“Well, maybe he’s just so used to being among vampires that he’s forgotten how to be around humans. Maybe he can’t control himself.”
“Looks like I’ll have to teach him, then,” Gavin said, and they laughed.
“Well, he’s probably waiting for you. I should probably let you go. And I’m about to freeze my ass off, so hurry up and leave already.”
They hugged, and after Gavin promised to call her the next night, he climbed into the driver’s seat. He stayed there as she walked back up to the house, making sure she got inside okay before he started the car. As he let the engine warm up, he pulled his phone out to text Malcolm. He almost didn’t realize that he was smiling as he did it.
He couldn’t wait to get home. It suddenly didn’t seem like that big a deal that Malcolm had been a jerk about Christmas, and Gavin was sorry that he’d taken it to such extremes the night before. At least now he didn’t have to worry about taking down all the decorations after the holiday—it was already done.
Malcolm was a great man—vampire, whatever—whose only fault was that he was sometimes a little self-centered. The times when he wasn’t, he was romantic and charismatic. He was considerate of Gavin’s needs and desires, and he treated Gavin like he was made of gold. Gavin was damn lucky to be with someone like Malcolm, and he didn’t know why it had taken him until now to see that.
Aria and Jason didn’t live all that far away from Gavin, only a twenty-minute drive on good days. With the snow and traffic, however, it would take a little longer. Gavin was already thinking about the back route he could take so that he could get home sooner.
On my way now, the text read.
Malcolm smiled to himself, placing the candy cane he’d been holding down on the coffee table so that he could text his boyfriend back. How was the party? he wrote. He sat down on the couch to wait for the reply, feeling strangely light. It was the sort of feeling that vampires didn’t get—it was all Gavin’s fault.
The response was quick, which meant that Gavin wasn’t yet driving. He was probably sitting in the driveway at Aria’s house, letting the car warm up. Interesting. How was the virgin-stalking?
Not what it used to be. Get home safe. After sending this text, he set his phone down to finish what he’d been doing.
Picking up the candy cane he’d set aside, he moved towards the tree that he’d been getting together for the past twenty minutes. A few of the branches had been bent at the ends during Gavin’s mini-fit the night before, but it was still very much usable. Malcolm had already covered it with the multicolored lights, and he’d already put the star on top. All that was left were the smaller ornaments, which went up in no time, thanks to his vampire speed.
It’d been a long while since he’d decorated a tree. It was a strangely therapeutic thing to do, and it was a lot more fun than he would have thought.
Next he hung up the stupid, tacky wreath that Gavin had. One of the little cardinals was slightly loose, so he had to be extra careful as he put it up over the TV. Then he stepped back and surveyed his work.
He’d already set up all of Gavin’s various knickknacks —that had been his first task. It probably wasn’t done the way Gavin liked it, probably nowhere near the way, but it was as good as Malcolm could manage. And it didn’t look half bad. It didn’t look like it belonged in a magazine or anything, but it was nice.
It was obvious—as it should have been the night before—that Christmas meant a lot to Gavin. Malcolm should have been a lot gentler in his Scrooge-like approach to the holiday, and he knew that. He wished he could take it back, especially since he could remember the excitement in Gavin’s eyes when he’d first started talking about Christmas. It’d been the first that either of them had mentioned it—Gavin because he’d been too busy before, and Malcolm because he simply didn’t care.
He hoped this would make up for it. He hoped that when Gavin got home, this would prove just how sorry Malcolm was.
But damn, if his vampire friends could see him now—big bad Malcolm, stringing lights and tinsel, getting into the holiday mood. Thank God they’d never know.
His cell phone started ringing and he moved to grab it, thinking it was probably one of those vampire friends now. Sometimes vampires had this uncanny ability to just know when someone was thinking about them—he couldn’t explain it.
When he looked at the caller ID, however, he found that it was Gavin. He smirked.
He answered the call by saying, “You know you’re not supposed to be on the phone while you’re driving.”
He wasn’t met with the laugh he’d been expecting. He wasn’t even met with the rushing sound that usually came when someone was on their phone in a moving vehicle. And when Gavin spoke, his voice had taken on that tone. The I’m-in-trouble, worried tone that set Malcolm’s nerves on edge.
“That would be really funny any other time, but there’s sort of… a problem,” Gavin said.
“What is it?” Malcolm asked, already grabbing his keys and going to the door. He didn’t need a jacket, and at his age, it wasn’t even habit to think to grab one.
“Well, you were right about my piece-of-shit car. I’m going to need a ride.”
Malcolm opened the front door and stepped outside. Soft flurries fell from the sky, coating the front lawn and sticking to the concrete of the driveway. Malcolm made himself lock up as he shut the door.
“I was trying to get home faster,” Gavin went on, “so I was taking a back road. And my shitbox just stalled out on me. There’s no one I can flag down, and I can’t get ahold of any cab or tow truck.”
“It just stalled?”
“It just stalled, I don’t know. It’s probably the transmission—ah hell, I don’t know jack shit about cars. That was always a regret of my father’s, but if he thinks he was ever disappointed, he can’t imagine how I feel.”
“Relax, Gavin. I’ll be there as soon as I can. You know, I tell you time and time again that you need to start taking my car.”
“I don’t want to take yours. I like my car—”
“Except that it’s a piece of shit and it stalled out on you in the middle of nowhere?”
“Well, except for that, yeah.”
Malcolm bit back a sigh. Vampires could get around a lot more easily than humans, naturally. He normally just ran everywhere, using his super speed, and he always told Gavin to take his car—a relatively newer SUV. Some sort of silly human pride kept Gavin from listening to him. The same pride that had made him decide to go to Aria’s on his own.
“I wish I was there with you,” Malcolm said as he reached his SUV.
“It wouldn’t do any good—then we’d both be stranded. At least now you can come and get me.”
“What’s the road?”
Gavin told him the road that he thought he was stuck on, and Malcolm said a hasty goodbye to him as he started the car. He partly wanted to stay on the phone with Gavin but knew he’d drive better without the distraction. He rolled the driver’s side window down so that he’d be able to find Gavin more easily—a vampire’s sense of smell and all—and he pulled away from Gavin’s home. The cold wouldn’t affect him since he was already dead.
He wanted to drive like a bat out of hell. He would have been able to keep himself safe, but he knew he would have only been putting other drivers at risk. Plus, the police had really been cracking down lately, hiring vampires onto the squad and getting themselves new technology that made it easier to track and catch speeders. Malcolm definitely didn’t need to get stopped when Gavin was out there, in the cold, waiting for him.
So he drove as fast as he legally could, without harming anyone.
Sometimes it was a real pain trying to blend in with the humans.
When Malcolm pulled up behind Gavin’s car, he could see that Gavin was sitting inside of it. Malcolm was out of the SUV in seconds, pulling open Gavin’s door in almost less time. At first, Gavin looked petrified.
“Jesus Christ, Mal! You can’t do that—I didn’t
even see you pull up.”
“You should pay more attention.”
“You shouldn’t yank my door open like that when I’m already feeling nervous.”
Malcolm grabbed Gavin by the crook of his elbow, making sure to keep his grasp gentle, and he pulled the human from the driver’s seat. Gavin was cold. He’d bundled up in his coat as much as he could, and he’d even pulled the small blanket that he kept in the backseat around his shoulders for extra warmth. Still he was near shivering when Malcolm took him into his arms.
And who could blame him? The snow had gotten heavier, and he’d been sitting in his car without any heat.
“You all right?” Malcolm asked.
Gavin nodded. “Yeah.”
“You’re frozen solid—starting to feel like me.” That remark got him the light, if breathless, chuckle that he was hoping for. “Come on, let’s get you home.”
Malcolm led him to the SUV, which he’d left running. He’d rolled up his window as he’d pulled up behind Gavin’s car, and fortunately, he’d thought to turn on the heat before he’d jumped out. At least Gavin would be getting into a somewhat warm vehicle.
“I thought I was going to die on this damn road,” Gavin said, and Malcolm laughed. “No, really. I just kept waiting for Jason Voorhees to come out of nowhere and—” He made a noise like a blade slicing, and he ran his hand across his throat.
“You humans,” Malcolm said with a little shake of his head. “You have real, tangible monsters living amongst you and yet so many of you still fear movie monsters.”
“Maybe if you’d seen Friday the Thirteenth when you were a kid, you’d understand.”
“When I was a kid, I was busy working the farm and playing with hoops.”
“I’m guessing that doesn’t mean basketball?” Malcolm raised his eyebrows.
“You’d be guessing right.”
“You geezer.”
“Laugh all you want, but hoop rolling was good fun back then. It was no Xbox or PlayStation, but it passed the time.”
Malcolm helped Gavin into the passenger seat. The human’s fingers were frozen, so Malcolm fixed the seat belt on him as well. After making sure he was in safe, Malcolm shut the door and returned to Gavin’s car to get the keys that Gavin had carelessly left behind. He made sure all the doors were locked as he climbed out.
When he was getting into the SUV, he glanced sideways at Gavin. “You all right?” he asked again.
“Already feeling better,” Gavin answered. “Thank you. For coming to get me.”
“Do you honestly think you have to thank me? Gavin, I love you.”
Gavin smiled, and it was the kind of smile that spoke for itself. He didn’t have to tell Malcolm that he loved him because it was right there, written on his face and shining in his brown eyes. Malcolm took just a moment to admire him—his narrow jaw and slightly pointed chin, his thin yet sensuous lips.
Malcolm had always thought that Gavin looked like a model, the kind of exotic, otherworldly beauty that many fantasized about. Aria was like that too—she looked like she could be an actress in foreign films. Malcolm sometimes couldn’t believe that Gavin had ever agreed to go out with him in the first place.
“I’m sorry I freaked last night,” Gavin said suddenly. “I guess I have PMS too from time to time.”
“Wait, what?”
Gavin flashed a little grin, looking impish and alluring at the same time. “You ever notice that you can act like a real asshole sometimes? I call that your vampire PMS.”
“Vampire PMS. That’s a new one. After a hundred and six years on this earth, that’s something I’ve never heard before,” Malcolm said.
“Hundred and six? I was right?”
“You forgot my age?”
“Hey, you’re over a century old—it’s hard to remember specifics. Aria asked me, and I told her that I thought you were a hundred and six. I’d say that’s not too shabby since I was spot on.”
“You’re lucky I’m in a good mood, or else it might be my turn to throw a tantrum.”
“A tantrum?” Gavin asked, and for a split second, he seemed like he was going to get offended, like he couldn’t believe Malcolm had said that to him. Then he grinned again. “I guess I did go sort of crazy. I am sorry.”
“And forgiven. I would never hold it against you,” Malcolm said. “And I’m sorry too. I should have seen how important it was to you for us to share the holiday like this.”
They both fell silent, and Malcolm turned the SUV around. They’d figure out what to do about Gavin’s car tomorrow; what was important was getting Gavin home and inside where it was warm. He’d probably try to talk Gavin into letting him buy him a new car entirely, though if he knew his human, he knew Gavin would say no.
Maybe he could convince Gavin to take the SUV, and if need be, he’d get himself a new car. That might work.
“It’s partly my fault,” Gavin said suddenly. “How were you supposed to know?”
“It was kind of obvious by the look in your eyes. I guess my, what’d you call it? Vampire PMS just didn’t care.”
“My mom’s the reason I like Christmas so much. It… meant the world to her,” Gavin said slowly. Malcolm glanced at him, but Gavin was staring straight ahead, a strange, distant look on his face. Malcolm said nothing, waiting for him to continue. “Even when she was in the hospital, she only ever wanted to make sure we celebrated as a family. She was one of those people who believed that family was everything and that there wasn’t a better family-oriented holiday than Christmas.”
“I’m sorry,” Malcolm said after a long moment. And he was. It was strange to hear Gavin talk about his mother so openly. It was rare that Gavin even mentioned his mother to Malcolm.
Gavin shrugged. “It’s stupid though, isn’t it? My love of Christmas. It’s just me trying to be closer to my mom….”
“It’s not stupid. Trust me—I’ve seen a lot of stupid in my lifetime.”
“Your century.”
“My century.” Malcolm smiled. “You never really talk about your family, save for Aria…. Tell me about them?”
“I don’t know anything about your family,” Gavin said, only slightly defensive.
Malcolm hesitated. It was his turn to shrug. “I don’t really remember them,” he said slowly, truthfully. A hundred and six years was a long time. He remembered that his father was firm, and that his father had taught him how to break wild horses back on their farm. And he remembered that his mother had smelled like roses when he was a child. After that, there was nothing in particular—just small flashes and bits of memories, like pieces of torn-up photographs that didn’t quite make sense to him.
That was one of the harder things about becoming a vampire. Forgetting who you used to be.
He told Gavin this, about what he barely remembered, and Gavin was silent for a long moment. It made Malcolm feel strange to talk about his life before he’d died, before he’d become a monster. It made him feel kind of raw and unprotected, like Gavin was now able to see right into his very soul.
It was an uncomfortable feeling that Malcolm wasn’t quite used to.
Gavin glanced sideways at him, and after a pause, he smiled. As they drove home, Gavin told him about his family, the Martellos. He told him about his eccentric inventor of a father and what his mother had been like before she’d fallen ill—her love of Neil Diamond and her fascination with history.
A sad sense of jealousy washed over Malcolm as he listened—a bittersweet sensation. He was glad that Gavin had all of his fond memories, but he wished he could remember his own parents that well.
By the time they pulled into the driveway, they were long off the topic of Gavin’s parents. Instead Gavin was telling him about Aria’s dinner party. Apparently it’d only been a five-person soiree, and Malcolm was kind of glad he hadn’t gone—it sounded right boring to him.
Though he did wish he’d have been there to see what had gone down with Pamela. He wasn’t surprised to hear about her
vitriol concerning vampires—there were a lot of humans in the world who didn’t like vampires, and he didn’t care about them all that much. He was surprised, however, to hear about Jason sticking up for both him and Gavin.
“We are talking about Jason Foster, aren’t we?” Malcolm asked.
“Right? I can’t believe he apologized.”
“Well, he didn’t apologize to me yet—just you. Looks like I’ll have to pay him a visit soon and see what sort of reaction I get.” Malcolm flashed a grin at his human.
“Only if you don’t show your teeth and hiss like you did before. Generally speaking, humans don’t like that.”
“You do.”
“Don’t you start with me,” Gavin said, but he was laughing.
Malcolm led the way up onto the stoop, and he unlocked the front door quickly so that Gavin wouldn’t have to stand outside any longer than necessary. The snowfall had become steady and thick, and if it kept up through the night, they were going to have a lot to deal with the next day. It was a good thing Malcolm was a vampire—his strength and speed would help when it came time to shovel the driveway.
Once again, he found himself amused by what his friends would say if they’d seen him like this: Malcolm the Domestic Vampire.
“I love when it snows on Christmas,” Gavin murmured thoughtfully as Malcolm pushed open the door. “There’s something so… right about it. So romantic. I can’t imagine living somewhere that it doesn’t snow.”
Malcolm stepped aside and held the storm door for him, gesturing. Gavin slipped past him wearily, his shoulder brushing Malcolm’s chest, and Malcolm fought the urge to pull him into an embrace. He had to wait until they were inside at least.
He didn’t know if it was just the constant lust he felt for the human or if it was the relief that he’d gotten Gavin home.
As Malcolm started to follow him inside, however, he noticed that something was wrong.
Gavin was just standing there in the living room. He’d been in the midst of taking off his coat but was frozen in place, looking around as though he couldn’t believe his eyes. And that was when Malcolm remembered that he’d put up all the Christmas decorations. He’d forgotten completely since he’d left to get Gavin, and neither of them had been paying any attention, or else they would have seen the lit-up tree from outside.
The Vampire Grinch Page 4
