Something Inside

All previous disclaimers apply.



“Ryan…please…it’s been three days. Tell me what happened.” Sharpay slipped into the bed where her brother had been laying, not speaking, not drinking, not sleeping for three days. She had even put off her promised trip to New York, surprising Troy and Gabriella with her concern, to try to find out what was causing her brother such distress. They loved Sharpay more than life, but to say she was a spoiled, selfish, bitch was an understatement most of the time. They had failed to realize that, because of their long separation and the situation that had caused Ryan to leave them the last time he’d gone, Sharpay was, at least at the moment, more concerned with Ryan’s happiness than her own. She wrapped him in her arms like their human mother used to when they had been children and had nightmares. It had always comforted him, even now so far into their new life, but this time it seemed to have no effect. He remained stiff in her arms. She sighed and was about to leave when his voice, small and sounding so young, finally reached her like she had been hoping it would for three nights running.

“We were getting ice cream,” He murmured, “We were so happy. He told me… after…that he was nearly in love with me. And I told him the same thing. I would have told him everything if he had asked, but he didn’t. He just said he wanted to get ice cream and eat it in bed with me. So we went to the store. On the way out I got three distinct voices in my head. Same old, same old. They wanted to teach Chad and me a lesson for daring to hold hands in public. I pushed Chad behind me, told him to stay, pushed his mind a little to obey me. It was harder than I thought it would be. He has a strong mind. Then, they came at me.”

He could still see it in his mind. With Chad safe against the wall he had allowed himself to let go a little. The three men who approached him reeked of unwashed bodies and beer. Just three “good old boys” probably just off from a twelve hour work day and a two hour beer guzzle in some seedy bar. Usually he was able to ignore their type. But, that night he had been more than a little thirsty and more than a little angry, taking their remarks as a personal attack on Chad, the man he loved. They would pay for that alone if nothing else.

The first, stocky, a little overweight but heavily muscled below the fat, had charged without pretense, without a word. Ryan had decided to have a little fun. He was riled anyway, why not let it play out a little? He just tossed the guy to the side, grinning to hear him run into a street lamp. From the satisfying crunch of bone he knew the connection of nose and metal had broken it. It made him laugh. The two other men had come at him at the same time, screaming with their rage. He had just laughed harder, breaking one’s arm and leap-frogging, kicking out just as he came down. The air had escaped the man’s lungs with a satisfying, low grunt and he had doubled over. A glance at Chad had Ryan thinking that perhaps it was time to finish up. Chad looked scared. Ryan hadn’t wanted to scare him. A knee to the head of the man he had just kicked put him out. A harsh punch to the gut of the man with the broken arm had laid him out just as easily. They’d wake up in a bit, hurting, needing to go to the hospital, but very much alive. Ryan hadn’t killed a man in nearly two hundred years.

“But, I was so thirsty,” Ryan whispered as Sharpay continued to stroke his hair comfortingly, “I should never have taken the chance of going to see Chad when I was that thirsty, but all I could think about was being with him. When the other guy came toward me with his nose broken…”

The scent of the blood was strong and metallic in the back of his throat. His throat was burning. As the man had rushed at him, blood still pouring out of his nose, Ryan had stopped thinking and acted on instinct. He had caught the charging man in his arms, knelt on the ground, swept the too long hair back from the dirty neck and sunk his teeth in. The first taste of blood had made him groan in appreciation and he knew his bite was having the same effect on this man as it did on others. His body jerked, he groaned, half in pain, half in arousal. He came in his pants before his body began to go weak, before Ryan took too much. But, he had. He hadn’t been able to stop himself, even though he had trained himself so thoroughly, garnered more self control than he had ever thought possible those first thirty years. Perhaps it was the thirst, perhaps it was the adrenaline of the fight, perhaps it was that he had lost his careful control while in bed with Chad and had not yet bothered to make sure he had put it back in the places it belonged, but he had taken the man’s life. He had gone peacefully, Ryan knew, but it didn’t make things easier. He stood, disgusted with himself. The man’s blood was on his shirt, down his chin. Ryan hadn’t been so messy with a meal in decades. His heart already breaking, needing Chad’s comfort, he had turned to him, wiping the blood from his chin, and held out a hand to him.

Then, he had seen Chad’s eyes. His lover was terrified of him. He had pressed himself to the brick as if it would be possible to disappear into it. Ryan felt Chad’s fear invade his mind. No words to describe it, just a haze and mask of terrified color, white, blank. What had he done? He looked at his hands, wished he still had the ability to be physically ill to find some relief from the tension in his chest, in his abdomen, and reached for Chad, calling his name once, gently. In his mind Chad came to him, still terrified, but willing to let Ryan explain, willing to give it a try, to forgive. In reality, Chad just kept looking at him as if Ryan would attack him as he had the men who had come at them, the men who hadn’t been able to defend themselves against something that didn’t belong in this world. Ryan got a picture from Chad’s mind, just one. Ryan smiling viciously as he held a very lifeless Chad in his arms, blood on his lips and on Chad’s neck. And Chad only felt fear toward him any longer. Ryan hadn’t even been able to move when Chad bolted, falling to his knees with his grief.

“I got rid of the body,” Ryan’s voice was full of tears he could not shed as Sharpay rocked him, “I had to protect you. You and Gabriella and Troy have made a life here. I couldn’t put that in jeopardy. I came here. The way he looked at me, Shar. He was terrified of me. He wasn’t seeing me anymore. He was seeing a monster.”

“Ryan, you aren’t a mon…”

“He was right, Sharpay!” Ryan pulled out of her arms and walked to the window in his room, his arms clutched around his midsection as if to hold himself together. He couldn’t cry, it wasn’t physically possibly for their kind, but he might have well have been screaming, sobbing, for the breaking of his heart that she felt, “I am a monster! I couldn’t stop. And because I couldn’t stop a man is dead and the man I love will hate me and the rest of our kind for the rest of his life!”

“Ryan.” Sharpay tried to go to him, but the dead look in his eyes stopped her.

“I’ve been hated before, Sharpay. As a man and as a vampire. But, never by someone I loved. I’ve loved humans before, too. But there was something about Chad. I’ve waited my whole life, my whole death, to find someone like him, and I could very possibly kill him. If I have no control when it comes to someone I see once, how will I be with someone I spend every night with? I don’t deserve him. I don’t deserve…”

“Ryan,” she stretched out her arm to him, wanting to touch, suddenly scared for him, “You wouldn’t…” She couldn’t say the words, but they both knew what she was thinking.

Commit suicide. Stay out when the sun rises.

“I won’t go out into the sun, Shar,” he laughed weakly, “I can promise you that.”

She breathed a sigh of relief.

“I don’t deserve something that quick.”

“Ryan?”

“Go drink, Shar. You look thirsty.”

“Come drink with me,” she almost begged, finally seeing, finally understanding.

He smiled once, harshly, “No.”



It had taken him two weeks to work up to this moment. He pulled his cell phone out of
his pocket, dialed in the number, and waited while it rang. Chad tried not to hyperventilate. The past two weeks had been Hell. He had spent the night it had happened trying to convince himself that what he had seen, Ryan’s brutal fight and the murder of the man attacking him, them, hadn’t happened at all. He had run for close to an hour, trying to convince himself that this was all just a bad dream brought on by eating ice cream too late in the night, that he would wake up with the sun, arms around Ryan, and they would make love in the shower before he went to classes and Ryan went to do whatever it was he did during the day. But, when he had gotten home the sheets had still smelled like Ryan and it was undeniably still night.

The terror had come back full force then as he remembered the look in the man’s eyes as Ryan attacked his throat. Chad had watched those eyes go dead. He had stripped his clothes off haphazardly as he stumbled toward the bathroom and fell into the tub, turning the shower on so that the water poured over him nearly hot enough to burn. Still, he had shivered, rocking back and forth. Taylor had found him three hours later, still rocking, mumbling unintelligibly. She had gotten him into his pajamas, tried to ask him what happened, but the evening had been too much for him and he had fallen asleep before she could say anything.

He’d spent the next four days in bed, trying to come to grips with what he had seen. Ryan had killed a man, had been drinking his blood. But, those men had attacked first. Chad had known what they had wanted to do. He wasn’t stupid. If Ryan hadn’t stepped up, if Ryan hadn’t been able to do what he did, they both would have been hurt, maybe killed. The men hadn’t been small, and they hadn’t been weak. Which meant that Ryan had to be insanely strong. That was when Chad had begun to think, really think. He never saw Ryan when the sun was up, no matter how many times he invited him to picnic, to take a boat out on the pond in the park. Ryan always claimed that he had a full day, never explaining what he had to do. But, Chad had never asked, either. Ryan’s skin was always cool to the touch, it had been cool inside of him when they made love. Chad had seen him eat or so he thought, but that didn’t mean anything.

The next two days had been spent so deep in research, on the internet, in the library, that he hadn’t even noticed when Taylor had tried to get his attention, tried to get him to talk to her. She had been so scared by the way he was acting, not speaking, hardly eating, that she had called her parents, their parents really, and told them that she thought Chad needed help and she didn’t know what to do.

“Chad, I called Mom and Pop. They’ll be here in the morning.” She had told him, not expecting a response. But, it had finally woken him up.

“What?”

“Oh, thank God!” Taylor had thrown her arms around him, “I was so scared.”
“I’m sorry, Tay. I’ve been trying to find out… It…it doesn’t matter. Ryan…he’s…and that night…” He hadn’t been able to say just then what he was thinking, what had happened. The latter scared him too much, still. The former made him think he was insane. So, he had gone with the mild annoyance what she had done caused, “You just had to call Mom and Pop, didn’t you?”

“Chad, you haven’t spoken to me for six days! Count them, six! I thought you were coked out or you’d been raped or something! You were scaring me! I needed Mom and Pop and I think you need them, too! If you can’t talk to me will you at least talk to them?”

He hadn’t been able to resist it when Julia McKessie had taken him in her arms and Thomas McKessie had rubbed his back. All of the fear, all of the pain, had come pouring out. He had collapsed in their arms, sobbing, wishing like hell his mother was there to hold him even though two of the people he loved best in the world had flown across the country to make sure he was alright. But, he wasn’t alright. He could admit that when his parents and his sister were holding him. It all came out in spurts and starts, how he had met Ryan, their courtship, sleeping with him just the once. He told them how he had been so happy, how Ryan had almost said he loved him, just as he almost told Ryan the same. When he described the fight, he left out the part where Ryan had killed the man by sucking his blood. He knew that it would sound insane. He still wasn’t quite sure he believed it yet himself. He told them how he had allowed himself to run from Ryan, terrified of what he was capable of.

“Alright, baby,” Julia had rubbed his back, “What you did makes sense. Anyone would be scared to see someone they thought they knew do something like that. The fact that it was so violent when you had never thought Ryan capable of such a thing probably just made it worse. But, the fact that Ryan scared you isn’t the real problem, is it? I think your real problem now is deciding what to do. I think you’re worried that Ryan will take your running away as rejection. I don’t think you’re nearly in love with him, sweetheart. I’ve seen you nearly in love before. I think you love Ryan and that scares you. I think you’re afraid he won’t take you back after you ran from him and that scares you more.”

Chad had wondered then if it was just Julia who was so astute when it came to the children she’d raised or, if perhaps, it was all mothers. Julia and Thomas had stayed two days, just long enough to make sure Chad was back to eating and talking regularly, and then they’d gone home. It had taken Chad nearly a week more to work through everything he was feeling, everything he had discovered. He was in love with a vampire. He could accept that. Ryan had killed a man by drinking his blood. That was harder, but Chad rationalized it by thinking that the man would have killed them both if he’d had the chance. He wanted Ryan back. That was the easiest thing to decide.

Chad felt ashamed now of how he had acted. Of course he had been shocked and he had been more terrified than he had ever been in his life, but he had run away like a scared boy. Ryan probably thought he was a coward of the worst kind and that idea still made him a little sick to his stomach. He never wanted Ryan to think he was a coward just as he was sure that Ryan had never wanted Chad to think he was a monster. As he had thought about it more he had come to realize that he knew Ryan well enough to know that the look in his eyes after he had killed that man had been grief and regret. He had reached out for Chad, needing comfort. Chad knew now that he hadn’t wanted to kill the man, that he had lost control. Ryan had looked so disgusted with himself as he wiped the blood away from his mouth, but all Chad had seen was the blood. How could Ryan not take what he had done as rejection when he had reached out to Chad for comfort and Chad had run away? His fear that Ryan wouldn’t take him back, that he had hurt him too badly, kept him from calling.

Not a little of what was keeping him from calling was pride as well, he had to admit. Ryan hadn’t trusted him enough to share his secrets. He had kept something from Chad that could have broken their relationship. When had Ryan been planning to tell him? When they decided to move in together? His anger carried him for two days. When he realized the fact that he was dating a creature that he had always thought mere fantasy no longer bothered him and that it was the fact that Ryan had kept his nature from him that had Chad so angry and confused he knew it was time to call Ryan and beg him to take him back.

He was still waiting for Ryan to pick up his phone, heating up his dinner in the microwave and looking out at the bright city lights, when he was suddenly slammed against the wall of his apartment. Unlike the last time he had been slammed against a wall, there was no hand to prevent his head from striking. Instead, his head snapped back and struck the wall hard, making his vision go momentarily blurry. A hand wrapped around his neck and lifted him from his feet. He instinctively grabbed at the hand around his neck and tried to pull it away, struggling to breathe through the small amount of space the strong hand allowed him for air. As his vision cleared he realized the one who had him trapped against the wall was Ryan’s sister.

Sharpay was a beautiful woman of slight build, he knew that. But, with her eyes flashing with rage and her hair a mess as if she had been pulling at it, she terrified him. She growled at him, flashing teeth that looked sharp, despite the fact that they didn’t have the fangs he associated with vampire lore.

“Sharpay,” he wheezed.

“Give me one good reason not to kill you right now,” She snarled in return.

He took only a moment to think, then tried the only thing he could think of, “I’m in love with your brother.”

She pressed her hand more strongly against his throat, cutting off all air, “You ran away from him. You made him think he disgusted you!”

“I…” he used the last of the air in his lungs to force the words out, “I made a mistake.”

“What?” She dropped him to the floor just before he passed out and waited until his coughing had died down to wheezing, “What did you say, Chadwick?”

“I made a mistake,” he repeated, “I was scared. I didn’t think. I was just calling Ryan. I was going to beg him to take me back.” There was no use to stand on pride with an angry vampire in his apartment.

“You’re telling the truth.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Yes,” he answered anyway, “What’s wrong, Sharpay? Has something happened to Ryan?” Why else would she be so angry with him?

“Chad,” she took his hand in a surprisingly gentle grip, “You broke his heart. He thinks he disgusts you. He hasn’t fed since that night. He’s starving himself. Nothing we do gets him to drink.”

“Shar,” Chad was frantic. A world without Ryan was unthinkable. He would never be able to live with himself if Ryan died because he thought Chad didn’t love him. He had to get to Ryan, it was all he knew. Ryan had to live, even if Chad had hurt him too badly to be taken back, he had to know that somewhere Ryan was alive, “You have to take me to him!”

“Come with me,” She grabbed him and placed him on her back without a second thought. Chad tried not to be surprised, “Close your eyes if you have a weak stomach. We’re going to be moving fast and if you throw up on me I’ll kill you, no matter how much Ryan loves you.”