Work Text:
TO BE OF USE
By: Natasha Barry
Printed in Dark Fantasies 8 (2001), Posted in 2006, edited 2022. Barnabas needs blood, Willie obliges. Barnabas Collins/Willie Loomis
"Barnabas." Willie Loomis came abruptly awake.
Perhaps he'd fallen into the pattern of light sleep, wistful naps, upon his return to Collinwood. Certainly he couldn't have been asleep for long, and it was obvious he'd become a light sleeper. Unconscious agitation was an easy metamorphosis from calm when your life was in danger, as his was, as it was for all the residents of the Old House.
"Yes, Willie." The vampire moved closer to the bed. "I wanted to speak with you without Julia overhearing."
The former dreamer sat up. "What is it, Barnabas?" What could not be said within Julia's hearing? The doctor was Barnabas' closest friend, had been Willie's own physician.
Tentatively, Barnabas hovered over the bedside. He knew he could influence the young man, take him forcibly, make him do his bidding as he had before. But now there seemed no purpose to it. Willie was here and voluntarily, believing he owed his former benefactor something when he owed not a thing.
"What is it, Barnabas?" Concerned, Willie frowned, wondering if he should get out of bed. What could be that serious that Barnabas was here without saying anything?
The prompting did the trick. "Simply that I wanted to thank you for coming to my aid."
Reflexively, Willie glanced towards the window but it was still dark. "Why should now be any different? Besides, I owe you, Barnabas, you and Julia."
"Not really, but I'm touched you believe it to be true. You're entitled to your own life, Willie, the life you'll have with Roxanne."
"Yeah, she's beautiful, Barnabas, a real lady, like I was telling the Doc. I never thought someone like her would have time for me. It's like you and Maggie."
"I believe those hopes to be dashed."
"Because you're a vampire again?" Willie scoffed. "You changed before, you can be human again, Barnabas. Don't give up hope. Look at me. Me and Roxanne, that proves anything can happen."
The aged being was touched by the naivete. "If you say so."
"So, is that all you wanted, Barnabas?"
It was time. "Willie, you know I'm a vampire again, you understand these needs..."
"The blood? But isn't Julia taking care of that?"
"Physically," Barnabas conceded. "But you know the appetite for blood is only partly a physical craving."
"It's emotional, too, right?"
"Yes, Willie, if I promised not to use my influence over you, never to make you do something you've sworn against..."
"You want me, Barnabas, after all this time?"
"More than want, Willie, it's need. I need you, and you're the only one who understands me like this, not even Julia has been in the position you are."
"Julia loves you."
"Which makes her dangerous to use."
"But I care about you."
"Not in the same way. I wouldn't accept Julia."
"You don't want her, you never did. But you do want me, is that what you're saying?" Or maybe not, for Barnabas did need Julia's brain, and maybe she wouldn't be so good if she were a slave. Willie never had a brain to speak of, which was how so much of his life came to be tangled in Collinwood in the first place.
Barnabas faltered. "If I have you, then Maggie is made safe."
"You'll trade Maggie for me?"
As he awaited the answer, pondering his response, Willie scanned his length outlined through the bedclothes. He knew all the scars from the bullet wounds, could trace them with his eyes even through the covering. In all this time, as far as he knew, since the shooting and hospitalization and upon his release to Collinwood and Barnabas Collins' custody, he'd never once been used by the vampire.
"You've sacrificed yourself for Maggie in the past. You just saved her life."
"I tried to." Something unknown had rescued them both, when Willie had intruded on a plot to do the young woman harm. It wasn't only Maggie in trouble, but Barnabas and Julia as well, and that's what made them call for his return to Collinwood. But he'd been the one to make the decision to stay. "If you'll accept me, Barnabas, in place of Maggie," the beauty who'd only ever wished him well, "you can have me." It was what he'd stayed in Collinwood for, to be of use.
Barnabas bent down as the young man in pajamas leaned forward to meet him. The embrace was swift, but not as swift as at times in the past. Blood was rare for him these days and the vampire savored it, the momentum of a warm gush meeting the impact of his incisors into the arch of throat providing Barnabas the only pleasurable physical sensation to be had in his life.
If he were not such a part of life here at Collinwood, if he didn't feel so much a prisoner of a newborn conscience, he'd venture further afield. Perhaps to journey to Boston or New York to experience more of this wicked orgy with the young men and women of those cities, the participants at his sole discretion.
Barnabas took more than the scant portion necessary to place someone under his influence, he nearly killed Willie, so lost in the moment he had to force himself away. He lifted him carefully to the pillow, and settled the lax figure upon the cushion before draping him again with the bedclothes. His young friend would recover, but "Forgive me, Willie." He thought his recent victim would understand him, at least through the blood. "I've missed you more than I allowed myself to realize."
"That's all right, Barnabas," came the response, but the pale lips of the unconscious man were motionless. "I've missed you, too. It doesn't take the blood to make that happen."
Barnabas smiled, suddenly joyful when he couldn't recall the last time he'd felt that way. "I'm glad you're here, Willie. More than anyone, you remind me what it is to be human."
"I love you, too, Barnabas."
THE END