Let The Darkness Lead You Home 9 страница

Under the circumstances, it's too weird standing while Gerard sits, but all the other chairs are too far away, so Frank lowers himself to the floor. "I haven't been spying. I've been watching. Trying to—" Live vicariously through you. Learn what it's like to be a vampire. "It can't be news to you that I have a thing." Frank gestures, encompassing Gerard's existence. "But I don't think you get it's not a new thing."

"What have you seen?" The bite of fury is gone from Gerard's voice, but what's left is far from idle curiosity. Frank wants to move closer, wants to touch, but he stays where he is.

"Mostly I watch you hunt." Gerard's eyes narrow. "And sometimes, sometimes I watch you draw, or read. I just— I know I shouldn't."

"Does anyone else know about this?"

"Not even Pete." That had been a close call, but Frank knows Pete believed him when he said it was old footage. Gerard watches him for a minute, and when Frank holds his gaze, he's pretty sure he sees the tiniest flicker of a smile on the edge of his mouth.

"You know it's creepy as fuck installing spy cameras inside a dude's head, right?" Gerard leans over and plucks Frank off the floor, sets him in his lap. The smile gets a little bigger. "Really? You were worried about me?"

Somehow, though Frank's bones are trying to dissolve with relief, he finds the coordination to wrap his arms around Gerard's back. "Not—" Gerard likes that Frank's been spying on him. He likes it. "I mean, you're a gerent. Rulers are always more vulnerable to like, revenge plots and shit."

"Years. You've been stalking me for years. And you never made a move." Frank doesn't even have to check Gerard's face to know that's delight in his voice. Vampires are fucking weird.

"You're a gerent, did I mention that? And until everything with Ulrich, you didn't exactly seem open to move-making."

Gerard glances over at the monitor. "But you're still watching?"

"Not every day." Frank doesn't mention how much of a cutback that is. "But when you hunt— I like it."

Gerard beams down at him and gathers him close. "Where did I find you, Frankie?"

Frank means to retort, "Rutgers," but first he's breathless with motion, and then he's flat on his back on his bed with Gerard's tongue in his mouth.

When Frank wakes up, ass and throat and groin still feeling sensitive and used in that way he'll never get enough of, Gerard is watching him from his place as Frank's pillow, looking very pleased with himself. "Yes," Frank says, digging his chin into Gerard's sternum a little so he knows Frank's not letting him get away with being a smug bastard, "that was totally amazing. Stop smirking."

Gerard stops, his face going pinched and stern for the flash of a moment before he breaks out the dopey grin Frank will also never get enough of. "You're the amazing one, Frankie. I never thought a human would be so, you're so— All I have to do is touch you and I feel like you're feeding me already. You're so alive."

"What if I—" Frank says. Just to see what Gerard will answer. "What if I weren't? Alive. What if I were a vamp?"

"You're not," Gerard says, too quickly for Frank's liking. "I won't let anyone do that to you."

Which, duh. Obviously Gerard isn't going to let another vampire turn Frank. "But if I were asking you to. If I wanted— Would you still— would we still be this?" Frank counts on the whole naked and plastered together with come and flecks of dried blood thing to clue Gerard in to what this means.

"You don't want to be a vampire." He sounds insultingly certain.

And Frank was mostly kidding. Didn't even really know he was going to say it. Because it's just a fantasy. A blip. But Gerard doesn't know that, and he doesn't have to sound so sure.

Frank pushes up on his palms so he's looking down into Gerard's face instead of up at him. "Is that you telling me I have to choose between being with you and being like you?"

That makes Gerard frown. "But you're a tech, Frankie."

If Frank never hears the word tech out of Gerard's mouth again it will be too fucking soon. "And you were an art student. And now you're a king."

"Technically, the title of king is passed down through a familial line of succession. And there's no—"

"Oh for fuck's—" Frank rolls off Gerard and wraps the sheet around his shoulders, sitting down by Gerard's feet where he won't be tempted to strangle him. Or kiss him into submission. "I don't actually care what the difference between a king and a gerent is. My point is that we don't have to spend our lives doing only one thing."

"But you're a genius. You're the only one who can do some of the things you do. And when you get turned— It was years before I could draw again. And it's still not the same as it was before."

Jabbing Gerard in the calf with his toes, Frank says, "But what I actually asked you is if you would still want to do this with me if I were a vampire."

"Always," Gerard says. "But it's different."

"That's all you had to say." The sun is going to be up soon, and it's not a good idea for Gerard to sleep in Frank's quarters; his are safer. Untangling the sheet from around his legs, Frank gets up. "That's all I wanted to know."

Gerard follows as he heads for the bathroom. "I don't think you're listening to me."

Frank sneaks a glance at the clock. Ten minutes 'til shutters, another ten after that before James is down here looking for his charge. "That's because I'm not," he says. "Almost sunup. I'm gonna take a shower. You probably want to get upstairs."

"Frank," Gerard says, but Frank steps into the bathroom and closes the door behind himself.

**

Gerard pretends they never had the conversation.

When he's licking Frank's blood off his lips, pushing into him, telling him how good he tastes, how hot and soft and perfect he is, Frank doesn't even mind. But then he's back down in his lab sitting in front of his monitors, and it's an itch under his skin he can't dig out.

He tries watching all the hunt footage he has time for, and tries not watching any. But now that he's said it out loud, neither tack makes him think any less about being turned.

Once he stops thinking of it as a blip it starts to feel like something that's inevitable. As inevitable as tech school was from the minute he rescued Princess.

But more than a month after Frank first tried to talk to Gerard about it, he still hasn't figured out how to bring it up again. Maybe tonight, after Gerard wakes up. He'll just dive in, not give himself a chance to second guess his words. In the meantime, Pete needs to get his ass out of Mikey's bed and down to the lab so they can go over the new code they've been working on for the shared-vision circuits.

Like thought summoned him, Pete appears on silent feet, loose hands around Frank's throat to shake him hello. "You have the best of both worlds right here," he says in lieu of a standard greeting. "Why change it?"

"Why change what?" Not that it isn't obvious. Apparently Frank is the only one Gerard isn't talking to about Frank bringing up being turned. Not that Mikey's everyone, but still. Fucking Gerard and his fucking mouth.

Pete taps the screen where a vamp Frank barely remembers as one in a string he installed cameras on is frozen mid pounce. Frank's been synching sound effects to footage while he waits. "You really think that bastard chose to be that?"

"Sure," Frank says, ducking out from under the hand Pete still has on his neck. "It's a two-way street."

Not getting the hint that Frank wants to drop it, Pete wraps both arms around Frank's shoulders, pressing his cheek to Frank's ear. "You can still have a head-on collision on a two-way street, Frankie. And that's one car crash you can't walk away from."

Pete's strong, but Frank knows where all the nerves are in his wrists, and he digs in with sure fingers, breaking Pete's embrace and wheeling his chair out of range. "Point is you do. You get to walk away forever," he says.

Wising up, Pete doesn't try to follow. He's still fucking talking though. "You think Mikey wouldn't take it back if he could? You think Gerard wouldn't?"

"I think what the fuck business is it of yours?" He doesn't need this shit. Not from Pete.

"I think you're my fucking friend and you're thinking with your dick."

Fuck him if that's what he thinks. What the fuck does he know anyway? "When my dick's involved, that's the only time I don't want to do it. I've been at this a lot longer than you have. Don't fucking tell me what I want."

"Just tell me you've really thought it through."

"I don't really have time to do those circuits right now," Frank says. "I have editing to do."

"You're a defensive little shit, but you're my fucking friend, Frank. I'm allowed to worry about you."

"Fuck you, Pete." Frank turns his back on him even though it means he's looking at a blank wall.

"Yeah," Pete answers. "Not that kind of friend."

He doesn't say anything else, and after a minute Frank cases the room in the reflections in the cooling towers and sees the lab is empty.

"Not what I meant," he mutters to himself and goes back to the audiofiles of screams and shouts and running feet.

Gerard appears not long after sunset. Frank's still pissed off and really not in the mood, but Gerard didn't come to sniff around. "Mikey said you and Pete think you've solved the shared vision problem. There's a conference in New York in a couple of weeks and the twins want to come with the Central contingent and have you try again. Will you be ready?"

"Pete thinks we're closer than I do. The best we've got still has a strobe effect."

"Two weeks, though. Sixteen nights, really. If I promise not to distract you too much?" Gerard grins like he has no intention of ceasing any of his distractions. "I'll at least promise not to give you any more work to do."

Frank really wishes he wouldn't grin like that. It makes it hard to stay pissed off. Hard, but not impossible. "Not sure Pete's talking to me, anyway, which, thanks for that. Do you have to tell Mikey every single thing we talk about?"

"What?" Gerard looks genuinely confused.

"Pete knows I asked you to turn me. I can only assume he heard it from your brother, since you're the only one I've discussed it with."

"Oh," Gerard says. Guilt doesn't sit well at all on a vampire's face.

"Yeah," Frank says. "Oh." Frank gets out of his chair and hops up to sit on one of the tables so he's at Gerard's level.

"I didn't tell him so much as I didn't deny it when he asked me."

"How would he even know to ask you? Does he have my room monitored or something?"

"No. We wouldn't— No, Frank. He's just. He's Mikey. He always knew what was bugging me. Even when we were kids."

"So I'm something that's bugging you now? Fantastic."

"That's not what I—" Gerard steps closer, reaches out to touch Frank's arm, but drops his hand when Frank flinches away. "I hate saying no to you, Frank. It's always been so easy to give you everything you wanted, but I can't do this."

"You mean you won't," Frank says, pushing off the table and past Gerard toward the lab's door. "And you're treating me like I'm still the seventeen-year-old kid you met at a college fair." He turns back to see Gerard looking at him, mouth open like he's about to argue. "No. Don't fucking deny it. I've been human longer than you ever were, and I've been living with vampires almost half my life. Been living with you. Fucking trust me when I say I know more than you could imagine about what I'm choosing here."

"Frank," Gerard says, but it's not capitulation.

"No," Frank answers, and slams the lab door behind him.

The music from Frank's speakers is making the windows vibrate, and Frank's spraying sweat every time he brings his drumsticks down, but he can't get lost in the music; he can still see the messages popping up on his screen in the corner. With a grunt, he throws a stick at it, but it only bounces off the wall. He hauls the hem of his t-shirt up to wipe his face and reaches for another stick, but he's thrown or broken them all but the one he's holding in his left hand. He brings that one crashing down on the ride cymbal before throwing it after its mate.

"Music: three," he says, bringing the stereo down to background-noise levels. "Shopping list: drumsticks. Inbox: font sixty." The messages get big enough to read from across the room. They're all from Pete, and they're all minor variations on open your fucking door. "Inbox: delete," Frank says.

"Don't fucking delete my messages," Pete calls through Frank's door. "I just want to talk to you about the strobe problem. Won't bring up your desire to become a blood-sucking fiend, I promise."

Christ, Pete's an asshole. "You're an asshole," Frank calls back, loud enough to be heard over the music.

"I'm the asshole who's gonna solve your fucking strobe problem though. Open up."

"Hall door: unlock," Frank says grudgingly.

True to his word, once he's inside, Pete doesn't bring up vampires once. He's jumping around, hands waving, spitting equations and design adjusts at Frank so fast Frank can't keep up. "Let's take this to the lab," Frank interrupts when Pete finally pauses to breathe.

"This time I really think it's gonna work," Pete says, reaching for the door.

They're tweaking and testing, tweaking and testing until well past sunrise, but finally they get five test feeds in a row without so much as a flicker.

"I've gotta sleep, dude," Pete says when they're done grinning at each other. "You gonna get Gerard to bring us a body tonight to try it on, or should I ask Mikey?

Frank's grin disappears like it was never there. He doesn't want to ask Gerard for anything, but there's no point complaining that Gee's treating him like he's seventeen and then acting like a petulant kid to prove him right. Their relationship is a separate issue from Frank's job. "I'll ask," he says. "With luck we're gonna need Mikey to bring us a prisoner soon anyway."

"Fuck, yeah, we are," Pete crows, raising his hand for a high five, coaxing Frank's smile back.

They part ways in the hall, but when Frank gets his door open and sees the mess he made sulking earlier, he turns around and heads for Gerard's rooms. He might as well start being the bigger man now. Besides, he sleeps better when Gerard's there.

**

If Gerard is surprised to find Frank in his bed when he wakes up, he covers it by rolling Frank under him and kissing him maddeningly slowly until Frank's grappling at his hair, his shoulders, his ass, rutting up into him, trying to get more. Which, since that's pretty similar to most of the other evenings for the last several months, is either a great cover, or indicates Gerard didn't take Frank's fit of pique personally.

Before Frank can come, there's a knock on the door, and James is calling, "Sorry, sire, it's the harbormaster. I think you should talk to him."

"Stay," Gerard says, nipping at Frank's neck, fangs retracted. Then adds, "Please," when he's half off the bed.

"You're going to give James an eyeful," Frank answers, eyes on Gerard's naked ass. He's not planning on moving anyway. He only got into bed two hours ago. Another good thing about being a vampire: he'd get a lot more sleep.

Gerard pulls a pair of pants off a chair and tugs them on as he crosses the room. "I'll be right back."

Frank doesn't get to find out if Gerard keeps his promise because he's asleep again before his dick even goes soft.

The in-situ tests Frank and Pete do that night on the body Gerard brings them go well, and whatever the trouble was at the harbor provides them with three vampire subjects a few days later, and they're ready when Mizuki and Miyako get there. During the redesign Pete and Frank figured out how to get sending and receiving on one chip, so Frank takes everything out and starts again. Pete did one of the installs in the prisoners and did a great job, but no one's ready to ask vampires from another zone to let a pet perform surgery on them. Especially not when they already know and trust Frank's work. Frank's definitely going to have to talk to Gerard and Mikey again about reclassifying Pete to tech status, though.

The mechanism for switching to receiving mode is a sharp glance up, and Frank's about to open his mouth and give the twins instructions when he flashes back to Gerent Ulrich and what happened when he activated his alts. "Um," he says instead, his own eyes finding Gerard. Neither of the women have given any indication that they're likely to snap and start thrill-killing, but it makes Frank feel better that Gerard's only a few feet away. He takes a deep breath and blows it out.

"Okay, Mizuki, turn and look at that screen there, Miyako, close your eyes for me." He motions to Pete to call up the test image. "Alright, keep them closed and roll your eyes up to the ceiling."

Miyako does as she's told and lets out a short squeal. Frank hopes he's right in reading it as delight.

" Ane, are you okay?" Mizuki says, swiveling rapidly to look at her sister.

"Ooh, don't turn like that," Miyako says, eyes still screwed shut. "Is that really what I look like?"

Gerard and Pete give Frank twin thumbs up.

"My turn, my turn," Mizuki demands.

"How do I turn it off?" Miyako turns her face toward Frank.

"Just open your eyes. That resets it to sending only."

The twins trade off, and then back again, never letting go each other's hands.

"We'll just let you practice," Frank finally says, and the three of them leave the sisters alone.

"You need me for anything else?" Pete asks once they're out in the hall. "Because they're having pizza up at quarters tonight, and I'm starving."

"Nah," Frank says. "You go eat pizza."

Pete takes the stairs two at a time.

"That must have appealed to your stalker self," Gerard says, tracing Frank's jawline with a finger and tugging him toward his apartment by one belt loop.

"I would totally do that with you if I thought you'd let me." No point in lying.

"You could close your eyes and watch your own face while I fucked you." Gerard's voice is low and he's nuzzling under Frank's ear and fumbling behind himself for the doorknob. This is a bad idea.

"Gee, we can't—" Frank mumbles, but he's having trouble remembering why. Then there's a crash from the lab and he remembers. Guests. Right there. Probably getting hungry after having Frank work on them half the night.

"Fuck. Better take them hunting," Gerard says, lips still brushing Frank's neck.

"Yes." Frank adjusts his dick in his pants. "You'd better. I don't want starving vamps loose in my lab."

"You gonna watch us hunt?" Gerard asks, eyes on Frank's bulge.

"Rather watch you fuck me. Too bad it's illegal to install alts on a human."

Gerard pointedly ignores the dig.

**

As summer tips into autumn and the nights start to get longer, Gerard ignores sarcasm, hints, and flat-out requests to discuss it with a skill that would be impressive if it didn't make Frank want to scream. They're also having more sex than they have since they started fucking, because that seems to be Gerard's favorite subject-changing tactic. Frank is going to be thirty-three in less than a month. It doesn't matter, not really, but it's a point in time. A deadline. And going through Gerard isn't working, so Frank comes up with another plan.

He finds Mikey in the garage, watching Pete help Ray hoist the engine out of an old Roadster Gerard found in an abandoned house up by Sarasota Springs. Mikey's up in the rafters, perched at the edge of the storage loft, indulgent smile on his face as Pete struts and sweats and lifts heavy things. The guys are making enough noise, and it's far enough away, that if Frank climbs up there to join him, Pete and Ray won't overhear.

Mikey watches silently as Frank picks his way up the rickety ladder and over the scattered half-rusted Frank doesn't know what to sit down beside him. "Nice view," Frank says in greeting.

"It is," Mikey agrees, smile tugging at his mouth again as his comment is timed to Pete bending over to pick something up off the floor, ass in the air.

"That too," Frank says.

Never a believer in idle smalltalk, Mikey lets that hang there until Frank spits out what he came for.

"Would you turn him if he asked?" Frank finally asks.

There's a beat while the guys unhook the engine from the hoist and send the chains rattling back along their track. "He'd never ask," Mikey says.

"Well yeah," Frank agrees. The idea of immortality freaks Pete the fuck out. "But if he did."

"Depends why he wanted it, I guess."

"What if it was me? What if I'm the one who wanted it."

Mikey's head swivels toward him so smoothly he looks like an owl. "Would I turn you. That's what you're asking me?"

"Honestly, I've given up getting your stubborn-ass brother to even talk to me about it."

"Yeah," Mikey says. "No. There are ways to kill vampires, and my brother, stubborn ass that he is, knows every single one of them."

"Gerard would never kill you." Gerard would never harm a hair on his brother's head. Which is why Mikey's the perfect one to ask to do this.

"Pretty sure that if I so much as wet a fang with your blood he wouldn't even stop to remember that we shared a mother."

"What if you told him I asked you? What would he do then?" Frank tries to sound like this wasn't his plan all along, but he's pretty sure Mikey sees right through him.

"Probably throw something. Rant about how you don't know what you're asking, don't know what you want. Accuse me of trying to manipulate him." Mikey arches an eyebrow in Frank's direction. "Not that he'd be wrong about that last part. Which is what you're really asking me to do, isn't it?"

Fucking Mikey.

"Yeah," Frank says, picking a splinter off the railing between his legs.

"Why do you want to be a vamp?"

Frank doesn't really want to tell Mikey this any more than he wants Mikey instead of Gerard to turn him, but maybe it will help. "It's what I know," he says. "And he's— you're my family."

"And you've told him this?"

Frank snorts. "A hundred fucking times. Sort of. Have you ever tried to tell Gerard something he doesn't want to hear?"

Mikey just looks at him. Of course. Stupid question. But Mikey's had like sixty years more practice. Plus, Gerard doesn't have biting or handjobs in his avoiding-conversations-with-Mikey arsenal.

"He always shuts me down. Either pulls the I don't know my own mind thing, or starts in on how turning me would deprive the world of my great fucking genius or some shit, or he, you know, distracts me."

"This is between you and him," Mikey says. "But I'll see if I can get him to listen."

**

Three nights after his conversation with Mikey, Frank's checking out his face in the reflective glass of his cooling towers, wondering if he needs to shave or if he can get away with another day, half listening to Gerard debating the merits of releasing a greatest hits video with clips from their most downloaded movies, when apropos of nothing Gerard says, "If you want any more tattoos, you'd have to get them before I turned you," appearing at Frank's side mid-sentence to trace the ink on his left wrist.

Fearing that turning to look at him will change Gerard's meaning somehow, Frank keeps staring at his own face. "You'll do it?" he asks, voice remarkably steady.

"I said 'if'." Pushing up Frank's sleeve, Gerard scratches lightly at the stars on his forearm. "'If' isn't yes."

"If I want more tattoos you said. Not if you turn me. But that's a good point. The one thing I hadn't thought about."

"There's a lot you haven't thought about. Or you wouldn't want to do this."

Frank doesn't tell Gerard to fuck off. He doesn't kick him. He doesn't junk-punch him. He's proud of himself. Without pulling his arm from Gerard's loose hold, Frank edges back so he's leaning calmly, casually on the edge of the nearby desk. "I get that you maybe didn't do a lot of thinking before you turned, but I've had fifteen years to see what I'm getting myself into."

"You won't be human anymore. You lose all that." Gerard lifts Frank up and sits him on the desk so he can settle between his knees, forearms propped on Frank's shoulders. "You wake up and it's gone."

Grateful Gerard's in a t-shirt tonight and not one of his skin-tight vests, Frank gets his hands on the skin of Gerard's back, smooth and soft and cool. "I think about killing. What it would be like to rip a person's throat out with my teeth. The taste of the blood, the sound of their last breath leaving their body. At least you do it to survive. It's you or them. I'm just— I know what feels more monstrous to me."

Gerard's hands cup the back of Frank's head. "But you don't do it. You're not out there killing people, Frank. Thinking about it's not the same. Fuck. I used to think about killing people all the time. The drones on the subways, the assholes— It's not the same as doing it. Doing it and loving it. We are monsters. Don't kid yourself."

"Ninety-two percent of our sales are to human customers. They throw money at us to keep them supplied with fresh carnage." Frank gives Gerard a wry smile, changes tack. "If I'm a vampire at least I don't have to get old and withered while you stay young and hot forever."

"You'll still be hot when you're eighty," Gerard says. "Tiredest cliche in the book, becoming a vamp to stay pretty."

"What about becoming a vamp to stay with your family?"

"Touche."

"Yeah," Frank says. "But I'm actually talking about me. You're my family. My parents— They'd want me to have family." Frank chokes on the words a little. His mom couldn't have known what it would mean to send Frank to live with vamps; she'd never met one. But she's been dead for as long as Frank lived under her roof. She died proud of what her son had accomplished.

"You have me," Gerard says. "You already have me."

"And that would have been enough for you after Mikey?"

"I'll think about it," Gerard says. "You think about those tattoos."

Frank does think about them. He asks around, does some research, finds the best portrait specialist in the country. Of course, she's on the west coast. He's trying to figure out how long he'll have to go for, if it will be worth it or if he should find someone closer, but Gerard offers to fly her in and she agrees. He even helps Frank choose from the pictures of his grandparents, his parents, his uncle, lends his artist's eye to help Frank figure out placement.

"Do you miss them?" Gerard asks, holding a printout of Frank's grandfather against Frank's shoulder.

"Every day." Which is true. They're all still with him in their own ways. "But they'd be dead whether or not I was here, and I don't regret any of this." Frank gestures, trying to encompass his lab, the compound, his life.

"What would they think, their faces on a vampire's arms?"

Tough question, but it's not like Frank hasn't thought about it. "They won't know. And it's me. No matter what I do they're my history. They'd like that I'm proud of that."

Дата добавления: 2015-09-29