conclusion.
“Oh, hey, Eds, long time no see,” Richie groaned, rolling onto his stomach before pushing himself to his feet. His muscles groaned, and he shook out each limb, hoping to shake any remnants of sleep from them.
“Come with me,” Eddie said, not waiting for Richie to respond before striding off purposefully, “I have something to show you.”
Richie jogged to keep up with Eddie, unleashing a litany of questions to the tune of “where are we going?” and “Oh I didn’t know you had an outhouse!” until Eddie stopped in front of a pair of metal gates, locked with a heavy chain and padlock.
“Now, what I’m about to show you is my pride and joy. This, Richard Tozier, is what I call The Poison Garden. Within these gates is the most beautiful garden you will ever lay your eyes on, and each and every one of these plants, if consumed, would send you spiralling down a tunnel of agony you cannot even comprehend”
Richie nodded. “That -- is actually very cool, Eds, and exactly the kind of plants I expected a vampire to grow.”
“Are you insulting my potatoes again?”
“Would I do that?” Richie said, faux-shocked, and Eddie laughed.
“Yes, yes you would. But, if I am to let you inside these gates, you must promise me, sincerely, that you will not touch or eat any of these plants.”
“I’m not a cow, Eddie, I’m not about to go chomping on your foliage.”
“Promise me, Richard.”
“Okay, okay, I promise.”
When he was satisfied that Richie’s promise was genuine, Eddie pulled a ring of keys out of his pocket, and unlocked the gates, which swung open with a loud creak.
“After you,” Eddie said, and he thrust his arm outwards, guiding Richie inside.
The garden, as Eddie had promised, was beautiful. Unlike the neat, orderly rows of plants in vegetable patch, this garden was more sporadically organised, as if Eddie had stood in the middle of the narrow path and thrown the seeds into the air to be carried to their rightful place by the wind. Richie walked forwards, not noticing that Eddie had hung back, and he scanned the garden with awe. Each plant was encased inside its own little metal cage that didn’t affect the amount of light the plant got, or impede its growth, but stopped any rogue animals from taking a lethal bite. Like the vegetable patch, however, each plant had a little handwritten sign, with information about the effects on the human body upon consumption of the plant, and, endearingly, Eddie had drawn a tiny white skull on each sign.
“That one is called belladonna,” Eddie muttered into Richie’s ear, and Richie jumped, having not been aware that Eddie was so close to him, close enough to speak directly into his ear without the sound bleeding out into the surroundings.
“Belladonna, otherwise known as deadly nightshade, is one of the most toxic plants in the world. They say consuming it can send a man insane, that is, if your nervous system doesn’t turn to sludge first. Brutal stuff, but just so beautiful, don’t you think?”
“Uh-huh,” Richie replied, barely making a sound. Something about their proximity, something about having Eddie practically pressed up against his back, speaking in hushed tones directly into his ear, set Richie’s skin alight.
“That one over there,” Eddie continued, pointing at another caged plant over Richie’s shoulder, “that one is conium maculatum, or poison hemlock. See its beautiful white flowers? Well, eat those and your muscles will constrict, and your lungs will fail, and you’ll heave your last sorry breath, all for eating just one of those little white flowers.”
“You know a lot about plants,” Richie said, turning his head to look past Eddie’s hand, but, when Eddie’s breath hitched slightly, he realised that he had just bared his entire neck right in Eddie’s face. Richie held his breath, waiting for the inevitable pain that would shoot up his neck when Eddie –
“I’ve had a lot of time to learn,” is all Eddie said, however, and he stepped back, stepped away from Richie and his defenceless neck, and walked further down the path. He made it only a few steps before he turned on his heel, and held his hand out.
“Are you coming?”
When they got to the other end of the garden, there was another small wooden shed. Eddie took the ring of keys out of his pocket once more and unlocked it, before he disappeared inside for a few seconds. He emerged holding a small, potted sapling in one hand, and a pair of large, rubber bright yellow gloves in another.
“I need to plant this young thing before she dies in that shed, she’s ready to be put to the soil. It’ll only take a few moments and then I shall escort you back to the house,” Eddie said, and he placed the plant pot on the ground and putting the gloves on.
“Oh, Eds, believe me, I could sit and watch you prance about in those gloves for hours, take your time,” Richie laughed.
“What? What’s wrong with my gloves?” Eddie asked, staring at his gloved hands as if they’d suddenly speak up and tell him the answer.
“I mean -- bright yellow rubber gloves? That go almost the whole way up your arms? Can you really not see how that isn’t funny?”
“Well, I suppose -- I don’t even really need them, the plants, they don’t -- affect me. I’ll take them off,” Eddie mumbled, as he began to take the gloves off.
“I didn’t mean to offend you. I think they’re quite dashing --”
“It’s fine, really. I guess it was silly of me to keep up with the pretence, I just --”
Eddie paused, and looked up at Richie, with a helpless expression. The gloves hung limply in Eddie’s grasp.
“Do you know why I love flowers and plants so much?”
“Because they’re pretty?” Richie guessed, but Eddie shook his head.
“I love them so much because they die.”
“... That certainly is a novel reason for loving plants so much,” Richie said, tone jovial and light but Eddie shook his head again.
“No, I -- look. When I was a boy, when I was still … when I was younger, my mother locked me away. People kept disappearing in the town, and she was paranoid that I’d join their ranks and be the next little boy to disappear in the night. So, she locked me up in this house, and didn’t let me leave. For years.”
“Shit, seriously? Not even into the grounds?”
“Not even into the grounds,” Eddie continued, “and I used to watch the gardeners, with their silly rubber gloves and their pruning shears, spend hours out here, tending to the garden and making it look beautiful. Then, when the frosts came and everything died, they’d collect all the dead, like the men who collected the dead after the plague times, and then the spring would come, and they’d start again.”
“I can’t believe she locked you up, like a princess in a tower.”
“Yes, yes, that isn’t really the point. When I became … this ... When I was turned, and everyone left, and they boarded up the house, I watched the garden sprout and grow and blossom without any help, without any intervention. But, when the frosts came, year after year, they died. They all died, as living things are wont to do. Would you -- Would you think I was crazy if I said I find comfort in death?”
Richie shrugged. “Not really, no”
“I can’t die, I found that out when I tried to throw myself off of one of the balconies. My bones didn’t even shatter, Richie. Not one. Watching my flowers die, watching them bloom and blossom and thrive and then shrivel, turn brown and die, it reminds me that … not everything is chaotic. Some things … Some things are inevitable.”
“Inevitable, like …” Richie paused, unsure of how to continue, “like …”
“Say it.”
“I --”
“Richie, say it.”
“Inevitable like us?”
Eddie smiled, and thrust the gloves into Richie’s hands.
“Yes, like us”
Despite his initial qualms, Richie settled into mansion life with remarkable ease.
Eddie’s body remained hypersensitive to Richie’s presence, so they’d spend the days holed up together, moving from room to room leisurely, from library to kitchen to sunroom, but together, always together. They’d spend the days reading aloud to each other from Eddie’s expansive, sprawling collection of books, or they’d sit quietly, basking in each other’s presence, or Richie would sit hunched over reams of paper as he sketched out the maps he knew from memory, and Eddie would watch him. Then, sometimes, when the top floor library was the only still point of the turning world, Richie would, with sweeping lines, draw out a map of his home town. Voice door-mouse quiet, hoarse from lack of use, Richie would begin to tell Eddie about the town, “that’s my house, my parents’ house, and that is where the tree is that I fell out of, and my grandmother lives here, and that’s where …”. Eddie would listen, eyes trained to the page, absorbing each little snippet of Richie’s life, each little crumb of who Richie was. Richie’s pen would dance across the page, a complicated foxtrot that Eddie didn’t understand, but loved to watch. This would go on for hours, until Richie had projected his entire town, his entire life, onto the page, and Eddie would remain perfectly, entirely silent, content just to listen, just to observe.
Occasionally, Eddie would excuse himself, some unknowable errands calling his name, and he’d be gone for several hours. When he’d return, his pupils would be blown, eyes as wide and as bright as polished dinner-plates. The times when Eddie’s eyes were the widest and his breathing was loud and erratic were the times that he was the most tactile with Richie. A fleeting touch here, a hand that lingers on the small of Richie’s back as they walk, a hand that pushes errant locks of hair behind Richie’s ear. It’d stop though, as soon as Eddie’s eyes returned to normal, the respectful distance between them returned, too.
It took nearly a week of Richie continually getting lost, or wandering into cupboards in the dead of night when he was looking for the bathroom, and being constantly late for dinner before Eddie demanded that he accompany Richie on a tour of the entire mansion. As per Eddie’s demand, the tour began in the grand entrance hall.
“That’s my piano. It was a gift from my father before he died, and I’ve kept it going with sheer willpower ever since. It’s almost as old as I am.”
“Do you still play?”
Eddie shrugged, and avoided Richie’s gaze. “Sometimes.”
The tour was rather whistle-stop, and Eddie didn’t give Richie more than mere seconds at a time to poke his head into each room.
“That’s the seventh bedroom, this is the eighth, the next one is the ninth, the tenth and eleventh are down there. There are two libraries on this floor, a study down there and this --” Eddie paused, and then gingerly pushed open the door revealing a very small room with a bed, a small stool and nothing else inside. “This was my old room.”
When Eddie didn’t enter the room, and chose instead to hover awkwardly in the doorway, Richie pushed his way past, breaching the threshold, before walking steadily into the room. The room was brightly lit by two decent sized windows overlooking the main lawn and flowerbeds, and the small bed had been pushed against the wall underneath them. Richie could so clearly imagine a very tiny Eddie, all those centuries ago, kneeling on the bed, elbows propped up on the stone windowsill, watching the gardeners labour away below. The only other item of furniture in the room was a small wooden stool pushed against the other wall, but, when Richie extended his arm, he could touch it from where he sat on the bed. The room was tiny, barely bigger than the cupboards Richie found himself stuck in most nights on his trips to the bathroom.
“You really lived in here?”
“For several days, yes, before she -- before I convinced her to let me roam the rest of the house.”
The room was tiny, and it grew tinier and tinier still, the walls closing in on Richie every time he thought of Master Edward, hammering on the door, pleading to be let out, pleading to once again feel the sun on his cheek and the wind through his hair, before he’d give up and sit on the bed with no one but the sun’s taunting rays for company.
“With all due respect, Eds, your mother sounds like a bitch,” Richie said, tone too jovial for the weight of his words, and he expected Eddie to snap at him, to accuse him of cruelty, but he didn’t. Instead, Eddie laughed.
Eddie laughed so much that tears sprang from his eyes, and they chased each other down his face in great, glittering ribbons.
“Oh, Richie,” Eddie said, clutching his belly, “oh how I adore having you here.”
At that, Richie felt the blood rush to his face. “Heh. Tell me again how you escaped?”
As they walked around the rest of the mansion, Eddie regaled Richie with stories from his youth, how he’d snatched the key from around his mother's neck that allowed him to escape, how he’d spent many a winter's night huddled in front of a blazing fire with the groundskeeper sat in the rickety old armchair, scaring him silly with ghost stories of yore, and how the servants used to sneak him crumbs of sweet cakes on hot, sticky afternoons in the summer when he’d long for the feeling of a fresh, summer breeze on his face, when he’d long to feel anything at all.
They were walking back to the kitchens, Eddie having promised Richie a mug of hot cocoa, when Richie spotted it. A large metal door, entirely unlike the rest of the opposing wooden ones, with four heavy-duty locks set deep into the frame.
Richie stopped walking immediately, and let Eddie carry on own the hallway, chatting mindlessly to the air. It wasn’t long before Eddie noticed Richie wasn’t with him and turned around.
“Richie? Are you okay?”
“What’s in there?”
“Nothing,” Eddie snapped, marching back to where Richie stood. “Do not concern yourself with what is behind that door."
“But --” Richie started, but Eddie cut him off.
“What is behind that door has nothing to do with you, and you shall not seek to discover it. Now, leave it.”
Before Richie could protest further, Eddie stomped off, sending a sharp, “Come!” over his shoulder.
Richie followed.
It took fourteen days of being in almost constant contact with Richie for Eddie’s body to return to normal. Richie first noticed it when Eddie’s eyes began to droop, bulldogish, in the afternoons, and soon after, he began to flinch away from the sun’s midday greeting when they’d sit in the sunroom and play cards. He’d expected it, that one day the vampirism squirming in Eddie’s veins would rear its ugly head and pull Eddie away from Richie and back towards what he truly was.
The days without Eddie were long and tedious, and, more often than not, Richie found himself pacing the corridors aimlessly, counting down the hours until the sun sank below the horizon and the familiar sound of Eddie shifting in his room began to echo around the mansion. Eddie would emerge, smacking his lips, with his hair sticking up wildly, and he’d greet Richie with a sleepy, “Good evening” that would shake the butterflies in Richie’s stomach until they awoke themselves.
If asked to pinpoint when his attraction towards Eddie transcended simply being physical and entered the unpredictable realm of emotional, Richie would have to shrug. It was as simple as if it had happened spontaneously, as if he’d woken up one morning, walked downstairs to the kitchen where Eddie was bent over the stove, meticulously stirring herbs into a bubbling pot, and Richie’s heart had suddenly burst into song, “yes, yes, it’s him, it’s him, it’s him.” Whilst he still didn’t understand this bond that Eddie spoke of reverently, and whilst he didn’t believe in soulmates, and had said as much to a bemused looking Eddie, Richie felt something. It wasn’t a cosmic force, nor was it a metaphysical hand guiding him towards Eddie without consulting him first. It was something lighter, something more delicate, like a string of the most fragile spider silk had been woven between them, no wider than a hair, and the longer they spent together, the more Richie looked at Eddie, really looked, the more convinced he was that one day he’d be on his knees before Eddie, and he’d thrust own his beating heart clasped into Eddie’s hands, bloody and raw. Spider silk turned platinum.
At the time when the only light came from the fireflies floating like embers in the inky darkness, it was this same something that pulled Richie’s eyelids open, an insatiable desire to be near Eddie stopping him from truly slipping away into blissful, restorative unconsciousness. Though he was fearful of encroaching on Eddie’s nighttime activities, more often than not, Richie waged victorious campaigns against the part of him that pleaded that he remain in bed, that he shut his eyes against curiosity. More often than not, Richie found himself tip-toeing to the door of his room and coaxing it open with tiny, jerky movements to avoid the tell-tale creak that would alert Eddie to his rising.
As soon as the door swung open the first time Richie snuck out of bed, though, a different noise invaded the room, swirling and dancing in the air until it was all Richie could hear. Immediately, memories of his first night in the mansion flooded back to him, memories of a haunting cry that came from the belly of the house. Filled with a reckless sort of determination, Richie crept down the hallway, and, as he walked, the sound swelled around him, growing louder and more insistent with each step.
Richie burst onto the main balcony that overlooked the entrance hall at precisely the same moment that the sound crescendoed, before it fell gently downwards, furious yelling replaced by comforting whispers.
It was Eddie.
Eddie was sat at the piano, back rod-straight, hands flying over the ivory keys frantically. Richie didn’t recognise the piece, but was more than content to crouch down on his haunches, lest he be seen by Eddie, close his eyes, and listen. The tempo peaked and troughed at seemingly random intervals, and Richie wondered idly whether Eddie was playing a pre-existing song or whether he was having his hands be guided by the invisible muses, letting his body become a conduit.
Without consciously wishing to, Richie began to awake most nights, body and soul alight with anticipation. He’d sneak out of his room, and hunker down in his spot on the balcony, concealed by darkness, and he’d watch Eddie play.
Until a rogue sneeze escaped his nose before he could stop it, and his cover was blown.
With a hand covering his nose, as if it could claw the sneeze back in, Richie watched Eddie jump so hard he stood up, snapping his head this way and that, searching for the noisy intruder.
“Up here, Eddie,” Richie called out, face pulsing with heat and embarrassment.
“Richie! I -- how long have you been there?”
Richie gulped. “Not that long, perhaps an hour or so?”
Eddie shifted, and closed the lid of the piano with a loud bang. “You must return to your room, it is very late.”
“You’re beautiful, you know,” Richie blurted, without thinking.
“Beautiful?”
“I mean, you play beautifully. I didn’t recognise the piece, though.” Richie said, beginning to descend the stairs to where Eddie was still sat at the piano, hands knotted in his lap.
“I have begun to write my own music, a somewhat … recent development, I must admit.”
“How recent?”
“A few weeks, perhaps. I cannot be specific.”
Richie regarded Eddie steadily, and rested his hand on the top of the piano, as if to feel its heartbeat.
“Be specific."
Eddie placed his hand next to Richie’s, with an all but a negligible amount of space between them. “Eighteen days.”
“The exact length of time I have been here,” Richard said, a statement of fact that neither needed to hear aloud.
“Yes,” Eddie replied, simply. “The exact length of time you have been here.”
Richie sat in the gardens, and, as he watched two small rabbits dance in the lush undergrowth, he decided that tomorrow, when the moon had risen, her smiling face bathing the world in cool light, he would ask, nay insist, that Eddie accompany him on a walk. They would leave the mansion, leave the grounds, to see if they truly did exist in the world beyond the borders of the bubble of existence that they had meticulously created with shared efforts. Whilst he was content to hide away with Eddie, an ever-growing part of him desired to breach the womb-like comfort of the mansion. He stood in front of the mirror, rehearsing his lines, practicing how he would convince Eddie to venture into the wilderness with him, but, much to his bemusement, it wasn’t necessary.
“Of course,” Eddie agreed, “if that is what you want, then that is what we shall do.”
That night, with the wind howling and rain falling from the sky in great, bloated drops, Richie and Eddie ventured out of the relative safety of the mansion and into the mercy of the wider world. Eddie had insisted that Richie wear one of his coats, a great, woollen thing that swamped even Richie’s lanky frame, but he was grateful for the shelter it provided from the weather as they trundled down the hill into the town of Krov. They barely spoke, as Eddie watched the moon with his dinner-plate eyes, and Richie watched Eddie.
Abruptly, Eddie stopped walking.
“Are you okay?” Richie asked, walking backwards for a few steps before he was stood next to Eddie once more. Eddie continued to stare at an inconspicuous spot on the ground.
“This is where it happened.”
“Pardon?”
“This is where … this is where I was turned.”
Oh. The fury radiating from Eddie was palpable, a hot current of air fighting the arctic winds. Richie had barely asked Eddie about the circumstances of his turning, and Eddie had offered little to no information himself. It was a vast and foreboding secret, something that Richie was desperate to know but reticent to ask. The look on Eddie’s face, a look of sheer savagery, like he would rip the larynx from the creature who did this to him with his bare hands and not think twice, set Richie’s stomach on edge.
Up until this moment, it had been easy to convince himself that, whilst Eddie was in possession of two rather large canine teeth, and professed to being centuries old, he was – in all the ways that counted – still human. But now, with his too large teeth bared in a too large mouth that snarled like a wolf, and his eyes, with the pupils blown and the rest an unnatural white, Eddie looked different. Eddie looked scary.
“Eds …” Richie cautioned, laying a timid hand on Eddie’s bicep. “Eds, can we go?”
Immediately, as if Richie’s words were as sharp as pins, Eddie deflated.
“Yes, uh -- of course. I seem to have … forgotten myself,” Eddie said, as if in a daze, before he allowed himself to be gently tugged away from the spot by Richie, who vowed that never again would they return to that spot.
The silence of the town was deafening. The buildings were the same as they had been when Richie arrived, the same dilapidated, crumbling walls and the same sloping rooves. But, with Eddie stood next to him, fists clenched into tight rocks, it felt different. Now, more so than before, Richie could picture the town as it had been before, a bustling town, thrumming with the energy of life. But now, the only indication that there had ever been life here were the things abandoned in the street, a chair, a bowl, a children's toy, and the incredibly guilty look currently spread across Eddie’s face.
They walked in hushed reverence along the rows of houses, Eddie peering inside each open door, and Richie watched him. Richie watched him walk inside one particular house, and lie his hand flat on the bed, with his eyes shut and his mouth pulled into a thin, straight line.
“Did someone you know live here?” Richie asked, painfully aware of the intimate moment he was intruding on, but unable to squash the curiosity within him.
Eddie’s head snapped up. “Yes.”
Richie wanted to ask more, ask who lived here, ask who it was that Eddie’s eyes glittered for, but he didn’t. Instead, he watched. A silent observer to Eddie’s very palpable, and very private, grief.
“There’s a river,” Eddie whispered, a small sound that thundered in the silence. “I want to show it to you.”
The river was a mile or so from the town, and they walked there in silence, Eddie several steps ahead of Richie. When they arrived, Richie was awestruck. The river was high and fast-flowing, and curved this way and that, a jagged vein on the otherwise perfectly untouched valley.
“I used to come here and think when I was younger. It’s beautiful, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” Richie agreed immediately, not looking at the river. “It’s beautiful.”
Despite Eddie’s protestations that he might fall in and be swept away, Richie stood on the very edge of the riverbank, staring at his reflection, warped by the fast flowing current.
“The river is hungry, Richie. Everything it consumes, it spits out again, but it’s hungry. You must fear it,” Eddie said right in Richie’s ear, causing him to jump and spring backwards.
“Holy shit! I didn’t see you --”
Then it dawned on Richie, slamming into him like the tide against rock.
“You don’t -- You don’t have a reflection, Eddie”
Eddie sighed. “No, I don’t. It’s another symptom of this disease, another curse. I haven’t seen myself since I was eighteen years old, and that was over four centuries ago. I suppose I must look rather monstrous now.”
“I wouldn’t say monstrous, not at all. Just --” Richie paused, gesturing with his hands as if he might pluck the right word out of the air, “different.”
“Well that’s incredibly reassuring, Richard, thank you”
“Different isn’t bad!” Richie insisted, backtracking, “different isn’t bad at all. Look, I’ll tell you what you look like, so you understand.”
Richie stood back, surveying Eddie’s face as one does a work of art, with his eyebrows knitted.
“Well, you’ve got pale skin, but I suppose that much is obvious. You’ve got greyish-whiteish eyes, and they can be rather spooky in the dark,”
“Charming!” Eddie interrupted, but Richie dismissed his comment with a wave of his hand.
“But sometimes, when the light catches them when we’re sat in the sunroom, or when we are in the library with the fire blazing, sometimes … they look like molten silver, and that’s,” Richie coughed, “that’s quite lovely. You’ve got a messy crop of the darkest, blackest hair I’ve ever seen, and when you wake up it sticks up in all directions, and then that, combined with when you have creases from your pillow all over your face, I just want to --”
“Richie,” Eddie cautioned, but Richie continued.
“I, um. Your nose is pinched, and quite pointy, but it suits your face, like the peak of a mountain. Your mouth --”
Richie stopped, and his eyes flitted back and forth between Eddie’s mouth and eyes.
“Your mouth is large, perhaps bigger than normal. Your teeth, well … they are rather frightening but … when you laugh, when you really laugh and you smile, not that stupid smile you do when I know you’re trying to hide your teeth, you look --”
“Richard.”
Richie shrugged. “You look beautiful.”
Eddie placed his hand on Richie’s face, his fingers brushed the hinge of Richie’s jaw, and Richie had but a second to panic before Eddie tilted his face down, and fitted their mouths chastely together. Richie, as if on autopilot, pressed himself against Eddie, knee to chest, and his hands gently gripped Eddie’s waist, fingers curled in the soaking wet fabric of his overcoat.
After a few seconds, Eddie pulled away, just barely, just enough to stare into Richie’s eyes evenly.
“Eddie,” Richie whined, a pathetic sort of noise that he would have been embarrassed about had Eddie not practically growled and pulled Richie back down, back in.
Eddie tilted his head, as if he meant to go deeper, and fangs scraped across Richie’s lower lip. As much as Richie hadn’t anticipated kissing Eddie at that exact moment, it would be patently untrue to suggest that he hadn’t thought about doing it at some point. Those nights that he’d spent fantasising about when he’d do it, whether he’d corner Eddie after breakfast or whether he’d grab Eddie’s wrist and haul him in when they were walking around Eddie’s poison garden, he’d always come back to one thing, the thing that made his gut swirl with anticipation.
The fangs.
The same fangs that were, at that very moment, pressed gently into the soft swell of Richie’s lower lip.
Richie pulled away, gasping.
“Shit,” Eddie cussed, and stepped away from Richie with clumsy steps, “I shouldn’t have -- I assumed that, you kept saying that I was beautiful, and --”
“Eddie,” Richie said as he stepped into Eddie’s personal space, crowding him against the trunk of a tree, hands cradling Eddie’s face, “Eddie.”
“Fuck, Richie -- Fuck!”
They stood there, sheltering under the boughs of the tree, the wind roaring it’s encouragement, and kissed.
“NO!”
Eddie smacked the spoon out of Richie’s hand with a growl, and his movement sent the contents of Richie’s bowl cascading over the floor.
“What the hell is wrong with you, Eddie! I was about to --”
“It’s fucking poisonous, Richie. It’s poisonous. I was looking in one of my books to see how long I needed to let the vegetable boil – I didn’t know its name, but I’ve been eating it for centuries – but the book said that it’s poisonous! I could have killed you!” Eddie yabbered, wringing his hands as he stood over the mess on the floor, staring at the lumps of apparently-poisonous vegetables.
“I can eat it because my insides are practically dead, but if you had eaten it … if I had let you eat it … I couldn’t live with myself, Richie, I’ve only had you for a few months and I nearly killed you myself.”
And then, Richie learnt that it was perfectly possible for a vampire to cry.
Richie gathered Eddie up in his arms, and stroked a comforting hand through Eddie’s hair as the vampire wept against his chest.
“Eddie, Eddie, I’m still here, I didn’t eat any, you’ve still got me, you’ve still got me, Eds, I’m not going anywhere.”
“Do you promise?” Eddie asked
Richie pressed his promise to Eddie’s lips.
– x –
“SHUT THE DOOR!”
Richie slammed the door shut, but what he had seen would be etched onto the back of his eyelids for centuries to come.
“RICHARD,” Eddie boomed from inside, voice syrupy and wet, “GO AWAY!”
Richie didn’t move.
“I know you’re still there,” Eddie’s voice was wet, and as he spoke, his words were interspersed with ugly, slurping sounds. “I can hear you breathing.”
A coppery, metallic smell lingered around Richie’s head, a heady fog that sent his head spinning and his mind racing.
He’d burst into the room, excited to tell Eddie that the asparagus spears had begun to stick out of the earth, but he’d found Eddie slumped over the body of a rather large sheep, mouth attached to the animals neck. Eddie’s eyes had rolled back into his head, an expression of pure ecstasy, as he slurped at the blood gushing from two large puncture wounds on the animals neck greedily, the dark red liquid smeared around his neck and face.
“This is my reality, Richard,” Eddie said, pulling the door open. “This is what I am.”
This Eddie was different. This wasn’t the Eddie that Richie had kissed at the riverbank, this wasn’t the Eddie that curled up like a cat next to Richie on the couch, and read Richie’s book over his shoulder. This wasn’t the Eddie that cried from laughter when Richie had fallen over in the mud when his feet gave way from under him in the vegetable patch, sending carrots flying over his shoulder like tiny orange arrows. No, this Eddie, this Eddie who wiped the back of his hand across his mouth roughly, this Eddie who had pupils blown wide, and who chattered his teeth together like an excited hyena, this Eddie was different, and Richie was terrified by how much he wasn’t terrified.
“I’m not scared,” he blurted, as he stared at the droplet of blood that was still clinging to Eddie’s bottom lip. “I know I should be scared, but I’m not. I’m not even a tiny bit scared.”
Eddie laughed. “You’re a strange little thing, aren’t you.”
“Not half as strange as the vampire who grows potatoes in his back garden,” Richie shot back, before he pulled Eddie into an embrace.
It took two weeks to get the blood stains out of his shirt.
Eddie’s hand was pressed against Richie’s throat, a barely-there pressure that had Richie squirming underneath him, rutting against Eddie’s leg that was slotted possessively between his own. They were shirtless, with Richie’s legs bracketing Eddie’s hips as he hovered over him. They had been going at it for a while now; what had started as chaste kisses and gentle hands on waists had become needy, insistent and breathy over a remarkably short space of time.
With Eddie hovering over him, skin ghoulishly pale in the flickering glow of the candlelight, Richie was sure no one else had ever been more aroused than he was in that moment. He bucked his hips up, desperate to make contact with Eddie’s thigh, his dick straining painfully against the fabric of his trousers.
“So needy,” Eddie hissed, and he shifted his attention from Richie’s mouth to his neck, ghosting his breath along the length of Richie’s exposed jaw. “So needy, so ready, would you let me take you now? If I asked very nicely?”
Richie nodded feverishly, mind focused on nothing but the feeling of Eddie’s hand snugged to his jaw.
“Do you want me to? Take you right here? With you flat on your back?”
“Yuh-yes, Eddie, fuck –”
“Do you? It’d be so easy, you know. So easy to just –” Eddie paused, trailing one of his hands down, skating it over the taut, trembling skin of Richie’s chest and stomach, until he’d dragged his fingers, slowly, over the bulge in Richie’s trousers and down, until his fingers were hovering over Richie’s clothed asshole.
“Eddie, Eddie, please –”
“Please what?”
“Please”
Eddie shifted off of Richie, and sat back on his haunches panting. Richie whined at the loss of contact, at the loss of Eddie’s weight hovering over him, pressing him down into the mattress, and he reached out, and tried to pull Eddie back onto him. Eddie swatted at his arm, and stood up, stumbling a bit, before he left the room in haste. Confused, and rather annoyed, Richie huffed, pushing himself up to a sitting position. Three, or perhaps four, seconds later Eddie returned, holding a small bottle of oil in his hands.
“This will make it easier,” he said, and placed the vial on the table next to the bed, before climbing back up the bed, and back up Richie’s body like a jungle cat.
Before he could capture Eddie between his legs again, however, Eddie shoved an arm underneath Richie and deftly flipped him over, so that Richie was now lying face-down on the bed, dick trapped against his heaving stomach. Eddie was on him instantly; he placed open-mouthed, wet kisses against Richie’s neck, before Eddie shifted, and began trailing kisses over Richie’s shoulder, down his shoulder blades, over the dip of his waist, before he landed at the fleshy swell of his hips.
“I want – Richie, I want to – do you trust me?” Eddie asked, voice crackly.
“Yes,” Richie answered, immediately, as he scrunched the crisp sheets in his fists, as he tried desperately not to transcend this mortal coil.
“I want – just … let me …” Eddie babbled, and then he scraped his teeth along the squishy flesh of Richie’s hips, not applying enough pressure to break the skin, but just enough that Richie cried out, half from surprise and half from concentrated want.
Eddie continued to bite and suck at Richie’s hip, and Richie buried his face in the pillow, biting at the soft cotton to stop himself from sobbing.
With deft fingers, Eddie began to tug at the soft material of Richie’s trousers, encouraging Richie to buck his hips up, allowing him to tug the material over the swell of his ass, and down his thighs.
“So beautiful,” Eddie whispered, a reverent prayer not delivered to Richie himself but to his ass, “so good for me.”
Eddie replaced his mouth with his hand, that continued to squeeze at Richie’s hips, and, even with his eyes still screwed tight and the static buzz of lust screaming in his ear, Richie heard Eddie unscrewing the top of the vial. Richie shivered on the bed, entirely overstimulated but, at the same time, nursing an insatiable need for more, for Eddie to touch more of him, all of him.
And then it was there, an oil-wet finger that probed gently at the tight ring of muscle, and, instinctively, Richie tensed.
“Sssh, my love,” Eddie whispered, and he stroked a comforting hand across Richie’s back, “it’s just me.”
Richie nodded, and his breath heaved out of him in great, staccato wheezes as he willed himself to relax. Two of Eddie’s fingers, both wet and dripping, rested against the ring of muscle, slender fingers between the cheeks of Richie’s ass like they were meant to be there, like they had always been there. Slowly, painfully slowly, so slowly that Richie felt like he was about to scream from sheer anticipation, Eddie’s fingers began to move. They circled Richie’s sensitive opening that twitched uncontrollably, as spikes of not-quite-pleasure rippled through Richie’s body.
With a careful confidence, a certainty that made Richie’s dick twitch from where it was trapped his stomach, Eddie finger bared down on Richie’s opening, until, after pushing past a little amount of resistance, it entered him. Richie’s body instinctively tensed once more, before Eddie leant forwards, and began to press small kisses to the small of his back.
“So good, Rich, so good,” Eddie praised, and Richie’s brain flicked into overdrive, as it oscillated between embarrassment and an unabashed desire for more, to such an extent that, when Eddie began to draw his finger back, Richie’s hips chased it wantonly.
Eddie chuckled, a deep vibrato that cut through Richie’s embarrassment like butter, and he drew his finger back, only to sink it in a little deeper the next time, and again, and again, until Eddie’s finger were burrowed up to the knuckle in Richie’s ass. The motion was smooth, thanks to the oil, and the not-quite-pleasure had been replaced by a rapidly solidifying pleasure buried deep in his gut that was growing and growing with every thrust of Eddie’s skilled fingers.
“Are you okay, love?” Eddie asked, and Richie almost laughs.
Richie shifted, and spat the corner of the pillow out of his mouth.
“I’m – fuck. Move, Eddie,” he tried to command, but when spoken aloud, the words just sound like he was begging, like he was pleading. Perhaps he was.
Eddie obeys. It was slow at first, a teasing, languid movement that had Richie writhing beneath him, before it became firmer, a more confident rhythm that turned Richie’s insides to jelly, and his lips parted in a soundless groan that only the air heard. Eddie continued to thrust his finger in and out of Richie, before he pulled it back all-together, which caused Richie to whine.
“Could you take another, my love? Are you ready?"
“Fuck me, Eddie,” was Richie’s only response, and Eddie didn’t need to be told twice. However, instead of continuing to finger-fuck him with his face pressed into the bed, Eddie prodded at Richie’s side, prompting him to roll over. Richie obliged, and Eddie shuffled up the bed, and curled himself around Richie’s back. Eddie pushed on Richie’s right leg until it moved forwards so that it was lying at a right angle, giving Eddie access to Richie’s ass once more.
Before he could push his fingers back into Richie, Richie ground down on Eddie’s crotch, a spike of pleasure shot up his spine at the realisation that Eddie was as rock hard as he was.
“Eddie, Eds, I want --”
“What do you want, my love?”
“I want you to bite me”
Eddie stilled behind him.
“What?”
“I want you to, ah, I want you to fucking bite me!”
“Richie,” Eddie warned, “Richie you have no idea what you’re saying.”
Richie sat up, and twisted around so that he was facing Eddie.
“Yes, I do. I’ve been thinking about it, thinking about what this,” he gestured between them, “what this is. What it means, not just for me but for you, too. And these past few months, I’ve -- I’ve …”
“You’ve what?”
“I love you.”
Eddie didn’t say anything, just blinked dumbly at Richie.
“I know you probably don’t believe me, and I know it’s incredibly fast, and I don’t expect you to --”
“I love you too, Richie, but, God, this is bigger than love.”
“What could possibly be bigger than love?”
“Come,” Eddie said, and he stood up, and held Richie’s trousers out to him. “I have something to show you.”
The basement was freezing, and Richie watched with a steady gaze as Eddie unlocked the four heavy padlocks.
“This,” Eddie said, as he heaved the door open and revealed a long, dark, stone staircase, “this is bigger than love. I need you to see this, I need you to see all of me, see all of what I have done, before I let you make this decision.”
Richie, unsure of how to respond, pushed past Eddie and began his descent, deep into the underbelly of the house, deep into Eddie’s past.
The first thing that Richie noticed was a gaping hole in the stonework, large enough for a man to walk through.
“Who, or what on earth did that?” Richie asked, confusion evident in his tone.
Eddie sighed. “Let me tell you about Patrick.”
Eddie spoke for nearly an hour, and he paced up and down the room, patently not looking at Richie, who was sprawled on the floor, head resting against the cool stone.
“I haven’t been down here since,” Eddie confessed, staring at the hole in the wall with an embittered expression, “I can’t bear to see what he did, what I did … What I put him through.”
At that, Richie’s head snapped up.
“What the fuck? Eddie, no, that wasn’t your fault.”
“How could it possibly not be my fault?”
“How were you supposed to know he’d turn into a feral beast? No, you were the victim, as much as those --”
“Richard,” Eddie said, voice trembling, “do not compare what I went through to those people who had their throats ripped out by that animal. Do not.”
It made sense now, of course. Why Eddie’s lusty expression had so rapidly been replaced by a mask of panic, why Eddie was so reticent to even entertain the idea of turning Richie. Eddie, compelled by the kind of loneliness that gnaws at your soul, had taken a risk, and it had so horribly backfired that it had left all but visible scars across Eddie’s entire body. Eddie, his trusting, wonderful, Eddie had been duped by a creature so evil, that even the vampirism coursing through his veins could not have affected his nature that much.
“You know I’m not Patrick, right?” Richie said, sitting up.
Eddie scoffed. “Of course, you are nothing like that brute. But what if --”
“Go on,” Richie prompted.
“What if it goes wrong? What if I … what if I lose you? What if I accidentally kill you? I could --”
“You will lose me either way, darling. I will age, I will grow coarse and weary, and you will no longer love me,” Richie said, and he stood up, walked over to where Eddie was hunched in the corner, and grasped Eddie’s hands in his own.
“I will always love you,” Eddie insisted, fiercely, but Richie shook his head.
“You cannot love me when I am dead, Eddie. I will age, and change, and then I will die. Like your flowers, I will rot and turn brown with decay.”
Tears began to trickle down Eddie’s face.
“It is such a horrible choice, Richie,” he said, voice wobbling.
“I know, darling, I know”
The candles flickered in the breeze of the open window, and Richie screwed his eyes shut. Eddie was between his legs, lapping over Richie’s asshole with a broad, wet tongue. He’d been there for what, to Richie, felt like eons, teasing Richie’s hole open with a pointed tongue that darted inside, just for a moment, before the lapping, and the sucking resumed and Richie was left frustratingly empty. Occasionally, Eddie would graze the pointed tip of his fangs over the soft, vulnerable skin of Richie’s inner thigh, pressing in just enough to hear Richie gasp, before he’d pull away again.
“Eds, I can’t – please, c’mere, Eddie, please,” Richie moaned, and he buried his hands in Eddie’s hair before he gave it a sharp tug.
Eddie pulled off of Richie’s thigh, and slithered back up Richie’s body, and pressed their mouths together.
Anticipation pooled in Richie’s stomach like lava, and it took all of his self-control not to force Eddie to chomp down on his neck, but he knew what had to happen first, he knew what he had to wait for. An aching, primal urge tugged ruthlessly at Richie’s lower stomach, and he groaned as he felt it travel up his spine, reaching a deafening crescendo behind his eyes. With Eddie grinding down, swivelling his hips down against Richie’s, their bare cocks brushing together, Richie threw his head back, exposing his bare neck.
Eddie immediately dropped his head, and licked a long strip up the length of Richie’s neck, beginning at his clavicle and ending at the hinge of his jaw.
“You smell so good,” Eddie moaned, nose buried in Richie’s hair, “you have no idea what it’s been like for me, all of these months, not letting myself smell you, not letting myself have you.”
“You have me,” Richie babbled, “you have me.”
“I do,” Eddie said, “I do”
Arousal spiked in the cradle of Richie’s hips, a white hot electric heat that spread like wildfire. “Eddie, I’m ready, I’m ready –”
Wordlessly, Eddie pushed Richie onto his side, the same position they’d been in before, when Richie had asked Eddie to bite him. This time, though, as Richie lay there, back nestled against Eddie’s chest, Eddie draped his arm over Richie’s shoulder, positioning it so the soft flesh of his forearm was positioned in front of Richie’s mouth.
“You know what you need to do, right?” Eddie asked, breathlessly, and Richie nodded.
Two oil-slick fingers pushed their way into Richie’s ass, and Richie bit down on Eddie’s arm, and began to suck.
Eddie gasped behind him, a noise he’d never heard Eddie make before, breathy and high-pitched.
“Drink, ah, drink up, Rich, oh fuck oh fuck”
“Does it hurt?” Richie asked, voice thick and wet, mouth still half full of Eddie’s blood, but Eddie shook his head.
“It – ah, it the opposite of hurts, Rich, oh fuck”
As Richie sucked on Eddie’s arm, swallowing mouthful after mouthful of blood, Eddie’s fingers worked in his ass, maintaining a furious rhythm that worked in sync with Richie’s greedy slurps.
Soon, when Richie’s stomach sat hot and heavy, Eddie gently pulled his arm back. “Are you ready?” he asked.
“Yes, fucking do it, Eddie, do it”
Eddie pulled Richie back, and Richie jolted when he felt the press of Eddie’s solid length against his ass. Need swirls wildly in his stomach, and he holds his breath, waiting for the press of Eddie’s dick against his entrance. It comes slowly at first, Eddie edging forward with gentle caution, dick slippery with the same oil as before. The tip of his cock nudges at Richie’s tight opening, and he pressed forward, Richie’s eyes snapping shut instantly, mouth parted in a silent gasp.
Eddie edged in, inch by inch, centimetre by centimetre, until he bottoms out and Richie’s ass was pressed snuggly against his crotch.
“oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck,” Richie jabbered, and his hips stuttered in Eddie’s lap, micro-movements that sent sparks of not-quite-pleasure and not-quite-plain up his spine.
Eddie waited until Richie stopped jabbering to start moving, but when he did, Richie’s head fell back on Eddie’s shoulder, and he forgot where he was, forgot his own name, all he remembered, all he cared about was the blunt drag of Eddie’s cock, in and out of him, a rhythm as smooth and as regular as ocean waves. Experimentally, Richie pushed his ass back against Eddie’s thrust, meeting it in the middle, and earning himself a “oh, Richie, oh, oh God…” for his efforts.
“You’re doing so well, my love,” Eddie praised, hand snaking around to grasp at Richie’s dick, “you’re doing so well.”
Heat flooded to the base of Richie’s spine, a cloying heat that grew and grew as Eddie continued slamming into him, breath stuttering in his ear.
“I’m gonna come, fuck, Eddie, Eddie, do it.”
“Are you sure?"
“I love you,” Richie gasped in response, and he felt Eddie nod behind him, before he felt a sharp, piercing pain on his neck, and his vision went black. At that moment, with his lover’s hands scrabbling around his neck, Richard Tozier died.
The first thing Richie saw when he opened his eyes with Eddie’s face hovering above him, eyes wet. The first thing Richie felt when he opened his eyes was an unfamiliar toothache, overwhelming in its intensity.
Richie swirled his tongue around his mouth carelessly, and jolted with shock.
There, sat in his mouth, as if they’d always been there were two, razor sharp, huge fangs.
“Happy Birthday, Richie”