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“I think I could take living forever with you,” Jimmy said before Joel even finished wiping the blood dripping down his mouth.
The vampire raised an eyebrow at it.
“I'll turn you when you get a little older, how ‘bout that?” Joel grinned, all sharp teeth and bravado. A part of him hiding the fact Jimmy might regret the statement. “Besides, I can't just get rid of our favorite source of blood so soon. Grian would end me.”
“So that's what I've been to you the past seven years? A bag of blood?”
“Among other fluids,” Joel laughed at Jimmy's disgusted expression.
“Stop it,” he groaned.
Jimmy looked at Joel one last time.
“You promise you'll turn me into one of you guys?”
Joel is gentle as he says. “Promise.”
It's a promise he doesn't keep because Jimmy is turned into a werewolf. He now has to face the fact he won't get to live forever with the people he loves most as well as the annoying new instincts that come along being part wolf.
Jimmy had been out in the forest on a full moon, exactly the kind of setting in which terrible things happen.
He doesn't exactly remember how it happened. There were two clear possibilities. Whether he had made a mistake, lowered his guard in the woods. Perhaps he took a misstep, maybe he didn't hear the howls of hunger in the distance. There could have been something he could have done to prevent a body that no longer was his.
Or the alternative.
There was nothing he could have done to prevent it.
Like fate almost, written along the magic of the world they lived in. Jimmy had been meant to be devoured into a werewolf that night.
He didn't know which was worse.
Not like he would know. He didn't remember how it happened.
Grian had found him, half dead, half transformed into a monster the second night after he went missing. Joel would tell him Grian had been so shocked he wouldn't speak to Joel for the week Jimmy was unconscious with fever as his body adapted. Grian would deny it, but his voice would still shake as he explained to Jimmy the state in which he had found his body.
When Jimmy wakes up he doesn't feel much different.
He went through a profound change in everything he is. Surely that meant he would feel different.
He doesn't.
He gets used to the changes he feels.
“You are being clingy,” Grian says.
“No I'm not,” Jimmy refuses from the nook of Grian’s neck.
“You are,” Grian says, hesitating after taking a good look in the way Jimmy clinged onto him, as if letting go for a second would take him away. “Is this a new thing now?”
“What do you mean?”
“Instincts.”
Jimmy gets to learn the meaning of the word when Joel announces he has to go on a trip for a few days.
“Why didn’t you say anything sooner?" Jimmy curls onto himself.
Joel stares at him as if he was being ridiculous. “Because I realized I needed to go today?”
“Yeah, I know that, but…”
But what? He is being ridiculous. Joel had left their home many times before that in a similar manner. Always something to do with his old compromises. Jimmy knew this. He understood it.
But he still felt like he was losing something. He didn’t want Joel to leave because he didn’t want Joel to be in a place he couldn’t protect him.
“Can I go with you?” he blurts out only halfway through his own train of thought. “Wait, not that. Grian too, uh, can we all go? Together?”
Joel stares at him as if he was being more ridiculous than before. “Why?”
“I think,” Grian interferes a knowing grin growing on his face. Never a good sign. “He’s having a bad case of lost puppy.”
Jimmy squirms under the correct assessment. “No, I’m not!” he denies, embarrassed.
“Oh,” Joel realizes, a teasing grin growing. “You gonna miss me, Jimmy?”
Jimmy grinds his teeth. “Yes,” he says, eliciting a shriek of a laugh out of Joel.
“How about we all go together this once until you get a better grip on those instincts?”
“You make it sound as if it’s simple.”
Joel chuckles. “It’s not like I’m drinking your blood all the time, am I?”
“Do you feel like drinking it all the time?” Grian asks.
Joel shrugs. “Yeah.”
“You are such a baby vampire,” Grian mocks.
“Not all of us can be over a thousand! Give it time,” Joel whined.
Jimmy simply sat among the bickering as it grew around him. The more he thinks about it, the more he wants time.
Admitting his protective instinct is not more embarrassing than the time Grian dropped a ball and he rushed to catch it. He was teased for days.
The first full moon ever since he was converted was an entire ordeal. Unlike the night he was transformed, Jimmy remembers it in peculiar vivacity.
Joel and Grian went along with him as he let go of all and any inhibitions he had. He would run around, chase the trill and come back to them. The forest felt immense, and his vision was wide and clear. The cold didn’t bother him.
It was a rush of energy like no other. It was incredible.
The after effect was worse than the fever from when he was turned.
Jimmy feels exhausted and sore. Every muscle, every bone in his body was stretched and twisted into something unnatural. A contortion that made him a beast that ached for the rush. In the aftermath it was just him, craving the contact of the people he was closest to. They could have his blood, he wanted their time. But right now he felt like nothing but a bag of skin that could barely retain his soul.
If only this hadn't happened to him, it was a thought he often had.
Jimmy never stopped wanting to be a vampire.
“It would be easier if I was a vampire like you guys,” Jimmy whined.
“Don’t even think about it,” Grian cut him off. “It’s too dangerous.”
"Whatever you say, man."
"I mean it." Grian locked eyes with him. "Don't."
He thinks about it.
He thinks about it.
He cannot stop thinking about it.
Jimmy does not think about it until he finds Joel alone in the balcony of the manor.
“I still want you to turn me into a vampire.”
Joel turns to him. Somehow, Jimmy is not sure he can read his expression. “What?”
“Yeah, I've been thinking about it.”
“It would kill you,” Joel cuts in a serious tone.
And that’s the detail Jimmy had been thinking about.
What says a werewolf cannot be a vampire? Are there any rules on how much magic a body can take? Jimmy had not found anything that suggested it.
He sighed.
“We don't know that for sure.”
“The heck do you mean ‘we don't know for sure’?” Joel pushed him away, angry and red. “You wanna bet on that something?”
“I want to try!” Jimmy screams.
Because he wants the time.
Because he doesn’t want to die before them.
“I'm not turning you.”
“But you promised,” Joel looked away from him. “Joel, you promised me you would do it. Please do it.”
“Not. Happening.” Joel cuts, effectively walking out the room. He was startled when he bumps into Grian at the door frame. “Tell this idiot I’m not killing him!”
Grian looks like death when he walks into the room.
“How can you even ask him that?”
He is cold as he speaks. Jimmy answers out of inertia.
“I want to be a vampire.”
“Tim,” Grian said in a mix of frustration and disbelief. “ Jimmy ,” now he was upset. “Joel is in love with you.”
What?
“What?”
Grian glared at him.
“I've only seen Joel fall in love twice. Once five hundred years ago before he was even turned and the moment he met you.” Grian said, an unusual seriousness surrounding him. “Don't you dare ask him to kill you because he will do it and he will regret it for the rest of his life.”
Jimmy sighs, defeated. “Fine, I won’t ask him again.” His shoulders sag, but they rise again as the confession echoes in his mind. “About Joel! I… I can't feel the same.”
“And? You think he cares? I don't.”
“Do you lo—?”
“I won't say it.” Grian cuts him off.
Jimmy blinked in realization.
“You also love me,” Jimmy says. A statement, not a question.
Grian’s silence it's answer enough.
“I'm sorry,” Jimmy says.
“What for?” Joel startles him from behind the balcony door. “We’ve been living in the manor together for a while now, surely there’s some trust between us.”
“Don’t test it,” Grian says.
Jimmy prefers to think Joel has a point.
“When I said I could take living forever with you guys I meant it,” Jimmy says. “I want to.”
And Joel and Grian look at him with something that tastes like pity but in truth it’s something else. Because it goes deeper between them, because there is something more.
Jimmy doesn’t love them in that way, but they know their bond is something that claws inside. Because they are a group, they are a pack.
“We’ll figure something out,” Joel says.
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
Years will pass.
A hunter gets too close to their manor.
An arrow too close to a beating heart.
Teeth sink into his neck and Jimmy thinks the promise was never broken.
When he opens his eyes he is a different thing entirely.