Chapter Text
Allentown, New Jersey doesn’t get a lot of traction. It’s so far out of the way that most people in the state won’t even consider it as they’re driving through the wilderness along I-95 to get to the action in Newark and beyond, but for the people who live here, it’s home. It’s always been home, and it always will be.
Frank and Ray have mixed feelings. While, on one hand, neither of them would ever consider upping and moving out of this place in favor of somewhere busier where they can inconspicuously disappear into the crowd — despite its desirability — the alienation that comes with being the only two solitaries of the town who live notoriously atop the tallest mount just west of Main street is pretty damn convicting. It’s trapped them in a sort of viscous net that cradles them coarsely in the thralls of small-town gossip, although they’d both prefer to remain oblivious to the talks and tells of the citizens of Allentown.
There’s not a single drop of vampirism in this town, which is what sets them so drastically apart from their fellow citizens, leading to an expansive knowledge of the caution Frank and Ray must keep engaged at all times lest they cause their own demise and release an uncertain doom upon the townspeople that would only destroy them further than they aim to destroy themselves with incorrigible smack. This is why you’d typically see vampires like the two of them in covens; social, deeply, tightly bound, intensely loving and affectionate, and dependent to damn near dangerous levels on community, but Frank and Ray can do no such thing here. They refuse to leave, but refuse to fix these problems, so into limbo they go for eternity.
At least the townspeople are, for the most part, unaware.
The sun burns hot here. Daylight comes raging with the rising of the sun upon first light, scalding the delicate petals of purple cornflowers, black-eyed susans, and great blue lobelias, turning the already lush landscape a vast array of saturated, vibrant color. The trees sway above short grasses in the wind of a summer’s day when the creeks run murky with hot water reluctant to refresh. Mosquitos thrive in the stagnation of the brooks. The old cemetery beside the church on the west side precedes open, often spotted skies when the humid season overtakes the usually mild climate. The speckling of clouds gives the sleepy town a visible cautious edge that hangs in the air like steam from the pond central to Allentown on a colder day. This place feeds off of the sun to survive; without it, there would be nothing worth noting here at all.
This is why Frank and Ray struggle so much to survive as the direct antithesis to everything people would typically consider human. And that’s to be expected, really, when it comes to vampires: this whole undead thing doesn’t ring any alarms after you consider that Frank and Ray are more parts supernatural creatures than flesh and blood people, but it’s been so long since either of them have felt alive that they can’t help but be a little bitter about their outcasted status.
Frank is the one who has come more to terms with his own undeath than Ray has. Well, put that way, Ray is obligated to state that any and all anxiety around his mortality has been quickly dispelled once im mortality came into picture, but it’s more the mere thought of being a monster, a marauder, and a thing that bothers him. It’s the knowledge of being inhuman by association that Ray gets into his head and that Frank has to kiss away and dispel.
Frank has always been the rational one, which anybody who knows them would expect to be the opposite of the case. This isn’t to say that he’s always been comfortable with himself, with his body, his wants and desires, and his way of life, Frank can feel anxiety, dread, and self-hatred like no other emotion felt before, but he's definitely more level-headed about his emotions now than he used to be and Ray is now. Ray has gotten better at keeping the peace within his existence — or lack thereof — but he’s not quite to Frank’s stage of acceptance yet, and he’s been assured that this is okay. The point of a relationship is to nurture each other and help each other grow, so if Frank has to take on a bit more of that task, he’s more than willing to. It’s worth doing, he promises.
Vampires are strongly bound individuals, as was said before, but the bond between Frank and Ray is unlike any ever noted before. It’s not just solely a sexual appetite that fuels their attraction, nor is it their commonly shared thirst for blood, gore, and the macabre that brings them any closer, but the want, the need, the magnetism between the two men that fans the flame they started in the dry, brittle grasses with wind so strong it knocks even the strongest bodies off their feet. They both feel overwhelmed by their own relationship in the best kind of way.
They’ve lived together in the gigantic mansion on a hill called Scarlet Fields Manor in Allentown, New Jersey for five years now, so most of that work has been done and accounted for, but both of them have deeply acknowledged that there’s a forever’s-worth of effort still to be exerted to get each other on track towards the “people” they aspire to be — or as close to personhood as they can get. Therefore, the walls of this place have seen five years of love, and of unconditional care, of adoration, of undeniable affection, and of the most high definition of passion that words can describe, though many a time they often cannot when the two of them are strung up together in bed after a long night of bleeding.
The walls are painted a rich oxblood — a crimson — adorned with golden trims, accents, and medallions reaching far above the tallest head to the ceiling spotted with high-hanging chandeliers and globes that make the space glow like the outskirts of the sun. It’s a warm light that counteracts the coldness in the bones of the two of them they can’t bear to change. It’s pretty close to irresistible to shiver in this atmosphere, despite the heat of the light.
Stairwells and twisting turns adorn the hallways that span the entirety of the mansion, all seeming to run in a great big circle connecting with one another into a perplexing knot like a drunken spider’s web. Every fiber seems to go missing no matter how well one thinks they follow it, and the endless expanse of the mansion — and the estate itself — is overwhelming to any and everyone not as in tune with each and every feature of its walls and ground.
The dining room is formal and sits up to three tens, adorned with buffets, hutches, and the finest China dishes that can be reasonably owned, accompanied by pure silver wares, cloches, platters, and servers that neither Ray nor Frank have ever used for anyone but themselves. The table and its chairs are mahogany; shiny and deep brown in the yellowed orange of the lightbulbs screwed into each fixture. The same crimson tone prevails throughout, as does the ornate carpeting.
The bedroom is their personal favorite out of the whole place, spacious, dark and cold: secluded from the rest of the open house. It has become their own private paradise: a hiding space from the chaos of their daily lives that doesn’t ever seem to let up. When they miss the days they used to spend entwined with each other in bed for hours with nothing else to do, they relive their immortal memories in the smooth covers and plush mattress for just a few minutes before the tide kicks up again. Their heads pound with it.
When you live forever, at what point do the memories of old begin to die? Is there an index for how long you’re permitted to remember before your past is stripped from you one by one? So far, neither of them have lost anything, but, also, neither of them have any clue when they will, so the expectation of that night, distant in the future, sits eerily on their minds. Whensoever it decides to come up behind them, neither of them believe they are the least bit prepared to forget. They hope that the memories they still continue to make on a daily basis pile and pile and pile up on top of one another until the weight becomes too much and they black out from the pressure because even that sounds more pleasurable than amnesia.
Second to forgetting about each other, forgetting about the secrets hidden in this estate on this mount would assuredly result in apocalypse.
Scarlet Fields Manor sits on two acres of land, most of which is overrun by invasive, native weeds and grasses that crawl up the limbs of the hearty trees that shade the landscape. They could go out there on the grounds to take care of the state of overgrowth themselves, but with the brevity of the night atop their pre-existing obligations, maintaining the estate and its demands is quickly pushed onto the back burner. Food has always been their top priority, especially since it’s literal blood that’s proven to be especially scarce in Allentown: a small residence of just under 1,800 people, many less of whom are regularly donating blood to a lowly little hole in the wall twenty minutes out of town in south Trenton.
This dilemma of course begs the question of ‘why don’t they just feed off of people?’ that they’ve been grappling with for years. When you live in a place as small and remote as Allentown, New Jersey, the disappearance of one person, no matter how recluse, never goes unnoticed. Word circulates like a virus in the air as soon as Betsy stops coming to the coffee shop at 7:10am every morning. Everyone knows that something has happened to her when it’s 7:09 and her car’s slipping belts haven’t whined in the bay outside the front window yet. Everyone knows that something has gone wrong when she doesn’t come home at 8:00 sharp. That’s why. That’s why neither Frank or Ray can go out and hunt classically like the style you typically see vampires conduct, because if any one atom is out of place here, it’s instantly known, and thus they are forced out of hiding and thrust into the light that burns their skin. No one keeps watch like the townspeople of a sleepy little hometown along the highway.
Twenty-minute journeys there and twenty more back multiple times a day just to stay alive is becoming impractical for the two of them, but there really isn’t a true solution to this problem without abandoning all their other tasks, chores, hobbies, and slots of free time almost entirely. Without food, they cannot survive to do anything else, much less trim back the plants threatening to consume them too.
When you’re enthralled by writing, drawing, painting, reading, stalking — more for enrichment than for edible interests — going out for food, feeding, spending time with your lover, and relaxing in the freedom of endless time, all in an eight-hour-long slot, there’s noticeably not enough time for taking out the gardening shears or the grass mower, much less what it takes to maintain those tools themselves. Gasoline, sharpening blocks, you name it, it all takes time that Frank and Ray do not have.
This is where they start to branch out.
The Allentown Examiner has been sitting out on Frank and Ray’s doorstep since 5:00 this morning, which almost always jolts them out of their nocturnal sleep just as their eyes shut for the day when it gets delivered, but every night at sundown, Ray steps outside into the safe darkness to bend down and retrieve it. Together, they read it and check the job ads like they do every day before bed in case there are any locals who could work on things around the Manor during the day that Frank and Ray can’t get to during the night.
Today, near the bottom, there appears a block reading “will do daytime estate management work for fair rate or equal alternative exchange” accompanied by a phone number.
“What do you think?” Ray sighs, defeated. “Do you think they’re from here? Do you think they mean well?”
Frank sits on Ray’s lap at the table at 4:00 in the morning with the newspaper in his hand. Ray rests his chin on his shoulder, intermittently kissing at his neck and hair while his arms sit lovingly around his waist. It’s a nice distraction from the twisting dread in his gut for the fact that they have to keep trying on top of trying their absolute hardest. It’s bordering on painful.
Frank shrugs with just one shoulder — the one that Ray isn’t leaning on. “If they are, then I don’t know of anyone else in Allentown who has an estate — much less one that needs managing. I think we’re the only ones with a house above fifteen-hundred square feet, so they have to be honing in on us, so… I mean — I’m sure we can try and talk to them, and if it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out, and we keep looking.”
“Mhm…” Ray hums. “I’m just tired of looking. I wish we had time to do it ourselves so we didn’t have to do this.”
“I know,” Frank turns around and kisses at him in reassurance.
Ray sighs again, disappointed and out of steam. “I don’t wanna give up but…”
“I understand. I’ll give them a call and fret about it for you. Just try to relax, okay? Let’s see what happens.”
Frank pulls his phone from the table in front of him and enters the number into the dialer. It rings and rings and rings until it goes to voicemail, which he goes ahead and records as he expected to. He didn’t think that this person would pick up anyway.
“Hello, sorry for the hour, we work nights and only have this time available to call, but we saw your ad in the paper for daytime estate management and we think you’d be a perfect fit for what we need. You’re exactly what we’ve been looking for, so give us a call back as soon as you’re able. We’d prefer you to start working in the morning after this voicemail reaches you, so please return this call as soon as possible so that we can get you the address of the estate. Thanks!”
He hangs up and sends the voicemail.
“Done. We’ll see what we get.” Frank reaches up and back to pet the top of Ray’s head and curls a lock of his hair around his pointer finger. “Ready for bed?”
“Yeah.” Ray’s eyes are dark and sunken in from today’s activity. They didn’t do terribly much today, only stock up on their allotment of blood for the night and still have to go to bed hungry — which is enough of a task to knock either one of them out on its own — write a lengthy entry of the project-collection-book-whatever thing they’ve got going on that they can’t describe no matter how many times they crack open its document, and varnish a set of paintings they finished last week that have finally been dry for forty-eight hours, but the two of them are absolutely exhausted. This was the last thing on their to-do list.
“Come on. I’ll comb your hair if you brush my teeth,” Frank offers, standing up from Ray’s lap and holding his hand to guide him back to their bedroom.
Ray agrees and follows at once, especially since they’re gonna need to traverse through Black Pearl Hall: the main hallway off the entrance that leads to the living room of the mansion that caught the two of them up in a maze the first time they stumbled through it at the purchase of this manor. They’ve since memorized its twists and turns, but nobody else who has ever visited and stepped inside can say the same. This hallway would be most practically used in situations where Frank and Ray would need to subdue their prey by way of the disorienting, never-ending hallways, but in the absence of that instinct, it serves solely as a blank slate for their decorative urges. The walls are littered with paintings, frames of printed poetry, and written down memories that they couldn’t photograph.
Frank doesn’t remember the last time he held a camera or found himself stumped by his reflection in the mirror. He has no idea what he looks like outside of Ray’s sleepy, drunken descriptions that he gives him while the two of them lay on the floor and trade thoughtless words.
They stand at the bathroom vanity now, Frank with Ray’s trusty comb in hand and Ray with his eyes blissfully shut and heavy. Frank’s hand works gently but deliberately, not forcing through the small tangles, but fighting with them enough to get them out in a timely manner.
When he’s done and can run his fingers smoothly through his curls, Ray sits him down on the counter against the covered-up mirror to brush his teeth for him, addressing every centimeter of his mouth from the insides of his teeth to his gumlines and all around the molars in the back he always has trouble reaching. He scrapes his tongue and he gags just like he always does, so Ray smiles lovingly at him.
“What did I tell you about breathing through your nose when you do this?”
“That doesn’t help, babe, you know I can’t control it.”
Ray laughs nasally at him and gets him back on his feet so he can spit and rinse out. “You know,” he starts, “technically, you’re supposed to leave all the toothpaste on your teeth after you spit: that’s what makes it work like the package says it will.”
“That makes me feel nasty, Ray, I’ve tried it. I hate it.”
Ray shrugs mildly and kisses him as if it’s routine. “Let’s go to bed.”
In the morning, an hour later at 5:00 when the next day’s newspaper slaps the wood of the front door of the mansion, the person in the paper calls back, leaves a message, and sends Frank a text, waking him up. He rolls out of Ray’s arms to check it and he immediately notices the absence.
“Did they call back?” he mumbles, trying to find his senses in the dark.
“Mhm,” Frank grumbles, rubbing his eyes in the stupor of the early hours of dawn. His eyelids are cinderblocks on his face. “They texted.” He clears his throat before he continues. “Hey, sorry that I missed you, I’m excited to hear that I’m a fit for your needs! If you send me the address within the next half hour, I can be there to start work at 6:00 sharp. Let me know, thanks. -Gerard.”
“Hmm, Gerard.” Ray lets the name sit on his tongue for a moment. “Send him the address. He sounds excited.”
Frank sniffles and sits up on his elbows in bed to type it in. He hits send and groggily leans over to kiss Ray on the temple. “Done. Can we lay here for a little bit until he gets here? I don’t wanna get up just yet.”
“Yeah, that sounds nice. I’ll stay up and watch the time so I can wake you up. Just roll over and rest for a little bit, honey. I’ve got you.”
Those forty-five minutes go by in a flicker and Frank is somehow even more tired when he is awoken the second time. He seriously contemplates ignoring Ray’s touches on his shoulders when he feels the thralls of deep sleep catching on, but right before he goes under, he forces his eyes open. The first things he sees are Ray’s big, dilated pupils. He kisses him and guides him up and out of bed before he dresses him in the clothes he laid out, bathing him in baggy black and softness.
Right before they head out into Black Pearl Hall to wait for their guest, Ray kisses him again, then they hold hands as they venture out. When the doorbell rings, they don’t let go.