Page 54 of How to Bite Your Neighbor and Win a Wager
“Well, I like that you help me cry, so we’re even.” He thought he could feel Vincent smile at that.
“They’re from high school. At the time, it had felt like the only way to express some things I didn’t have words for.” Vincent breathed in, then out again. “Those feelings didn’t stop there. I wanted to take a gap year before college to help, I don’t know, figure myself out, I guess? But my parents told me they wouldn’t pitch in for my tuition if I waited, so I went anyway. When I got there everyone acted so happy to be free and alive and young, and I was finally out from under my parent’s noses, but it didn’t change anything. I was doing everything I was supposed to be, but I still felt like the kid hiding behind the curtains hoping no one else noticed me, while alsoneedingeveryone to notice me at the same time, and not knowing what the fuck to do about it. Then I met a vampire.”
“That was when you turned?”
“Not at first. I just wanted him to bite me, not the kinky way you like me to, but because it was painful and ecstatic and vulnerable and it made me feel like I was alive for a little while.”
Wesley’s mouth went dry. “I get that. Well, not exactly like that but the needing to feel alive because if you stop, for even a moment, then there’s space for everything else to crash in, so you have to keep going, keep smiling, keep throwing yourself forward at top speed because when you don’t you end up sitting naked in the shower hyperventilating into oblivion? I getthat.”
“Oh.” Vincent wrapped his arm across Wesley’s chest and held him. “But you’re always so… you act like you’re happy.”
“Iamhappy. Except when I’m not. And then I kind of want to kill something or else die a little bit. Not in the big S way, just like, I don’t want to be here for a while.” Wesley snorted. “I bet you a hundred bucks this is what people get therapy for.”
Vincent made a sound somewhere between a groan and a whimper. “I’d take that bet but it wouldn’t be enough to pay for therapy in the first place. I checked, after I turned; I thought if I could at least fix that part of myself before I went crawling back to my parents then they’d accept me, but there wasn’t anyone under their insurance who offered sessions at night, and everyone else costs a fortune.”
“Why did you become a vampire?” Wes asked. “You didn’t know how much it would suck, did you?”
“There wasn’t a reason; it just kind of happened. I was so low at the time, and the vampire I’d been seeing brought a couple of vamp friends with him for this basement party that I barely even remember. They’d all been biting me on and off, and I’m pretty sure I ended up in a supply closet or a laundry room or something with one of them by the time I started passing out. I’ve been thinking about it a lot since then, and I don’t know if they even realized what was happening to me, or cared enough to pay that kind of attention. I was in a bad place, and I might have chosen to turn if they’d asked, but I didn’t really get that option, you know?”
Wesley felt like he had to give some sort of comfort, but Vincent’s revelation was so awful and heart-wrenching that everything in him wanted to run back to the happier topics, to a place where the shitty vampires the media were based on only existed outside of their lives, in stories and jokes. While he tried to wrangle up the emotions into something useful, Vincent kept talking.
“It happened, though, and there’s no way to take that back now. I cut all ties with them after. They would have helped me through it, I think—the vampire I’d been seeing originally would have, at least—but I couldn’t bear it. It’s part of why I never tried to find the vampiric community when I came back here, either. I was too nervous to approach them alone.”
“If you ever did want to, I’m here for you. You could bring me with you, like your little human pet or something.” He didn’t think, just said it, and after it was out, he realized it was true. He wanted to go with Vincent, not to find another vampire to bring to Vitalis-Barron or even to fulfill his curiosity or expand on their kinky play, but just to help Vincent make friends and feel more comfortable with who he was. There had to be others out there like Vincent; vampires who knew what it was like to struggle to find their footing after they’d turned. People who could support him in the ways Wesley couldn’t.
He didn’t realize how quiet Vincent had gone until a car revved along the nearby road. The vampire picked himself up on one elbow, his arm still slung across Wesley’s chest. His fingers found Wes’s sternum through his hoodie fabric. “You’d do that for me?”
“Of course. I’d do anything for you, Vinny.” He was pretty sure he would cut his chest open and give Vincent his bloody, beating heart if that’s what the vampire needed. He’d do that, but not tell him the truth. Not about some things anyway. But maybe others… Maybe.
“I don’t think actual vampires treat humans like pets though,” Vincent was saying. “That’s probably just a bad media trope. But maybe there’s a kink community for it? Are you into that?”
“I don’t know, probably in some variety? But I don’t think I need to do it in front of anyone. You’re enough for me.”
Vincent just hummed, his whole body a little tighter suddenly.
“Hey, Vinny?” Wesley asked, before he could lose his nerve. “I have a question.”
“Hmm?”
Wes slid his hand over Vincent’s, casually, like a friend might. Or a boyfriend. He took a breath, and as he had with the freezing lake, he dove headfirst. “Are we dating yet?”
Vincent froze, for just a second, a second in which Wesley’s heart ricocheted around his chest like it might burst out through his ribs and leave him dead in its wake. Then Vincent sat up and swung his leg over Wesley’s hips. He settled there almost hesitantly, like the whole concept was new and experimental, but when he spoke, he seemed more certain and almost a little pleading. “Can we be? Please?”
“Fuck yes.” Wesley breathed out in a flutter of relief. “Actually if you add it all up, I think we’ve been dating for like a week already.”
“Damn.” Vincent started shaking again, and Wes’s panic spiked until the sound from Vincent’s chest caught up with him: a pure, light laugh that put into song everything Wesley had been feeling. He laughed too, tipping his head back and cackling into the sky with the kind of joy no amount of adrenaline or intoxication could bring. The feeling didn’t vanish as they quieted, the faint curve of Vincent’s lips catching in the moonlight. He traced his fingers over Wesley’s abs, and Wes could feel it flicking switches inside him.
Oh fuck.It hit Wes then—not the erection, though he felt that coming behind it—but the fact that, if they were dating, then Vincent probably wanted him the way he desperately wanted Vincent, and if they both wanted each other, there was nothing stopping them fromhavingeach other. Thankfully, Vincent was smarter than Wes, because before Wes could askdo you want to touch my pingly,Vincent spoke for him.
“I wager you one really explicit sex act that you can’t kiss me faster than I can kiss you.”
Wesley could barely form his reply through his breathless exhilaration. “De—”
Before the full word could slip free, Vincent’s mouth covered it up, his fingers gripping into Wesley’s hair. He kissed like he’d been thinking of this every moment since they’d met, kissed like they were two objects destined to come together from the start of the universe, the earth finally plunging into the sun. Wes’s mind turned to stardust and his bones to light.
And Wesley Smith Garcia kissed his vampire back.
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