now a time and a half away

He wakes up, sometime just after noon, to the dark. His sheets are cold where his body touches them, as is the press of the body next to him, slumbering quiet, peaceful. Edward closes his eyes and tries to fall into a rhythm he no longer hears. This is not how it is meant to be.

When the infections first break out, it is on the tail end of public sympathy for the onslaught of diseases before it, and finally, it is one that seems far away, in another world. "It is unknown where exactly the L261 virus first broke out, but doctors first identified it in a bat-bite victim in the east of Afghanistan near Kashmir," say the soothing, English tones of the pretty news reporter.

Edward half-watches from over the rim of his coffee mug. The woman continues, "L261 has been popularly dubbed 'the vampire virus' by local media due to its superficial similarities to classic vampire folklore." A rustle of fabric from the couch next to him, and Edward looks away. The sun is just starting to peek over the houses in the neighborhood behind his. Newspaper says it's going to be a wonderful day.

"Why are you even awake?" slurs his brother's voice from the mess of jeans and blankets. "It's, like, six in the morning. It's unnatural."

"Some people have work to show up for," Edward answers, not unkind. Frankie groans and tries to hide his face. "I'll leave you some coffee," he offers.

Frankie groans again. "I'm up, I'm up." He kicks off the covers, which pool at his feet on the floor, and begins to grope around for his clothes.

Edward moves away and into the kitchen, as the TV is saying, "Symptoms include low body temperature, as well as skin and eye discoloration. Those who suspect that they may be infected are being advised to seek medical attention-"

"I'm going now," he says, watches the water as it foams up the side of the coffee mug into the sink. His brother casts a shadow show against the divider wall, all stretching muscles and pulling cloth. "Try and talk it out with Kate, alright?" he calls.

"Yeah." Frankie leans against the divider. He's barefoot and short-sleeved and he glows, just a bit, when he stands like that in a puddle of light. He doesn't look up when he says, "Be seeing you, big brother."

Edward nods and heads out into the dawn.

The virus' prevalence increases, and Edward's lab is picked up by a new company, Bromley Marks Pharmaceuticals. They are charged with the further research of L261 and its progression.

"Are they looking for a cure?" Matthews asks him. There's a open strain of hope there, in her fresh-scrubbed face. The President has closed off their borders, set patrols between Texas and Mexico and along much of Canada, but still the incident rates rise. Edward gives her what he supposes is his most comforting, apologetic smile.

"We're just trying to figure this thing out, Dana."

Matthews doesn't come in the next morning, or the one after that. Police find her two days later, huddled behind the clothes in a corner of her closet, snarling and shaking, her eyes yellow.

Edward comes home late, three months since L261 hit the US and two months since the President issued a state of emergency and Congress began calling for martial law, curfews, mandatory round-ups of the sick and "high risk groups." The courts are still debating its constitutionality. Most people think there's nothing to debate.

He'd given in and updated his security system after the facts of Matthews' attack came in. A stranger infected with the virus had broken into her apartment, pinned her down as she was sleeping and punctured her left jugular with a set of freshly elongated teeth. Police say the case is still technically open, except there are at least thirty such cases every night, and resources are thin.

He falls asleep with his feet up on the coffee table and his brogues still on. At about 3:10 in the morning the security system informs him chirpily, "Back door is ajar," and he jolts awake, scrambles for a weapon.

"Who's there?" he calls. Panic clenches at his muscles like a covetous hand, because the only light is coming from the chaos on the TV and all he sees is a shadow within shadows, something creeping from in the direction of the hallway. "Hello?" He tightens his grip on the iron poker as he crosses the room, prepared either to stab or to swing, his heart working like a piston in his throat.

"Edward?"

Fear ebbs from him like poison leaving his system, but he feels naked without it, unprepared for the relief and commonplace anxiety it brings. "Jesus!" Edward drops the poker and rushes to close the last few feet between him and his brother. "What are you doing here? Are you alright? You haven't been-" He fumbles for a light switch, floods the entryway with dim fluorescence. Frankie keeps his palms wrapped around Edward's wrists; keeps his eyes trained carefully on Edward's face with a kind of scrutiny that has nothing to do with "vampirism" but has the same kind of hunger nonetheless. Edward shakily tips his brother's face back and forth between his hands and pretends not to see. He's pretending not to see a lot, these days.

Finally, Edward relents, to more than just worry, as he lets Frankie's hand remain in his while he pulls them both away from the door. "Kate was going to move back in with her folks," Frankie says, after a moment. His gaze shifts restlessly, landing on the furniture across the room, the paintings on the wall, the television still flickering like a horrorshow on mute. On their hands, still touching. "She said she'd heard that that was how you get sick, from being around too many people."

Edward laughs, bursts of hollow sound. "No, no." He shakes his head. "God, we might not have martial law yet, but they're definitely keeping a lid on everything."

"Edward. Kate is... She was..." Frankie looks up, and his eyes are lined pink. He clears his throat. "This thing...it's a blood disease, so is it like..."

"Nothing you're thinking of, no." His brother lets out a laugh that's more like a bark, scrubs at his face with his fingers which come away sticky and wet. Edward sees this time and acts, seizes Frankie's hands away from him and hides them with his own so that he won't see that they come away red as well. He babbles, "Think malaria, no, West Nile. It's kind of like West Nile. It's transferred through the saliva, passed directly into the bloodstream. Like giant mosquitoes. It's not like that, like..."

"The clap." His brother's mouth stretches over his teeth crookedly, a grim perversion of his usual grin. He turns his palms so that he's holding Edward's wrists again. His arms are stained too, and his shirt. He doesn't seem to notice. "You know, for a brainiac scientist who spends all day knee deep in bodily fluids, you're a fucking prude about some really stupid shit."

"Shut up," Edward says automatically, but he doesn't even try to return the smile. He stares into his brother's face until he finally looks up, meets his eyes for a brief moment before looking away again. "Frankie," he says. "It's not safe out there. You know that right?"

Frankie's smile dissolves from his face and he looks away, and for the first time Edward notices the faint smell of fire clinging to his brother's clothes, like soot, like burning things.

"I know. God," Frankie says, "I know."

Matthews comes back into work on the twilight of a Friday evening, her skin a pale, bloodless gray. He is the only one left in the lab: everyone else is sick, or has given up. He's never been more grateful for his lifestyle.

"Good evening, Dr. Dalton," she says, slipping perfunctorily into her lab coat. She picks a file up from Edward's desk as she passes, and there is something distantly brutal in her actions, as if a caged animal sleeps languidly beneath her skin.

"Dana," he says. She looks up at him. Her expression is friendly, but there is a mask-like quality to it, a pre-set mechanism achieved under relentless practice. "Did they ever—" Her face doesn't move; he doesn't know if this subject is one to broach with her. He can't tell. Her eyes are like old mirrors.

"Yes?"

Edward drops his gaze, back to the drop of blood irradiated twelve times and still infected, still dead. "Nothing," he tells her. "It's good to see you."

She smiles and two pinpricks of blood dribble from her lower lip.

At home, Frankie's been reading the papers, catching up on the news. The spread of his findings pile around him, laced with old socks and dirty dishes.

"There's a whole subculture for it now," he tells Edward as he steps into the house, and he locks the door behind him. He's been coming back later and later as more and more of his team are infected, released, and who now come into the lab only after dark. "There's this colony of them, on the north side of New York. They've got whole tunnel systems up and working to get around during the day, and then –"

"Change the channel." They're showing video clips from the streets of Peru, Uruguay, one of the small, coastal South American countries that collapsed as soon as the virus reached them. There are no riots, no stones being thrown, no crying children, just empty streets rustling with rubbish, running with mud. It's storm season, there.

Frankie flips the channel, puts his feet up against the coffee table. He reaches for a bag of chips, pops it open between his hands. Begins munching surreptitiously. Edward snaps, "Haven't you found a job yet?" and immediately knows it's unwarranted. "I'm sorry," he recants. "That wasn't fair. I didn't mean it like that."

It's been seven months, but it's not like he even wants his brother out of the house, when it's like this. Random attacks are increasing, now that most of the infected have finished off their friends and neighbors. Bromley Marks sends guarded cars for its few remaining unturned scientists, but even then, things gets dicey after midnight. At least here, he doesn't have to worry about Frankie while he looks for a cure. At least here, he's safe.

Frankie blinks with some confusion, hurt. Mostly anger. He's always been the one with the short fuse. "What the fuck's your problem?" he asks, throwing down the remote. It jumps off the couch and clatters noisily to the floor. Edward watches as the batteries pop out and roll beneath the coffee table, bouncing to a stop against a thick black-and-gray colored pamphlet. Edward reads: "The Gift of Immortality."

He picks it gingerly from under the up from under the wreckage of old news clippings and crushed aluminum cans. "What's this?" he demands.

Frankie's irritation screws uncomfortably into an expression of indignation. "Some people came by earlier and put it under the door," he says.

Edward sneers; Frankie's shit at lying, always has been. He crosses the room, kicking past his brother's debris as he goes. Frankie doesn't try to stop him. "Under the door?" he asks. "How is this going to fucking fit under the door?" The trash can in the corner is overflowing, but Edward hurls the book in with such force that the bin liner crumples in alongside it. "Who have you been talking to? Damn it, Frankie, you know what—"

"They have some good points, you know," Frankie says. "We should at least hear what they have to say." Edward turns around to find his brother on his feet, his hands quivering slightly, a trapped look on his face and, for the life of him, Edward cannot figure out what he is going to do. So he crosses the room again and clasps Frankie's hands and holds them until they stop shaking, opens his fists so that they are palm to palm, their fingers interlaced. Frankie makes a noise and looks to move in, stops, because that's not how this goes, and this is as far as they will ever take things while the lights are on.

The nights are immeasurable, now, without the day; the world is turning to hell all around them, and Edward is just so tired. So he pulls at Frankie until he comes in close enough that he can press his brow into the hard bone above his brother's temple. "Don't even think about it," he says to him. "I'm going to find an answer to all this, all right? I'm going to fix this."

Frankie's laugh is more like a sigh, but he buries it into Edward's shoulder anyway. "I'm not eight years old any more, Edward. I won't believe things anymore, just because you want me to."

But Edward wants. Just wants. So when his brother moves for him again, he lets Frankie touch him, and he doesn't make him douse the lights.

It's been almost ten months since that first bat bite in Afghanistan, eight since the virus hit the US, six since the population began turning en masse.

Bromley Marks doesn't even send cars for him anymore. It's almost as if they're saying to him 'it's an inevitability; we're not wasting the effort.'

Edward thinks he can understand the appeal. Eternal youth, eternal strength. The virus kills all other infections and foreign bodies that breach the system, so eternal health too. But, he thinks, there is still nothing that can be done about the sun, nothing that can be done about the enormous sensitivity to light as a whole. He's the only one in the lab now with a desk lamp, the solitary spot of brightness amidst soft fluorescent bulbs and dimmed computer screens. The rest of his team is too polite to ask him to shut it off, but they still pause upon the edge of his little halo; some refuse to step into it at all.

He can't imagine art like this, in this world of solitary grays. He can't imagine beauty when nature is no longer relevant of its dichotomy. When there is nothing to look forwards to in the coming tomorrow, when nothing changes.

"Mr. Bromley will see you now, Dr. Dalton," the receptionist tells him. She's a pretty girl, somewhere in her mid-twenties. She'd be the perfect face for any pro-vampire campaign: her entire future ahead of her and never getting closer.

Charles Bromley CFO has offices at the top of the Bromley Mark Pharmaceuticals tower, just below the glowing, geometric design. His rooms have a neon glow to them, as if they are lit only from the outside.

"Dr. Dalton," Bromley says. He is a quietly imposing man, middle-aged. The virus has given an edge to his features that he probably didn't possess before infection; something unhinged in the way his yellow eyes keep slipping out of focus. He reaches out a hand, and Edward takes it; his skin is clammy, slightly waxy in the way Edward remembers cadavers' to be back in med school.

"It is a pleasure to meet you." Bromley gestures. "Please, can I get you a coffee, something to drink?"

"Coffee's great, thanks. Two sugars," Edward adds, sitting where he is directed to sit as another pretty girl puts a clean white cup down in front of him and another in front of Bromley.

Bromley grins like a wolf. "Aren't they magnificent?" His eyes following the girl's rolling gait until she disappears into the next room. "Twenty-two to twenty-four, all of the girls in my employment. PhDs, with a bit of a kick. And I'll never have to find new ones, if I don't want to. It's a shame none of us can get it up anymore, but hot damn, how did we ever get along before this?"

Edward smiles, noncommittally. "I don't know sir," he says.

Bromley howls. "Of course you don't!" He stirs his coffee with the ridiculously tiny spoon that came with it before downing it in one long swallow, sighing contentedly as if he'd just finished off a glass of especially fine wine. "So tell me, how goes your quest for a cure?"

"What we really need right now are more field experiments, sir," Edward says immediately. "We've tried a number of antiviral cocktails on animals infected with L261, but we need more data, more experiments, more people working to figure out something that might work."

Bromley nods sagely, as if understanding. "Well it seems like you've got yourself a real pickle there, Ed," he says. He leans in, like he's going to tell him a secret. "But numbers are coming in," he says, "and we're really starting to wonder whether or not funding your team is going to be profitable, you see, in the long run." He leans back into his chair, gestures. "Drink your coffee."

Edward picks up his saucer, holding it between his hands, stirring it absently. "We just need more time," he says desperately.

Bromley arches an eyebrow. "You just said you needed more experiments." He claps his hands suddenly, as if an idea has suddenly come to him. "You know what? I think I can find you an appropriate test subject. Come on in," he calls, and the door to the next room slides open.

It's Matthews, powdered and poured into a seamless, satin dress. "Isn't she perfect?" Bromley asks, crossing the room and pressing her into his side. She turns into him. "Tell me doll, do you want to help the good doctor here find a cure for this terrible disease? Drink your coffee, Doctor." Bromley grins in a way that is universally understood to mean that this is not a suggestion. Edward brings his cup to his mouth, sips experimentally.

Matthews smiles, all pointed little teeth lined neat in a row behind her red, red lips. "Why would I ever want to be cured of this?" she asks. Bromley howls again and Edward swallows.

The taste of blood burns, slippery, all the way down his throat.

His entire neighborhood, now, everyone he knows has turned. The little Jones twins next door, old Mrs. Kawasaki down the street.

The President of the United States of America.

Edward watches the State of the Union broadcast at 4:00 in the morning. Frankie had stayed up with him, but had dozed off with such a frequency that Edward had finally taken mercy on him and sent him up to bed. Outside, not far in the distance, a soothing electronic voice calmly states that there are two hours till sunrise. His eyes are shot from sitting too long in the dark.

There are no flashing cameras as there used to have been; there'd stopped being any point to taking photographs when it became evident that not even the fastest photo lens could capture an infected individual's light-bending molecular structure. Even video footage comes out grainy and distorted.

Tonight, the President speaks about constituency and representative democracy, the historical significance of the words, how they are meant to reflect the will of the majority while maintaining rights to the minority.

But the majority are on the verge of a national crisis, he says. The minority will have to give way.

Edward has no illusions about what he's talking about. The heavily turned Congress has just been given the green light to declare all uninfected people secondary to American vampires citizens. Edward feels sick, except he's seen it coming. They've all seen it coming. Tonight, there will be feasting in the streets.

"One hour until sunrise," the electronic voice coolly informs him. It is time he went to bed.

That night, he goes to sleep with his arms wrapped around his brother in a way that is shameless as it hasn't been since they were boys and he'd just told Frankie that Mom and Dad had had to go away for a while, possibly a very, very long time. He isn't sure he wants to wake up.

"I think you should put some serious thought into turning," Frankie says one afternoon after breakfast. It sounds rushed, rehearsed, said all in one breath without even the slightest indication of eye contact.

Edward is clearing dishes into the sink and a glass slips out of his hand, crashing to the floor. He pauses. "What do you mean, 'you'?" he says slowly.

Frankie looks at him, defensive and stubborn. "I mean that since it's legal now to hunt humans, it would make the most sense if-"

"I said, what do you mean, 'you'?" Another dish splinters on the kitchen floor. "You have no idea, do you? You don't even think about what you're saying. I'd rather die, do you hear me? I'd rather die than become one of those things."

He didn't used to be like this. He used to be the reasonable one, the one everyone always said would become something, always using his brain before his heart. A small part of him, silent now, whispers if he ever wonders if he should have used his heart more, after their parents died.

But now he can't think. It's five in the afternoon and the sun, their only certain protection, is slowly slipping away. It's going to be dark soon, and Bromley Marks has started sending armed escorts for him again, but the security system's still shit because no one will update it for a human, even one protected by the biggest blood supplement distributor on the market, and god, Frankie, he's going to have to leave soon, and Frankie's going to be alone in the house, surrounded by monsters waking up on all sides.

Another dish, but this time by Frankie's hand. "I'm not a fucking baby!" his brother snarls. That's a little more like it. "I'm twenty-seven and I can make fucking decisions this time and nobody has to die!"

Edward's never been very good at confrontation. His kitchen is in tatters, and he can't think straight. His car is waiting for him outside and his brother is pissed off with him, right angry. Desperate.

Edward's never been very good at confrontation. "We'll talk about this when I get back," he says. And then he leaves, and shuts the door behind him.

"Given a little flexibility," Bromley purrs, "I'm sure we can convince those paper-pushers to make this work."

He's not looking for a cure. He's never been looking for a cure. Blood supplements aren't enough.

They're going to be hunting humans, hooking them up, milking them like cattle.

Edward retches in the toilets until even his sobs taste like iron.

Frankie isn't home when Edward arrives in the early morning. The house is locked and in order; even the dishes from that afternoon's fight cleared away. Frankie isn't home. He's never been one for confrontation either.

Edward doesn't make a habit of drinking much. Doesn't touch the stuff, usually. He doesn't like the way it messes with his mind, but he feels today clearly counts as an exception.

He's a fucking lightweight. If his brother were around to tell him, he would have said it. Cuffed him in the shoulder and then thrown an arm around his neck. Three or four beers and he's out of the running. But he's choking down the good stuff tonight, scotch and whiskey, gifts from past birthdays, because Frankie never knows what to get him.

He gives out around 3:30, dead to the world and determined to keep it that way. Around five, though, he's stirred muzzily into consciousness when the mattress dips and a body climbs into bed with him.

"Frankie?" he mumbles. It's completely dark; he can't even see his hands in front of his face. But he reaches out, nonetheless; meets nothing but miles and miles of smooth, bare skin.

"Edward," his brother says.

His voice is a bit odd, a little tight, and when he gathers him into his arms Edward realizes, "Jesus, you're freezing!" He begins to lift the sheets, wrap them around his shoulders, but Frankie gently pushes him back.

"Edward," he says. "Edward, you know I love you right?"

Edward is confused. Neither of them talk like this, not even in the dark. Frankie's hands linger nervously at the hem of his shirt, toying with the fabric, waiting. Edward carefully picks his hands away, lifts them up to his face and presses his mouth to them, slowly. "Yeah," he says. "Course I know."

Frankie kisses him then, full on the lips; hard, sweet. He pulls his hands back and presses them under Edward's shirt, pushing the cloth away, moving down, digging his fingers into the waistband of his trousers and pulling them away too. Edward pulls back out of the kiss, pants, "Shit, shit, your hands are cold," and Frankie murmurs, "Sorry."

"Hold on," Edward says. Frankie's kneeling between his legs, moving his mouth down the side of his neck, and Edward is out of it, disoriented by the dark, the drink, the unexpected sensation of his brother's fingers working at his cock. They're supposed to be talking, he remembers, but then Frankie does this thing and the thought flies from Edward's mind. They've never been very good at talking anyway.

He makes a grab for Frankie's hips, miscalculates and fumbles a bit against his stomach. He's achingly hard now, and he never likes to be inconsiderate. But Frankie pulls his hands away, pushes them to his sides and holds them there, pinned.

"Don't," he says, and then in the same strangled voice, "It's gonna be okay."

His brother doesn't do this often for him, and he never asks him to. Neither of them are entirely comfortable with the adage "practice makes perfect" when "practice" is the act of putting another man's dick into his mouth. But Frankie's got better since the last time, even if he can't quite tuck his teeth away, the inside of his mouth is wet and tight, and he swallows down easily. Edward's far gone by then, breathing in ragged gulps of air, his muscles seizing like coiled springs, trying to lift him off the bed.

"Frankie, god's sake," he hisses, wrestles a hand out of his brother's grip and pulls him off of his cock. He wants another taste of his mouth, but when Edward reaches for his brother in the dark, this time his hands meet nothing but air. "Frankie?" he says, confused.

"I didn't want to have to do this, Edward," his brother replies. Edward's hands are being taken away from him again, lifted over his head and made to wrap around the iron bars of his headboard. Something soft and smooth is twined around them, and when he's finished and Edward tests the knots, they hold.

They've never done anything like this before. This is too drawn out, too indulgent, where they've always dealt with efficiency, furious and vulgar before either of them could think too hard about it; where even in the privacy of Edward's windowless living room, they've always been afraid of being caught.

But he can't imagine ever having wanted this any other way when Frankie slides luxuriantly onto him, wet with the saliva still left on his dick and with whatever cool stuff it is he's slicked into his ass. They don't do this very often either, and when they do, their positions are almost always reversed, Frankie shoving into him frenzied, almost panicked.

He's only ever got to do this once, at the very beginning, when Frankie'd still wanted him to. He's forgotten how good it feels.

Frankie's movements are cautious, tiny, like he's trying to be much more careful than he knows is strictly necessary. "Is this all right?" he asks lowly.

Edward tries to twist under the full brunt of his brother's weight but gains no more friction for his efforts. "Fuck, Frankie," he manages exasperatedly. "Move."

His brother takes far better to direct orders than he would ever admit, and slowly, he begins to rocks against Edward with a full heft of motion. Darkness begins to creeping into the edges of Edward's vision, and he gasps for air, though his brother remains oddly quiet, strangely distant. Edward hardly notices, though. His hands are caught, his body trapped and pinned; he's spread like a butterfly on a dissection table, his brother's tongue is licking into his mouth. The world is ending outside his window, but he's never been more aroused in his life.

"Are you coming?" Frankie asks him. Edward's face is cradled between the palms of his hands and he can feel the dampness of his own breath on his brother's skin like fog touching glass. Frankie kisses his jaw.

Edward stretches again against his bonds. He feels drugged, like he's burning fever, like he's surrounded and claustrophobic and claimed and, god, he feels safe. "Yes," Edward manages. He has his eyes screwed so tightly he's convinced he can see colors in the black of his eyelids.

Frankie leans in further, and for the first time, it occurs to Edward how cool and dry his brother's skin still is, how still his hands are: his quivering, fluttering, expressive hands.

"What have you done?" Edward whispers, just as Frankie murmurs in his ear, "It won't hurt."

Edward sees white when he comes, a rush of his own pulse filling his ears to drown out the sound of Frankie's teeth slipping tenderly into the side of his neck.

Frankie undoes his hands.

"I'm not sorry. I'm not sorry. Edward. You'll see. You don't have to forgive me."

Edward nods. "All right," but he lets his brother push clumsy kisses around the wounds on his neck anyway, lets him lap there at the rusty streaks until his tongue comes away clean. There's no more blood any more, no such thing. No such thing as light. Endless nights and empty veins: there isn't a thing they could do now that could be seen as wrong in anybody's eyes.

But it's cold, that feeling. There isn't any warmth there. Somehow, Edward doesn't think there ever will be again.

Dawn creeps, pink and stealthy, dissolving the darkness on the horizon and swallowing up the stars. Edward watches. It's his last sunrise, the last start of his last day. He's not sure he can make it count.