Okay, so this is a oneshot filler for a prompt of mine on tumblr for my Jackentine blog. I didn't want to have to post it in pieces so I just decided to put it here. God I didn't mean to make it sad it just happened.
Love is something Valentine prides himself at being an expert on. Not just an expert in the generic aspect, but at manipulating love, too. His ability was shown by the many, many masses of broken hearts he had collected in his trophy cases. He knew how to give it and take it with practiced ease. Love was suppose to feel like fireworks. Like bursts of light through your brain , turning your thoughts to mush and filling your blood with gooey warmth in your veins. Valentine knew this, because it was his routine technique. Every heart he had ever harvested fell without fail for the same act. Draculaura was falling for it, too; would've been his next trophy if her ghoul friends hadn't intervened.
Never did it cross his mind that he could be wrong about love despite the fact he'd never experienced it himself. So when he did, Valentine was in no way prepared for the shock- literally.
He hadn't planed for it to happen; in fact he wasn't sure when it started, or when it really hit him. Jackson had just been another nothing to him, a blimp on the school map. Until Valentine was forced to notice him-and he became a spontaneous lightning strike in the storm of school. Appearing and then vanishing and never the same twice. Sometimes a timid crackle and other times a thunderous whip; so bright he left you blinded for a moment.
Valentine hadn't talked to Jackson until they were paired for a Dead Languages class. Actually, Valentine really didn't say much the first few days, as the boy spent the class with his head ducked over his notebook vigorously planning the project. Now that Valentine thinks about ut maybe it started when he finally said, "Darlin', this is ah group project, you know."
Jackson had looked up with wide, impossible amethyst eyes and stuttered on about how he had thought, since Valentine was an aristocratic monster, he just figured he would want Jackson to do the whole thing. Valentine had smirked and picked up his pencil, beginning to add his own work to the project. Jackson didn't say anything after that and they worked in studious silence. Soon though silence turned into small talk. Little 'How's your day going?'s and 'Yeah. I got that for homework, too's.
Jackson asked Valentine about certain conjugations because the vampire was over four hundred years old and knows these thing better, even if Jackson is incredibly smart. Small talk turns into actual conversation.
Valentine learns the trivial things; like how Jackson has a chameleon named Crossfade, or how 4/4 tempo music specifically triggers Holt's appearance. Then he learns some more personal things. Like how when Jackson went to a normie school it was so horrible he would beg his parents to let him stay home. How, yes, he was still bullied at Monster High, but it was better than going back to New Salem. Valentine's heart maybe quakes at that a moment, and he has to grasp his chest briefly because he doesn't know what that means.
Jackson can hold a surprisingly good conversation, Valentine finds, and even better company during study howls when perhaps maybe they get a bit off topic and stray from the project. Neither of them mind much, though, it seems.
How ironic it would be, Valentine thinks, that he makes his realization on Valentine's Day of all things. Despite the school's apparent disliking for him, they still carry out the tradition. (He tries to hide his smugness- he's still got it.) That's not the point, though. Because Jackson is currently standing beside him as Frankie fumbles out her confessions to the normie about her attraction to him- to Jackson. And Valentine isn't sure how to feel about that; or the dripping cold feeling consuming what should be his heart when Jackson blushes and confesses his own attraction to the ghoul.
Maybe that's when Valentine realizes he might've fallen in love with Jackson- just a little bit. It's an attraction, sure, but more than that. He had never felt this love, and he had always thought if he did that it would undoubtedly be returned. Valentine had never anticipated this; never could have. This was not the melting love he had become so use yo playing.
This was burning.
Love was an electric storm. Surges of energy cracking through his lungs, thunder bolts rumbling through his mind. Disorienting and shocking. Love was the constant threat of being burned. Like amnesia, Valentine realized, you could be forgotten when a newer bolt appeared. Metal ore flavored in his mouth, dangerous strikes of lightning in his blood, breath so impossible to take they felt like thunder shaking the earth.
"Can you believe that? I thought- I mean, I hoped, you know?" Jackson's eager, disbelieving voice reached his ears as Frankie practically skipped away.
Valentine looked down at him, into his ecstatic impossible blue eyes. Jackson's smile was wide and cheeks flushed a slight pink.
Valentine smirked down at him, "Congratulations, darlin'. Looks like you get a Happy Valentine's Day aft'r all."
Love was electric, he decided, set to a voltage that would hurt you no matter how careful you were. Sudden like lightning and crescendo-ing like thunder. Like a storm- beautiful but never perfect and always wrecking.
{He supposes he should count his heart among the ones in the glass cases, now.}