Dollar Store Crosses Can't Save You, a Romance fanfic

Dollar Store Crosses Can’t Save You

It starts off with Luke stumbling in through the door, dazed and bruised and mumbling about vampires and blood and stakes. It almost ends the day Daniel dies, cornered in an alley, like a dog, by Chris.

The end begins three days after Daniel dies.

Luke thinks that Daniel looks like a newborn fawn when he wakes up, all blinkey confused eyes and stuck-up hair and soft mouth. It sort of makes him wish that Daniel spent all his time waking up, but then he takes it back because then he could never watch Daniel fall asleep.

Then Daniel blinks, once, hard, and anything vulnerable is gone.

Daniel’s different now. He can smoke without worrying about his lungs, his asthma. He had brightened when he realized there was no need for his inhaler anymore. The pleased smile was wiped off his face when Luke archly points out that he can’t breathe anymore, either.

It’s true, but sometimes during the day, when both Daniel and Luke are sleeping, Luke thinks he can almost feels Daniel’s breath ghosting over his shoulder, where Daniel’s face is mashed up against it.

But it’s faint and fleeting, and he’s not at all sure he can feel it.

Daniel’s different in other ways, too.

While he was never a major fan of the sun before, now even a singe bar of golden sunlight can sting, the sweet-sick stench of burning flesh overwhelming him.

He figures this out by laying on the floor of his room, stretched out in the sunlight trying to see how long it would take for him to burn and shrivel and die-one less creature of darkness in this world.

Luke finds him and claps his hands over his mouth, eyes bulging with the effort of not shrieking aloud. He pulls Daniel out of that single ray of sunlight and throws his arms around Daniel, shaking.

Daniel feels hot, wet tears sliding down his neck and into the collar of his shirt from where Luke’s face is pressed.

Daniel’s crying a little bit too, but only because Luke saved him before the sun could.

“So. Can you, like, turn into a bat?”

“How the fuck should I know? It’s not like I’ve tried. Why would I even want to?”

Daniel glares at Luke’s disappointed look, and turns away.

Later that night he tries to change. Envisions leathery black wings and extraordinary hearing.

He gets so sick that he’s stuck in bed for two days. Luke brings him soup, even though he doesn’t eat it, and when Luke thinks Daniel’s asleep he leans overt to kiss Daniel’s neck, lips firm and smooth on his skin. Daniel clenches the sheets in his fists with the effort of holding back his urge to lunge up and sinks his teeth in as deep as they’ll go, and then just a little deeper…

The fact that he can’t tell which one of them is the vampire isn’t helping matters any.

When Daniel dreams, his mind is full of sharp, gleaming teeth and bright, predatory dead eyes. He wakes up screaming, then only as Luke comes running does he realize he feels traitorous.

He dreams about Chris.

Luke swoops in like a bat, bringing fresh air and daylight in with him, and he kisses Daniel firmly on the mouth like he’s not a monster that could kill him.

“Tell you what,” Luke leans forward, elbows on knees and Daniel mimics the pose unconsciously. “I’ll be the Wilhelmia to your Dracula.”

Daniel’s lips twist. “Fuck you, Luke,” and he pushes away from the other man and goes to stalk to the window as Luke laughs.

Daniel realizes he can’t go near windows in daylight anymore, and Luke stopped laughing.

Daniel never started.

The skin around Luke’s eyes is red like the sunrise Daniel will never see again.

Luke’s become his whole world and he doesn’t even realize it.

Yet again, knowing him, he probably does.

Luke’s lips meet Daniel’s neck, and his hands skim down Daniel’s side and settle on his hips, and he’s gasping and Daniel would be too, if he could breathe.

And he needs to be saved so badly, but there’s no one left to do it.

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