Page 69 of How to Bite Your Neighbor and Win a Wager
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WESLEY
He stared at the little mailbox mounted beneath the stoop’s overhang, waiting to feel better. Inside it now lay the papers for Vincent to sign in order to officially transfer ownership of the house, along with a little note. Not a long, soppy goodbye letter, though Wesley had written ten of them. Nothing pleading Vincent to let him back into his life, though he’d certainly given that speech to his therapist so hard he’d started angry-blubbering for the first time since their initial session.
It was supposed to be enough. He’d told Kendall it would be, and she’d supported him despite how badly she clearly wanted him to action-dive through the living room window with a proclamation of love. But he found himself taking the final step to the door, fist already raised. He stared at it, breathed, and turned away. He’d made it halfway across the yard before the clink of the mailbox came from behind him.
It froze him in place, but he couldn’t look back. He couldn’t bear to see Vincent closing the door again. Or worse, him reading the note then and there, and Wes having to see his reaction, to wonder what the vampire was thinking and not be able to wrap him in his arms and set his chin on his shoulder and just ask.
You are already enough, exactly as you are, and you deserved so much better than me.
Wes
It was the only goodbye he could come up with; a kind of benediction that he hoped would let them both move on. He breathed in and out again and forced himself to take another step away from the place he cared about most in the world, and the person he cared for even more than that.
“Wesley?” Vincent’s voice sounded hollow, so weak Wes thought maybe he’d imagined it. “You mean this?”
Wesley turned.
There stood Vincent at the very edge of the shade, Wes’s note in his hand and the papers to sign over the house lying forgotten at his feet. His face was pale beneath his rumpled hair, his eyes a little bleary, but they focused on Wes with an intensity that made Wes’s skin burn and his heart lurch.
“Of course I mean it.” The words caught in his chest, in his throat, in his heart, so large and powerful that it seemed for a moment they couldn’t break free. “You deserve the world, Vinny.”
Vincent swayed, half his body tipping back toward the front door. “You know, this is the first place that’s felt like a home to me in a long time. In forever, really. But since you’ve been gone, it’s just a house again.” He made a soft noise, pleading in a way that wrecked Wes so utterly it seemed like they had only been separated for a minute and not a month. “It’s worth nothing to me without you in it. I don’t care what I deserve,” he said, louder now. “You’re what Iwant. Please, come home.”
Wesley stared at him. Out of everything that he needed so desperately to convey, everyI love youhe’d uttered into the dark and every time he thought to go looking for another vampire’s bite just to realize he only wanted Vincent’s and every starry night that would always be the same one they’d laid under on the mausoleum roof, what came out was, “You never messaged me.”
“My phone died,” Vincent said.
“Oh.” Wes inhaled, half a laugh and half a sob.
Vincent shifted between the soles of his feet, glanced over his shoulder at the darkness of the house. With one arm outstretched, he stepped toward Wesley, into the full brightness of the near-noon sun.
Wesley didn’t tell his legs to move, but neither did he tell his lungs to breathe or his heart to beat. They did so because they were born to, and he was born to run into Vincent’s arms. He crashed against the vampire, stumbling Vincent backwards into the shade. Vincent wrapped him up. Their mouths met, hungry and breathless, Wesley tugging Vincent’s lips between his teeth and the tip of Vincent’s tongue sliding against his own. Suddenly his feet were swept off the ground, and he was swinging, through the entrance and around, Vincent carrying him inside as they kissed.
The vampire kept turning, kicking the door closed behind them. His feet tangled with Wesley’s and they stumbled. Wes grabbed onto him with a yelp, but Vincent laughed and didn’t let go, carrying Wesley down with him as he fell. He rolled, planting Wes gently on the floor and kissing him again, deep and a little rough, one hand tight in Wes’s hair.
Wes grinned against Vincent’s mouth, his cheeks aching from how broad he smiled but he couldn’t help himself. Vincent wanted him. Vincent had maybe even wanted him all along. It felt as though the color had returned to a world that had slowly been going gray, his future transforming from a monotonous trudge to a beautiful adventure just by the knowledge that throughout the ups and downs, he could have Vincent’s hand in his.
Vincent paused to pull his head back. He beamed as he stared down as Wesley, his fangs starting to peek out the corners of his lips. “I missed you.”
Wes’s chest ached in the very best way. “I missed you, too, so fucking much I thought it would kill me.”
The way that admission transformed Vincent’s expression, making it brighter and softer and fuller all at once, took Wes’s breath away. He was struck by a dual realization: first, that he had to preserve Vincent’s happiness, and second, that he was the cause of it. Wes, goofy and breathless and laying on the hallway floor, was making Vincent happy just bybeingthere. He was also clearly making Vincent hungry.
“I missed some other things, too.” Wesley propped himself onto his elbows.
He kissed Vincent again, more meticulous this time, savoring him with every touch. He pressed the tip of his tongue into the vampire’s mouth and dragged it along one of his fangs. The twinge of pain as it cut was quickly overwhelmed by the flush of toxin that followed, and a moan escaped him. He pressed a little deeper into Vincent’s mouth. Vincent sucked gently at his bleeding tongue and a flash of terrified yearning went through Wes at the thought of the vampire doing the same to his rapidly hardening dick. It was certainly filling with enough blood to make up for everything that was not being sent to his brain at that moment.
“Bite me, already,” he whispered into Vincent’s mouth.
Vincent laughed, catching his lips once more before kissing the edge of them, then nibbling along his jawline. “That’s all you want me for,” he teased. “Admit it.”
Wes’s heart twisted, plunging him from his lust into something even stronger. He pressed a hand to Vincent’s chest.
Vincent pulled away, looking concerned. “It was a joke, Wes. I know you don’t—”
“No, fuck, I don’t care, I’m saying this.” All the emotion in his chest came out as a soft, light laugh, both hands cupping Vincent’s neck. “Vinny the vampire, I want you for everything that you are. For your selflessness, for your impossible kindness, for your awkward, shy exterior and the still just a bit adorably awkward but also impish, hilarious, and brilliant person beneath that, and yes, for your fangs, too. And I promise, if you take me back, I’ll be someone you can trust; I will always take care of you, I will never take you for granted, and I will be as kind and good to you as you act to everyone else.”
