A/N: Warning for vampires, talk of changing into vampires, talk of blood, and a situation involving a hospital. No gore.
This is purposefully written in a very dark, fairy tale-esque style, language, etc. It's actually kind of a SebKadam fic. You'll see why. Written for the kurtoberfest prompt 'vampire'.
Eternity is a long time. And like misery, it enjoys company.
Kurt loves Sebastian, and Sebastian loves Kurt, but sometimes, even though they spend the majority of their existence so single-mindedly wrapped up in one another that the world drips completely away, it's nice to have other people around to talk to, to laugh with, to enjoy the sunless days and the long-stretching, never-ending, and sometimes mind-numbing future.
Kurt refuses to suck the blood of humans. It's not a moral issue. He has no fear of sacrificing his mortal soul. He never believed in God and besides, his soul has been long gone, even before he made the change. It departed him the second he met Sebastian, on what is now called the Rue de la Mare, over five hundred years ago. When Kurt looked into the eyes of the demon incarnate, and willfully offered up himself to him.
No. His sacrifice is a matter of compassion. In his dark, monstrous heart, he still retains a measure of it that he carries around, like dry ash in a corporal vial, nestled inside the steel cage of his chest. Sebastian thinks of it as an illness, since he would personally love to do nothing but spend the rest of their days ravaging whole country sides like the terrifying vampires of old, striking fear into the hearts of men. But seeing as the scariest nightmares in the twenty-first century are the things that men create, from imaginations so depraved that Sebastian could scarcely compete, he gives in to Kurt's whims and leaves the humans be, feasting exclusively on animals himself.
He loathes it, subsisting solely off of soupy, gamey blood. But he loves Kurt.
Love. Another parasite of humanity that he should be rid of.
Kurt, however, deserves better than dogs, cats, and the occasional buck. So, for him, they break into local hospitals and neighborhood blood banks, stealing three or four pints a piece of what might not be missed – common blood types in large supply.
It is on their latest trip to a hospital in New York that Kurt finds him, lying on a gurney, barely alive. Feverish and delirious, he mutters non-stop, his thready voice drowned out by machines constantly beeping.
But Kurt hears him from floors below, through multiple levels of steel and concrete. He hears the man mumbling sweetly through his agony, singing softly, a song of hope, something religious, and Kurt discovers that he, too, knows the words. That voice draws him upwards, through the belly of the hospital, floors and floors above, and as he walks toward the sound, he passes by people again – people who don't look at him twice because they know what illness looks like, know what death smells like. They expect it. They expect him. Some of them look away as he passes by, praying that he'll keep going. Others stare right at him, because he's simply too beautiful to ignore.
When he enters the room he's searching for, he does so with arms open wide to the man slowly dying, as if he has found something of tremendous worth amidst the rubble of human weakness and suffering.
"Sebastian?" Kurt calls. He doesn't turn to find him, but he knows that he's there. In the many years they have been together, Sebastian has never once left Kurt alone. "Sebastian, I found him. I found the one who will complete our fold. I want him. Give him to me?"
"Why him, my love?" Sebastian asks, perching on the man's bedside, nimble on his feet like a cat.
"Because he reminds me of me, my love," Kurt says, stroking the back of the man's cold hand. Kurt doesn't perceive the chill in the man's skin. In these last moments of his life, his hand is as ice laden as death itself, but Kurt's hands are colder. "I can see his past in the notes of that song." He looks at Sebastian, grinning wickedly. "He reminds me of someone I could have fallen in love with, if I wasn't already head over heels in love with you."
"Then why do you need him?" Sebastian snaps, the love he has for Kurt, the love that should not exist, clearing the way for something even more inconceivable – jealousy.
"I guess I don't," Kurt admits, pouting. "It's just…" Kurt looks at the man and sighs. Within that sound, Sebastian hears the faintest strands of humanity. "I don't want to see him perish. Gone from the earth forever. I have a feeling he had a full and prosperous life ahead of him."
"We all did, love," Sebastian groans with a roll of his blood red eyes.
"He had potential," Kurt clarifies. "He would have been special. Renowned. Isn't that why you saved me? Because you thought my life still had potential?"
"I saved you because I love you," Sebastian says, his voice so hard, the words grate together like cinder blocks. "And because I'm a selfish ass bastard."
"Okay, well, then be the vampire who loves me, who's a selfish ass bastard, and wants to see me happy."
Sebastian adjusts his position on the bed, waffling between moving higher towards the man's neck and giving Kurt what he wants, or leaping to his feet, grabbing his mate, and launching them both out the window into the night, never to return here for another two decades.
"And if he falls in love with you? And chooses to stay with us?"
Kurt softens his grin. "I belong to you, my love. And only you."
The man in the bed sings a little louder, his head turning toward Kurt, as if calling for him with his song. Kurt gasps, puts a hand above his rotting heart, and sighs.
Sebastian glares at the man, eyes burning red. "I don't share," he growls.
"I wouldn't want you to," Kurt answers.
Sebastian lowers himself to his feet. He crouches close, taking a moment to breathe the man in, determine what exactly is wrong with him. Certain maladies don't disappear during the change. Some of them carry over, turning demons into something so extraordinarily profane, even vampires fear them. He sees Kurt watch him with a worried expression on his face, waiting for a diagnosis. Kurt can read minds, but Sebastian can read other things – the flutter of an eyelid, the pace of a pulse, the opening and closing of valves in the veins. As a mortal, he wanted to be a doctor. He was a perceptive man. Brilliant.
What a grim gift his talent turned out to be.
"Hmm…it's his heart. It's weak. Two chambers malfunctioning. Another almost done. It can go at any time." Sebastian tilts his head sideways to listen, to be sure. "What is his name?"
"Adam," Kurt says, eyes bouncing from one man to the other till their faces blur together. "His name is Adam."
"Ah, like the first man," Sebastian replies dryly. "How poetic."
"Sebastian, please?" Kurt bats his eyes, attempting to look as innocent as he once was when Sebastian first loved him – frail and human, with a warmth that came from the heart beating inside his chest, beckoning for him with blood and nourishment. Kurt hasn't the strength to turn a human into a vampire. He never thought he'd want to. But now, Sebastian is his only hope.
Sebastian peeks up over the man's neck, shallow pulse becoming weaker with every second that zips by, and smiles. Sure, he'll do this for Kurt. He'd do anything for Kurt.
That doesn't mean he won't spend the next few centuries making certain Kurt showers him with gratitude.
"Of course, my love," Sebastian says, envisioning the next hundred years of Kurt on his knees. "Your wish is my command."