#sorry about the delay i was sleeping + debating the merits of consuming jesus' stigmata with some friends. you know how it is

[good--merits-accumulated]

do you take requests🧍‍♀️

LMAO I don't know if I would write full versions of these, but I can do some short snippets of each!

I. writer! Todd and vampire! Neil neighbours

Nicolas bared his teeth – and they were not just flashing white as Andrea had seen, but long and pointed, and curved like the canines of wolves. And they were no longer white, but slick and dark with blood. Of course. What a fool he had been. Nicolas moved closer and put one hand on Andrea’s throat, one cold relentless hand, so that they could both feel his pulse jumping between them. Behind him, pinned to the metal wall, Clara’s stake lay clenched in his hand. 

“No, no, no,” said Neil cheerily across the space between their balconies, “you’ve forgotten that Andrea wears that necklace.”

If it had been six months ago, Todd would have – and had – turned red, snatched his laptop off the flimsy table, and scuttled away into the sanctity of his own apartment, imposing a state of self-exile from the balcony for several more weeks. Fortunately it was not. He twisted around in the chair, shot a half-despairing glance at Neil’s grinning face, and asked, “Have you never heard of privacy once in your entire life?”

“I have many times heard of l’intimité,” said Neil, grinning wider, “and of einkalíf, and even yǐnsī. Privacy, however. That’s a new one. Pri-var-see. Is that how you say it?” 

He was incorrigible. Todd had discovered quite early on in their friendship that Neil had had some huge measure of life experiences which allowed him to come up with a rebuttal to every situation, and even earlier on that allowing him to run his mouth in French was a dangerous thing to do to himself. He was best humoured. “You’re in a boasting mood,” he said, pulling the laptop towards him. “I’ll bite. What’s wrong with his necklace?” 

“You’re the one writing with your screen brightness all the way up on an open balcony,” said Neil mildly, but acquiesced when Todd shot him a threatening look. “Sorry. Lips sewn. Anyway – whatever gory hand-to-hand combat scene you’re working on there can’t go if he’s got the necklace on.”

“Well, why not?”

“It’s a fish,” said Neil, with some measure of surprise. 

Todd fixed him with a look. “Neil, Andrea is a marine biologist.”

“A marine biologist wearing an ancient symbol of Christ around his neck,” said Neil. “Nicolas – he’s the vampire, yes? – he wouldn’t be very partial to that, I imagine.”

“A fish?” said Todd, surprised. “Well, it's not exactly a cross.”

“Hurts just as bad,” said Neil, making a face. “I mean, I would reckon. You know the ichthys actually predates the cross by two centuries? Bit more power to it, wouldn’t there be?”

He squinted and turned around fully. In the faint light spilling from his flat – the light from his flat was always faint – Neil looked loose-limbed and relaxed, draped over his balcony with his customary easy smile on his face, and his perpetual air of someone who knew more than he was letting on. Infuriatingly, the air was alluring at the best of times. But there was no hint of a lie or a joke on his face. “How on earth do you know that?”

“I’ve got time,” said Neil, “I read.” Then, with a shrug affecting casualness, “Could come over to yours and explain it more to you, if you want.”

“Well,” said Todd, and then, “well.” It had been six months they had known each other. He supposed that was enough time. But it had not happened before. For a moment a terrible feeling of anxiety overwhelmed him – something prickled over the back of his head like a hood, and a cloud crossed the moon, so that for half a second all was plunged into darkness. He shuddered. But then the clouds cleared and a ray of light struck Neil’s face, and illuminated it for him; he looked a little bit sheepish and a little bit pale, with nervousness perhaps. His hands twisted, one after the other, on the railing of the balcony. He was looking determinedly down. “I suppose it’d be helpful,” he said, and Neil looked up with a smile, suddenly blinding. 

“Really?” he said. 

“Well, don’t make me recant the offer.”

“Of course. Invite me in?”

He jerked a thumb in the direction of the door, standing up. “No,” said Neil, in a voice that was soft but carried nevertheless, and filled with laughter. “I’d like to hear you say it.” He was full of odd little idiosyncrasies like that, and despite himself, they were all endearing.

“You – are – ridiculous,” he said, punctuating each word with a movement; standing up, shutting the laptop, tucking the chair in behind him. “Are you recording that, or something? Come on over to the door. Of course you can come in.” He left Neil’s smile and the laptop behind him and slipped back into his flat, to stack the cushions back onto the sofa and check his hair in the mirror. 

It did not occur to him until much later the point that should have been obvious from the start – that their balconies were much too far apart to see well, and that his screen brightness, despite Neil’s insistence, had not been turned up all that much at all. But by that point, he could no longer quite bring himself to care.

II. vampires! Todd and Neil forced to plan museum heists

Languages tended to blend into one another these days; they evolved so much over these many hundreds of years that dialects, once sisters, became distant cousins, and then ceased being on speaking terms altogether. It was awfully difficult to keep up, at least without looking like a fool or a grandfather. Despite that, some languages had, throughout the years, impressed themselves onto certain parts of Todd’s moods. Corsican when he was feeling playful, Old Norse when he had just woken up or was particularly vulnerable – English for almost everything else, except in those rare cases where he felt something unimaginably distressing had happened, or that some unforeseen calamity was tearing at the bounds of his reality, demanding to be given voice and a few more vowels. In those cases it was invariably French.

“Merde,” he said, staring in dismay at the display case, “oh, merde.” 

“Fill de puta,” agreed Neil gloomily. 

Staring back at him was five sheets of stained paper, covered densely from margin to margin in a scribbling hand he knew very well, seeing as it was attached to his wrist. They had been arranged with the utmost care on a transparent support, and although he had not read the contents of the label next to it, he could, very clearly, see its proud, bolded title: The Met Museum presents – “His sweet mouth”: Love Letters Through Time.

“Fill de puta,” Neil repeated. This time with a touch more horror. 

“That must have been one of your letters,” said Todd faintly. 

“The first time I used the phrase,” he rejoined, “le Roi Soleil was already dead.” He gestured at the line before them that read 15th century, exact date unknown. “That was you. Remember?” 

He remembered, unfortunately, in excruciating detail. That had been a particularly thrilling night – a young man, one of Borso’s hanger-ons – a moonlit chase through the Castello Estense – him and Neil had been younger then, and had spilled more blood than was strictly necessary in the process. But it had been wonderfully romantic, and shortly afterwards, when Neil had gone off to Venice to do something with alum and Todd had remained in Ferrara, he had sat at his desk and remembered the moment; their hands and mouths meeting in that dim corridor of the Castello, the soft chimes of their laughter, the taste of the courtier’s sweet blood lingering still on his tongue. Enamoured, and in a mood much more befitting to a youth, he had written the letter and sent it off with a kiss. 

It had been well received at the time; Neil had come back from Ferrara early and they had gone off for a third honeymoon in Milan, and stayed until the whole business with Galeazzo Maria had forced a quick escape. When asked where the letter had gone Neil had only assured him that he had kept it, with the kind of dashing prince’s bow he had favoured at the time. Looking at him now, both of them were remembering it. 

He looked a little closer, just making out a particular line of Italian which had not been fit for public company in 1469 and was certainly not more so now, under hundreds of thousands of visitors’ eyes. “You said – ”

“I may,” said Neil, a little shamefacedly, “have lost it.” He rubbed at the back of his neck and added ruefully, “1844.”

He put a hand over his eyes. “The Oregon Trail?”

“It was quite windy.”

He pointed accusingly at the letter, and Neil winced. “Not windy enough to destroy the damn thing.”

“Well, it could be worse.”

“Worse!” One or two people looked over; he pulled Neil with him into the corner of the room, away from the damning glass display cases. “Neil, not only has our property been stolen – ”

“Lost.”

“Yes, because you lost it. Not only that, but now thousands of people are looking at it under this – damn – ” Lost for words, he pointed at the sign above them as they had walked into this particular exhibition room, reading, quite damningly, Eroticism and Sensuality, 1300-1550. He took one deep breath and compressed all the forcefulness and anger into a single, low, “Merde!”

“It was quite a good letter,” Neil offered. “I was flattered. Particularly the passage about my – ”

“There’s nothing for it,” Todd decided, firmly cutting him off. “Does Charlie still have all of his equipment from the ‘60s?”

“Good God,” said Neil smilingly. The good thing about having known each other for over a thousand years was that, at this point, they could have been the same person; he had not surprised Neil in quite some time with his actions. “You don’t mean to break into the Met?”

“That’s exactly what I mean.”

Neil blinked at him slowly, and pulled him a little closer, so that they were pressed close enough together to be mistaken for young lovers. A middle-aged woman pushing a stroller shot them a smile as she walked by, and Todd smiled back, close-lipped. “I certainly haven’t been arrested in quite some time,” Neil mused.

“And you can’t be hung for it any more,” Todd pointed out, putting his head on his shoulder. “The stakes are exceedingly low. Neil, I really do want that letter back.”

When he looked up at him again he was smiling; the wide flashing smile which exposed all his teeth and the fangs jutting sharp onto his bottom lip. The light in his eyes had long since died but in the reflected glow of the spotlights they looked almost alive again, and dancing with mischief. “Well, if you wish it,” he said. “Then I can’t say no.” 

Notes:

I: languages Neil uses in succession: French, then Icelandic, then Chinese. Take all the stuff about the icthys with large grains of salt - I did like 3 seconds of research for this and it was all on Wikipedia! Also I do think Andrea wears specifically the icthys, and not just any old fish.

II: Todd is of course using French, but Neil uses Catalan. Maybe I've been reading too much Aubrey-Maturin. The Borso mentioned is Borso d'Este - highly recommend reading more about him if you like Quattrocento things. Similarly Galeazzo Maria is of course the real Sforza who was assassinated in 1476!