Nocturne | ONC 2024

Thirteen: Plant Magic

"I want to see it."

"I don't think that's a good idea, Aaron."

"Goddamnit, Bill, it's my flat. I didn't say I was going to get involved!"

His supervisor gave him a stern look over the pile of forensics images he'd been flicking through and wouldn't let Aaron look at. "It is your flat, and that is exactly why I think you should have as little involvement as possible."

"It's just a few pictures. Let me see."

He was trying to be patient. He really was. But not two hours after Nikolai had left for the crime scene without him, Aaron was restless and ready to crawl out of his own skin. He'd expected to feel relief at getting pulled off the case, but it had just made him antsy. He'd rather have been doing something, but there was nothing else to work on; with the Nocturnes kicking up such a stink, every other active case they had had been relegated to second priority or lower. Which left him sitting about waiting for everyone else to do his job for him.

He hated it.

Bill clearly had designs on making it worse. "What happened with Meier last night?"

The question was so direct and unexpected that Aaron found himself blurting, "Nothing," so quickly and unconvincingly that he sounded like a five year old caught stuffing peanut butter into the radiator grill. He cleared his throat and tried again. "We talked again. Nikolai cooked us breakfast." He shrugged, trying to make it look casual.

Bill gave him a look that was very unimpressed. "And what else?"

Aaron said nothing.

Bill sighed. "I presume..."

"It didn't get anywhere," Aaron muttered, because he knew what Bill was about to say and he couldn't bear to hear it again. He'd been recriminating himself for it already all morning, and he was still somehow worrying about what Nikolai thought. "I, er...soured the mood rather thoroughly."

Bill gave him a long look over his papers. "You've never had this problem before, Evans."

Reversion to surnames was not a good sign. He sighed. "I know, Bill."

"And honestly, I never expected someone like Meier to cause one."

"Neither did I."

"You know what he could do."

It was hard not to roll his eyes, and he didn't quite manage to refrain from it. Bill cocked an eyebrow, but continued, "I'm not talking about the predator element, Aaron, though that is a consideration. If he likes you back enough to act on it, that's dangerous territory. He's no Tana, but you still need to be extremely careful."

"I hardly think he's..."

"He might," Bill said sharply, more sternly than he'd spoken to Aaron since his training days. "He could. He won't see it the same way you do, Aaron. You don't know how strongly he feels about you. He may be only casually interested. But if it is more than that, you could saddle yourself with lifelong problems. Longer, even."

They sat in a long, long silence.

It hadn't once occurred to him that Nikolai might feel more strongly than he did. He never showed it, but then vampires were renowned for that. They were also known for forming highly territorial attachments; centuries of living alone in the dark could lead to irrational solutions to that loneliness. He'd been too busy worrying about it not meaning anything to Nikolai to consider that it meaning too much might be worse. That Nikolai might consider spiking his drink after all. He could have done it last night; he could have put his own blood in the wine, could have given him a nice, deep hickey when things got heated. Aaron wouldn't have fucking noticed, would he? And as simple as that, his human life would have been over, and he would have had no one to blame but himself.