Ivory Moon ♡ Book Two ♡ Frerard

Chapter Three

Just a head's up, the first part of this chapter talks about blood/stitches/fear of blood! 

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"You never looked as lost as this. Sometimes it doesn't even look like you. It goes dark, it goes darker still, please stay. But I watch you like I'm made of stone, as you walk away."

— 'A Night Like This', The Cure.

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Frank still grew queasy at the sight of blood.

It seemed a ridiculous trait to have clung to him despite all he endured, some would assume he would become desensitized to the sight of it and learn to stomach it right instead of growing dizzy by any amount, but it was on the contrary. The large quantities he shed were enough to make his stomach twist and his vision blacken around the edges, so Frank opted to avoid glancing at it for longer than necessary, as long as he could help it. He hadn't thought of it much when under the savage attack of a nomadic hunter, his mind carried into another dimension of thought and terror so every other fear seemed miniscule in comparison.

Now that he was marginally aware of the result of the disaster that struck that night, Frank's heart and gut twisted in every direction. In tandem with unwanted glimpses of the past he longed to forget, Frank had no choice but to tip his head back and take quiet labored breaths, barely reveling in the cool comfort of the ice pack gently laid across his forehead when it reminded him of rigid icy fingers going to tear him apart. It was more difficult trying not to think of anything than it was to actually think of it, he decided. The mental strain was bound to leave him burned out by the end of the night.

Donna patched him up in her office, situating him at the desk chair and elevating his feet on a stool when she discovered a shard had scathed his ankle. She informed him of how delicate of an area it was despite everyone's better belief as she retrieved her extensive first aid kit, practically a massive briefcase of equipment of all sorts. Frank gave her a questioning look when she first pulled it out since vampires weren't capable of attaining flesh wounds or anything that would need medical attention, to which she replied by simply stating she ordered one immediately once it was settled Frank would be visiting them much more in the future in case of an emergency. With his history of being a walking disaster, it was more than understandable why it would be a mandatory addition to the household, but Frank couldn't help feeling chagrined and put off by his own tendency to collide with trouble. It never escaped him. He wanted to say at that point, it openly sought him out.

The glass pulled from Frank's lacerations glistened with fresh blood as it collected in a porcelain bowl off to the side, strategically placed out of Frank's view, but his own foolish tendency to be curious forced him to steal a glance and he couldn't shake the image from his head. He winced each time the soft clink of glass settled in the bowl, his sigh of relief cutting off with a sharp breath as Donna cleaned the wounds and began to stitch him up.

As some of the nausea steadily began to disperse with the metallic scent of blood permeating the air, Frank was able to think more clearly. He still felt the aftershocks of his power ringing through his system. Again, it came to his aid in a moment of trouble where his life depended on it. A pure survival instinct from the looks of it, just as it had been the first time, completely beyond his conscious control and triggered by something eerily similar. His power was rendering itself infamous for springing unexpectedly and with severe convenience, though Frank would never want to hurt Mikey, but it was proven necessary at the time. He could be assured Mikey would never decidedly harm him either, which caused a wave of sadness to wash through him.

Most of all, the one person who would be the least likely to ever consciously hurt Frank had been one of the two to unwillingly lose himself to a primal instinct, and that was more wounding than a box cutter wound or glass gashes ever could be.