Victor stood beside the bed in nothing but his boxers, arms crossed tightly over his chest. Outside, rain had begun to fall, the occasional drops tapping softly against the metal roof of the trailer and echoing faintly through the small space.
“This is ridiculous,” he muttered.
Finch lay sprawled across the mattress in his own boxers, deliberately taking up as much room as possible. One arm rested behind his head as he looked up at Victor with a mocking grin.
“You’re the one who wanted to cuddle.”
Victor frowned down at him. “You’re not wearing a shirt.”
Finch raised an eyebrow. “You aren’t either.”
“It’s way too hot.”
Finch leaned his head back against the pillow, the smirk widening as though he’d just found the fatal flaw in Victor’s argument. “I thought vampires can’t feel temperature.”
Victor rolled his eyes, though he had to fight the urge to smile. “Not– I can tell it’s hot.”
Finch pointed lazily at him. “You took your shirt off the moment I took mine off. You were copying me.”
Victor remained standing stubbornly beside the bed. “You didn’t invent taking off your shirt in the summer.”
Finch gestured upward towards the top bunk.. “We should just dismantle the bunk bed. How many times have you used that thing?”
“Not a lot,” Victor admitted. “It’s uncomfortable. But we don’t have enough room for two beds.”
Finch shrugged. “We’ve only ever used this one.”
Victor sighed heavily, the tension finally draining from his shoulders. He stepped forward and tapped Finch’s leg impatiently. “Move over.”
Finch didn’t budge. “Just lay on me.”
Victor swallowed.
For a moment he stayed where he was, silently calculating the least awkward way to do it. Finally, he climbed onto the bed and carefully slid over Finch, straddling him briefly as he adjusted himself.
For a second he just looked at him. Really looked.
Victor took in his soft hazel eyes, the easy way he filled the space, the warmth of him. A quiet awareness settled over him– how limited days like this might actually be.
Finch noticed the staring.
“What?”
Victor exhaled and finally lowered himself, wrapping his arms around Finch and resting his head in the crook of his neck. He listened quietly to the steady rhythm of Finch’s heartbeat.
Finch’s hand immediately found his hair, fingers moving through it in slow, absent strokes.
“I can’t imagine being with anyone else this way,” Victor murmured.
Finch shrugged lightly beneath him. “It’s not that hard. You just need to trust people more.”
Victor’s voice grew quieter. “People are cruel. You’re so lucky you were just born with no baggage, no story. You could just start your life fresh.”
Finch tilted his head slightly. “Wasn’t that the whole purpose of you being reborn?”
“I thought so,” Victor admitted. “But people still have their hang ups apparently. Mom will never trust me around you, and I don’t think Dad would be psyched if he knew how close we got sometimes.”
Finch paused his hand briefly. “Did you ever get this close to anyone in your past life?”
Victor thought about it for a moment. “Back when Mom was my wife… she held me sometimes.”
“What did you like about it?”
Victor’s voice softened. “She knew how fucked up I was, but she still cared about me anyway.” He shifted slightly against Finch. “You know how fucked up I am and you still care.”
“You’re not fucked up,” Finch said quietly. “Not like that.”
Victor sighed. “There’s no way there’s someone out there for us who will care about us more than we do. So what’s the point?”
“We won’t know until we try,” Finch said gently. “It’s okay to be vulnerable. That’s how you make new friends. New lovers. New experiences.”
Victor hesitated. “Will you leave me at the end of summer?”
Finch didn’t even pause. “I’ll never leave you. Whoever I end up with is just going to have to accept that sometimes we fall asleep in each other’s arms. It’s fine.”
Victor snorted softly. “They’re just going to think we’re gay.”
“So?”
Victor lifted his head slightly, making eye contact with him as he lamented, “You’re going to find someone you love. Someone you’ll want to start a family with and move into a new house. You’re going to start a whole life away from me, and everyone keeps telling me I should be happy for you.”
“Wouldn’t you be?”
“Yes…no.” Victor grimaced. “I’d be happy for you… but I’d miss you every day.”
“But I’m not actually going anywhere.”
“When you went to England, I had to cope eventually,” Victor said quietly. “But I knew you were coming home. When we move out, there’s no ‘home’ anymore. This will be gone.”
Finch shook his head slightly beneath him. “It doesn’t have to be. I don’t have to spend every waking minute with them– or you. It’s possible to divide time up.”
Victor was quiet for a moment. “So you promise we’ll still have us even when you’re married with kids.”
Finch smiled faintly. “You’re always going to be my best friend, Victor. Best friend, brother… whatever name we have for ourselves.”
Victor huffed softly. “I think we made this up.”
Finch chuckled. “I think we did too. Do you still think of me that way though?”
Victor thought about his answer carefully before answering, “It’s just… when we kiss, it makes this seem more real. And it makes me feel better.”
Finch considered that for a moment. “Why do you think you’re so terrified of me leaving?”
“Because I don’t know what would happen if I didn’t have you this way.”
“You don’t have to worry about that though.”
Victor’s voice dropped. “You could die.”
“Everyone dies.”
“Your partner could think it’s weird you sleep half naked with your brother sometimes and tell you to stop it.”
“Then they wouldn’t be my partner.”
Victor went quiet again before speaking.
“You know what it is? I think you just make me Victor, and I like being Victor.” His voice softened further. “In my old life I was alone a lot. But I’ve never been alone in this life thanks to you.”
Finch’s fingers slowed in his hair.
“You exist outside of me though,” Finch said gently. “There are things that make you Victor that don’t have to do with me. You have a family who loves you. You’re great at capturing life in what you paint and draw. You have a real appreciation for it.”
He paused. “That’s completely different from what I’ve heard about your past life.”
Victor buried his face deeper against Finch’s neck. “No one loved me like you love me. Not even Mom.”
Finch frowned slightly. “That’s sad. Your old life just seems really sad.”
“I was sad,” Victor admitted quietly. “And angry. I was really, really angry.”
“How angry are you now?”
“Not a lot,” Victor said after a moment. “I’m just scared my life’s going to change once we don’t live in this RV anymore and reality sinks in.”
Finch looked over at him. “Do you really think I’ll ever stop loving you?”
Victor didn’t hesitate.
“No.”
–
Once in a while, Victor’s dreams actually belonged to him.
They weren’t echoes of another life or fragments of memories he wished he could forget. They were the awkward, mundane nightmares of an ordinary teenager; showing up to class without pants, or being forced to sub in for Finch during a band performance while everyone pointed and laughed as he completely botched the song.
Those dreams were embarrassing.
Harmless.
This one was different from the start.
There was blood.
A lot of blood.
But this wasn’t a memory either.
Victor recognized the house immediately– the one in Innisgreen. Only now the place looked like a slaughterhouse. Blood coated the walls in streaks and splashes. It soaked into the floorboards and pooled in dark, glistening lakes across the rooms.
And in the middle of it all were bodies.
His mom.
His dad.
His baby sister.
They lay motionless on the floor while Victor himself was pinned down nearby, his arms restrained painfully behind his back. No matter how hard he struggled, he couldn’t move.
He couldn’t help them.
A wicked voice echoed through the house, oily and triumphant.
“You think you can just bring the traitor back to life and start a Vampire Resistance right under my nose? You underestimate my power.”
Victor twisted his head wildly, trying to find the source of the voice.
“What are you talking about?” he shouted. “I didn’t bring back Micah! I had nothing to do with it! What the fuck Vampire Resistance are you talking about?”
“The Maryams know of you,” the voice continued coldly. “They know your intentions. They know your potential. They know you’re working with Dahlia to seize control.”
“I haven’t seen Dahlia in years!”
“Who else have you recruited? Your brothers? Your uncle? We’ll find them all… and end them just like we did them.”
Victor’s chest tightened violently. “What did Starling do to you?”
The voice chuckled.
“How many more deaths will you be responsible for? Oh look–”
Something heavy crashed from the top of the staircase.
Finch.
He tumbled down the steps and landed hard on the floor, his arms bound behind his back.
“We found another.”
Victor’s scream tore out of him like an animal being flayed.
“No! Not him! Anyone but him– get away from him! He’s not a vampire! Kill me! Kill me instead!”
The unseen figure seemed amused.
“You must care about him a lot to offer yourself up like that.”
“Don’t hurt him!” Victor pleaded, his voice breaking. “I’m the one you’re after! Kill me instead!”
Finch struggled against the restraints, confusion flooding his face. “Victor, what’s going on? What did you do?”
Victor’s vision blurred with tears.
“Please,” he begged desperately. “I’m sorry. What do you want me to do? I’ll hand them all over. I’ll kill Dahlia and my uncle myself if it means you’ll spare him. Please!”
“It’s far too late for that.”
A sword drove straight through the back of Finch’s throat.
The blade burst out the front in a spray of blood.
Finch died instantly.
Blood poured from the wound, racing across the floor toward Victor with terrifying speed.
The sound that tore out of Victor’s throat was not human.
It was something older, deeper—pure agony ripped from the soul. He felt something inside him collapse completely as Finch’s blood soaked into his sweater, stained his skin, spread across the floor between them.
Victor watched the light leave Finch’s eyes.
He screamed until his voice disappeared.
Until there was nothing left but a ragged wheeze clawing through his chest as his lungs burned and his ribs felt like they were splitting apart.
The grief hollowed him out completely.
And in the empty space it left behind…
Something else rose up.
Anger.
A kind of anger he had never allowed himself to feel before. Something ancient and buried deep in the recesses of his mind. Something that had existed long before Victor ever did.
It had simply been waiting.
Dormant.
Waiting for the right moment.
And that moment had come.
In the dream, Hackelm’s eyes snapped open—dark and blazing.
A shockwave of psychic power exploded outward from him, slamming through the room like a hurricane. The cackling demons around him were thrown violently to the floor, pinned helplessly in the blood-soaked wreckage of the house.
They writhed there, choking and snarling as Hackelm rose slowly to his feet.
The blood of his family dripped from the floorboards beneath him.
He didn’t hesitate.
One by one, he descended upon them.
His fangs were enormous now—monstrous. He sank them deep into the neck of the first demon, draining it completely. Then the next. And the next.
Each one shriveled as their blood disappeared into him.
With every kill, he felt stronger. The infernal fire inside them poured into his veins like molten energy, igniting something unstoppable within him. His body hummed with raw power as the world sharpened around him.
The sensation was intoxicating.
Addictive.
Invincible.
By the time the last demon collapsed at his feet, there was no blood left in the room but what already stained the walls.
Hackelm stood in the center of the carnage, chest rising slowly.
Alive.
Alive—and unstoppable.
–
Victor jolted upright with a shuddering breath, dragged violently out of sleep by the lingering terror of the nightmare. For a moment he just sat there in the darkness, chest heaving as his eyes darted around the room, trying to separate dream from reality.
“Hey, hey—what’s wrong? Are you okay?”
Finch’s voice came immediately from beside him, thick with sleep but laced with concern. The mattress shifted as Finch pushed himself up on one elbow, peering at Victor through the dim light filtering in from the window.
“Finch—!”
Victor’s voice cracked with relief and panic all at once.
“It’s okay,” Finch said quickly, reaching for him. “What happened? Did you have a nightmare?”
Victor dragged a hand over his face, shaking his head like he was trying to dislodge the images still clinging to him.
“I’m evil.”
Finch blinked at that, then huffed softly in disbelief. “No you’re not. How many times do we have to go through this?”
Victor’s breathing still hadn’t steadied. His eyes looked distant, like part of him was still trapped inside the dream.
“They hunted us all down,” he said hoarsely. “And they killed you in front of me… and I went crazy and murdered everyone.”
Finch tilted his head slightly, studying him.
“Well,” he said after a moment, “I think I would go crazy if you were murdered in front of me too.”
Victor looked at him helplessly.
“What am I going to do if that happens?”
“That’s not going to happen,” Finch replied calmly. “Who’s going to murder us all like that?”
Victor didn’t hesitate. “Satan. Or Dahlia.”
Finch snorted softly and leaned back against the headboard.
“I don’t think so. We have a lot of powerful people in the house. If anything like that ever did happen, we’d go down swinging. That’s for sure.”
Victor shook his head, still shaken.
“Finch, it was really real. I’m scared it’s actually going to happen now.”
“It won’t happen now,” Finch said gently. “We’re here. No one scary knows that we’re here.”
He wrapped an arm around Victor and pulled him closer, holding him firmly in a quiet attempt to ground him back in the present.
Victor leaned into him for a second—but then shifted his hips backward slightly, a quick, embarrassed movement.
Finch noticed the motion but didn’t comment. He just kept an arm around him, steady and warm in the dark. This awkward situation already happened a handful of times, but they never made mention of it. Sometimes he found himself getting hard too. 
Laying stiffly beside Finch, Victor tried to will his body back into behaving normally. His mind was racing from the nightmare, from everything they’d just said, and now from the quiet awareness that his body had decided to react in the worst possible moment.
Beside him, Finch wondered, distantly, if doing something about it might actually help– if maybe Victor’s constant anxiety about him leaving would ease if they stopped acting like everything about their closeness was some terrible secret.
Finch shifted beside him.
“It’s okay,” Finch said quietly. “I don’t care.”
Victor groaned softly into the pillow. “I care. It shouldn’t be happening.”
“But it happens,” Finch replied with an easy shrug. “It happens to me too.”
Victor kept staring stubbornly at the wall. “It’ll go away if I just ignore it.”
“Or just take care of it, whatever.”
“No,” Victor muttered. “I don’t want to move.”
Finch snorted lightly. “Then take care of it here.”
Victor turned his head, frowning at him. “Finch, don’t be like that.”
“I mean it,” Finch said, his tone more serious now. “I feel like the more you shy away from this and get all shameful about it, the more you convince yourself I’m going to leave and then you spiral again.” He nudged Victor’s arm. “Seriously. I don’t care if you take care of it here.”
Victor stared at him in disbelief. “How?”
Finch raised an eyebrow. “You know how. Don’t be coy.”
Victor immediately shook his head, suddenly hyper-aware of Finch’s presence again. “No. I’m too nervous now. I feel like you’re watching.”
Finch tilted his head thoughtfully. “Do you want me to watch?”
“I just want it to go away,” Victor said miserably.
Finch was quiet for a second before he said, almost casually, “What if I did it?”
Victor’s head snapped toward him. “No. No way,” he said immediately. “We’d never live it down.”
Finch didn’t look particularly bothered by that.
“What if I want to though?” he said. “Like—you’re not even making me. I just want you to feel better.”
“By jerking me off?”
“No, I don’t have to touch it if you don’t want me to.” Finch insisted, “What if you just,” he glanced down, assessing the situation between them, “ground up against me or something.”
Victor curled in on himself. “That just means I’m using you to get off.” 
“Or I’m just helping you make it go away?” Finch reasoned. 
“So like…” Victor tentatively moved his hips forward until he could feel himself brush against something solid. 
“Against my leg or something.” 
“Ngnn,” Victor made a wanton noise as soon as the friction from his boxers and the firm muscle of Finch’s thigh collided, whining, “but then that’s just going to make you hard.”
“I’m already hard,” Finch admitted, laughing, “This is just going to help me get over it too.”
With one shift of his hip, Victor’s body shuddered when he felt Finch’s rigidness as well. Suddenly, guilt surpassed lust and he stopped all together, slumping forward as he lamented, “This isn’t right.”
“It is if we both want it?” 
Victor shook his head, a sob coming on from how absolutely disgusted he felt with himself. “We shouldn't want it “
As soon as Finch sensed his brother starting to bottom out emotionally, he sat up quickly and reached for him. He cupped Victor’s face gently in both hands, drawing him closer until their foreheads nearly touched.
“Come here,” he murmured softly against his lips.
Victor leaned into him without resisting, the tension in his body finally giving way. When they kissed, it wasn’t hurried or desperate—just a quiet, grounding moment that made Victor feel a little less alone in the storm inside his head.
When they pulled apart, Victor’s eyes were wet.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“Don’t be,” Finch said immediately.
Victor shook his head, struggling to explain what was churning inside him. “Finch… if you touch me, there’s no going back. I’m already suffering when it comes to…” He trailed off, frustrated with himself. “How do I even say this?”
“Say what?” Finch asked gently.
Victor swallowed. “My feelings for you… I think it’s too late for that. Maybe I’m just a lost cause.”
Finch studied him quietly for a moment, unsure how to process that, so he spoke the first thing that came to mind, “Love can’t be bad, can it?” 
Victor let out a shaky breath and glanced upwards, shifting himself to move off the bed and up to his own bunk. “This is. This… is all my fault.”
Finch’s hands tightened slightly around his arms. “Please don’t go up there,” he said softly. “I feel like it’s my fault too.”
Victor scrubbed at his face, clearly losing the fight to hold himself together. “Now I’m going to keep crying and ruin everything,” he muttered miserably.
“Don't go,” Finch said again, pulling him forward and cradling him against his chest.
Victor buried his face against him again, shoulders trembling. “I suck so hard,” he mumbled into Finch’s neck. “I know I need to get over myself, but I keep sabotaging all your hard work.”
Finch sighed, “At least I can't stay hard when you’re crying.”
“Me either,” Victor sniffed and dried his face. “It's gone now.”
“Well, mission accomplished!” Finch cheered in jest, “If the goal was to make it go away, at least.” 
Weighing whether he should even make mention of this or not, Victor hid his face even further away as he asked, his voice pitched upwards nervously, “D-did you actually want to touch me? Or did you just want me to feel better.”
Finch answered like it was no big deal, “I just wanted you to feel better. Did you actually want to touch me?” 
“You wanted me to touch you, l’ Victor shot up defensively, not answering the question straight away, “you told me so.”
“I kind of did,” Finch admitted, making a face as he thought better of it, “but I think you were right. Going too far would change things, and I don't really want them to change.”
“Yeah, I'd rather not know what your dick size is if I can help it,” Victor snorted. 
“Oh so it's like that,” Finch sat up and gave Victor a challenging look. “Afraid to face the truth?”
“You say that because you know you’re bigger.” Victor said in an attempt to take the joy of the victory away from him.
“Okay well, hold on,” Finch moved out to escape the bed, “I have a tape measure on my keychain.” 
“Do it in the bathroom, far away from me.” Victor ordered. 
“Well,” Finch grumbled, "I need to get a boner again first.”
“Think about tugging Seth in the Karaoke Bar again,” Victor said, contempt dripping from every word. 
“Ugh no,” Finch shook his head and sat on the edge of the mattress. “I just feel bad when I think about him now.”
Victor stretched his back, eying Finch curiously. “What were you thinking about just now then?” 
“I don't know,” Finch puffed out an amused breath of air. “Knowing you were hard I guess. You were contagious.” 
“Yeah, I gave you a bad case of boneritis.”
Finch laughed out loud, shoving Victor's leg. “Stop! Now I can't concentrate.”
Victor shoved him right back. “I can't take you seriously if I know you’re going to jack it in there.” 
“You're the one who brought it up!” 
“Nevermind, this is so dumb,” Victor acquiesced and slid his fingers over Finch’s arm, beckoning him back. “Let's just go to bed.”
“Do you feel better now?” Finch complied, fitting back in snuggly against him.
Victor nodded, nuzzling the side of Finch’s face before muttering something softly into his ear. 
Finch smiled. “I love you, too, Boneritis.”