Author: Aubretia Lycania

Description: Thomas Raith feels like a loser; gone from playboy to schmuck on his younger brother's couch, he takes time out of his minimum wage existence to tell us about a day in the life of a sex vampire, living like a frat boy in an abstinence house. Takes place between Blood Rites and Dead Beat. Warnings for Thomas luvins, big kid language, and vapid snarkery.

Author's Notes: This was written wholly for my original work fanboy David, who got me into the Dresden Files at a rough time in my life and has been subsequently exchanging text messages as I've been chomping through them. Plus, I just freaking love Thomas. My apologies to my readers in other fandoms—the muse is a fickle mistress with a discipline-murdering shotgun.

Prologue: To whom it may concern

Alright, for those of you picking this up, let me take a leaf out of Rochester's book and warn you. You're not going to like me.

Sure, you'll want to like me. You'll like things I do, too. You'll be sniffing around me for noble reflexes because you'll be in my head, because I'm the hero's brother. We come from the same stock—the same blood goes running through our veins, and those are your conduits to understanding us, when essence flows into our eyeballs. You've been caught up in an everlasting soulgaze with Harry Dresden, and now you're on the hunt for more. Maybe you think I'm his sparkling vampire equivalent, with inclinations to save the world, take on evil, and overall be a misunderstood average Joe who happens to be cursed with soul-sucking martyrdom, and ends up with the gorgeous lady in the end.

I wish.

My time of glory has been here and gone; seen the moment of my greatness flicker and all that. The height of my romantic life was waking up in the middle of sex with the woman I love and realizing she was on the brink of death—her soul winking out as it became part of my body, and hearing the Hunger scream with a kind of perverse triumph, until I cut it off. It rallied, we struggled, and there was blackness again—while in a suicidal rage it tried to kill me, consume my soul instead. My life with the Hunger (yeah, capital H) is a symbiotic agreement, signed off when I exchanged a young woman's life for power the very first time it stirred in me. I went from an awkward man in his late teens to a sex god.

Oh, don't give me that look. Everyone wants to be a sex god. Everyone wants to be like me. And for those of you who think you don't, watch some more TV and read some more magazines. I can guarantee you that the Raith family will put you back on the straight and narrow in how you ought to see yourself. You want rippling abs, perfect skin, great teeth, the right hair, the right height, the right things to say. Immortality, all the girls you can shake a stick at (or some other phallic symbol my brother has holed up around here). And you don't want to work for it.

At this point my dear little brother would tell you everything has a consequence, and you wouldn't really want to be like me. Not if you lived it. And hey, maybe that's true. Maybe you really, honestly like living in a basement, talking to yourself, eating Froot Loops, making a pittance for saving the world, and never getting the girl. Maybe you think all of that is worth it if it means that you don't have to be ruled by anything else, and you could make what you think are the right decisions on your own watch. Oops, was I just describing Harry?

I can't honestly say I don't believe all of that myself, now that the shining moment is gone. If I'm a sex god now, it's a sick rendition of Eros and Psyche where the deity is a monster, trapped in the dark or cursed to loneliness. If I give into the Hunger now, I risk more than a woman's life, my own self-worth, the roof over my head or my existence. I risk the only family who'll have me, because as much as Harry has his own demons—and boy howdy, does he—he fights them.

Don't get me wrong. Harry is a freeze-dried retard popsicle sometimes, with a temper to rival mine when I haven't eaten or slept, enough power to flatten a house of the Red Court, not an ounce of the control he needs to keep himself under raps, and more repressed sexual desire than a nun at a vibrator convention. He gets himself into more trouble than a big brother can handle, even if I was Superman, and the best I can do at times is show up at the right place, shove him out of the way of a bullet, and pray the next one misses. My brother is gifted with a lot, but none of it is an overabundance of luck; the only thing he decently flirts with is disaster. He's poorer than dirt, doesn't have a water heater, and his job is nigh close to thankless, even though it nearly kills him every other week. I've seen the lady he's got a thing for at a restaurant with that Kincaid guy, though I haven't told Harry. Could've been harmless and he'd deny his feelings anyway. Yeah, like a vampire, a being who feeds off emotions, couldn't tell if his own brother was falling for someone. Don't make me laugh. That's like saying a dog couldn't smell kibble right under his nose.

Long story short, Harry doesn't have much. We didn't grow up together, and until the Red Court ball at Bianca's, I wasn't reasonably sure if my mother had had another child before she passed. I stayed by him and fought, but he'd looked out for me too. In subsequent years I tried to keep him safe, and in return he risked his life against the leader of the White Court to save me. He has nearly no resources, and save the blood between us, our connection is one within a war between our kinds that has rendered us both pariahs, dangerous to both sides. The siblings and the family who have known me since I was a child, professed to care for me, with their infinite resources and immense power, threw me from them at the lowest moment of my life, after nearly taking it. Harry Dresden, recently informed of being my brother, with barely a network or a red cent to call his own, a cramped apartment with no electricity, and a million people who'd love to see him dead or blackmailed into obscurity, took me up without a second thought.

I'd do a lot for family, for my sisters, once upon a time. I'd still protect some of them, if it came down to it—Lara, and Inari in particular. But that human bond, the person you'd do insane, unpredictable, even dark things to protect? I would be a madman for two people—Justine, and for Harry. It might sound funny coming from a vampire, but there's more to life than blood.

And as for Harry, I have to say that even Justine is impermanent. Justine will fade, soon, and her imprint on me will be long-lasting. But Harry and I are brothers. When Murphy and Mouse and Justine have passed on, we'll still be here, having a beer, arguing about who gets the last steak sandwich, running from monkey demons and sneaking into late night monster movies, and we won't look all that much different doing it. I'll probably have a few gray hairs courtesy of Harry's Evil Keneval stunts. He'll probably have lost a limb by then, and I can't guarantee I won't be the perpetrator.

Of course, that projected future requires me to keep the idiot alive into his forties.

Maybe he'll mellow out one day, and be content with saving the world once a decade or something. A guy can hope. It's like being brothers with a race car driver—he's rolled over a few times, caught on fire, staggered out before the whole thing exploded in his face. But when you look at the odds? It's only a matter of pushing it one more time. And then a next. And a next.

This is where we get to the part where you won't like me. I don't have the same faith in humanity as Harry, and he's rocky in that department to begin with. I'd be hunky dory with him consulting for Chicago PD, finding lost items, and being a file clerk for a living, and keeping his stupid head down. If Harry never looks another demon, Denarian, vampire (present company excepted—I'm nice to look at), holy knight, Sidhe queen, soul-chomping ghost, evil wizard (or any wizard really), Warden, loup-garou, Renfield, thrall, or mentor in the eye again in his life, I'd be a happy, happy man. Would I miss the adventure? Sure. I'd let him rescue some temple puppies once in a while for old time's sake. But Jesus Christ on a crutch, I'm too pretty to die of a brother-induced heart attack.

And you, reader? I'd probably toss you in with the sharks, if we met today, and getting rid of you would save his life. He'd probably order me not to. I'd listen to him, because most of the time it's his freak show, and I'm along for the ride. But know that I'm thinking it. I'm not a good guy.

Harry can have all the friends he wants, but if it was my apartment, and I had an inch more say, I'd lock him in his room for fifty years. Oh, I'm sorry, you say Chicago might go up in flames if Harry Dresden doesn't save your asses again? Yeah, he's in the can. Have a nice life. The world could be plunged into eternal winter if Harry Dresden doesn't do some more crazy shit and then get shot at for doing it? Call someone who cares.

Don't get me wrong. I like the world. I even like some of the people in it, despite not feeding on them. But my brother is the one always having to save it without an inch of backup aside from me, some raggedy college students, a five-foot-nothing police officer, a barking puppy and a wise-cracking skull, and still the Council treats him like a psychopath needing a straight jacket. He can't walk in a park without getting shot at. I think your world sucks, and you don't know a good thing when you see it. Worse, it's a world that destroys people like Harry Dresden. It's a world full of people who would rather not get involved, keep their heads down, ignore the truth, preserve their reality, and stay alive.

People like who I used to be.

Asking all of this is asking Harry not to be the person he is, and to be honest I can't do it. I can not care about lots of things and people, but he can't, and I can't not care about him. But I'd just as soon toss a person endangering his life out a moving car than save them and hope for the best. It's perhaps wrong and shallow, and not the mentality of a hero. But maybe you can understand.

Right now, he's all I've got. I have a feeling that will be true for a large portion of my life.