Fic: Time Is On My Side

[csi_sanders1129]

Title: Time Is On My Side
Chapters: 2/?
Author: csi_sanders1129
Genre: AU. Drama. Romance.
Ratings: T, for now.
Word Count: ~1700
Pairings/Characters: Ryan/Sergey.
Synopsis: The Penn State campus is eerily silent, mostly dark, and nearly abandoned, but for the two lone figures on opposite ends of the campus. One is unaware of the other’s presence, but the obliviousness is not mutual.
Comments: For the prs_fansmonthly challenge - this month being an AU fic. Much thanks to cynic_ficbecause she's awesome and without her none of my fic would get anywhere. <3 Any and all recognizable names in this work of fiction are not mine. The PS crew belong solely to themselves. I'm just playing with them. Enjoy! Chapter 3 will be up soon.

II

The apartment is eerily dark and quiet; much like it had been just hours ago. However, only one figure is present this time.

 

Sergey’s passed out on the bed. His wrist is wrapped in gauze and tape and he’s tucked under the covers in his bed as if nothing had happened. The bat is still laying discarded somewhere close to under the bed, and his sweatshirt is still ridden up to his elbow. So many signs point to truth, but to Sergey, at first, it all seems like a really bad dream.

 

He lies in bed until close to noon. He’s exhausted. Probably has something to do with losing a fair amount of his blood. Not thinking about that, Sergey tells himself.

 

It’s only when he hears the front door open and close that he dares to move at all.

 

It’s Katrina and Heather.

 

“Sergey!” Heather calls, sounding more than a little bit on the inebriated side. “We’re home! The weathermen are liars!”

 

She and Katrina wander into his room a moment later. Yeah. Heather’s definitely a little drunk. Must have been a party at Chad’s place. “Serge, you’re really still asleep?” Katrina questions quietly, in case he did somehow manage to sleep through Heather’s loud announcement.

 

“I’m up.” He grumbles, and tries to ignore the pangs of pain in his ankle and the newer one that comes from his wrist. “I’m up.”

 

“What happened to you?” Katrina asks, concern in her eyes when she spots his injuries.

 

“Yeah, what’d you do, try and kill yourself cause you missed us so much?” Heather teases, all semblances of tact lost to the alcohol in her system. Heather doesn’t get drunk often. Sergey remembers why now.

 

Katrina rolls her eyes at her friend and shoos her out of the room. “Talk, Serge. Now.”

 

“It’s nothing.” He says, as calmly as he can. His eyes focus briefly on the wall Ryan pinned him to just hours ago. “I fell when I was walking back from the library, that’s all.” Somehow the words sound convincing when he says them. He’s not really sure why that is when it’s only half true.

 

She nods, accepts his answer. The sidewalks were certainly icy enough when she and Heather had walked to the party last night. “Be careful next time, okay?” Katrina tells him, and smiles as she leaves him alone in the room.

 

He drags a hand down his face, sighing deeply. He’s not sure whether or not he’s relieved or disappointed that she believed him.

 

“Sergey?” Katrina pokes her head into his room once more.

 

“Yeah?”

 

Her brow furrows and she stares past him. “Close your window, freak. It’s the middle of winter.”

 

“What?” He asks. The window had been closed. He knows. He would have felt the chill had it been opened. Like he had last night. But, when he turns around, it is open, and he could swear he saw a figure lurking in the distance watching. It disappears as fast as he even notices it, but Sergey has a feeling he knows just who it was.

 

Hurriedly, he gets up to close and lock it. He thinks he’s going to be sick.

 

***

 

That night is anything but eerie and quiet. Katrina, Heather, Chad, and Josh are all working on some group project for a class that Sergey’s not in. As such, he’s hiding out in his room.

 

He can hear them laughing and chatting about their assignment. Debating what to include and what can be cut. It’s all very loud. And he feels sick and cold and tired. And afraid. He’s turning paranoid. Four times throughout the day, he could swear he saw shadows out of the corner of his eye.

 

“Get the grade for your project yet?” The voice comes from just behind him, and he tries very hard to not fall out of his desk chair as a result. Hands that land on his shoulders – surprisingly warm hands – are what ultimately keep him upright. “Careful.”

 

“Don’t.” Sergey snaps, moving to stand rather ungracefully, on one leg in an attempt to escape his predatory guest. “Don’t touch me.”

 

Ryan frowns at the avoidance, as if he hadn’t expected that somehow, but does stay in place. “Relax, Serge. I don’t bite.” He grins, and those animalistic teeth appear again. “Much.” It’s a bad joke and Ryan knows as much. He invites himself to flop down across Sergey’s unmade bed. “Sorry. I couldn’t resist. Really, though. I can’t bite you again already.” He assures the younger man.

 

Sergey backs himself up against the wall this time, putting as much distance between himself and Ryan as he can without alerting the others. “What do you want?” And, really, he’s not sure how he’s talking so clearly, when he’s shaking so hard, but he manages.

 

“We covered that last night, didn’t we?”

 

“You said you…”

 

Ryan shrugs, and with an unfair level of elegance, flips himself back onto his feet, and this time he is approaching Sergey. “I said I couldn’t bite you. Not if I want to keep you around, anyway.”

 

Sergey looks hardly convinced by Ryan’s words. “I’m just supposed to believe that?”

 

“Well, you’re still alive, aren’t you?” The elder replies, and Sergey can’t disagree with that one. “As for why I’m here. Well, maybe I just happen to like being around you.”

 

“Maybe I’m not so fond of being around you.” Sergey responds, a wave of unfounded confidence hitting him.

 

Ryan doesn’t seem threatened by his tone or his attitude and instead reaches out, grabbing a fistful of Sergey’s t-shirt and hauling him closer. He smashes their lips together – fangs helpfully not present – and assaults the younger man with a searing kiss, one-sided as it may be.

 

Just as suddenly – Sergey doesn’t even have time to fight his vampiric fiend of an attacker away – it’s over. The next thing he knows, Ryan is gone, and there’s a knock at his door, just before it opens.

 

“Sergey, man.” It’s Josh, half-leaning on the doorframe. “We’re ordering pizza. What do you want?”

 

He shakes his head and wipes at his lips. “I’m not hungry.”

 

“Okay.” Josh nods and slips back out, closing the door behind him.

 

Sergey falls into bed with his back to the window.

 

***

 

As it turns out, the weather forecast was not a lie, just a bit premature in its estimation of the timeframe. Despite promises of an unseasonably warm front on the rise following the snow storm, the snow is still, in fact, falling. It’s beginning to pile up now and the road crews are hard at work trying to manage the chaos.

 

Despite the overcast and cold and wet conditions, the school isn’t falling prey to the news stories so easily this time. Classes are on, which means Sergey has to go and spend the entirety of his three hour night class with Ryan. The Quad is bustling with activity everywhere, but Sergey still feels watched.

 

He slips into his classroom slowly; extra careful of his still healing ankle on the icier than ever sidewalks and slippery floors wet from everyone’s snow-soaked shoes. His seat in the lecture hall is in the second row and he heads toward it automatically.

 

With his concentration elsewhere, he bumps into someone somewhere around row six. Only after about five seconds of blinking into the fabric of an unfortunately familiar black pea cost does he realize just how inopportune his luck seems to be. It’s Ryan, and his warm arms instinctually come up to catch yet another of Sergey’s seemingly always ungraceful movements.

 

Ryan laughs at him. “That ‘watch where you’re going’ thing from the other day was entirely lost on you, wasn’t it?” He teases with an amused sigh, and his hands linger a little longer than necessary when he leads Sergey down to the second row. “Be careful, okay? You’ve already got one sprained ankle.”

 

“Thanks.” Sergey says on impulse, and extricates himself from Ryan’s hold a little more forcefully than necessarily required. “I can take care of myself, okay? So just stop.”

 

The professor arrives before Ryan has a chance to react or retort.

 

“Take your seats, groovy guys and groovy gals. The sooner we get through the rest of this section the sooner we can all get out of here and away from this blasted snowstorm.” Mr. Robertson announces, and his distaste for the weather more than evident in his words.

 

Sergey sits, and expects Ryan to walk away and take his own seat – somewhere near the back of the room, if he’s not mistaken – but Ryan sits down in the vacant chair directly beside him as if that has been his spot all semester.

 

“Why are you sitting here?” He whispers, while Robertson sets up his flash drive in the computer.

 

“It’s so much easier to make sure you don’t trip over your own shadow from a foot away as opposed to across the room.” Ryan jokes. “I told you. I like being near you.”

 

Sergey scoots his chair as far away as he can get.

 

Distance becomes an entirely irrelevant matter when they do finish the section they’re on, though. Professor Robertson announces the end of semester project he’s been holding off on. When he starts off with the words ‘with a partner,’ Sergey’s head hits the desk. Why? Why with partners? He knows he’s going to end up working with Ryan.

 

“You knew about this, didn’t you?” Sergey mumbles once they’ve been released with their instructions and their pairs written down.

 

“And if I did?” Ryan answers with a smirk that answers the younger boy’s question.

 

Sergey has nothing in the way of a fitting reply. Instead, he stalks away from Ryan and out of the building, but trying to escape a vampire is evidently a kind of tricky endeavor. Ryan appears several feet ahead of him just seconds later.

 

Sergey groans in frustration. “Look, fine. Whatever. I’ll do this project with you. Just… stop being creepy and stalkerish, okay?” Not that Ryan is not entirely freaky all on his own. Hell, the kids a vampire who’s evidently made Sergey his meal-plan of choice.

 

“No promises.” Ryan answers, but he slings an arm casually over Sergey’s shoulder as if they’ve been friends for years and leads him in the direction of Sergey’s apartment.  “You got your grade back for that paper today, right? What’d you get?”

 

Sergey drops his head, won’t look at Ryan. “I got an A.”