The cool morning air meets you with an unfamiliar apartment complex, chipping paint on outside walls and creaky steps on the way down from Wilbur's apartment. Finding your car really is simple, the matter of following the sight of it down those flight of stairs, revealing the fact you were on a second story unknowingly. You gather you're lucky you never had to jump out the window.
Crawling into the passenger seat and having to adjust it from Wilbur's height leaves you without the fantasy of keeping the idea of him locked away in the apartment. He follows you, sticks to your skin. It's his sweater, the ache of your body, and the smell of his shampoo. It's him, Wilbur, that covers you.
The drive feels long as you swim through your thoughts, get dragged deeper, waves that swallow you down. Wilbur is there, everpresent, an open wound. His face mixes with the stillness of fresh bodies, then comes back to you clean.
"You wanted to hurt me,"
Words you said echoed back with the sting of bites that you let him inflict, that were so often stolen. You grip the steering wheel harder, try and look forward at the road.
It was more complicated than you wanted it to be, but you didn't understand your feelings towards him, not fully. They melded with ones of pain, teeth ripping into you with the intention of only that and bodies he made you witness. He was cruel and now you felt tied to him even if that cruelty had shed away to gentle words and brushes of his skin.. His hands, large and all-encompassing, soft or commanding, never touching you with the ability to do harm.
Even if he had wanted to.
The motel.
You blinked, almost missing your turn at that retro sign with the wooden shadow of a sparrow. The neon open sign greets you as you park near the back, silently thanking your un-crashed car for getting you to your destination. You stumble to the office first, feeling uncentered as you enter the small room with a smile. A bell on the door rings, a sound you never quite registered.
The receptionist meets you with the same smile you had become accustomed to in your handful of interactions.
"I'd like to pay for another night," you say.
"Same card?" she asks and you nod. You listen as she types into her computer, then that bell rings again. It's a voyeuristic part of you that wants to turn around to view the stranger. "Alrighty, you're all good to go, check out is eleven am tomorrow, sweetheart,"
"Thank you, ma'am," you smile at her again before spinning with excitement only to face the last person you were expecting to see.
"Looks like you got here before me," he says and you feel as your blood runs cold, his gaze scanning over you. It's not your fault you made no effort to hide the hickies on your neck nor the bites that were evident to the trained eye. You think of what he might see: the wounded animal or the monster. You force a smile that looks as unnatural as it feels.
"Hugo," you say "Here for the same reason I am I assume?" you ask and he nods, giving you a quizzical look.
"Why else would I come to a place like this?" he says and you force yourself to laugh past the sickness quickly becoming overwhelming.
There is a history between you two, one that'd you'd rather not think about, and one that is now staring you in the face. Vampire hunting was so often a solitary job, yet bumping into other hunters wasn't necessarily uncommon, and well, the internet was a thing. You two knew each other well, having hunted together in the past and spent some less than savory nights in the same bed after meeting through an internet forum. It wasn't one of your best choices. He wasn't a memory you cherished nor someone you would seek out, especially not now, yet here he was. "We should compare notes, see how the hunting is going?" he offers and you freeze.
