The bitter scent of burning toast hit the back of Ansel’s nose and he woke with a start. Disoriented, he stretched his arm out and cracked his knuckles into a wall, scraping off skin which healed in an instant. He dumbly dragged his fingers over the thickly painted plaster before pushing himself up off the bed and his lagging mind caught up with his body. Heck’s bedroom was smaller than his own, and with the curtains drawn and the space in near total darkness, he had forgotten where he was.
After turning the situation over in his mind, he came to the startling revelation that he’d been asleep in a way he hadn’t been for decades. He’d never relaxed fully around his past partners — the anxiety of his glamour dropping in his sleep was too much — and at the Mansion he was on edge for different reasons.
As the sounds of the toaster popping and the kettle boiling drifted in from the kitchen, he rolled over onto his side and pressed his face into the pillow, masking the scent of food with that of Heck’s sweat, detergent, and shampoo. No matter how hard Ansel tried, everything of his at the Mansion smelled musty, dead, or decaying. The thought made him sniff at the sheets as if he’d carried the odor in with him when Heck had taken him into his bed.
In the warmth of the bedroom, lost in a daydream of imagined domestic bliss, Ansel almost fell asleep again before heavy footsteps jolted him upright. The sound of a hand thudding against the bedroom door and flinging it open was so severe, he was ready to dive out the window behind him until Hector locked eyes with him.
“A cop?” he said, hand gripping the edge of the door tight enough to blanche his knuckles. When Ansel shook his head side to side, a lack of comprehension on his face, one of Hector’s hands dragged its way down the side of his own stubbled cheek. “You killed a cop?”
Pieces clicked into place and Ansel found the means to speak. “I didn’t kill anybody—” he weakly protested.
“For God’s sake, Ansel—” He cut himself off with a noise of frustration in the back of his throat and slumped against the doorframe. “It’s all over the news. Cutter’s furious.”
“Let him be,” Ansel said, some of the initial tension leaving him. “I didn’t touch her, that was Slate.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Hector said, his face now in his hands. “As far as Cutter’s concerned now you’re a cop killer. You know what cops do to cop killers, right?”
“What the fuck’s he gonna do?” Ansel sneered, moving to sit at the edge of the bed. “Drive a stake into my heart? Fuck Cutter, he can do whatever he wants.”
“He can go to Baptiste,” Hector snapped. “And Baptiste could—”
“Baptiste won’t do shit. I spent damn near a century with that man, he knows I’d welcome the day he finally fucking ends me. It’s the only reason he hasn’t yet,” he said, baring his fangs.
Hector fell silent and he peered at Ansel from between his fingers. “Ansel, please take this seriously.”
Squirming under his gaze, Ansel tucked one leg under the other and scratched at his neck. “I am,” he mumbled. “Just, Cutter ain’t a threat to me in any way that matters. He can’t make Baptiste do shit, no man on Earth could.”
The expression on Hector’s face was one of doubt, but he didn’t push back on the statement. Instead he crossed the room and sat next to Ansel, their bodies barely touching. “I just don’t want you getting hurt again.”
Ansel eyed up the side of his face, but Hector had turned his head to avoid him. With a huff he said, “Yeah, I get it, on account of your Honor.” When Hector’s head whipped around with his mouth pressed down into a thin line, Ansel’s stomach dropped.
“Yeah,” Hector said, his voice lodged behind something in his throat. “That’s why.”
“Heck,” Ansel said, reaching out to him. When he touched his shoulder with his fingertips, Hector pulled away. A flash of anger hit his face, but he tamped down the urge to grab him, pull him down on top of himself, and pick up where they’d left off. “I been away from the Mansion too long, I better go before Baptiste calls me back.”
Hector opened his mouth to speak, but covered it with his hand, nodding into his palm. “Yeah, maybe you’d better.”
That time, Ansel did grab his shoulder, pulling him into a kiss that Hector leaned into readily. “What’s eating you?” Ansel whispered when their lips parted. “What do you want from me? Really?”
Turning his head, Hector closed his eyes as if Ansel was too bright to look at directly. “Do you know how Hunters get our powers?”
“I—” Ansel started, but furrowed his brow. “No. I never thought about it before.”
Hector rubbed at the back of his left hand, casting his eyes down. “One Hunter passes their abilities on to a new one. I was still in high school,” he sneered.
Dumbstruck, Ansel leaned back and studied the side of Hector’s face. “You was just a kid,” he said. “That’s—”
Hector cut off his platitudes with a fierce hand gesture. “There aren’t a lot of people who know. A few people I ran into on patrol, but not my family. Not anyone I knew from before. It’s like keeping my personal and professional sides separate, get it?” He finally raised his eyes to meet Ansel’s, red at the corners and heavy with some unspoken weight.
Scratching at the side of his neck, Ansel cast his eyes off to a far corner of the room. “You can’t exactly get upset with me for assuming your concern came from the professional side then, can you?” With a sigh, Hector leaned his body weight against him, but didn’t respond. “But I’ll be careful. Cutter can’t do shit to me and I mean it, but I suppose that don’t mean he won’t try something.”
“He’s a piece of shit,” Hector growled. “I can’t believe I didn’t assume he’d be working for Baptiste when I first met him.”
This earned a snorting laugh from Ansel, who raised an arm to wrap it around Hector’s shoulders. “He almost didn’t when we crossed paths, but he pleaded his case pretty good, I suppose.”
Hector picked at a corner of the sheets in silence for a moment before tilting his head up to look at Ansel. “What about you?” he asked softly. “What got you working for him?”
A tense silence fell over the pair and neither moved for fear of upsetting the other. “I pleaded my case pretty good, too,” Ansel said.
“Sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it—”
“I was a wreck after the war,” he said, plowing over his words. “I just felt hollowed out and angry. I had family I might could’ve gone to but I couldn’t bear to face ’em. I knew I’d changed and I didn’t want them to deal with it.” Here he met Hector’s eyes and saw the quiet understanding in them; something buried too deep for words to truly reach.
“Were you from around here?”
“Nah, Georgia. We were discharged at Newport News and I skimmed down along the coast until I ended up here. Well, Hays,” he said with a lazy wave of his hand. “I had plans to make it all the way out west, but I needed money. Someone bent my ear about robbing a rumrunner’s truck and splitting the booze for profit.”
“Baptiste’s?”
Ansel’s laugh was hollow. “We had no idea what we were getting into. I killed the driver easy enough, but the two guards were vampires. Tore my partner apart. I ran.”
“Jesus.”
Ansel’s hand made its way to his mouth, nearly overcome with the memory of Wolcott’s face slick with blood and wide open in shock. It was nearly a century old, and somehow still fresh in his mind. He shook his head. “I killed ’em both, somehow. I thought I was the luckiest man alive.” He turned to face Hector and laced their fingers together. “Baptiste found me not twelve hours later. He said he’d either kill me or have me work for him, and I wasn’t ready to die, so.” He shrugged and trailed off, letting the memory fade back into the past.
Hector stared a hole into the floor as he took in the story, some unseen calculations running through his mind. “Did you know what he was? Did you know anything?”
“Nothing. I died with his fangs in my throat and I had no idea what was going on.”
“That’s—” Hector shook his head. “Fuck.” His eyes met Ansel’s again and for a moment he mistook his expression for pity, but when his warm hand clasped tighter to his own, a shudder went down his spine. Something in Hector’s response told him he knew, that his experiences mirrored Ansel’s in some fundamental way, and neither one of them expected it. Ansel broke eye contact first, worried he might find some deeper emotion of his own reflected in Hector’s face but terrified he wouldn’t.
“And you?” he asked. “How’d you—?”
Hector pulled his hand away, shaking his head minutely. “No.”
“No?“
Brown eyes met grey and the dark flicker of a warning passed between them. Ansel squared his jaw and nodded to himself. “Alright. You don’t owe me nothing.”
“Oh come on, don’t—”
“It’s your business, I get it,” he said, standing and reaching for his borrowed clothes.
“Ansel.”
“Thanks for last night.” His voice was muffled by his shirt going over his head, and when he peered out through the collar, Hector was handing him his phone. He took it slowly, like he didn’t recognize it. “Thanks.”
Hector perched at the edge of the bed, tensed like he might stand, but he sank deeper into it instead. “I’ll talk to you later,” he said to the floor before he raised his eyes to meet Ansel’s. “Really.”
“Yeah, sure,” he said with a lopsided smile as he stepped into his sneakers. “I trust you.”
Their eyes lingered on each other, Hector’s brow furrowed, until Ansel broke it off by turning to leave. He retrieved his jacket from a hook by the door and savored the smells of the kitchen one last time before letting the door close behind him.