Darkest Before the Dawn (male/male)
I Feel Better

Barty

My stomach and cheeks hurt from laughing at the absolute dweeb sitting two feet from me. Cadence and I had never liked these stupid questions nearly as much as Felix did, only spurring me on whenever he gave a ridiculous answer.

I asked him what type of animal he would be. A platypus.

He responded to his own question of “which celebrity would you hook up with?” with Cher because he figured she’d be freaky in bed. When I reminded him that she was in her 70s, he shot back with, “that still makes her younger than both of us.” He immediately wanted to take his answer back when I told him Jon Hamm or Anne Hathaway.

“No takebacks – you said Cher, you get Cher,” I argued, ignoring how he kept swearing that he didn’t know if I’d give an actual answer or not. I almost couldn’t breathe or talk between me cracking up, him rolled onto his back and hiding his face from me mocking him.

“But you said two celebrities! I want two celebrities!” he groaned, body convulsing from his giggling. I was so irritated that this wasn’t how he was when he was hired at MMES because I could have fallen for him the week he had started if he had shown this side more.

“Okay, fine, but if it’s like Madonna or Elton John, I’m gonna give you so much shit for being a gerontophile.”

He guffawed, crossing his arms over himself and holding his sides. “You’re so awful, oh my god. Okay. Second celebrity would probably be Mila Kunis. She has a lovely smile.”

I held up a finger to pause him, having a serious question now. “With or without Ashton because I’d be willing to have both.”

He drew his lips into a line, attempting to put some thought into it. Completely by accident, I tuned out his words, focusing on his face and the way his eyebrows curled upwards whenever his pupils moved to the top corners of his eyes. There was this coy half-smile he frequently wore that I used to detest, one I thought was arrogant and smart-assy. Now it was elfish and playful, changed because now I knew the thoughts he had and the feelings he possessed.

On the way to his house, I had to keep telling myself that it was probably inappropriate to try and fuck him on our first date after not having seen each other since September. That was before he was sprawled out on his couch with his feet in my lap and the hem of his Legend of Zelda sweater pulled up just enough to show a sliver of porcelain skin beneath. It may have been fucking stupid of me to keep telling myself that I didn’t need to smother him with kisses and physical affection.

“Mew, it’s your turn to ask me something,” Felix said, putting a stop to my flow of thoughts. His fingers grazed mine when he gave my phone back, which he a thousand percent did on purpose.

We were down to just a handful of questions now. There were still some that I was hoping to avoid with him that would’ve gotten too personal from my end, so I chose the simplest one left. “This one isn’t vampire-friendly,” I warned. My left hand had settled on his bony-ass knee at some point during this. It was stupid how much I felt the need to be constantly touching him. “The original question is asking if you only had one thing to eat for the rest of your life, what would it be? But I’m changing it to ask you what’s the one food you miss the most?”

His eyes got large, searching the ceiling, and he clasped his hands together in a prayer form over his mouth. “Oh, that’s a difficult question,” he muttered. “Tell me your answer first for the original question. I need a moment to think.”

“Well so do I! In fact, I’d argue I need more time than you since there’s been so many food…invention…things since the last time you could eat.”

He rolled those gray eyes, muscles pulled into the impish expression again. “That’s unfair. Fine. Probably chocolate or cheese. I used to love both of those. Going to Switzerland when I was a kid had me spinning because there were chocolate shops all over the place, and my father would buy me these specialty chocolates that had fruits or nuts mixed in them. In France, particularly Lorraine and Champagne, both my parents would spend ridiculous amounts of money on cheese and wine, and they’d have parties with other artists and scientists. I used to steal a bottle of wine and a ton of cheese and bread and just hide away in my room to get drunk and engorge myself.”

I threw my head back to bark a laugh. “I can see you being a pretentious teenager thinking you deserved expensive wine and fancy cheese. That doesn’t surprise me at all.”

“I definitely spent a few years being a lush. Champagne, cheese, and chocolate. What more could a 1930s European boy want?”

“Pretty sure that’s just you,” I teased, getting a scowl in return. He made being annoyed look attractive.

“Alright then, smart-ass, what’s your one food choice?”

“Pizza, hands down. You can have it modified in so many ways. Not feeling gluten that day? Use cauliflower crusts. You have dessert pizza, mini-bagel pizzas.”

“That’s cheating! That’s a category of food, not just one singular item.”

“So was yours. You said cheese and chocolate. You didn’t specify which kinds. Technically, you could make an entire meal out of different cheeses.”

His shoulders were quaking from hidden giggles, face covered by his hands. “You’re such a pain, Mew,” he groaned, voice muffled.

“Yet you still missed me,” I reminded him, wishing I would take his hand from his face because I wanted to look at him. Instead, I gave him back the short collection of questions we still hadn’t answered. Usually by this point, Cade and I got bored with it and start reminiscing about stories we’d think about while answering our questions. After not having heard Felix talk in over a month, I wanted to hear him speak all night long.

Over the past month and a half, while I had been in Hell, I had grown to fucking despise the saying “distance makes the heart grow fonder”. It hit too close to home with the insane way I was feeling towards Felix and his stupid smile and his dumb hobbies and the incredible way his eyes glistened whenever he impressed me with how smart he was. There was a particular way he was able to make me a more compassionate person, softening me in such a way that I almost didn’t know who I was anymore.

Vulnerability was still something I would never like. Felix made it easier to start the process of loathing it less.

His face finally came uncovered by his hand. Light filled those gray eyes. I didn’t know how the fuck I hadn’t kissed him yet. Probably because I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop myself if I started. “Okay, okay, a serious question now,” he finally said, giggles still making their way out of his system. He sat up for this one, leaning against the back cushions of the couch, legs scrunched up closer to his chest with my lap still occupied by his feet.

I was glad feet weren’t part of my fetishes or it would have been over me half an hour before.

“What’s something that you rarely or never tell people?” Felix asked after taking a moment. “I can go first if you want me to.”

A nervous smile came to my face. Cade and I had always given lighthearted responses on this one, stupid responses that never got too deep. Some things were better left unsaid between siblings. “How serious is yours?” I asked, testing the waters to see how we would approach this.

His eyes closed. He furrowed his shapely eyebrows and made a face that said, ‘I regret asking this’. “Um, it’s something only Madeline knows about me, and I’ve been trying to address it with you since we started talking more,” he admitted, his spindly fingers curling and uncurling on his knees.

I sighed and ran a hand through my hair, wondering if honesty was really the best policy when trying to get to know someone who I was this interested in. “Alright. I can go first, then. But you have to swear not to tell Cade or Goldie or anyone else since they don’t know.” The clammy palms were already starting. “And I’m only telling you this because you’re telling me an equally scandalous secret.”

“And I promise to tell you mine. Whatever we say will stay between us.” Fucking finally, he extended his hand out to reach for mine, his cold hand contrasting so heavily with the sweaty heat from mine.

I swallowed the spit that had built up in my mouth, the bitter taste of panic rising in my throat. “I have over a dozen suicide attempts. None of them successful, obviously, but if I were human, I would have definitely died ages ago.” My lower lip was trembling, and my extremities were tingling and involuntarily twitching. Loved when my body betrayed me. “I’ve never told anyone that before, not even Cade. Especially not Cade. She would have lost her absolute shit if she knew.”

Nonjudgmental eyes stared at me, waiting for more. “Are you okay with telling me why you tried to kill yourself?” Felix’s voice was wavering, as if he were trying to keep calm and not freak the fuck out on me. The attempt at it was appreciated.

“Some were because of my parents, like I’m sure you could have guessed. I was raised thinking that I was a useless, unnecessary mistake, so I thought that killing myself would make my family happier. Cadence unintentionally helped me get through that, like she knew something was wrong. Most recently, I had three or four attempts after Richard attacked me, once again thinking that I was as helpful as a bullet to the head, which, no, that’s one I have yet to try. When I was in Hell, I started getting those thoughts again, which is why I picked up journaling.”

“Mew,” he choked out, rearranging himself so that he was seated sidesaddle, leaning into my side. “I didn’t realize you felt that way, so thank you for sharing. I really, really hope you understand how glad I am that you’re still alive and here, though. I mean, you’ve done such incredible things with yourself and have gone so far above and beyond what you think you have. You’re an amazing, talented—”

I had never shut someone up from kissing them before but had to do it to Felix because there was no way I could handle the praise he was giving me. Besides, I had been subduing every craving to kiss him since I showed up on his doorstep ninety minutes before. Now that my hands were entangled in his hair and he was responding so deftly to my actions with his fist balled up in my shirt, I wish I would have had the guts to kiss him earlier.

This one was different from our first kiss. He had been so damn innocent with that one, worried about touching me when I wanted his hands to roam freely. They were doing that now, grabbing at my biceps, grazing across my thighs, and squeezing my shoulders in his attempt to pull me closer to him. My left hand landed on the seat to support my weight, the fingers of my right hand embracing his softly rounded jawline.

My lungs ached from the lack of breathing, yet I didn’t want to stop, too afraid that he wouldn’t want to start again if I ended this too soon. Oxygen finally won out, and I broke away, panting. I kept our foreheads together, my eyes still closed, torso leaning over him and his knees up on either side of me, locking me in place by my hips.

“Damn your lungs,” he hissed, voice hoarse and croaky.

“They’re the worst, I know,” I sighed, allowing myself to peek down at him. His cheeks were ruddy, and his lips were moist and swollen. Those fangs of his had popped from his gums, immediately sending the reminder that he could produce those spit hormones if he wanted. There was almost, almost, the inclination to have him drink from me again, if only to feel that type of way once more, the one that left me melting for him like a teenager after losing their virginity. “If I had known you could kiss like that, I would have encouraged you to do that the first time you kissed me.”

“Dating an ex-sex worker had its perks every now and then,” he teased, giving me a lingering kiss again when I glowered at him for mentioning Madeline at a time like this. “Sorry, couldn’t resist. I like when you’re a little jealous over me.” He smirked and began to push me back into a sitting position, reaching for the top of my skull when we were both upright. “Your horns came out. That’s cute.”

I wasn’t one for embarrassed smiles yet still let one through. “Yeah, that happens whenever I’m not focused on my magic.”

His expression changed, from one of amusement to possibly one of admiration. At least, that’s what I hoped it was. “I know you were trying to distract me from your secret, though. I’m not done with you yet.”

“Should I kiss you again?”

“Mew,” he scolded, a light laugh coming from him when I pulled him against me again, his body molding so neatly against mine like he always belonged there. “Really, are you okay?”

I tipped my head against his and extended my arm along the back of the couch. “Yeah, I’m okay. I started feeling better when Cade and I decided to leave Hell, knowing I wouldn’t have to subject myself to that bullshit ever again if I didn’t want to.” With my finger, I drew little invisible circles and patterns on his shoulder. “You’ll be the first and only person I come to if I start to feel that way again, though.”

“I’ll always be here to listen and talk,” he assured, now throwing both of his legs over mine in a much more comfortable fashion.

“I think you have a secret to tell me?” Anything to get the attention off me again.

“Yeah, right.” His body was tense now. My arm instinctively moved to wrap around him again. “I’ve been trying to think of ways to tell you this for a while now. I’ve almost slipped up a few times, which you’ve caught, but it never felt like the right time to bring it up to you.”

I sighed in my traditionally dramatic fashion. “You’re straight, aren’t you?”

He snickered and settled his head back onto my arm. “Absolutely. That’s why I’m having to resist making out with you and am actively trying to make you my boyfriend. Extremely straight.” He started twisting the bottom of his sweater into his fingers, crumpling the fabric. “Actually, I had considered myself straight at one point, enough to, uh, get married and have kids. It was when I was still human, obviously, so in a different lifetime, but…” His fractured voice trailed off, a crease forming between his eyebrows.

I limply shrugged one shoulder, hoping I didn’t come off too nonchalantly about it. “I kind of figured you had been,” I admitted, his head whipping towards me, eyes large, searching my face, probably hoping I wasn’t fucking with him. “Fee, you’re an attractive, well-educated man from the mid-twentieth century. I’d be more surprised if you hadn’t been married. Someone had to lock that shit down, and I say kudos to your wife for doing it.”

“You’re not mad?” he wondered, puzzled.

“Absolutely not. That was the norm when you were human. It was a different life, anyway, like you said.” I mussed his hair from behind, which seemed to put him at ease. “Can you tell me about your family?”

His expression softened, and he rubbed his jaw some. There was that little humming noise again, which I now found endearing. “Yeah, of course. Sorry, I’m still reeling from you being so okay with this. I was expecting you to be turned off and not want to see me again. And you heard me say I had kids, right?”

Airy laughs came from my nose. “I heard you. I’m hoping this means you’ll let me call you daddy now.”

His hands slapped over his face. The tips of his ears lit up in a crimson blush. “This conversation is over, oh my god.”

“Oh, come on. I want to hear about Daddy Felix,” I insisted, both my arms around him once he curled himself up into embarrassed fetal position. “I’ll stop fucking with you. Tell me everything.”

He gripped onto my arms like he was scared I’d remove them from their position. “Okay. I’ve told you about going to college and the war and all that. I skipped everything in between. When I was attending college, I met Doris. You already know I was studying to be a linguist, and she was studying cultural affairs with a minor in linguistics, specifically in English. We met in our Latin class and clicked rather quickly. She would teach me Latin and Italian, and I would teach her English.”

His voice contained more emotion than I had anticipated, a little bit of wander, a touch of apprehension. I should have been more envious. “Doris was the daughter of a shoe cobbler and seamstress. Her family owned their own business in Murano, but she came to Università Ca’ Foscari on a scholarship.” Biting the inside of my lip was the only way to prevent myself from pulling him in for another quick make out session. I had never heard him speak another language before, but goddamn, that was the way to go. “Are you okay?” he quipped, noticing my sudden tensity.

“Wishing you would speak Italian again,” I admitted.

“Would you prefer that? It may be difficult for you to understand since that’s apparently the only Latin language you chose not to learn.”

“You don’t need to call me out on that, I’m aware that I’m not as talented as Mr. Polyglot over here.” I rolled my eyes and wiggled my hands as best as I could with him still holding tightly to my arms. His deadpanned expression made me stop and nuzzle him. “Sorry, not the right time for sarcasm, I get it. Please continue.”

It was his turn to roll his eyes, the twitch of his lips betraying his amusement. He once again rearranged himself, squeezing his ass between my right thigh and the side of the couch so that he wasn’t sitting in my lap but was still able to be taunting, legs draped across mine again. “Anyway, Doris and I just got along incredibly well. Everything with her was so natural and effortless.” His throat jumped from swallowing. “Which is partly why I like being with you so much. Things with you are simple. I can be myself around you.”

Then would have been a perfect opportunity to tell him that I felt the same. Instead, I opted to shut up, still needing to work through whatever the fuck it was that I was truly feeling towards him.

“Doris and I got married when we were still in college. I had just turned 19 when we exchanged vows, which is insane by today’s standards. A month after we graduated, we moved to West Sussex because my family let us move into their old house. I taught English to French and German students at night, and Doris worked as a schoolteacher until she had our daughter.” He glanced at me to check my face, which I tried hard to keep the surprise from so that he would keep telling me everything. “I’m waiting for you to freak out.”

“Fee, I’m not going to freak out.” I held up a finger because he raised one of his eyebrows out of suspicion. “That being said, hearing you actually say you had a daughter is taking me a second to get my mind around because I cannot picture you as a dad, especially because you were, what, 20 by this time?”

“Turned 20 six days before Rosalina was born. I’m sorry--I shouldn’t have told you this much, I knew it’d be strange to hear.”

There was my hand on his knee again, thumb rubbing the kneecap. “It’s not strange. Between the two of us, I’m the fucking weirdo who’s never been married or had kids. You were preparing your life for the way you wanted it to be, and you wanted a wife and kids. That’s nothing to be ashamed of, babe.” It slipped out without thinking. I had spent a month creating pet names for Felix, saying them to myself in the mirror to get a feel for them since I hadn’t dated anyone before that made me get this much into my emotions.

“Babe?” he asked, the word curling up at the end in a hopeful question.

He would’ve gotten shoved off the sofa if there hadn’t been the conscious effort to not downright ruin this moment. “Uh, if you’re, like. . . I can stop, um. . .that’s. . . Doris and Rosalina. Get back to them. Please.”

“Sure thing, sweetie,” he mocked. He burrowed himself against me, arm across my chest, hand gripping onto my left shoulder. “We had another daughter when Rosie was about three, named Olive, and she was born about a month before I joined the SOE. The agency scouted me out specifically because of my linguistics background and almost called upon Doris until they learned she was a mother. It was a nice arrangement, really. I’d be gone for a week to conduct sabotage missions, like blowing up Nazi supply lines or railroads that took Jewish people to concentration camps, then I would be able to come home for a few days to my family.”

“Love that you’re just glossing over being a total fucking badass.”

“I’ll tell you about some of my favorite missions someday. I once got to set a whole factory on fire because it was producing machinery for German tanks.” A wicked light came to his eyes.

“You’re actually cool, what the fuck,” I hissed, putting my fingers to my temples in disbelief.

“And you used to think I was boring. But, yeah. I got to watch Rosalina and Olive grow up some. Rosie understood that I had to be away to fight bad people. Doris discovered we were pregnant again about two weeks before I was captured.” A scowl emerged. “Unfortunately, I never got to meet our third child. He was our only son, and Doris named him after me since, by the time she had him, the SOE had pronounced me MIA. I learned that years after the fact, when Madeline made me conduct research on them as a form of emotional torment.”

My hand started toying with his curls again, which I noted calmed him some, eyes sliding shut at the touch. “I promise I’ll never make you do anything like that.”

He gave a half-hearted smile, void of any happiness. “I was given the offer to return home by the Red Cross, and I accepted it. I’ve already told you about Alice, who was the human nurse who helped me recover from my time in the internment camp. She was a delightful woman who kept promising me that I’d get to go home to see my family. After I was healthy enough to be released from the hospital, she allowed me to stay with her until I could work some to pay for a train ticket home. She kept insisting that the SOE couldn’t send me back, and I took her word for it since I hadn’t been aware of anything in the outside world for almost two years while I was in the camps. She may have been right for all I knew, and why would she lie to me?”

I spotted his chest rise from the intake of air. Although I doubted he noticed it, he did that whenever he got too worked up, like when I had shot Adrianna in front of him.

“Before I could get home, Alice introduced me to Simone. The two were lovers, but Alice was convinced that I would make a good addition to their family, which is why Simone had been intrigued by me. She wasn’t aware that I had my own family since Alice never informed her, and she was already biting me before I told her why I wanted to get back home. Simone turned me a few days after I turned 27, sealing my fate and condemning me to this life that I’ve had to deal with for more than seventy years.” Brittleness had settled over his voice.

I couldn’t help myself, finding my hand in his curls again. They had grown longer since September, giving him a more modern appearance that suited him. “I can’t imagine everything you’ve been through since you’ve been turned into this,” I began. “The idea of being away from Cadence for too long upsets me, let alone a spouse and three kids. I don’t know how you can keep this whole upbeat personality going all the time, despite all that.”

He shrugged, now avoiding eye contact. I never realized how often he did that whenever he was trying to hide how upset he was, usually by closing his eyes or looking anywhere but at me. “The first few decades were hard, which is partly why I came to America not long after being turned. Escape was easier than bearing the guilt of being in the same country as my family, but never being able to see them. And sometimes, I still get sad whenever I think about it, as if everything were still fresh.”

“What happened to all of them, if you don’t mind me prying?”

Those skinny piano-playing fingers of his reached around to his neck, fingering some unseen spot on the jugular. “My wife eventually got remarried, which I was glad for since it was always a request of mine, should something happen to me. She and her new husband had another child, and they all moved back to Italy to be with Doris’s parents. Rosie grew up to be a florist and had her own business. Olive followed in my mother’s footsteps, her Nona, and became a painter. I believe Felix worked in an auto shop and became a mechanic, but he passed away in the seventies from stomach cancer. It’s unfortunate because I never really knew him, and I feel horrible for not having mourned him for as long as a father should mourn their child.” He flinched as he said it.

His music from his speakers had been low the whole night, but now it sounded loudly in my ears, neither of us finally having nothing to say at last. Audioslave thrummed in the background.

“Mew, I’m sorry for bringing the whole mood down. This was supposed to be our date night, and I ruined it by talking about my widowed wife and dead son.” Felix almost looked on the verge of tears, a thin film of pink lining his eyes. I wasn’t sure if vampires could cry tears or not. There were still parts of vampire anatomy that I didn’t fully understand.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I urged. “You didn’t ruin our date.” I swallowed hard and picked at my thumb cuticle. “Honestly, it’s one of the better ones I’ve been on.” It shouldn’t have been as fucking difficult as it was to just say words to him. None of them sounded right in my head, not when I was piecing together whatever the hell it was that I wanted to tell him. Having that letter my mom burnt would have been preferable since at least, then, I had something to read from.

“That’s very sweet of you.” He clapped his hands together and stood up, attempting to change the mood. “Why don’t you go get ready for bed in the guest bathroom, then meet me up in my room? We can watch our first Marvel movie together since we’re going to watch all of the MCU movies in chronological order.”

With him, I couldn’t tell if that was a thinly veiled way of asking me for sex or if he was being serious. Even as I found myself at his bedroom door ten minutes later, nerves settling thickly in my stomach, I couldn’t tell which decision I hoped he had picked. Worse, when he opened his bedroom door for me, adorned in those red flannel pajamas, toothbrush still in his mouth and curls pushed back from an obviously freshly washed face, everything in my head and heart lined up for me.

“Oh,” I muttered, a blush immediately heating up my face and ears.

“Are you alright?” he asked, removing his foamy toothbrush from his mouth.

“Yeah, I’m—wait, what happened to your window?” The window by his fireplace was covered by a large piece of cardboard, which Felix didn’t seem ready to explain.

“Which window?” he asked slowly, peering at me through narrowed eyes. I nodded towards the super fucking obvious one, suspicion already rising heavily like ants under my skin. “Oh, that one, okay. Um, can I...?” He waved his toothbrush around, and I silently excused him to let him take care of it, taking advantage of the brief disappearance to go analyze why the hell his window was smashed. “Alright, so remember how you asked how I was, and I didn’t want to discuss it?”

“Vaguely remember that conversation from less than two hours ago, yeah.”

“Okay, um, so. It involves Richard.” He sat on the bed while he told me everything, about Richard breaking into his house and telling him about Madeline lying, ending in Felix being broken on the ground. “I healed quickly, obviously, but discovered how painful it is to have your skull smashed in. Would certainly never recommend it.”

At the first mention of Richard, I had planted myself in a wingback chair to keep myself from panic pacing. I could have walked a divot in the wood floors with this news, so instead, I gripped hard onto the arms of the chair and hoped my nails wouldn’t ruin the fabric. “I was gonna kill him before for what he did to me, but now it’ll be a slow death for what he did to you,” I warned, flashing him a smile that probably wasn’t as romantic or sweet as I intended. “I’m gonna fuckin’ murder him. Painfully. Slowly. Just enough to give it that little—” I gave a chef’s kiss.

He raised an eyebrow, then scooted back into his pillows and grabbed the remote off his nightstand, solidifying his thoughts for how the rest of our night would go. “I know you will. I believe in you. But for tonight—” he patted the spot on his bed beside him “—come lay down and watch Captain America with me.”

My eyes fixated on the shattered window for a moment, a deeply residing panic beginning to build in my chest once again. Richard was getting closer. He was going after people I cared about. Despite having been in Hell and how smooth things were going now, there was still the lingering calamity where I knew confronting my past and Richard was imminent.

Like with everything else, I would bury it down so deep inside of me that it would give me an ulcer until I had to face it. Thinking about that was for a Barty who was back on his Klonopin. For tonight, however, I was going to lie down and watch Captain America with Felix.

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