Work Text:
The first night after Conrad's life is ruined, he tries to eat a pizza.
He throws it all up of course – all six bites that he had managed to choke down. Apparently, creatures of the night are not equipped to consume anything with tomato sauce, no matter how hard they might try to pretend that it is congealed blood. Which, for the record, is a) really, very difficult, and b) not all that helpful.
As he's sitting on his bathroom floor, vomiting pieces of pizza and whatever he ate before this nightmare began – some bread, some chicken, possibly some carrots – Conrad thinks to himself, Jesus, I am going to make the worst vampire ever.
It is not, all things considered, the most auspicious of beginnings.
–
Conrad isn't exactly angry with Hanna Falk Cross. If it weren't for Hanna and his emergency vampire transformation, Conrad would be really dead. The kind of dead that doesn't come back. Conrad's not exactly alive anymore, but he's up and moving around, which is pretty good. He thinks.
It's just. Conrad has a life. Had a life, before. He'd had a job, and an apartment, and a favorite cafe. He'd liked going to afternoon movies. He'd liked Italian food and fruity drinks. He'd liked going out to rivers and quiet places, places where he could sit and turn his face toward the sun, and just be.
And now.
Well.
It doesn't help that Conrad knows pretty much next to nothing about the supernatural, other than the basics: vampires drink blood, werewolves have a problem at the full moon, zombies want your brains and ghosts will fuck you up.
Three out of four is pretty good. And Hanna's zombie friend might just be biding his time.
Still, the point is that Conrad knows fuck all about vampires, and even less about being a vampire. He doesn't even bother testing out his reaction to sunlight – he's not willing to risk the worst case scenario, and even sunset through the curtains makes his head hurt a little – and he refuses to see how long he can go without blood, because starving yourself is idiotic, no matter how alive you are or aren't.
“It is for science,” Hanna whines, but Conrad has dealt with more frighting things than a sulky ginger man who doesn't even come up to Conrad's shoulder. Conrad dealt with more frightening things than that before the whole vampire business, because believe what you will, but Conrad is almost certain that there is nothing more terrifying than an art student right before a deadline.
“It's to satisfy your weird curiosity,” Conrad snaps, dragging his bag of blood out of the fridge. He's only just starting to taste the difference between the blood types, and unfortunately, tonight is a bag of O negative, which he is not all that fond of.
The zombie, who is currently being called Inigo Montoya, gives Hanna a calm, patient look, and Hanna's mouth goes from a crumpled o of outrage to a scrunched up line of sullen unhappiness.
“Hanna just wants to make sure you don't accidentally go too long without blood,” Inigo Montoya explains, in that soft, uncomfortably ordinary sounding voice. “But to do that, we do need to know how long is too long. It could be beneficial, in the long run.”
Conrad gives them both a long, hard look. Hanna, practically vibrating with enthusiasm, and Inigo Montoya, dead face giving away nothing. This is Hanna, Hanna who condemned Conrad to a lifetime of nights and shadow and blood, Hanna who did his best to help Conrad, just because Conrad needed help.
Hanna, who did not let Conrad die.
He smiles at Hanna, maybe a little shakily, and says, “Sorry, but no thanks. It's hard enough to choke down now – I don't think about what it would be like after I took a break from it.”
Hanna sighs, more than a little dramatically, and says, “Okay, Con-man, my man, but you just let me know if there's anything I can do for you! You name it, and Raphael and I will be there before you can finish your sentence!”
Conrad knows better than to depend on people like Hanna: people who are all over the place, people who don't follow a usual pattern. Conrad like stability, and certainty, and people who don't drag your newly undead body to a sketchy alley to be yelled at by possibly-intoxicated maybe-doctors.
The thing is, Hanna obviously means what he's saying. The thing is, Hanna has yet to break his word to Conrad, even when Conrad is caught up in the worst of his undead identity crisis.
The weird thing is, Conrad believes him.
–
Conrad has not told his mother that he is on an exciting new liquid diet. Conrad doesn't know how to tell her, doesn't know if he can tell her.
Doesn't know how long he can avoid telling her.
–
Conrad is not sure who volunteered his apartment for the purpose of housing sharp-toothed teenage runaways, but he knows that it fucking well wasn't him.
Also, to everyone who has ever crooned at seals or pictures of seals or even just the idea of seals, Conrad would like to politely point out that seals are assholes, in the ocean and, apparently, on two legs. Veser likes to tease Conrad, any and every way he can think of. He once bought Conrad a pink mug with a kitten in a sweater on the side of it.
“To drink blood out of,” he explains earnestly, smug fucking grin smeared across his face. “Y'know, for when you're just not up to biting the plastic first thing in the morning.”
Veser is a smug little shit with a temper that makes Conrad look like an ocean of calm, and a past that would send most people sobbing into pillows. Veser, on the other hand, responds to memories of his past by smiling wide, with all his teeth, and saying absolutely nothing at all. The only thing Conrad has ever seen him cry over is Lee, and Veser doesn't talk about Lee any more.
Veser snipes at Conrad with a thousand little vampire jokes, leaves old tacky vampire films playing so that Conrad will see them when he wakes up, once swapped out all of Conrad's books with copies of Twilight. Veser snarls at Conrad over nothing, tells Conrad that he is the worst vampire in the history of time. Veser is a trainwreck of a person, and a terrible roommate.
The thing is, Veser is, occasionally, strangely thoughtful. He does errands for Conrad in the day, between his classes that he won't talk to Conrad about. Conrad once woke up, only to find Veser passed out on the couch, the wood of Conrad's living room floor gleaming and soft, and Conrad can picture Veser scrubbing the floor in the early afternoon sunlight, the grey of his hair shining like his not-skin.
Veser is rough and abrasive and unwelcome, but he knows about being different, about being strange and unable to change, and he doesn't ever treat Conrad like a threat or a monster.
–
Conrad doesn't really have to do anything about his job, despite his new circumstances. He just tells people that he's busy during the day, prefers to speak online, feels a better creative energy at night. No one really seems to realize that anything is wrong, that there might be other, stranger reasons for Conrad's new work habits. But then, Conrad doesn't report to anyone. Conrad was a freelance graphic designer, and Conrad is still a freelance graphic designer. The only difference is his working hours.
For the first time, Conrad looks around his apartment, and realizes that there is no one to notice that he has changed. No one to lie to, no boss to try and cover with, no coworkers to try to mislead.
Conrad gets to work, and tries not to feel lonely.
–
Toni Ipres is, in a word, shocking. She has shocking hair and shocking lipstick and a shockingly adorable werewolf form, and she says shocking things with a smile on her face and a laugh in her voice.
“You were kind of a dork before you died, huh,” she says one night, perched on Conrad's kitchen counter and nibbling on something small and ginger-smelling that Veser had made. Conrad is on the sofa, trying to read, but Veser is at the other end, reading a textbook and occasionally kicking Conrad's thighs out of either spite or boredom.
Really, Toni's comment is just the most recent interruption in a long and prosperous line of interruptions.
Conrad sputters in outrage, but Veser just barks out a laugh, and after a moment, Toni laughs with him.
“I mean, you still kind of are,” she points out, which, okay, yes, Conrad is aware that he is not exactly the anti-nerd or art geek, but he hasn't said a word to Toni about anything like that, so where is this coming from, and then she continues: “I mean, you're like, a hipster nerd. You wear sweater-vests and live in a loft apartment, you have a dinosaur tattoo-”
At that, Conrad wheels on Veser, wordless with rage. Veser doesn't even bother raising his hands to defend himself, just grins open-mouthed at Conrad, and then goes back to his textbook.
“But,” Toni continues, grinning at Conrad in a much less offensive way than Veser, “you're also tolerable in a conversation, and your taste in music is not at all disastrous. So, you're at least a tolerable sort of hipster.”
Conrad pauses, tries to think of a way to respond to that, and comes up short.
Toni keeps on grinning at him, and says, “Don't worry about it. Just giving you shit in case Veser's been slacking on the job.”
“Unlikely,” Conrad mutters, and Toni laughs, hopping down from the counter to saunter over to the couch, where she throws herself across both Conrad and Veser, who snarls at the sudden addition of weight before tucking his chin into the crook of Toni's neck and arranging his textbook on top of her stomach.
Toni grins at Conrad, her blue-painted toes wiggling in his lap, and says, “Looks like you're adapting just fine, Mister Fangs.”
Conrad thinks about that for a minute. Thinks about everything that he has lost, thinks about the chill he can never shake, the sharp, nauseating shock of looking in a mirror and seeing nothing, thinks about never feeling the sun on his face, thinks about his mother, who he still hasn't told anything. Thinks about his horrific new liquid diet, thinks about the danger that his life is now thick with. Thinks about everything he will never do again, everything he can no longer do.
Thinks about Hanna, vibrant and optimistic, and his friend, quiet and filled with endless calm, and Toni, beautiful and endlessly curious, and Veser, loud and reckless. Thinks about how much different the world looks, now that he is looking for the strangeness hidden in every corner.
“Yeah,” he agrees. “Yeah, I am.”