“Whoa. Talk about dark,” Jean said as they entered Malcolm's room, reaching his hands out to touch anything he could.

“Dark like my soul…which I don't have,” Malcolm said from behind Jean and he couldn't help but laugh at that.

A vampire with jokes. I didn't see that coming.

“It wasn't even funny,” Fred mumbled from Jean's right.

“Don't pout, mutt…You can put on the lights now.”

Jean blinked his eyes rapidly when the lights came on. Once realizing that he was facing a bordered up window, he turned around to come face to face with Malcolm who was suddenly wearing very tinted sunglasses.

“You're a skinny one,” Malcolm said, voice so deep for someone so skeletal looking.

“Not as skinny as you, vamp,” Fred said, looming behind Malcolm with a frown on his face.

What's wrong with being skinny? Body shaming much?

Malcolm clicked his tongue, sneer showing mild irritation.

“I'm dead, moron. Like it fucking matters what I look like. I could still make you want some of this.”

Jean's eyes widened at that, watching silently as Malcolm turned around to face Fred with folded arms.

What is going on? What did I just walk into?

Fred let out a long, suffering groan, hands going on his face before he rubbed his eyes.

“Don't even fucking remind me. And it was just a fucking kiss. Don't make it sound like we fucked. You tasted like rotten meat,” Fred said, frowning down at Malcolm.

“Oh please,” Malcolm said after letting out a scoff. “With the way you were panting and moaning and getting hard like a twelve-year-old discovering porn for the first time? Don't start pretending like you didn't want it to go there. I'd know. I'm that good, if not better.”

“Uhm,” Jean spoke up, hoping they wouldn't transfer their building anger towards him.

“Back to you,” Malcolm said after turning around to look at Jean. “You're the human that knocked out Freddie here with a stun gun, correct?”

Why bring that up when he's angry?

Jean glanced at Fred who was childishly making mocking faces behind Malcolm's head, thinking he may have been saved from Fred's rage for a good while, before looking back at the ghostly pale being standing in front of him.

“Yes?”

The vampire nodded once and stuck his hand out for a handshake. “You're probably the best person I've met in my 300 years of being trapped here. Malcolm Eichel. Born in Germania in 973 AD and lived in the Holy Roman Empire. Hold the applauds.”

As Jean shook his hand, he was starting to think all supernatural beings introduced themselves like that.

#

“No soul? You were serious about that?” Jean asked, writing down all the answers Malcolm calmly gave while staring at Jean with his lidded.

“No soul,” Malcolm repeated blankly, voice forever monotonous save for the funny show he gave outside.

Jean furrowed his eyebrows at that, sitting back on the loveseat facing the vampire that sat in the middle of a couch with books piled on his left and right.

Malcolm looked tired, sure, and he sounded like a robot with a hint of an accent but soulless? Jean couldn't exactly see it.

“He's soulless.” Jean turned around to see Fred doing an essay on a small desk facing a bordered up window. “Not a soul or a beating heart in the guy. Don't be surprised if he suddenly rips your head off.”

Jean turned back around to look at Malcolm whose response to that was a half-hearted shrug.

“All animals gotta eat and survive, even undead ones. Besides, with Bow Wow over there, I can't do much of anything but sit in this room and be beautiful.” How someone could say that without a hint of emotion on their face was beyond Jean.

“...Wouldn't soulless mean you're…empty?” Jean asked, unable to see it. He was seeing a quirky, tired guy full of dark humor and with a joking side, even with the whitish skin, black claws, skinny frame and protruding fangs.

“Wouldn't be able to tell you. I've been like this for so long, can't remember what it was like to be human. From what I've seen, I'm glad.”

Jean pressed his lips together, not sure if he agreed or disagreed with that opinion.

“I live, I eat, I survive. That's all I need to think about,” Malcolm said on, turning his head to the right to stare at the ground.

“Oh yeah and that's all you did,” Fred said from behind Jean.

“I had an addiction. Sue me. Not like I'm not paying for it now. Get back to your homework, Pluto.”

“Do the dog jokes ever end?”

“Unless dogs become extinct in the next minute, then no.”

“Why didn't the shaman kill you?”

“Lady was older than me. You think she had the stamina?”

“Guys?” Jean cut them off, confused as to why they kept fighting. He had gotten the impression that they were friends but as soon as Malcolm did that bad Dracula impersonation, Fred had been testy with the vampire ever since.

“No soul. Not grossed out by garlic. Asexual, if we're gonna use those terms, as vampires can have sex but not interested in it and most would prefer not to. Best way I can describe it to you really. We don't shit. We don't piss. Blood is absorbed through the veins in the fangs. Just saying since a lot of you humans like to add science in these things, even though it's been established that this ain't fucking science but whatever, right? And we can't eat what you eat. Can't digest since dead and all.”

Jean didn't think it was possible to sound sarcastic while not sounding sarcastic, but like so many things since last week, the supernatural proved him wrong.

“Can't…digest…food,” Jean mumbled as he wrote everything down, smile on his face as he blew a strand of hair out of his eyes.

“This is amazing,” Jean breathed out as he sat straight, staring at his two pages of vampire facts.

“I'll take your word for it.”

He looked up to give Malcolm a smile, the vampire slowly blinking in response.

Jean noticed those golden eyes shift to look behind him then back Jean before something flashed there and all of a sudden, Malcolm was the most mesmerizing being Jean had ever seen.

Jean blinked his eyes rapidly, unsure as to why his heart felt like it was being squeezed or why his cheeks were warming up or why he had the sudden urge to follow Malcolm anywhere and everywhere.

He had no idea when he had moved but he was suddenly kneeling in front of Malcolm and the vampire merely stared at him and Jean was so desperate for more. For the vampire to touch him, hold him, bite him.

And the feeling vanished when he was picked off the floor, his mind a hazy mess. He heard Fred shouting through the fog in his head but he felt like he was under water so he couldn't hear the wolf’s words.

All he heard before he was pulled away was Malcolm's last words to him before a door slammed closed.

“We're also very intoxicating. So little sips at a time is recommended.”