you're too young & eager to love

I have not written a piece of fanfiction or anything even remotely creative in … in … months. That’s an intimidating amount of time. I can crank out some graduate-level literary analyses on the discourse of the hegemonic power structure, postcolonial masculine theories, or the cyclical marginalization of Native Americans … but I can’t string together pretty sentences anymore. It’s always one or the other, isn’t it?

So, vampires. Vampires always do the trick. I can ease back into writing with them.

I give you (shakily and with some insecurity) fanfiction based off of The Hamiltons (and the sequel The Thompsons). Darlene/Wendell centric, naturally. My tenses go everywhere. Be warned.

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Before the family fled to Europe, David still believed it was possible to live a normal life, no matter how often they moved. He kept his big, dopey grin, his stiff-collared shirts, his wide-eyed hopefulness. The air around him was tense. He was killing himself trying to care, killing himself trying to fight for the unreasonable. It wasn’t the idea of a family that the twins were opposed to – it was the insult of trying to be normal. Normal was a concept. Normal was a cookie cutout dream. David kept burying fags beneath the rose bushes, and the twins make friends that they never intended to keep, their hunger growing slowly, while Francis kept the secrets: secrets that were more than just blood, more than just needles, more than dank basements full of chains and desperation, claw marks made from broken nails and bloody hands.

When Francis switches sides, gives up that dream of a normal apple pie life for kidnapping transients and drinking blood out of frozen IV packs stocked in the fridge, Wendell says he’s finally starting to become a man. Darlene smirks from her predatory position on the couch, runs her fingers through Lenny’s hair and raises her eyebrow, pulls her first tight, because everything is funny to her. She’ll laugh at this like she laughed at the way she used to lock Francis in the closet when he was young, the way she would bare her teeth and tell him not to squeal. Even the way she sings Lenny to sleep seems somehow darkly comical, how she pairs that maternal affection with letting him take the last of the night’s drink of blood. He curls up between her and Wendell, grabbing fistfuls of their skin and bringing it to his mouth, sucking contentedly in his sleep.

Francis gets a craving in the pit of his stomach every time he sees this. (He’s still a bit of a voyeur – he hasn’t quite grown out of that.) It’s part disgust and part longing. Sometimes he catches the same expression in David’s glance, but they don’t talk about it.

--

The thing about this family is that they can’t go anywhere death doesn’t follow.

All those young girls and boys, the teenagers that hitchhike late at night, the ones Wendell can charm into getting in his car, the ones he loves to take for a test drive before he brings them back home, before David chains them up and drains their blood.

England isn’t so much as different as it is surprising.

The idea of home becomes synonymous with the open road, spinning car wheels, and rolled down windows.

--


Darlene is raped, trussed up in virginal white and crowned in flowers, and she lets the Stuart men pound away at her without so much as uttering a single cry. They think of her as a vessel, but she keeps her eyes open the entire time, memorizing their faces, and the way her retribution will color them scarlet.

Francis takes care of the brothers, but the father remains by the end of it all. As bound as she had been, Darlene grins above him, stroking the phallic block of wood between her hands wickedly. Downstairs, David takes Lenny outside, but the brutal sounds of the Stuart patriarch are hardly muffled by the open air and birdsong. Wendell waits inside, leaning against the blood soaked bar, and he pours a shot of tequila for Darlene once she finally emerges.

They drink for a while, and the rest of their family doesn’t bother them. Wendell doesn’t say anything until the sixth shot of tequila and by then he’s already crawling his heavy palm up Darlene’s leg, seeking something akin to comfort. He’s still hurting from the beating earlier – they all are. The twins’ pride is ruined, their ego shattered. The same part of them is humiliated by their inability to defend themselves, by how impossible it had been to fight the Stuart clan.

“How were the boys?” Wendell’s voice is gruff, but his expression is playful.

Darlene digs her nails into the top of his hand. It’s her type of affection. She wrinkles her nose up at him, pouring another shot. “Nothing I couldn’t handle. I was expecting more from Papa Stuart. No wonder he can’t knock a bitch up.”

Wendell laughs in a way that sounds like a growl. He catches her hair with his hand and kisses her, tasting blood and tequila, scraping her bottom lip with his fangs. She arches into him for a while, hungry and aching at the same time, until David coughs from the doorway and gives them an impatient look.

“We, um, have to get going.” David has seen them together for years, their conspiring glances, their sly whispers, their sounds in the house at night, but he still gets uncomfortable by brazen displays of sexuality. It’s been a while since he’s buried a one-night stand in the backyard, but his desires haven’t gone anywhere. He’s partially in love with his own sense of self-control, while the rest of him hates it.

Darlene rolls her eyes, but she gets up from the bar anyway. Wendell has to throw his arm over her shoulder, supporting his battered weight against her sleight frame. For once, neither of them argues with their older brother, and Wendell even hangs his other arm over David once he’s close enough.

--

Francis covers the Stuart bodies, and he leaves behind the human girl. Wendell wants to take her with, but his reasons are far more sinister. His eyes are full of rage and hunger, and Francis knows he would break everyone of Riley’s bones if he could, drink their marrow, and let Darlene lick between the muscly sinews.

It was their idea to separate, at least for the time being, so the twins leave first. Darlene takes a long time to say goodbye to Lenny. She promises to let him visit them in Germany as soon as they know it’s safe. She strokes his soft, white cheek and kisses the top of his head. David wants to take Lenny and Francis to Montmartre, a city of drunkards and artists, where their faces might get lost.

--

Germany is cold, but it’s history of demise and misery appeals to them. Darlene wears fur-lined coats, colors her hair a deep shade of burgundy-wine, and Wendell doesn’t mind the snow as much as he thought he would. They buy cheap whores that sound rough when they speak, their tongues shaping thick words even as the twins tear into their throats.

They visit Dachau, inevitably offending the people that have come to commemorate the tragedy of the Holocaust. Wendell is bored in five minutes. He kicks at the old, notorious metal post marking the entrance of the camp, and Darlene whistles from the crematoriums.

They have nothing new to learn about death.

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