has done nothing wrong, ever

He’s started imagining things.

Not fantasising - that makes it sound a little too much like a, um, vulgar sort of imagining, and though in his time as a purely sexualised existence (the queer thing, no the vampire thing - though he finds it difficult to imagine that nobody has that particular fetish) he has become, he thinks, anything but a prude, his good Christian upbringing can’t quite reconcile active fantasising just yet - just… imagining. Picturing. Seeing, objectively.

Yes, he knows he uses that sort of thing as a front for luring prey to his apartment - but that’s just feeding. He isn’t deriving any fetishistic pleasure from it, no more than they are; it’s just like eating a meal. If you made out with the meal a bit first, to make it taste better.

Hm. There is, perhaps, a better analogy.

Either way, the manner in which he fantasises is neither fetishistic nor particularly Christian, so he’s losing on both fronts; when cleaning glasses or mixing drinks his eyes are able to wander, and when he has time (which is, admittedly, rarely), they are able to linger on the forms of his more… well-off patrons. Those who laugh in a particularly carefree manner, who wax fondly of lovers and family a little too loud, who walk with enough confidence to draw his eye - the gait of a person who has never suffered and doesn’t care to. The way that they walk, in particular, enchants him: upright and confident, or bouncing, or a half-skip, or a stride - utterly unlike that imperfect gait he sees in glitches and flickers in passing windows or in his shadow, utterly ignorant of the other side.

It’s that focus that helps him to see them in a different manner. It’s that magnetism that lets him picture their bodies feeble and crawling, soaked through with desperation, hauling their limp and bleeding selves across his floor and sobbing, begging with their eyes - the pain of running so great that it outweighs the need to survive like nothing ever outweighed his, and the fantasy reminds him that in everything he is, in spite of what has been done to him, he is better than them, and it’s a feeling he could get high on. And it’s that kind of thought that lets him get through a shift without launching himself across the bar and strangling the first person to mention a friend or a relative with any hint of fondness - or display a hint of an Irish accent; one or the other (he doesn’t hate the Irish, he doesn’t, but the accent is both distinctive and familiar, and it’s not like he has anything against the accent itself but he thinks he is well within his rights to find it uncomfortable, well within his rights, even if it feels a little reductive, but who cares? It’s not some moralising thing, just a slight discomfort, he doesn’t actually even dislike the accent; it’s fine; it’s a fine accent; just uncomfortable). Only once or twice has he actually gone through with the urge to mutilate, and though he promptly threw up and swore it off the first time, the inevitable second was unimaginably freeing. It took him at least a few extra minutes before the urge to run to the bathroom and puke blood into his sink overtook him entirely - so, clearly, he’s getting there.

(Is ‘there’ somewhere he particularly wants to get, though? He perishes the thought. At least it’s something he’s allowed to want.)

There’s something about the feeling of holding another person’s life in his hands that, were it not for the fact that it was his life he held so often, would almost certainly have him sympathising with Father Aiden. The feeling of slipping his hands down a person’s legs, of holding them taut with his teeth deep in their thigh, of the precision with which a hidden and carefully-sharpened knife glides through muscle and feeling tendon retreat like a snapped bungee cord, beneath skin and between his fingers. The feeling of clumsily pressing his thumb into the wound and scraping bone. That knowing feeling, when he looks into their eyes from below and knows it’s too much even to scream, and the sound that comes out instead when without glancing down, he cuts the second. That one’s clumsier - partially because he can’t see and partially because his hands are now shaking: takes a little sawing to sever completely, and makes him feel a little silly under the high. It’s his first time, he explains, like his audience is someone who can care, so he’s bound to be a little clumsy. He hopes they can forgive him, he laughs (like a nervous schoolboy), but knows they won’t. He asks them to stand. They refuse. He looks them in the eye and tells them to stand. He’s only once taken ecstasy, but he doesn’t think he’ll have to ever again. And that’s where he gets the idea to tell them to run, and realises when their bloodied hand falls limp against the pressed-in handle that he forgot to lock the door. Lucky break, then, that he got to them so quickly. He doesn’t make that mistake again, though he does lean over and expel that particular meal against his will, faint and shaking, when he sees their eyes roll back.

He finishes shaking that margarita, strains it out and salts the rim. The customer shyly asks for the lime on the side, and he apologises profusely, obliges, and even gives her an extra on the opposite side. It matches the bunny ears, he mentions offhand, noticing the visible hen-do attire; he laughs, she laughs, and he knows they’re tipping good tonight, though that wasn’t his initial thought. It really does look a bit like bunny ears. He could do something with that, next Easter - maybe with strawberry slices; something with chocolate liqueur?

He takes another order. The second time was clumsier still - well run dry of beginner’s luck, perhaps (though he did lock the door, this time!), or maybe just the consequences of thinking a little too hard; either way, his hand slips, and the victim kicks out against the pain even through the haze of the kiss - the blade scars his palm, and he is left facing an angry, fading man. What’s worse is that the man is bigger than him, that there are weapons in the room and he knows because he’s wielding one; he is very, very aware of how easily he can be disarmed.

He pressed his palm into his prey’s mouth and forced them down, he remembers. He held it there as if to gag him, and the way the look in his eyes shifted as the blood ran from his own palm and down its throat is a sight he has to press out of the forefront of his mind as long as he’s in public. He pours another round of shots. His glasses were askew, anyway - he couldn’t see quite right, not the full picture, and he doesn’t doubt that’s for the best.

Still pressing one hand to the kine’s lips, he used the other to adjust his glasses and press a single finger to his own.

Shh.

It stares up at him in wonder as he peels his hand away, which contorts into agony, not anger, when he slashes his heels as quickly as he can. He rings in an order. The sensation of blood-soaked hands running through well-kept curls presents itself to him, and he lets himself breathe it in before serving the next customer.

He didn’t finish drinking from that one - just put a few more clumsy wounds in it and let it bleed out naturally (maybe that’s why he threw up, but at the very least, it was slightly less to expel). He cringes thinking about what Father Aiden must have thought, cleaning up the body - though, he supposes that ‘looking like an amateur’ is about par for the course, when it comes to… being somewhat of an amateur, so he’s sure that he can’t judge too harshly. He’ll just remind him of the somewhat heavy-handed number of car accidents staged in his youth, if he asks; he isn’t the only kindred here allowed to be a little excessive.