Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Adam hadn’t actually been working that long, only on his fourth hour of his seven hour evening shift, when Boyd clapped a big hand down on his shoulder and said, “I think that’s it for the day, son.”

Adam frowned and made a show of looking at his watch, despite being consistently aware of the time. He liked to be known as a diligent and hard worker, but not one that could be exploited for free overtime. He made sure to never look that eager to leave, but he also never let him stay longer than a few minutes after his shift ended. His dad would kill him if he was late home, “I still have three hours left of my shift.”

“There isn’t that much work to be done.” Boyd said, and as much as Adam didn’t like to argue with his superiors in case they thought he was catching an attitude and decided to fire him, he couldn’t take the loss of three hours worth of pay.

He chewed raggedly on his lip and set down the oil stick he’d been meticulously cleaning, “What about that new Impala that just came in?”

“Me and Bobby’ll look it over, leave most of it ‘till tomorrow.” Adam turned around just in time to catch Boyd’s expression softener. Something ugly twisted in Adam’s gut - he’d seen that face before, on too many people to count. Pity. Horrible, shaming pity, “Look, Adam. You’re a good kid, an’ all, but you’re working yourself to the bone. You look like you’re about to pass out. Just go and get some rest. I won’t dock your pay.”

Those last five words were a godsend. Still, Adam didn’t like handouts. They felt too much like pity. So he said, “Are you sure? I can always clean while you and Bobby look at the Impala.”

Boyd’s expression hardened a little bit, “I’m telling you, as your boss, to go home and get some rest, Adam. You look like you really need it.”

Adam opened his mouth to argue once more, but he could tell that Boyd wasn’t going to take no for an answer on this front, and he didn’t want Boyd to decide he needed a longer break and not give him shifts when he really needed them. So he just sighed, “Alright, then. I’ll see you tomorrow Boyd.”

As he retreated to the backroom to grab his stuff, he heard Boyd call after him, “And I mean it! Sleep!”

He waved a hand over his shoulder in what he hoped was an acknowledging gesture, but didn’t bother to waste his breath on the lie that would reassure Boyd of him getting some rest. It was impossible to rest in the Parrish household, with his mom’s incessant nervous skittering and his father’s raging temper. It was more than likely that he’d get home and immediately be wailed on for being too lazy to finish his shift.

But he could avoid that, couldn’t he? Boyd said to rest, and he also said to go home, but the two things couldn’t exist together, couldn’t inhabit the same space, like two same ends of a magnet being forced together. Repellent.

Adam waved goodbye to Bobby as he collected his bike helmet from where he left it in their meagre staff room before heading outside, the dim light of the setting sun a welcome sight when he’d been cooped up inside all day.

His bike was chained up to the lamppost barely lighting the alley between Boyd’s and the everything-store it bordered, but he didn’t unlock it immediately. Instead, he balanced his helmet on the handlebars and just -

Breathed .

It seemed like an age since he’d had time to just enjoy breathing. He was a living, breathing organism, and sometimes he had to remind himself of that when his entire existence was narrowed down to work, more work, and being beaten black and blue by his father for the crime of existing.

He didn’t know how long he stood there, staring at the drab brick exterior of Boyd’s Autoshop and breathing. His feet were starting to hurt from being stood for too long, but he didn’t know if that was because of his inaction or just a consequence of never having any time to relax. Working himself to the bone , as Boyd had said.

He thought that it was darker than when he’d originally stepped outside, but sunsets came quick and fast as the seasons started to move toward fall, so that could mean anything. Time, slipping away from him again.

His eyes, just as overworked as the rest of his body, slid closed of their own accord. He wasn’t relaxed by any means, but it was the closest thing he’d felt in a while. It felt like every single muscle had been bunched up for his entire life and he was finally letting them loose - well, loos er than they had been before.

He almost thought he could fall asleep right there, which was ridiculous. He was well known amongst his coworkers for catching snatches of sleep whenever he could, but falling asleep standing up was a new low for him.

Because this was Henrietta, and no outward criminal activity happened here aside from the general nuisance of the local private school boys, he didn’t think to have his guard up.

So when something - he had no idea what, eyes closed and body relaxed for once in his life - knocked into him so hard, feeling like a tonne of bricks against his side, that he careened to the floor, he hadn’t been expecting it.

His eyes flew open, but his traitorous body went limp, ragdolling after a lifetime of violence where he knew the best option was to just sit there and take it.

He expected a shitty apology from one of the Aglionby boys that had been engaging in too much tomfoolery with his friends to notice the poor local getting in his way.

What he hadn’t expected, would never have expected in a hundred years, was the white-hot feeling of pain as someone - some thing - bit deeply into his neck.

It didn’t feel like it should have hurt as bad as it did. He knew pain, but this was something entirely different. This wasn’t the smarting ache of a bruise, it wasn’t the crunch of a broken bone. It was sharp and deep, and he could feel it all over his body before he went limp, the area around the bite going numb.

The noises he was making were that of a wounded animal stuck in a trap, ready to gnaw off its own leg if it meant he could escape.

Feebly, his hands came up to fight off his attacker, but it was no use. Whatever was on him was stronger than a person was, especially him, scrawny and malnourished as he was. He could do nothing but lie there and feel every ounce of pain, every pull from the open wounds that meant his blood was being drained from his body.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was aware that he was about to die.

It wasn’t even necessarily a bad thought, which sounded morbid, but it was true. In fact, some part of him felt a strange sense of relief at the knowledge that he would die, here and now. As much as being attacked on the street wasn’t exactly a peaceful way to go, it was better than having his own father, his own flesh and blood that hated him so much, be the last thing he saw before he died, which was probably the way he would have gone out if he had to live in that trailer any longer.

It wasn’t that he was excited to die - he wasn’t suicidal, nowhere near to it. He’d fought to live for so long that he couldn’t imagine willingly taking his own life. It just meant that when death came to him, he wouldn’t fight it.

His entire body was sluggish, taking real effort to move. No energy. Not even when the creature upon him fled into the night, leaving him there to die, did he have the energy to crawl away and get help.

He was just going to have to wait here, slowly dying from blood loss on the ground, until -

Shit. Until Boyd found him. Or Bobby, or any of the other guys that worked at the autoshop. This would fuck them up for life, having to call the police over the dead body found around the back of the shop. He was in a camera blindspot, as well - he knew that because he always parked his bike there so he could have a few minutes of uninterrupted alone time before having to work. It was going to look intentional. This could ruin one of his coworkers' lives, and they didn’t deserve that.

But, then again -

Everyone knew that vampires were real. It was the same as knowing the sky was blue, or that the Earth was round. You could dispute it, but it wouldn’t make it any less factual. Creatures of all shapes and sizes roamed the planet, living out in the open. And what had attacked him was definitely  a vampire - no human bit at the neck and sucked the blood out.

Finding his body would traumatise his coworkers, but hopefully none of them were investigated for suspicion of murder. Hopefully even the backwater Henrietta cops saw the bite marks on his neck and came to the correct conclusions, even if vampires in a town like Henrietta, sunny and redneck, were practically unheard of.

And yet here he was. Bleeding out and drained half dry because a vampire was in Henrietta , because Adam was quite possibly the least lucky person in the world. The exposed wound on his neck, wet with blood, was cold in its exposure, but he didn’t have the energy to reach up and try and cover it, to put pressure on the wound so maybe he could have any chance of survival when his body was finally discovered.

It was strangely peaceful, to die. It was just him and the leaching feeling of his life draining as he lay there on the ground, eyes closed and the Henrietta sidewalk cool against the side of his face.

He had no idea how long he lay there, the time simply sliding by him like a cool breeze, but eventually he became aware that he had been conscious for far too long. He should be dead by now, but instead he was fine. In fact, he was feeling better and better by the minute.

He knew subconsciously what was happening to him, but he didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to realise what the implications of his slowly healing body and the newfound burn in the back of his throat meant.

Things like this didn’t happen in places like Henrietta. Vampires kept themselves in big cities, in places where feeder bars were around every corner and wolves roamed the streets on the full moon and you had to watch your step in case you accidentally stepped in fairy circles. Things like this didn’t happen in a town with more churches than houses, where the inhabitants could barely handle a misbehaving child, let alone a blood-sucking creature of the night.

But there was no doubt about it. He was turning into a vampire, the wound on his neck slowly knitting itself back together, his insides roiling as the venom made its work on his body. It was an indescribable feeling, like all of his cells were replenishing at the same time, the pure script of his DNA being entirely rewritten all at once.

He felt… different.

It wasn’t a good nor a bad feeling, just - different. His muscles felt like they were corded in metal, more strength than he had ever felt in his body condensed into ripcord strength. There was a spriteliness in his body that he couldn’t remember ever feeling, his body aged and worn since birth.

And, more than anything else, more than the reeling confusion and lingering pain still wheeling through his brain, he felt hungry .

Now, Adam knew hunger. He knew the smarting of an unfed belly, the knowledge that not only could they not afford to feed him all the time, but that his dad would see how long Adam could physically go without food when he’d deemed him in trouble for something or another.

This was entirely different. He had never felt this hungry in his life, and he knew that it wasn’t for food. It wasn’t hunger, really. It was thirst — the sort of thirst a man dying of dehydration would feel.

He couldn’t stay here. He was dangerous now, to himself and others. He needed to get out of here before the thirst drove him mad and he decided that his boss looked like a pretty good snack.

He opened his eyes, the first step in the sure to be gruelling process. Everything seemed sharper, in much higher focus, than it had been before. The sun had officially set, but he wasn’t having any problem seeing through the darkness, his vision cutting straight through it like it was high noon instead of nighttime.

Speaking of - that was going to be another problem. He’d burn in the sun now, and he couldn’t go home. His father would jump at the opportunity to leave the sunlight streaming in if he thought it would do the job of killing Adam for him. And he couldn’t stay here, with innocent people around. He had no idea of the time - sunrise could be right around the corner for all he knew.

He picked himself up off the ground, swaying slightly as he got to his feet. His face felt strange, not being pressed to the ground. The burning hunger in the back of his throat was distracting, but he barrelled through that to focus on where he could hide and wait out the rest of his transition without -

Killing someone.

He could kill someone. It would be so easy for him, as strong as he was.

He was going to have to stop himself from killing people now.

Jesus .

The only place he could think of where he wouldn’t happen upon some innocent passerby and he wouldn’t be at risk of turning into a flaming cinder if a ray of sunlight hit him was the local church - he knew St Agnes’ had a big basement where they kept records, and there weren’t any windows. People rarely went down there, and he was sure he could probably find a rat or two to tide himself over.

So he ran. Leaving his bike was a hard decision, but he had a sneaking suspicion that running would be faster than any speed he could accomplish on his shitty little bike, and it was probably better to leave it next to the pool of his blood for when the cops were called - his death would probably be in the paper by the end of the week, because his parents for sure weren’t going to start putting missing posters up around town.

Running through Henrietta in the dark was freeing. He was still hungry, but he managed to push that to the back of his mind as he ran down the roads, the wind brushing against him as he moved. He was aware that he was, objectively, hitting a speed which should be impossible, but it felt like no more than a light jog, his legs not even burning with lactic acid like they would if he was still human.

Breaking into a church in the dead of night didn’t exactly make his list of top ten experiences of all time, and it did make him feel near-Catholic levels of guilt, but he had never once in his life been so grateful that he was far too cynical to find religion during his life, because being able to step foot on holy ground had never felt so good.

The church was eerie in its settled state, almost liminal with the lack of people, but Adam knew that nothing more nefarious than himself could possibly be lurking around the corners, so he didn’t stay under the watchful, tragic eyes of the Mother for much longer, cutting through the silence and space until he reached the door set in the side of the room, following the steps down into the dark, everything smelling musky and incense heavy.

The dust in the records room was so thick that he could practically taste it, but he caught the smell of something else in the stagnant air - he followed his nose around the room until he could snatch the rat out from the cabinet it was hiding behind.

He didn’t exactly feel good about it, but he drained it dry in practically one mouthful before disposing of the corpse. Rat blood was thin and dirty, but it worked to satiate the hunger crawling up the back of his throat. He hunted down the rest of the rats in the church basement and drained them all until he felt less like ripping someone’s throat out.

The blood didn’t taste like he’d assumed it would - metallic and irony, the flavour of a punch so hard it made him bite right through his own cheek - but it wasn’t not blood, either. He was aware, the entire time he was drinking it, that he was drinking blood, but it didn’t taste wrong . He knew, if he was a human, he would have thrown up by now. The human body can ingest two pints of blood before it makes itself sick, and there were way more than two pints worth of rat blood currently sloshing about in him.

It felt right to drink it, now, as much as the morality and ethicality of it was already weighing down on him. Drinking the rats was more like drinking stale water that had been left out all night when you suddenly woke up really thirsty - it did the job to quench the thirst, but it left a bad taste in his mouth and was vaguely disappointing.

When he could no longer locate any more rats - he’d probably left a church-shaped hole in the rat ecosystem of Henrietta - he dropped to the floor and curled in on himself, relegated to the corner the furthest away from the door.

He checked his watch. Roughly ten past eleven. But his watch was chronically three minutes early, no matter how much he fiddled with it, so it was probably more like five past. The sun had been rising while he was biking his way to his early morning factory shift, so roughly seven in the morning. He had about eight hours to kill down here before the sun rose, and then another twelve hours before the sun set again and, as much as he should have felt tired, he didn’t, like his body had automatically adjusted to its newfound needed nocturnalism.

He rested his head against the wall - the texture of the stone felt like nothing he’d ever felt before, his skin abruptly aware of every single ridge and bump in the rock - and contemplated.

He couldn’t go home. He knew that. His father wasn’t a tolerant man anyway, and if his loathed son came home as a creature that could now easily fight back against him, he wouldn’t hesitate to sell him out to the pitchfork-toting mob of Henrietta.

Not that he ever wanted to go home. He just knew he couldn’t leave.

But maybe now was his chance. He’d been saving up to get out of this town for a while, and while it definitely wasn’t enough to get him a place to live and stay alive, it was enough to get him out of town. It wasn’t a full-bodied plan in the way he would have liked, but it wasn’t like he had planned to get turned into a vampire, so he supposed he’d have to just make up a new plan for his future on the fly.

The closest big city was DC, but that felt uncomfortably close to Henrietta from him. He racked his brains for any information that would be helpful, but it was hard when he was distracted by the fact that he could still feel his body changing.

It wasn’t a sensation that he could fully understand, but he knew it was happening. A strength powering his muscles that hadn’t been there before, a vitality in his bones that he’d never felt in his life, the funny sensation of being aware that there were an extra pair of sharped teeth hiding away in his gums.

He’d seen a news story, once, before his father had turned off the TV muttering about the ‘freaks in the world’ about how New York had the highest supernatural population - or, at least, the largest population of people that were outwardly supernatural. Faeries that didn’t glamour their other-wordly look, and bars on every corner that served blood, pharmacies that sold antidotes to silver poisoning and hex counterspells.

He could go to New York. It would take a while, but he was faster now. He could run, hide during the day, get buses during the night. He’d stick to unpopulated areas and feed himself on any woodland creatures he could find.

He’d have to go home first, to get his stuff. The money that he hid bundled up in the toe of one of the shoes that he’d grown out of, further hidden under a pile of neatly folded clothes. Some clothes as well. The tiny toy car that was his last vestige of his childhood. He didn’t really have any possessions that he had any emotional connection to, but maybe he could take some of the battered old paperbacks that he’d gotten for quarters at the thrift store. To occupy his time.

There was only so much contemplating that one man could do, after all.

He sorted his plan out in his head, mapping out his route in the map in his head. And when he’d sorted all that out, the best he could, anyway, he got up from the floor and scoured the records room for something to occupy his time.

There were the records, of course, but he doubted reading over how much the church made from the collection plate was going to keep him invested enough for the rest of the night.

Eventually, after some searching, he found a small collection of books crammed into a dusty bookshelf. They smelled vaguely unpleasant, but he picked one at random and settled himself back into his corner to read. The philosophies of St Augustine weren’t exactly his idea of a fun time, but trying to understand them and their reasoning at least passed the time.

Eventually, somewhere around six in the morning, he started feeling tired. Sleep would pass the time even better, so he lay down and curled into a little ball right there on the harsh stone floor. It wasn’t comfortable, not in the slightest, but he somehow managed to slip into sleep anyway just as he thought the sun might be rising.

His last thought, before slumber claimed him, was that he should have appreciated the sun more while he still could.


—--


He never thought he’d see the day where he’d be breaking into his own double-wide because that implied that A) he couldn’t come back (which he couldn’t, but that would have been an eventuality anyway) and B) that he wanted to come back when he couldn’t.

It wasn’t like he could walk through the front door, though. It was dark out - or, at least he assumed it was very dark, to his new eyes it was barely dusk coloured outside - and his parents should be sleeping, and he’d never come home after work.

He wondered what his father thought. He wondered if his mother had missed him at all. Or maybe that he hadn’t even noticed he was gone at all.

He got the window to his room shimmied open and carefully slid in, his body now more lithe and flexible than his overworked bones had ever been in life. He didn’t have enough possessions to disturb much, but his bed did creak as he landed on it. He paused, waiting for the inevitable storming in on his father, but he apparently hadn’t disturbed them. He could hear two heartbeats, slow and steady with sleep in the next room over.

He was still hungry - the rats in the church really had put a bit of a dampener on his bloodlust, but that had been hours ago - and yet, somehow he didn’t feel any pull to drain his parents of their blood. Maybe it was the biological connection, or maybe it was the fact that the idea of having his father’s blood in him in a way that he could actually help, not just his genetics, made him feel sick to his stomach.

He wanted nothing more to do with that man. Ever. And after he completed this one task, he could run away and never look back.

It didn’t take long to get his things. He packed the clothes that were the least worn, and his spare pair of shoes were the money was hidden. He had enough room on top of his clothes for his beaten up copies of The Gunslinger and The Children of Men .

Before he shimmied back out the way he came, he took one last look at his room. With his clothes and few personal possessions gone, it was like no one ever lived here.

Would his parents even notice that his stuff was missing? Would they look into his room ever again, or would they just assume that he was dead, or missing, or had run away? Would they even put on the facade of looking for him?

He’d spent so much of his life in that room, and yet, at the thought of leaving it forever and never seeing it again, all he could feel was pure relief.

He slid smoothly out of the window, closed it behind him, and glanced back at the trailer one last time before he sprinted off into the night, something loosening in his chest as he got further and further away from the memory of his life.


—--


He’d run all night, and yet his muscles did not ache. He had no idea how much distance he had covered, but it was far enough that he didn’t recognise any of his surroundings. He’d never been to this town before, but he also hadn’t really been outside of Henrietta ever.

It was nearing the early hours of the morning, and he didn’t want to find out what would happen to him when the sun came up, so he checked himself into a motel. Having to pay for two nights so he could sleep through the day was a blow to his meager savings, but staying alive was much preferable.

He slept in the bathtub, which wasn’t exactly comfortable, but there were no windows in the bathroom, so he pulled the duvet off the bed and shoved the pillows against the crack under the door so he wouldn’t get incinerated as he slept, and went to sleep. When he slept, he didn’t dream. He didn’t know if that was a vampire thing, or just his subconscious blocking him from remembering whatever he dreamt.

But he didn’t have time to think that over too intensely. As soon as the sun was safely beneath the horizon, he was running again.

He spent days running, sometimes stowing away in the holds of trucks going in the same direction as him so he could keep moving as he slept. It wasn’t fun, just him and his thoughts alone, but it served a purpose and he figured that, since he’d spent his entire life working for what he needed to do and not what he wanted to do, he could handle that just a little bit longer.

It was freeing, though, even if it wasn’t fun. His new body was far more agile and lean than his old one, and exhaustion didn’t seem to be something he could experience. He’d run for days and all he had to show for it were clothes dirty from forests and motel sheets. He didn’t even sweat . He might have been undead, but he was more alive than he’d felt in years .

People either didn’t notice him, or didn’t think that there was anything strange at all about a vampire running wildly from state to state. He was sure that creatures had done stranger and more concerning things in the past, but he also couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching him, coming after him. Not that he couldn’t handle them - he was that strong now that he could actually hold his own in a fight if it came down to that.

It was paranoia, he knew that. He was in the middle of Pennsylvania, nobody knew who he was, nobody was calling up Robert Parrish to tell him that his delinquent son was drinking deer blood in the forest and running along the Pennsylvanian highways in the middle of the night.

Like his father would care about him anymore. He was probably thankful that he didn’t have to deal with Adam’s bullshit. They were probably already cleaning out his room to make more space for themselves.

And Adam didn’t have to deal with him. And that was the most freeing thing of all - it wasn’t the raw hunger in his throat that had made him fully realise that his life was now irrevocably changed forever. It was the fact that, no matter how much his father’s anger nipped at the back of his mind, the shadow of him dogging his heels, he couldn’t come after Adam. He couldn’t hurt him anymore.