Happy Valentine's Day, guys. I wanted to get this up before midnight my time, and I made it! Thanks for sticking with me throughout this story. Right now we're looking at a total of 14 chapters and a possible epilogue, so it isn't over yet!
Aidan was not one for meditation, but staring at the dark lids of his closed eyes eventually gave way to some semblance of peace. He could not imagine death, that stark, blank nothingness that awaited, and he knew his months underground were only a pale shadow of what was to come. Even then, during his literal and figurative darkest days, he had had Sally and Josh, in a manner of speaking, to keep him company. Their light quips and at times, inappropriate comments had kept him going, even though there were some days Aidan still felt like he had a few screws loose upstairs, the pieces not quite meshing together anymore. They had been there for him, two bright spots in the endless night, and he would not have them, or anything even close to them, where he was going.
Josh was angry at him, a persistent, simmering buzz that had lasted the course of a long, uncomfortable week. He came down twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening, to leave the pre-packaged blood vials for Aidan on his table. He had stopped measuring him because Aidan had stopped moving to make it easy. The first day of Aidan's stillness Josh had let him be, asking him only twice to take off his shirt so he could analyze the marks before he seemed to realize Aidan was having none of it. The second day Josh tried to manhandle him into a sitting position, which he managed, and even got his shirt off with a lot of grunting and swearing. Josh was strong and Aidan wasn't all that heavy, all things considered, but it was not easy for someone of human strength to manipulate what was essentially a beanbag of unmoving flesh. Josh had gotten his measurements that day and left victorious, if a little sweaty and dishevelled. He'd smelled divine, his blood thundering under his skin.
The third day Josh yelled at him, refusing to manipulate Aidan bodily into any sort of position, demanding answers he already had. Aidan just looked at him, somewhere between sad and frustrated, but mostly just tired. He was so overwhelmingly tired these days.
After that day Josh had stopped trying to measure him, and just slipped in, put the blood down, and slipped out. It was what Aidan had wanted; less contact, less complication. He wanted Josh to start to find his constant, dogged stubbornness annoying, maybe think him selfish for refusing to speak. In a perfect world Josh would come to resent him before he died, but he knew he couldn't hope for that much. Josh was mad, but he was mad because he loved him.
And Aidan was acting this way because he loved him.
He didn't expect Josh to understand, and explaining it would have defeated the purpose. So Aidan laid there, only getting up to move around every so often, and only when he was sure Josh wasn't going to come down. He needn't have bothered being paranoid, though. Josh stuck to his routine, his wordless twice-a-day visits, and Aidan stuck to his. It was better this way.
It was also sheer, unbridled misery.
Aidan supposed it wasn't much of a shock that his "Josh-shadow" appeared to him after the fifth day. He was often visited by apparitions, dead or alive, a little side-effect of being alive for so long and maybe more than a little bit insane. Josh-shadow was a lot like the real Josh, only a little preferable right now, since the shadow wasn't mad at him.
It was pretty critical and judgmental though, but that wasn't so surprising, considering it was Josh.
"So…" Josh-shadow said, motioning with his hands like he was prompting Aidan to fill in a blank. "You're… dying, and you're really going to spend your last few days like this. Pouting, essentially."
Aidan didn't answer Josh-shadow. If he got into the habit of talking to fake Joshes it would be even harder to keep ignoring the real one.
"You know you're acting like a kid, right? An actual, literal child."
Aidan let out a sigh at that one, but it turned out to be a mistake to give Josh-shadow even the slightest hint of attention. He took it as validation and barrelled on.
"I'm—the real me, that is—I'm gonna be down here in about…" Josh-shadow checked his watch, which seemed like a ludicrous gesture to Aidan. He was a figment of his imagination. How was he supposed to tell time? "Half an hour. You don't have to be this way, you know."
Aidan stared at the corner of the room, but Josh-shadow moved into his line of sight, brow furrowed, giving Aidan the serious frown he knew so well. Incensed, Aidan shifted his gaze to a different part of the room.
"I know you're feeling weird. I'm—real me—probably feeling weird too. But, hey." Josh-shadow moved into Aidan's line of sight again, and Aidan looked away. He could play this game all day. Josh-shadow sighed and gave up. "Look at it this way. You've got what, a few more weeks in you, best-case scenario? Josh and Nora, hopefully, have their whole lives ahead of them. You should really do what makes you happy now, while you have the chance." Aidan rolled his eyes, but Josh shook his head vehemently. "No, listen! I don't mean to be a selfish douche. I mean, they love you. All of them, even Nora. Even if this is sort of uncomfortable, or weird, it's only for a while. You're only for a while. They won't hold this against you, especially not after you're in the ground. Figuratively speaking."
Aidan finally looked over at his very tenacious figment and gave him a long, withering stare. Josh crossed his arms and stared back. "You know it's true."
For the briefest of moments, Aidan was tempted to talk to Josh-shadow, as he had done many times with Bishop, with Josh and Sally while he was underground (and for a while after that, too) and with other various apparitions. Still, if he had only a few weeks left, he might as well keep up his streak of breaking the bad habit of talking to himself like a psycho. Aidan averted his eyes again and Josh-shadow sighed.
"Sally and Nora already know. I bet you anything other-me knows too. You guys aren't fooling anyone." There was the sound of someone moving upstairs—Aidan didn't know why he referred to it as "someone," he'd know Josh's shuffling, hesitant footsteps anywhere—and Josh-shadow perked up at the sound too. "Here I come, little early today. So, no more of…" he gestured broadly to Aidan, head to toe. "This, okay? Seriously. I will not leave you alone about this."
With that, Aidan's apparition of his roommate vanished, and his real roommate's footsteps could be heard coming down the stairs. Aidan sighed and settled back on the bed, in the precise position he was always in, and waited.
Josh pushed the door open almost soundlessly, the doorknob in one hand and the tray of glass tubes in the other. He glanced over at Aidan as he entered—he always did, quickly, like he didn't want to but couldn't help it. Aidan stared back, not bothering to hide the fact that he was looking. Josh pressed his mouth into a hard, thin line for a moment, then walked over to the table and set the stand of vials down. Aidan was expecting him to turn and retreat, like usual, but Josh remained where he was, staring either at the blood tubes or at nothing, lost in thought and looking through the world. Aidan wasn't all that surprised when he finally spoke.
"Thank you," Josh said glumly, and for a second Aidan's poker face broke and he frowned. Josh wasn't looking, though, so Aidan was able to make a recovery. "For not just… chucking the blood, or anything. First few days I thought you might be, but I know that you're keeping up with your feeding."
Aidan had nothing to say to that, vow of silence or no. He didn't know how Josh knew so positively that Aidan was still taking the blood, but it didn't really matter.
"I feel good, if it makes even the slightest dent in how you feel. Been eating a ton, keeping up with the shakes, drinking my weight in water. My new hobby is peeing." It took Aidan a bit of resolve not to smirk at that. "I'm running out of vacation time, so it'll be back to the hospital sooner than later. You've got enough stocks of these," he paused and tinked his finger gently against one of the glass tubes, "to last you another few days."
Aidan's first impulse was to nod to show he understood, but he couldn't bring himself to "break character" and engage with Josh. This was the most the other man had said to him since yelling at him many days ago, and the temptation to just talk back was overwhelming. Better this way, Aidan reminded himself, gritting his teeth.
"I'd still like to measure you," Josh said with a sigh. "But I understand why you don't want that. You're not wrong," he said, turning slightly away from the table, which was what he had been talking to this whole time, and showing Aidan part of his tired profile. "Just… you're not right, either. If that makes sense."
It did and didn't, another paradox. That was simply what Josh was to him these days. A werewolf, his friend. Infuriating, calming. Supportive, challenging. The best and worst thing about life right now.
"Well," Josh said, shrugging slowly. "That's it, I guess. Just wanted to… I don't even know. Just wanted to talk to you, talk at you, even if you don't want to hear it. Guess I'm being selfish in that way. Sorry." He finally looked over at Aidan and the two of them met eyes, unspoken things heavy and dense in the air between them. It felt like the charged, thick atmosphere right before lightning struck, almost solid against his skin.
Then Josh cleared his throat and looked down, disappointment clear in the briefest of flashes on his face as he made for the door. "Just—I'm not mad, okay? I just wanted you to know. I love you, Aidan. I just want you to be happy at this point."
Aidan knew how he'd meant it, the simple, pure, uncomplicated, labelless love that they had always shared, before something else had crept in there and mucked it all up. He knew instinctively because of how much he'd punched the word love, how he'd reported it with zero discomfort, zero shame, zero uncertainty. Aidan knew because he felt the exact same way.
And it was just too bad that there was more, tangles and heaps of more, deep, winding roots of more, lightning strikes and blazing fires of more. It was too bad, it made everything so much more complicated, but Aidan could not be bothered to give a flying fuck anymore. He crossed the room to Josh in less than a second and was rewarded with a look that was devoid of any surprise, absent of fear, Josh's brown eyes softening in a way that almost seemed to say finally as he turned to meet him halfway.
Aidan crashed his mouth into Josh's and they clutched together in a hard, frantic tangle, pressed together suddenly from shoulder to hip. Aidan shoved Josh backwards and there was a thud as their bodies slammed into the table. The blood vials tipped over but it didn't sound like they'd broken.
Every second that passed Aidan expected Josh to push him away, come to his senses and discover he didn't actually want this, want him. Instead Josh raked his fingers into Aidan's hair, pulling them hard together, breaking the kiss only to breathe, hot and hard panting breaths, against him. Aidan felt a growl rising in him, low and unstoppable, and Josh muttered, "fuck," and pushed his face against the side of Aidan's jaw, his intent cut off by some sort of misfiring connections in his brain. A moment later Josh seemed to come to himself and finished the gesture, mouthing and nipping at Aidan's skin before moving down to the hypersensitive skin of the vampire's neck.
He couldn't know it was a particularly erogenous zone for his kind—Aidan had never told him, and who else would he have found out from? Aidan rolled his eyes back and let out an animal sound that came from somewhere deep inside him he didn't even know he had anymore. When had someone last made him feel this way?
"Aidan—" Josh gasped out near his ear, and Aidan had a momentary, terrified moment of thinking he was going to back out. Then Josh's hands travelled down his body, grasping at the beltloops of his pants, and Aidan felt like dying when he muttered, "please."
I can't, Aidan thought, even as he yanked Josh hard against him and threw the pair of them at the bed. The sentiment was alien to him, the true meaning unknown as he tore Josh's shirt off over his head, interrupting his roommate's own impatient ripping at his own button-down. A few unlucky buttons caught on Josh's heightened strength and sang across the room, skittering for cover under the furniture. I can't, I could never.
Aidan lowered himself down over Josh's hot, impossibly hot skin, burning against his as if with fever. As he bit down on the smooth, hard planes of his body, he realized with a start that his fangs were sheathed. This wasn't about blood-lust, and feeding was the last thing on his mind though Josh's scent was heavenly and distracting. This wasn't about being a vampire, or being about to die, or about Aidan at all. This was about Josh, and Aidan could feel himself getting lost already, sinking down into the one person who had always, would always be there.
I can't.
And as Josh yanked him closer with strong legs wrapped around Aidan's waist, pulling him back up for another demanding, hungry kiss, Aidan finally got the rest of the memo from his addled, love-drunk brain.
I can't say no. Not to you.
There would be consequences. People would get hurt.
And Josh whispered his name again, a broken thing in two parts, just syllables breathed out between movement, and Aidan didn't care. His name had never sounded so good, an affirmation that Josh knew it was him, that he wanted him, so much that it was his name Aidan was eliciting now with every touch, every taste. No bender could ever compare to this. If the end was around the corner, Aidan was alright with that, knowing that it had been leading up to now.
I could never say no.