Mark was always a "weird child" he had cut his thumb to figure out if his blood would turn red after hitting air because of his teachers teachings about the body's veins after that mark started chewing on the inside of his mouth, he doesn’t really like the way his blood tastes anymore, too easy and familiar. It makes him hungrier when he feels his skin start to give under his teeth and the copper spills out. It gets boring the way playing with your toys does.

you, William, are skinnier than the other boys, don’t act like the other boys, shyer than the other boys. He doesn’t know why he notices you, really, there’s nothing really special about you. So ordinary, you don’t even have any cool hobbies or can do any cool tricks or doesn’t have any interesting interests.

And, well, maybe it’s because Mark feels like you are weird too. Maybe y'all can be weird together. His father told him he was half Viltrumite, he knows he’s different, but there's more than that, something deeper and hungrier. Maybe your like that too.

He’s half viltrumite, but he’s also half human, half mom. He doesn’t really feel like either of those, but he has to choose. So when he goes up to you, introduces himself, he smiles back at your big sunny smile, telling himself he has gotta like being human more.

you become someone almost special in Mark’s life, almost. And it becomes very obvious that you have a fat crush on him. And very obviously Mark doesn’t love you the way you want him to. If there’s any love at all.

Mark confides in you, sometimes. When it becomes too overwhelming, he’s half human, it's only natural he’d want to spill his guts to someone in hopes they’d understand, wouldn’t judge, maybe even accept this part of him. So he tells you. Tells you about the hospital freezers, the morgues, the blood banks, the butcher shop he found that was close but just far away enough that he wouldn’t be that tempted too often. He tells you how hungry he is, how he’s always hungry. How normal food tastes like sand most of the time, how he keeps track of how many times the people in his circle have bled around him. He sounds like a fucking freak. He laughs, he says, maybe if they let him taste he’d finally be a little more fucking normal..

And you, after a whole minute of silence laugh too, “Yeah, you’re a total vampire, man.” And Mark smiles back like how he practiced in the mirror. you feed the illusion that he’s still human, makes the little kid in Mark feel giddy and high that at least one person doesn’t think he’s a total fucking freak. Even if he can see the doubt in William’s eyes, smell the bubbling fear.

He’s learned to pretend not to notice it. He lets you change the subject, rambling on about a boy you've had your eyes on, not noticing Mark’s wandering eyes.

After Mark started to confide in you, he started to let himself stare too. When you weren’t looking he’d map out the shape of your throat, the curve and hollow points of it. Like a stereotypical vampire, like a werewolf. Well he honestly wouldn’t know, he’s never been interested in that corny shit. He takes your hands when he’s distracted and smoothes his thumbs over the veins. They’re kind of delicate compared to his, it makes Mark chuckle and grin. You are delicate compared to mark, its kind of fucking funny how this scrawny little human has stuck by not-so-human Mark for this long. It’s not your fault, you doesn’t know.

So Mark keeps a list of people who have bled around him but Mark has never seen you bleed, not once, even before he told him all this blood-meat-loving stuff. He doesn’t know if your more careful about it now, or aren’t, he doesn’t really care. Well, he is, mostly he’s just a little curious.