Page 38 of The Good Vampire’s Guide to Blood & Boyfriends
DELICATE
brENNAN’S PHONE
Brennan
You seemed to like Travis.
Cole
Fucking coolest person I’ve ever met!!! And so charming???? Like wow.
Brennan
Can’t say I get the appeal.
Cole
Aw. Babe.
Are you jealous?
Brennan
NO!
He’s super old and powerful, he kinda freaks me out, that’s all.
Cole
Don’t worry, I promise you’re still my favorite vampire.
Brennan
You might be my favorite human
Aw, do I get a trophy? A plaque?
Cole
Don’t test me, or I’ll put it on a t-shirt.
Nellie
Thanks for the heads up hey watch where you’re going ash hold
Sorry voice to text.
Sunny will keep an eye out and I’ll let Quinn know to stockpile more blood than usual. We’ve got this covered.
bloodsucking memes for immortal non-teens (new england clan)
QUINN MILLER
The annual New England clan reunion VAMPIRE BALL will take place at the Old Florence Inn outside Boston. Join vampires and humans alike at our annual celebration, where vampires can mingle freely with humans in one place.
*Remember that for the safety of the clan, hunting is not permitted in protected areas. Read more from our “So You Want to Kill a Human” pamphlet. Humans will be present, and secrecy must be maintained. If you have concerns about blending in, please reach out to Nellie, Sunny, or Quinn!
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It seemed far too easy to be real, but the last two weeks of the semester passed with Brennan jumping at shadows without any event. Without any disturbance in the area, in fact. Whatever strange “animal attacks” had been causing disruption had stopped, for now.
Life dared to go on.
Brennan went to classes, went to the library, and read Breaking Dawn, slowly but surely.
He scoured through pamphlets for history on the vampire ball of 1928, which didn’t seem to exist anywhere in Nellie’s literature.
A pamphlet on the New England vampire ball was just about the tradition of it all, without specifics.
Clan history mentioned Nellie and Sunny assuming leadership in 1928, but not how or why.
He once stayed holed up in his room for so long that Tony knocked on his door, concerned, offering—of course—a bowl of pasta.
Brennan couldn’t stand to say no to the extended kindness, so he took it, swallowing down retches, and when he closed the door on Tony, he dumped the bowl out the window into the alley behind their building.
He and Tony might be peripherally friends, but Brennan would not sit with Tony’s garlic sauce for anyone or anything.
Even Mari seemed to tentatively tolerate him during Bachelorette Night, though Brennan’s vampirism was something of an elephant in the room. Tony still didn’t know.
Then there was Cole.
They spent their nights in the library flirting like they always did, except now their feet pressed together under the table, or they held hands, or they smiled all sappy at each other across the stacks because they knew they both felt the same way, somehow.
They still ended up keeping each other company late at night, and if they weren’t crashing at the other’s place, then they were falling asleep on the phone talking about anything and everything.
A few things were different. Half the time their work in the library devolved into making out in the stacks, the way Brennan had always secretly wanted to.
“You have no idea how many times I wanted to do this back then,” Cole had said against Brennan’s mouth after dragging him to somewhere in the 600s.
Half bewildered that this was his life and half unbelievably turned on, Brennan said, “I should have known, you bringing up Twilight on the first day. You were practically throwing yourself at me.”
Another week went by, and no attacks. Nellie told him they were keeping their guard up but they were optimistic.
Yet vampirism, always determined to find new and creative ways to ruin Brennan’s life, continued to make its presence known.
Like, okay, when he and Cole started to get into it? Brennan had gotten used to his fangs dropping at that point. It was still embarrassing and weird but Cole just laughed. He called it a vampire boner, which was mortifyingly appropriate.
They were in Cole’s room, a stack of records knocked over on the floor, some indie singer-songwriter playing on vinyl. Cole was starting to do the thing he did where he leaned back and pulled Brennan up over him, and Brennan pulled back to make some smart-ass comment—
And Cole looked up at him with dazed eyes. Too dazed, because no one was that good of a kisser. Whatever interest had been building in Brennan shattered with the icy realization that something was wrong.
Brennan fell off the bed in his haste to scramble away from Cole.
“Um, yikes,” Cole said, and pushed up to sit with a disgruntled huff. “What’s wrong?”
Brennan shot back up and crept closer to the bed he’d launched himself from, squinting at Cole for some sign of… what, exactly? Magic?
Cole met his gaze with confusion, and sure enough, that cloudy glaze was still there, undeniable. A chill went through Brennan. Did he do that? How?
“Do I have something on my face?” Cole asked, and giggled.
“Are you high?” Brennan asked, half-desperate.
“No?” Cole giggled some more. “I’m good! Why are you on the floor? Get back over here!”
Something was definitely wrong, Brennan realized, in a magic vampire-y sense.
“I need to call Nellie,” Brennan decided.
“Wait, what?”
“You’re all—” Brennan made a hand-waving gesture that clearly didn’t translate.
“I’m what ?”
“Weird! Your eyes, and you’re giggling—”
“I was giggling ’cause I like you?”
“I think I did something to you!”
“Not yet, that’s the problem,” Cole grumbled.
“I’m calling Nellie.”
Ten minutes later, Brennan had explained the situation, Nellie had laughed her ass off, and Cole was sitting on the bed with his arms wrapped around his knees watching Brennan pace a hole into the carpet.
“ Vampire saliva has venom in it, ” Nellie explained, her tinny voice crackling through the room on speaker phone. “ You guys were swapping spit, so, yeah, he got a teensy bit enthralled by you. ”
“So,” Brennan said slowly, “I accidentally roofied my boyfriend with my spit?”
Cole had been fiddling with the strings of a hoodie, and stilled his movements at the question.
“More or less, yeah.”
“Isn’t that, like, a moral concern?” Brennan hissed. How was she so nonchalant about it? Cole went back to fiddling with the string.
“No offense, Brennan, but you’re super weak. Nothing your trace amounts of venom can do is anything worse than, like, eating an aphrodisiac. It wouldn’t make Cole do anything he didn’t want to do.”
“Okay,” Brennan said. “Okay, thanks, I guess.”
“ No problem, ” Nellie said. “ I’m gonna mail you some relevant pamphlets, ’kay? Be safe. ”
Brennan resisted a groan, hung up the phone, and turned to Cole. His face was twisted in some expression that Brennan couldn’t decipher beyond displeased. The cloudiness in his eyes had faded by the time Brennan had gotten Nellie on the phone, and there was no giggling.
Brennan flopped down on the bed a safe distance away from Cole, who was curled with his knees to his chest, avoiding Brennan’s eyes.
“I’m sorry for poisoning you with my spit,” Brennan said.
Cole huffed a laugh, unfurling slightly from the tight protective ball.
“I don’t care about that.” He seemed to gather his courage, finally looking up to meet Brennan’s eyes. “But you could have talked to me. I was right here, and I was telling you I was fine. I guess it kinda feels like you still don’t trust me with some of that stuff.”
Cole doodled vague patterns on his jean-clad thighs with his fingers.
Brennan watched his hands skating around, and eventually convinced himself it would be okay to hold them.
He did, and Cole seemed to deflate with relief.
Like that gesture alone said that whatever tiff this was, they were still on the same page.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you, I don’t trust myself. Or, the part of myself that’s a vampire.”
Cole snorted and squeezed Brennan’s fingers. “Do you hear yourself?” He gave Brennan an unimpressed look, and Brennan wanted to press a thumb to the crinkle between his brows. “You sound like a Riverdale character.”
“I’ve never seen Riverdale. ”
“That’s for the best, you’d hate it.”
They shared a small laugh. Cole scooted to close the distance between them, tucking himself into Brennan’s chest like he belonged there, and Brennan ached with it.
“You’re right, though,” Brennan heard himself say. “I don’t always want you to see the bad parts. You’ve seen me have vampire-related crises, like, eight times since we met. I don’t want that to be the only thing we have going for us.”
Cole remained unimpressed.
“It scares me,” Brennan admitted. “Dom and all her drama, yeah, but more the fact that—that could be me. That I’m a slippery slope away from hurting someone. Hurting you.”
“You keep saying that. Why do you think you’d hurt me? When have you hurt me, or anyone, that you’re so afraid of doing it again? Since I’ve known you, all you’ve been is good. ”
“Because I’m trying so hard to be! But what if I slip? What if I get lazy? And then underneath it all, my nature is that. ”
He didn’t know how to say, I’ve lost myself before, I’ve hurt people before, with my stupid brain, and I’m terrified of it happening again, this time with fangs. So he didn’t.
“I’m just. I mean. The vampire stuff is always gonna come up in weird, unexpected ways. It’s always gonna be… an obstacle.”
“Well, yeah,” Cole said, shrugging. “Maybe. It’s part of you. It only bothers me when you don’t let me be part of it. Like calling Nellie instead of talking to me. Or not letting me read any of the terrible pamphlets.”
“I don’t mean to keep you out of it,” Brennan said, but he wasn’t sure it was true. “I just think sometimes it’d be easier if I weren’t—”