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elliepassmore · 4 months

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Down Comes the Night review

4/5 stars Recommended if you like: Gothic fantasy, romantasy, murder mystery

Admittedly this is my least favorite Allison Saft book to date (which would probably say more if I'd rated it less than 4 stars, but whatever). I've read eARCs of all her other books and really enjoyed those, but I definitely think you can see her progress as a writer from this book to A Far Wilder Magic , and then definitely between those two books and A Fragile Enchantment and A Dark and Drowning Tide . The latter two books are my favorites by far and I really like the richness of the setting as well as the strength of the character arcs and plots, which I felt were lacking a bit in this book in particular. That being said, I did still enjoy the book, I just don't think it's as strong as her other three works, and particularly her two upcoming releases.

Wren is a medic in her country's army, and the niece of the queen, but she isn't someone who was born to be a soldier. In fact, she's had multiple moments where her emotions and desire to help people overpower orders she's been given, which then lands her in trouble. Honestly, while Wren acts impulsively at times and had me smacking my forehead, I also have to admit that breaking orders to help and to heal others isn't the worst reason, nor is it really one I can fault her for. I definitely felt bad for Wren at times since she is a healer but everyone around her seems disappointed she isn't a soldier. This feeling of constantly being a disappointment is really what jumpstarts the book and results in a whole host of messes. At the same time, while I have sympathy for her, Wren is also pretty set in her beliefs, which lead to her clashing with those who don't, even if they're being open-minded toward her, which I wasn't as much a fan of.

Hal is an enemy soldier Wren gets roped into helping, and not just any enemy soldier, but one who quite literally features in her nightmares. He comes off as pretty gruff and can be aggressive at times, but over the course of the book is revealed to be just as lost and hurt as Wren. I actually found Hal to be pretty funny at times and enjoyed some of his commentary. I also thought it was very big of him to (mostly) stick with his open-mindedness even when Wren was being a brat. I definitely liked seeing the dichotomy of him being a soldier and him being a gentle human being.

I really liked how Saft depicted the effects of war on the human psyche and especially how those effects show up in mirrored ways in Wren and Hal. Both of them were child soldiers and have seen and done things that will haunt them for all their days. They're also both stuck in that cycle and their own cycles related to that (for Hal, being held up as a war hero for actions he regrets; for Wren, a desire to squash all her soft parts so she can be accepted as a truly loyal soldier). I think the way their emotions play out, and what those emotions mean to the story as a whole, is really interesting and impactful and I think Saft dealt with war and the legacy of war in a really unique way. I'd definitely like to see more depictions like this in YA SFF.

The romance was....a little off to me. By the end of the book, Hal and Wren are very clearly devoted and loyal to each other, but I didn't really feel the buildup to that. There's very clearly lust, basically from the first moment the two of them lay eyes on each other, but I didn't feel there was a clear romance arc. They go from bickering to grudging respect/tolerance, and then all of a sudden they're in loooove. I especially didn't like the extremely xenophobic rhetoric Wren spouted toward Hal before they were getting along and how all of that is kind of just brushed over once they become friendly. I know if anyone said the kinds of things Wren said to Hal I would never, not once, even come close to considering them as a romantic partner. I get that overcoming those xenophobic beliefs are part of Wren's journey away from what the military taught her and away from those people who are constantly disappointed in her, but imo she does not do enough apologizing and reckoning to overcome her earlier vitriol. Her actions/words were especially surprising to me since she didn't seem that extreme earlier in the book! I did end up liking Hal and Wren together, but there was a lack of depth and development that kept me from really loving them and believing them as a couple.

The plot is a murder mystery, with Wren using her healing abilities and her scientific studies to try and figure out why the people of Colwick Hall are dying. I liked how Wren combined magic with science to do her job and I enjoyed the cat-and-mouse feel to the mystery that comes about later in the book. However, I do feel like a lot of the plot is pretty obvious and I clocked what was going on almost immediately. Since there are multiply mysteries at play throughout the book, I would've preferred to not have solved them right away, I would've liked some additional suspense.

The ending 1/3 of the book is the strongest in my opinion and we get to see all sorts of things come together in that portion, from Wren and Hal's individual and combined character development, to the various mysteries, to the war and those 'loved ones' that expect all the wrong things from Wren. I found myself really enjoying the ending of the book and liked how high-stakes and fast-paced it was.

Overall, I think this book is OK. It's definitely the weakest of Saft's works, but it isn't terrible. The atmosphere is there and I really liked with how she dealt with the effects of war. However, there were some character and plot problems.

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bitch-butter · 2 years

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Hey, I hope you're doing well, if you're taking requests from that list, could I ask for 131 and webgott? Be well!

thank you for sending this in! this prompt had A Lot going on in my head that for obvious reasons took me to a place of vamp, so I hope you don't mind this takes place in ye olde down comes the night (aka vampires) universe.

there are some...Details in here that pertain to something I'm working on rn, bc it's been very much on the dome, but hopefully I don't give too much away! I hope you find something to like in this, be well ~

“I’ll spend a thousand lifetimes coming back to you.”

For some reason he thought that the moment he was turned his life would somehow cease to be what it was.

Not anything spectacular, nothing like opening his eyes and finding the sky going different colors, being able to spot dust mites floating in the air, hearing emotions type of different. Just, different. Even if only intangibly he assumed that becoming a vampire was going to be nonstop something, whether it be euphoria, anxiety, hunger, anything.

And yet Joe still sat staring at a fucking laptop and refreshing the page over and over again like it was going to show his Vampire Eyes, as Lestat would say, something different.

He had the urge to rub over his eyelids, ease away fatigue, but he didn’t actually feel it. Joe hadn’t been tired since last December, and it’s late November now. Outside he recognized it was cold, but he couldn't feel the discomfort of the chill, finding his predominant reactions are ones of pure sympathy, even managing to fake a convincing yawn back to a woman in CVS last week.

Really the main thing he feels these days is boredom. Or, it was before September.

He sighed, and caught himself again. Breathing. What even is that anymore?

In the heavy, early days of his change, when the venom was still fresh under the thin covering of his skin and the burn shot over every inch of his body, he would try to gasp in pain and would choke on air that didn’t come to him, unable to let himself believe he didn’t need it. Back then he could barely speak, barely move, could only think of hunger, hunger, hunger, and David.

Always. Always.

It had been like nothing he’d ever felt before, the relief that surged through his dying veins as he put his mouth to David’s neck and was permitted, lovingly, to feed. That first rush of intoxication, burning like whiskey straight down his throat, tasting fresh, earthy, was enough that he half expected to never regain his senses, to forever be an animal David kept under the porch and would throw scraps of affection at.

But he had recovered. Straightened, stepped forward on two legs into this new thing that together they could call a life, but in many ways was not living at all. With David he had started to learn the ways to walk on earth as something other than himself, began to look for opportunity, for pockets of darkness for them to easily slip in and out of, and so far it had made him strong. The cravings weren’t nearly as bad as David had told him he’d endured, given tastes of his maker’s still, sweet blood and swallowing it down like a child's medicine to keep the itching along the back of his throat away, stop the terrible flares of anger that came when he couldn’t seem to get enough.

David was patient with him. Joe would have been convinced he’d done this before with the gentleness and skill he had in managing Joe’s sudden shifts, his hunger, his needs that at some times were nonexistent and legion in others.

It had been almost a year. It feels like 90.

“More coffee?” the waitress asked, voice pitched like she anticipated breaking through his fugue, but he had smelled her coming.

She’s fine but she’s sweet, like maraschino cherries, and it made him wrinkle his nose in distaste. He’s getting mature enough already to know what he likes and she isn’t it, even if she had been attentive checking in on the coffee that he hasn’t had a goddamn sip of yet. Regular food still fucks with his stomach, he expected he had another couple of decades before he can fake eat something to complete satisfaction.

He managed a sideways look towards her, eyes barely making it to hers around the edges of the black hood he had pulled up, looking like a reject of some tragic Boston basement band. “I’m still working on it, thanks,” he brushed off, voice quiet, pitched low enough that she might not have a reaction to it.

From the way he can hear her breath pick up, just a tiny bit, just enough to grimace at, he failed. That’s the other challenge of it, the one that he had secretly laughed at when David had told him about it because only an asshole with a face like his could complain about the way people threw themselves at him. Poor David, poor handsome David who had to beat humans of literally all flavors off of himself just to get some damn peace and quiet, how hard it must be.

That’s what he had thought. Now he knows better.

The Look is no joke, not even in the slightest and not even for Joe, who knows that even as a pitch-perfect vampire there are elements of his face that he would have needed to start laying the groundwork to change when he was 13 to look halfway presentable. He knows what he looks like, but since the change people have fallen at his feet like he was a ye olde Backstreet Boy, drawn in by the seeming forcefield of pheromones that surrounded him.

So now having a minute alone, something he’s fairly fucking used to, is a relatively rare thing.

The waitress’ neck muscles tightened, gathering to speak, and he turned his face away quickly to look out the front window just beside him.

“Thank you,” he repeated, the words warping with the sudden rush of saliva through his mouth, pushing a bit through the words to send a rush of: go, go, go.

So compelled, she turned on her heel and left without a word, pace stuttering as she crossed back behind the counter like she couldn’t quite believe what she had done, whether she ought to question it at all.

Stifling a groan, he tugged the hood down lower over his face, hand curling against his forehead as he slouched inward, eyes moving back to stare towards his screen. Mechanically, he reached up to click harshly at the Reload button, watching the momentary spin, before feeling his spirit sink gently as the page before him remained unchanged.

No news. No updates. Nothing but the same old headline he’d been staring at for two months, a bleak, black line above the picture of Babe and Gene at their engagement party, smiling and so beautifully, terribly unknowing.

If he scrolled down a bit he knows he’d see isolated photos of George Luz, maybe even the shape of Joe Toye’s name in the footprints of text all the way down the page.

But no more. Not since September.

He’d say it was inconceivable, but in the past years he’s seen too much to rule out even the most fantastic

Dully, he swiveled his gaze to look back out to the empty parking lot, only his own car looking back at him, the sky like a heavy roof of shadows above. It was close to 2a.m. now, pretty much the only time that he could have time to himself in the 24 hour Denny’s he posted at to leech off the wifi, and he felt a wriggle of all too familiar anxiety go through him at even the most distant thought of the sun rising. The sun meant aches, meant feeling sick, tired in a way vampires shouldn’t be tired, and at least for tonight it meant going back home and having to face David.

Beyond the parking lot were the woods, the modest sweep of forest that bordered the town like a crescent moon, blocking them in between the wilderness and the rolling crash of the water, and his eyes got lost in their dark tangle, in their winds and bends. He imagined walking into them, getting lost, having nobody to come looking for him, and he lowered his head down to rest on the table, feeling altogether too human.

He does feel it, if even just a little. It’s hard to hurt a vampire, but since September he’s gotten better and better at finding the places where he could still hurt himself. Hurt other people.

Turns out just because he gets better in some senses doesn’t mean he’s better in all. He’s still just as apt to be horrible as he ever was, lash out, feel bad about lashing out, feel trapped by the weight of guilt and how it mingles together with raw, primordial sadness. Just because he’s a vampire doesn’t mean he’s completely divorced himself from the same type of bullshit he pulled as an idiot running around in 3 day old pants that smell like gin and cigarettes, he’s self-aware enough to admit that.

Maybe it isn’t the vampirism he had hoped would really change him, maybe it was the Being in a Stable Relationship he had thought might do the trick.

But no, still an asshole.

He’d feel disappointed in himself if he was capable of feeling anything but a sort of paralyzing sadness.

He wishes he could call Babe. The thought shot a dart of ice cold pain through his heart, and he bent into it with masochistic relish chased eagerly by helplessness, like dogs after a rabbit. Babe had probably had the same thought a hundred times this last year and Joe hadn’t been there, so he supposed he gets what he deserves in this instance. If only it didn’t hurt so much, if only Joe had had the stones to own up to the hazy unreality that he walked in now, where the world is somehow exactly as it had been and yet forever changed, forever darkened by love like a bruise over an eye.

Eye, eye, eye. I, I, I.

It’s why they had fought. Why he had taken this anger, this hurt, and made it into something solid and unyielding that he could hit David with. Because Joe blamed himself for all of it, for leaving, for changing, for believing that life and the people he had known inside of it would wait until he was strong, ready, and not go on and on until, suddenly, it was gone.

But that hadn’t been what he said. What he’d said to David’s face was: it’s your fault, you made me this way, if it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t have left.

He’d known it wasn’t true even as he said it, but the way the guilt flew from his body and seemed to slam into David’s was a momentary balm, the kind of relief that sleep used to bring him. The feeling was fleeting, no more than a moment, and an entirely new kind of guilt had replaced it as David’s face, his pale, beautiful face, had frozen, shuttered, and was gone. Joe hadn’t even been able to make his mouth work to speak, to take it back, and realized as fast as anything that he hadn’t changed at all. Here he is, still making the same mistakes.

Apologies don’t come easy to him, they clog up his mouth like stones until he can’t make the sound of them, can’t spit them out or swallow them down and only learn to hold their weight. He makes them, but rarely means them, or let himself feel them, allows them to be little more than platitudes.

But he finds he wants to apologize now. He wants it so badly that his silent, cold chest is throbbing with it.

To Babe, to Gene, but most especially to David.

David had been afforded so few choices in the improbable time he’d been walking the earth, had been offered so little consolation for the things that had happened to him, what he’d had to endure and what he’d had to do just to stay on the earth long enough for Joe to find him again. And he’d let Joe choose for himself, to leave and to change, the two choices that David had never gotten. Joe had known, deep in his bones, threaded all the way through his heart, that had he chosen to be human forever, to let himself slip and fall down the long path towards death, David would have let him do it. He was full of the kind of grace that Joe never was, maybe never could be.

Joe had known it all, and had said the words anyway.

It’s worse than an insult. It’s blaming David for something he never had control over in the first place.

The Joe that David had fallen in love with would never have done something like that. He had chosen to die rather than live without him.

What a waste of whatever goodness he might have had then, and then, and now. He owed David more. He owed himself more.

It’s a paralyzing breed of shame, an isolating kind. He knows he has to apologize, he wants to apologize, and hanging over the top of it like a heavy crown was the fear that it wouldn’t be accepted, that he’d fall victim to the same curse that David had and walk the earth alone for a century just hoping to find love again. Wouldn’t he deserve it?

God, he wishes he could drink that coffee right now. Wishes he could have something other than this horrible crush of pain inside himself.

Unless he wanted to go back behind the counter and eat. But he doesn’t feel all that inclined to cherries right now, and it's getting to be too late to find anything prime on a weeknight.

There should be vampire Lexapro, it’s too much work to have to purposefully hunt someone down just to get a taste for a couple of hours before it burns off. Maybe he and David should finally watch True Blood, maybe that’s something they do in fake Louisiana. If he’s forgiven, that is.

He should be hungry. He should want and want and want, never stop wanting, until maybe one day he shrivels up like a dead flower and turns into dust and makes the world look just a tiny bit dirtier because he lived in it.

David would be right not to forgive him, but Joe knows that he will. He waited 100 years for Joe, he gave him a choice with no privisos, and Joe knows that he’ll forgive this but it doesn’t make the guilt any better, in fact it makes it all worse. How can Joe ever repay him? How can he let him know that the 100 years of waiting, of thinking the love they’d shared in another life was all gone, was worth it? So far he’s done a shit fucking job of it.

Joe never thought he’d be married, but here he is. It’s deeper than a marriage, the bond they had made, the vow he took, powerful enough that once given a single taste it had stopped his heart forever.

And he might still be human enough to want to honor something like that, even in the moments when he’s weak. He had said it many times, to many people, holding them back as they tried to leave, making promises, fighting for something intangible: but I can change.

He’d changed. But there can always be more, right? This is where it starts.

A chilling, chilling thought; that wide swath of eternity that stretched out ahead of him was only the beginning, and all over the horizon were pieces of lightning, rolls of thunder, mistakes he’s yet to make, apologies he’ll drop at David’s feet. It’s like being a child all over again, except this time he knows just how black the world can be.

Oh, but how bright as well. How soft, and warm, and ready to envelop him in its arms and carry him to different places, happiness bursting from every pore like light, like he was made of something better, incredible and impervious. He had almost forgotten it when he met David, had to pry the doors of himself open to let the sweetness of it in, and ever since he’s felt it every day. Not from sunrise to sunset, sometimes for no more than a minute, but each day of their union David makes him happier than he’d ever dreamed he could be.

He feels himself roused from his newborn’s sleep, the non-sleeping trance he’ll go into as he adjusts to nonstop wakefulness, by David’s hands each day. The way the old self had loved to be touched, the way that David remembered to touch him, the way that Joe had learned he had wanted to be touched all his life. Fingers rubbing up along his hairline, down the line of his forehead, against his temples, soothing the ghosts of Joe’s stress, his worries, with nothing but the warmth of his hand.

He’s only whole at all because David put him back together.

Love is a many splendored thing…

Over the speaker the song begins, low as a drawl through his ears, and he slumped back against his seat to look out once more towards the parking lot, to the lonely mound of his car in the center of the tableau.

But his car isn’t so alone anymore.

In the high, white lights of the lot he spots the silhouette of a figure perched on the hood of his car, back to the window, face tilted out towards the woody area just beyond beneath the brim of a dark blue, almost black, hood.

Joe sighed, and smiled as he caught himself doing it, feeling relieved and filled with dread. He made himself move methodically, trying not to look as hurried as he felt, as eager to run out to him, as he packed up his laptop, stowed it away, tossed a $20 down next to his cup of cold coffee. The waitress hung back behind the counter, scrolling away on her phone and not looking up as Joe passed, and he moved away from her scent gratefully, the bell above the door tinkling above his head as he moved out to the cold beauty of the night air. It’s cold enough that he should have had to burrow deeper in his coat, but he moved through it like a knife through butter, unflinching, eyes locked on the lone figure atop his car.

At his approach David didn’t turn to face him, but he didn’t need to. Joe knew he was heard, expected, and he sat beside him easily, keeping a scant few inches between their bodies like the words he had spat out formed an invisible wall. His profile is set, perfect, his eyes anchored towards the wooded horizon blankly, pupils flat in the way Joe knows now means he’s eaten, lips like a poisonous bud resting placidly, the threat of its bloom sending a shiver through Joe that had nothing to do with temperature.

“David…” he ventured, soft, a little creep across the silence. “Please say something.”

David barely reacted to his voice, eyes falling down to the ground like dead leaves. “I don’t know what to say to you, Joe.”

“Tell me to go fuck myself,” Joe said, low and strained with the reminder of his pain. “Let fly on me, I can take it.”

“I’m not going to do that,” he replied gently, eyes still held just beyond Joe’s reach.

Joe felt a psychosomatic tightness in his throat, unable to tell anymore where real pain began and his remembered responses ended, trying to think of when he won’t even remember how to fake the feeling of a flush, the urge to hide away. “I’m so sorry, David.”

He nodded under the protection of his hood. “I know it.”

“I forgive you,” David said simply, still sounding a million miles away from where they sat beside each other.

He ached to reach out to him, but held himself back. “I didn’t mean it, I…” he fumbled, closing his eyes like he could look for sense just behind his eyelids. “I wanted you to feel like shit because I feel like fucking shit, I didn’t mean any of it.”

“You don’t need to forgive me right now,” Joe shook his head, brow furrowed and jaw clenched. “I just need you to tell me you know I didn’t mean it.”

David finally looked to him, the line of his mouth thick with tension. “You did mean it.”

His hands twitched beside him, reaching out just to pull back before they could latch onto David’s face. “No, I didn’t. I’m a bastard, I wanted to hurt you and I obviously did, but I never meant it, David. Never.”

“But it’s true,” David insisted, solid and unyielding, his eyes cold in the night.

Joe let himself break the tiniest bit, unable to stop from taking David’s hand in his own, the two of them cold to the touch, small traces of warmth that may or may not be there between their palms. “You think for one second I would do something I didn’t want to do?” he challenged, David’s hand pliant between the twin pressures of his own. “I chose this, not you, none of this shit is your fault.”

“I should have been better,” David said quietly, eyes sliding from Joe’s eyes, down his face, down to the ground. “Should have asked you to reconsider -”

“I wouldn’t have listened,” Joe said, low and sure, David’s eye falling in reverse, back to Joe’s with that terrible, palpable fragility Joe sometimes forgets he has inside him at all. “No matter what you’d have done, I would have chosen you every time.”

David looked at him reservedly, the shadow of doubt in his eyes, but he let Joe hold his hand anyway.

He’s too good. Joe loves him too much.

“I’m sorry,” he said, the words willing and eager to be free from his body, offering themselves out to David like golden barbs, little sharp things that Joe keeps hidden away inside himself. But if anyone deserves them - has ever deserved them, it’s David. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry about -” David began, hushed, mouth bunched at the corners like he wasn’t sure he should say it at all. “About your friends.”

It’s another arrow of fire through his chest, and he smothers its flames by bringing David’s hand to his mouth, pressing a worshipful kiss to the soft, cool skin at the back of his hand. “It's not your fault I wasn’t there,” he said, the truth singing his tongue, no less painful in its accuracy, in the stinging thought that what happened to them - whatever it had been - would have happened whether Joe had been there or not.

“And it’s not your fault, either,” David countered, earnest as he ever was.

Joe doesn’t know if he believes that. He knows it’s the truth, but he can’t believe in it.

But he’ll try. If it means there’s a chance to be forgiven he’ll try, and as he does it he’ll keep hope alive in his silent heart as best he can. The same as he’s sure Babe did for him.

Joe gave in, weak and pitiful and undeserving of the way David didn’t flinch away from him as he bends, slumps against him until he can wrap his arms around him fully, hold him closer than he ever held anyone else in that long-ago life.

“You made me better than I was,” he rasped, face pressed in against the thick fabric of the other man’s hood, heartened by the way David went loose against him, his hands sliding over the plane of Joe’s back. “You’re the only reason I ever wanted to be better. I left because I love you,” he rambled, a hushed, hurried string of words that were no less stinging in their truths. “Tell me you know that.”

David held his silence long enough that Joe began to feel the individual parts of himself begin to separate, split like the joints of a marionette.

“I came back to you,” Joe said, the words coming almost before he thought them. “I think I loved you before I even knew you.”

Tipping into the embrace, David turned his face into Joe’s presence, nose pushing at the brim of his hood until it fell back and he kissed against Joe’s hair, tender and kind. “I wanted so much better for you,” he said, soft enough that its edges crack around his voice, his hands tight across Joe’s shoulders. “But I was selfish.”

Joe scoffed, touched and devastated. “You fucker,” he chastised, pulling back to look David in the face, curling his hand around the line of his neck, holding him close and refusing to let his eyes get away once more. “There isn’t anything better than you. Not for me.”

Smile weighed down at the corners by a peculiar sadness, David brought his hand to Joe's face, smoothing his thumb along his cheekbone and giving a slow shake of his head. “I forget how young you are,” he said, something like wonder in his voice. “You have a thousand lifetimes to realize just how wrong you are about me.”

“Bullshit,” Joe shot back, pulling him in to press a kiss against the pale peak of his cheekbone, sighing a worthless sigh at the feel of David’s eyelashes against his skin. “I’ll spend a thousand lifetimes coming back to you.”

David smiled again, soft and yet luminescent, like candlelight against Joe’s face, and he let Joe come to him readily, taking his face and steadying him into a kiss that made the brittle pieces of his soul tremble inside with want, with love. His mouth moved beneath Joe’s own unquestioningly, allowing itself to be kissed, kissed, his hands against Joe’s back pressing into the muscles there, easing an ache that was no longer felt. With gentle insistence he coaxed David’s mouth open, slipping his tongue into the other man’s mouth to taste the hours he’d missed: something heavy, rich, perfect the way expensive meat used to melt in his mouth and become elemental, coagulated power.

The way it still was, in the night. In the blood.

Above them the faded, white tones of the lamps high above the parking lot suddenly flared, becoming fistfuls of neon stars that hummed loudly with the rush of their affection before bursting into explosions of glass, sparks lighting their death down to the ground. Behind them he could see the illumination of the restaurant's front window as it abruptly screamed into overload, lights bright, bright, bright, and then dying in the space of a moment, the music slumping, garbling away and leaving them in their blessed, familiar dark.

David huffed a laugh against his mouth, and Joe’s eyes were powerful enough in the dark to see the pleased turn of his lips as he kissed his cheek, his jaw. “You need to be more careful.”

“That was you, too,” Joe brushed off, pushing a hand through the other man’s hair and moving the hood back and off to give his face to the moonlight. “I’m sorry.”

“I know you are,” David nodded, his own hand moving to curl against Joe’s neck, eyes gleaming in the shadows with understanding.

Joe opened his mouth, began to apologize again, but thought better of it and simply kissed him once more, sloppy and needful the way he so often felt. Releasing a long sound into the grasp of the kiss, David pulled him in closer, the two of them sliding slightly against the hood of the car in the growing chill, and Joe let himself be moved, allowing the pace to be set. It’s just another moment where by all accounts he should look down at his existence and be baffled by how the strange is now routine, how though he can no longer create his own warmth he finds it in the arms of another. How he can allow himself to be forgiven as easily as he can ask for it.

He’ll change for the better. Hopefully he changes and never stops changing.

For now he’ll settle for being grateful to be given the chance at all.

Grateful enough to test just the slightest bit.

Planting his feet against the hood of the car, Joe tightened his grip over David’s shoulders, pulling out of the kiss long enough to speak. “Hold on,” he said, low and teasing, smiling at the way David first frowned and then rolled his eyes. “And don’t help me.”

“It’s hard not to,” David sighed, but kept a loose grip over Joe’s body as he concentrated, eyes fluttering, before he tentatively reeled him into another, softer kiss. Slowly he began to feel it thrumming under his skin, flowing through his veins like silver cords that eased him up, up, easily enough that he barely paid attention as David deepened the kiss, letting Joe’s insistence guide them up until together they were barely braced on their feet. Making a pleased sound, Joe smiled and tipped his face up to the sky as his feet left the hood of the car, David’s body pressed against his own as they floated, dangling up high, and then higher in the dark with no light to illuminate the way save for the touch of the moon. It’s his favorite of all the things his new body can do, this nothing power, good only for moments like these when he needs the earth itself to fall away under his feet.

It still had a reaction on him, exertions like speed, strength. In his mouth he felt his fangs prick up, and he pulled in David’s entirety eagerly, desperate for scent, for taste, and finding them both held surely in his arms. As they kissed he let himself scrape against David’s lips with the tip of one of the fangs, the sweet, deep scent of vampire blood filling his senses, and he put his mouth to it urgently.

“You’re incredible,” David said on the edge of a laugh, delighted by thoughts Joe only wished he could hear.

“I had a good teacher.”

“You’ll be invincible in a year,” he went on, tipping back into the kiss messily, letting the air swirl around them as they floated above the darkened parking lot of a Denny’s. “In five, I can’t begin to imagine.”

Humming disinterestedly, Joe pressed a red kiss against David’s cheek, pulling in the smell of cypress, amber, comfort and indulgence in one. “You won’t have to imagine, you’ll be there with me.”

David accepted the kiss, turning his face to the promise and setting his own against the inky strands of Joe’s hair. “I will be.”

There must be goodness left inside of him, even now, to have earned something like this. He’ll try not to waste any more of it.

#webgott #down comes the night #vampires love denny's #as they should #stop Thinking and start Kithing 2k22

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