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“No.”
“C’mon,”
“No, Jack.”
“It’ll be fine,”
“Mm-mh.”
“Won’t even hurt,”
“Nope.”
“Aw, c’moooooonnn,” Jack whined in a gratingly high voice. His legs kicked back and forth beneath a large armchair across the room, slender feet swinging several inches from the ground. Red and black folds of his dollar store costume swayed in constant movement. Pitch hesitated between the door and the window, uncertain of which portal would make for the easiest escape should their disagreement sour further. The glare of moonlight outside further complicated his choices. Oh, and with the house technically being occupied, he had had to quench every lamp in the place because Jack, Jack, finally understood what a glaring bother light could be. The so-called “splitting migraine” that he’d bitched about for the past forty minutes (even though Pitch had been kind enough to scurry around the damned house on the boy’s whim like some servant) would absolutely not subside until he got a taste of blood.
Gleaming white fangs poked proudly through his mischievous smile, the effort he’d shelled out for the pretence of a headache drying up with childish impatience.
“Yanno,” he drawled in the unconscionable sing-song of a noxiously bad winner, “I could probably overpower you,” the instant stillness in Jack’s limbs informed Pitch that his shooting glare had done its job. Jack waved his hands in what was meant to be placating fashion, feet still kicking. Had they a mind of their own? Pitch secured his robe more tightly, hyper-conscious of the fat moon outside the window, carefully avoiding the searching streaks roving along the heavy hems of maroon velvet curtains. Of course, a full moon on Halloween, his one time of visibility to all humans, and it was wasted on Jack.
Not just that, a ridiculously-dressed, currently-hexed version of Jack, who, he proddingly reminded, could not be sure that this transformation was not permanent, and that dear little Jamie was liable to become a sweet, rosy-cheeked snack. He’d thought life had well-prepared him for all its obscene injustices; the routine and tacky chaos to his detriment (whatever composed the cape was cheaper and more obnoxiously coloured than the Bird’s Vegas-style get-up). With all his misfortune, one might guess that Pitch would have come to expect these little punches life kept knocking at him.
But no.
Vampire Jack was a curveball.
All Hallows Eve, and Pitch should be out partying, wrecking a town, giving children and adults alike nightmares for the next three weeks from the toxic cocktail of sugar, insomnia, haunted houses, walking ghosts, and all the best horror movies. No, instead, he had to babysit a version of Jack so foul, needy, selfish, and impudent, he might as well have spoken to a mirror.
Pitch considered that he might not have generous opinions of either of them. Then Jack insisted for the fortieth time that it’ll just be a pinprick and you don’t even need blood, anyway.
That is not the problem.
(Pitch’s blood is more precious than all the iridium in the universe. He sets the price of his own neck.)
The problem is that Jack, well, Jack…
maybe…
… could
over…
power…
him....
No, no, that wasn’t the issue.
He was drinking punch. Where had he gotten punch? And that ridiculous cloak was gone and Jack was indulgently guiding him to sit in the vacated velvet chair. He flicked off the arm but sat anyway.
“That’s it, just sit down and relax.”
Pitch’s existence flared with all the hatred it could muster against Jack’s fiendish charm, but his ire wilted morosely into the surely alcoholic drink Jack had supposedly fetched and forced on him. As if Pitch would tilt his neck to the first vampire that offered him a drink, no, sir, Pitch was a class-act. It helped that Jack’s selection was only some moderately disappointing fruity concoction which tasted more like jet fuel than vodka with twice the burn. It went down hard and hot, and beyond the giggling lancing through his ears, Pitch ascertained that he had said that aloud, and that maybe the four sips he’d thought he’d had were actually a glass and a half.
Jack was persistent, he’d give him that.
“I think it’d be a waste not to take advantage of the situation.”
“And where was that logic back in Antarctica?” Pitch shot glumly, not bothering to bristle when the fire at Jack’s inconstancy invariably missed. Jack shrugged and leaned back, the ripple of his shoulders enticingly youthful under a thin white T-shirt. Pitch snorted at the lack of effort in the costume. Jack showed his teeth with only some ill intent.
“Look, as far as I know, this thing finishes at 3:30. We only have four more hours of me being a totally-cool, sexy teen vampire.” He flicked his hair moodily and Pitch rolled his eyes, “Honestly, that you’re not jumping me right this second sort of convinces me that you can’t, anymore.”
“That’s not going to work on me,” Pitch piped up drunkenly, his words toddling between each other on shuffling sea legs, “I’ve been alive for longer than man has existed. Frankly, it doesn’t concern me whether or not I can reproduce.”
“I’m not talkin’ about reproduction.”
Jack’s narrow, perfectly-shaped finger dragged up Pitch’s chest until the whole of a frozen, pale hand cupped the side of his hot neck, and a tiny gasp escaped his lips with the sour taint of alcohol. For a moment, the contact of skin had not been vile. Nevertheless, he again pushed Jack away and returned his lip to the rim of the cup, mumbling stupidly,
“My god, whatever you put in this drink is worth millions.”
Jack chuckled and the cup disappeared, or perhaps he just took it and Pitch was too damned distracted to notice anything beyond the faint trace of sharpened nails gliding along the prickled swaths of gooseflesh on his neck, carding the roused pores into fine dark streaks. Pitch tensed and Jack giggled again, swinging a leg over an arm of the chair as he leaned back.
“It wasn’t that much booze, actually.” His eyes shimmered and seemed almost to glow, the words distant and faint in Pitch’s thrumming ears. All he could hear was the sound of his heartbeat, fluttering at the touch of cool lips to his neck, eyes drooping with another gasp and fingers clenching in ecstasy as razor fangs grazed his throat in delightful warning. A nose brushed his ear and Pitch hummed as Jack whispered,
“Honestly, I’m totally hypnotizing you, right now.”
“You little...”
The words were garbled but sweet; warm. Pitch’s whole world had been dipped in honey, his arms stuck, melded to those of the chair, Jack drooping over him contentedly in a sheath of sugar, and the teeth on his neck piercing the tender flesh with just enough pressure that his artery was massaged by the smooth front surface, the prick of bone devouring his blood and Jack’s saccharine venom flowing into his veins. Pitch’s eyes dilated and his breaths died down next to nothing. Jack grasped the other side of his neck, climbed fully into his lap, pressing their hips together with a shuddering moan. Pitch hadn’t the energy to push back. The more Jack devoured of him, the colder he felt; the lower he sank into the chair, and the more earnestly and greedily Jack sucked his blood.
Vampire Jack, indeed, he mused dimly, the world growing quiet and bright spots forming in his eyes.
A full moon on Halloween allows spirits more freedom, but Pitch had never heard of a spell in this millennium turning someone into their costume. Jack had bounced off the wall when he’d decided on being a vampire, courtesy of Jamie’s costume from the previous year and the fact that his stature was not far beyond that of a ten year-old’s. Stupid malnutrition. Stupid skinny, spoilt fuck. Stupid moon, holidays, tight jeans, capes; stupid blood loss making his mind hazier and softer and Jack only more attractive (if that was possible, in those jeans).
“Mmm, that’s a good boy,”
Pitch groaned indignantly in response, head tilting obediently when Jack finished with a wipe of his mouth, stretching one of the robe’s shadows over the leaking holes in Pitch’s unnaturally-pale neck to sweep away tendrils of smoky blood.
Shadow blood, or whatever it was.
Curlicues pulsed ecstatically in Jack’s vision as he mounted Pitch properly, snapping his fingers and squeaking at the jolt of bony knees against his bony ass, Pitch grimacing as he woke with a pang from the trance Jack had lured him into. Did that count as non-consensual? Could Pitch say it truly bothered him?
Jack tucked himself luxuriously under the other’s chin, basking in the dwindled (and therefore comfortable) warmth of Pitch’s anaemic body. Pitch allowed himself to be moulded according to the boy’s preferences, the casual sneer on his face weakened into a vacant and slightly uneasy purse. He was never sure of what to do in these post-coital (well, post-meal) situations. Jack usually did as he pleased, but the sharing of blood and Pitch lowering his defences enough to be, well, drugged, meant that whatever Jack did, he was for the most part fine with. While he would normally have sped along that train of thought at a disastrous rate, the lull of Jack’s gentle breaths and unsaid thanks, and the slow ticking of the clock in the dark corridor eventually sent him into a pleasant doze.
The next morning, Jack was back to normal, albeit naked, gasping, and streaked with welts, bruises, and other decorations of Pitch’s taste. At least, Pitch thought, he’d given as well as he’d gotten. Over the next few hours, Jack chirped and tittered not unlike the damned tooth faeries about how much fun he’d had as a vampire, what a lamb Pitch had been under hypnosis, and how his blood hadn’t tasted nearly as gross as he’d thought it would.
Pitch wrinkled his nose, “And how did it taste?”
He’d encountered enough undead and their nightmares to glean the particulars of human blood. A being of his nature might differ toward the distasteful, but rather than complaining as he expected, Jack’s face flashed with great distance, pale eyes recalculating the near puff of Pitch's breath, the slender lines of his waist. In a second, he had returned to himself, and as Pitch was about to criticize his lack of manners, the boy belatedly answered,
“I don’t know if I could tell you.”
“Do try,” Pitch retorted on sarcastic instinct, but the intensity of Jack’s stare was more complicated than any replies of like cookies! or good ol’ fashioned steak, which some of the lesser (and more numerous) vampires would note. A moment of supreme tension ached in their discomfort, Jack licking his lips subconsciously and Pitch surveying the flick of pink in utter horror. When it had passed, Jack brightened again, having apparently forgotten the depth of his true answer.
“Well, I guess we’ll just have to do it again, next year!”
Pitch shuddered and rejected him outright, suggesting instead that they jump off a cliff or something else more enjoyable. Taking the bitter attacks in stride, Jack laughed and patted the elder’s ass, eliciting a royal squawk from the now-seething Nightmare King.
“You’ll get to wear the costume. You can tell me how I taste.”
He waggled his peppery brow and Pitch scoffed as the fleeting unease surrendered to Jack’s over-familiarity.
“I am never celebrating Halloween with you again.”
Jack only laughed,
“Keep tellin’ yourself that, Pitchy.”
Pitch did, in all the millions of voices that composed his being, and yet they were not loud enough to subdue that one resounding curiosity:
What might have been Jack’s answer?