Chapter Text
Felix couldn’t help himself. Three nights later, he was back, sitting at one of the bar stools staring up at the menu. But there was something off about the club this time. The first time he had been there, he had attracted eyes immediately. And this time was no different. Within minutes of entering, he could feel multiple patrons tracking him. But the eyes were different this time. Still predatory but more reserved, resigned. He had been there for almost forty-five minutes and not one person, human or vampire had approached him. Was he doing something wrong? Clearly he was still attractive if the hungry gazes on him were anything to go by.
The bartender slid a drink in front of him next to his water. Felix opened his mouth to protest. Apparently he was stupid enough to come back but he was still not stupid enough to drink at a vampire club.
“It’s orange juice,” the vampire said before Felix could voice his complaint. “Humans like orange juice.”
“We do,” Felix confirmed. “Or at least I do but I didn’t order anything.”
“It’s on the house,” the vampire shrugged. “Drink. You look silly just sitting there.”
Felix quickly took a sip. He would normally put up more of a fight but he actually did like orange juice and the bartender actually somewhat alarmed him in all honesty. It seemed to satisfy the bartender because he wandered off to talk to some vampires at the other end of the bar who were holding up a dazed looking human between them. Felix couldn’t tell if it was lust, alcohol, or bloodlust making her so unsteady on her feet. She seemed the furthest thing from unhappy with her situation but he couldn’t help but cringe. This. This was why he found vampires so hard to stomach. At least humans pretended to be ashamed of acting like this. Vampires thought it was their right.
“Drinking alone?” a smooth voice asked.
Felix turned to see a dark haired man towering over him. He didn’t recognize the man but he would put money on his being a vampire. His suspicion was confirmed when the man flashed his fangs quickly. Probably thinking Felix was a fangbanger and would get turned on by the display. Felix shook himself mentally. Jisung was dating a vampire, at least according to Chan, and he knew being called something like that, especially by Felix would deeply hurt Jisung. Felix would do anything to avoid hurting Jisung even if he thought he was being incredibly stupid.
“So are you?” the vampire asked.
“Am I what?” Felix played coy, tracing a finger around the lip of his glass.
“Drinking alone?”
“I am,” Felix said. “Are you planning to fix that?”
The vampire smirked and sat down next to him. “So what’s a pretty thing like you doing here all alone?” He traced the edge of Felix’s face. God, what was Felix doing? He should have been batting the vampire away. He shouldn’t have even been here. But he couldn’t bring himself to leave and he didn’t want to examine why.
“I was bored,” Felix replied. “You know how it is.”
The vampire’s hand left his face to trace his wrist, lingering on the artery there. “Of course. I can fix that for you too, baby.”
“Oh really?”
“Really.” The vampire reached out for him.
“Get up.” The bartender was back on their side of the bar and he was glaring down at the stranger.
“Because you want him for yourself? Little too late for that, I’m afraid.” The vampire didn’t move from his spot next to Felix. Didn’t even release Felix’s wrist, still gently rubbing it.
The bartender’s glare deepened. “You asked why he was drinking alone but you clearly didn’t stop long enough to think about the question. You are the only one here who approached him.”
“All I’m hearing is that I’m the only vampire here with any taste.”
“No, just the only one with either no self-awareness or no self-preservation.”
“What the hell are you on about?” the vampire asked, stunningly dismissive.
The other vampire smirked like a beast about to shred its prey as it writhed below him. “He’s claimed you idiot. Everyone else is staying away because they don’t want to make an enemy of the Bang coven.”
He dropped Felix’s wrist like it burned him. “Claimed by the . . .”
The bartender chuckled. “Oh yes you’re smelling it now. I’d leave if I were you.”
The dark haired vampire sped out of his seat and out of the club in a blur before Felix could even truly register what was happening. He was claimed? What the hell did that even mean? He tried to ask the bartender but the vampire just refilled his orange juice and hushed him like a fussy child.
He stayed sitting at the bar for another twenty minutes, simply pondering the interaction when yet another body came up next to him, looming over him.
“You’re back,” Chan said, a note of surprise buried deep in his tone.
“You claimed me?!” Felix exclaimed whipping around in his chair to look up at him.
“I did,” he admitted. He remained standing next to Felix and Felix couldn’t help but feel small even though he knew Chan was only slightly taller than him.
“What the fuck? Why?” he demanded.
“Why? Do you not want to be?” Chan looked down at him with a raised eyebrow. Felix couldn’t hide his shiver. Chan’s large hand came to rest on the back of Felix’s neck. “What? Were you planning on fucking a different vampire?”
Felix batted his eyelashes. “Would you let me?”
Chan’s grip on Felix’s neck tightened to where it was just slightly painful. Felix couldn’t help but suspect that that was purposeful. “No.”
“It’s curious to me that you’re here,” Chan said. “I’ve heard nothing from Minho that would suggest that he knows that I fucked his Jisung’s roommate and it’s possible that Jisung just didn’t tell Minho but I’ve found he is quite incapable of keeping secrets from Minho. So the question remains. You didn’t talk to Jisung. Why?”
Chan was right. He hadn’t spoken to Jisung about Chan or Minho. The realization that Jisung would far from appreciate meeting in the post coitus way that Felix had planned led to Felix and Chan simply watching the two of them leave and seeing that Jisung was all in one piece. Jisung was a rather private man even though Felix had done his best to cure him of it in their friendship by sharing all the details of his own sexploits but finding out that Felix knew he had been hooking up with a vampire and had slept with the leader of his boyfriend’s coven in that way would likely melt his brain and make him die of embarrassment.
“I found out about his relationship through fucking his boyfriend’s friend,” Felix said. “That doesn’t necessarily set me up for success in talking to him about it.”
“I fail to see the issue,” Chan said finally settling down next to Felix.
“I’m sorry I thought you said you’d met Jisung.”
Chan chuckled. “Are you trying to argue that the boy is private?”
“Please do not say boy. Sung is a grown man, he’s twenty-two,” Felix defended. Something about Chan calling Jisung a boy as if he was a child unnerved him.
Thus time Chan laughs fully. “Right. Should I tell you how old Minho is or would that only make you more disapproving? Twenty-two is nothing in the eyes of a vampire.”
Felix recoiled. “So you’re saying Jisung and I are children? That’s disgusting.”
“Not like that,” Chan made a face. “Your understanding of time changes when you become a vampire, especially when you’re as old as I am. You and Jisung are humans. You age differently. You are adults at twenty-two in the same way a dog is an adult at age two. The dog is fully grown but you humans still view two years old as young in a dog.”
“And now you’re calling us dogs?”
“No, you’re northing like dogs. It’s far more rare nowadays to eat dogs.”
Well that certainly didn’t make Felix feel better.
“You’re more like livestock, maybe cattle.” Chan smirked, looking entirely too satisfied with himself.
Felix slapped him lightly on the arm forgetting for a moment how powerful and unpredictable the creature before him was.
Chan caught his hand, viper fast, before he could pull it away after the slap. “You don’t want to be mine? You don’t want to be my pet? Let me feed on you whenever I need to?”
Felix tried in vain to yank his hand back. “I’m no pet.”
“You’re not. But you are mine aren’t you?” He released the human’s hand and laughed. “You still don’t like us very much. Is that why you haven’t spoken to Jisung? You cannot give your approval.”
“Maybe I would approve more if the vampire he was dating didn’t leave him with open wounds for fun,” Felix fumed thinking of the unhealed bite marks that he had seen all over Jisung on that fateful day.
“It’s not for fun,” Chan said. “It’s a claiming thing.”
“Claiming?” Felix looked at him with wide eyes and leaned away slightly.
Chan reached out for Felix’s hand again and pulled him back in. His broader fingers played with Felix’s. He suddenly stopped before he lifted the wrist to his nose.
“You were talking to another vampire.”
It wasn’t a question.
Felix plastered on a cocky smirk. “So what if I was?” He glanced at where Chan was still sniffing his wrist. “Can you let go now?”
Chan’s grip only tightened. “This was recent. While you were waiting here.”
“I wasn’t waiting here,” Felix protested.
“Yes you were,” Chan said. “And someone was stupid enough not to respect a claim.”
“Isn’t that a little bit dramatic?” Felix asked. He should have known that was a pointless question.
“Yujun,” Chan called.
The bartender appeared before them instantly. “Yes, Bang Chan-ssi?”
“Someone approached my human?” The look in his eyes was undeniably dangerous.
“I’m not your human.”
“Yes you are,” Chan and the bartender, Yujun, said at once.
“He did but I got rid of him,” Yujun said. “Nothing happened besides the wrist touching.”
Chan grit his teeth and Felix finally yanked his hand free. “Enough! This is ridiculous. I never agreed to be yours and you can’t keep me in a nunnery because you’ve unilaterally decided that I am.”
“That doesn’t matter here. I have a claim on you. To disrespect that claim is to disrespect me and I cannot have that. Such offenses must be punished.”
“If I may,” Yujun spoke up. “I do not believe he noticed the claim. It is rather faint to the nose of a younger vampire and I’d guess this one was less than a year old. He left as soon as he noticed the claim.”
“Thank you, Yujun,” Chan said. “You can go.”
The bartender left and Chan turned back to Felix. “So you see as long as my claim is on you, a proposition to you is an offense to me, at least from a vampire.”
“And you didn’t think to tell me?” Felix demanded. “I’ve been walking around smelling like bloodwhore for days and telling every vampire around me that I belong to you for days and I had no idea!”
“Keep your voice down,” Chan hissed. “At least if you’re going to be using words like that.”
“I didn’t think you’d mind,” Chan said. “My claim will fade if I don’t refresh it and you so despise vampires that I assumed it would cause no problems if you chose not to be a nun. I figured it would keep you out of anymore vampire trouble and I assumed, mistakenly it seems, that you would fuck humans. Imagine my surprise.”
“Somehow I find it hard to believe you were completely fine with the idea of me sleeping with anyone else, human or vampire.”
“I’m not. I hate it and I will do my best to prevent it,” Chan admitted and Felix couldn’t help but notice the present tense. “But as you said, the claim wasn’t mutual yet.”
Felix did his best to ignore the yet. “I wouldn’t have slept with him, I think,” he said. “I don’t even know why I engaged with him.”
“I do,” Chan smirked.
“Oh do you? Enlighten me?”
Chan just hummed in response. “So you want me to help you talk to Jisung.”
“I never said that.”
“No you didn’t but it’s true. Don’t worry, I’ll help.”
Felix’s eyebrows shot up. “You will?”
“I will,” Chan agreed. “For a price.”
Of course there was a price. Could vampires ever just doing anything straightforwardly? “What sort of price?”
“You’ll see.”