Arc 2

by RoAnna Sylver

  Raphael was already rising to kiss her before she finished talking. They connected almost too fast, fangs clicking together, but quickly melted into something softer, slower, and utterly relaxed with the automatic knowledge that they fit together perfectly—the way they had longer than any human had been alive.

  “You guessed right,” Aletta sighed when they finally broke apart.

  “This was the first one,” Raphael murmured as their foreheads rested together. She’d had her eyes closed until now, but now she opened them like waking up to a new night. Aletta’s bright grin was the first thing she saw, like it always should be. “First free kiss in forever. The first one that’s just ours, just the two of us, he’s not here in our heads. He’s not here, it’s just us.”

  “Yeah it is.” Aletta giggled again, and again the wave of joy and relief threatened to overflow, too big for a small vampire, so big she might burst. “I can’t wait to tell everyone!”

  “Me neither,” Raphael replied, knowing that some things would remain secret, private, no matter what else they shared with others. Like their names. When they went out into the world again, they would be Nails and Maestra once more. Aletta and Raphael lived here, for the two of them alone—but in those hours, they lived lifetimes. “Wow, there’s just so much we have to do—we’ve got so much time to make up for, I don’t even know what to think about first!”

  “I’ve got an idea.” Aletta pulled her into another kiss, and a thousand bright futures melted away in favor of a sweet, perfect here and now.

  It would take a long time to make up for one hundred fifty years, but by the time the sun came up in earnest—though hidden behind a merciful overcast sky—they were off to a good start.

  A lot had changed in Jude’s apartment, and his life, since someone had crashed through his window and into his orderly world a few months ago.

  The window had long since been repaired, now covered with a black shade that managed to shut out today’s early morning rays, bright and rare after a common, rainy night. Where the fridge had once been neglected and largely empty except for condiment afterthoughts, it now held not only actual food, but an abundance of red bottles of The Pit’s local specialty sauce, and although there were just as many locks on the door, no stake or holy water waited in any drawer.

  No loud music came from the apartment above, either. Jude no longer needed to bang on the ceiling to get someone to turn it down, though it had rarely worked anyway. It was quiet overhead—Pixie had been on the edge of eviction as it was, he’d learned. Now, the place had been taken back and given to quieter tenants, and almost all of Pixie’s things were gone. Except for the treasured old guitar and small amp that leaned against the far wall.

  Most nights and early mornings were quiet now—aside from lingering nightmares. The sound of ocean waves and memory of stones jutting toward the sky stayed in his head as he got out of bed, remaining a vaguely unsettling white-noise soundtrack to the rest of his life.

  Jude secured his prosthetic leg with practiced ease and finished putting on his uniform for the last time. Today was a very special day for him as a mall security officer—his last day. The one he’d been looking forward to since his first day. He’d taken off more and more time to help Pixie adjust, and finally decided to just make it official, so he’d done it. He’d turned in his notice, and now he was free. Or would be, after just a few hours. And first he had to leave without disturbing his new roommate.

  Jude stepped as quietly as possible to his bedroom door. Pixie hadn’t had the easiest time sleeping lately, and Jude would have sooner crashed back out his own window than risk waking him up. With adorable, sensitive ears like Pixie’s, even a small noise meant he wouldn’t be asleep for long. He was almost always up before Jude, always said goodbye when he went to work, at least when Jude actually went to work.

  There was something nice about telling someone he’d be home soon, and knowing they’d be there waiting for him. Home wasn’t just his anymore; it was both of theirs. It felt right in a way little else did.

  He didn’t make it out the door before the screams started.

  Jude almost jumped right into the air, only keeping still through the power of freeze over fight or flight. Yells—more like cries—rang through the small apartment, high-pitched and terrified. The noise was muffled, but definitely coming from inside this room, and the only possible place within it.

  In searching online for suitably coffin-like containers that would make a vampire feel safe and protected from any rogue sunbeams, Jude had come across the idea of a captain’s bed, with drawers for extra storage space underneath. Finding one big enough to fit a human could have been a major expense, but local message boards came to the rescue, as did Pixie’s enhanced vampire strength when it came to getting the thing up to the third floor.

  Now Jude rushed up to it, falling to his knees and knocking urgently on the oak-paneled drawer under his bed. “Pixie? Are you okay?”

  No answer came from inside, except for more scuffling noises and soft, muffled cries.

  Jude only hesitated for a heart-pounding second—he’d never invaded Pixie’s sleep like this before, didn’t like the idea at all—before pulling open the drawer, revealing one smallish, chubby, pink-haired vampire, thrashing like he’d been struggling to get out but had forgotten how, eyes squeezed shut and forearms raised to protect his head. It gave Jude an uncomfortably clear view of the vaguely star-shaped, silver-burn scars still visible on both the palms and backs of Pixie’s hands.

  “Pixie?” Jude slowly reached out to touch one of his hands, but it didn’t seem to make a difference. Even more tentatively, he laid a hand on Pixie’s chest, hoping the slight pressure would be enough.

  “What? J—” Pixie gasped, then cut himself off. Even though vampires didn’t need to breathe—and sometimes forgot to, which Jude would never get used to—his chest rose and fell sporadically as he sucked in automatic, near-panicked breaths. Slowly, he brought his arms down and lay still. “Jude. Hey. Hi. What’s, uh. What’s up?”

  “You were having a nightmare,” Jude said as gently as he could. He started to take his hand back from Pixie’s chest, but Pixie reached out, caught it, and held on. Jude felt warm inside. “At least it sounded like one.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, it was. Thanks for waking me up. That was… not fun.” Pixie’s exhaustion and lingering adrenaline was as obvious as the understatement.

  “Didn't sound like it,” Jude said. Now he wanted nothing more than to spend the day right here, until Pixie stopped shaking and either slept peacefully again or smiled. There were too many things that could invade his dreams, and too many of them were real. Unfortunately, he didn’t know the right way to ask Pixie about them, or if there even was a right way. Or a way for him to help. “Listen, I don’t even really have to go in today…”

  “What?” Pixie blinked up at him, looking confused—then embarrassed.

  Letting out a mortified little whine, he covered his face with his hands, hiding in the bandana he always wore around his neck to cover the worst of his visible scars.

  Jude had to smile a little; years ago, Jasper and Felix had once made the mistake of teaching him poker, and the ease with which he’d cleaned them out surprised all three. Jude had resting poker face, Felix had said, and he’d decided to take it as a compliment. Pixie would never have such a chance—Jude doubted he had ever been able to successfully hide an emotion. There were things Pixie kept to himself, Jude knew, but not the way he felt about them.

  “Nooo, no!” Pixie said. “I don’t want to get you in trouble!”

  “What are they going to do, fire me?” Jude asked with a rare smirk. “I’m quitting, remember? And even if I weren’t, it still wouldn’t be a big deal. I have… quite a few paid vacation days piled up.”

  “A few? You’ve never taken a day off in your life, have you?” Pixie asked, smiling a little. “Until recently, I mean. And now you’re quitting your job. You shouldn’t have to do all this just to
take care of me and all my crap.”

  “It’s no trouble,” Jude said, smirk turning into an actual smile. “If anything, you’re giving me the excuse I needed to actually walk away for good. I never wanted to be a cop—”

  “You never were a cop. You think I’d be into you if you were? You tried to keep kids from skateboarding inside. Badly.”

  “Or anything like one—”

  “A-C-A-B,” Pixie sang, giving him a finger-gun with every letter. “We’ll make a punk out of you yet!”

  “Don’t push it. But seriously, I’m not broken up about quitting, it was just an easy paycheck while I tried to prove vampires were real.”

  “Well, I guess you’ve done that,” Pixie said, picking at a spot on the back of one gray hand.

  “Right. And now I can spend my time on the important things—like protecting this city from actual evil, whether that’s vampires or witches or whatever else. You have no idea how glad I am to turn in this badge and start to do some good!”

  Pixie tilted his head. “You don’t have a badge.”

  “It’s a figure of speech.”

  “Sure,” Pixie said with a good-natured roll of his eyes. “But you really don’t have to worry about me—I’m fine. Really.”

  “Okay,” Jude said, reluctantly getting up. “If you’re sure. Try to get some more sleep.”

  “Um, wait, actually—can I go with you instead?” Pixie asked, a little hesitantly, as if expecting Jude to say no, with a sharp bite of irritation for good measure. A few months ago, he might have. Now, he couldn’t imagine rewarding such a shy request with anything but yes. “I just kind of… don’t want to be alone right now.”

  Pixie did tend to spend most of his time in the apartment—Jude and his friends had saved him from one immediate threat, but that didn’t mean there weren’t others lying in wait, even if Pixie wasn’t ready to talk about them. Or that the memories had yet faded. The scars on Pixie’s hands hadn’t yet either, even if they were mostly healed by now. Thanks to the silver damage, they might never.

  “Sure, I don’t think Eva would mind you tagging along while I make my final rounds,” Jude said, simultaneously heart-warmed and worried. Jude had never gotten the sense that he was missed, or had anyone waiting for him to get home, until now. Pixie wanting to spend the day with him was… nice. Even if the reason for it wasn’t. “Though you might want to put on some longer sleeves. Where’s your going-out hat?”

  “Not like that. Pocket?” Pixie asked hopefully, visibly brightening at the thought. Even his large, pointed ears seemed a little perkier. “Kinda feel like an all-day cuddle might make a nice nap.”

  “Sure.” Jude didn’t try to hide his Pixie-related smiles anymore. Even sleep-deprived and shaky, the uncommonly sweet and squishy vampire was ridiculously cute in a way Jude would probably always have trouble articulating, and once would have found embarrassing. Now he couldn’t imagine living without it.

  Now he held out his hand, which Pixie took—and Jude’s eyes slipped again over to the clear white scar on the back of Pixie’s gray hand. He felt a pang at the memory of the wound, and an urge to soothe it. He wanted to pull Pixie into his arms, hold him tight until he smiled again, but held back. He’d been doing that a lot lately.

  They hadn’t kissed, or even held each other that closely since their first adventure had ended and they’d decided Pixie would stay here. It had been wonderful, one of the best feelings Jude could remember, but there seemed to be no place for it now. Pixie was troubled and seemed to be waiting for him to make the first move. But something about initiating a touch like that—and being misunderstood, overstepping, scaring or hurting Pixie, after everything he’d been through—was unimaginable. So they stayed where they were, which right now seemed to be nowhere.

  But before he could say or do anything, or the silence become awkward, Pixie disappeared. In an instant, there was a fuzzy bat with oversized ears nestled in the palm of Jude’s hand. Still pink, still chubby, and still adorable. He gave the ridiculously-cute creature a gentle head rub with one finger, before carefully placing it in his jacket’s inside pocket.

  Hoping the day would bring Pixie a better rest than the night had, Jude headed out the door. He’d never imagined the small, warm weight in his pocket, slightly squirmy as the bat got comfortable, would be so reassuring. Or that he would feel so solid and confident in his own skin, despite his confusion about what exactly lay between the two of them.

  When he’d told Pixie it was okay, he meant it, and believed it, something he hadn’t been able to do for five years. Even if both of their dreams were still troubled, for the first time in those five years, he was tentatively, genuinely happy.

  But he’d be even happier when his last shift was done.

  Despite his apathy and general disdain for his job, Jude was enough of a perfectionist that he’d never actually been late for work before, but he probably would be now—and he didn’t care. In fact, instead of heading right down the stairwell, he stopped a couple doors down from his apartment, knocking even though he knew it probably wasn’t necessary. Not with heightened vampire senses. He also didn’t really expect the door to actually open, but that wouldn’t stop him from trying.

  “Jasper?” he called tentatively, keenly aware of how loud his voice was in the quiet, early morning corridor.

  He only called the one name, though Felix’s sat just on the tip of his tongue too. Even if there was nobody else in the hall, he still didn’t want to yell anything incriminating, or indicative that there might be not-quite-dead people sharing the space with their living counterparts.

  “I’m on my way to work. Last day. So I just thought I’d say hello to... uh, you. See if you were okay, and… everything.”

  Jude slapped his forehead with his palm and dragged it down his face. Of course he wasn’t okay. And now, for the first time since he could remember when talking to Jasper, Jude felt incredibly self-conscious, standing out here in an empty hall. Like he was imposing. Never something he wanted to do to his friends, especially after they’d gone through everything Jasper and Felix had.

  “I’ll see you later,” he said with a chagrined shake of his head, and started to walk away when he heard the unexpected sound of locks clicking open from inside. Jude stopped mid-step and turned back around. Despite himself, he felt an excited flutter in his chest, a foolish but irresistible hope, as the door opened wide enough to show Jasper’s face.

  “Jude,” Jasper said, a tired smile spreading across his face at the sight of him. “It’s been too long.”

  “Hi,” Jude said, keeping his voice down despite the empty hallway. Old paranoia died hard, and besides, it looked like Jasper could use as much quiet as he could get. “Just thought I’d drop by, check on… everything.”

  Like Pixie, his old friend looked drawn, as if he hadn’t slept well. Jasper really hadn’t slept well in years, Jude knew, but this seemed like a different, less-despairing kind of tired, a mild improvement over the bone-weary grief and exhaustion than had dogged his every step before their lives had been turned upside-down for the second time. They all kept different hours now, living with vampires. Jude often felt the same jetlag-like sleepiness, since the rest of the world didn’t function according to their timetable anymore. But even if his monthly coffee expenses increased, it was a small price to pay.

  “Is he, uh…?” Jude asked, raising his eyebrows in lieu of voicing any unwise specifics.

  “He heard you,” Jasper said, not altogether happily, sounding a bit disappointed but a lot more resigned.

  “Good, that’s good.”

  “He’s just not…”

  “No, no, I understand. No pressure. On him or you.”

  Jude fidgeted a little. He felt awkward in a way he wasn’t used to, not around Jasper. And at one time, not around his fiancé—was ‘fiancé’ even the right word anymore? So many things had been put on hold or dropped entirely, and it was more than a little unsettling to realize that Jude didn�
��t know if this was one of them. That was another change, the distance between the three of them, but at least it was far preferable to the pangs of grief and regret he’d felt whenever he thought of Felix until recently.

  They’d almost been something, back then, the three of them. Just barely been on the cusp of defining what.

  They’d kissed, once. Him, Jasper, and Felix. The night they’d asked him to be their best man. A sense memory of warmth and touch and taste he didn’t let himself think about very often; it was painful and confusing as much as pleasant. He’d melted into both of them, felt overcome by belonging and rightness for one wild minute—and then overthought it. As he did everything.

  Jude had made stammered excuses and run away, and they’d never had a chance to actually talk any of this through.

  Because the very next night, it was a full moon and Felix was dead.

  Now, what felt like a lifetime later, Jude felt like he’d been dropped right back into that “almost” state, questioning and between and uncertain.

  He’d loved both of them. Still did. And they still loved him, in a way that made his head spin, impossible to make sense of.

  And now here was Pixie, in his pocket and close to his heart, wonderful and good and making everything so, so much harder to figure out.

  Figuring out attractions and connections between three people was hard enough even if you weren’t an autistic, gray-ace-and-aro-spec—demisexual, demiromantic, he thought; sex and romance were non-considerations with everyone but three people in the world, but oh, he was starting to consider them now—trans guy who forgot how words worked and froze up when he got overwhelmed… which was unfortunately often.

  “We always want you around, Jude, it’s just…” Jasper trailed off again, as if he didn’t have the energy for things like complete sentences.

  “No, I get it, don’t worry. I’ve got, uh, company too.” Jude gently patted his pocket and felt an answering wiggle.