Let the Right One In

SAVE OFFLINE

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://download.archiveofourown.org/works/12385290. Rating: Archive Warning: Category: Fandom: Relationship: Character:

Mature Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings M/M

Additional Tags:

Bullying, Vampires, Dubious Consent, Bloodplay, Biting, Implied Murder, 1st Year Isak Published: 2017-10-17 Words: 3821

Stats:

SKAM (TV) Even Bech Næsheim/Isak Valtersen Isak Valtersen, Even Bech Næsheim, Elias (SKAM), Jonas Noah Vasquez

Let the Right One In by claycrowns Summary

Isak is trying to hitchhike when he meets a beautiful boy on the side of the road.

Notes

Alex prompted Vampires at the Comm and it made me want something a bit spooky for Halloween! Title is from the amazing vampire novel, Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist.

See the end of the work for more notes

Isak hates Elias. He’s ugly, with beady eyes and hair is so greasy it leaves an oily film on everything it touches. Isak knows he can’t help those things but it makes it easier to ignore the real reason he hates him. Jonas likes him. Isak doesn’t mind it at first because Jonas likes a lot of people. He likes Magnus from their Biology class even though he’s dumber than a box of rocks and Eva who Isak would actually like if he wasn’t so jealous of her. But Elias is different because Jonas might actually like him more

than Isak. And Elias hates him. It’s the little things like how Elias’s mouth screws up into a satisfied smile when Jonas bails on Isak to smoke pot with him in the woods and how Elias claps Isak a little too hard on the back and hides a smirk when he stumbles. He never lets Jonas see but Isak knows. Elias’s disdain for him is a physical thing; it’s a bruise on Isak’s shoulder and a scrape on his knee. It hurts. This time Elias’s hatred is a shove to Isak’s trembling collarbone when Elias asks, “What do you mean you don’t have it?” It was Isak’s job to bring the weed. Elias and Jonas took a charter bus up to the cabin and the bus always did the bag checks so Jonas didn’t want to risk it. Elias met Isak after school and shoved the plastic bag into his bag before shaking his shoulder, too rough, but he was always too rough with Isak. “Don’t forget,” He said. And Isak had. It was hard not too with his Mamma screaming about how a demon was going to get him if he went into the woods, begging him not to go to the cabin for the weekend. Pappa was nowhere to be found as usual so it was Isak’s job to ply her with pills and hold her down until she stopped scratching. He can clearly remember the orange plastic of the pill bottle and the green of the weed he left next to it. Fuck. “I mean, I don’t have it,” Isak says, his voice rising in annoyance. He hopes it hides how scared he is. He looks to Jonas for help but he looks away uncomfortably. He never knew betrayal looked like a pair of brown eyes avoiding his. “What the fuck are we supposed to smoke!?” Elias yells and he pushes Isak back again, this time pushing him down into the frozen grass. Isak can feel purple start to blossom on his back. “Hey man,” Jonas says, finally stepping forward, “He forgot, it’s not like we can do anything about it now.” He doesn’t look at Isak or try to help him up. His eyes stay on Elias and he looks almost embarrassed. Isak embarrassed him. The red hot shame that burns through his veins is more painful than the purple on his skin. “Fuck you man, you let him get away with too much. He needs to learn a lesson.” “I’m not Jonas’s fucking dog,” Isak spits, and he only realizes the irony when he has to look up at Elias from his seat by Jonas’s feet. The feeling of insignificance is familiar to him, it’s being pushed aside for Elias and watching Jonas kiss Eva, eyes closed in bliss. Elias’s grin is cruel when he says, “Aren’t you?” Isak flushes in anger and struggles to stand, but Elias kicks out his shaking arms like he’s an unruly pet. “Elias, enough!” Jonas steps in front of Isak and this time his face is hard and impassive so Elias holds his hands up in mock surrender.

“Alright, I won’t bruise your little peach. But he still needs to be taught a lesson. I think a night outside is a good one.” “Bro,” Jonas says dubiously, “It’s fucking freezing.” “He has a sweater,” Elias shrugs like Isak isn’t right there, “And I’m just fucking around. Obviously we’ll let him in. Later. Much later.” Jonas still looks cautious but then him and Elias make eye contact and Isak sees Jonas smirk a bit, like he thinks this is all a really funny joke. They both run for the front door and Isak is barely able to stand before it’s slammed in his face. Isak can hear the two of them laughing when he bangs on the glass. “Let me inside you assholes!” After a moment Jonas calls back, “It’s just a joke Isak, we’ll be back in a bit.” Isak hears Elias say something, the heavy footfall of feet going upstairs, and then the aching empty silence. He tries the door one more time, just to try, but the brass knob stubbornly stays in place. After he begins to feel stupid standing in front of the door, he crouches down on the steps and curls up, his arms wrapped around his thighs. He lets his head rest on his knees to preserve warmth but still, the cold seeps into his limbs like water to cloth. The only consolation is that it makes the purple on his skin numb until it becomes cold and blue. He would think he wasn’t hurt at all if it wasn’t for the hot sting of tears in his eyes. There’s no one outside to judge him. It starts with a sniffle and ends with Isak sobbing embarrassingly loud until his own cries sound like they’re echoing back at him. He almost wants Jonas to hear from his inside the cabin and come rushing out, but he knows that’s a fantasy. But he lets himself dream anyways. He imagines Jonas running out of the cabin and crouching down next to him. Fantasy Jonas would wipe away Isak’s tears and tell Elias to go home. The door behind Isak stays obstinate and closed. It brings him back to reality. Jonas doesn’t care that Isak is outside freezing half to death. Fuck, he didn’t even care when Elias threw him to the ground. Isak slowly rests his head against the metal railing of the stairs and lets the cold seep into his head too. He wishes the cold could numb his thoughts along with his skin. And it does, at least for awhile.

When Isak wakes, it’s frighteningly still. It’s black but Isak can also see the grey shadows of hills and white drops of stars in the sky. The grass doesn’t move because there’s no wind, it feels like there isn’t anything out there except for Isak on his little perch outside the cabin. He uncoils his frozen limbs and slowly stands before remembering how he got there.

He bangs on the door, his fist wavering, afraid to break the silence. “Jonas! Let me in, it’s fucking freezing!” No one answers but Isak can hear the steady thrum of some obscure rap song echoing through the cabin. But no laughing, no talking, and no Jonas. Isak knocks the door again, this time louder, and still, nothing. He hits the glass one last time before he turns away and starts circling the cabin. The cold has gone from numbing to painful. The windows are all closed, glazed over with ice but still glowing a dull orange from the lights inside. Isak raps on the glass, helpless. “Jonas! Elias! Let me in!” Like the black outside, the orange of the cabin goes interrupted by the shadows of people. Isak would think they had left if it weren’t for the music pounding through the wood. The hot coil of panic has started to wrap around his limbs the longer the silence extends. “Jonas!” He cries as he punches the window, as if his useless fists could actually break through the glass and the ice. It stands, defiantly whole. “Fuck!” He curses but the glass does doesn’t reply. He’s not dumb, he knows he can’t survive the night out here, so he starts to think, the cogs of his mind spinning into place. He remembers the dirt road he’d taken up here. The memory is faded, muffled by the sound of Jason Mraz blaring from his headphones and the snap and pop of the driver’s gum, but Isak remembers. It was long and spiraling, his whole body lurching every few minutes because of the rough of it all. The sky was black, but so black that even the grey road should glow in the moonlight. If he walks it for a few hours, he should eventually come across a car to get a ride back to Oslo. A solid plan in mind, his blood starts to run a little hotter with the knowledge that he’s alive and he’s planning on keeping it that way. He spits on the grass outside the cabin, rubbing it in with the toe of his shoe, before heading in the opposite direction.

Isak has been walking for close to an hour when he has to stop, his limbs stiff and unmovable from cold. His lips are fraying at the edges, split at the corners where’s he’s opening and closing, mouthing the lyrics of songs he can’t remember to stay awake and warm his frozen hands. He forgets the words completely, mouth hanging open in surprise, when he sees him. He appears so quickly Isak isn’t sure where he came from, if he walked out from the cracks of grey in between the trees or if he was following behind him.

He’s a boy, or a man, or someone who's a little bit of both. If the sky is pitch black, he’s as white as the snow that hasn’t fallen yet, morning glory eyes on a face where nothing that beautiful should grow. After hours of silence, Isak should be afraid. But he’s walking the road alone too so maybe the boy should be afraid of him. “Hello,” Isak says shyly, voice raspy from cold and tears. He worries that his red eyes give away that he's been crying so he rubs at them, embarrassed. The boy follows his hand to trace the red rims of Isak’s eyes, Isak only drawing attention to it. “Hello,” He finally replies, “Are you...okay?” “Am I okay?” Isak says incredulously. He’s heard the common words plenty, directed at quiet girls in class by nosy teachers, and Eva when she gets all morose about her lack of friends, but they sound foreign directed at him. “You’re shivering,” The boy says simply, stepping forward until he’s looking down at him. Isak can feel his head grow hazy when he realizes how tall he is. “You’re only wearing a sweater,” He wraps a hand around Isak’s waist, fingering the slip of cold skin under his hoodie. His hands are hot. “And you’re all alone.” Isak peers up at him and feels impossibly small, but not insignificant. “You’re alone too,” Isak says, “So, are you okay?” The boy stares down at him curiously before the tight line of his plump lips breaks and laughter pours out. “Why are you laughing at me!?” Isak shoves him away, annoyed now even as his own mouth twitches. “No, come back here,” He says, reeling Isak back with his long arms, “You’ll freeze.” Isak lets the boy hold him like a doll and pretends he’s helping him too, not just absorbing his heat like a leech. The boy carries the heavy scent of pine needles and teakwood, the kind of heavy that only comes from spending hours outside. Isak has smelt the same scent all night but it smells better when it’s wrapped around strong arms and a solid chest. The boy says, “I wasn’t laughing at you,” Isak says nothing but his silence speaks for him. “Or I was. I was laughing at the idea of someone so...vulnerable asking if I was okay.” Isak resents being called vulnerable. “If I’m vulnerable then what are you?” Isak says, petulant. “You’re walking around in the dark in less than a hoodie - A jean jacket! You’re wearing a jean jacket.” He doesn’t understand how the boy is so hot, both in temperature and attractiveness, after being outside for so long. “But I’m the vulnerable one.” He expects the boy to laugh again but he hums against the top of Isak’s head and says, “You are.” Isak rolls his eyes, “Being seven feet tall isn’t going to protect you from the elements. There are

Isak rolls his eyes, “Being seven feet tall isn’t going to protect you from the elements. There are bears in the woods. And possibly axe-murderers.” “Axe-murders? This is Norway.” The boy says, like he’s suppressing a laugh, “And what if I’m the axe-murderer? You’re letting me hold you. Walked right into my arms, and my trap.” Isak sputters like a rusty tap, cheeks heating at the verbal acknowledgment of what they’re doing. It’s one thing to let a beautiful boy hold him, it’s another for him to say it. “You can’t be the axe-murderer,” Isak says, “You don’t have a balaclava. And axe-murderers don’t wear jean jackets. There’s nowhere to put your axe.” The boy hums, humouring him, before he abruptly asks, “Why are you out here all alone?” The last few hours feel like a particularly vivid and ugly memory, painted in the broad strokes of the setting sun and Jonas’s brown eyes. Nothing like the black surrounding them right now, safe and isolating. Isak doesn’t want to tell this boy, this beautiful strange boy, but the story is pulled out of him with a gentle caress of his hands on Isak’s waist. “I came up with my friend for the weekend, to stay at his girlfriend’s cabin but we got into a fight,” Isak blinks away tears, not wanting to cry again like a baby, “Him and...his friend locked me out. They were going to let me back in!” The boy doesn’t say anything but Isak can hear his judgment, “But he forgot. So I’m trying to catch a ride back to Oslo.” The boy hardens like a plank against Isak before his body uncoils, harder but more malleable, like liquid metal. His body feels encompassing, a cage but a welcome one. “He’s not your friend,” He says with finality, “No one who’s anything to you would forget about you.” Jonas is his friend, his best, but Isak nods, his words sounding like a declaration. Or an order. He lets out a whimper of surprise when Even noses his way to the curve of Isak’s neck and presses his lips there. It feels like a reward, for being so good. “What’s his name?” Isak answers quickly, eager for another prize, “Jonas Vasquez.” He hums, like he’s not listening but he presses on, giving away his interest, “And the other one?” Isak doesn’t want to think of Elias when his dick is hard so he spits it out, “Elias Selhi.” “You don’t like him?” Even asks, calculating. “I hate him,” Isak says, shocked at the poison in his own voice but unable to stop, “I wish he was fucking dead.” This is the point where the beautiful boy should let Isak go and run in the opposite direction but he just hums again. Those hums are deceptive. “I’m sorry,” Isak says, mortified, “That was creepy.” “Don’t be,” The boy says, “I wanted you to be honest.” “People want others to be honest all the time, that doesn’t mean they will or they should.” He smiles like he has a secret, “People are always honest with me.”

Isak rolls his eyes, even if he is charmed by that smile, “Yeah, okay.” “Try and lie to me.” The boy presses another kiss, lower, to the soft of Isak’s neck and asks, “What’s your name?” His head is four beers deep when he whispers, “Isak Valtersen.” “Isak,” He says, “That’s a pretty name.” It really isn’t. It’s the 20th most common boy’s name in Norway and Isak has been the second or third Isak in his classes multiple times. And not even the most popular one. But everything this boy says sounds like truth so Isak just nods in thanks, and hides his blush in his chest. He can feel the boy breathing, heavy, in the hollow of his neck and it makes him want to press forward, grind down on his thigh like an animal in heat. He feels off-kilter, out of control the more he speaks. He needs some back before he embarrasses himself. “I don’t like this,” Isak announces. He feels the boy freeze against him, like he’s going to push him away, so Isak clutches at his neck. “No, not this ,” He says, “You asking all the questions.” The boy relaxes and says, “Do you have some questions for me sweetheart?” And Isak likes that. He wants to be his sweetheart. “What’s your name?” The boy smiles and says, “Even.” “Even?” Isak says, testing the new name on his tongue, “Just Even?” “Just Even for now,” He says, “I’ll tell you the rest at the end of the night.” Isak isn’t going to be here at the end of the night, he’s going to be in the back of someone’s car on his way back to Oslo. “What if I’m not here at the end of the night?” He says, trying to hide how sad the prospect makes him, “How am I gonna find you on Facebook?” Even laughs again and Isak’s starting to hate it, Even laughing at him. “I’m not on Facebook and don’t worry, you will be.” “If you say so,” Isak says, sure that this is Even’s way of politely giving him the slip. Isak feels embarrassed and a little needy now that he’s warm again. Even’s heat isn’t common, like the warmth of a space heater, it’s the hazy heat from alcohol that makes Isak’s head heavy and his tongue loose. It’s dangerous. He’d let Even do anything if he asked. “I should get going,” Isak says, after an appropriate pause, “We can walk together, look for a car to take us back to the city?”

It’s the last thing he wants to do but he pulls his arms free of Even’s neck. But Even doesn’t let go of his waist in turn. “Even?” Even doesn’t answer, only stares down at him under dark lashes, black against stark white. He never noticed how black they were, distracted by those morning glory eyes. Isak doesn’t feel afraid but maybe he should be. “Even?” Isak starts, his voice cautious, “You never told me why you were out here all alone.” “I was looking for something,” Even says, words vague. Isak really hates this. He wants to go back to before, when he didn’t know Even’s name and they were just two strangers necking in the street. Now, they know each other and the absurdity of the entire situation is coating his mind like a fungus. What the hell was Isak doing? Why was Isak letting Even hold him? Why was Even here? “What are you looking for?” Isak finally asks and when he looks up Even is looming over him. His eyes don’t look like flowers anymore, harmless and beautiful. They look like very real eyes, pupils black and dilated with something Isak can’t recognize. “Food, mostly.” Isak laughs nervously, “What, are you one of those ethical production hipsters? You can’t just buy your food at the grocery store you need to go foraging in the woods at -” Isak waves at the dark around them, “Three AM?” Even doesn’t laugh and the silence stretches between them, vast with only Isak to bridge it. “Did you find anything?” Isak asks. He doesn’t know what they’re talking about anymore but he needs to know the answer. “I thought I did,” Even says slowly, “But I found something better.” Isak expects Even to say something cheesy like, ‘You,’ but Even doesn’t give himself the chance. As quick he as he appears, he takes. He’s not entitled or rude, but when he plies Isak’s neck to the side, Isak knows what it’s for. Isak’s hands clutch Even’s hair, clenching with every scrape of Even’s teeth. They’re sharp, too sharp to be human, but he soothes every nick with a lick that makes Isak’s neck fall back, wanting. When he finally bites down, Isak barely feels it. It’s a distant ache like the press of a yellowing bruise, but it feels good . “Even…” Isak whines but it's muffled by the sound of his blood rushing in his ears and the wet noise of Even’s teeth sinking into his neck like butter.

The steady slurp of Even’s tongue pulling red from Isak’s veins sounds vulgar, like he’s sucking something else. Isak moans when he feels some trickle down into the hollow of his collarbone, but Even’s tongue follows it, licking Isak’s skin clean. Isak’s eyes are growing heavy and about to close when Even finally pulls back with a gasp. Isak can barely stand, Even’s hands clutching him the only thing keeping him upright, but he leans back to look at Even. His lips are puffy now, burgundy with blood. Isak’s blood. It should be disgusting but Isak isn’t disgusted, he wants to taste. Isak thumbs at his lip gently, “You’re a mess.” “You love it,” Even says and he really does. When Isak presses forward Even meets him halfway, one hand tugging on Isak’s hair, holding him in place as he makes himself at home. Isak can’t breathe. Even’s in his blood, in his mouth, and fuck, Isak wants him inside him. His mouth tastes like salt and skin and all the things he imagines a person should taste like, but there’s something addictive about his mouth. Isak isn’t sure if it’s the tangy taste of his blood or just Even’s lips. He finds out when the film of Isak’s blood disappears between them along with the heady taste. Still, Isak whines when Even pulls back. “What you said before…” Even pants and Isak doesn’t care about what he’s talking about, he just noses his way across Even’s face, urging him back into the curve of his neck, wanting him to take again. “Sweetheart,” Even says, nudging him away so he’s staring down at him. They’re so close that Isak almost goes cross-eyed trying to hold eye contact but he doesn’t want to step back. He wants to get closer. “What you said before,” Even repeats, “Do you still want it?” “Do I still want what?” Isak says, confused. He’s pretty sure he didn’t verbalize his desire to have Even’s inside him though, he’s ready to. “Do you still want Elias dead?” Isak remembers the words pulled out of him like tooth from mouth. Now that Even isn’t draining him he's starting to piece it all together, fragments of forgotten vampire lore from films and books making sense of Even’s seduction. And of his transformation. He licks the now cold blood from his lips. He wants more. “Isak,” Even prods, “Do you want it?” It’s a loaded question. Isak smiles and kisses him again.

End Notes

And then Even and Isak run off to be murderer-vampire Husbands like Louis and Lestat. Isak is obviously a little more unhinged in this because he's closeted, miserable and bullied. He's down for anything including murder lol. Even was using his powers to entrance Isak and coerce him into submission which is what the Dubious consent tag is for. Sidenote: Sorry to the real Elias! He's a lovely guy but canon!Elias has no surname so I used his real one. Hope you guys enjoyed and you have a great Halloween! What are you going as this year?

Please drop by the archive and comment to let the author know if you enjoyed their work!