The Vampire, His Kith And Kin

---

 

As the consummate cosmopolitan vampire – a pacifist, if not a vegetarian – Adrian was a cheap date, which was fortunate for both of them. It was a little counter-intuitive, but it stood to reason that it’d be hard to offer him anything he couldn’t obtain for himself, other than what he amicably called the pleasure of Dan’s company. Not that two guys, warm or not, couldn’t go to dinner; you saw pairs from time to time in New York where there was no other conceivable explanation, holding hands under the table. And that would have been all right – a little uncomfortable, but all right – if feeling bought and paid for didn’t drive Dan crazy. Not that he was particularly versed in the ancient arts of courting other men, but if they were going to see each other, they might as well do something that wasn’t a fundraising fete.

They could hardly take it back to Dan’s place, with Rorschach hanging around – the way he was lately, anyway, and Dan still had neighbors. So at some ridiculous hour they’d retire to Veidt’s ancestral penthouse, coffee for Daniel and a conspicuous mug of hot water for Adrian. (He’d never seen him eat anything – assuredly not anyone, which gave him the creeps, but it certainly had to happen.) Adrian was an apt conversationalist on most topics, though sometimes things got a bit grim – the repercussions of Byron Lewis’ staking, or the subject matter covered in Under The Hood and what it threatened to do to the tenuous radio silence on the old gang’s scandals. The only time it veered anywhere near personal matters was discussing vampires’ rights initiatives and such. Dan didn’t feel like Nite Owl then, in or out of civilian garb; he felt like a call girl making small talk, and to his alarm, he often liked it. Veidt seemed much more patient when he wasn’t being Ozymandias (after all, having all the time in the world, and other Twilight Zone-esque phrases that volunteered themselves) and they did have shared interests, more than he would have expected. Adrian had a long memory for Dan’s little anecdotes and quirks, and it felt.. nice. Nice to have somebody who listened.

It must be a cruel fate to remember everything, every near miss, every window of opportunity you’d watched slip shut.

There had been a few near misses long before, when they’d still been patrolling their separate beats, both of them; they weren’t grand incidents of seething sexual tension, more like things you’d laugh with Laurie about at dinner. They had never known one another as two mortal men, Adrian having acquired that which he sardonically described as a “gift” somewhere in his twenties, which was Daniel’s adolescence. From whom he didn’t say, and Dan didn’t ask. It seemed uncalled for. God only knew what he got up to these days, with that as an open secret.

 

“We went about fighting crime in very different ways, Dan, but I felt like we could have understood each other. You were always very genuine with your heroics. I admired that.” His eyebrows gave a sardonic little lift on ‘fighting crime’, but otherwise he seemed as earnest as Dan had ever seen him. ‘Earnest’ unfortunately not precluding ‘full of shit’, in Adrian’s particular instance.

“No, you didn’t, Adrian, for the longest time you hated what I was up to, some rich kid building grappling hook guns and night vision goggles–”

“You build things, Daniel. You’re restless without a new project to work on, isn’t that so?”

“…yes, but–”

“Sometimes it feels like we’re the only ones who enjoyed the activity and not merely the glamor of it all.” That particular phrase was laden with morose undertones. “I feel like I might go mad without a dozen different projects to juggle.

“You wouldn’t know a thing about glamor, would you?” Dan said, a little more bitterly than he’d intended. His coffee cup made unpleasant scraping sounds against the brushed steel countertop. “It’s hard to buy that you’re languishing in obscurity when you’re CEO of a billion-dollar company by day with purple-tinted windows, and at parties all night with Klaus Nomi–”

“You’re welcome to join me. there’s so little else I can do and remain a respectable individual in my condition. You know the way public opinion’s turning. I could pack my bags and move to some other, more deserving country, take up the practice there – so could you, for that matter, with your Harvard education – but I’d be abandoning what I meant to do here in the first place. I’d be a waste of a costumed adventurer and businessman. What I’ve been courting you for – besides the sex, which is excellent,” he said with another little raise of blond eyebrows, “is a collaboration. Consider it gainful employment.”

“As what, your secretary?”

Dan had a sudden, ugly vision of his own forearm ringed with bites. Adrian had never asked, no, but that euphemism made him shudder.

Adrian chuckled, an artificially warmed sound that had metal underneath it. “No, Dan, nothing like that. Think of it like having a partner again. I’ll sponsor you, you can write all the articles on ornithology you like but we’ll have other projects–”

“I really don’t know what you’re asking here, Adrian – on a book? On a line of action figures? What?”

“There’s a feature film in pre-production stages with your name all over it, Dan. Adventure, heroics, science fiction,” a wry quirk of his lips, “horror, romance…”

“What would I be doing? Props?”

Dan hadn’t considered that. Veidt being aggressively thoughtful about costumes and adventures he still didn’t care for, but an actual, non-euphemistical project, something more constructive than a gentleman’s hobby… (He really did love birdwatching still, but having grown up with it, it made him feel every year of living age. The pleasure was fading, from both the academic and hands-on parts of it.) Still, it gave him pause. Where was Adrian with a job for an old friend last year, when the rent went up?

“Since when did Veidt Industries make movies?"

(Adrian didn’t care too much about film. Nothing personal, he’d stated, he just found it tedious. The one time Dan had seen him unabashedly enjoy something, he’d dragged him to some foreign film with Greek subtitles, Iphigenia as a nut-brown androgynous apparition of a girl with fangs that changed prominence between shots. Adrian had loved it. Dan found it creepy.)

Adrian laughed with the spontaneity of a movie star, except for the needle-points of white teeth, sticking out like his damned cat’s when his head jerked back.

“You wouldn’t believe half of what we do.”

 

---

 

Veidt was more devoted to kissing than actually having sex, and Dan would be lying if it wasn’t a little bit of a relief. Sometimes what was all they got up to after a particular meeting, pressing bodies and embracing and pressing one another with kisses. It had seemed like a demure embarrassment at first, either Veidt too repulsed to do anything with Daniel Dreiberg’s all-too-mortal body or assuming drastic inexperience that could only be remedied by sliding on top of him and necking like a teenager. (Dan also had the uniquely unpleasant thought intrude that maybe Veidt was gay, he just wasn’t attracted to grown men. Or that things weren’t entirely operational downstairs, though he’d felt firm evidence to the contrary through damnably well-tailored slacks.) There were other reasons to be wary, of course. Vampires had existed in America long before a German had made them acceptable, with golden eyes and golden hair. As instrumental as Adrian’s pacifism had been to his fame – as genuine as it seemed – Dan wasn’t entirely at ease.

When things had developed to a certain point, and the clothes came off – Adrian immaculately well-muscled, smooth as a wax figure – Dan tried his best, which was still damn good. Veidt did appreciate his youth, but mostly his life, and his earnestness, and he said so.

But even when the sex was great, he lay awake after thinking sullen, limping thoughts – I went to Harvard, damn it! being at the pathetic forefront. Regretting his own trust fund, regretting whatever sexual defect there was in him that made previous pretenses of strict heterosexuality evaporate in proximity to men who looked like Steve Rogers.

 

They didn’t make it into bed, at least not both of them. Whether it was meant as some kind of apology or not eluded him, but Adrian got him up against the edge of the bed, firmly told him to have a seat and to take his glasses off, and dropped to his knees. It was unexpected, to say the least, but not unwelcome, and in his state of arousal (pleasantly glossed by a hard cider from Veidt’s space-age cooler) having a beautiful blond buried in his lap was… well. Adrian gave him a cursory look before starting on his belt.

Veidt mouthed at Dan’s erection through the cloth of his pants, at once very businesslike about how he meant to handle him and utterly abandoned to it. With his cheek pressed to Dan’s thigh he murmured something approving, in an unexpected tone of voice – hoarse and with accent heavy, thick with pleasure. Daniel was so hard that it hurt, and barely knew what to do with himself – he clutched at the edge of the bed, as Adrian’s expert hands drew his underwear down and firmly encircled the very base of his cock. Another pause, as if awaiting further instruction, and he took him into his mouth while he watched.

He could feel the urging of teeth behind Adrian’s lips. That alone kept him on the very edge of losing himself, losing everything to this and to impossible pleasures. His hand knotted in golden hair. An element of terror cut through the proceedings, soothed by the very human touch of his mouth, of his tongue and his pleasantly cool lips, youthful without fear of age.

He came harder than ever, feeling Veidt’s whole body tense as if the same shudder ran through both of them. Adrian exhaled raggedly and he felt him swallow, before he drew back entirely.

“Thank you, Daniel.”

Adrian got up to brush his teeth; Dan laid back on his dove-grey expensive sheets and thought.

---

 

But after what might have been a long while, he hadn’t returned, and things started to get cold. Dan tugged his pants back up and cautiously set off down the hall.

“Hello?”

 

The door was ajar. Adrian stood before the mirror in the bathroom.

It was almost a joke – if this had been a movie, a farcical romp through a backlot Transylvania, he’d have been in his street costume, two blots of black greasepaint seeming to hover in midair, and a circlet, and a mask above an empty collar. But it wasn’t, he stood naked and the sight of it, the dead air in the mirror, was like a chill wind. His broad white back, his scarred side. On his face was something there was no name for, something keen and sharp, as if what he saw in the mirror was something very different. Whatever it was turned his lip in almost a sneer. Whatever he saw must have been far away.

Dan wasn’t sure whether to be concerned or deeply unnerved.

 

“Do you need help with anything?”

“No, no,” he said lightly, in a bloodless voice. “I’m only thinking. You’re very welcome to stay the night.”

He washed his face and followed Dan back to bed.

---

Dan was acutely aware in Adrian’s presence of how little his own brightness meant – a repeat of the experience of going from a progression of close-knit private schools, where he was considered precociously bright and teased accordingly, to Harvard, a place with less overt teasing but populated entirely with promising young people with wealthy fathers from obscure private schools. He’d been relieved at first not to be the only one, but the relief had given way to feeling completely overshadowed, small and dull. Dan’s little intellect glowed; Adrian’s blazed.