It wasn't the way things were that freaked Martin out every so often. If it were, then his freak outs wouldn't happen just sometimes. They'd be happening all the time, wouldn't they?
Besides, he'd had plenty of time to get used to this new way of life. Un-life. Skipped meals weren't quite so important as making sure there were enough blood bags in the portable mini fridge he'd bought as what would have, before, been thought of as an extravagant purchase but for a while had meant the difference between staying alive and dying.
Again.
He drew in a deep breath, and shivered at that, even months after the fact. He hadn't meant to die - he'd gone down kicking and screaming, actually. Douglas would probably emphasise the 'screaming' part, though. But he'd like to bet that he'd managed about as well as anyone, under the circumstances.
He'd managed only a short while without being found out, as it happened. A few weeks, that was all. He'd been able to put it off - feign illness, pretend he was running on not enough sleep - but excuses could only go so far when flying with a crew like his. Douglas had started by worrying that he wasn't fit to fly. Carolyn had told him that he'd better start looking more like the living soon, or she'd start looking for a pilot elsewhere, even if it was only on a temporary basis until Martin got back on his feet. He'd attempted asking one of the agri students who he knew had a side interest in theatre for tips on how to put full-body make-up on and cover things up to look skin-toned, he'd actually got quite good at it.
Until, of course - as his bad luck decreed - Arthur had bumped into him on a hot, sticky day in Spain, wiping off a good bit of the stuff onto the steward's sleeve and showing Martin's clearly paler skin underneath.
Arthur had been confused, mostly. Douglas and Carolyn had been furious. Mainly because he hadn't told them, or so he gathered. Or it might have been that, already half dead or not, he'd looked about ready to faint from how all of his blood supply was safely back at home and he'd misjudged how long the trip was going to take, missed a meal, been jittery all flight. It might have been because, for him, they'd had to do the unenviable job of trying to find somewhere that would willingly sell animal blood.
Or, perhaps, a thing he'd tried so hard to avoid thinking on, they were angry because Martin had let slip that he'd died.
He huffed in the present, still remembering that day weeks ago, sat in a boiling hot and temporarily grounded aircraft while his first officer and his boss went to see if they could feed him, Arthur talking in an unfailingly Arthurish way right outside, via the satcom.
He'd locked himself out of the flight deck. Just to be safe. Sat himself in one of the passenger seats, knees up to his chest with his fist to his mouth, two little fangs pocking small holes into either his hand or his lower lip as he listened and worried.
Douglas had been the one to come up and 'administer the dosage', as his First Officer had described it. And when he'd warned the man away for fear of aiming at something other than the blood in the bags, Douglas had just come back at him with some inane quip about how he was quite sure he could handle his scrawny little Captain who was in great need of a cookie or few, as the euphemism went.
He'd laughed, then, because it was a joke and he'd felt like it would have been far worse if hadn't, and he'd started hyperventilating on top of everything else. He'd eaten, and calmed down, and Carolyn had allowed him enough time to get his head back on straight before ordering them back into the sky.
It'd been a quiet trip back. He'd flown almost mechanically, done the paperwork back in the cabin as if through a brain fog, with only the facts and figures making their way through it to him. The drive back to his attic had been little different. In short, for a while it'd been something just like autopilot, and just like when he was flying the warnings would go off at just the right times so that he'd take over when needed. Eat. Drink. Sleep. Fly. Talk when necessary.
It'd worn off after a while. He'd just been grateful he'd still had a job, if he was honest. That they were understanding, or the part where they'd given him space to breathe? Those were a bonus, compared to being able to continue flying.
But even with all the time in the world, things weren't perfect. He'd never be fully at ease. Never fully come to terms with this... condition, he had. Which had lead to the here and now in the present day, with Martin sitting - just like he had before, when they'd found out - with his knees up to his chin, but this time on a grotty hotel bed instead of one of Gertie's passenger seats, and it was cold and night time instead of daylight, hot and sticky.
He heard Douglas begin to wake up before he saw his eyes start to open, and then when they did, there was some bleary blinking in his direction. Of course. The curtains of one of the windows had been open, and the streetlights were shining through. His eyes were probably reflecting the light.
"Martin?" His words were lost somewhere underneath all of the other things that were in his head at the moment. As a result, he didn't - couldn't - answer. "Martin, you all right?"
He'd just stared for a while, unable to figure out how he'd wanted to reply. He started by nodding, but then realised how foolish that was. So, then, he shook his head.
"I..." He had to pause, realising how strange he sounded. His voice seemed distant, even to him, and sort of as though he was rubbing sandpaper all over it.
No, the hardest part wasn't the fact that he was a vampire now. He could laugh about that, sometimes. It wasn't even needing to drink blood, or the numerous helpful side-effects - and just as many that weren't so helpful, either.
"I think I get what it's like being you sometimes, now. With a drink problem."
He'd meant it as a joke. A bit of black humour. He immediately regretted it and started apologising.
Douglas cut him off on his fifth 'sorry'.
"It's alright, Martin."
"No, it's not! It was- it was completely in bad taste, and I, I just-"
"It had to come from somewhere. So. Come on, out with it."
Perhaps if it wasn't half three in the morning, Douglas might have sounded more snide. Or attempted to hide the softness in his voice that Martin could hear clearly behind the half-asleep state they were, admittedly, both in.
"I couldn't - can't. Can't sleep. I keep - r-remembering. Things."
If it was just worry for what he might do, he could deal with that. The same way he could deal with wondering what might happen if something went wrong with Gertie again. It was like learning to be a pilot again - you just had to re-learn the rules so that you knew them by heart, and you could inform someone if, just on the strangest of off-chances, you broke one.
"Ah."
Douglas was somehow able to make it plain in that one sound that he was sympathetic, that there wasn't mere pity, that he wasn't afraid. The very fact made Martin want to run. Or cry. Or both, even.
He couldn't run, though. MJN needed two pilots for the return trip, they couldn't make it without him. And although he wanted to, he really, really wanted to, his eyes only stung but didn't leak.
"Y-you don't understand. I-" he paused to take a deep breath in, and let it all out again. Unnecessary, some might say, but definitely needed. "When I haven't... eaten... I start shaking. I snap. I s-stop seeing people as. A-as people sometimes."
"You've said," said Douglas, and Martin heard the closest thing he knew to compassion in those words. And he had. Frequently. Just to make sure they understood. Even Arthur - especially Arthur.
"A-and that's terrifying. It really is. Even though I know how to correct it, because I do, even without ever, ever-" he cut himself off, unable to say the words out loud, simply because that would be saying it aloud. Instead, he clicked his teeth together.
Biting anyone, were the unspoken words.
"But - but. Have you ever wondered what'd happen if I did? You say you could, but I'm stronger than before, faster, and oh god I don't want to hurt you, any of you-"
"Martin, calm down. You're not going to hurt anyone. I somehow doubt you even could, despite all that, if it helps."
Martin covered his face with his hands, and heaved in, and out, and again, his throat burning.
"Martin?"
And, finally, the tears came, at first slowly and then in a steady stream down his face, causing his eyes to sting and his face to, he was sure, go red, and he'd need to find something to wipe them with before he started inhaling salt water.
Remembering. That was it. The hardest part of it all. He could live with everything else.
"You found me the next day, remember? Did you- did you ever wonder what happened in that time?"
"...You said you'd had an accident. At the time, anyway. And later, when you explained... well, we didn't want to push. It wasn't an accident, though, was it? You don't have to say anything you don't want to, Martin."
"I hurt someone."
There, it was out. There was a pregnant pause, in which neither of them said anything, although he could practically hear Douglas' heart skip a beat. Then, Martin started to laugh, simply because it was out and because he almost didn't know what else to do than carry on with the story, because now that a part of it was out, the rest would end up falling out sooner or later.
He probably sounded more than a bit unhinged. He was surprised Douglas hadn't gone for the nearest wooden implement for a makeshift stake.
"I woke up, and I was- I was hungry. I couldn't remember anything. I couldn't even remember me. Not really. And - I hurt someone. Badly. Really badly. Douglas, I don't think they're okay. Not after - that. You know how much I needed in Spain and back then I wasn't starving."
"...Yes. I rather think I do remember that. It was hard getting that much - ah."
The part of Martin that remembered things also chose this moment to remember that Douglas had, at one point, also been a medical student. He then focused on getting his breathing back under control again. He'd never heard Douglas queasy before.
There was a creak, a sound of feet hitting the floor and footsteps moving around the bed. Martin half expected there to be an excuse at any moment - that the other man needed the bathroom halfway down the hall. That he'd forgotten something in G-ERTI. Anything, to get away from the Captain who might have just confessed to killing someone.
None of those things happened. Quite the opposite, in fact. The footsteps came closer, until they were right by him, and then sat right in the space beside him. The next thing Martin knew, an arm had come around his shoulders and was pulling him in, Martin's head ending up so close to Douglas' chest that his heartbeat was positively deafening.
On the one hand, it was terrifying. On the other, it was comforting as all hell, to hear that incontrovertible proof that his friend was very much alive, right here, that he hadn't done anything, the opposite of what his nightmares sometimes suggested.
"It wasn't you," Douglas was saying, Martin's mind gathered past the new wave of tears. It had been, he wanted to say. It was, it was. He didn't say it, though. "And you're right."
For a moment Martin wondered if Douglas had somehow gained the sudden ability to read minds, and that he was agreeing. He stopped breathing for a full several seconds.
"I'd say it probably is like having a drink problem. You have too much - or not enough, in your case - and you do stupid, dangerous things you'll always regret afterwards, and then the morning after you wake up with a throbbing headache and you don't always remember everything you did. You have coffee, eggs and bacon and then the next night you wonder why they won't let you back into that bar you used to be a regular in."
At first there was a hiccough. Then, a slight huff of amusement at the thought of Douglas - Douglas! - being kicked out of somewhere like that.
Then, things caught up again.
"God. Oh, god, they had a family. And I just ran."
"Like a drunk driver in a hit and run," came his response.
Martin's jaw clenched. As did one of his hands, into a fist.
"That doesn't help."
"People generally choose to drink. From what I've been able to gather, you didn't have much of a choice in any of this. It wasn't your fault."
Perhaps he could have held on for longer. Perhaps he should have. Should have argued the point. Or at the very least, not risked another dream like the one he'd woken up from.
In the end, though, he hadn't been able to resist. Uncomfortable though the position might be, he had the steady sound of of a heart to lull him to sleep again, drowning out the noise of his head so that he didn't dream of blood and bushes and cold nights spent alone in strange places, full of dark, hungry need.
...
AN: I'd spent most of the night on this by the time I'd finished it (which was a couple of days ago now, actually)... anyway. I was reading a fic earlier where Douglas is the one to be some kind of supernatural entity that harms someone when waking up, and I thought - what if that was Martin? And also helped by how I'd made Martin the only human on the plane once before, and so why not make him the only non-human.
Then at one point the reference to Martin as a vampire being sort of like an alcoholic - needing a drink, the symptoms of withdrawal as if from coming off drug use when not having enough blood in his diet, especially when his natural diet is so poor - came to me, and the Douglas conversation sort of came to life from that.
I feel like the first half is a bit all over the place, but I think I can explain that away by saying that in many ways, it's almost like a running train of Martin's thoughts as he remembers things after his nightmares.
I hope I didn't get anything wrong (details, characterisations, etc...), as I'm no expert on exactly what it's like to be a recovering alcoholic, so I don't know if I wrote those parts well or not. Also, I'm not perfect at tagging, so sorry if there's something that should be there that isn't.