Halloween 'surprise' story - Male vampire x male human, Part One (sfw) (Patreon)

So I saw from the poll that a lich x human was the most popular, and I'll bear that in mind, but this idea started rattling around my head and wouldn't go away. Here's part one, featuring a heartbroken art lecturer and his fiesty best friend, and there's no prizes for guessing which one of the two main male characters is the vampire, with his long white hair and mesmerising, aloof presence... 

Part Two will be up soon, and Part One will go up on Tumblr tomorrow. Hope you enjoy, and Happy (and safe!) Halloween. We're likely to be issued a stay at home order with a full country-wide lockdown again on Monday, so that's supremely depressing, but it is what it is, and when life hands you lemons, write lemons (part two of this will be nsfw).

1. 

Was an hour or so of peace and quiet really too much to ask for at nine o’clock at night in the sanctuary that was the university’s art department?  

Apparently, it was.  

“Oi, Ali!” came an all too familiar shout, shattering the pensive stillness that swirled around him amid the sweeping susurrations of charcoal on paper.  

Naturally, he jumped, gouging a harsh black line across the delicate fog of graduating greys on the diminishing background of off-white. Drawing a deep, steadying breath, he closed his eyes briefly and then turned towards the door to find Kay standing there looking only a little chagrined.  

The short, stocky, half-Japanese woman had her hair tied back in a scruffy bun, most of which was escaping in brushstroke tendrils down the collar of her leather jacket, and her cheeks were flushed from the cold October night outside. There was an unnerving glitter in her eyes that told him instantly she was up to mischief.  

“You know I hate that name,” Alec growled, setting the stick of magnolia charcoal down on the easel. He dusted off his hands on a scrap of cloth nearby, but it made little difference to the state of his charcoal-blackened fingers. They blended perfectly with his black hair as he raked his hands through it, tipping it from ‘casually tousled’ to ‘just plain scruffy’ in a single stroke. “What do you need?” 

“Have you seen the new English Lit. professor?” she asked, stepping in and checking around for students. There weren’t many still on campus at this time of night - not this far from exam season anyway - but still, it wouldn’t do for two teachers, however young, to be discussing a fellow teacher like gossipping teenagers.  

Kay eased herself down onto a nearby, three-legged stool, and melodramatically fanned her cheek with her fingers. “My god he’s hot.” Her black jacket creaked softly as she fidgeted, and his artist’s brain idly wondered if he could sketch it quickly before she moved again, the muted light falling pleasingly on the creases and folds.  

“And you’re telling me this because…?” Alec asked instead, already knowing full-well the reason for his best friend’s excursion from the engineering department.  

She snorted indelicately and shot him a knowing look. “Because you’ve become a miserable fucking bastard over the last year and a half since Jeremy, and I hate it.” 

“And you think this new paragon of yours is going to be interested - not only in men - but in a scruffy art teacher to boot?” he asked, shuffling back around and picking up his charcoal again. The unexpected mention of his ex-fiance cut him open anew and left him bleeding inwardly. 

“Everyone adores you,” she breezed, aiming for distracting. “The poor starving artist with the tortured soul and those big blue eyes…”  

Alec rolled those big blue eyes at that, but he didn’t bother to grace her with a look while she carried on. He knew she’d want to tell him about this new crush of hers, and his silence or interest wasn’t going to make a lick of difference either way.  

“So I was minding my own business in the cafeteria at lunch today, with Dan going on and on about his latest project - which basically just needs scrapping and starting again, by the way, but don’t tell him I said that. He won’t be told. Anyway, everyone started whispering and when I looked up, I saw Apollo himself! Helios! Adonis! Eros —” 

“— glad to see that series on Greek and Roman mythology I got you for your birthday has taken root,” he muttered to himself through a lopsided smirk.  

“Shut up, you,” she laughed. “He’s fucking exquisite! Seriously, you’ll hurt your eyeballs looking at him.” 

“All the more reason not to go near him then,” Alec groused bitterly. “I need my eyes for my, you know, ‘art career’…” Crossing his legs, he scowled down at a threadbare rip at the knee that hadn’t been there last week. He really was every ‘starving artist’ stereotype, wasn’t he? 

“You’re impossible. Put that down,” she said, hopping off the stool and snatching the stick of charcoal from his dirty fingers. “You’re coming to the pub. Now.” 

“Now?” he groaned. “Kay, I need to —” 

“— you need a pint,” she said. “And possibly a fuck, but I’ll let you decide that.” 

“So gracious,” he said through gritted teeth. This was not an argument he was going to win, and he knew it. Plus, his eyes were prickling with exhaustion. “Just one. I should probably stop for the day anyway.” 

“I’m always right,” Kay grinned. “C’mon.” 

They locked up together, and Alec grabbed his battered wool coat that might have been black once, but which had faded over the years to a dark, foggy grey.  

Leaves swirled and rattled along the pavement outside, and a stiff breeze snuck its icy fingers down the collar before he could pull it up to ward off the chill, and he shuddered. Kay seemed as impervious to it as she was to all external influences, and bounced along, scuffing up leaves with her heavy boots, but before too long, she shot him a softer look and asked, “Al? You really ok?” 

Something tightened in his gut at the concern in her pretty face. She was over a foot shorter than him, and as she cricked her neck to regard his scowling face, he felt his own expression soften with the sigh he didn’t mean to let out. “Yeah, I guess,” he shrugged. This time of year always reminded him of Jeremy; of childish leaf-fights and silly Halloween costumes; of kisses and breathtaking blowjobs in places where people really shouldn't be giving each other blowjobs…

Clearly dissatisfied with his response, Kay snuck her fingers into the crook of his arm and squeezed. “You don’t have to tell me what’s on your mind, but you know you can talk to me, right? I’m a loudmouth about things that don’t matter, but I’m not going to blab about personal stuff to anyone, ok?” 

Alec tugged her affectionately off balance and plonked a brief kiss on the top of her head. “Yeah,” he said, his already gruff baritone suddenly cracking. It had to be the fierce, blustering wind that brought tears to his eyes and made his vision swim, surely? 

A second later, Kay froze and hissed, “Wait, wait, wait! That’s him!”  

“Who’s him?” 

“Him him!” she said, pointing with her other arm and staring across the small, grassy park that sat on the borders of the campus and separated the town beyond from the university behind.  

Behind a row of slender cherry trees which earlier in the year were a riot of cotton-candy pinks and whites, Alec caught a glimpse of a slender figure striding along the tarmac path towards the busy road. He frowned. “I would have assumed that was a woman,” he commented, taking in the willowy lines of the man’s slim legs and narrow waist, accentuated by a long coat that snugged tightly around his hips and middle. A long, dead straight, platinum-blond ponytail dangled down his back, almost to his tail bone, glimmering and fluttering like silk in the harsh, orange light of the street lamps as he passed in and out of the pools of light at their bases.  

“Told you he’s fucking pretty,” she giggled, tugging him back into motion.  

He hadn’t even realised his feet had frozen to the pavement, leaving him stock still and staring stupidly after the distant glimpse of the new English lecturer.  

“Come on. I’m freezing my butt cheeks off.” 

With one last look at the figure vanishing into the dark distance of the town like a ghost, Alec followed after his friend. 

The Plume of Feathers was, predictably, heaving at that time of night. As Alec held the battered wooden door open, a roar of chatter and laughter spilled out onto the street, and Kay stepped inside first, thanking him with a grin for holding the heavy door.  

A few people seated near the entrance looked up instinctively at their arrival, and one or two students he recognised offered awkward grins at their teacher. Alec was only twenty-seven, but sometimes he felt like an awkward eighteen year old again around them; shy and bumbling and unsure what to say in the face of their seemingly easy laughter and banter. He’d always been the quiet, broody kid, and with three older sisters and one brilliant younger brother. He’d not perhaps had the same attention lavished on him by his parents as they had, but he didn’t resent it.  

At the thought of his family, he leaned on the old wooden bar top and drew out his phone, punching in a reminder to get his brother’s birthday present soon.  

“Oi, grumpy-face,” Kay said, ducking into his field of view and sticking her own face in front of his phone. “What are you having?” 

“Pint of Hogshead Bitter,” he said without looking up. 

“You’re a pint of pigfaced bitterness,” she snorted, digging him none-too-gently in the ribs, and he knew he’d walked straight into that one. 

A man about his own age, sitting at the bar, leaned - or rather, swayed - closer and said, “Your girl’s a firecracker…”  

“She’s not my girlfriend,” he said mechanically, still without looking up from his phone.  

“Oh,” he blinked. “Mind if I buy her a drink then?” 

“It’s not up to me, is it?” he groused, shooting him a scowl. “You’ll have to ask her, though I suspect she’ll turn you down.” 

Kay did, and the two retreated to a quieter corner for the evening.  

“Admit it,” Kay said later as he prepared to say goodnight at the door of her house.  

“Admit what?”  

“You needed that.” 

“I did,” he chuckled, hands in his pockets against the cold. “Thanks.” 

She rolled her dark eyes and smiled, opening her arms for a goodbye hug. “Jeremy was an arsehole, Alec. And he did a number on you. You’re a good man, and you deserve to be happy, ok?” 

He nodded on autopilot and waited until she was inside before turning for his own tiny, ramshackle apartment on the other side of town.  

Three days later, Alec met the man behind the rumours that had spread through the university - students and staff alike - like a brushfire, and it was not quite how he might have hoped a first introduction would go.  

The hallowed hush of the library was relaxing for some, but Alec had always found it deeply unnerving. With claustrophobia looming large between the tall, densely packed shelves of the stacks, he took a deep breath and continued his search for the book on Courbet, for which he had trekked across the campus in sheeting rain. A timely drip shivered down his spine from the soaked hair at the nape of his neck, and he shuddered.  

Finding the book, he clambered onto a handily-placed step-stool and reached to the top shelf. The stool’s feet must have been uneven, because the whole thing rocked disconcertingly, and he grabbed hold of the shelf to steady himself, and in the process, shunted several books on the other side out and off the shelf.  

Dislodged, they tumbled into the aisle on the other side of the shelves, and a loud shout of surprise went up.  

“Shit, I’m sorry,” Alec blurted, clattering down off the stool, dropping the Courbet book on the floor and praying he wasn’t about to find someone on the other side with a head injury or a concussion.  

Instead, he rounded the bookshelf and came to a sudden, sharp halt. 

Standing with one warmly tanned hand elegantly braced against the bookshelf beside him, and the other massaging the crown of his head, stood the man that Kay had been so desperate for Alec to meet. Close up, he really was handsome enough to stop a heart dead in its tracks, and Alec just stood there like a thunderstruck idiot, gawping at him.  

Blinking dark brown eyes, the man focused on him immediately which, he supposed, he should have taken as a sign that he hadn’t suffered a concussion. Instead, Alec was behaving like he’d been the one to take a blow to the head. He swallowed thickly, throat constricted, taking in the absolute perfection of this man’s olive skin, deeply tanned and utterly, agelessly smooth. He could have been sixteen or forty and Alec would have been none the wiser. Next he noticed the full, naturally downward-turning lips with a distinctive and pronounced Cupid’s bow, the extreme delicacy to his jawline and cheekbones, and the stark contrast of that long, dead-straight, platinum hair which was tied back in a loose plait. 

He was slim too - and not in a particularly healthy way - and on closer inspection, dark shadows hung around his dark brown eyes, lending him the haunted look of a student in exam season, rather than of a professor. Perhaps he stayed up late marking inane undergraduate essays every night or something. Despite that, he was without question the most beautiful man that Alec had ever laid eyes on.  

Finally, Alec cleared his throat and grunted, “Uh… are you ok?” 

“Yes,” came the tart response in a lyrical, low tenor. “I assume you were the one clambering around back there like an ape on the bookshelves?” 

The acidity in his haughty, aristocratic tone cut deep into Alec’s stupor and he found the enchantment shattering into shards around him like someone had taken a sledgehammer to a mirror. “It was an accident,” he said testily. “I’m glad you’re not hurt. Excuse me.” 

An uncomfortable silence bloomed behind him as he turned and practically fled the library, the book on Courbet completely abandoned. Sure, a pile of books falling from the sky wouldn’t be anyone’s idea of a great introduction, but while Alec was tall and well built, comparing him to a gorilla was taking it a bit far. 

Fuming, Alec ate lunch in his tiny office in the art department while the rain battered the old building’s windowpanes, and he taught his next two classes with such uncharacteristic sullenness that even the chirpiest of his students didn’t interact overmuch. His foundation art history class was the last one of the day, and while the first years filed out, he wiped the white board clean and turned off the projector.  

As the white after-image of the Bernini sculpture blinked out of existence, he turned and found that his doorway was occupied. Like a mirage, the white-haired man stepped into his classroom only a pace or two, and held out a book to him like a peace offering.  

“It occurred to me after you’d left,” he began in that disconcertingly musical voice, “That I was uncommonly rude to you in the aftermath of your avalanche.” 

“You know who I am?” he asked stupidly, not making a move to take the heavy book from his outstretched hand. If he found it strenuous, he gave no sign of it, and his hand never wavered.  

Glancing down to look at his hand, Alec noted that he wore a slender gold band on his thumb.  

The man laughed briefly, a sound rich and inviting, almost making Alec relax. “I enquired after your name from the librarian. He was kind enough to let me check this out on your behalf as well. I assumed you left it behind, but I will return it for you if I was incorrect.” 

Hell, the man spoke and moved as if he’d walked out of a different century. It was completely disarming, not to mention those glittering, dark brown eyes, and that smile. No wonder half the university was in love with him already. His canines caught Alec’s attention - the artist in him noticing the tiniest details before getting the bigger picture: they were slightly more pronounced, slightly longer, than most people’s, though it was nothing too unusual. At least he’d have a good Halloween costume prepared, he mused idly in the silence that stretched between them again.

As if sensing that his gaze had snagged on them, the new professor’s smile dimmed a little, covering his perfect, white teeth. “Was I?” he prompted.  

“Huh?” 

“Incorrect…” 

“Oh…” Alec finally scraped the soggy, disparate remnants of his exploded brain back together and looked back at the book. “No, you weren’t. That… That was what I went there for. Thanks.” And he stepped forward to take it at last.  

“My name is Sebastien,” the man said in his quiet, perfectly-articulated voice. The French accent that licked across the name sounded utterly authentic and utterly delicious. 

“You’re the new English professor…” Alec said, scratching the back of his head as awkwardness descended like a miasma around his brain. “Kay told me about you.” 

“Kay Tahoma?” he asked.  

“Yeah, you’ve met her then?” 

Sebastien nodded. “Briefly at lunch today. She told me where I might find you. Seemed oddly invested in our second introduction being a success…” he said, raising one pale eyebrow.  

Oh fuck, that’s hot, Alec thought, swallowing and turning away even while his jeans threatened to tighten. The intonation in the man’s voice was like sex itself, but the addition of a coy eyebrow-raise was almost enough to undo him. Definite voice kink, he thought. Fuck that - definite beautiful man kink. And this man was everything that Alec admired. Despite that, he was also physically the very opposite of Jeremy, which only added to the list of things in his favour. 

“Uh,” Alec said again, cursing the way his tongue thickened up in his mouth, making him almost literally stuck for words. “Yeah, she’s…” he coughed and thought he’d just go for it. Better to get it out of the way before Kay’s meddling made things awkward. “She’s been trying to set me up with someone for over a year now. I’m sorry about that. Just… ignore her.” 

After a beat of silence, Sebastien purred. “I see.” Alec turned back to him as his dark eyes began to drift around the room. “The work of your students?” he asked, indicating the semicircle of easels left half-abandoned in the middle of their work.  

“Mmm,” he nodded. Fuck, this man moved with the grace of a swallow in mid flight, turning like a dancer on his toes without looking pretentious. It was mesmeric. God, if he could paint him… Oils would work especially well for the tone and luminosity of his skin… Easy, he chuckled to himself. Don’t get carried away.  

“And nothing of yours?” he went on, casting his searing, dark gaze over the array of canvases without seeming to pass judgement of any kind on the unfinished work.  

“Nah,” he laughed, ramming his hands into his pockets and rocking back on his heels. “My days of exhibiting work for the critics are probably over.” 

“Why do you say that?” Sebastien asked, pausing and seeming genuinely interested in the answer.  

Alec shrugged. On the point of answering, he stopped as the door opened and a student barrelled back in, canvas messenger bag half slipping off her shoulder. “Sorry, Professor Twayblade,” she gasped, out of breath from running. “I forgot my phone.” 

Alec felt Sebastien’s eyes on him before he turned and found that it was true. He waved a hand at the girl to carry on, and she scuttled across the room, grabbed her phone, and skittered out again, leaving the room thrumming with an odd tension that had not been there before her arrival.  

“Twayblade is an unusual surname,” Sebastien commented with a distinct intonation; too casual.  

“I don’t even know yours,” Alec deflected, hoping he wouldn’t have to talk about his family.  

“Dulac,” he exhaled, as if it were of no consequence.  

Combined with his French first name, Alec ventured, “You’re French then?” 

He nodded. “On my father’s side. My mother was Iranian.” And just when he’d thought he’d escaped ancestral scrutiny, Sebastien added, “Twayblade is an old name. I’ve only encountered it once before.” 

“You have?” he asked, surprised. “I’ve never met anyone else with the same name… Hated it back in school…” 

“Mmm, sharing your surname with a flower from the orchid family… I can see why children might find it amusing,” Sebastien smiled, pacing towards him with all the grace and composure of a silent, hunting cat. Alec’s throat went suddenly dry, and not from attraction. He took an instinctive half-step backwards before he’d even realised it.

The man was like a predator; beautiful and captivating, but there was something unnaturally deadly about him that made Alec’s whole nervous system light up and his skin crawl.  

Before he reached the spot where Alec was once again rooted to the floorboards, Sebastien paused and idly picked up the corner of the Courbet book’s cover, glancing at the image on the first page. “Art is a family profession?” Again, that cool nonchalance, that casual disdain, made his senses prickle. He was asking something else, but Alec had no idea what it was. 

Alec scowled. “Hardly. My dad was in the military, and has about as much interest in a paintbrush as I do an SA80…”  

Sebastien’s eyebrow did its thing again and Alec cleared his throat.  

“Rifle,” he clarified. “Dinner table chats are a real joy,” he added, voice dripping with sarcasm. “I avoid them whenever I can.”

“And you had no desire to follow in his footsteps…? Take up his… ‘mantle’… as it were?” 

Alec now had the distinct impression that he was missing something here; like there was a thread of the conversation that was invisible to his eyes; like he was being tested. He frowned and shook his head. “No.” 

“Mmm,” was all Sebastien had to say to that. “Well, look, I’ve taken up enough of your afternoon. I wanted to stop by to bring you the book, and to clear the air between us.” 

“Right.” 

And with that, Sebastien Dulac swept from the art studio, leaving Alec standing there, the room still and silent as a sepulchre in his wake.  

  To be continued shortly....

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