#eaudemuse

A vampire stumbles on your doorstep.

Originally, this was going to be an OC story, but that would be boring; am I right? Is anyone else still obsessed with this man? Anyways, I wrote this months ago so everything is semi-written I just gotta tweak and adjust a couple things may take a while since I'm replacing my OC with self insert. It's loosely edit bc I needed something to occupy my time between dispatching ambulances, enjoy :/

Threshold

The first knock didn’t sound like a knock at all 

It sounded like something heavy giving out. 

You were in the kitchen, elbows deep in suds, rinsing out the pots from your dinner.

Robert Johnson had long fallen silent on the record player, the needle whispering in its groove. The window above the sink was open just enough to let in a thin breath of night air heavy with damp earth and the far-off chirp of crickets. 

Then came the sound again. A dull dragging thump against the front steps. Then another 

You froze, hands hovering over the water. 

The house was too far from town for visitors to just “stop by." Folks didn’t make that walk unless they meant to be here.

Another scrape. Then a low ragged cough.

Your heart kicked up. For a moment, you thought of Barbara's warning, of boys snatched and bodies torn. Animal attacks, they said. Wild dogs gone rabid. Wolves, some whispered, though no one had seen a wolf this far down in years. 

You wiped your hands on your apron and moved as quietly as you could through the front room, The floorboards remembered every step, creaking soft under your bare feet. You stopped just shy of the door, listening. 

Nothing. Just her own breathing, too loud in her ears. 

“Who’s there?” you called, voice steady enough., “If you’re lookin fro trouble, I dont keep none in this house.” 

Silence answered. Then faintly

“Ma’am…”

The word rasped like it has been dragged over gravel. The voice of a man, worn down to the bone. 

You hesitated only a heartbeat more before sliding back the latch. The door groaned as it opened, your other hand slipping to the little knife in your pants pocket. 

He was on his knees on your porch.

For a second, your mind couldn’t make sense of him. He looked half-melted by the sun. Skin blistered and peeling across his face and hands, red and raw where it had cracked. His shirt, white once, now streaked with dirt and old blood; clung to him in damp patches. His lips were split, dry as riverbed clay, and his eyes…

His eyes were off.

Not in color. Just too bright for a man that tore-up. They watched you with a sharpness that didn’t fit the rest of him, like the body had given out but something inside hadn’t.

“Sweet Lord,” You whispered before you caught yourself.

You stepped out onto the porch, doorway framing you in lamp glow. The last light of evening was clingin’ to him, the sky behind his shoulders still smeared pink and gold. He must’ve been walking in it for hours. Maybe days.

“Please,” he managed, voice a rough scrape. “Ain’t… lookin’ for trouble. Just… needed a place to sit a spell.” He tried to smile and it nearly split his parched lips open. “Didn’t mean to frighten you, miss.”

You glanced past him, out toward the road. Empty. Just the long stretch of dirt, the ditch, the fields beyond. No wagon, horse, not even a soul in sight.

“You walk out here alone?” you asked. “In this heat?”

He laughed once, low and strained. “You could say that.”

Your fear slid sideways into something else…habit, training, that healer’s instinct that always rose up when you saw someone hurting. The blisters along his neck had gone ugly, some already weeping clear fluid. His hands shook where they braced against the boards.

“That’s more than a little sun,” you muttered. “You stayin’ out in it all day?”

He looked away, jaw working. “Didn’t have much choice, ma’am.”

You should’ve sent him on. Told him the truth; that a Black woman living alone didn’t have the luxury of letting strange white men cross her threshold, no matter how pitiful they looked. That gossip traveled faster than blood out here. That's all it took, was one person seeing the wrong thing.

Instead, you saw the way his shoulders trembled. The way his breath hitched like every inhale scraped his lungs raw.

“Can you stand?” you asked.

He blinked up at you, surprised. “Reckon I can try.”

You slipped a hand under his arm before you could talk yourself out of it. His shirt was rough under your fingers, sticky with sweat and dust. He was hot, but not like fever; like someone had taken him fresh off a stove and set him on her porch to cool.

“Hold on,” she murmured. “Lean on me. I ain’t that fragile.”

He staggered when you pulled him upright, a low groan tearing from his chest. Up close, you could see the faint trace of stubble along his jaw, the tired crease between his brows. There was an accent in the few words he’d spoken—something lilting, edges softened in a way that wasn’t from around here.

His weight nearly sent them both stumbling, but you dug your heels into the wood and dragged him across your threshold and inside, one shuffling step at a time.

You got him as far as the couch in the front room and eased him down as gently as you could. The springs complained, but held. He sagged back, head tipping against the worn fabric, eyes fluttering shut.

“Hey,” you said sharply, patting his cheek with your fingertips. “Don’t you go dyin’ on my couch. I just had these cushions cleaned.”

A ghost of that cracked smile touched his mouth. “Yes, ma’am.”

You rolled your eyes skyward in exasperation and went to work.

First the water. Cool, not cold; you’d seen what cold shock did to folks already too close to the edge. You filled a basin from the kitchen sink, carried it in, and set it at his feet. A clean cloth, wrung out and folded.

She started with his hands.

They were torn up something awful. Not just sunburn—scratches, cuts, raw knuckles like he’d been fighting stone or tree bark. You dabbed gentle, biting your lip when he hissed between his teeth. The clear fluid from the blisters mixed with old blood, turning the water cloudy.

“How long you been out there?” you asked.

“Couple days,” he murmured. “Hard t’ tell. Heat plays tricks.”

“And you walked the whole way?” you shook your head. “Foolishness’ll kill you quicker than any sickness.”

“Wouldn’t be the first thing to try,” he muttered under his breath. If you heard it, you pretended you hadn’t.

You worked in silence for a while, cleaning what you could. The skin along his neck and collarbone looked the worst. He flinched when you peeled back the edge of his shirt, the fabric stuck to the burns.

“Gonna have to cut this off,” you warned. “You scream in my house, I’ll stick a rag in your mouth, can’t be drawing attention.”

His eyes opened at that, a flicker of amusement cutting through the pain. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll be on my best behavior.”

You fetched the scissors, snipped the ruined fabric, and peeled it away as slowly as you could. Underneath, his chest and shoulders were a patchwork of red and blistering, some places pale and angry, others almost… healed? Too smooth for how bad he looked. You frowned, fingers hovering over one patch of skin that seemed newer than the rest.

“You been burned like this before?” you asked quietly.

Something unreadable flickered across his face. “You could say that, too.”

You narrowed your eyes at him, but didn’t push. Folks carried all kinds of stories on their bodies. Some they told. Some they didn’t.

“You got a name?” you asked instead, dipping the cloth and wringing it out again.

He watched you move, that strange sharpness back in his gaze. “Remmick,” he said after a moment”. 

“Remmick,” you repeated, testing the weight of it. It didn’t fit with the local names she knew. Didn’t sound like Mississippi or Georgia or Texas. You told him your name, it slipping off your tongue softly.

He inclined his head slightly, as if yall were meeting proper in a parlor instead of halfway between life and death on your couch. “Pleasure’s mine, Miss. Forgive the state I’m in. Ain’t usually this ugly.”

You snorted softly. “You’re half-cooked and tore to shreds. Ugly’s the least of your worries.”

He winced as the cool cloth touched his throat. “Fair enough.”

They fell quiet again. Outside, the sky finished darkening, the last line of sun slipping away. The room seemed to loosen with it, shadows settling into their familiar corners. You lit another lamp, the warm glow softening the harsh lines of his face.

“What happened?” she asked finally. “To you.”

He hesitated, gaze flicking toward the window. The night pressed up against the glass, thick and close.

“Crossed some folks I shouldn’t’ve,” he said at last. “Men who think they own every road they set foot on. They been trackin’ me for a while now.” His mouth twisted. “Got a little careless with my timin’ is all. Sun caught me worse than I planned.”

“Men?” You repeated, raising a brow, then nodded toward the marks on his arms. “These look like more than men and sun.”

He met your eyes, something dark and wry in his own. “Some men ain’t far from beasts.”

You thought of the boy torn up by “dogs.” The way the mother had screamed when they carried him in. The pattern of the wounds not quite matchin’ what the doctor said. You pushed the thought away, focusing on the task at hand.

“You got enemies chasin’ you, and you pick my porch to collapse on,” you muttered. “Should’ve fallen out in front of the sheriff’s instead.”

“Sheriff shoots first,and ask questions later” he said calmly. “I could tell you wouldn’t” 

Your hand stilled for a moment on his shoulder.

“That supposed to be flattery?” you asked.

“Supposed to be truth,” he said. “You got kind hands, Miss. World don’t make many of those anymore.”

Heat crept up your neck at that, unexpected and unwelcome. You pulled your hand back, reaching for the small jar of salve you kept tucked on a shelf; your own mix of comfrey, plantain leaves, and a little something extra you didn’t talk about from the clinic.

“This is gonna sting some,” you said, unscrewing the lid. “If you pass out, that’s your business.”

“I’ll do my best to stay awake for the show,” he murmured.

You dabbed the ointment along the edges of the worst burns, careful not to press too hard. He sucked in a breath through his teeth but didn’t pull away, fingers digging into the seat cushion.

“You from around here, Remmick?” you asked, mostly to keep him talking.

“No, ma’am.”

“Figured.” you eyed his face, the curve of his cheekbones, his jaw. “You got a way of talkin’ sound like you from somewhere overseas, remind me of them Irish folk that come and go.”

He huffed a quiet laugh at that. “Been a few places. Stayed in fewer.”

“How long you plan on stayin’ here?” you asked, trying for light and mostly succeeding.

His gaze slid to the ceiling, like he was listening to something you couldn’t hear.

“Long enough to get my feet back under me,” he said. “Don’t aim to bring my trouble on your doorstep any longer than allowed to.”

You nodded once. That was fair. The truth was, you didn’t know yet if you wanted him to stay or go. All you knew was he was here now, and he was hurt, and that meant he was yours to tend until he wasn’t.

“Reckon that’s enough pokin’ at you for one night,” you said, screwing the lid back on the salve. “You hungry?”

His jaw worked, something like hunger passing over his features that didn’t look like it had anything to do with food. It was gone in a blink, replaced by tired politeness.

“If you got a bit of bread, I won’t say no,” he said.

You brought him what you could, bread, a little leftover stew, and water cool from the tap. He ate slow;  bites small chewing long as if he were savoring the flavor. You pretended not to notice when he left half the bowl full but drained the water like a man dying of thirst.

When you finally stepped back in the room from fetching him a sheet and a shirt your father had left behind, the room had gone quiet in that way it sometimes did out here. No wagons or voices. Just the hum of crickets and the occasional lonely call of some bird too stubborn to sleep.

“You can rest there for the night,” you said, handing him the items in your hand; nodding at the couch. “Ain’t much, but it’s soft and off the floor.”

His eyes followed you as you moved to put out the lamp. “You’re trustin’ a man you don’t know to sleep in your house?” he asked softly.

“I’m trustin’ you barely got the strength to stand up straight, let alone cause trouble,” you said. “And if I’m wrong…”

Your fingers tapped the pocket where your knife sat.

He smiled at that, small and genuine. “Fair enough, Miss.”

You turned toward the hallway, pausing just long enough to look back over your shoulder.

“Night, Remmick.”

His eyes had already drifted half-shut. “Goodnight.”

You woke twice that night, heart pounding, sure you’d heard something moving in the front room. The second, just the wind pushing at the porch screen.

The third time, it was silence that woke you.

The kind that felt… emptied.

Dawn light was just beginning to silver the edges of the window when you stepped into the front room, bare feet cold against the floor.

The couch was empty.

The sheet you’d laid over him was folded neatly at the end of the settee. The pillow fluffed. The basin empty, wiped clean, and turned upside down to dry.

The door was shut. The latch set just as she’d left it.

You stood there a long moment, fingers curled around the edge of the doorway.

“Gone in the night,” you murmured to the empty room. “Didn’t even leave a thank you.”

But when you stepped closer, you saw it there, tucked under the edge of the folded sheet. A small, carefully wrapped bundle.

Inside, you found a gold coin, worn smooth with years of handling, and a scrap of paper with handwriting neat and old-fashioned. You’d never seen anything like it, just wooden, and the occasional silver coin.

You saved my hide, Miss. Hope I can square that debt someday.

There was no signature; not like it was needed anyway.

You turned the coin over in your palm, feeling the weight of it. The morning felt different somehow, the quiet around the house deeper than it had been yesterday.

You should’ve put the coin in a drawer and forgotten it.

Instead, you slipped it into the pocket of your apron, right beside your knife.

And somewhere, far from your little house and its lavender-and-linseed smell, a man with healed skin and a banjo on his back walked the road at the edge of sunrise, already thinking of the porch he meant to find again.

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