The Keyes To Unlife {Jesse Fforde}

[Rhett Keyes]

Jesse is telling him to do something. Rhett thinks hard on what it was Jesse could be telling him to do. He understood the apology, and Rhett just shrugs. He doesn't mind helping a friend out. Even if they hadn't seen each other in a while. Drink something. Drink what?

The answer is given to him as he feels something wet on his face and lips. A drink did sound good. Real good. He was thirsty. Or he knows that if he got liquid in him and replaced what it was he lost that Rhett would start to feel better. That's basic common sense that anyone knows, even if they weren't a paramedic for a good portion of their life.

Rhett wants to drink whatever it is Jesse is offering him. He's worked too hard to let the things he's worked hard for to slip away. He doesn't care what it is, he just knows he wants to feel better and live past tonight. So he takes what Jesse offers him. As much as he can get, and won't stop until Jesse makes him. He wants to make sure that he will get to buy that house he wants. That maybe he could be the captain of a squad some night in the future and that the little league team he coaches for will change a kid's life. Like he had changed Jesse's after Rhett got his **** together.

When Jesse makes Rhett stop drinking, he lays on the floor again. And waits to feel better. But he doesn't feel better. Rhett feels worse. His body writhes up as he curls in a ball, his hands going for his throat as he scratches at it. It hurts. It burns. And other things hurt too. Rhett feels like he's been in a fight. He feels like there's bruising all over his body. His body is heavy and sore. Wasn't he supposed to feel better? Jesse was helping him, right?

[Jesse Fforde]

Jesse normally allows the newest planned progeny to take what they need. Rarely does he pull away as soon as they latch on to whatever bleeding part of his body that he has offered to them. First, he believes that the more they take the better chance they will have. Second—and probably the primary reason, though Jesse would not admit to it straight away—is that he likes it. He likes the loss of blood. The taking of it. He swoons as the blood in his body rushes toward that open wound, forcibly taken by his old friend. In that moment, and in the moments that follow, he can’t regret what he’s done. He can’t be sorry for going too far and taking too much. In that moment, there are no problems. None. There’s no anxiety about the future. This is not something he should be doing, creating another vampire. Another one.

As much as they may accuse Jesse of being some kind of collector, though, as much as it may look like it, it’s not the case. A connection is forged, right there and then. To the others, it would look like just another whim. Another sighting of something he wanted, and took. That’s how his sirings are often initiated, it’s true. But once the deed is done, they become far more than just a whim. They become part of a family that they may never have asked for, but Jesse would give to them anyway.

Just like Rhett, however, Jesse does have an instinct for survival. As much as he could let the guy take all that he had to offer and collapse due to complete loss of blood, he is aware of his responsibilities, and the fact that he needs his wits about him to at least try to explain to Rhett what is happening, and what will happen. Rhett doesn’t look like he’s going to stop, though. Not of his own accord. Jesse is forced to push him away, to pull back his arm when he feels the world spin and the darkness cloud the edge of his vision.

Jesse curses under his breath as Rhett succumbs to the illness that Jesse had hoped wouldn’t affect him. He hopes something had changed, and that this time would be different. But it’s not. He reaches for Rhett’s arm, hauling the heavy man up and onto his feet.

”C’mon, man. Get up. This is only going to get worse before it gets better,” he says gruffly, glancing around to ascertain where the bedroom is. He already knows he’s not going to take Rhett home, yet. Not until Rhett is better. Rhett can stay right here, in a familiar setting. As soon as he knows where the bedroom is, he starts to haul Rhett toward it.

[Rhett Keyes]

Rhett's pushed away from Jesse, and then picked up and hauled around like he weighed nothing. Maybe he didn't. He didn't feel very good. Rhett felt like he was still on death's door. Rhett doesn't fight Jesse, mostly because he doesn't have it in him. He doesn't know where Jesse is taking him, and he doesn't care. He just wants to lay down and die. Dying seemed like a good choice as his stomach bubbled and burned like he was having a serious case of acid reflex.

His room. The only real bedroom in the place. Rhett had a smaller room, which was pretty much an office space that was only used to pay bills online (because he was such a workaholic), and sent the occasional email. Rhett reaches out for the bed, even though Jesse is bringing him to it. Rhett hopes that by being in bed he'll start to feel better. Maybe if he stops moving. And closes his eyes. And maybe dies.

Rhett curls in a ball once he gets to the bed, fingers gripping the side of his mattress as he tries to get comfortable and push away the pain. Rhett has experienced pain on a couple levels. When he blew out his shoulder in high school, some of the tat work he had done a couple years ago and when he got slammed with a gurney once by a guy who was higher than a kite. Left a big welt on the side of his thigh for about a month and any time someone bumped something into it, Rhett had to stop himself from saying a few choice words. "****!" Rhett groaned as he spasmed a little from the pain he felt in his abdomen area.

And this is how his nights would be spent. Part of him wishing Jesse would have just killed him, the other part fighting to get past this and get better like Jesse said they would. He doesn't know how many days or nights pass, they all start to blur together. What matters is trying to get the pain to stop, which only happens for an hour here and there when he's passed out from exhaustion and his own inner battle.

[Jesse Fforde]

Jesse may as well be a nurse, in that week that passes. The first night is spent making sure the room is vampire approved; all the windows blacked out and boarded up in a such a way that a curious Rhett couldn’t easily undo. Though, if the man in all his delirium decided to try to get outside, then it would have been a lesson well taught. They say lessons are learned by mistakes made, don’t they?

The turning happens in much the same way as it used to, except at a much, much slower pace. The body slowly shutting down, each organ dying one by one, but not in the space of a few hours but in the space of seven long nights. If Rhett needed help to get himself cleaned up, if he requested such a thing, Jesse would help. He’d even change sheets, if need be. Because Jesse does come back, each and every night. He comes back to make sure that Rhett takes more of his blood. The way the others all had to. Sometimes it could be a messy procedure. Sometimes the mess had to be cleaned up.

If there any questions asked, Jesse answers them; things that he will of course repeat, once the week is over, and once Rhett is his old self again. His old self, made brand new. Polished to an immortal sheen. It’s a hazing process, really. It’s tedious, for sure, but at least Jesse knows that if the vampire survives after the week of suffering, than they are strong enough to handle this life. Whether they think they are or not. Readiness for vampirism is not wholly in the mind, but also in the body.

Jesse loiters. Though he does go to work at the beginning of his nights and though he does feed to make up for all the loss of blood, he otherwise hangs around Rhett’s apartment; either within it, or on the street somewhere, or somewhere just down the road.

There’s a certain aloofness that the Necromancer adopts during these arduous turnings; a kind of stubborn ego, where he will tell himself he doesn’t care whether or not the newly turned like him or not, for what he has done to them. But this time, it’s different. This time, it’s Rhett. And he’s almost anxious. This is one that he doesn’t want to **** up.

[Rhett Keyes]

There is finally a night when Rhett comes to that he doesn't feel at his absolute worse. He doesn't feel like he's dying, or that the guy had been run over by a truck, dragged down the street and hit everything on the way down that street with every inch of his body. This night, Rhett feels as if the worse has passed that maybe, just maybe, Jesse had finally followed through on his words and helped him. Rhett hadn't disbelieved that Jesse hadn't intended on helping him, it was just hard to see the silver lining of such a claim when you were riding on death's door for so long.

His room is dark, darker than it normally is when Rhett occasionally wakes up at night, ready to start a night shift. This happens every few months; the switching of the shifts to keep everyone happy. Everyone has to take their turn and Rhett never minds, whereas others do. They complain about how fucked they'll be for the next week or so until their body adjusts to the rotating schedule. Or how they'll never have time to go out and drink/party or do things with their kids these months. But not Rhett. Working this shift comes with a dollar fifty raise an hour, so he actually looks forward to the months he works these hours.

Jesse is in the apartment. Rhett isn't sure how he knows this, but his mind tells him this. That Jesse has been here most nights-if not all of them. For as long as the nights had felt and everything Rhett had endured, some of it was a blur because of the pain he felt. Some days even melded together for the guy. But somehow, each day, he woke up, endured it again and kept on going. Kept on surviving.

"Jesse?" Rhett calls out in a gruff, but hoarse voice after he finds the edge of his bed and sits up. While he feels better, Rhett is in no hurry to push his luck. So he sits on the side of the bed, just listening to the sounds of the apartment to see if he's right. If Jesse was in fact there after all.

[Jesse Fforde]

Rhett seems to take it just like the others. The sickness gets worse before it gets better. But Rhett is somehow more stoic than the others. He doesn’t beg or plead, as if he’s retreated into himself for the duration of the change; hardly there to take notice of Jesse, or to have any kind of coherent conversation. They all deal with pain in their own ways, Jesse supposes. At one point he sits by Rhett’s bed to watch, to stare, to wonder – what if Jesse himself had been put through the same thing? What if he’d been forced to suffer for a week before the change took hold properly?

For one, he doesn’t think Phoenix would have cared too much. He doesn’t think she’d have mothered him. She’d probably have called him weak, and insulted the ever living **** out of him. Maybe she’d have done it in the hope that he’d want to prove her wrong. Truth is, he doesn’t know what Phoenix would have done or how she’d have acted, just as he has no idea how he himself would have taken it. He hopes that he’d have been like Rhett is now. Showing strength, even at his weakest hour.

When Rhett calls out, Jesse’s in the kitchen. He’s cleared out all the old food; the milk had gone bad, and some of the fruit had gone black and mouldy. In the fridge, he’s stashed a few blood bags. For later. He closes the door and the fridge hums, oblivious to what it’s holding. Keeping it cold anyway.

It doesn’t take long for Jesse to reach the door of Rhett’s bedroom. The swiftness with which he answers the call is almost equivalent to a parent rushing to its sick child’s side, checking their temperature, staring concernedly to see how pale their skin is. Jesse keeps his distance, though his eyes are quick to take in Rhett’s appearance; to see that he is awake. And coherent. He leans against the door and crosses his arms over his chest.

”Feeling better? Alive?” he asks, unable to keep the slight smile from the corner of his lips. He hadn’t fucked up, then. It’s been a week, or thereabouts, and here’s Rhett. Making his recovery. Better than death.

[Rhett Keyes]

By the time Jesse is in the doorway of his room, Rhett's face is in his hands and his eyes are closed. He's just taking everything in. Mostly, the fact that he's awake and not dead. It seems hard to imagine he's made it through this. Whatever this actually is.

"Better, yeah." Rhett admits through his palms, the answer probably sounding more like 'medder, yam,' because it's so muffled. "Am I?" Rhett's hands drop to his lap as his head lifts up to look Jesse in the face. "Alive?" He remembers everything that happened. Everything Jesse said and claimed. What did this mean for Rhett? Was Rhett like Jesse now? Would Rhett attack people he knew? Would he bite them and drink their blood?

Rhett doesn't wait for Jesse to answer, even though he's sure he will have something to say. Instead, two fingers go to his wrist in search of his pulse to find there isn't one. "Because last time I checked and had learned was that people that were alive, had a pulse." There was a wry sense of humor in that minute before his hand left his wrist and Rhett placed it back on his knee. "So now what?" That was the basic question wasn't it? Now that Rhett was like this-like Jesse what did it all mean?

[Jesse Fforde]

Now what?

Jesse releases the breath from his lungs. They may not need air to breathe, but they sure as hell still need it to speak. To use the voice box. The one that Jesse sometimes might prefer to cut out. It’s a loaded question, isn’t it? One that can take a whole night to answer. But Rhett just needs the basic answer, for now. The basic answer that will lead to more questions. To further explanations.

”First – rearrange your perception of what alive means. You’re breathing. You’re seeing me. You’re physically here, talking, functioning, thinking. Some people like to call us dead, but I don’t see it that way. You’re more alive than you ever were. You’re… immortal, if you play your cards right,” he says. He’s a little calmer than Rhett will remember. Not injured, anyway. Cleaner, his clothes whole and his hair brushed. The manic gleam no longer lingers in his eyes. And he’s probably more approachable, too. Whatever fear humans have of Jesse, it’s not one that vampires share.

”Second – I apologise,” he clears his throat. It’s not often that Jesse apologises but they’d got out on the wrong foot. And he needs to make it right, as much as he is able.

”I didn’t want to kill you. I lost control and I… wasn’t thinking straight. Or at all. I might have explained it to you first, and given you an option. You’d have witnessed something you shouldn’t have, and you’d be a walking Masquerade breach – that’s the first thing. Don’t be seen. Don’t let anyone know what you are. No going around screaming from the rooftops that you’re a vampire – that’s what you are, now, if you haven’t figured it out. You should try to distance yourself from your old life. From the people who know you,” he says.

There’s plenty more, of course. There’s sunlight and food. There’s blood to talk about, as well as zombies, and hunters, and the fae in the wilderness. But they will come. For now, Jesse has to drill in the harder facts to accept – the letting go, the giving up. The sacrifices. The rules. He waits for Rhett’s reaction, brow lifted. Bracing himself for the worst.

[Rhett Keyes]

Distance himself. That wouldn't be too hard for Rhett. He had, oh, about, no friends. Not a single one. He knew a lot of people-from work, and the little league he coached, but after his shift was done and the hours were finished at the field, minus the random group building times, no one knew Rhett. He didn't even think a single neighbor knew his name. Just the guy in 2B.

"Not a problem with any of that." Rhett assured Jesse, his eyes landing on the answering machine near his bed that flashed the number 1 on it. A whole week and only one person left him a message. Not unusual. It was probably nothing but the sound of someone hanging up, in truth. "My folks and I only get together about once a month. No girlfriend and I don't go out much. Which makes my friends list a big, fat, zero. Lucky for me, I guess." Rhett shrugged his shoulders before his attention returned to Jesse.

"And it's cool. You weren't yourself the night we bumped into each other. It wasn't exactly intentional, right?" Rhett pushed off the bed, stood and stretched his limbs. "Just something that sort of happened because you were pretty badly hurt. Not really thinking straight. I get it." Rhett turned his back to the left and then to the right, working on getting his muscles limber after not using them much in the last week.

"Are there a lot of vampires?" Rhett asked, though he already suspected the answer. How many people had ranted and raved at him during his night shifts about people biting other people, or seeing people walk across water or the hundreds of other countless things he's heard? How many people needed more pints of blood than he anticipated when coming to a call for help? "Dozens?"

[Jesse Fforde]

Jesse peered at Rhett as he slipped from the table. It was hard to imagine that the guy had no friends. No girlfriend. No casual fucks, scattered around the neighbourhood. Although Jesse was straight as an arrow, he could still admire other men. Could still see when they had something that women would like – and Rhett had it in spades. Who the hell wouldn’t want to date a guy like that? But he decided maybe it wasn’t a lack of prospects – just a lack of want on Rhett’s behalf. Jesse didn’t question it. It made his job easier.

Rhett’s easy acceptance of the situation was baffling, too. Like Jesse had accidentally just tripped him, or crashed his crappy old car, or… something minor. Instead, Rhett’s life had been turned upside down and inside out, and he wasn’t mad. Not one bit. He brushed it off like crumbs or flakes of dandruff. Hardly a bother. Not thinking straight was the understatement of the year. Jesse arched a brow, but still didn’t comment. Instead, he focused on answering Rhett’s questions.

”Dozens. Dozens upon dozens. There’s more than a dozen in my own little bloodline…” he said, suddenly feeling strange to be talking about this with his old friend. Never would he have imagined that Rhett would one day become another addition to a small unit that Jesse considered family. He cleared his throat.

”Sometimes I wonder how the city is still standing. How there are even any humans left… and how the ones that are left don’t know…” he shrugged his shoulders. They must have been doing something right, keeping the Masquerade. Maybe Tytonidae had instilled enough fear into the masses that things could be kept under control. To an extent. He nods his head toward the kitchen, a hint that Rhett should follow him.

”I imagine you might be feeling thirsty…” he said. Now that Rhett was lucid, he would begin to explain the ins and outs of his new existence.