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Dan finds a passed out woman bleeding onto the kitchen floor at two in the morning, sighs, then flicks the light switch on.
“All I wanted was a bowl of cereal,” he tells the woman who’s only just waking up, clutching her head between two palms and looking around in confusion. “Like, seriously. Some respect for people’s midnight snack schedules, right?”
The woman looks at Dan like he’s mental. She’s got a point, maybe, sitting on a stranger’s kitchen floor smudged with her own blood while the stranger’s talking to her about midnight snacks. Dan hands her a glass of water and a prescription bottle of iron tablets and can’t help but think that the last one was more polite.
-
“You got a prescription for iron supplements,” is what PJ lingers on when they meet for tea the next day, folding his fingers together on the table and giving Dan a look that worryingly resembles the one the woman on his floor gave him the previous night. “You don’t need iron supplements.”
“I told the pharmacy I’m going out with a vamp,” Dan replies easily, cracking the menu open and instinctively overlooking the blood-based vampire food paragraph. “It’s not even that fucking far from the truth, is it? I can’t exactly let these people die on my kitchen floor.”
PJ doesn’t touch his menu. He doesn’t look away from Dan, either, nor does he erase thatyou’ve gone bunkers expression from his face. “You can’t just let it keep happening, Dan! Are you serious with me right now? You’ve got a vamp imprinted on you who treats you like you’re some sort of cat!”
Dan decides he’s going with a Caesar salad, raises his finger politely to call over the waitress and tells PJ, “I can’t do anything about it. I’ve tried. Also, I’m not being treated as a cat, piss off.”
The waitress takes Dan’s order and waits patiently while PJ’s busy with his I can’t order food right now, I’m being the responsible adult act. Eventually he tears his incredulous gaze away from Dan and tells her smilingly, “Yeah, I’ll take the steak tartare,” then turns back to Dan and says, “You are, most definitely, being treated as a cat. He’s leaving you the human embodiment of dead mice. He’s trying to court you or something.”
Dan pulls a face at his empty plate and PJ leans back in his chair, exclaims, “Oh my god, you think half-dead bodies on your kitchen floor is romantic,” and the rest of the conversation kind of goes to shit after that.
-
So the thing is, it starts with an apparent mistake.
One morning Dan walks into the kitchen and finds a very lost and unfamiliar man standing there, bloodstains on his shirt and two bite marks on his neck. There’s screaming on both accounts and after both parties are convinced neither one of them is planning a barbaric attack, they part ways with the agreement that some young vampire got turned around and accidentally left the man in Dan’s kitchen rather than his own. Dan finds peace with this reasoning, takes out a bowl for his morning cereal and makes sure to close the window shut.
A week afterwards, he rushes into the kitchen in a hurry for work, and finds a dazed-looking woman shielding herself with a perforated spatula in the left corner, between the fridge and the Wigglytuff soft toy. He blinks as she yells, “Don’t come any closer, you freak!” and when he takes three steps back and explains that his boss is going to kill him if he doesn’t show up for work in like, minus fifteen minutes, and could you please sterilize your neck and lock the door after you, thanks? she lowers the spatula and says, “You’re weird as fuck, man. But okay. Leave the key.”
Two months later, he’s got a collection of three women, four men and one elder who said oh, good morning sonny, do you have back pain pills?, all of whom have been left on his kitchen floor for no apparent reason. He tapes a note to the breakfast table saying pls stop leaving fainted humans for me to find with a full jar of blood jellybeans, just to be civil, and that weekend the jar is gone and someone’s written I bet it sucks more for them on the note, but there’s still a goddamn man on Dan’s floor. He squashes the note into a ball and tells the man, “Get it, because sucks?” and doesn’t hide the fact that he’s amused.
He tells PJ because PJ likes stories and weird things and vampires, most days (when they’re not drunken uni students throwing their dinner blood bags on his car for shits and giggles, because fuck them then), and PJ usually has good advice. PJ’s advice in this case turns out to be, “What the actual shit man,” and shoving the phone into Dan’s hand, which – okay, fair enough.
Dan calls the local vampire call centre, waits on hold for two and a half hours, plans a trip to the pharmacy while he holds. When they finally pick up the service advisor exhales in an exhausted voice, “It was a tough day in Westminster,” and then listens to his problem and says, “Ask them out.” Dan hangs up the phone and doesn’t bother phoning the Customer Complaint Centre about unprofessional behaviour, doesn’t admit that he’s leaning towards taking that advice.
-
Dan becomes somewhat of an expert in the art of post-bite medical care, thanks to the combined contribution of practice and the internet – but just as important, he becomes an expert in the human reactions to his unique situation. Some of them panic, most of them just tiredly ask to leave – some of them, though, react far too calmly to the circumstances for Dan’s levelled judgement.
On Monday when he enters the kitchen that night’s prey is already mostly awake, dragging himself up into a chair and leaning heavily into the table. “I don’t remember being that drunk yesterday,” he informs Dan conversationally, looking around curiously at the porcelain tiles and flower-printed curtains, and Dan makes a conscious effort to stop judgingly staring at the man for his composure, instead walks to the other side of the room and pulls a cupboard open.
“You were bitten last night and left here,” he tells the man, throwing him the prescription bottle and a wet towel for his neck. “Sorry about that – wasn’t me, though, I swear. I’m all human tissue cells and breakable bones.”
The man leans one elbow on the table, says, “You seem far too used to this, mate. Happens t’you a lot?”
Dan puts the kettle on the stove and says seriously, “You’ve no idea.”
-
Morgan from Production brings plastic bags of supermarket blood for lunch and drinks from the blood urn on the counter in the break room, the one that’s by the coffee machine. Dan knows she’s a vampire the way everyone in their department knows and doesn’t give a shit – except.
“I can’t ask her outright,” he tells Felicia from Circulation during Tuesday’s lunch break customary small talk ritual, watching Morgan set her lunchbox on a table in the other side of the room and sit down. “It’s not like excuse me, one of your kind is leaving me odd gifts in the form of unconscious humans on my kitchen floor, any tips?”
“You’ve a point, I guess,” Felicia quirks a lip, stirs the milk into her disgustingly sweet tea and licks the teaspoon with a considering expression. “Don’t have many options, though, do you? I’m telling you, only their kind understands. She’ll know how to help. Have you figured a way to rid of the bloodstains yet?”
Dan sighs, shakes his head, bites into his dry biscuit while Morgan takes out her lunch and drinks from a professional-looking black straw. Dan stares and Morgan looks up and stares at him back, and she doesn’t seem very pleased with him but then again, she never really does. He considers telling her she’s got some blood still smeared on her lips but isn’t sure whether that’s appropriate, and then he looks away and decides desperate times lead to desperate measures, but he’s not that desperate quite yet.
-
That Friday the boss stops him before he leaves for the weekend, grabs his sleeve and looks him in the eye as she says, “You’re finishing the report on Škrtel today or I’m going to have your arse above my fireplace by Christmas,” and he nods quickly, doesn’t doubt her for a second. This is why at quarter to three in the morning he’s making himself an overflowing cup of coffee and praying to the literary gods that caffeine poisoning isn’t actually a thing. His arse’s great and all, but probably not above someone’s fireplace.
He’s debating between Earl Grey and English breakfast gravely when the window to his left is suddenly pushed open from the outside, and a low voice mumbles, “Here we go, almost there,” far more sunnily than is appropriate. Dan closes his fingers tight around the mug and wonders when the shift in his life happened, that he’s hoping it’s a vampire rather than a burglar.
“Hi,” he says, because his mum always taught him to be polite to strangers, even to his grumpy neighbour from two houses down his childhood home. “Good evening.”
Looking out from the lit kitchen into the nighttime outside, he can’t make out the vampire’s face. He can make out his voice and the way he resolutely does not care that Dan wished him a good evening when it’s technically morning in less than three hours, only reaches out a pale hand through the window to wave Dan closer, lower an unconscious man into Dan’s arms and greet cheerfully, “Hello!” before disappearing.
Dan’s left standing by the open window awkwardly balancing an unknown man, one hand occupied with a chipped ceramic mug and the other supporting their combined weight against the wall. He doesn’t know what the vampire looks like. He’s a nice voice, though.
-
“Am I getting a new decoration for Christmas?” the boss asks him when he enters the office on Monday morning, marching over with perfectly done hair and painted nails that could and would, if need be, stab him to death. “I’ve got a mounted deer and the arses of employees past. You’d fit right in.”
He hands her the scrambled heap of papers he put together during Saturday night, rubs his eyes with the back of his hands. “Haven’t slept for forty-eight hours to get these done, but I’m sorry, no new decorations. I could buy you a Baby Jesus if you’d like.”
She takes the stack, tucks it under her arm, gives him an appraising examination. “You look like shit,” she tells him, as if he doesn’t know, and when he doesn’t say anything in return she adds, “Not contributing to the illusion that I give a damn, but is everything alright?”
He considers this. Alright – what a general statement.
“I’ve got some things going on,” he tells her with a tired smile. It’s the equivalent of sayingI’ve got a semi-crush on a semi-obsessive vampire who drops by to visit every odd night and brings gifts of human sacrifice, how was your weekend?, but she doesn’t need to know.
-
When Dan enters the kitchen at eight in the morning the following week, there’s a woman sitting at his breakfast table doing the daily crossword. He pauses at the door and says, “Hi,” and she looks up briefly and says, “Hello. What’s removed the centre of?”, and already it’s different than usual.
He steps closer and sits opposite her awkwardly, crossing his legs under his chair so he wouldn’t bump into her feet. She’s far more immersed in the crossword than she is in him, and he tells her, “Cored,” before asking, “So… you haven’t been, uh, bitten, huh?”
The woman hums, juts something down with his half-ruined pen. “Nah, I’m HBsAg positive. The guy said he’s really sorry but he doesn’t have time to track down someone else and could I pretty please stay here till you wake up? Said yes, of course. I live on the other side of town and he kept babbling about making sure I take my pills and healthy diets and shit. Super polite, even offered to buy me a coffee for the night. Tall, cute. You’re lucky, mate.”
Dan listens to this partly numb and partly quietly intrigued. He says, “Oh, cool,” and when she doesn’t make any indication to leaving before breakfast he decides on omelets for two, thinks of how this vampire has a knack for finding the weirdest of people, and contemplates the most politically correct way to ask your technically-hostage to describe the exact ways in which her kidnapper was cute.
-
On Saturday PJ comes over for their monthly Hayao Miyazaki marathon, and as he drops the bags of chips and seaweed on the coffee table he asks, “Have you solved your vamp problem yet?”, throws his coat on the floor. Dan’s a lazy bachelor in his twenties living alone – his floor isn’t exactly clean enough for clothes one intends to wear again. PJ’s an unrelenting asshole, though, so Dan doesn’t tell him that.
“I have a plan in the works,” he say, stacks the three DVDs by the seaweed and looks around for the remote. “He’s not gonna get away this time.”
It turns out that when PJ asked have you solved it what he meant was have you gotten rid of the guy. Nearing midnight, when PJ watches Dan setting an air mattress in the hallway by the door to the kitchen, it also turns out that what Dan meant was I have a plan to see him again.
“I’m not sleeping in my bed until I catch him,” Dan says, hands on his waist while looking proudly at his handwork. From his position on the sofa, PJ drinks his tea disapprovingly and says, “You’ve lost it, man,” perhaps too easily. Dan chooses to believe he’s persistent.
-
Dan wakes up in the middle of the night to the ring of the bell he put on the kitchen window and with a pulled muscle in his lower back. The second’s an unfortunate result of sleeping on an air mattress in the hall for several nights rather than in his £200 Ikea bed, but the first is about the middle aged woman he can see lying on the floor thirteen feet away, and the man with one leg already out said kitchen window.
“Hey, you – hold’n a moment!” Dan rubs the back of his hand over his face, clutches the sheets to his chest as he clumsily stands up. By the window, the body the leg belongs to pauses and turns, and Dan reaches out to switch the light on, blinks blearily at the sudden light.
“Good night,” the vampire greets, clutches onto the window frame and pulls himself up, then points out, “You’re sleeping outside the kitchen,” with a tinge of amusement as he balances himself in a crouch on the windowsill.
Dan rearranges the sheets around his shoulders, sets his jaw, says defensively, “Well, yeah.” He doesn’t say have been for the past five nights to meet you btw great hair, but. It’s a baby-steps plan he’s got here, okay, this is one hundred percent under control.
The vampire laughs a little bashfully, grants, “Sure,” smiles all teeth and authenticity and wide eyes. Dan stands there in his Pac-Man pajama bottoms and there’s a cute tall man in his kitchen, who’s also in the habit of leaving his victims in Dan’s kitchen. This is either Twilight or CSI, but honestly, he’d take either. “I’m Phil, by the way. Nice to personally meet you.”
“I’m Dan,” he says, and Phil says, “Uh, yeah, I kinda know that, sorry,” and Dan steps over the woman on the floor to lean one shoulder against the wall by the window. Phil’s smile just as toothy and genuine from up-close, which is, well. A nice surprise.
“We met at a concert once,” Phil clarifies. “You were the cool six feet tall guy who tried not to block anyone’s view and knew all the lyrics. I guess I wanted to get to know you.”
Dan says nothing, raises an eyebrow. What he doesn’t say is a mix of well you can now andnormal people say ‘how’s it going dude’, but Phil’s got that look that means I’ve got my own methods for things and Dan gets that, he does. Variety’s the spice of life. Instead, he listens as Phil asks, “So I’ve really got to go since there’s work in three hours, and being undead doesn’t excuse you from needing to rest after eating, but – wanna hear a joke first?”
“I’m probably going to regret this,” Dan sighs, and Phil takes this as a yes, obviously, because he grins and asks, “Why couldn’t the vampire’s wife fall asleep?”
Behind Dan’s head, Phil sneaks a hand for the second light switch. The light in the kitchen goes off and Phil states proudly, “Because of his coffin!” before disappearing from the window in a whirlwind of blowing curtains and high snickers. Dan yells after him, “Oh my god, Phil!” and maybe Phil hears it, maybe he doesn’t, but Dan knows the message was clear.
-
Two days later, Dan wakes up after a miserable sleep to find his kitchen empty of bodies and instead filled with a humming Phil. He pauses in the doorstep and Phil looks up from where he’s sitting at the table, waves one hand and says, “Good morning! Am I allowed to make tea? I didn’t want to impose and presume I can make some without permission.”
Dan, who’s slept four hours and had nightmares of his boss hanging him on walls for not finishing the article for the weekend issue, merely says, “Uh, sure,” and then tugs on the strings of his hoodie and adds, “So you thought it’s cool to break into my house but didn’t want to touch the kettle.” Phil, already opening and closing cupboards in search for the tea container, looks over his shoulder and shrugs like, well, yeah, is there a problem?
Dan sits down at the seat Phil was in a moment ago and decides there isn’t.
“I thought maybe we could grab breakfast together before work,” Phil dips the Irish breakfast teabag into Dan’s calcifer mug, leans against Dan’s counter like he’s already made himself at home. “I mean, if that’s okay by you?”
Dan settles back in his chair, says, “Sure, man. Definitely,” smiles bright. Phil smiles at him back while he sips from his tea and Dan’s totally not excited, not at all, but is maybe a little smug that his baby-steps plan is working.
-
Over the next three mornings Dan walks into the kitchen with maybe too much vigour, doesn’t admit to his disappointment when he finds it empty. On the fourth morning he walks in to find a woman leaning against his herbs shelf in a stained dress and punctured neck, and pretends he’s not let down even though he is.
-
On the phone to Bryony during work on Thursday, he asks her, “What does it mean if a guy makes contact and then disappears?”, and she takes a bite out of an apple on the other side of the line and makes pondering noises before saying, “Then he’s just not that into you,” somewhat jokingly.
She asks if he’s been stood up or waited by the phone for a call that never came – he considers explaining nah, he just sent me another human sacrifice rather than showing upand decides that friends are friends, but sometimes it’s better to keep your mouth shut.
She says, “Well, there are plenty of other fish and all,” and he says, “Plenty of other bats, as well,” and hangs up before she questions the joke. From her office on the other side of the floor, the boss is giving him pointed looks. Time to get back to Eniola Aluko and the World Cup.
-
A week and a half later, Phil’s sitting in his kitchen innocuously when Dan walks in at half past seven in the morning. He says, “Really sorry about last time, I was busy with the vet work, hope the lady was nice to you,” and doesn’t seem very phased. Dan stands there staring for a few moments while Phil titles his head at him like what, is everything okay? and eventually he says, “Oh, yeah. Okay,” and doesn’t show he’s eager. There must be a handbook somewhere, step by step guide to seducing your local vampire before he goes MIA again. The internet’s filled with strange things.
There’s a pause and Dan offers tentatively, “Well, I’ve got some time before work, so. Want to take the tube with me, grab something on the way maybe?”, and Phil doesn’t hesitate before snatching his jacket from the back of the chair, saying, “Yeah, sure! I know a great place down the street that does the best bloodshakes and strawberry muffins. Let’s go.”
Dan follows Phil to the front door and points out, “It’s the first time you’ve actually walked through the door,” and earns himself a, “Vampires are a pain in the neck,” and a toothy grin in return.
-
PJ texts him on Friday afternoon, asks for update on the freaky kitchen-vampire ordeal. Dan drums his fingers on the laptop keyboard for a moment before texting yeah it all worked out, goes back to watching rap videos on Youtube. What he doesn’t say is that he’s meeting Phil for Mario Kart later that night, but – he’s allowed some censorship, surely.
-
They’ve been at the fair for all of two hours and Phil’s already frantically covered every inch of his body with sunscreen six times. Dan says, “You’re so fucking weird,” with a quirked smile and a toy penguin in his arms, and Phil takes the SPF 70 sunscreen lotion out of his bag, again, says, “My skin could literally burn and fall off,” with a halfhearted glare. Dan shakes his head fondly and silently agrees to do Phil’s shoulders.
The travelling fair was a sarcastic suggestion, at first, an unserious lighthearted reply from Dan to Phil’s morning text of let’s do something fun and outdoors i haven’t seen the sun in like ten days. Now they’re sitting at a picnic table surrounded by teenage couples and sleep-deprived mothers and Dan’s won the Crossbow Shoot five times and Phil almost tripped on strangers’ feet about seven.
“You’re the clumsiest undead I’ve ever met,” Dan tells him when they’re splitting the profiteroles between them with sticky fingers and sun beating at the back of their necks. “Isn’t that supposed to be part of the package? Pale, sparkling, inhumanly good at anything physical?”
“I’m not Edward Cullen,” Phil objects, slaps Dan’s fingers away when he’s trying to steal from Phil’s side of the plate. “You should ask your mum about the physical, though. She’d tell you how inhumanly good I am.”
Dan wipes whipped cream on the back of Phil’s hand and steals the last of the profiteroles while he’s distracted. Phil protests loudly and Dan replies, “Listen, it’s a revenge for almost a month and a half of vampire and your mum jokes. You should be grateful I’m not going for something worse, tbh.”
Phil crumples the cheap disposable plate up and throws it into the bin by their table, wipes his hands with a napkin. He leans his head on a palm and gives Dan a look that is far too serious for Dan’s liking and says, “A month and a half, huh? That’s like. A long time in human years.”
There’s something in Dan’s throat that’s shaped like his lungs. This isn’t baby-steps and it is a long time and Phil’s face not even that far away, but Dan’s a fucking coward so he won’t kiss him even though he wants to. He says, “Well, as one lesbian vampire said to another,see you next month,” and Phil bites back a shocked laughter as he looks around at the shrieking children and scolds, “Dan!”, and Dan pretends to smile shamelessly while trying to convince himself that this is a perfectly good thing not worth ruining.
-
“Are you getting laid?” asks Steven from Advertising Sales five minutes before the meeting on Wednesday, with a briefcase in hand and a complete lack of care towards Dan’s nonplussed choking. “You seem happier lately. Les snappy. Didn’t even make snide remarks about Thomas’ suggestions yesterday.”
“That’s because he didn’t try suggesting Blast-Off Bronze for the article background again,” Dan mutters resentfully, settles down in his seat. “And no, fuck off, I’m not getting laid. Can’t a guy smile around here? Jesus.”
Steven gives him a onceover before sitting down beside him, mumbles to himself, “Okay, obviously not getting laid,” gets a stern glare and a clenched mouth for his efforts. The boss calls everyone to find their seat and on the briefing paper on the desk before them Steven writes, whoever they are, bang them. Dan does his absolute best to ignore him.
-
Phil shows up at midnight on Friday. He’s got a pizza box in one hand and a Starbucks blood-latte in the other, and Dan doesn’t even startle when the window is suddenly pushed open, just waves a hand over his shoulder while looking for Wednesday’s leftovers in the fridge and says, “It’s Lord of the Rings movie night. Also, you gotta stop with the dead bodies.”
When Dan turns away from the fridge Phil’s setting the pizza on the breakfast table while drinking carefully from the Starbucks cup, mindful of the ammonia wash Dan did to the floor on Tuesday. He says, “That’s not fair, they’re totally not dead, I make sure to take as little blood as I can,” and doesn’t say anything about the way Dan’s hair isn’t done and he’s dressed in nothing but sweats. Phil’s been leaving him humans as presents for almost five months, they’re definitely at the hanging out in sweats point now.
“Nevertheless, it’s creepy and unfair to the general population,” Dan maintains. He opens the box’s lid and grabs a pizza slice, gestures Phil to the lounge so they could start the movie. “Also, the pharmacy’s starting to suspect my I’m going out with a really enthusiastic vampirecover story, and I’m running out of iron capsules. This must end.”
Phil settles into his regular side of the sofa with a heavy sigh and says, “Well, I guess. But can you at least guess what vampires fear most?”
Dan stares at him with the remote already in hand and Phil stares back, says, “Tooth decay!”, attempts grinning. Dan doesn’t let his gaze drop and Phil holds it until he loses and defeats, ”Oh, fine. But you’re no fun at all.”
-
Between getting detergent on his shirt and struggling with the ancient washing machine for fifteen minutes, Lauren calls. Dan picks up the phone with occupied hands and throws the doge meme sweater Wirrow gave him for Christmas into the colours pile, leans against the wall and greets, “Talk to me, sensei.”
“Adam’s birthday this Saturday,” Lauren tells him, no preambles or pleasantries. He likes this about her, most days – less so on the days this brings to him sitting on her creaking sofa with a beer and her unfaltering vivid descriptions of her sex life. “Be there or be square, Howell. No excuses.”
He throws a pair of pants into the whites pile, smiles at no one, says, “There’s a Facebook group, Lauren, I know this,” also knows she doesn’t care. She makes a valid case, at least. There’s the whole PJ’s Halloween party of last year fiasco.
“Yeah, whatever, you kids and your tech,” she dismisses, and he doesn’t have to be there to see her waving her hands in the air, in one hand a glass of Ribena and in the other the PlayStation controller. “Not why I called – I could’ve texted. Wanted to know if you’ve a plus one in the horizon, for the guest list.”
“There’s a guest list,” he repeats, somewhat unconvinced. Guests lists are probably expected, he reasons while shoving the whites pile to the corner of the room with his foot, except his social circle’s known for their particular brand of disorganization.
Lauren huffs, a clear indication of yeah, I know, ridiculous. ‘It’s all Sarah and Bryony, nothing I can do. So plus one? You can bring this guy you’re seeing and we can pretend we’re not trying to scare him away.”
In the narrow laundry room standing barefoot on the shaggy mat, Dan says, “I’m not seeing anyone!”, doesn’t even believe himself. Lauren says, “Don’t bullshit me, you’ve been about as happy as it can get in permanent black clothes and a general 2007 emo attitude,” and he makes an disgruntled noise at the washing machine, shoves another pair of jeans in a bit too aggressively. He doesn’t really know what’s worse – the fact that she doesn’t believe him even though he’s telling the truth, or the fact that she’s not even nearly that wrong.
“You’re immensely annoying,” he tells her instead, tries not to roll his eyes too hard when she whoops with enthusiasm. “I’ll ask, okay? No promises.”
She lets him off the hook with that tentative promise and he’s left there with half a basket still full of laundry and the realization that there’s nothing standing in his way of actually asking Phil other than his own groundless fear.
-
When Dan was a lankly kid in sixth form the resident troublemaker was Callum Cooke, with whom Dan only ever had one conversation, on the grand stairs outside while Callum was smoking his third cigarette of the morning. Callum lolled his head on the worn brick wall behind him and told Dan apropos of nothing, “The best way to get out of troubles is to fake nonchalance when confronted with it,” and then stretched his mouth from ear to ear when the Principal and the Vice marched over angrily twenty seconds later.
Dan doesn’t know what happened to Callum, but now, on the other end of the sofa where Phil’s sitting with his feet propped on the coffee table and Dan’s toes are pressed to his thigh, Dan says, “So my friend Lauren asked if you’d like to come to our mutual friend Adam’s birthday,” and Phil drinks the last of the blood cup he’s got in his left hand and answers easily, “Of course.”
Callum Cooke said nonchalance, but Dan doesn’t feel like he’s finished. “…as my date.”
Phil pauses, puts the empty cup on the table, wipes his mouth with his sleeve and turns to face Dan on the soda, “Wait – I… aren’t we…? I thought the whole humans-in-kitchen thing made it clear that –“
He stops midsentence. Dan looks at him expectedly, something aching inside his chest. Phil stares at him and Dan stares back and there has to be some joke echoing in the background, because Dan doesn’t remember either of them ever being this intense, and.
“I was trying to chat you up,” Phil says eventually, and his mouth’s coiled like he’s either embarrassed or holding back laughter. “That was – that was the intention of the bodies thing. I mean, not that you’re not a great friend, you’re my best friend still, but. I thought. Well.”
Dan’s hand trapped between his hip and the back of the sofa and it may be slightly shaking right now, may not be, who knows. No one knows, that is, and no one will. Certainly not Phil.
“I didn’t know,” he says. “I kept waiting for you to – you haven’t tried to kiss me or anything, twat,” his hand’s getting kind of sweaty now, and it’s gross, especially as he’s watching Phil’s lips intently. He’s one hundred percent intending to get his hands on Phil’s face in the next thirty seconds, and unless the apocalypse happens, again –
“You could’ve kissed me!” Phil protests, his voice rising three octaves – but it’s affectionate, Dan’s learnt to tell the difference by now. Phil leans in closer and curls his fingers into the collar of Dan’s shirt and they both stop to seize the moment before Phil says, “Well, I guess you could say I loved in vain,” and Dan snorts while Phil’s face twists with laughter as he says, “This one was so good.”
He grabs Dan’s head between two hands, kisses him square on the mouth while Dan tangles his hands in Phil’s jacket. It’s kind of weird. He pulls back, considers. It’s different from kissing humans. Tasteless with a hint of copper, less warm, more like the vague feeling of kisses in dreams. Smells of lavender and citrus cologne, though, and Dan approves.
Phil wrinkles his nose, flattens his palm against Dan’s knee. “Bad?”
“Nah,” Dan shakes his head. “Kinda nice, once you get used to it. C’mere.”
Phil grins, pushes him into the sofa, leans his body into the space between Dan’s spread knees and kisses Dan’s collarbones to his jaw on the way. When the food arrives thirty minutes later, Dan pays the deliveryman with kisses-bruised lips and his hair twisted in trails of wondering fingers. Phil yells from the sofa, “The blood bottle’s mine, thanks!”, and the deliveryman raises an eyebrow. Dan shrugs one shoulder, smiles, shuts the door.
-
(When they meet PJ at the party that weekend, he takes one look at Phil’s blood-filled wineglass and almost loses grasp of his own glass, says in astonishment, “Fuck my life, you’re shagging the kitchen-floor vampire.”
Phil makes an affronted face and claims, “Hey, those humans were a romantic gesture,” and Dan bumps their shoulders together with a fond look as encouragement. PJ gives them a long look before he exhales, drinks his champagne in one gulp and replies airily, “Well, you’re definitely right for each other,” then shakes Phil’s hand with a smile.)