How to Bite Your Neighbor and Win a Wager (Guides for Dating Vampires, #1)

by D.N. Bryn

Somehow, Vincent knew that agreeing to come back was just setting himself up for disaster, or at least emotional mayhem.

That was what dreams were for—getting you horny in circumstances that made your waking self reevaluate your sanity.

“That doesn’t prove you aren’t a serial killer. Or a fetishist.” Wesley blanched a little. Definitely no fire there, then. Or perhaps he was secretly a vampire serial killer; Vincent was sure some of them were charming and good-looking and extraordinarily enthusiastic about their victims. They were also noticeably less likely to get caught or imprisoned. Murdering a vampire was technically still murder, at least in most states, but it was also far more commonly excused as self-defense, or the god-awful justification of I panicked when I realized what they were, like that hadn’t also been used as a defense for the biased killings of fully human people in the past.

Popular culture had never been great about accurately representing the vampiric community. A lot of people knew it, or at least admitted it was likely the case when pressed. That didn’t stop the ideas the media presented from leaking into the social subconscious. It didn’t stop the small subset of loud, angry anti-vampire bigots from feeding off those subconscious ruminations with vapid claims about the inherent danger of a group of people who were, sure, stronger and faster than others, but could also die from a mere half hour of direct sun exposure or a gram too much garlic. Vincent had grown up as a human in this world. Once upon a time he had been used to these sentiments, but even a callus could blister when placed under constant pressure.

“And you know, some people think this kind of rough, pushy sex makes for a hot fantasy. And it’s not like they want to be forced into sex in real life, or force anyone else; it’s just the concept of it. It’s hot to dream of being undone by some sexy growling fiend who just has to have you. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

Because if my existence starts hurting anyone but myself, then maybe I don’t deserve to exist at all.”

“I know you, Wes. You’re an impulsive gambler, and you’re very good at taking shitty risks now in the hopes that it’ll turn out well in the long run. It’s a terrifying sort of optimism, and it can be kind of great until it starts putting people in danger and blinding you to the consequences.”

Except, as it turned out, impulse and alcohol had equal potential to create and destroy.

But Vincent wanted more than friendship. He wanted to be coming home from a date, Wesley’s head on his shoulder because they were going to climb into bed together later and wake up tangled in each other’s limbs the next morning. There were people in this city who would judge them for that; he had known them, grown up with them, felt their conviction like sand trapped under his nails and a constant eternal buzz in his ears, even when they hadn’t known it was him they were judging.

“Kinks can be non-sexually intimate, I looked it up. There’s like, whole tiny communities of people who are into certain kinky shit just for the emotional return.”

LordOfTheWin So you mean like, how video games affected what I thought of vamps before I met you? HotMouth Yeah, but more than that. It’s like Like how you bought a bunch of those vampire games to try to learn from them. How the dating sim ones made you want me to bite you more, but then I bit you and you realized that the thing from the game was a vague stereotype of the bite, but that you could still bring the things you enjoyed from the game into the real version to enhance it further. It becomes a kind of recurring loop, where your interactions with media feed into real life, then real life feeds back into media, in order to create something more complex than either on their own, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. But when people engage with kindness and empathy as their foundation, I think those interactions are mostly positive ones.

Vincent had seen his family harden before his eyes, turning their house to a place where he was too terrified to even show his support for the queer community, much less come out. A place that didn’t feel like a home at all. He had to peel his emotions apart glob by envious glob to reach the real anger and fear buried beneath. Maybe if he had been like Wesley, sufficient and confident and engaging and all the other things that would have made his parents proud, maybe then he would have been the kind of son who could convince them that his sexuality was something worth loving. But he didn’t know how to express that yet, not without it combusting into a breakdown. He had to reply soon, though, or else Wesley would notice something was off.

Wesley’s mind went to the conversation he’d had with Vincent earlier, to every half-right piece of media lore that had shaped his idea of vampires. Vincent was a flash of fangs in the night and a beautiful, growling predator that sent shivers down Wesley’s spine, but far more than that he was a gay man who couldn’t go to Pride because no one had thought to make it accessible to someone who couldn’t stand for hours in the direct sunlight, or perhaps someone hadn’t wanted it to be accessible in the first place and nobody had bothered to fight against that.

“This vampire of yours, you take good care of them.” His use of neutral pronouns was a nice touch. It was so rare to not have someone impose their own assumptions about who Wes was and the gender of his partners—and he hadn’t even been wearing his rainbow string of beads amidst his teal and gold ones today. Wes grinned, the expression feeling genuine finally.

He thought of the bag of blood Wes had found for him, his honest attempts to learn so far, the way he had been offering up everything he had without question. Even if he was still oblivious to Vincent’s struggles at times, at least he was trying. Here, face to face with his earnestness and his eagerness to help, Vincent could feel his affection for the man outweighing everything else. But a little fear still clung to it. A little fear that all those things would eventually be too much for Wesley. That the amount he had to try just to be friends with someone like Vincent wouldn’t be worth his effort forever.

It was just a jacket. Vincent could fix the sleeve with some patchwork or switch back to his old one. But he couldn’t fix the problem that had caused it and he couldn’t go back to the way he’d been living. He couldn’t keep living like this either, getting pieces of Wesley’s bright, happy world and Wesley’s bright, happy affection as his own life continued spiraling. Couldn’t keep dreading the point when Wesley realized that Vincent wasn’t any different from his old thrift store jacket, threads always just about to break, fabric forever in need of extra care. Couldn’t keep stewing in discomfort while waiting to see if Wes’s generosity and attention would wane.

Vincent’s heart ached. And that was another problem with Vincent spending all his time here, with betting his life on Wesley’s good will: Vincent Barnes was fairly sure that he was madly in love with Wesley. Between his jealousy and his fear, that love had been clouded over, but it was still there, bright and hot and consuming in a way that made him doubt whether he could be in the same room with Wes for another minute without the unsaid weight of it burning him up. If Vincent had to be here loving Wes and wanting him every night for the foreseeable future, then it would be less painful to walk into the sun.

“So you do actually live in a mausoleum?” Wesley gave him a soft poke in the side. “I thought that would totally be one of the things the media had made up.” “It is, mostly. I’m special.” Special in his tone sounded like a curse, bitter and twisted. “And I’m kind of angry at you for having so much more than me. As though part of me blames you, like somehow you’re the reason I’m living this way just because you happen to have a little old house and a fifteen-year-old minivan, when you aren’t actually the problem at all. You deserve to have that kind of stability just as much as anyone, just like everyone deserves food and shelter and peace.”

“Your scars…” Vincent’s tracing stopped. “You’re not going to ask the whole question?” “I’m kind of embarrassed to, actually,” Wes admitted. “You’re embarrassed? Think of me.” “Yeah, but you’re awkward like eighty percent of the time. This is a risk for me. It could ruin my reputation as an always-confident asshat.” Wesley stopped himself short as his brain registered his own words. “Sorry, I should be more serious about this.” “No!” Vincent laughed, soft and at least eighty percent awkward. “This helps. It is serious, but it’s also something that I can’t allow too much hold over me, you know? Sometimes the only choice is between laughing and crying, and I used to do a lot of crying until there was nothing left of me. I like that you help me laugh instead.” “Well, I like that you help me cry, so we’re even.” He thought he could feel Vincent smile at that.

“That was when you turned?” “Not at first. I just wanted him to bite me, not the kinky way you like me to, but because it was painful and ecstatic and vulnerable and it made me feel like I was alive for a little while.” Wesley’s mouth went dry. “I get that. Well, not exactly like that but the needing to feel alive because if you stop, for even a moment, then there’s space for everything else to crash in, so you have to keep going, keep smiling, keep throwing yourself forward at top speed because when you don’t you end up sitting naked in the shower hyperventilating into oblivion? I get that.”

He kissed like he’d been thinking of this every moment since they’d met, kissed like they were two objects destined to come together from the start of the universe, the earth finally plunging into the sun. Wes’s mind turned to stardust and his bones to light.

“The only consequence you deserve, Wes, is therapy.”

There were only so many ways he could explain that Wes wasn’t the monster he made himself out to be while Vincent was still drowning in the weight of what Wes had nearly done to him, and there was only so much forgiveness Vincent could offer before he would start widening his own unhealed wounds.

“You do care about me?” “God yes,” Wes said, and he sounded so thoroughly broken that Vincent couldn’t bear to look at him in case what he saw there really was Wes’s raw and bleeding heart, because if he did, he was fairly certain he’d have to find a way to heal it, even if it meant cutting himself back open to do so. The little sob the man gave turned suddenly to a laugh, tight and bright and aching. “Does that make it better or worse?” I don’t know, Vincent thought, and couldn’t say it.

Not only had Vitalis-Barron been treating his community like disposable lab rats, but they’d made innocent people—the people most likely to be vampires themselves—complicit in the work.

Even if the majority of the people living in San Salud were uncomfortable with having vampires as neighbors or employees, most of them would still find outright imprisonment and experimentation offensive if it was shoved in their faces blatantly enough. But there was nothing technically illegal about the inhumane treatment of people the law didn’t even consider human in the first place.

They weren’t monsters, but right now they would be monstrous, if given the chance.

“Because they see us when we’re so starving that we can’t help but kill, and they pretend that it’s our natural state instead of something they did to us.”

“What if I tear myself up today, then put myself back together tomorrow?” “If that’s what you need. Tomorrow, or whenever you’re ready. I promise I’ll try not to push you this time, if you promise that next time you’ll tell me when you think someone you loved was murdered.” “Kendall, if there’s a next time for that, I quit.” He didn’t know what he was threatening to quit, exactly. Not love. Not life. Civility, maybe? The little moral voice in the back of his head that told him not to track down every one of Vitals-Barron’s hunters and smash their heads open brick by brick?

There were certainly still plenty of vampires to be had in their twice-weekly conversations, and even more anger and guilt and grief that Wes was slowly wrestling out of the attic in his soul, learning to let it live inside him instead of boxing it all up whenever it grew too much. It felt like running a marathon. But even marathons, his therapist reminded him, were run one step at a time.

“You know, this is the first place that’s felt like a home to me in a long time. In forever, really. But since you’ve been gone, it’s just a house again.” He made a soft noise, pleading in a way that wrecked Wes so utterly it seemed like they had only been separated for a minute and not a month. “It’s worth nothing to me without you in it. I don’t care what I deserve,” he said, louder now. “You’re what I want. Please, come home.”

Vincent wanted him. Vincent had maybe even wanted him all along. It felt as though the color had returned to a world that had slowly been going gray, his future transforming from a monotonous trudge to a beautiful adventure just by the knowledge that throughout the ups and downs, he could have Vincent’s hand in his.

“I was supposed to wait until later but—fuck—I was going to wait until the summer, because that sounded like the way this timing is supposed to work, but you know what? I don’t care.” He slipped his fingers around Vincent’s where he still held the case. “I have been all or nothing my whole life, so much so that sometimes it’s hurt myself and sometimes it’s hurt the people I love—people like you. But in this case it’s the only thing that makes sense.” His throat bobbed and he smiled. “Vincent Barnes, would you wager everything on us?”

“Do it. Whatever you want. I’m yours, whether you’re bodice ripping me or letting me tend to your needs, if you want something, just take it from me.”

D.N. Bryn is part of The Kraken Collective—an indie author alliance of queer speculative fiction committed to building an inclusive publishing space.