Tommy had left the house early that morning to avoid his family.

He was standing outside the school putting all his energy into keeping it together. He discovered that drinking ice-cold water helped distract him from the urge to attack some random person for their blood. He also had loud rock music playing in his ears to block out the sound of people’s pulses.

Although all of this has helped to keep him together so far, he could feel himself slowly losing it.

He scanned the parking lot waiting to see Keagan anywhere when finally a small gray car pulled up and Keagan stepped out, weakly waving goodbye to the person who drove him.

Tommy made a beeline for him, pulling off his headset. The loud thrumming of pulses and chatter filled his ear, nearly making him go mad.

“Hey bastard-“

“Not today,” Keagan brushed past him.

“What?” Tommy snapped.

“I’m not in the mood today,” Keagan said.

“I don’t care. You did-“

Keagan whirled on him, “Please Tommy, I’m tired. I don’t want to deal with the insults, yelling, and fighting today.” He wiped at his eyes which had become teary. 

Tommy stared at him wide-eyed. He wasn’t used to seeing Keagan like this. The boy’s shoulders were hunched forward making him appear smaller despite them being the same height. Not only that he just looked so defeated and sad that Tommy didn’t have the heart to hate him in the moment.

“Please, Tommy. Just not today,” he muttered, turning away from him.

Tommy grabbed his elbow, “wait.”

Keagan stopped, turning halfway to look at Tommy.

“I- I’m hungry.”

Keagan furrowed his eyebrows confused before it dawned on him.

Tommy hadn’t eaten all weekend.

He took in the boy's exhausted appearance. His hands were trembling from where they held Keagan’s arm, his eyes were bloodshot, his skin was pale, and he was breathing like he’d been running for miles. How he managed to stay sane, Keagan would never know.

“Oh shit,” Keagan said. 

He hurriedly dragged Tommy to the bathroom.

Finally being in the care of Keagan, Tommy let his mind go after straining to keep a hold on it. He had turned into something that was purely instinct. Tommy’s body leaned heavily on Keagan as he tried to claw at the bag where he knew the blood bags were.

As soon as Keagan got them both in a stall he unlatched Tommy from him and quickly took out a blood bag handing it to the boy who snatched it from him.

Tommy sloppily bit into it, taking in large gulps of blood.

Keagan couldn’t believe he had forgotten about feeding Tommy. Was he insane? The boy could have turned into a black blood being as blood-deprived as he is right now.

He would have seriously ruined his life then.

When Tommy drank the last sip he finally felt somewhat full. That was something he’d never want to experience again.

Keagan offered him his own bag.

“Don’t you have to eat?” Tommy asked.

“Nah, I can comfortably go at least three days without blood.”

“Wha- how come I can’t?”

“Because you’re a baby vampire and are already blood-deprived from the times you refused to eat in the beginning.”

“Ah,” Tommy felt embarrassed. He took the second blood bag from Keagan and bit into it.

The two boys sat in silence while Tommy finished off his second helping.

“You feeling better?” Keagan asked.

Tommy nodded before they fell into another long minute of silence.

“I read it by the way. The research paper,” Tommy said.

“Yeah?”

“Mhm. It’s pretty shit.”

Keagan scoffed, “Well if I had a partner to help me like I’m supposed to, maybe it wouldn’t have been as shit.”

“Yeah. Tragic,” Tommy smiled.

Keagan rolled his eyes.

“I added my own research to it. You know, to make it less shit,” Tommy added, clearly teasing Keagan. He had needed something else to focus on through the weekend so he decided to add on to the research paper.

“Maybe we should start collaborating. That way, you know, you could make all of my work for this project less shit.”

“Well, since you’ve asked for my help oh so nicely I guess I could do a bit of charity work,” Tommy joked.

“Oh how generous of you,” Keagan chuckled flicking Tommy’s forehead.

Their brief playfulness slowly died out into awkward silence again.

Tommy wanted to know why Keagan had been crying.

Was it because of Tommy? Was he being too harsh like Ray had said?

Maybe he was being a bit dramatic. It’s not like the blood tasted bad. It was actually fairly savory. Sometimes sweet. And he apparently had some super abilities he still doesn’t know how to work and pushing Keagan away clearly wouldn’t help him figure this new body out any quicker.

Plus it’s not like Keagan was actively trying to ruin his life that night. This wouldn’t have happened if Tommy didn’t sock him in the face.

So, Tommy decided to throw up a sign of peace.

“My house or your house today?”

DFA NEWS @D4AngelsDailyNews

Picture of TJ walking to school sent to us from an anonymous source! At first, our team couldn’t even tell it was TJ! What gave it away was his custom DFA phone case he’s holding. TJ isn’t looking so hot today. Our sources say “he was trembling and looked pretty wild. Like he was paranoid, it was strange.”

Very strange indeed. What are your thoughts?

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Bianca @SnowBunny_BB

Replying to @D4AngelsDailyNews

Bros on smth. Clearly.

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Minty @MintyTeazzz

Replying to @D4AngelsDailyNews

They aren’t actually celebrities. It’s creepy that people are stalking them. They’re just students leave them be. He probably stayed up late doing homework or something. Ik I look far worse than that on exam week.

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