Fic - Bloodlust - 1/1

[evandar]

Title: Bloodlust
Author: Evandar
Fandom: IronMan
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Gen/Angst
Disclaimer: I do not own IronMan and I am making no profit from this story.
Warnings: Vampirism and references to murder.
Summary: Tony is the man who has everything...except a heartbeat.
AN: This was written for the 'AU: Supernatural' prompt on my Trope Bingo table. I kind of focussed on Afghanistan because it's kind of overlooked in the (admittedly few) vampire!Tony fics I've read.

“Then you’re the man who has everything…and nothing. Not even a heartbeat.”

Tony lets his lip curl enough to show a hint of fang before focussing again on his stew. It’s warm in its metal cup, and the heat’s nice against his hands, but it serves no other purpose. He’s hungry. So hungry. But he won’t eat here, not when his only source of food is the man who can help him escape.

It becomes a test of self-control. Yinsen is careful with everything he does, but even he can’t help the occasional scratch on his hand or nick with his razor. Every time it happens, Tony goes still – predator still – and stops breathing to avoid the delicious scent. He can’t stop his mouth from watering, though, nor from his eyes tracking Yinsen’s movements through the cave.

Open heart surgery has weakened him. The lack of feeding weakens him further. He can see his skin paling beneath the grime, and it takes conscious effort to not unsheathe his claws and lunge towards the heartbeat that thuds constantly in his ears. His hands shake from the effort it takes to hold himself back, and he forces his mind to focus on the suit.

Entirely on the suit.

It becomes easier after a while. A habit. But Yinsen is smart enough not to relax around him completely. He shouldn’t: as automatic as it becomes, Tony knows himself well enough to know that he’ll snap eventually. He’s just glad that they’re working to a deadline because the sooner they’re out of here, the longer Yinsen has a chance of living, and Tony likes Yinsen. When he’s not thinking of the thin, breakable skin stretched over Yinsen’s jugular, he thinks that in another life they could have been friends.

He thinks that right until Yinsen’s bleeding out in front of him, the words “this was always the plan, Stark,” ringing in his ears. The smell of it is making his head pound, and what little of his humanity howls in betrayal as instinct takes over. It’s only the suit – clunky and restrictive and as good as it’s going to get – that stops him from dragging Yinsen to him and draining the rest of his life out of him before it can sink, wasted, into the burlap beneath him. The suit reminds him what he half-way through doing, and he watches as Yinsen dies before turning that rage on the Ten Rings.

And in the sunlight, he burns.

He screams as the suit shatters, revealing his pallid skin and his red-raw eyes to the unforgiving desert sun. When he’s well-fed it doesn’t matter; he can withstand it without pain. Starving as he is now… He claws himself free of the wreckage and rips off the remains of his shirt, wrapping it around his head to shield his eyes before he goes blind. Then he gets up and staggers. He has to. He claws back his humanity from the abyss of bloodlust – it’s habit, it’s habit; he can’t think of why unless he wants to lose himself again – and moves.

He thinks of the suit because it’s safe. He thinks of specs and upgrades and a replacement for the arc-reactor that hums in his chest, and it keeps his mind off the heat and the blood and the hopeless wasteland that stretches out in every direction.

He collapses to his knees when he hears the whirring of the helicopter. Its equal parts relief and exhaustion and he’s laughing hysterically when Rhodey reaches him: a wild thing covered in sweat and sand and grime, fangs fully distended and gleaming in the sunlight.