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Aesop digs the sharp pointed peaks of his canines into Andrew’s ghost-white neck, not even applying enough pressure to prick that pale skin. It’s like a kiss, really, only with his teeth, before they retract back into his mouth, and not his muted pink lips.
They’re standing in front of a large mirror, reflecting the both of them back— what a silly rumor, that vampires couldn’t see their own reflection. As silly as the notion that they were all tall, pale, gaunt men with sullen expressions on beautiful, painting-like faces. Andrew and Aesop just happen to fit that description (though Andrew’s complexion leaves Aesop looking tanned).
Andrew’s hands are nervously fisting into the fabric of his pants. There isn’t much to grab at— they’re tailored to his body not only in size, hugging his legs modestly and appropriately, but in color, too, having been meticulously picked out by Aesop to ensure he looks perfect. Aesop couldn’t help but dress him like a doll— first unbuttoning his shirt for him, then lifting his arms above his head, and muttering, hold still, while holding up hair with one hand and clasping a locket around his neck.
“What’s the matter?” Aesop hums, pressing his tongue flat against one of the veins in Andrew’s neck. A shiver rolls through the other man’s body at the gesture, and he lurches away, slightly.
They’re going hunting— well, Aesop is, anyway. This always makes Andrew nervous. Usually, he stays home— but even Aesop gets lonely, especially as summer lazily drifts into autumn, like a dried leaf languidly floating towards the sidewalk, unaware that it had even broken loose of the branch it used to call home. At least in summertime, the streets are busy with people, with movement and life and human energy that sucks the useless air out of Aesop’s lungs and makes him, for a moment, feign humanity when he stands on a street corner. Now they’re empty, with only drunks who stumble about, tripping over their own two feet. Feeding off of them is regrettable— Aesop always comes home tipsy off the alcohol in their blood. Nevertheless, he can’t help but love it, this unending death. The year is nineteen-nineteen, and in the wake of a war, there is so much to live for, and even more sinners worth disposing of.
“Nothing’s wrong,” Andrew murmurs. He's a bad liar.
Andrew hates it. He hates the chase, he hates the raw strength, and the instinct to feed that one often gets when the thrumming of a human heart can be heard. These things that Aesop reveres and holds close to his unbeating heart are pushed away by Andrew as wicked, evil ideas. In fact, it seems to Aesop that there’s not much he likes about being a vampire at all. Only recently, through Aesop’s gentle guidance, has he been able to get over old fears. Now he sleeps comfortably without the lid of his coffin so much as cracked (before, the poor thing had shaken with claustrophobia, like a leaf in the wind, at the mere mention of spending the night in a box), tricks sweet little shopkeepers into handing him receipts for things he’d never paid for, and can sometimes even guiltlessly guide his teeth into a woman’s neck and draw blood until she falls limp and dead against his chest (though he usually cries afterwards, shaken by the idea of himself, a killer,)
“I’ll take home a pretty girl, I think,” Aesop hums, coiling his arms around Andrew’s waist and pulling him flush to his body. “Maybe I’ll bring you home some jewelry. You’d look so handsome in a strand of pearls.” One of his hands drifts towards Andrew’s neck, gently tracing the shape of a necklace into the space above Andrew’s collarbone.
A slight, nearly embarrassed smile appears on Andrew’s lips, and he glances down, away from Aesop’s eyes reflecting back at him in the mirror. “You know I’d never wear them.”
“Mm, I suppose not.”
Aesop’s hands drift away from Andrew’s body, and he drifts towards the door. “You don’t have to come, if you don’t wish to.”
“I should, though.” Self-conscious, Andrew touches the back of his neck. “I don’t want you to have to..”
In truth, Aesop doesn’t care. Bringing home a couple isn’t any harder than simply taking one home, not when you dazzle any human being you make eye contact with, and Aesop has always been fond of watching Andrew eat.
Together, they drive to the poorly managed bar on the end of town where Aesop usually picks people up from, and Andrew, quiet as always, watches the city go by from the passenger seat. The sidewalks are cracked and the first windows dirty, and, best of all, every policeman on duty is too focused on other things to pay any mind to the two nicely dressed gentlemen walking past. Inside, the bar is dimly lit and smells of booze and, underneath that, urine, as well as the smell of tens of beating human hearts.
The man Aesop chooses tonight is blonde. A pretty, young thing sitting all by himself at the bar, his hair like curled straw in the in-between process of being spun into gold. He glances up as Aesop sits down a modest two seats away from him, with strange, strikingly hazel that seem almost golden because of his hair— they’re odd enough for Aesop to think that maybe he, too, could be a vampire, or at least not human.. before his thoughts come pouring in.
Oh, who is that? Victor briefly thinks, his mind flickering quickly to the idea that Aesop was here to talk to him, and then to the curious image of what Aesop’s hidden face might look like. Rapidly, as human thoughts often do, his focus shifts. I get off work at five tomorrow, don’t I? What am I going to make for dinner…?
Fickle things, thoughts are. Aesop quickly tunes the man’s noisy thinking out. He calls over the barmaid to order something strong, and then surreptitiously glances about the room, his eyes searching for a flash of platinum hair, or white skin. His efforts come up unsuccessful, so he turns back to the man beside him. Unhooking his mask and folding it up, to fit into his breast pocket, he longs to reach across the space between him and twirl one of his curls around his finger.
Aesop is fascinated by blondes. Blame falls on his maker, Joseph, whose beautiful, pale hair he’d clenched between his fingers as he was turned. Everything was so sensational, in that moment— he could hear the blood rushing out of his veins and into Joseph’s mouth, and felt it as it traveled through his veins, every artery sucked dry. And that hair… as he’d dizzily held Joseph’s wrist, bleeding profusely, against his lips, drinking from it like the holy grail, Aesop had run his fingers, ungloved, through his long hair and marveled at how sweet it felt between his fingers, how he could smell it, washed and perfumed, even over the rich taste of blood on his tongue.
So the fantasy of blonde hair is directly entwined with the act of rebirth. They just taste better, too, he thinks.
Anyway, as the barmaid slides his drink across the polished, lacquered bar, the blonde glances back up at him, and Aesop flashes him a smile (the kind that reaches your eyes, of course). He smiles back. His front teeth are a little crooked. Aesop glances back in search of Andrew again. He’s probably hiding in the bathroom, or something.
“You’re spending a nice night cooped up here,” Aesop hums, holding his glass to his lips and looking out the window. The sun has long since set, and there aren’t any stars in the sky, as far as he can tell.
“I suppose so,” the man mumbles, tracing his own cup distantly. “I’ve been out all day, though.”
Small talk like this amuses Aesop to no end. Do humans, weak as they are, realize just how much of their precious time they waste on formalities like this, with people they don’t care about? “Really? What for?”
“I work for the post office,” He says, shifting in his seat slightly. Aesop already knew that, of course, just as he knows the man’s name is Victor Grantz, and that he’s 26 years old next December.
Aesop pictures him running back and forth between houses, with his little bag of love letters, and internally smiles. “How interesting. That’s an important job. Are you paid well?”
He sounds stilted, and he knows it; his diction, and his professional way of speaking, is plucked straight out of his childhood in the early nineteenth century. A little bit of glamour makes it seem normal, though, and Victor doesn’t pick up on it.
Victor shrugs, clearing his throat quietly, as if he isn’t used to this much conversation. “Well enough.” Then, after an awkward beat of silence between them, Victor realizes he probably ought to continue the conversation for himself. “What… What about you? What do you do for work?”
“I’m an embalmer.” Aesop sets his drink back down as the ice begins to melt. He hasn’t taken a sip, and he wills Victor’s fragile mortal mind not to notice. When his freckled face shifts slightly in surprise, and his thoughts edge into morbidly curious, Aesop simply says: “Someone must do it.”
“Of course,” Victor says quickly, like he doesn’t want to offend Aesop by asking any questions. “What are you doing here, then? Wasting a good night.”
Aesop hums and glances over his shoulder momentarily, imperceptible to Victor. “There’ll be many more fine nights for me. I should waste some of them meeting people like you, Mr…?” He raises an eyebrow, pretending not to know his companion’s name.
His cheeks flush ever so slightly, maybe from the drink he’s just finished throwing back. “Victor— ah, Grantz.”
“Victor. I’m quite fond of that name.” In truth, he’s less than indifferent. “Aesop leans back.”It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Grantz?”
The man swallows quickly, and Aesop is fascinated by the movement of his Adam’s apple. Then he forces out the word, like it hurts him, “You?”
“Hm?”
“Your— your name.”
Already, this man is so compromised. It makes Aesop smile. He orders another drink, and slides it across the dark polished wood to him. Above their heads, a lightbulb (in Aesop’s lifetime, that little glass ball strung up with electrical currents is such a new, grand invention) flickers, casting brief flashes of warm orange light over Victor’s pink, freckled face.
“Aesop Carl.” He extends a hand, as if to shake, but when Victor takes it he merely squeezes and then, quickly, brings it to his mouth and presses a kiss to his knuckles. Victor clears his throat.
“You’re not from around here, are you?” Every word from Victor’s mouth makes him fall further into Aesop’s carefully laid snare. Subconsciously, his body seems to recognize what Aesop is— sweat beads at his golden hairline, his cheeks flush, his heart pounds. How easy it is to confuse those signals with attraction. “European?”
“Italian.” While Victor’s fingers, afflicted with a slight tremor, struggle to take hold of his glass, Aesop rests a casual hand on his knee. “I’ve lived here for a number of years now. Maybe you’ve delivered me mail.”
Victor nods, not meeting his eyes. “Possibly.” Then he glances at Aesop’s attire, then down at his own— his work uniform, his uncombed hair, and he blushes again. Why pay me any attention ? He thinks, finishing the last of his drink and nearly drops it in his haste to set it down.
Amused by his train of thought, Aesop leans in close, watching Victor struggle to hold his gaze. “You have such striking eyes. A striking face, really.”
It’s an answer to a question Victor barely knew he had, and he laughs, as he dabs sweat off of his brow. “Really? I could say the same thing about you, Mr. Carl.”
They study one another for a few moments, and Aesop catalogues him. Victor’s brown freckles, as if they’d been splashed across his face at random. His twinkling, wet eyes that Aesop longed to press his tongue against. The angle of his nose. His kissable cheekbones. After they’ve earned more than a few dirty looks from the drunk sitting beside them, Aesop pulls back.
“Why don’t you come back to my home with me, then?” Said the spider, to the fly.
He leads Victor to his car, glancing back towards the building. “I came here with a friend of mine,” he admits, finally. “I need to find him, quickly. Do you mind waiting here?”
This gives Victor the chance to run off, of course. But he’s sinless, so Aesop doesn’t feel the need to knock him out, or even glamour him into staying. If he goes, well… It's not like Aesop could stop him. He can find someone more worthy of this kind of death on any dark street of the city.
“Okay,” Victor’s golden eyes are imbued with longing, intently following each of Aesop’s movements. “That’s alright. I can wait.” He leans against the car slightly, and Aesop flashes him a smile. It’s like a reward for his good behavior.
He finds Andrew in the very back corner of the bar, looking a little bit like he’s trying to melt away into the booth he’s sitting in. In front of him, a young woman is drunk, talking quietly about her engagement. Andrew nods along, relief flashing across his face when he sees Aesop approach.
“I need to be going, now,” Andrew hastily says, almost stumbling out of his seat in his haste to get up. “It was.. nice meeting you.”
“Oh. It was nice meeting you as well,” as she speaks, her eyes flicker towards the watch on her wrist, studying the dainty arms as they point towards the time. “If you see Joker, tell him to come find me.”
“Of course,” Andrew nods, shaking one of her hands tentatively, before turning back to Aesop with a rather… ill looking expression on his face.
As they walk together towards the door, Andrew quietly projects his thoughts into Aesop’s mind.
I drained her fiancée in the men’s bathroom fifteen minutes ago.
Aesop laughs through his nose, “Really?”
“It’s not funny,” Andrew mumbles, his cheeks turning pink. “It’s not like… I meant to do it.”
“Oh. You didn’t mean to.” Shaking his head, Aesop slips an arm around Andrew’s waist and pulls him against his body, guiding him through the front door. The drunkard walking in after them shoots the pair a funny look as they pass by.
“I didn’t. I was going to take him home like you, but…” Andrew trails off as they reach the car, distracted by the blonde, who’s resting by his elbows against the car. Like a blonde sailor boy drawn on a poster, blonde hair tucked behind a hat, advertising that young men serve their nation. Aesop lets his arm fall comfortably back to his side.
Their introduction is rather awkward, but Andrew doesn’t internally complain. He even holds the door open for Victor, who stumbles inside weakly. Andrew joins Victor in the backseat. There aren’t any seatbelts, of course, and they wouldn’t want him choking on his own vomit, or limply rolling around, concussing himself with each turn Aesop takes.
Beautiful. They’re both… Jesus Christ. Victor’s thoughts are so noisy, and Aesop shakes his head to himself as they pull out of the bar. The air around them has a nice chill, and he can’t help himself, reaching behind his head to release his hair from the ponytail at the base of his neck.
For a while, the car is silent aside from the wind willing through it, and Victor is the first to speak. “Are you… ah. Also Italian?”
Andrew sucks his teeth, and Aesop looks over his shoulder, to look at Victor and say, “Something like that.”
Shooting him a nasty look, Andrew sinks further into his seat and mumbles, “No, nothing like that.”
Victor nods, pretending to understand their little exchange. “Then, how do you… know each other? I haven’t seen you around town, either.”
“We work together.” Andrew grits his teeth and turns to glance out the window. The further they get from the city, the easier it is to see the stars twinkling and sparkling, at home in the sky.
“Oh. You’re also…?”
Before Victor can even finish his response, Andrew snips the conversation short, like cutting off the stem of a rose. “No, a gravekeeper.”
Did you really have to pick such a talkative one? They're speaking, of course, but Victor can’t hear it.
He was quiet, before he started drinking . Aesop turns down their street, saying nothing. Silent. Like a little mouse.
Andrew rests his chin on his hand, and his elbow on the cool glass of the window beside him. I find that hard to believe.
You know, I don’t mind him. I like to play with my food, after all. Turning into the driveway of their home, Aesop flashes a quick glance at Andrew in the mirror. He says nothing, but huffs through his nose and gives the slightest shake of his head.
“You’ve got a nice house,” Victor mumbles, as Aesop leads him out of the car. He's right. It had once been inhabited by an older woman, who’d graciously given up her lavish, eccentric home, to the handsome young newcomers in town. Aesop predicts they’ll spend only a few more years, maybe five, walking those marble floors before they have to leave town. The doorway is held up with two bone-like ionic columns, giving it the shape of any historic southern home, and the knocker sitting on the large, white front door is elegantly crafted into the shape of a rose blood-red rose.
We could turn him. Have ourselves a pet. Aesop turns the key in the door, saying outwardly, “You’re too kind, Mr. Grantz.”
Andrew pulls a face, and shakes his head in a motion that goes unnoticed by Victor. That isn’t funny.
I’m not joking .
“How much did your car cost?” Victor asks, struggling out of his coat and shoes alike. “I want one, but they’re all so…” he trails off. “Too much for a mailman’s salary, but enough for an embalmer.”
Beside him, Aesop carefully slides out of his shoes.“I got a deal on it.” He remembers gazing into the car dealer’s glazed-over eyes, his slow nods as Aesop assured him they were paying it on credit— moreso, he remembers taking his very first drive in an automobile , with Andrew in the passenger seat. Neither of them knew how to drive, but that didn’t feel necessary. Briefly, as they’d gone around a sharp curve and Andrew had been thrown against the window, Aesop marveled at the innovation, and imagined writing a letter to Joseph, born seventeen thirty, about how wonderful human beings could be. Andrew had made him pull over after that, to throw up, motionsick.
Aesop leads him into the living room, and Andrew lingers in the foyer. Are you sure he’s worth drinking from?
Gently, Aesop helps guide Victor to the couch. He only had two drinks.
“Ah.” Andrew says out loud, leaning against the doorway. Watching. Makes sense, looking at him.
Be nice.
Victor opens his mouth, maybe to ask why Andrew is still following them around, if he’s just a friend, but Aesop never lets them get much of a word in. His arms are quickly around Victor’s waist, and he makes a soft, surprised noise, before Aesop’s retracted fangs are buried nicely into his soft, freckled skin.
To guide a person, sinless or not, to their grave, it’s a power Aesop wouldn’t give up. Death is the only relief that human beings get from a long life of desperation, of squirming, clawing at one another for the chance to achieve something, something to fill that gaping hole inside of them, whistling with the wind. A hole that only sews itself shut when a person finally passes on to somewhere beyond the white curtain of life. In fact, someone like Victor… he deserves a kind death like this more than anybody. Yet, something pulls at Aesop's heart— a nagging feeling akin to guilt.
Hot, young blood tastes so much better (especially when you can taste the slight sting of alcohol) than the old, battered criminals Aesop usually finds himself gorging on. Pressing flushed against Victor’s shaking body, he holds him tighter, closer, swallowing mouthful after mouthful of blood. When Victor begins to scream, Aesop pulls back, kissing his neck and making a soft, glamoured shush that makes Victor fall silent and limp in his arms. His hands drift down to Victor’s waist, then lower, feeling his unfortunate arousal, and sinks his teeth back in. Even to men, there was something erotic about feeling your life slip out of your grasp. What simple joys this curse (at least, that’s how Andrew always described it) could bring him. Nothing, he thinks, smells better than fear, and Victor reeks of it. After a few more moments, he drags himself back, panting, and lets Victor’s body, alive but weakened, drop to the floor.
There’s still warm, sticky blood on his hands, and his lips, too, when he starts to turn towards Andrew, dizzily pulling him in for a kiss. Andrew takes his face into his hands, brushing his thumbs against his cheekbones, as Aesop dips them both backwards.
When they pull apart, Aesop glances towards the man sprawled out like a discarded toy on the floor and sighs. “I’ve thought about it, and I really don’t want to kill him.” Andrew makes a face, tilting his head to the side slightly and looking down on him. “I think I’ll let him go.”
“What if he remembers? ” Andrew frowns pensively as he speaks, like a child who’s trying to avoid getting in trouble. “He’ll run around telling everyone about the monsters in that big mansion, who tried to kill him.”
Aesop places his arms around Andrew’s waist and pulls him flush against his chest, to rest his head in the crook of Andrew’s shoulder as he mumbles, “and who, exactly, is going to listen to that?”
“They’ll find the body in the bathroom soon.” Andrew mumbles, his face growing ever paler as the moments pass, watching Victor’s chest rise and fall. “There will be proof.”
“Hm.” Aesop knows that he’s wrong, but there isn’t anything on earth that would make him admit that. “I suppose I shouldn’t have taken him home.”
“Maybe not.” Andrew clears his throat. “I could…”
Aesop waves his hand. “No, that’s not right. I’m the one who caused this, afterall.”
Aesop sinks to the ground, kneeling beside the man. At the shift of Aesop’s clothing, Victor’s eyes open, swimming with tears, and Aesop touches his tanned face gently, shushing him before he can speak. “Does it hurt?” He mumbles, petting his blonde hair delicately.
Victor shakes his head slightly, and a little bit of blood dribbles out of the wound in his neck. “That’s good,” he breathes out the words, before pressing his tongue flat against his skin and lapping up the blood. “This won’t hurt, either.”
It will, but that’s a lie he’s willing to tell. Holding Victor’s soft, round face in his hands he guides his fangs back into his neck and starts to swallow down blood, feeling it grow thicker, darker. The man will die shortly, Aesop knows. It’s a shame.
Finally, Andrew's voice cuts through the silence. “You should turn him.”
Aesop startles and pulls back from Victor’s neck to raise an eyebrow. Beneath him, Victor shudders and gasps for air. Twitching and crying, but still unable to speak. Aesop considers lifting the glamour, but decides against it for the moment. “Should I?”
“I feel sorry for him.” Andrew touches the back of his neck hesitantly, and then drops to the ground beside Aesop, to take the dying man’s hand into his own. He lowers his voice into a gentler, softer tone, and loops their fingers together. “It’ll be alright.” It’s like he’s talking to a child, and despite himself, Aesop feels his unbeating heart swell.
“Am I not enough of a friend, Andrew?” Aesop teases, as Victor’s breaths come in slow and challenged. “You need a fledgling to keep you company?”
“ No,” Andrew shakes his head, squeezing the man’s hand. “But wouldn’t it be nice to have someone to take care of?”
“Someone who isn’t you?”
“Cruel as always, Mr. Carl.” Shaking his head, he lifts his unoccupied wrist to his mouth and hesitates. “Do you want me to?”
Aesop shrugs his shoulders slightly. “He’s quiet.” And after a pause, he murmurs, “Nothing says we have to keep him, anyway. He can run off if he likes.”
“Sure.” But they both know he won’t. They never stay away for long. Aesop had lived with Joseph for years afterwards, and Andrew… Well, he never talks about how exactly he got turned. But when they met, in the year eighteen-ninety, Andrew had already been dead for twenty years, and Aesop can’t imagine he’d been alone for all that time. “Open your mouth.” He instructs Victor, plainly. “You’ll feel better.”
When Victor parts his trembling lips just slightly, Andrew sinks his teeth into his own wrist, hissing as he draws back blood. Swiftly, he presses his wrist to Victor’s mouth, and holds his head there, shushing him again when he starts to make desperate sounds of protest. It's beautiful, Aesop thinks, his stomach fluttering with arousal. Andrew, so cruel when he needs to be, cradling that man like a babydoll, petting his blonde hair and biting his bottom lip at the pain of being drained. What could be better than the act of procreation? Humans surely don’t think there’s any higher pleasure.
As he continues to feed Victor his blood (and as Victor begins to latch onto his arm, falling in love with the taste), he mumbles something like, “I always wanted a baby,” to himself.
Aesop can’t help but laugh. “He’s twenty-five.”
Andrew draws his arm back, and Victor falls flat, panting. Moving like he’s dizzy, Andrew weakly offers Aesop a smile, and moves across their carpeted floor to pull Aesop into his arms. Aesop kisses Andrew’s neck, sinks his teeth in, but doesn’t drain any blood— instead, they both tumble to the ground and Andrew laughs, a quiet, foreign sound, as Aesop hovers above him. Briefly, Aesop feels nineteen again, pushing Andrew’s arms down so he’s splayed out like a doll, an age he hasn’t been in, what, seventy or so years. The age his body will remain, frozen in time, forever. No, his hair won’t grow, and his face will never crinkle with age, and though Andrew seems to mourn these facts, Aesop never has.
Beside them, while Andrew is busy kissing Aesop’s nose, Victor gurgles and spits, coughing up blood. Neither of them move towards him.
“I love you,” Andrew whispers, placing his hands on Aesop’s waist. Victor sobs and wretches up liquor. There’s a smear of blood on Aesop’s bumped nose, and Aesop laps it up, shivering when he realizes it isn’t Victor’s.
Aesop takes the flesh of Andrew’s cheek in between his front teeth, and Andrew gasps, swatting him away. “You’ll love him, too. With time.”
Unconvinced, Andrew tilts his head to the side.“Sure.” He kisses the corner of Aesop’s mouth, and Aesop presses them forehead to forehead, wishing briefly he could swallow Andrew whole, devour what he loves, rip open his chest and kiss his heart.
They sit with Victor, touching his face and brushing his hair, until the morning sun rises in the east, breaking in shades of pink and golden sun that spills through their foyer. His last dawn, Andrew comments, though Victor doesn’t yet understand. He presses himself flat against the glass of a nearby window, his eyes sparkling with a new intake of colors, a new way to taste the world, to drink from the cup of life. Not a word leaves his mouth, until he collapses, his body exhausted, trembling with wonder.