A/N: Another short fic written for JRW, this time for the prompt "blood". Yeah, I wrote vamp fic. Warning, there is some blood-drinking in this fic. And once I get through my ever-lengthening to do list, I might write more in this 'verse.
So it's kind of a funny story, if by "funny" you mean "completely, heart-stoppingly terrifying at the time but a heck of a story later on". Aster had seen Jack recount the story numerous times at parties and small get-togethers over the years, and every time he would laugh as if the memories didn't bring back a roiling pit of emotions. Fear, anger, sadness, or deep, lingering satisfaction-he could never pick just one thing to feel, and that was possibly the most frustrating thing of all.
"Yeah, can you believe that none of them even noticed when I was turned?"
Well, maybe not the most frustrating thing.
It was a brisk autumn evening, moon shining watchfully overhead, when Jack got sick. Aster realizes in retrospect that he'd been seeing less and less of the winter spirit that season, but he'd mostly put it down to Jack's oncoming season. He hadn't noticed that Jack only swept past on chill autumn breezes at night nowadays, or that he never, ever came to bother him in the warren anymore. He'd noticed that the mite seemed a bit pale now and then, but honestly, there were evenings even before the change that Jack looked like hewn marble in the moonlight.
It wasn't until he received the summons from North that he realized how bad things had gotten. When he arrived at the North Pole, he was intercepted by a twittering gaggle of Tooth's helpers. It took some figuring and an awful lot of repetition, but he eventually gathered that Baby Tooth had gone to visit Jack and had found him sprawled out motionless in the snow. Unable to rouse him, she'd gone to find Tooth, who had in turn brought him to North's workshop believing that the climate would be a better fit for a sick Jack than her own palace.
Striding into North's infirmary, Aster immediately realized why Tooth's fairies had been in such a state. Jack lay in one of North's enormous beds, still and pale, and he'd lost so much weight that Aster didn't know how he hadn't noticed that something was wrong. Jack had gone from lithe to bony and his pale skin was sallow rather than ethereal. Jack had, in other words, lost his glow, and it made Aster sick to his stomach to see it.
"What's wrong with him?" The words were out before he even noticed his mouth had opened.
Both North and Tooth sat on either side of Jack's bed, and Sandy was currently trying to use good dreams to rouse him. As one, all three looked to him, and their expressions were not comforting. "We have no idea," North finally admitted, great brows drawing together in consternation.
Tooth looked up from where she was absently stroking Jack's sleeve. "He's been doing okay on belief, and he hasn't told any of us about any other problems he might have been dealing with... Did he say anything to you, Bunny?"
Aster shook his head, heart in his throat. "He's barely even been around these days," he finally answered. And he hadn't even noticed.
"Yeah..." Tooth said softly, taking one of Jack's hands in hers.
Maybe it was that movement, but Jack chose just that moment to stir. He groaned and squeezed his eyes shut against the light, then shook his head to clear it. When he finally slitted his eyes open, he looked confused. "Tooth? Where am I?"
"Oh, Jack," she said, squeezing his hand. "You're at North's infirmary. You collapsed and Baby Tooth found you."
Baby Tooth took this opportunity to flit up into Jack's face and chitter severely, likely lecturing him for worrying her so badly.
Jack huffed out a quiet laugh. "Yeah, yeah. I'm sorry, Baby Tooth." Then, seeing the morose expressions on everyone's faces, added, "And to you guys, too. I didn't mean to worry anybody."
"Don't worry about worry, Jack!" North chastised. "We only want you to be all right."
"Yeah," said Aster, coming up to the bed. "What happened, mate?"
Jack frowned. "I'm not sure. I've been feeling kind of weird lately, but I didn't think it was that big of a deal," he admitted.
"Weird how?" Tooth asked.
"Well," Jack said, drawing the word out, "I've been feeling kind of dizzy lately, and the sun's been hurting my eyes. I got a wicked sunburn the other day, too. I've been hungry and thirsty a lot, which is kind of weird. That's not usually a problem for me. I don't feel as bad at night, but I've been-" He paused for a moment, frowning over what was about to come next. "I've been feeling cold."
"Cold?" Aster asked. That wasn't right. Jack was perfectly at home in sub-zero temperatures and was known to frolic with penguins on his off hours. Too cold wasn't a phrase that was even imaginable to the frost sprite on most days.
Jack looked away. "Yeah. It's been really weird. No matter where I go, it's like this coldness coming from somewhere inside."
None of them said anything for a moment, looking at each other in confusion. This didn't seem like any sickness or curse they'd ever heard of. And then, Sandy brightened. He constructed a pair of snapping teeth floating above their heads, then followed it up with a question mark.
"Bitten? I-actually, yeah, some weird guy did bite me a couple weeks ago. How'd you know?" Jack asked, looking confused.
"Someone bit you?" Aster cut in.
Jack shrugged. "Yeah. Honestly, I kind of figured he was a drug addict or something. He looked really strung out."
Aster blinked. "Someone bit you and you didn't seem to find that odd?"
Jack shrugged again, looking uncomfortable now. "Sometimes I get weird believers nowadays. I think it's easier to believe in things when you're not in your right mind."
Aster hushed at that, realizing that it probably would not be best to rub in that Jack did not always have the highest class of believers behind him. Things were improving, but he still did not have the steady belief that the others enjoyed. But a smattering of children and a few drunks...
Sandy fluttered his hands, drawing attention away from his discomfort. He opened his mouth and pointed to his teeth.
Tooth frowned, then looked more closely at Jack. "Jack, have you done something to your teeth? Sandy's right, they do look a little different." With her usual grace and subtlety, she pried his mouth open and took a look. "Oh my goodness! Jack, what on earth did you do?" she wailed.
Jack pulled away from her, bewildered. "What do you mean? I didn't do anything."
But now that their attention had been called to it, it was true. Jack's eyeteeth certainly had a specific pointed quality to them before which had not previously been an issue. And while they had dismissed Jack's pasty pallor, chilled skin, eating habits, and recently irritability as side effects of his living impaired nature, it was also possible that they were due to something more sinister.
Aster and North exchanged glances. "You don't think..." Aster started, then stopped.
"Glinka, Jack!" North exclaimed. "You have been bitten by vampire!"
"Excuse me?" But despite the disbelief apparent in Jack's tone, there was a resigned, haunted quality to his eyes that spoke to half-imagined theories being proved correct.
"Must have been in a bad way to bite a Guardian," Aster mused. Vampires weren't generally a bad lot, for venomous blood-drinkers. Nowadays, it was easy for them to find perfectly consenting mortals to drink from. In fact, Aster had heard of entire subcultures devoted to it. Put frankly, they didn't need to attack people. Only a vampire in dire straits would have stolen blood from another spirit.
"Vampires don't exist," Jack protested.
Aster raised his eyebrows. "Mate, you're standing here talking to the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, the Sandman, and," he said, taking a step closer and raising himself to his full height, "The Easter Bunny and you're trying to tell us that vampires don't exist?"
"But-but that's just something they tell kids to scare them," Jack said, but his protests were weaker.
Sandy lit up a sparkling profile and North nodded in agreement. "Da, Sandy. So is the Boogeyman."
"But I can't be a vampire," Jack said, his voice gone quiet and small.
"Why not, Jack?" Tooth asked, leaning forward. "It matches all your symptoms. I bet you'd feel a lot better if we got some blood into you."
Jack snatched his hand back from hers and pressed himself back against the wall his bed rested against. "Absolutely not. I am not drinking blood. That's disgusting!" he announced, even as his stomach betrayed him by growling.
The Guardians all looked at each other somewhat helplessly. It was obvious to them now what the problem was and how to fix it, but how to get Jack to accept it? The boy was obviously starving to death, slowly wasting away until there would be nothing left. Something had to be done.
Aster cleared his throat. "Do you think I could talk to Jack privately for a moment?" he asked, keeping his tone purposefully casual.
The other Guardians shot him worried looks, but nodded, filtering out one by one until the two of them were alone.
"What now?" Jack asked, eyeing Aster warily.
Aster made a fist and brought his arm up to hang in front of Jack's face. An offering. "I want you to bite me, mate."
"What?" Jack asked, cringing back as if reviled at the very thought. But Aster could see from the way his throat worked and his eyes darted back and forth that he was anything but.
"C'mon now, Frostbite. You know that there's enough Life in these veins to have you healed in no time at all, and I'm big enough that I won't even miss it," Aster said, staring at Jack levelly. He might not have noticed that Jack needed help earlier, but this was a thing he could do to help now. Unlike North, Tooth, and Sandy, his specialty was life and rebirth. His blood would be ideal in this situation. And with the amount of blood that Jack would likely need, even in this state, he could likely heal within a day. It was a perfect solution.
Jack did not seem to agree. He was looking at Aster with an expression akin to horror and was shaking his head even before Aster had finished speaking. "No!"
Aster drew back his arm so he could put both paws on his hips. "Why not? It's just a nip and you'll be feeling right as rain," he said with a scowl.
"Why not? Are you serious? I'm not going to suck your blood!" Jack snapped. He moved to cross his arms, but eventually let them fall back to the bed, too weak to manage even that much.
"It's not as if I mind, Jack. I've got more than enough where that came from," Aster replied coaxingly, easing closer to the bed. He knew that even with his weakened senses, Jack could probably smell him from here.
Jack looked up at him for a moment, gaze transfixed and almost hungry, before he forced his eyes away. He squeezed them shut as if he were afraid that if he opened them again, he wouldn't be able to take his eyes off of Aster's pulse line. "I'm not-I'm not a monster, Aster," he choked out. "I would never do something like that to you."
Ah. So that was it. Jack had told him once, quiet and halting, about what Pitch had said to him all those years ago. About how he and Jack belonged together. What they had in common. What they could do together. Jack had confessed to him at the time that sometimes he worried that Pitch had been right, that cold and darkness really were hopelessly intertwined. Aster thought that was a lot of old tosh, personally, and he'd told Jack so. The winter could be dangerous, but it could also be beautiful. Jack's choices spoke more to his character than his powers ever could. But if that was a fear still lingering in the back of Jack's head, Aster could see why Jack was fighting this so much.
"No, you're not a monster," he said, and moved to lay a paw against one of Jack's hands. "You're one of the best men I've ever met, Jack, and I'm honored to fight alongside you. But you're also my friend, Snowbird. How d'you think it makes me feel, seeing you all alone in this bed? Thinking you have to be alone."
Jack was looking at him now, but his expression was still shuttered. Aster pressed on. "I know you'd never hurt any of us on purpose, mate. But that's not what this is. You've gotta stop thinking about this as something you'd do to me. It's something I want to do for you. Let me help you, Jack," he urged.
Jack looked at Aster for a long moment, then whispered, "Don't make me do this, Aster."
By this point, Jack's eyes were suspiciously wet, but Aster didn't allow himself to back down. Not when Jack's life was at stake. He hardened his expression and tightened his grip on Jack's hand. "Don't make me watch my best mate die. Not when I can do something to help."
Jack looked down at his lap and blinked several times, obviously trying not to cry in front of Aster. Finally, though, after a deep breath in and out, Jack shifted and Aster felt the hand in his finally start to return his hold. "Okay."
The acquiescence was quiet, so small that Aster had to strain to hear it, but it was there, and Aster did not ask twice. He made to move his arm again, thought better of it, then reached out his other wrist so Jack could easily cling onto it if he so chose. "Would it be easier on you if I made the cut myself?" he asked quietly, knowing he would in a heartbeat.
Jack was staring at his wrist with a sickly kind of longing, and he shook his head. "No. I mean, it would probably be easier on me, but I don't think it would heal as well."
"Jack, I can-" Aster started, but Jack cut him off by wrapping his fingers around his furred forearm and squeezing gently.
"Let me do this for you, at least. I can make it hurt less," he said with a quiet conviction that led Aster to wonder just how much Jack really knew about the changes to his body, and how. He didn't question, though, simply letting Jack do what he wanted to do.
Jack ran a cold finger over the line of the major artery in Aster's wrist and Aster felt his heart quicken at the contact. Absently, Jack tapped his finger in time to the beat. He pushed back some of the fur on Aster's wrist, and then- "Look, Aster, are you-"
"If you ask me if I'm sure, mate, I'm gonna hit you," Aster breathed out, voice rough for reasons he did not care to examine.
Jack looked momentarily startled, but then nodded, a grim look set into the lines of his face. Hesitantly, he pressed his lips to Aster's wrist and breathed in, inhaling the scent of rushing blood and pure life. It was heady, and he was so wrapped up in it that he didn't notice that Aster was not unaffected by this either. He shifted between foot to foot, unwilling to bring attention to it, and Jack, unaware, bared his teeth.
The bite, when it came, was quick and didn't hurt nearly as much as Aster had expected. There was a sharp pinch and then Jack's venom went to work, dropping both anticoagulants and some kind of numbing factor into Aster's bloodstream. It tingled for a moment, and then all he could feel was wet lips and a steadily warming tongue as Jack lapped and sucked at his wrist. Jack suckled for only a few minutes, drinking a few cups of blood at the most before he dabbed his tongue delicately over the bite and it immediately began to clot.
Slowly, as if coming out of a dream, Jack blinked and then looked up at Aster. "How do you feel?"
Aster felt slightly lightheaded and his heart pounded so loudly that he couldn't understand how Jack couldn't hear it. And even though he had his doubts, he made the conscious decision to put that down to loss of blood. "I feel fine, ya drongo. Shouldn't I be the one asking you that question?" he asked, displacing attention as best he could.
Jack gave him a thin smile, and the answer was obvious even before he opened his mouth, revealing fine points, and said, "Much better." His skin was swiftly assuming a healthy pallor, at least for him. His skin was pale as milk, yes, but there were roses blooming in his cheeks and the sparkle was returned to his eye. Aster counted that as a win.
"You know," Aster said, making no move to take his arm back, "You can come to me for this any time."
Instantly, the easy, satiated look was gone from Jack's eyes, replaced with fear-edged revulsion. "I don't know, Aster, I-"
"This will just happen again, mate," Aster said quietly. Now that Jack was no longer pounding on Death's door, he had the luxury to be gentle. "You'll get sick and weak until you have to have a drink. Wouldn't it be better if you got some regular meals? You'd drink less each time, which would probably be safer for both of us, and you wouldn't have to worry about losing control like the blighter that got you."
Jack blanched at the memory, or as much as he could, anyway. "The kids..."
"Yeah," Aster agreed, not feeling the least bit guilty about bringing it up. "I can lose blood every now and then, but not everyone who crosses your path will be that lucky."
Jack bit at his lip and Aster did his best not to follow the movement of those teeth. Finally, he looked up at Aster with resignation. "I think you may be right, Aster."
Aster made a dismissive sound and moved to clasp Jack's hands in his once again. "It's been known to happen occasionally, Frostbite."
For just a brief moment, Jack brought Aster's paws up to his cheeks and leaned against them. It lasted only a few seconds, just long enough to center himself, but it was enough that Aster probably would have blushed if he hadn't just made a very special blood donation. "Yeah. I guess it has."