The Hunger

Summary: One month after the Jesse 'incident' and things are returning to normal. Except, Ethan doesn't feel too normal and that bite mark on his arm is taking it's time to heal.

Spoilers: Up to and including 1X13 (Re-Vamped)

Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, only the madness in my words.

A/N: Thank you so much for the awesome response! It's great being able to share my obsession with MBAV :D This was going to be uploaded tomorrow but tomorrow will be a pretty full day for me and I'm not sure I would have had the chance so I'm uploading it now. Hope you enjoy! Hopefully the next one should be up for Halloween ^^

Chapter 3

When Sarah left the Morgan's, Erica was waiting for her.

The night air was cool, the sky clear and moon bright. The pair walked along the sidewalk, a light breeze accompanying them. They could have been average high-school girls, out late, wandering the streets. And to any average onlookers, they sure seemed that way. The only thing to set them apart was their conversation. Though, even then, the average onlooker could have easily mistaken them for overzealous Dusk fans. Whilst once over that may have been true, in that moment, their conversation had nothing to do with Dusk.

"Babysitting? Really? We're so much better than that, Sarah." Erica examined her fingernails, frowning at a scratch in the nail vanish of her index finger. "We can go anywhere, do anything. So why are we still stuck in this hokey little town?"

"I happen to like it here, Erica," Sarah defended, pushing forward.

"Why? We're vampires. What could this town possibly have for us anymore?"

Sarah laughed, sardonic and dry. "My family for one. What do you think my parents would do if I just up and left? I couldn't let them worry like that."

"They're parents. It's what they do. If they're not worrying, they're not happy."

"Erica…" The name was drawn out, Sarah's frustrations showing through in it.

"Oh come on, live a little. So your parents will worry? Big deal. If that's the only thing keeping us here, then I don't see the problem." She let go of a sigh, eyes rolling. "They'd get over it eventually."

"I wouldn't!" Sarah's feet fell still and she turned to face Erica, head cocked to the side as she considered her friend. "This is our home. We go to school here. We have friends here."

"We're friends, Sarah. Best friends."

Eyes downcast, a light breath escaped from Sarah's lips and she felt her shoulders slump. She had been best friends with Erica since forever and as much as she had changed, she was still Erica. She still always had Sarah's back, and Sarah knew it. But she couldn't just abandon Whitechapel. She couldn't abandon the other friendships she had formed.

"You're thinking about your nerd, aren't you?" Erica questioned, arms crossed in front of her and eyebrows raised, demanding. "Give it up, sweetie. You're gonna have to sooner or later."

Sarah ignored her, shaking her head and turning away, continuing down the sidewalk. But Erica wasn't done.

"The math is easy. Human, plus vampire, equals disaster waiting to happen." Trailing behind Sarah, Erica pushed on. "We will live forever in all our hotness… whilst they, they'll eventually grow old and die."

"Yeah, in like eighty years time," Sarah countered.

Erica's face contorted, nose wrinkling up. "Are you saying you still want to be hanging around them when they're all wrinkly and smelly and… old?"

Sarah waved her arms in exasperation. "I'm saying, they'll get old… but not yet."

Erica clucked her tongue, shaking her head. "How soon before they leave you behind? You really think nerd one and nerd two are going to hang around forever? The likes of them will go away to some dork filled college… and then what?"

"I don't know," Sarah forced out from behind clenched teeth. "I'm trying not to think that far ahead."

"I'm just saying, Sarah. You need to start thinking about leaving them behind before they can leave you. It'll hurt less that way."

"It's easier said than done."

Erica offered a sad smile, almost apologetic. "It's for their own good too, you know? As long as you're around them, Jesse will hurt them to get to you. Do you really want that?"

And that question left an uneasy pit in Sarah's stomach. She knew what Jesse was like and as much as she hoped that staying around and keeping an eye on things would keep him at bay, she did wonder if maybe the result would be the opposite. Would staying around make things worse? For Whitechapel? For her friends? For Ethan?

"Think about it, Sarah," Erica implored, taking a step back and allowing her fangs to flash in the moonlight. In another instant, she was gone, leaving Sarah alone with nothing but a heavy heart and aching stomach, a sharp reminder of her earlier hunger.

She could have lied to herself and said things were better now she was a full vampire. She could have said that the hunger and thirst for blood had lessened. But it hadn't. Far from it. The blood she took from animals quenched the thirst a little. It made it manageable. But she had tasted human blood and it was not one she would forget anytime soon. Ethan's blood. Rare and tempting…

And perhaps her biggest worry wasn't Jesse, or wasn't the thought of being left behind. Maybe the reason she had been attempting to distant herself, and failing, was because she was worried that she would be the one to hurt her friends. To hurt Ethan…

It was for exactly that reason that she couldn't help but actively consider Erica's offer.

Ethan woke wrapped up in a cocoon of sweat drenched sheets. Warmth radiated around him, smothering him, and yet still he shivered. A cold chill etched its way into his skin, coating it like a thin layer of ice that fought back against the heat and showed no signs of melting. His head throbbed, his stomach rolled and all in all, he felt like a wreck.

"Guuh," he moaned, rolling onto his side and curling up into a ball. He pulled the sheets tighter around him but it did nothing to fight off the chill.

Vaguely, at the back of his mind, he had the memory of Sarah helping him up to bed. But it was only faint and any thoughts concerning it were washed away with a wave of nausea that forced him to close his eyes and focus on just breathing. Even when the nausea passed, he kept his eyes closed, deciding it was less effort that way.

A light knocked echoed from the other side of his bedroom door and he grunted in reply, feeling too out of it to form words beyond caveman speak. The door creaked open and he pulled his head up enough to peer at the blurry visitor that somewhat resembled his father.

"Hey there, champ," was the sympathetic greeting. "How you feeling?"

Ethan opened his mouth to answer but still words failed him. It took too much energy to even think of the right words let alone sound them out. So he buried his head back under the duvet cover, hiding away from the lights and noises of the early morning, and offered a pitiful moan up for his reply.

"I'll leave you to it then," his dad answered, backing out of the room and closing the door with a click, leaving Ethan alone with the silence and stillness of his room.

The last time Ethan could remember being as ill as he felt then was when he had chickenpox that time in fifth grade. It had not been pretty and worst of all, computer games had been strictly prohibited. For him, it had been the couch and daytime television, with Great Aunt Meredith watching over him while his parents were at work. He had vowed then to never get sick again.

"Oh god," he whined, burying his face into his pillow at the memory of Great Aunt Meredith's 'special medicine'. He envied Jane for never getting the opportunity to try it and given how he felt at that moment in time, his only consolation was the fact that Great Aunt Meredith had moved away to Hawaii and took her medicine with her.

He shifted about once more, to lie on his back, and groaned, the sound muffled by his sheets. "This is exactly how I didn't want to spend my Saturday. Ill."

When sleep claimed him again, it was restless. His dreams were filled with an onslaught of images, a reminder of his vision in full, vivid, Technicolor detail. Blood and fangs. Once brown eyes rimmed with a golden yellow, glowing softly. And Ethan tossed and turned, becoming ever more tangled in his sheets, heartbeat quickening and breathing laboured. Until he turned over just that little too much and his body, along with his sheets, was brought crashing down to his bedroom floor.

He woke and groaned, a pitiful and strained 'oow' escaping from his lips. Then he lay there, staring up at the ceiling in his now darkened room.

Even with his eyes open, he could still see the image clearly, from the dream and from the vision. He could still see himself, as if he were staring at a somewhat distorted reflection from a funhouse mirror. Only instead of making him look tall and lanky or short and stout, this mirror did a different trick. It turned his image into that of a vampire.

After several long moments, he pulled himself back up onto his bed and perched himself on the edge. His open curtains allowed light from the streetlamps to filter in and brighten his room somewhat, enough to see by. Not that it mattered. He wasn't looking around his room. His gaze was lost to the floor, unfocused as his thoughts wandered.

With whatever illness had gripped him, he had slept most of the day away. But he no longer felt like death. Though his mind felt sluggish, his body felt…. great. It buzzed with unspent energy and he had to place a hand on his knee to keep it from bouncing. It was in that moment that he caught a glimpse of the bite mark, or what was left of it.

No matter what Benny had said, this wasn't normal. Nothing ever was anymore. Not in their town. Not when it concerned them. So what did it mean?

Swallowing thickly, he pushed up and turned his lamp on, bracing himself for the sudden brightness. In an attempt to force back the thoughts and fears, he got himself together and threw on a clean shirt and sweats before wandering from his room and downstairs to face his parents.

They stood in the kitchen, sorting through the dirty dishes that lay in the sink and on the counter tops. He stopped at the doorway, hands shoved into his pockets, and cleared his throat. The noise caused his parents to pause in their work and face him.

"Champ!" his dad called, tone surprised.

A sheepish smile played at Ethan's lips and his mom moved forward, abandoning the dirty dishes altogether.

"You feeling better, honey?" she asked, coming to a stop in front of him and bringing her hand up to his brow. She laid it against his skin for a second or two then moved it to his cheek. When it fell away completely, she sighed. "I think the fever's gone but you still feel clammy. Maybe you should eat something."

"I'm not really hungry," he mumbled in reply.

But his mom shook her head, lips thinned and face set. "I'll rephrase that – you will eat something. I'll make you some soup."

And before he knew it, he was sitting on a stool and staring down at the bowl of warm tomato soup in front of him. He probed at it gently with his spoon, like a small child might have done with a stick and piece of road kill, and watched as the thick, reddish orange liquid sloshed about inside the bowl.

"It'll make you feel better," his mother said, eyes never leaving him.

But the words were lost on Ethan. His thoughts were elsewhere, the colour of the soup putting him in mind of other things. Dipping his spoon into the soup, he filled it and pulled it free, his gaze locked on the red liquid that dripped back down into the bowl.

Red…

"You okay, kiddo?" his father asked, hand landing on Ethan's shoulder.

The noise and touch startled him and the spoon fell from his grip, landing with a clatter and a splash in the bowl below.

A concerned frown etched its way onto his dad's face. "What's going on inside that head of yours, Ethan?"

Ethan attempted a smile and a shrug to reassure his parents, not that he was sure it worked. "Same old junk," he answered.

And 'same old junk' was at least partly true because he did think about vampires. He thought about Sarah, and Erica and Rory. He even thought about Jesse. And he worried. Yet… this time, his worries had taken a different course. After all, even though he worried about being a walking, talking Happy Meal for vampires, he so very rarely worried about he himself turning into a vampire and when he had, it had been a passing thought. But now, it was different…

More soon! Thanks for reading!