#plot twist he is a vampire | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

swordsandholly · 9 days

Text

Fancy

Ch. 4: Black Out Days

Ao3 | Previous - Next | Masterlist

Vampire!Poly 141 x Fem!Fat!Reader

MDNI | cw: sickness, hallucinations, injury, some light dubcon

Word Count: 6.2k

Summary: A permanent darkness rests over the city. You’ve lived here your whole life - in the slums, just another human to be pushed and pulled at the whims of the vampires that run it. Another human made to bleed and crawl their way through a meager life. Maybe, just maybe, a meeting by happenstance will change your fate.

A/N: the tone of this story has sort of shifted as I’ve worked on the next few chapters/plot points. I hope it’s not too jarring, but I’m excited for the direction it’s going in.

Your mother rises out of her drunken stupor - spine too straight and head flopped back limply. As if her hips are the only thing capable of moving and her neck has snapped at every ligament. The worn sheets pool around her hips, torn neckline of her nightclothes exposing her gaunt, bruised collar bones.

She says your name in that sickening, gruff voice of hers. A voice too exposed to the poisons outside. Blood drips from the corner of her mouth, coats her teeth as she speaks. Black and viscous. “Oh, darling, what have you gotten yourself into?”

You’re small. A child kneeling by her bed like you always did, waiting for her to ask you to bring her water or pain pills. “What?”

“It’s easier if you give in.”

People aren’t buried anymore. There isn’t room. Your mother’s urn is painfully cold in your hands. You stumble as the train lurches. A new voice hisses above you. Wild eyes and big hands that leave clawing, bloodied stripes in their wake down your body. A flash of blonde, some sort of scar. An accent so old you don’t recognize it.

“It’s easier if you give in, little girl.”

You fall back, out of the train doors and onto something soft and silky. For a few beats you stay there, in the quiet. In the dark. Comfortable in a way so deeply foreign to you it might as well be alien. Until some thick cover pulls away from your face. John grins down at you, shirtless with his head resting on his hand and elbow on the pillow below him.

“Knew you were awake.”

You rub your eyes. “Wh- when did- when did I get here?”

He frowns, a deep crease forming in his brow. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve…” You run a hand through your sleep tangled hair. “I don’t know…”

“It could be so easy, Fancy.” He murmurs, voice low and far away. “It doesn’t have to be… this.”

“I can’t…” Something complicated swirls in your chest. A twisting of guilt and love and unadultered disgust.

The world shifts. You’re standing, now. Simon leans on the railing of the penthouse balcony, staring out at the city. He takes up so much space. Envelopes you without even touching you. “How many memories do you think a person can lose before they’re someone else entirely?”

“What?” You frown. There’s an ache in your head - a drumming pain growing more intense by the second. Your bones rattle along to the rhythm.

“It’d be so easy…”

You peel your eyes open only slightly. It hurts, as if they’ve been glued shut. An offensive light blazes in your face. It takes a moment before you realize the tingle on your skin comes from the UV lamp beside you. Did you fall asleep under it again? No matter how hard you blink your vision won’t clear. When you finally manage to swallow it feels like your throat has been lined with shards of glass.

You grope around the bed uselessly, hands unsure. The edge of the bed takes longer to get to than it should. With a low groan you crawl to the edge, barely managing to swing your legs over. Well, swing is a generous description. In reality you end up on your back on the floor, head thunking against some sort of plush rug or carpet. Your vision swims.

With another groan you slowly pull yourself up into a shaky stance. Wherever you are, it’s big. The bed you fell out of is easily a king with richly woven sheets and a thick comforter. The rug on the floor has such intricate patterns it makes your pounding head dizzy. There’s even a fireplace in the far corner, unlit at the moment.

Something different catches your eye - an item too familiar for this foreign room. Your box of valuables sits on an elegantly carved wooden dresser. Real, actual wood. You run your fingers over the strangely organic material, so rare that it almost feels more unnatural than the plastic plywood you’ve grown accustomed to in the slums.

You limp weakly toward the heavy door on the far wall. A whine escapes you as you pull it open, the heavy wood causes the hinges to creak quietly. You poke your head out, walking down the empty hall like a person with decade long atrophy. Sweat drips down your back, the sickness in your gut turning to anxiety as you realize where you are.

The penthouse.

Voices waft through the mostly open central area - deep and growling. A sound you might mistake for an angry beast if it weren’t for the intelligable words the noise makes up.

“Bloody ‘ell, Price, what the fuck?” That baritone could only belong to Simon. You poke your head around the corner of the wall, peaking into the living room where the four vampires stand.

“I know, I fucking know. I couldn’t-” An exasperated sigh. “I couldn’t lose her again.”

“So you fuckin’ marked ‘er?”

Your hand lifts shakily to the still sore cuts on your neck. They’ve scabbed over but barely. The action makes you look down at your hands - neatly bandaged. Recently, too, you think. At least if your blurred vision is to be believed.

“We’ll lose ‘er anyway if you fuckin’ scare ‘er away!” Simon’s volume continues to grow. He steps forward. John doesn’t back away.

“Guys…” Kyle tentatively steps in, hands outstretched between them as if stepping into a dog fight. He might as well be, frankly.

“You promised her you wouldn’t!” Simon’s voice wavers. It makes your heart skip, the unsteady sound so bizarre coming from him. “We all did!”

“Simon’s right.” Johnny crosses his arms. “We said we’d take our time. See where she’s at.”

“Weren’t exactly taking your time when you fucked her raw were you?” John snaps back. It’s shockingly childish and out of character for the man. Not that you would know. He sighs, rolling his wide shoulders. So much for not being angry about it.

Before you can make heads or tails of the scene playing out in front of you, your vision blackens, one leg stiffening and the other giving out. You barely catch yourself on some random side table, knocking it against the wall in the process. Despite your efforts to hold yourself up you collapse onto the cold, hardwood floor.

“Oh, baby girl.” It’s Kyle at your side first, cool hands tenderly enveloping you as he checks for damage.

“Don’t…” You push at his chest weakly. “Don’t touch me…”

“Dove-” A crack sounds throughout the penthouse, deafening and ringing as Simon’s palm comes into contact with John’s chest, forcing the man back a few steps.

“You’ve done enough.”

There’s a moment, long and silent as you watch them stare each other down. A power struggle. John is the head of the coven, objectively. The only way to change that is an exchange of power. A death. You’ve seen it out on the streets within lesser covens. Simon is bigger, but you can see the cold, dogmatic shift in John’s eyes. The look he gave you in the car. The one that says he is well and truly Right and there is nothing to stand between him and what is Right.

The moment ends when you double over, lungs heaving as you choke and cough. A slimy, viscous glob of red-black comes up from your throat. Barely liquid with the thickness of it. You fall limply against Kyle, as much as you’d rather be left in a dark alley than with these psychopaths your body just can’t hold itself up.

Someone scoops you up, pressing you tightly to their chest. Johnny or Kyle, you think. A touch so soft and sweet you might mistake it for love. Not that you would know. You’re back under the wave of nothing before you even touch the sheets.

You sit still as you can, arm growing tired of the stiff angle you have it positioned in. Laid out across some old loveseat that creaks every time you move even slightly. You don’t trust it to not have at least a little dry rot considering it’s from a good few centuries ago. One of those random pieces John hoards for some secret reason. The light positioned carefully above you feels too warm, discomfort making you twitchy.

“Johnnyyy!” You whine. “Hurry up!”

“Ye can do it, bonnie. Just sit like me.” He goes still. Inhumanly still. Transitioning from living (well, undead) being to a marble statue in barely a second. It sends a frightened shiver down your spine - the prey instinct in your hindbrain moving into overdrive.

You take a shaky breath. “I hate when you do that.”

When he does what? Has he done that before? Have you been here before?

“Jus’ be a good lass f’me.” Johnny murmurs. A different sort of shiver runs down your spine.

You recognize his room but it’s… different. Lighter, somehow, than the last time you were here. The only time you were here. The wall has far more drawings tacked to it, nearly doubling the amount and bleeding across onto another side of the room. You squint. It’s you. Well, mostly. All in different poses, some more salacious than others, each carved out with a deep attention to detail. Were… were those there before? They couldn’t have been.

Your body lights up, the room grows darker. Nearly pitch black. Your hips roll lazily. You feel… good. Ecstatic. The warmth from the light replaced by an immeasurable heat. The man below you comes into focus as the dream settles - a mountain. Blonde and pale and scarred. Part of his right ear is clipped off from a fight. At least you think it was a fight. His hair just barely long enough for you to tangle your fingers in. You’d know those dark eyes anywhere - the ones that look right to the very core of you. That know you wholly from Eve.

“Fuck, Si…”

“Tha’s my girl.” He grins. The action pulls at a scar covering his lips. “Always so good f’me.”

The hands on your waist lift you like nothing. Like you weigh as much as paper and are just as delicate. A burning fills you, a tension that pulls a grating whine from your chest.

A distant part of you remembers to question what this is. Why you’re here, with him. Why you’ve never seen his face before but seem to know every detail of it by heart. The rest of you falls into the moment without a care, allowing yourself to be consumed entirely by him and his desire. It’s all you want - all you need.

Simon’s voice rumbles in a sort of call and response to your devoted babbling. “I love you.”

You jolt, snapping forward and sloshing water around you. For a moment, you panic that you’re drowning. That you’ve been dropped into some great sea and left to flounder.

There’s a quiet rumble behind you, vibrating through your back. Simon. You couldn’t make out whatever he said.

You relax instinctively. Some unconcious part of you falls back into him. Until he runs a soap rag over your chest and you tense, clumsily attempting to cover yourself and curl into a ball. The water sloshes over the edge of the tub again. You don’t get very far, despite the massive size of the bath you’re utterly surrounded. Bracketed by Simon’s strong thighs and large hands.

“None of that.” He barks, pulling your arms back to continue washing you. “You’ve been sweatin’ in bed for four days. Gonna make y’self worse.”

Four days? Worse?

You stay quiet, limp and pliant as he pours a hefty glob of shampoo into your hair. Vanilla. Far too exhausted to put up any sort of fight. Not that you would win. It feels good, if you’re honest, the way he systematically scrubs every part of your scalp, slowly detangling with conditioner. You nod off for a moment, coming back when he pours water over your head to rinse you.

“Simon?” You murmur weakly.

He grunts.

“Why am I here?”

The hands in your hair pause. Only for a moment before going back to their gentle movements. “Because you’re ‘ome.”

You shiver, another coughing fit wracking your body. At least nothing comes up this time. There aren’t bandages on your hands, just the scabbing wounds that have obviously been carefully tended to. Even as the coughing subsides your breaths wheeze, shallow and hollow in your chest.

When you were young, your mother would set you in a cart to walk to the supermarket. The cracked streets would bump and rock you uncomfortably but it was better than walking all those miles. You always hated the market. Too loud and confusing. A maze of sterile white tile and shelving so high it felt giant to you.

One time you lost her, distracted by a massive plushie that she said you can’t afford. You’d stood there staring at it, angrily contemplating why you couldn’t afford it. What sort of societal disservice had been done that you can’t have that bright pink creature. Angry and lost you ended up wandering the aisles for what felt like an eternity. Walking through that white void in search of… you’re not really sure what, actually.

That confusion continues to eat at your mind as the aisles transition into a small, lush greenhouse. The UV lights above you would burn, if it weren’t for the large hat covering your head and shoulders. Gardening gloves protect your hands as you carefully harvest a few tomatoes. They came in so well this year, bright and firm.

You’re lost in it. The green. So accustomed to grays and neon lights that it feels unnatural. You turn your gloved hands over, palm up, down, up, down. They’re yours but distant. As if you’ve possessed some alternate version of yourself. You suppose you have, in a way, if these fever dreams are in pattern. Not that you remember the others well.

The lights turn off suddenly and you freeze, muscles tensing and hackles raising. You turn slowly as the door begins to creak open, trowel in hand. Not that it would do much against whoever has you cornered. John said to be wary.

He’s been acting strange lately.

Isn’t he always?

A hand clamps over your mouth and you shriek behind it. You claw at the stony hand covering you, instinct taking over. Adrenaline pulses through you.

“Hey, hey, it’s just me.” Kyle coos, letting you go quickly. “Sorry, love, I didn’t mean-”

“Don’t do that!” You snap, harsher than you meant. Or less so?

He deflates a bit, shoulders sagging. “Sorry, I just wanted to come in here with you for a bit.”

“Why?” You snort. Kyle is the only one brave enough to venture in. Even with an external light switch, the others are far too wary of the UV lights hanging across the roof to enter. It’s a joke between Simon and Johnny - that they’ll throw Johnny into the greenhouse if he doesn’t behave.

Kyle nods, scooting forward. You can barely make him out, the only light being that of the faux stars drifting gently through the fogged greenhouse glass. “Missed you.”

“I saw you, like, five minutes ago.” Did you?

He shakes his head. You wish they would tell you more. They always hold back so much, as if your puny human brain can’t grasp what they think. You could. You’d learn to. Even if it was some horrid, eldritch secret you would bear it for them. He pushes you back until you’re laying on the floor, slowly resting his weight on you and burying his face in the crook of your neck.

“Just let me stay like this for a bit.”

You frown, but only move to reach up and pet his hair. It’s smells like vanilla. He stole your shampoo again. A fraction of you screams, rails against the idea of being this close to an apex predator. To a man you don’t know. Strange. You know Kyle. You love him. Both the fear and the fondness swirl together into a confusing mixture in the back of your mind.

“We can stay. For as long as you want.”

Something heavy and cold coils around you. You weren’t out as long this time, you think. If you’re even awake now. The room is dark. A pitch black void that you float in outside of the grounding weight holding you in place. That vanilla scent felt so real, still wafting through your nose. A nagging sense of despair settles in your chest as it dissipates.

“Need t’go home.” You croak, unsure of why you say it. Your tongue feels heavy and numb. God only knows why.

“Ye are home.” Johnny murmurs in your ear, voice low.

“Not m’bed… sheets’r t’nice.”

“It’s yers.” Johnny’s arms tighten around you. His voice shakes. “It’s always been yers.”

“N-no…”

“Knew it was tae soon tae bring you back.” He buries his face between your shoulder blades. “Told Kyle it’d be tae much.”

“Wh-”

“Ye make us such a mess, bonnie.” He sighs. “Cannae believe Price-“

Johnny cuts himself off. You can’t find it in yourself to argue or press. A sob wracks you out of nowhere. Something about Johnny, about being wrapped up in his strong arms sends you over the edge of it all. The weight of him mimics the one in your chest.

“Dinnae cry.” Johnny sits up a bit, running a thumb under your eye.

“I’m s-so confused-“ You sob. “I can’t- I-“

Somewhere in the midst of your crying fit the bed dips in front of you. Kyle cages you in between himself and Johnny, pressing you tightly in the center. It makes you want to thrash, to fight and scream.

It also feels so, so good.

You’re back in the slums, in your apartment, with some random man groaning above you. He works down the street, you think. Smiles at you whenever you go get a coffee or cigarettes. You stare at the ceiling blankly. You brought him here… why did you bring him? What- You hiss at the living heat of his hands, burning through your skin - gut churning at the blue of his eyes. It’s wrong. Neither bright nor tranquil enough. You can’t voice it. Can’t place it. They’re just wrong.

You catch a flash of dark irises as you take drinks to some slimy little vampire paying on credit. Immortal but still poor. Pathetic. Suddenly, though, you don’t care when he and his friends grab at you, your gaze trained on the man lounged in a booth on the other side of the club. You can’t stop staring at him, something tugging at you deep down to go to him. His eyes connect with yours, and you nearly leap with joy when he waves you over.

Except, when you get close, you freeze in place. Straddling his lap, a crushing weight lands on you all at once. They’re not what you’re looking for…

What are you looking for?

You sob in your bed late into the night, pressing the heels of your hands to your eyes. You’re so lost. So hollow. You don’t know why - don’t understand what changed. Some portion of you carved out into nothing. A soulless tulpa born of someone’s imagination. You can’t be human, there’s no way you can be human and this empty. A walking carcass. Not even undead, just barely animated. A puppet, almost.

It’d be so easy…

You wake in a fog this time, limbs heavy. As much as you try to will your arms to move, they won’t quite do it right. Your hands glide over the soft fabric around you, barely moving a few inches. The muscles twitch and shake. It feels like wading through molasses and with a thousand pounds of steel strapped to your back as you attempt to sit up even slightly.

“There she is.” A familiar voice murmurs. It’s soft, comforting, but also incredibly far away. “Hey, lovie.”

“Kyle?” You croak. You might as well be speaking around a massive ball of cotton. There’s something hot and wet streaming down your face. Are you crying?

“You’re alright.” He murmurs, soothing down your hair. Petting you like a dog in pain. An injured, feral animal.

You collapse back on the bed - not that you made it that far in the first place - unable to see more than a few feet in front of you. Kyle, really. Kyle is all you can make out. His face so vivid you’re sure you could draw it from memory. “Where am I?”

He pauses. “…Your room.”

“M’chest hurts…”

“I know, lovie. We’ll make it better.”

“What’d y’do t’me…?” Your vision flashes in and out. You’re going back under, as hard as you try to fight it. The edge just comes closer. You teeter on your heels.

“You just breathed in some bad air. You’ve been out for… a while.” Somehow, you get the sense that what he says is an understatement. That there are layers he has to hold back. Simon said four, you remember, though you can’t quite define if that was real or a dream.

“I hate you.” You whisper, barely audible. “I hate all of you.”

“I know.” Kyle sighs, continuing to run his fingers through your hair. “I know.”

Teeth sink into you. A choked gasp escapes your lips, body stiffening and hands knotting into some thick cloth. The pain is searing but fleeting. A part of you, the present part of you, feels disgusted. Wants to shake and batter whatever parasite has you caught in its maw. Another part, a far more distant piece of you that you aren’t even sure is you, blossoms with warmth. You melt into the strong arms that hold you against a cool chest.

“John?” You murmur. Or, rather, this other you murmurs.

A low groan reverberates from his chest to yours. Your head gets lighter, vision fuzzy around the edges. A hand clamps over the bloodied parts of your neck. Your vision fractures, partially the scene in front of you and partially the ceiling of your room that isn’t your room. Your lashes flutter and you’re back loosely straddling John’s lap.

“Yes, love?” He pants, mouth and teeth stained red. It sends a wave of panic through your veins.

You swallow roughly. “I don’t-”

Something shatters - the staccato sound reverberating through the apartment.

You startle, sitting up and throwing your blankets back. The bed is empty, room dark except for the few embers trapped in the fireplace off to the side. You don’t notice the box missing from your dresser.

“Hello?” You frown, standing and moving toward your door as if possessed by some external force. As if you at all know where you are going. Your bare feet pad quietly against the hard wood, door silently sliding open a fraction.

There’s another smashing sound. Your heart rate spikes, fear coursing through your veins. No one’s home - they left days ago. On business.

How do you know that?

Suddenly you’re in the living room of the apartment, crouched behind the couch and groping underneath for one of the silver daggers stashed around in various hiding spots. An insurance policy. Your breath comes in short, rapid gasps. You have to get out. Get downstairs. There’s security down there. They’ll help you, they know you.

How do they know you? How did you know the knife was there?

With the small dagger gripped tightly in your fist, you flinch at another smash. It came from John’s room across the apartment, another following right after. It sounds like this person (or people) tore his metal bed-frame apart. Splintered into pieces.

You take the opportunity to carefully move toward the front exit, allowing the noise to cover the sound of your movements. Damn the open concept design. You told John you didn’t like it. Breaths come in faster and shallow. You’re not built for running - too soft from all that pampering. A chubby, well loved pet. Not that you’re complaining. It’s just not the best for this particular moment.

A figure moves at lightening speed from John’s room to Kyle’s. You duck down behind the kitchen counter, covering your mouth to stifling the sound of your breath.

“I can smell ya.” A low voice taunts, echoing through the apartment. Fortunately, your scent is everywhere. It will take longer to distinguish where you are in particular than he may think.

Why is your scent everywhere again?

There’s more tearing and smashing. A door groans loudly as the intruder tears it off the hinges. More shattering. Your heart breaks a little - that must have been Kyle’s pottery. Oh he worked so hard on those. Some of them are from a century ago.

Anger begins to boil up your spine. Who is this fuck who thinks he can just wreck your home? Someone you know, for sure. He would have had to be invited in at some point. With a sneer you continue making your way through the penthouse, toward the front door. John’s going to rip this fucker in two when he gets back.

Except, just as you’re reaching for the front door, the vampire exits Kyle’s room. You meet his eyes - glinting in the dark of the hall. There’s barely a beat before you begin to rush, opening the door as fast as you can.

Not fast enough, of course. You’re only human, after all.

A scream rips it’s way through your throat as you connect with the far wall, knife clattering who knows where. Something broke, you’re not sure what. Every nerve ending seems to light on fire as you try to sit up. Your arm doesn’t move more than a twitch when you try to stand.

“Hey there, little girl.” The man pins you suddenly. You get the nagging sense that you know him, his name on the tip of your tongue. Buried somewhere under lock and key in your mind.

You thrash, punching at his chest and tearing at his hair. To no avail, of course. He just lets you, a cruel grin spreading wider and wider the harder you try to get away.

“What do you want!” You finally sob, going limp when your body finally gives out under pain and exertion.

“To destroy John’s coven. Obviously.” He huffs. “Yer step one.”

The vampire grabs your jaw in an iron grip, your teeth crack under the pressure as his pupils dilate. They’re bright - so blue and infinite and you can’t look anywhere else no matter how hard you try.

A clarity washes over you almost violently as you come to - like breaking through the surface of water after staying under too long. Everything from yo ur time under washing away, sinking back into the deep. A forgotten wreckage - old and twisted and grown over. Another lost Atlantis somewhere in the depths of your mind.

“John?” The name falls from your lips before you even realize you’re speaking, before his face comes into focus. Soft and familiar - comforting and enraging.

“Right here, dove.” He murmurs, dabbing your face with something damp and cool.

“Wh…” You swallow roughly, not entirely sure what you even want to say. So any words threaten to spill from your lips and yet your mind feels blank. All fuzz and static.

You want to beg him to let you go. To keep you forever. To tell you why he brought you here despite the ever nagging sense that you know why. Something deep in your marrow that connects you to this place - to these men - at the very soul. You are theirs and they are yours and you want nothing more than to run from them as far as you can go.

Those blue eyes focus on yours, so oddly gentle for all of their inhuman qualities. “We’ll talk when you’re better, okay?”

Talk about what? There isn’t anything to talk about. You don’t know them and they don’t know you, no matter what that tugging in your chest tells you. You’ve lied to yourself before - you’ve lied to others before - surely you’re just doing it again. This man hurt you. Marked you, whatever that means, so why do you still melt into his touch?

Your name falls from his lips, reverent and frightening. You blanch, eyes wide and mouth falling open. You didn’t tell him that. You didn’t-

“Just sleep for now, yeah?”

~~~

John watches intently as you fall back asleep. There was panic in your eyes for a moment, but your sick body can’t do much more than drift in an out of consciousness. You look more peaceful this time, at least, your breathing even and your body still. You’d been thrashing before, for what reason he isn’t sure. The lower city’s poison air does a number on the body, it’s effects only growing worse as time goes on and the pollution becomes more dense.

He did that, didn’t he? He left you and now you’re sick and hurt. John runs his fingers over the Mark, nearly entirely healed now. Just two small, faded marks that will follow you to the grave.

“I’m so sorry. I just keep failing you, don’t I?” He sighs. You always said he was a good man even when he didn’t believe it. Even with all the things he’s done. Would you still agree?

John‘s eyes sting. He’d be crying if he was human, surely.

He glances at the door. The others are out - taking care of business while he watches over you. The world doesn’t stop even when you need it to desperately. It took Johnny and Kyle nearly dragging Simon away to leave you alone with him.

He takes your hands in his, guilt wrecking him. They’re so much smaller, so much warmer. He can feel your pulse in every fingertip. Surely he’s ruined any chance to fix this before they could even try. He wouldn’t blame Simon if the man decided there needed to be a change - that John needs to be removed. He wouldn’t fight it.

John crawls into bed beside you like he’s done so many times before. Nestles under your pink silken sheets - the ones you picked out for Christmas. That was years go, now. Over two. Two tortorous, draining years that felt longer than the past six hundred.

He ran for days. Weeks maybe. Tearing through the city block by block, dodging and weaving between people and buildings alike. Speaking to anyone, using up every connection and resource he ever gained under this damned dome. It took a week to get through the sewer system.

No one knew where you went.

No one heard a thing. At least, nothing they would admit to. Even under compulsion.

You were gone, just like that.

Two years go by in the blink of an eye for a vampire. Might as well be a day, a night, a handful of hours. Time in such small increments is nothing to an immortal. Decades are barely enough to measure with. Not for them, though. Every second drug on. The days were long and tense.

A fracture formed between them. Kyle retreated into himself - quiet and frayed around the edges. Sometimes John caught him with a far away look in his eye, staring at nothing. He thinks Kyle would have been crying in those moments if he could. Johnny became far too unpredictable. Ripping and tearing any lower level vampire he can find. He spent a few months hunting Frenzies in the lower city without contact.

And Simon…

Simon turned into a fucking nightmare.

After the first year, they at least hoped to find your body. After the second anniversary of your disappearance came around, they gave up. The guilt of giving up brought a whole new wave of grief on them. Johnny laid in your bed for weeks, nearly beginning to petrify as he denied any blood. John couldn’t blame him, opting to re-read your favorite books with shaking hands. Simon fished your last knitting project, eyes heavy and tired. Kyle meandered listlessly through the house, sometimes laying with Johnny but most often sequestering himself in the now empty greenhouse.

They try to fill the hole with pretty girls that look sort of like you. Never enough and they never act like you. Too busy placating to snap at them like you were so willing to do. These others are only place fillers - something to take up the space you left between them. They could never truly fill it, though. It was far too great. A chasm that continues to swallow the four of them whole.

He’s so tired. The others were, too. Kate handled business well enough but their involvement was still required. Each issue and event weighing on them more and more. Kingpins of the city and they’ve been nearly ruined by the loss of a single girl. A single, human girl. None of it mattered in the face of what they lost.

John looks up, the pin-drop silence in the room bringing his attention back to the present.

And there you are.

Like Lazarus returned. An angel bathed in low, red light. Your hair spills around your shoulders framing that face he knows so well, one he’s held more times than he can count. A face that made him pray to a god he does not believe in every day to get back. Just once. Those unmistakable pearls grace your neck, the ruby latch glinting as you twist your neck and tuck your hair behind your ear.

“I’ll be your Companion tonight.” You say so softly. Almost the way you used to, laid up in his bed, whispering about nothing and everything with your fingers running through his hair. Asking about the things he’s seen with such awe.

“What happened t’ Cherry?” Kyle asks faux casually. John can feel the tension in the man next to him. He’s feeling it out - always so good at that. Better at human subtleties than the rest of them. His dark eyes sparkle, though, with a light John hasn’t seen in so long. He hadn’t realized just how much he missed it.

“She was unfortunately unable to come in tonight.” You slide the tray onto the table. You look the same. You sound the same. There’s a few new scars, some scratches here and there. A wariness in your eyes that wasn’t there before. Damage done to your skin that could only come from the lower city air.

Where have you been?

You shift nervously. “If I’m not to your standards-“

“Well, now, none of us said that.” John says far too quickly, smiling despite himself. It might not even be you. Maybe a doppelganger. A distant relative. A clone is more plausible. “What’s your name, dove?”

“Fancy.” And oh, John is sure his dead heart comes back to life. It is you. It has to be.

“Fittin’.” Johnny says, eyes raking over you. He might as well be vibrating, struggling to keep himself held back from yanking you into his hold.

They’re all measuring you up the same way he is. Feeling for anything unfamiliar. Outside of your distant, distrustful gaze with a lack of recognition that makes his chest ache, it’s you. It’s all you.

“Do you know who we are?” Simon murmurs. You’re having trouble looking at him, only meeting his gaze in small glances. Not so different from when they first met you. You and Simon have always had a certain… connection. Not that you weren’t all close - that they all didn’t love you deeply - but you and Simon had an understanding. He wonders if you can still feel it somewhere, deep down in the back of your mind.

You’re panicking a little, eyes flitting between their faces. John’s heart sinks. He feels it in the others. A deep disappointment - a turbulent melancholy- seeping into their bodies. You don’t know them. You don’t recognize a single one of them.

It’s all gone.

“It’s not a trick question.” Kyle says gently, ever one to soothe.

“No, sir.”

John’s heart breaks all over again.

A/N: My initial summary for this one was just “Fancy tripping balls on pollution while John and co. have a meltdown”

518 notes · View notes