Maybe Just A Bite

013

            Living with the vampires was like a dream.

Knox had never been so well fed or well rested in his entire life. His grades were steadily increasing (who knew how easy college was when you weren't worried about money all the time?), his bank account was looking better than it ever had, and even his acne was clearing up. It nearly felt like a vacation.

If he wasn't so aware of Callum's glares, the tense phone calls Valentine seemed to have daily, or of the red bags in the fridge. No attempts for his blood had been made, but he was hard pressed to forget the vampires were predators, and he was their prey.

In hindsight, maybe a pillow barrier wasn't as formidable as it seemed.

The night had started out normal enough, with August glued to his side like a leech until they went to their respective sides. They had formed a sort of routine, dancing the line between what could be platonic. Was it gay if your vampire friend held your hand while you stared into their eyes lovingly and counted the freckles on their cheeks?

Sleep reached him easily, and it was dark when he woke up (which was normal, because there was never any natural lighting inside the nest, so it was pitch black when they slept). A strange, sharp pain exploded in his wrist, like large needles were slipping into his skin. The panic was gone as quickly as it came though, Knox only getting a second to gasp before an unusual, calm feeling washed over him. It was foreign, nearly unnatural as he felt his heart calm, his tense muscles relax. They weren't his emotions, he was aware of that, but he was powerless to do anything but sigh at the strange sensation. It was like when you tasted a purple candy, and you knew it was supposed to be grape although it tasted nothing like the real thing. Artificial and manmade, but still sugary sweet and syrupy against your tongue.

The needles slid out, and there was only a moment of relief before something warm and wet sealed over the wound, and then the feeling of sucking. It took his sluggish brain longer than it should have to understand that he had been bitten.

He couldn't move a muscle. Vampires were venomous creatures, their fangs ejected an anti-coagulant as well as a muscle relaxant, immobilizing their prey so they couldn't struggle while they feasted. Reasonably, Knox knew he should have been flipping his shit internally. Even if his sympathetic nervous system wasn't working properly, he should have at least been concerned. He wasn't though.

He didn't make a sound as his thoughts started to go fuzzy, and he was sure if he could have seen anything his vision would have been going dark.

Knox didn't know how they ultimately noticed, but suddenly light flooded the room from the hallway. He got a glimpse of August's reddish curls before he was hauled off of him.

Just like that, the spell broke. The calm fled, and it left something horrible in its wake. Knox had been hungry before. Specifically, his first few weeks in his apartment, when all his money had been spent on deposits and getting his water and electricity turned on and purchasing a mattress. His pantry had been practically bare for the first two weeks, he'd resorted to visiting the pantry for students in need on campus and the soup kitchen for homeless people. Even that hadn't been quite enough, there had been a few nights where his stomach had twisted painfully while he tried to sleep, vision dancing with spots from the lack of food.

For a split second, an all-consuming need swirled through him, a cavernous pit of longing and want that stemmed from his throat and spread through his body like acid. It felt like rage almost, like he needed to rip into someone's flesh to feel right again.

Then it was gone, and Nash was standing above him, blocking his view of the rest of the room. It didn't hide the inhuman snarling though. He couldn't do much more than blink up at him, though, mind reeling from what had just happened and muscles frozen from the venom.