Josh was still in the shower when he heard Nora open the door to their attached was already clean—he'd been clean ten minutes ago—and now all he was really doing was wasting their hot water. Still, he felt vaguely dirty, like a thin layer of some invisible transgression was still clinging to his skin. He'd paid special attention to both his arms—the wolf arm and the vamp arm, as he was now calling them. Both wounds were clean and healthy, or, as healthy as they could get. Josh couldn't stop staring at the two puncture marks Aidan had left on him. They were tiny, neat, and hardly even stung at all after the initial touch of water. Josh wondered if that was some special side-effect of vampire bites. He'd never thought to ask, but it was probably something he should look into now.

Right, Josh thought with a surge of renewed dread, because this is a thing now, a recurring thing that you have yet to share with your emotionally-compromised fiancé. Suddenly the bites didn't look so neat and tiny anymore. They were incriminating, impossible to hide, another fight just waiting to happen.

Josh turned the water off just as the door to the bathroom creaked open. He peered around the side of the plastic shower curtain to see Nora standing there, wrapped in a towel, her blonde hair hanging in tangled locks over her pale shoulders. She looked girlish standing there, almost shy.

"Oh, I was going to join you," she said, and Josh leaned down to turn the water back on. Even after all this time heat still rushed to his ears when she did things like this, exactly like he was a nervous school boy wondering how to get to second base without getting slapped. Nora slipped into the shower beside him, dropping her towel as she did, and a moment later they were hugging each other tight under the hot spray of water. It was too hot, but Josh didn't care. He let his eyes slip shut as he rested his face against her dirty hair, fighting back a constricting feeling in his throat.

"I'm so sorry," he muttered to her, and she shushed him.

"That's my line," she whispered, and Josh chuckled around prickling, unshed tears. For a while he was able to forget about everything that had happened and just stand there with her beneath the spray, the hot steam around their bodies gradually starting to cool as the water heater was pushed to its last legs.

"I should let you actually bathe," Josh said, clearing his throat and stepping back. "Before we reach arctic temperatures in here."

"Okay," Nora said, leaning up to kiss him gently. Josh stepped out of the shower and onto the mat outside the tub, grabbing his towel from the rack and ruffling it through his hair. He peered down at his arms again; the wolf scratches were still ugly and stark, but they'd scar up quickly just like his shoulder had all those years ago. The twin puncture marks on his other arm were already starting to scab, thin stretches of translucent, pinkish skin spanning the gaps.

Josh slipped out of the bathroom and got dressed outside, subconsciously going for the shirt Nora liked best on him, which was a short-sleeved button down. It did nothing to hide his cuts, but once she was done with her shower there would be no reason to conceal them. He was going to come clean, anyway.

Nora emerged ten minutes later, looking scrubbed and fresh. It baffled Josh how quickly she was able to get herself clean and ready to go, which Nora had attributed to her speed-showering on her short breaks during her hospital shifts. Josh gave her a crooked smile and she gave him back her vulnerable one that was reserved only for him.

"So," he began, taking a seat on the bed, and Nora followed his lead and joined him, still wrapped in her towel. "There's… a lot of stuff we need to go over."

"Yes," she said simply. "I want to start by saying I'm sorry. I just—reacted, this morning. It wasn't fair to do so without hearing everything first." Nora half-lidded her eyes and looked out towards their window, her gaze distracted and troubled. "I don't know if I can deal with Aidan right now, but I plan to apologize to him later."

"That's a nice gesture," Josh said, "but I don't think it's necessary, if you don't want to. He doesn't blame you for anything."

Nora peered at him, looking baffled in a tired way. "Not even for assaulting him?"

"No," Josh said, shaking his head. "In his words, I'm your mate, and he never expected a different reaction from you."

Nora made a face, and Josh's eyes widened, realizing that might have sounded wrong. Nora put her hand up to stop him. "No, it's okay. I know what he means. He's right." She shook her head and shrugged. "I can't argue with that. I can't keep it together where you're concerned. The idea of you hurt, or in danger…"

Josh moved closer to her, opening his arms as an invitation. She scooted closer and leaned her head against his shoulder, bathing him in the soft scent of her clean skin and cucumber-scented shampoo. "I love you," he said simply.

"Love you, too," she said. "You… seem like you're taking it really well. Your change."

Josh chuckled. "Not really, no. Truth is I haven't even thought about it yet—about changing next month. Too much other stuff to focus on."

"Like Aidan," Nora guessed.

"And you," he affirmed. "I know this is as hard on you as anyone, because I know how I felt when I realized I'd—" he stopped to clear the emotional blockage in his throat, "that I'd turned you. It's almost worse, hearing that something bad has happened to someone you love, than going through it yourself."

"You're a wise man, Joshua Levinson," Nora said with a hint of a smile in her voice.

"There's—in the interest of full disclosure, there's one more thing I need to tell you." He could feel her stiffen in his arms and rushed to put her fears to rest. "It's nothing bad, I promise! Just… an arrangement, that I feel you should know about, so you don't think the worst—"

"Josh, please," Nora said, moving back to look at him with wary eyes. "Just spit it out."

"I'm… I'm going to be feeding Aidan, that is, um, donating blood to the cause, until we figure out how to fix him." Josh wanted to close his eyes in mortification. Donating blood to the cause? "It's not enough to hurt me, and it'll only be when he needs it, to keep up his strength—"

Nora cut off his disclaimers, looking more confused than anything. It was a relief; confusion was better than righteous indignation or fury. "Wait—but, you're a were now."

"I know, right? We were worried he'd have that bad reaction again, but… I don't know, he's alright with my blood so far."

"So you already fed him? What, today, or last night?" Nora asked, and Josh realized he was treading on thin ice.

"Today, when you and Sally were out," he said, and he couldn't read Nora's expression. She didn't seem mad, which was a relief, but she didn't seem happy either. "Is that… are you okay?" he asked, amending his statement halfway through.

"I just… you aren't worried at all that his virus can spread to other supes through blood, or saliva, or whatnot?" she asked, furrowing her brow. "There's no precedent for it since vampires don't usually feed on us, so you have no way of knowing."

Josh opened his mouth to put her fears to rest, but paused. That was actually a really good point. "Well… I'm pretty sure this is a vamp-exclusive thing, but I can get some equipment from the hospital to draw blood externally, and Aidan can have it after that. Then there's no contact."

Unbidden, the bright, vivid image of Aidan running his tongue across his forearm leapt to the forefront of Josh's mind. Yeah… no-contact was probably a good idea anyway. That had been all sorts of weird.

"Really, Josh… I just don't think it's a good idea, period. Who knows what your blood might be doing to him without either of you knowing it? Just because he isn't showing outward symptoms just yet doesn't mean it's good for him."

"It's better than nothing," Josh argued, starting to feel a little boxed in. Undeniably this was the most productive conversation they'd had in the past few days, but Josh couldn't fight the feeling there was something else she was getting at.

Sure enough: "And what's this about curing him? You're going to be… what, researching this and trying to cook up a vaccine?"

"The plan is to start him on a sampling of antibiotics and vaccines from the hospital," Josh explained, his voice sounding exhausted even to himself. "And to go from there."

Nora was quiet for a moment and Josh felt the very out-of-character desire to push her on the subject, to find out what she was really thinking. Instead he made himself wait, feeling a growing heat somewhere between frustration and embarrassment behind his ears.

"I just… I don't think you're going to find anything," Nora said, quietly.

"So what are you saying?" Josh asked at once, his question coming out much more blunt and stern that he'd meant.

"I'm saying it's not a good idea. I don't think you should do it." Nora maintained perfectly poised eye contact with him the whole time, not backing down an inch. She never did.

"You don't think I should even try to look into this?" Josh asked, incredulous. "What's the harm in trying? I'm supposed to just give up, sit back and watch him die and not do anything?"

"What I'm saying is I don't think you can do anything. This—this isn't going to be easy, Josh, going through this with him for the next few… however long it takes, weeks, months? I just… it feels like you're in denial."

"Yeah, okay," Josh said, getting up just to have something to do with the restless energy in his body. "If trying to help someone I care about instead of rolling over and accepting their impending death is denial, then I'm up that Egyptian river without a paddle."

"Josh," Nora said, getting to her feet too and reaching out to have him face her. Her other hand still clutched her towel around her body, and for a moment it was laughable to Josh. They were having this argument while she was still half-naked. "How many vampires have ever been cured of this?"

"We don't know that," he said, striving for patient but instead sounding sarcastic, "because we don't have a convenient database of all known vampires in the world."

"The answer is none. Every vampire any of us has encountered since this outbreak has either been dying or desperately trying not to get infected. There is no evidence that suggests there is any way of coming back from this." Nora released him and put her hand to her forehead, rubbing the skin there so hard it flushed pink under the pressure. "I just… don't want to see you get hurt."

For a moment Josh was honestly baffled. "Get hurt? I'm not the one who's dying," he reminded her.

"I mean emotionally, Josh," Nora said, sounding mildly annoyed now.

Josh let out a short laugh. "Hate to break it to you, but if Aidan dies, no matter what, I'm going to get hurt. I'll be—" Josh stopped short, the familiar panicky feeling rising in his chest at the words he was saying, like he could somehow make it not true if he didn't verbalize it aloud. Determined to hide that from Nora, he plowed on. "... Losing my best friend. There's nothing anyone can do to change that fact, if that's what happens. The only way it could hurt more is if I didn't do absolutely everything in my power to help him before then."

It was a pretty good bit of rhetoric, if Josh said so himself, and it seemed to work on Nora. She deflated a little and sat back down on the edge of their bed. "I understand," she said, her voice resigned and hollow. "Just… try to prepare yourself, Josh. That's all I ask. That, and avoid direct contact with contaminated vampire bodily fluids."

Josh sat down beside her again and shifted to put his arm around her, but something stopped him short. Instead he just remained where he was and nodded once, briefly. He wasn't sure if she saw him do it out of the corner of her eye or not, but she said nothing more and silently got up to get dressed for the rest of the day.

Though they hadn't screamed or thrown things, and had actually kept it civil the entire time they talked, Josh couldn't help but feel adrift. He'd almost have preferred it if they had yelled, a little, gotten it all out and smoothed over. Even though he'd won, technically, it sure didn't feel that way as his fiance leaned down to kiss the side of his cheek, her expression still remote, though she gave him a small smile.

"I'm gonna go out for a bit, just to pick up some things. Sally and I are going to have a girls' night tonight, if that's okay."

"Sure," Josh said, trying to inject his normal, lighthearted tone into the word. Instead he just sounded as worried as he felt. "Be safe… and have fun tonight."

Nora gave him a sad smile, confirming Josh's fears that his concern had leaked into his voice, and turned to leave without another word.

"You're intact," Aidan said, unable to keep the surprise off his face as Sally closed the basement door behind her. "I'd say you're alive, but I don't really know if either of us qualify as that, strictly speaking."

"I return triumphant," Sally affirmed, sliding down to sit on the floor with her back pressed up against the door. Aidan frowned at that and motioned to his bed, offering her a place to sit. She shook her head. "I'm not staying long, just wanted to check on you."

"Nora's back?" Aidan asked, ignoring her purpose for being here.

"Yeah, she is. She's upstairs with Josh now."

"Well… I guess it's good we haven't heard any furniture breaking." Sally gave him a wan smile at that. "How are you doing? You look… appropriately rattled, I guess."

Sally chuckled. "Aidan, you and Josh are beyond ridiculous, you know that? Stop asking me how I'm doing. Especially since I asked you first!"

"I'm…" Aidan quirked the corner of his mouth up and shrugged. "I'm good, actually. More than good." He wasn't going to elaborate further but she got up and drew nearer, squinting at him and stooping her head as if peering at an archeological find.

"You do look uncharacteristically chipper. What changed in the span of a half hour?" she pondered aloud, but then the answer to that question popped into her head. Her expressive face morphed into a look of abject shock. "You fed? How? And from who?"

"Whom," Aidan corrected, mainly just to see her reaction. She batted at him furiously with her hands.

"I don't care! Tell me!"

"Okay, okay!" Aidan said, laughing and putting up his arms to defend himself, though the odds of Sally actually landing a hit that hurt were slim to none. "It was Josh," he said simply, noncommittally. Then he studied his thumbnail just to complete the nonchalant look.

"... Wait, what?" Sally asked, frowning. "But he's…"

"Yeah, and it apparently doesn't matter." Aidan shrugged. "Maybe it's the infection, or something. Either way his blood is quite satisfying."

Sally gave him a shrewd look and tilted her face to the side, peering at him out of the corner of her eye. "'Quite satisfying?'" she quoted back at him.

"Quite."

"I don't really know what that means…" Sally began slowly, quirking an eyebrow up, "but it sounds hot and I like it."

Aidan laughed and rolled his head back, finishing the gesture up with an eye roll for effect. "Hey, if you see Josh, can you send him down here?" Aidan asked.

"Yeah, sure," Sally responded, rolling her eyes. "Be careful, though. Don't want to give Nora more reason to be jealous."

Aidan frowned at that, certain she'd meant something other than "jealous"—probably "furious" or something along those lines. She took her leave though, and Aidan lifted his shirt hem after she'd gone, examining the cross-hatching of blackened skin that had started across his abdomen earlier last night.

The vine-like marks had been spreading across him so quickly and violently Aidan was sure he'd be dead within the week. Allowing Josh to stick him full of drugs was, largely, for the werewolf's own peace of mind. Aidan didn't expect anything to work, and the least he could do was put his friend's grief and worry to any cause that would help him feel less helpless in all of this. Whatever Liam had shot him full of was potent and deadly. Aidan wouldn't be surprised if the vengeful were had specifically brewed up that syringe of blood to be as chemically rife with the highest percent of pathogens possible.

Aidan had checked his body over that morning to note, with unsurprised, grim satisfaction, that he'd been right; the disease had spread exponentially overnight. Yet the encroaching darkness seemed to be held at bay, at least for now. Aidan tried to think of other possibilities, dredging up painful memories of Henry's final days, but there was no other catalyst that could have caused it besides…

But that was ridiculous. Infected vampires fed from the untainted and still died. Atlee had fed from Aidan himself and nothing had happened. Not a thing had seemed to even remotely slow the process of slowly disintegrating from the inside out, and yet Aidan's plague marks seemed to be perfectly content to stop where they were for now. Aidan lowered his shirt then immediately lifted it again, as if he and his marks were playing a ludicrous game of red-light-green-light and they would move only when he wasn't looking.

There was a knock on his door and he called through it, "yeah?"

"Josh is going to the hospital to pick some stuff up, I guess. Did you still need to see him before he goes?"

Aidan paused, but called back, "No, it's fine. I'll see him later." There was no reply from the stairwell, but Sally's retreating footsteps told him she was going to deliver his message.

It was two hours later when Josh returned, and Aidan could certainly hear him coming this time. Josh was shuffling along the stairs, taking each one very, very slowly, and there was a rustling and clattering sound that followed him down. Aidan got up and crossed to the door, opening it just in time to watch a stack of boxes with his friend's legs start to topple down the stairs.

Aidan shot forward to stabilize the unbalanced structure and person, and Josh jumped from the sudden help, almost dropping everything anyway. "Holy mother of—uh, thanks."

"Jesus, Josh," Aidan said, removing the top of the boxes and revealing Josh's flustered face. "What did you bring, half the hospital?"

"Just… stuff. Go," he said, jutting his chin at the door at the bottom of the stairs. "My arms are killing me."

Aidan obeyed, dropping the first of the boxes on the sole wooden table pushed up against the far wall of his bedroom. Josh huffed out a grunt as he dropped the other two down beside it, then immediately stretched his arms back and elicited a fiendish series of pops from his shoulders, back and neck. Aidan peered into one of the boxes and frowned at what he saw.

"Josh… I hate to break this to you, but I don't think 'What to Expect When You're Expecting' is going to have a chapter on curing vampire plague."

"Ha ha," Josh said, still sounding a little out of breath. "This is all a decoy. I couldn't just stroll on out with all the supplies I needed… what with hospitals generally looking down on theft and all that. So I 'cleaned out my locker' instead. Your stuff's underneath."

Aidan rifled through the tremendous amount of crap, most of which consisted of strategically placed old hoodies and various miscellaneous sheafs of paper, and removed whatever he spotted that was pre-packaged or otherwise medicine-related. "You cleaned out your locker? And found three boxes worth of junk?"

Josh rolled his eyes. "No, of course not. This is junk from the lost and found and recycling box, mostly. My locker is immaculate."

"Yeah, I know," Aidan said, suitably impressed with Josh's ingenuity. "I'm touched, by the way. You touched other people's nasty, germ-infested forgotten stuff for me."

"And don't you ever forget it," Josh griped, wiping his hands on his scrub pants. "Speaking of which. I'm gonna go wash my hands like fifty times." Josh took the stairs in short, quick bounds, leaving Aidan to arrange the items as he saw fit across the table. The rest of the junk got tossed back in the boxes and kicked to the side of the room.

Josh had certainly pulled out all the stops. Aidan glanced over the sticker labels neatly pasted across various plastic-wrapped tubes of fluid, frowning more and more as he read on. Hepatitis A, B and E, the newest batch for influenza plus the batches used last year and the year before that, MMR, Polio, Rabies, Smallpox, Yellow Fever…

Aidan frowned as Josh returned, a pair of latex gloves on now. "You picked me up the HPV vaccination? Really?"

"I picked up everything I could get my hands on."

"You think I need to worry about cervical cancer or genital warts?"

"This isn't about cervical cancer or genital warts. It's about trying everything."

"This is gonna be fun," Aidan grumbled, taking off his shirt and reaching over to unwrap a few antiseptic swabs.

"You shush," Josh said, unwrapping one of a slew of syringes and grabbing the nearest tiny glass jar of fluid. "Go sit."

"Yes, Nurse Levinson," Aidan intoned like a school kid. Josh tossed a crumpled-up plastic wrapper at him, which promptly met air resistance and fell lamely to the floor only two feet away from him.

Aidan liked to think he was a decent patient. The shots didn't hurt, though the HPV vaccine went in cold and thick, which was a little worrisome. Perhaps his very male body recognized that it didn't need to protect itself against diseases that attacked female sex organs. The process was long and protracted and utterly silent as Josh worked with a crease between his brows the whole time.

Somewhere halfway through the process, Aidan took to watching Josh work. The far wall and the fabric of his own pants were only so interesting, and Josh became his new subject of study.

His best friend had changed remarkably little over the many years they had known each other, but Aidan was starting to wonder if that was an illusion. Perhaps he'd just seen Josh too frequently over the past five or so years. Perhaps a bit of the youthful roundness of his face had been lost to time, for certainly Aidan was sure his jaw hadn't looked quite as defined when he'd stumbled upon the kid being beaten in the alley behind his old diner.

He'd lost weight steadily, that was for sure, and where uncertain, formless softness had once been his lean, lanky frame had beefed up and filled out a little. Josh would never be buff—his genetics seemed to forbid it—but he was toned and cut in a way that only constant, life-threatening fear and frequent, anxiety-fueled workouts could give. Aidan had known Josh had taken his training seriously, but he hadn't fully appreciated how seriously until he'd seen Josh land hit after hit into Liam with perfectly-aimed bullets. To hear Josh tell it, he'd also capped another wolf's knee before coming to Aidan's rescue. That was a difficult shot to make in the best of times, and Aidan wondered how many hours Josh had clocked at the local gym and firing range to get himself honed the way he had.

There was something else, too, something implacable that had done a much more thorough job altering Josh than anything that could be seen or measured outwardly. It lingered around his eyes and in the corner of his smile, even though Josh had never been anything less than an open book to him all these years. He was just a little shrouded, slightly obscured, and Aidan missed being able to see the outline of his true self as clearly as it had once been.

"Take a picture," Josh muttered, and when Aidan gave him a startled, guilty glance, Josh quirked a grin at him to show he was kidding.

"With what?" Aidan asked, making a smooth recovery. "My stolen and probably destroyed smartphone? Figures murderous werewolves would kill it right after my contract upgrade."

"Oh," Josh said, snapping off his gloves and going over to one of the boxes. He rummaged in it and pulled out something Aidan had initially assumed was lost-and-found trash—a T-Mobile bag. "I got that taken care of for you."

"You—" Aidan said, a frown coming to his face as Josh dug out a cell phone box and handed it over. "Jeez, Josh…" he said quietly, oddly touched by this simple gesture, even if it had been born out of practicality. "Will I ever stop owing you?"

Josh burst out laughing at that. "Owing me? So you live in backwards land now, huh?" He looked pleased as punch though, crossing his arms over his chest and beaming at Aidan as he freed the phone from the box and turned it on. "They were able to transfer most of your contacts over. I don't think they'd have let me get that for you if you and I didn't have possibly the worst T-Mobile track record known to man."

Aidan laughed. It was true; one of the living hazards of being a supe was the constant property destruction that came along with it. "Did you remember to punch our stamp card?"

"I know, right? 'Destroy nine cell phones, get the tenth free!'"

"Or possibly get banned for life."

"Nah, they love us. We're their best customers."

It felt indescribably good to sit there and shoot the shit with Josh while thumbing through the new controls on his phone. Aidan picked up the navigation system of his menu relatively quickly, using the phone stylus Josh had gotten for him. Being dead generally made touch screens not his friend, and he lamented the collective turn towards this technology that the world had unanimously decided on sometime while he was underground.

Aidan glanced up to say something, but abruptly forgot when he saw the look on Josh's face. The smile was gone and his eyes had taken on a soulful, sad look, heavy and full. Josh offered him a smile but was too slow to hide his earlier expression.

"Hey," Aidan said, turning to face him better, frowning and putting his phone down on the bed beside him. There were any number of things he could say after that, but he somehow knew he didn't need to go further. Josh knew what he meant. It's alright. I don't want you to kill yourself worrying about me.

Similarly, he knew what Josh meant when he replied with a soft, "yeah," and gave him a better version of his earlier smile. I know. I can't help it sometimes, but it's going to be okay.

There was a warm, companionable silence between them where they just existed together, their bond beyond the need for words.

Or, Aidan thought it had been a warm, companionable silence. Apparently to Josh it had taken a turn toward awkward, because he seemed to snap out of it and coughed in a way that was clearly just for the sake of making noise. Aidan gave him an amused, wry smile as Josh looked around the room for a moment, as if the remedy to his sudden discomfort would drop from the ceiling. He turned back to Aidan and looked like he was about to say something, but paused.

"Your… huh. Your… disease… spots look like they aren't spreading as bad as last night."

"... Disease spots?" Aidan asked, a little sadly. That was probably the grossest term he could think of for them. "But, you're right. The growth seems to be stalled, for the time being."

Gone was whatever had been ailing Josh previously. He sat down next to Aidan and grabbed his torso, twisting him so he could look at the marks closer. Aidan allowed himself to be manipulated into a position that was optimal for viewing, watching Josh curiously as he did so. "Damn. What do you think did it?"

"To be honest?" Aidan asked, shrugging, "Probably nothing. This might just be something the infection does that I didn't notice on Henry or Atlee."

"Yeah, but…" Josh said, and Aidan could hear the mounting excitement in his voice, though his friend was trying to hide it. "Still. This isn't a bad thing. It was going so fast last night…" Aidan was determined to keep silent on this subject, but Josh picked up on the implication far quicker than he would have liked. His head snapped up and Aidan tried not to wince as he turned to face him.

"You don't think… could it have been me?" he asked. The way he worded it and the hope on his face was almost too much for Aidan. Something that felt an awful lot like heartache reached through his chest as he offered Josh another shrug.

"Maybe. But, listen… don't—"

"Don't you dare tell me not to get my hopes up," Josh warned him.

Aidan chuckled. "I was going to say 'don't jump to conclusions.'"

"Same basic thing!" Josh said, but he seemed to be filled with a frenetic energy now. "We gotta keep this up, if it's even got a remote chance of being the thing that's delaying this. You hungry again? Could you eat now if you tried?" Josh asked, already pushing up the long-sleeved shirt he was wearing under his scrubs.

Aidan put his hands up to ward Josh off. "What? No! I already took a pint from you today, no more. In fact, you shouldn't bleed any more for me until at least three days have gone by."

"What?" Josh asked, aghast. "No way! That's forever!"

"Hey, I'm not thrilled to go without, either, but you're gonna start to feel extremely crappy if we do anything further before then." Aidan's pulse would be kicking up if he had one right about now.

"Well…" Josh said, clearly put out by this news. "Okay, new plan of action then. Instead of taking a pint every few days, you're gonna take smaller amounts every day. Twice a day, okay? Three times if we can swing it."

"What?" Aidan asked, staring at Josh like he was crazy, which, at this point, he very well could be. The stress may have gotten to him somewhere over the last five years. "Josh, that's ridiculous."

"Why?"

"Because—" But Aidan couldn't think of a reason. Gradual blood loss, a quarter-cup here, a quarter-cup there, would actually probably be healthier for Josh than losing a full pint all in one go every few days. The idea of feeding that often, breaking skin up to three times a day, like he was doing something as normal as sitting down to dinner? The thought made his head spin.

"Exactly," Josh said, clapping his hands. "You can't think of a single good reason not to. It's settled, then. You're getting dinner later tonight. Bring your appetite."

Aidan snorted and waved Josh off, which was unnecessary. Josh was already bounding up the stairs, muttering to himself, and Aidan couldn't really be bothered to wonder what he was off to go do.

He turned to face the wall and shuddered, hard, and a moment later he was in full feeding-frenzy mode. He lifted a hand to his face, dazed with wonder. This had never happened before; his fangs were out and his eyes blown wide and black at just the mere thought of getting to taste Josh again so soon, even if it was only a laughably small, tantalizing amount.

This could get complicated.