Edited: 01/11/23

Darren stood at the living room window looking at Central Park with its vegetation dotted with round globes of yellow light. The complex was a couple of blocks away but the buildings in front of Rafinesque Place were shorter and his vampiric vision showed him what he wished to see. The Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir’s waters twinkled in the silvery moonlight. As he gazed at the natural beauty before him, he began to think about when he moved to New York for the first time and how he would walk his dogs in Central Park. Just like that, he was depressed.

Darren had always been a dog person, but after his embrace, his dogs didn’t want to have anything to do with him. They would bark, snarl, and back away from him. McGregor said that he was one of the unlucky vampires that animals didn’t like. McGregor took the dogs and left them on his aunt’s doorstep. After abandoning his dogs, Darren and Daniel were told to liquidate all of their assets and move to New York. According to McGregor, Australia was a hotspot of unruly vampire activity, and the vampire king was not a king at all, and his recklessness is what attracted the hunters. New York, he said, had a community that would help them grow.

Behind Darren, cartoons played on the TV. He wasn’t sure which was playing now because his mind was far away. Lifting his fingers to the window, he began to thump them gently to the melody of “Carry On Dancing.” What a big fucking mistake that song had been. Having always been attracted to dark and arcane subjects, he had been a fan of vampire literature and movies. Now, he avoided the subject like the plague, but that damn song would always be with him, a part of him. He wrote it, with Daniel, of course, about fucking vampires. Now, look at him, drinking blood for the rest of eternity. On that note, he lifted his mug of cooling blood and took a sip.

It was early fall, but the chill of the north was creeping in. Being able to withstand harsh elements as a vampire, Darren could walk out into a blizzard with shorts on. However, that would be foolish and attract attention that The PIEN did not want.

Oh, excuse me, Darren thought. Le Parlement Infinie des Êtres Nocturnes. The bloody Infinite Parliament of Nocturnal Beings.

One can only wonder why an organization that governs a supernatural populace would name itself that when they were highly prejudiced and disallowed weres and other nocturnal creatures from joining. The battle between vampires and weres had been raging for centuries and though the high-ranking vampire officials denied that they still enslaved weres as well as supported the production of fur outerwear made from weres’ hide, on the contrary, they still did. This was the species Darren now belonged to.

However, Darren could not deny that he missed his handsome creator’s embrace. He was beautiful. He had a rugged look to him, tan skin, strong, tall body, muscular, a headful of thick wavy brown hair, and that lovely hard-on inducing smooth teasing voice so low as it tickled his ears. What was also interesting is that he had an old scar on his face, stretching across his jawline and cutting up to the bottom of his lips. Darren never asked how he got it, and Darren never knew his name. All he and the others knew him as was the vampire king. In that short time, Darren loved him.

Tilting his head up, Darren looked at the ceiling as he heard the bed shift, and a pair of feet touching the floor and padding to the bathroom. He’s up, he thought solemnly and sighed leaning on the windowsill.

Technically, vampires didn’t have any control over their sleep/wake cycle. When the sun rose, they fell asleep, and when it set, they woke up. However, when one adds alcohol or drugs to the mix, things change. An inebriated vampire could fall asleep whenever or stay up past daybreak. There had been instances of vampires high on cocaine burning up in the sun because they were so wired and awake. Darren only hoped Daniel wouldn’t graduate to drugs. He didn’t think he could handle that.

The shower was turned on in the upstairs bathroom and Darren felt relieved. He didn’t think he could take another day of Daniel’s funk. There had been times that he had gone two months without bathing. It was torture.

Darren continued to rest against the window as he smiled while he listened to Daniel move around and shower. Images of them showering together flowed into his mind and he smiled. Their hands moved over each other’s body, lips connecting, flesh against flesh…He sighed. That was the past and that’s all it would ever be.

Soon, Daniel’s feet were slapping the wooden stairs as he came down to the lower level. Darren watched as he crossed the living room. A small smile came to Darren’s lips. Daniel was wearing the charcoal gray lounge pants he had gotten him for Christmas and nothing more. Some might find Daniel’s bony frame unappealing, but Darren loved it. His eyes drank him in as he passed enjoying how the pants were loose and hung low on his bony hips exposing the top of his little perk butt cheeks and the top of his pubic area with its trail of hair leading to heaven. Oh, how he wanted to walk up to him and run his fingers over his chest…Things were different now, and when Daniel disappeared into the kitchen, Darren turned and continued to look out the window.

Alcohol was still in Daniel’s blood. He was never truly sober. Darren listened as he fixed a mug of warm blood in the kitchen, and his mind recalled all the hell they raised in Australia with each other. The PIEN didn’t prohibit killing humans, they prohibited vampires not cleaning up after themselves and attracting attention from hunters and Blood Reavers. Blood Reavers were insane humans who were addicted to vampire blood. As it were, vampire blood had drug-like properties when humans ingested it. Who would have thought?

Anyway, Darren and Daniel left bodies all over Australia. A toy vampire, those that are newly embraced until the age of ten, consumed large quantities of blood. At their current age, they each consumed between one and one-fifth to three gallons of blood a day. When they were just infants, they consumed way more than that. All Darren remembered was that it was a lot of death, blood, and sex. McGregor said they were lucky they weren’t dead. They then found out that there was a hunter on their trail. An Aboriginal hunter at that. Aborigines were the fiercest hunters in Australia.

“Cartoons?” Daniel asked, calling Darren’s attention.

Turning, Darren nodded his head. “It’s just on. You can change it if you like.” He didn’t look at Daniel, his face was down, and looking into his mug.

“Scooby Doo?” Daniel continued to question, this time with mockery in his voice.

Darren lifted his head and looked at Daniel sitting at his keyboard. His hair was washed and damp, his eyes weren’t red but there were still traces of pink in them, and that scowl, hideous and vicious, cleaved into his heart.

Darren didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to fight. Moving to the coffin, he picked up the remote and carried it to the keyboard. Daniel's hand reached for it as he was setting it down, and immediately, he dropped it. He didn’t want him to touch him. He feared his touch. In Darren’s mind, as long as he didn’t touch him, he was safe from physical abuse.

Avoiding looking at Daniel’s face which surely was wearing a more pissed-off countenance than before, Darren retreated to the couch and sat down sipping his blood. He heard him snort after awhile, but he kept his eyes forward. Though Daniel had mocked Darren, he didn’t change the channel.

With his mind returning to Central Park, Darren thought about going out that night. Perhaps he’d get the driver to take him in the car. At the thought of the car, his eyes flicked to the built-in shelf on the other side of the fireplace. On it was Daniel’s high-quality model vintage cars. None were made out of plastic. All were constructed from metal and wood. Conveniently, he left that shelf intact. Their car was vintage. It was actually Daniel’s car. Therefore, Darren decided he’d just walk. Heaven forbid he got into an accident.

After finishing his meal, Darren set the empty mug on the coffin. Shuffling the junk around on top of it, he found his bottle of midnight blue nail polish. It was the same color the vampire king wore. A smile came to Darren’s lips. He was pure, utter bliss. After shaking the bottle of nail polish, Darren sat back on the couch and began to paint his nails silently. However, it didn’t take long for that to turn into a shitstorm.

“And you wonder why everybody thought you were gay all those years you were in the closet,” Daniel stated with his words digging against Darren’s skin.

Darren tensed. Daniel knew everything he went through as a child. He knew how he was spanked at school by a principal for playing in a girl’s hair, how he was threatened with getting punched in the nose if he didn’t stop looking at a boy he had a crush on, and how he prayed to God not to be gay because he didn’t want to get AIDS. He knew all of it. He was goading him, ripping out his insides.

“Yeah, I wasn’t the only one in the closet, love,” Darren fired back as he flashed hard-boiled eyes at his partner. His eyes had gone from a light blue to a deep cobalt.

“Darren,” Daniel started as his lip curled up at the corner. It was so fucking evil. “You were so far in the closet that you were wearing your great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother’s undies. Besides, you turned me and that wasn’t the first time.”

Darren’s fingers gripped the nail polish brush hard with the long slender top pressing into his flesh. “Bugger off!” He snapped.

“You turned me, Darren,” he insisted.

“I didn’t turn you! If you’re gay, you’re just gay. You have to have it in you from the start.”

“Darren,” Daniel’s voice kept needling him, “come on. The way you always danced up on me and twirled around on stage, and are we not going to talk about the vampire thing?” Darren kept painting his nails. “Do you want me, Darren?” Daniel had shoved the blade in and now he was turning it. “You wanted me from the moment you saw me.”

Darren tried hard to ignore Daniel, but his eyes were stinging, and his anger was threatening to boil over. He didn’t want this. He didn’t want any of this, but it was going to get worse. Daniel started hammering “I Want You” out of the keyboard. Even if he were playing sober it would have sounded like a dead cat being resurrected because the instrument was fucked beyond repair.

“Oooo, I want you! I don’t know if I need you! Let’s die and find out!” Daniel sang at an unbearable pitch. In horror, Darren stared at his insane partner completely outdone. “Cola, cola, yeah! Chica…cherry…cola!” he continued.

Darren couldn’t take it anymore. He gathered his nail polish and moved to make his exit.

“You’re a fucking fairy, Darren Hayes!” Daniel shouted after him.

Darren turned and froze. He eyed Daniel. Silently, Daniel looked back. For a moment they looked at each other. There was triumph and smugness on Daniel’s face and shock on Darren’s.

“I’m getting the fuck out of here,” Darren said. Turning, he continued on his path.

“Don’t sprinkle any of that fairy dust, sunshine!” Daniel called after him and began screeching “To the Moon and Back” while playing “A Thousand Words” on the keyboard.