Midnight Whispers
QAF Brian and Justin Fanfiction


“ ‘I have to figure some stuff out before I can be with you.’”


From on top of Ted’s kitchen counter, Brian scoffed, “That’s literally what he said. And all the while there I stood—”


“—about to get your rocks off…”


“Yes, thank you for the recap Theodore. ‘I have to figure some stuff out before I can be with you,’” Brian finger quoted yet again. Grumpily, he crunched another bite of carrot stick between his teeth. “What the fuck kind of lesbionic excuse is that?”


“It’s about as lesbionic as you sitting in my kitchen complaining over a pint of Ben and Jerry’s,” Ted quipped from his spot on the sofa. Emmett was at the stove, whipping up something for a catering event.


“Uh, it’s vegetables,” Brian countered snottily, waggling the length of a carrot at him.


From a pace away, Emmett waved a scolding spatula in Brian’s direction. “It’s crudité, and I told you to stop eating it! Catfish tits, what do you think Mrs. Prestley is paying me for, half-eaten asparagus?”


Raising his eyebrows at Ted, Brian smirked, “It’s crudité, Teddy. And it’s Justin who’s being a lesbionic twat. Not me.”


“Hm.” Ted went back to his perusal of that morning’s paper, while Emmett cooked and Brian sulked. The trio had already had their ritual hangover breakfast at the diner, and now it seemed they’d gathered to listen to one of Brian’s rare outpourings. As a singularly shielded man, the forthcoming attitude was usually only observed when he was either extremely high, or extremely upset. It was clear to pretty much everyone now, which of those two circumstances was in play.


“Well my aunt Lula always used to say that no matter how unusual the problem, if you try hard enough there’s a solution to everything,” Emmett was proclaiming from the stove, where a batch of pastry cream was being vigorously-stirred. “And in this case, it’s to go find that little vampire and tell him what-for. He’s obviously confused.” Bringing his pot from the stove, the most confident member of their group fixed Brian with a knowing stare, “And if you weren’t so stubborn you’d have already convinced him to fall back in mad passionate love with you.”


“Oh for Christ’s sake. This isn’t some Streisand flick,” Brian bemoaned, rolling his eyes. “He’s inhuman, not insane. The idiot can clearly make his own decisions.” A pause had Brian averting his gaze to his twiddling fingers, “However ludicrous they may be.”


“Ludicrous?” Ted huffed, “Any man who doesn’t choose promiscuous sex with Brian Kinney is out of his senses then?”


“No!” Brian argued lamely, “Just him. The little twat hasn’t lost his memory—as I’m sure I already explained. He knows exactly what he’s missing.” Brian held out his arms for emphasis. “Me!” A scoff choked out of his throat, and he muttered, “What a moron.”


Apparently Ted had had it with his friend’s show of bravado, because he slapped his paper down onto the coffee table and turned to look Brian right in the eye. “Oh would you shut up? You just can’t stand that he turned you down. Again.”


“Falsehoods, Theodore.”


“Admit it: you were the center of his universe and you LIKED it that way. Now he’s less interested in you and more interested in sucking down hemoglobins, and you can’t stand it.”


Brian had abandoned his carrot stick, now glaring pissily at his perceptive friend. “Thank you, Freud.” God, he thought, maybe it had been a mistake to tell these two anything. It certainly showed a weakness of character, on his part. He should have stuck with Michael. Mikey was the most reliable person for a good rant. Somewhat subconsciously though, the dark haired man suspected that his best friend wouldn’t have given him the hard truths; he wouldn’t have pressed him to find Justin and get him back. And so—again, definitely subconsciously—he hadn’t gone to the comic book store to spill his guts. He’d gone to Ted’s.  Referring to his ex-partner yet again, Brian remarked, “He’s hidey-holed himself away for this long. Who am I to change his mind now?”


“What happened to all that talk of ‘he’s just a stupid twenty one year old kid’?”


“Vampire’s will be vampires,” Brian shrugged with sweet sarcasm. Fishing around in his pocket, he found a stick of gum to chew. “Sunshine’s messed up. Confused. He isn’t going to come running back just because I whisper some sweet words at him.”


“Well if you want the sun to orbit Planet Brian yet again, you’ll have to have a more proactive attitude than that,” Emmett advised distractedly. “Stop being such a queen. Be a man.”


“Said the guy squirting creamy white goo into bun holes.”


Brian snorted loudly at Ted’s quip, while all Emmett did was glare. “No éclairs for you Ted Schmidt. And as for you,” his stern gaze swiveled to Brian, who promptly sucked his lips in impishly. “YOU need to stop eating my 1:00 brunch prep, get the heck out of this apartment, and go come up with a better plan for winning your boyfriend back than sitting around here and whining to us. Are you Brian Kinney or are you Brian Kinney?!” Brian opened his mouth to make a retort about the use of the B word, but the other man beat him to it, tacking on, “And don’t go on about how he isn’t your boyfriend. Some things just get old.”


Emmett went right back to his cooking, Ted hurriedly dove back into his paper, and Brian was left to blink in shock at the irrefutable evidence that he’d just been put in his place by one Emmett Honeycutt. Not one to suffer such indignities lightly, the dark-haired man hopped from the counter, snatching an éclair away in what might have been called a viscous manner. “Well then,” he said brusquely, shouldering-on his coat as soon as he was by the door, “I won’t waste my breath on you two homos any longer.”


“A nice day to you too,” Ted remarked dryly from behind the arts section. He only emerged from hiding once the door had whooshed shut, and Brian was obviously out of the apartment and thus hearing range. A cautious glance was angled toward the kitchen, where escargot could be heard sizzling away in some butter. “Where do you think he’s going?” Ted asked.


Emmett only shrugged, “Who knows. As long as it’s not to Mrs. Prestley’s 1:00 brunch, I don’t really care.”


---


Outside the apartment, in the closed-off interior of his Jeep, Brian sat where he’d parked that morning and stewed over what to do next. Justin said ‘stay away,’ while everyone else said ‘go after him.’  What would he do? Haphazardly, Brian wished that it wasn’t too early in the day for a drink, because he certainly felt like he needed one. Thinking too much about emotional topics tended to make him want to drink. And boy, was he thinking.


The night before had been an eye-opener, to be sure. Justin had finally shown himself again. Really SHOWN himself. And if he was being honest with himself, Brian couldn’t quite claim that he’d hated any part of it. Dancing with the blonde again had been like coming home. Seeing him fuck around in the back room had been arousing as hell, as had their brief time together against that brick wall. Even seeing the darker side of the young vampire as he bit into that man’s neck… Well, that part had been fascinating at least. Running his hands against the leather of the steering wheel, Brian tried to shake off the memory of how he’d watched, terrified and turned on, as the younger man had sunk fang.


Dark thoughts had run through his mind then. Thoughts of Justin, thoughts of the man beneath Justin’s lips, even thoughts of what he himself would do in the other human’s place. There had been that undeniable drive to go over there and supply the young artist with everything he had ever desired. He had even wanted to offer Justin his own neck…


“Fuck.” Brian smacked his hands hard enough against the steering wheel to cause pain. He cursed. Actually allowing, let alone wanting anybody poke holes in his body violated rule number one of the Kinney school of thought: look out for yourself before all others. And now he was getting a hard on at the thought of being someone’s dinner? Brian sighed. He wasn’t ready to contemplate that yet. Let’s tackle one thing at a time, shall we? he thought depreciatively to himself. Last night had also been a total bust, of course. Justin had fled, leaving Brian aroused and alone; his least favorite combination of things to be. To put it mildly: it had sucked.


The only question now was: was he going to simply leave it at that and accept his Justin-less fate? Sitting there parked outside his friend’s building, the self-centered man scoffed. No way. Brian begrudgingly remembered his friend’s words: No matter how unusual the problem, if you try hard enough there’s a solution to everything. Well, Justin being turned from a coma victim into some emotionally-wrecked vampire was an unusual problem. But the brunette’s lips only twisted up wryly. If he could take down a corrupt mayoral candidate and emerge with a cent to his name, if he could ride a bike to fucking Canada and back with a broken collar bone, if he could upstart his own company, beat cancer, and rebuild his bombed-out shell of a club all within the span of a year, then he sure as hell could figure out how to make Justin remember his emotions.


Sitting there in his car, Brian clenched his eyes shut. He just had to make him remember. It wasn’t impossible, after all. He’d done it once before, after Justin had lost his memory of the bashing. Given, back then the problem had been the loss of a few memories, not the clean sweep of an entire relationship’s worth of emotions, but Brian was sure that he could make him remember this too. Somehow, he’d make him remember.


A car horn sounded from the end of the block, bringing the contemplative man’s attention back to the present. He sat up straighter in the driver’s seat, turning his key in the ignition. One thing was for sure, Brian thought determinately. He was going to get to that little bloodsucker, no matter who he had to ask for help. Putting the Jeep into gear, he turned right down the very next street. His course: Pittsburg General Hospital.


---


Outside of the loft, Justin thought that the door into Brian’s private world looked way more intimidating than it ever had before. When had so much riveted steel become so foreboding? The blonde reached to punch in the keyless code that would unlock it. To his side, Evan was removing his sunglasses, both men’s extensive collection of outerwear draped across an arm.


“This is nuts,” he muttered darkly, unwinding the scarf from about his head. “We look like really hideous Muslim women.”


Justin snorted, and slid open the heavy door. The apartment was the same. Brian had moved the couch to the wall again, the huge, fuck-on-the-floor pillows now arranged closest to the door. But that was the only change. The loft was still just as sexy and pristine as ever, as if it hadn’t even noticed the sudden vacancy of one of its two occupants. It faced them accusingly, almost as if daring them to go ahead with their plan to intrude. “What was your alternative,” Justin muttered, eyes taking in the expanse of the place where he’d used to live, “Ditch the outerwear, get a really bitchin’ tan?” They’d swaddled themselves, taken a taxi over, and were paying the driver a fortune to idle outside as they snooped.


“Uh, I was thinking: not come here at all.” The darker man begrudgingly trailed his counterpart into the loft. “What’s this supposed to accomplish again?”


“Maybe help me get some more of my memory back,” Justin replied thoughtfully. He was edging along the kitchen, running fingertips faintly over Brian’s liquor bottles. “I told you what happened last night.”


“At Babylon. Yeah, you got some feelings back.” Evan shrugged, “So what? You get a trace emotion of passionate feelings, and you’re just going to go back to him now? I thought we were going to do this together.”


He didn’t have to explain what “this” was. They had left the care of the safe house for their own apartment. They were friends, roommates, and relearning how to live again together. The younger vampire glanced up from his perusal, attuned to his friend’s discomfort. The look in the other man’s eyes was telling. It told Justin that coming back to the real world was something that he could do alone, but which Evan could not.


“I’m counting on you,” Evan confided. “I’ll have to go back to the home if you go back to him.”


Justin scrunched his face uncomfortably. He’d been the impetus for the move, but he didn’t really want to be Evan’s lifeline. “I never said I was coming back here,” he placated. In fact, if he thought hard about it, returning to live with Brian sounded not only ridiculous at this point, but a little frightening as well. “I just want to see if there’s anything to what I felt last night.” He gestured around the apartment, “And this is the safest way to do it.”


Evan gave a nervous laugh, meandering over to sit on one of the living room poufs. He flopped down into the giant pillow, groaning, “If you call breaking and entering safe.”


“We didn’t break anything.”


“How do you know he won’t come back here and find us snooping around?”


In the bedroom, Justin glanced up from his perusal of Brian’s bedside items. “He’s at hangover breakfast.”


“How do you know that? Did you call him or something?!”


Jesus, Justin thought, jealous much? “Trust me,” he drawled. “It’s ten o’clock on a Saturday; he’s in the third from the last booth at the Liberty Diner. The gang’s all there, the table’s covered with food, and he’s either making lewd jokes about the coffee creamer, or else about somebody’s sausage links. He’s at hangover breakfast.”


 Justin continued his search as if it would yield something. Brian’s watch, the condoms and lube, Brian’s cologne, his pillow… put your hips over a pillow, like this. And sentimental thoughts. Memories of first times, last times, and all the things he’d learned in between.


“Do you miss him?”


Glancing towards his friend’s still-slumped figure in the living room, Justin queried, “Huh?”


“Do you miss him? At all?”


Justin blinked in surprise, but after a long, silent moment, finally managed to admit, “Yes. I didn’t yesterday, or any day before. But now I guess I kind of do.”


“Well then I guess you’ve got something back,” the other man said, sounding almost disgusted at the fact. “You can’t miss someone you don’t care about.”


Justin couldn’t bear to answer the other vampire at that, even though the assertion made sense. You know it’s true, his mind told him. How can you miss Brian, it nagged him, if you don’t remember loving him? Going on what others had inferred to him, and from his own, strictly fact-based memories, the blonde knew that he had in fact been in love with Brian Kinney. And the worst part was that, even though he no longer felt that way, Justin could tell that it had been a wonderful way to feel. Probably like butterflies-in-your-stomach, sunlight on your skin, first boy-boy kiss you’d ever had, kind of wonderful. It was really quite frustrating, like waking up from an amazing dream that you’d had, but couldn’t quite remember. Yeah, kind of like that.


Going back down the bedroom stairs and into Brian’s dining area, the blonde figured that he’d just have to find something to jog his memory again. There had to be something that he could do to bring back more solid emotions, more meaningful ones. After all, feeling passion for Brian Kinney wasn’t exactly a novel emotion. Justin was pretty sure that on any given night half of the men in Babylon were able to kindle lust in their hearts for said man.


Shaking his head, Justin knew that he’d either have to find some old memories to jump start his damaged brain, or else make a more serious attempt at putting Brian from his mind altogether. “Not being in his freaking apartment would be a start,” Justin mumbled to himself.


“Huh?”


“Nothing,” Justin muttered. “Maybe this was a stupid idea. I don’t know what I was thinking.” For all he knew, this would be the one Saturday that Brian came back to the loft early. The idea of being found there, especially with Evan in tow, was cringe-worthy. “Come on,” he suggested, “let’s go.”


“Sure, just let me cover up,” Evan said exasperatedly. He’d begun to re-cover his head with the scarf, but halted at the sight of a pastel canvas over by the television. Well actually, it was directly in front of the television. “Hey,” he breezed, “check it out.” When Justin had come over to take a look, Evan asked, “Is that one of yours?”


Blue eyes gazed in surprise at the portrait that’d been propped on the entertainment console, its thick paper clipped to sturdy backing. “Yeah,” he said, walking closer. “I had it at the studio before… before the accident. I guess I never realized that it was gone.”


“How could you not?” Evan was marveling. “It’s so good. Beautiful.”


The young blonde blushed, rubbing a hand at the back of his neck. “I never finished it.” The portrait was of Brian, the bright yellow and pinks of oil pastels depicting the older man in a happier light than when the artist had last seen him. “I had a mental block, couldn’t go a single pigment further,” he finished softly, reaching out to touch the paper lightly. It was a weird place to hang a drawing, since the TV was then effectively unusable. How had Brian been watching his old westerns, if this stupid piece of scrap art had been leaning here for weeks?


“A ‘mental block,’ how ironic.”


“That’s all I am now,” Justin agreed despondently. “One big fucking mental block. I thought there might be a way to get past it but now I’m not so sure. I wish I could remember. God, I wish I could remember this, him… us.”


Back to being covered up in layers, Evan had been carefully watching how Justin stared at the drawing so sadly. As his new friend took the paper from its perch and carefully rolled it up, the darker man felt a stab of uncertainty within himself. It had seemed so perfect before, that Justin didn’t remember or want to be with the people from his past. It had been something that made them alike, their solitude. And then they had set out together, just the two of them. Was it all going to be ruined so soon? Maybe Evan cared about his new friend, but maybe he didn’t like the idea of Justin rejoining Brian either. Frowning, the conflicted man tried to push the uneasy feelings away. He reached out to hand the mulling artist his own jacket and scarf. “Here,” he said. “Let’s go back to the studio. Bedroom walls aren’t going to put themselves up.”


It lightened Evan’s heart a bit, when Justin offered a tight-lipped smile and agreed. “Yeah, let’s go home.”


---


Back to the hospital. Back to the basement. Back to the ridiculously entitled ward of Special Recovery.


It was “special” alright. Brian snorted at the irony of the fact that the place in the hospital where they turned people into vampires was housed right across the hall from where they stowed the bodies of the patients who’d been less lucky. Or luckier, depending on how you looked at it. Just those who were clever enough to leave that particular provision out of their ‘continued care directives,’ the provocative man thought as he strolled past the morgue. In the institutionally-decorated waiting room of the unit, he looked about for the man whom he was seeking. Only the resident blood sucker would be able to answer all of the questions he had, but Brian certainly wasn’t looking forward to the chat.


He found him in a side-office, typing away on a computer. When Aiden saw him, his fingers stopped typing and he placed his hands calmly atop the desk’s glossy surface. “Mr. Kinney. This is an unexpected surprise.”


Brian rolled his eyes. “That’s redundant. A surprise is, by definition, unexpected.” Some small measure of satisfaction—however childish—came when the other man could be seen tightening his lips. “I came to ask you about Justin.”


Aiden blinked. “I’ve made it quite clear on the phone that I cannot divulge his location to you, let alone the personal details of his condition.”


Brian smirked, casually inserting himself into one of the other man’s office chairs. “I know enough about all of that already.” Ignoring the other man’s curious frown, he elaborated, “I want you to talk with me in generalities; hypothetically.”


“Now who’s being redundant?” Aiden asked, steepling his fingers.


“Touché. Are you going to help me?”


“Help you do what, Mr. Kinney? You haven’t told me your purpose in even coming here. What is so important that you couldn’t communicate over the phone?”


Brian suppressed a snide remark. He had to remain in the vampire’s good graces if he was going to get any useful information out of him. Altering his tactic, he admitted, “I’ve seen Justin recently. It was by chance when I was out the other night. I want to get him to remember…” Brian had paused, “to remember his life. His emotions for it and all that. But I need to know how best to go about it. You seem to be the expert in vampirology, so here I am. As for coming in person well,” Brian simpered, “I like to offer a personal touch to matters of this importance.”


“How generous of you,” Aiden drawled. Up until that point, he had not bothered to obscure his regard for the other man. Brian Kinney knew how little he was liked. The assertive man had been nothing but rude to him from day one, after all. He’d even tried to assault him when Aiden had been forced to deliver the news of Justin’s transfusion. However, the man behind the desk knew that this prejudiced dislike was largely due to Brian’s perception of him as his lover’s murderer, and so it was with a practiced air of compassion that he asked his next question. “What did you want to discuss, hypothetically?”


Brian held out his palms. “I need to know what makes him tick. Or at least, what makes people like him… people like you, tick,” he amended. He needed to find out what the fuck had happened to the Justin he knew, to have him turning Brian down on the dance floor and in the backroom of Babylon. But the shielded man didn’t say that, instead he inquired, “He doesn’t have emotional memory. Is that something that happens to every vampire?”


Aiden shook his head. “No. If any vampire experiences memory loss, emotional or otherwise, I would attribute it to other trauma, not the transfusion itself.”


“Transfusion,” Brian said, repeating the other man’s word. “That’s how you turned him… I mean, how you would hypothetically turn a person into a vampire.”


“I’ve told you that before Brian.”


Brian gave a winningly insincere smile at the use of his first name. “Right. Well what about when a vampire bites someone. As in to drink their blood?” Wikipedia had been a little vague on some of these finer points.


“The only way to turn someone into a vampire is by a complete—or nearly complete—transfer of blood. It can be done manually, but that is very dangerous. A one-way transfer of blood isn’t going to make someone a vampire.” Aiden sniffed, “And we don’t encourage drinking from the vein. It can be addictive.”


Brian raised his eyebrows. “For the vampire?”


“For the human.” Aiden shrugged, “Vampires will claim that they’re addicted to it, but that’s like comparing a heroin addiction to an addiction for fatty foods; not the same at all. Humans bear the brunt of the burden in this case.”


Hmm, Brian thought. He’d have to remember that piece of information for the next time he felt some ridiculous urge to let Justin take a chomp out of him. Moving on, he asked, “Are there any other psychological changes?”


It went unsaid that Brian was referring to those who’d been turned into vampires, but Aiden understood. “No,” he answered finitely. “Depression and even anxiety are common with any major life change, but they’re not unique to our condition.”


Mentally, Brian snorted at the other man’s use of the word “condition.” He was however, able to hold the derisive gesture in check. Be nice, he cajoled himself. “Okay. So…” He thought carefully about what his next question would be. It was absurdly limiting that he couldn’t just ask outright queries regarding Justin. Damn those pesky privacy laws. It was those very laws that had kept him so far out of contact with his Sunshine for this long. Brian looked over the desk to the face of the other man, and his brow pinched. That man, that attractive, annoyingly-calm vampire that’d flushed Justin’s veins with his own blood, had been allowed the privilege of contact. From day one, Brian knew. He was Justin’s freaking doctor, for Christ’s sake. His therapist. Uneasily, Brian wondered if he’d been even more to the young man. Suddenly, he knew what his next question would be.


“Does the vampire who creates another vampire share a special mental bond with them or something like that?” It was borderline obnoxious to think about, since if it were true, then Brian would be forced to face the fact that this handsome vampire currently shared a stronger connection with Justin than Brian himself did. The thought made him want a drink. It made him jealous. Stupid really, since Brian Kinney did NOT get jealous.


But Aiden quickly put that possibility to rest, answering, “Not anything beyond what you’d expect two people sharing a circumstance to have. A man with HIV will feel a special bond to another like him, I’d imagine.”


Brian pursed his lips where he sat, “Interesting that you’d choose that example.” In his mind, he thought of Ben and Hunter. Special bond indeed. Okay, so maybe it was a relief to know that Justin wasn’t experiencing some sort of supernatural, ESP-related intimacy with the other man. Brian supposed he’d watched too many vampire movies. Moving on, he thought. “In your professional experience with people who have lost their memories, what would a treatment plan consist of?” There, he thought smugly, that ought to be hypothetical enough for the good doctor.


Aiden looked thoughtful for a moment, and Brian suspected that the other man was trying to think of a way to answer without brining any direct mention of Justin into the conversation. “Well…” he ventured, “that would depend on the nature of the memory loss. If, say, a certain someone were to have lost emotional memory, then I would direct him—or her—to focus on the tactile memories that they still possessed, and to try and imagine the associated feelings. Visual imagery exercises, that sort of thing.” He folded his hands and said, “Or maybe if he—I mean they—had held certain interests or experiences that could be used as more deliberate triggers. That would be something I would take into account. If Just—I mean, he or she—”


“—Oh for god’s sake!” Rolling his eyes, the human of the pair interrupted, “We both know who we’re talking about. Just say his name.” Folding his hands as if a saint in prayer, Brian added, “I promise I won’t tell.”


Aiden didn’t look placated, but he did honor the request. “Justin has sizeable memory loss. I would suggest journaling, exposure therapy, and looking for any possible triggers, but…” his eyes slid wearily down to his desktop.


“But?” Brian was repeating. “But what?”


When Aiden met his eyes again, it was with a heavy look. “But I’m not his therapist anymore. He left the safe house a couple of days ago. I don’t know where he is. My suggestions for therapy are relatively useless if I don’t have a patient.”


“WHAT?” Brian glared at the other man. “What do you mean he just left?! What the hell do you do: just let them walk out of that place?”


“Of course,” Aiden was answering testily. “It’s not an institution, Brian. They’re not committed. It’s my understanding from what other residents have reported to me, that Justin went away with a young man he’d befriended. Another resident until very recently.”


Brian blinked, “Another vampire?” Privately, he thought of the odd-looking, darker man that Justin had been dancing with in Babylon, the one whom he’d introduced as his friend. “Evan?” he asked.


“You know him?” For the first time during their meeting, Aiden looked surprised. “You said you saw Justin. I take it Evan was with him?”


“Yeah.” Brian watched the other man through a perceptive squint. Aiden didn’t seem enthused about the mention of this other vampire—this Evan. “Why?” he asked carefully. “What’s wrong with him?”


“Wrong?” Aiden sat back in his chair defensively. “Nothing… innately.”


“I hear a ‘but’ coming on.” Brian hoped that Aiden wouldn’t hedge around this issue. He himself had gotten a weird feeling around the dark-haired young vampire, even if it had been hard to look away from him. “If Justin’s hanging out with bad people, I want to know about it.” Absentmindedly, Brian wondered where the two could be now. If they weren’t still at the inaptly-named Perry Home for Wayward Youth, then where the hell were they? “What has you looking so morbid about this Evan guy?” Brian pressed.


“Evan is… complicated,” the vampire behind the desk sighed. “Hypothetically, any vampire should be able to reintegrate back into the human world, once they’ve become acclimated to the physical changes of their condition. But—hypothetically—if a person wasn’t very good at being a human in the first place, being a vampire isn’t exactly an easy change for them. Some people might get… stuck.”


“So you’re saying this guy is messed up?” Brian huffed. Great, the little twat’s gone and made best friends with an undead psychopath.


“He’s not a psychopath,” Aiden asserted, breaking with his train of hypotheticals to echo the other man’s thoughts. “He’s just failed to thrive. He… could be trouble, if the right situations present themselves. There was an incident when I first started counseling him.”


Brian’s eyes widened, “What sort of ‘incident’? Like: a fender bender? Soliciting a prostitute?”


“Like: A human died. Another new vampire that was with them ended up killing himself.” At the human’s upset expression, Aiden continued, “No criminal charges were ever pressed. Look, Brian you have to understand: Evan was a non-functional human of multiple addictions when I met him. He hated himself.”


“I’m beginning to agree with the sentiment,” Brian muttered darkly. That little undead prick better not be getting Justin into any trouble…


“Yes well, he hated himself enough to try and commit suicide.” Aiden chuckled, little to no amusement in the sound. “But he was smart. He did it right in front of me, where he knew I’d have to try and save him.” Dark brown eyes slid up to acknowledge hazel ones, “Suffice it to say that he didn’t get a transfusion like Justin did.”


“How did you know him?”


Aiden looked almost embarrassed to answer. “I said feeding from the vein is stupid. I didn’t say I’ve always followed my own advice. He was my meal for a while.” A self-depreciating slice of smile graced his face, “Like I said: being bitten by a vampire is addicting for the human. And he had a lot of addictions.”


“You were one of them,” Brian supplied, trying not to frown. Until now, he hadn’t cared much for the upstanding example of a vampire. Now he cared for him even less. “And you went around biting a junkie to get your rocks off.”


“Evan wanted a way out of his life. He chose me as that way. I took the Hippocratic oath; I had to do everything I could to save him.”


“And you did.”


Aiden shook his head, correcting, “I didn’t. The kid escaped his addictions for sure. He woke up a shiny new vampire, no withdrawal symptoms to speak of. But vampirism doesn’t create something where nothing was before; it didn’t make him a meaningful person.” Aiden sighed resignedly, “Being this way hasn’t done anything useful for him. He’s desperate for experiences that will make him feel real, I know that much. Sometimes he finds them too. Hunting out cheap thrills was what got him into trouble the last time around. That’s why I worry for Justin. I don’t want him to end up being one of Evan’s ‘thrills’.”


Brian chewed his lip thoughtfully where he sat. Me neither, he wanted to say. He also wanted to say something along the lines of, “Why the fuck did you let him get entangled with your other patients?! But he held his tongue. Aiden had been very useful today. He might be very useful in the future. If he ever wanted to pump the hospital’s resident blood sucker for information again, he’d have to play nice. “Well,” he said aloud instead, “I’m going to have to track them down. Is there anywhere that you think this Evan guy would go?”


Aiden looked apologetically across the desk, “I’d assumed Justin was directing their move. Evan has always been reluctant to leave the safe house on his own. He… attaches himself to people.”


“I see.” Brian’s tone was not lacking in displeasure. “Fine then. I’d better go.” Shit, Brian thought to himself. Where the hell would they be, if it was left up to Justin? Think Brian think, his mind urged. Then suddenly, he had it. Justin really wasn’t that sneaky, the brunette knew. He was nearly a creature of habit, and certainly a creature of comfort. So it reasoned to follow that, if a need for shelter suddenly presented itself to the young blonde, he would go to a place with which he was familiar. And since Brian knew for a fact that Justin hadn’t holed up in Michael’s old bedroom anytime recently, that really only left one refuge.


Justin was living in that shithole studio again.


Standing, Brian considered offering his hand to the other man for a shake, but wound up ignoring the possibility in favor of his own dignity. Sometimes you just had to maintain the dominant position over people. And if there was one thing Brian Kinney knew how to do, it was how to act superior to others. In lieu of a handshake, he simply stalked to the door, departing with the pleasantry of, “See you around doc. It was a pleasure having this little hypothetical chat with you.”


 


 

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