Page 66 of How to Bare Your Neck and Save a Wreck
Andres looked like he was prepared to argue, but in the end he only pressed a kiss into Shane’s hair. “May I?” he asked, touching Shane’s hands with all the tenderness in the world.
The affection melted Shane, dimming the buzz of anxiety beneath his skin. “Please,” he whispered.
Andres pressed his lips to one of Shane’s knuckles before gripping gently onto his wrist. “Give me yourself, pet.”
The demand felt like the sun’s warmth, a stable, eternal heat that bloomed from the center of Shane’s chest. He let Andres unfurl one of his arms, felt more than saw the pressure of his vampire’s fingers drawing up his skin. His insides still squirmed as Andres’s thumb pressed into the soft inner vein of his elbow, but he focused on Andres’s face, on his ever possessive and protective presence.I’m yours, Shane thought.
And like they were connected, Andres murmured it, “You’re mine.”
Shane leaned back in his chair, one arm still folded against his chest, and dwelled on the sensation of Andres tracing up and down his vein. When the motion shifted upward and a gloved hand took the place of his vampire’s fingertips, tightening the tourniquet and applying the sanitation wipe, Shane kept focusing on Andres’s touch. He could do this. He was ready.
He just wouldn’t look.
So he kept his eyes closed and thought of his vampire. He could not quite pretend the prick of the needle was anything but cold metal. A fresh flash of panic rolled through him, quelled only by Andres’s voice, his breath hot on Shane’s ear. “You’re safe.”
A few more seconds, and the worst part was over. Now just came the waiting.
This was good. The blood he was giving now was life-sustaining, and he wouldnotthink of Maul’s needle, or the feeling of his goons’ fangs sinking into his skin, or the slow panic of his consciousness slipping—slipping—slipping.
Shane made the mistake of opening his eyes, trying to find Andres’s face again. Instead his gaze latched onto the machine his donated blood was rocking in, the sterile plastic and the slowly filling red. His mind went to another room, another night, the bags beside him filling and filling and filling, switched out again and again as he struggled and cried and eventually succumbed to the blackness.
“Shane,” Andres murmured, worry in his voice. It latched onto Shane, grimy fangs lodging deep into his flesh. His very existence in this reality seemed to spin. And still his blood was pouring out of him, too much too fast. Like last time.
“Andres,” Shane choked. His eyes were open—he’d opened them, he swore—but half his vision was dark spots like the world had been hollowed out, like his chest, like his veins. He suffocated on it, barely forcing out the words. “I can’t—”
He’d hardly moved his lips when the catheter slipped free of his arm, a warm pressure replacing it. His vision slowly returned in flickers and crackles, the room coming back into focus around the phlebotomist dropping the used donation supplies into a red bin and Andres at his side, both hands gripping Shane’s arm and a bead of red on his lips from where he must have quickly licked the wound closed instead of letting it be bandaged.
Both of them were speaking to him, gentle but worried.
“You’re safe, Shane. Look at me, I’ve got you. You’re safe here.”
“How are you feeling? I’m going to lift the footrest and lean the chair back, all right? You’re done now, just rest.”
Shane felt numb, empty, tight and terrible. His world shifted again as his chair moved, and his senses returned in a proper flood. He gasped in air with a shudder, forcing himself to breathe out slowly. The panic didn’t abate entirely, still tingling beneath his skin, his arms tight to his chest again, but the clearer his head grew, the more he could feel a very rational shame sinking in. He managed to force his gaze to his donated blood, hoping perhaps the whole ordeal had taken longer than he’d realized, but the bag had only filled a tenth of the way. It was barely enough to feed a small vampire for a day, and certainly less than Andres was drinking from Shane in a single bite. Not nearly enough to knock him out, even if they’d taken it directly from the vein in his neck.
The darkness had been all in his head.
Shane dragged in a breath, tearing his gaze away. “I didn’t finish.”
“That’s fine, it happens sometimes,” the phlebotomist reassured him, smiling. “We don’t want anyone to force themselves into a position that makes them uncomfortable or unsafe. Just relax for now. I’m going to get you juice and a snack—does that sound all right?”
“Yes, thank you,” Shane said, vacantly, briefly cataloging the insulin he’d need to take to adjust for her offer, though in his head he was still reeling too much to do the math.
He’d thought he was ready for this. He should have been ready. Trembles raced up and down his arms and through his rib cage and it took him a moment to realize what they were: shivers. He tucked his arms all the closer.
“Is it cold in here?” he asked Andres.
Andres responded by stripping off his jacket, draping it over Shane. “If that’s not enough, I’m sure they have blankets.”
“No, I think this is fine,” Shane replied, weakly. Maybe it wasn’t, but it smelled like Andres, softly floral, and it lay like a shield over his arms. A protection Shane shouldn’t have needed still, a whole month after Maul’s assault. “Fuck.”
“Shane?” Andres sounded so scared and soft, and he knelt before Shane, a hand securely on Shane’s leg. “You’re safe. Everything’s fine.”
“I know,” Shane snapped. “But that’s the problem. I’m safe. I’m the fucking safest I could possibly be, and I still couldn’t put up with a tiny needle prick and a little blood loss I’d have thought nothing of a couple months ago. It’s pathetic.”
“I don’t think that’s how this works? I’m certainly no therapist, but it does seem to me that your reactions are perfectly normal. You can’t brute-force your body to accept something that’s hurt it in the past.”
“You did.” Shane hadn’t meant it like that, or perhaps just hadn’t meant to say it out loud, and he felt a bit rude once he had. His own failures had nothing to do with Andres’s ability to keep going after the traumatic event that had radically altered the rest of his life. Shane tried to soften his voice, smiling weakly. “I mean, you got over it, didn’t you? You started working directly for Maul after he had you turned. And here I can’t even engage with something that’s barely related to him.”
