We Don't Die

Chapter title: Back in Black

Chapter rating: PG-13

Musical inspiration: Fortune Faded by The Red Hot Chili Peppers







Flashback, early 1981



Donald grinned at Mac, the men facing each other in the living room of the detective’s apartment. “So how you feelin', Officer Taylor?"



Mac ran his fingers down his front for the umpteenth time. “Feels good to be wearing a uniform again. Feels damn good.”



Don allowed him his moment. “I got some better news for ya: I’m your partner.”



Mac blinked. “Already? But… we’re not even in the same rank. You don’t even wear a uniform anymore!”



“I know, but they’re makin’ a special exception since we already know each other. Judgin’ by your old record of service and all the studyin’ you do, you’ll probably be better at this than I am. I’m just more experienced.”



Mac couldn’t keep his hands off his uniform even as he asked, “So how is this going to work?”



Donald grinned shamelessly. “You’re my little go-fer. You know, go fer this, go fer that.” He snickered as Mac gave him a Look. “Naw, seriously. I go to crime scenes, you’re right behind me. I question a witness, you’re the officer guardin’ the door from the inside. I want somethin’ to eat, you’re buyin’. You follow me around, you watch me, you learn from me.”



Mac blinked at him. “That sounds great, Don… hey, why do I have to buy?”



“Because you’re the rookie, smartass.” Donald sank into the chair and laced his fingers behind his head and looked absolutely smug. “I don’t give a rat’s ass how much older you are than me, I’m the boss.”



Mac gave a good-natured sigh. “Yes, sir.”



Donald grinned again. “God, I love the sound of that. I gotta confession to make, you’re my first rookie partner. Funny, you practically baby-sit my kid and I baby-sit you.”



Mac crossed his arms but he still couldn’t keep the smile off his face. “I’m also a war veteran out of the Marine Corps, a vampire, and they tell me that my police academy test scores were higher than yours.”



“Yeah yeah. Suck it up, rookie.”



Mac growled but he still couldn’t quit smiling, and he looked down and fingered the badge over his lapel. Donald noticed. “You take care of that shield, ya hear me?”



Mac glanced up, brows furrowed. “Shield? It’s a badge.”



“It’s a shield.” Donald looked steadily at him, the humor turning serious. “It says that you’ve got a family again, and every other person wearin’ one of those has got your back. It sits over your heart and it protects ya from bein’ alone, and it protects ya from bein’ a nobody. You’re a cop now, Mac. You’re one of the Boys In Blue. You’re one of us.”



Mac’s eyes closed and he bowed his head. “Thanks, Don,” he whispered.



“Hey, no problem.”



And then Maggie came out of the kitchen with Donnie. The little boy squealed at the sight of Mac and dove for him, and Mac smiled and dropped to one knee long enough to scoop the child up and toss him in the air a couple of times to the tune of his ecstatic shrieks. Mac couldn’t quite put his finger on it but there was just something about the little boy that made him feel… alive. Like he was human again. And the kid was just so damn cute that Mac couldn’t help playing with him.



Donald clapped his hands to his ears. “Hey Mac, ya mind?!”



Mac’s grin turned sheepish and he settled the boy on his left hip; he had a gun on his right now. “Hey Donnie, how old are you?”



Donnie contemplated his hands for a moment and then held up the appropriate number of fingers to go with “fwee.”



Mac chuckled. “You’re not three yet. That’s next week!” he protested good-naturedly.



Donnie shook his head firmly, the unfortunate bowl haircut flying out to the sides and bowing to the laws of motion. “I’m fwee!” he insisted.



Mac tweaked the little nose. “Close enough, I guess. Can I come to your birthday party, Quackers?”



Donnie nodded vigorously this time, chubby little-boy cheeks flapping. He paused in mid-nod and slowly grinned at Mac from beneath the tangled screen of his hair. Mac chuckled and gave him a firm hug and a kiss on the top of the head. “So what do you want?”



He winced at the sheer volume of Donnie’s next statement: “Me want cookies!”



At the befuddlement on the vampire’s face, Maggie burst out laughing. “Sesame Street. He loves Cookie Monster.”



Donnie wrapped his arms around Mac’s neck and started chewing on the collar of his uniform and making “omm nom nom nom” noises. Mac’s eyes widened; past experience had made him less than comfortable with someone else’s teeth so close to his neck and he gently tugged the child away before things got awkward. “So what’s a cookie monster?” This question was directed as much at Donald and Maggie as it was at the boy. Mac didn’t watch very much television besides the news, science, and history channels.



Maggie and Donald had looked the slightest bit unnerved for the briefest moment, seeing Donnie go for Mac’s neck, but it was just innocent childish spontaneity and they let it slide. Maggie answered. “It’s a big blue Muppet that eats everything in sight.”



Mac smiled at Donnie again. “It’s perfect.” He tapped the boy’s nose. “And you are a bottomless pit.”



“Kettle black,” Donald muttered. Mac blinked at him and suddenly snorted. So Mac fed on sex and so he happened to get laid damn near every night… was Donald jealous? Yeah, in human terms Mac was something of a horndog. In regards to being an incubus, Mac just had a healthy appetite.



Maggie sighed good-naturedly and settled on the arm of the chair next to her husband. “He does eat a lot, for a three-year-old. And the only direction he’s growing in is up. It’s not fair.”



Mac chuckled. “I hate to think of what he’s going to be like when he hits his growth spurt. He’ll eat you out of house and home.”



“Aw, he’s three,” Donald protested. “Give the kid some time to grow a bigger stomach before you start freakin’ out about that!”



“Sorry, Don,” Mac said with an apologetic smile. “It’s a force of habit. The past several months have just gone by so quickly, and I know that the older I get, the faster time will fly.” He smiled down at the little boy that was oh-so-innocently toying with the shiny badge on his lapel. “He is his father’s son, though. I can already tell. If I believed in reincarnation… well, Donnie’s a little early.”









One week later, Mac and Donald were standing in the doorway to Donnie’s room and watching the boy sleep. It was hard to keep silent; the official three-year-old was curled around a stuffed Cookie Monster plush nearly as big as himself. He had the biggest smile on his young face and he was sleeping like a brick.



Mac finally whispered, “Think he likes it?”



Donald rolled his eyes. “Oh, I don’t know. You gonna try takin’ it away from ‘im again?”



The look of horror on the vampire’s face was answer enough. Mac had already tried once. It was his own fault, really, because he’d brought it to the Flack apartment the minute the sun had set, slinging it across his back like the lightest rucksack he’d ever carried. And when he’d tried to set it aside so the boy could eat his cake and ice cream and not get the food in the fabric… well, Mac was unfortunate that he had such good hearing.



Mac finally sighed and glanced at his watch. “Time for work.”



“Yeah.” Donald crept silently into the room and bent to press a gentle kiss to his son’s head and smoothed the skewed hair back. “Sweet dreams, kiddo,” he whispered.



When he looked up, Mac was staring at the boy with such a look of longing that Donald felt a pang in his chest. Donald stepped back over to his partner. “Hey, honorary uncles that bring stuffed Cookie Monsters are entitled to get good-night kisses too, ya know.”



There was such a tender look on Mac’s face that Donald couldn’t help a sappy smile himself, and then Mac showed Donald how to really move silently. Making no more noise than a shadow, the vampire bent and kissed the tousled hair so gently that he barely moved a single strand. “Good night, Donnie,” he whispered.



Maggie padded up to her husband in her socks, going to give him his own kiss, and she froze at the sight of the bloodsucker leaning over her son’s bed. Donald grabbed her arm and gave her a warning look before she could react. Mac pretended not to notice and tucked the blankets more snugly around the warm little body, smiling tenderly when Donnie snuggled even closer to his new toy in his sleep. And then Mac bent down and picked up his uniform cap off Donnie’s floor and swiped at the cake crumbs, and sighed. He exited the room and stepped around the Flacks on the way to the kitchen and murmured “If you’ll excuse me, I have ice cream on my hat.”



Maggie waited until Mac was in the kitchen before she leaned closer to Donald. “Why did you let him do that?” she hissed.



Donald was bewildered. “What’s the problem, Mags? Not like he’s hurtin’ anything.”



“Don, he’s a vampire,” Maggie growled as quietly and forcefully as she could.



Donald put his hands on his wife’s shoulders and looked her full in the face. “He’s a good guy, Maggie, you know that. He can control himself. He’s never touched me or you like that and I know that he’d never even think of biting Donnie.”



Maggie slid her arms around her husband’s waist and dropped her forehead to his shoulder. “I know you think he’s good, and I want to believe you. I really do. It’s just… I can’t help it, Don, but he’s a vampire. We have an incubus in our home, touching our son.”



“Stop it,” Donald growled. “You’ve seen Mac, and you know that he loves Donnie. I’ve never seen a guy so protective of kids before.”



Maggie gave a weary sigh. “I know you like him, but why did you have to become friends with him?”



Donald pulled her back so he could give her a level look. “What’d you want me to do, huh? Shove him back? Tell him that it’s okay to be a vampire but not around us? Thank him for keepin’ Donnie from walkin’ off that building, but we don’t want him to have a chance to prove himself? Mags, the guy has no friends, no family. The only thing he’s got is tryin’ to prove that even though he’s a vamp, he can still act like a human. He’s a good guy. He’s my partner and I trust him with my life. I’m not scared of him bein’ around you or Donnie because I know that if somethin’ ever happened to me, he wouldn’t hesitate a second to do everything he could to take care of both of ya. Protect ya.”



“Don’t talk like that,” Maggie murmured. “Don’t talk like anything’s going to happen to you, Don. I worry about you enough as it is.”



Donald wrapped his arms around his wife and held her tightly. “I’m sorry, babe. I just… I love you and I love Donnie more than you’ll ever know. And I just wish you’d give Mac a chance.”



“I am giving him a chance,” Maggie whispered, taking comfort from Donald’s embrace. “I’ve been nice to him and I’ve let him come over as long as you’re here too.”



Donald gave her a squeeze that was half loving, half scolding. “Mags, it’s not like the guy’s gonna flip out and throw you to the ground if I’m not around. You can trust Mac, I swear.”



Maggie nuzzled her husband’s neck. “Don… did I tell you that I’m pregnant?”



Donald froze, and then hugged her as tightly as he dared. “You’re sure?”



Maggie nodded. “I got it confirmed just the other day. I wanted to make sure before I told you.”



“Aw, that’s fuckin’ great to hear, Mags,” Donald murmured, kissing her head. “I love ya, babe.”



A throat cleared, and Mac was standing nearby with his cap in his hand, waving it idly to help it dry faster. “Ready, Don?” He’d also put on the heavy jacket that went over his uniform. He didn’t need it, of course, but it helped him blend in.



Donald broke into a wide smile. “Hey, guess what?”



Mac cocked his head. “Maggie’s pregnant?”



Two Flack jaws dropped. “How’d you know?” Donald stuttered.



Mac gave a little smile. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I could smell it. I didn’t want to say anything, though. Not my place to say.”



Donald stretched out an arm to point a finger at his partner. “Buddy, you and me are gonna work on our lines of communication real soon. You are not allowed to keep secrets like that from me.”



Mac just chuckled and looked at Mrs. Flack. “Congratulations, Maggie. I’m happy for the both of you. Are you willing to let me spoil this one, too?”



“Bet your ass,” Donald growled before Maggie could say anything. Donald gave his wife one last hug and a squeeze and then began heading for the door with a noticeable spring in his step. “Gonna be a daddy again… oh yeah,” he cheered quietly.



Mac waited behind so that he was standing close to Maggie. He couldn’t miss the way she crossed her arms but kept looking like she wanted to cover her stomach. Shield her unborn child from him. “Maggie,” he murmured sadly, “I don’t know what you want me to do. I’m sorry that you don’t think you can trust me, but I’m just not a human and there’s nothing I can do about it. All I can do is just thank you. Thank you for letting me remember what it’s like to… to be a person again.” And before she could say anything, Mac put his hat on and then tipped it to her, and turned and joined Donald by the door.



Donald took one look at his wife’s stricken face and then stepped out into the hallway behind Mac and closed the door. “What the hell did you say to her?” he demanded.



Mac turned his head to his friend, an uncharacteristically sad look on his face. “Does she want me to stay away? Because if it makes her too uncomfortable, I’ll never darken your doorstep again.”



“Hey,” Donald growled, grabbing the vampire’s shoulder roughly. “Where’d you get the idea that she doesn’t like you?”



“I can smell anger and fear, Don.” Mac gently shrugged out of Donald’s grasp and took a step back. “And I never told you how good my hearing is, did I?”



Donald’s shoulders slumped. “You heard what she said?”



“Every word.” Mac kept looking at the man with that infinitely sad gaze, his own shoulders drooping. “Thank you for standing up for me, by the way, but… maybe it would be better if I kept to myself.”



“Bullshit.” Donald straightened and got right in Mac’s face, towering over him by a few inches. His brows were together like twin thunderheads and he was all but shaking a finger in his partner’s face. “You listen to me, Mac. Don’t worry about Maggie. She’s only known you for a little while but she hasn’t gotten to know you like I do. I trust you around her, I trust you around Donnie, and I trust you enough to take you on as my partner. Don’t ever think that you’re anything less than family to me, you got that?”



Mac took the verbal sucker punch for what it was, shoulders slumping and looking suddenly unsteady. “You don’t mean that, Don.”



“The hell I don’t.” Donald reached out and grabbed Mac by the lapels and tugged him to a straighter posture before the vampire could react. “Stand up straight, rookie, before you give that badge a bad name.”



Mac just stared at his partner, his gaze nothing less than stunned. Finally he made his hands work and gripped Donald’s biceps loosely. “Thank you,” he croaked, and the human noticed that Mac’s eyes were starting to get darkly red around the edges.



“Hey, don’t mention it. And don’t you dare get all weepy on me, either. It’s a disgrace to let your own blood get on that uniform.” And Donald shrugged out of Mac’s grasp and began walking with purpose down the hall toward the elevator. Mac stared after him for the longest time, threw one last glance at the apartment door, and then stepped quietly after him.









Present day, 2007



When Mac came into the lab that night, after waking up with Danny that afternoon and then going home to shower and change clothes, it was hard to ignore the stares. He lost count of the double takes he got as he rode the elevator up to his floor, and it was difficult not to flush as women (and a few men) that didn’t know him started radiating pheromones like crazy. He was able to ignore it tonight; he’d fed recently, after all. Sheepishly he ducked his head and walked the maze of hallways until he reached his office. When he got there, Stella was waiting for him and her jaw outright dropped. “Mac,” she murmured incredulously. “What’d you do, where’d you go and how much did it cost?”



Self-consciously he ran fingers through his hair. He felt good and young and strong and alive, like the last seven miserable years hadn’t even happened. “I, ah, went out to dinner with someone.”



She snorted. “That takes on a whole new meaning coming from you, doesn’t it?” She couldn’t help running her eyes up and down his still-muscular frame, taking in the change. “This is incredible, Mac. It’s just… wow.”



He gave a small and slightly embarrassed grin. “Stella, how old would you have said I was yesterday?”



She paused, thinking, trying to reconcile the smiling man in his seeming early thirties with the stressed-out, half-starved vampire from yesterday. Or her longtime friend and boss. “Oh, about forty-five, I guess,” she said finally.



He smiled broadly. “I’m eighty-four. Which is pretty young for a vampire, by the way. Honestly I’m practically a newborn.” He waited for her to pick her jaw up off the floor before he continued. “This is what I looked like when I first turned over fifty years ago. Without feeding, I start to age just like a human.”



“And is the change always this… drastic?”



Mac gave a little shrug, still smiling. “No. But then again, it was the first time I’d fed in a decade. I was starving. Naturally it’d jump-start this process. Believe me, it’ll only last as long as I feed regularly.”



Stella clicked her tongue. “Knew it was too good to be true.”



Mac chuckled. “You think you’re surprised, imagine my reaction when I looked in the mirror. Or my partner’s reaction.”



Stella tapped her chin with her finger. “You say ‘partner’ like you don’t want to say gender… and usually somebody only does that when they’re talking about a same-sex relationship that they’re trying to hide.”



“Keyword here is ‘trying,’” Mac grumbled good-naturedly. Strange, it didn’t bother him that Stella had picked up on that. She already knew anyway. Honestly he didn’t care; he felt good and so what if people learned that he preferred men?



It was at that moment that Danny chose to come around the corner, and upon spying Mac he nearly tripped. Mac looked great in full lighting, and compound his younger face with the black silk shirt he was wearing… it was hard to keep from drooling as the Italian wandered into Mac’s office.



Stella glanced at Danny and then at Mac. “Gee, I wonder who it was,” she said in a monotone.



Mac was all set to frown at her when his eyes caught a glimpse of Flack out in the hall behind Danny. The dark-headed detective stood rooted to the spot, staring at Mac with his mouth open. Mac cocked his head and spread his arms, asking a silent ‘Well?’



Almost numbly Flack stepped into the office, eyes never leaving Mac’s face. Those eyes closed when he kept walking forward and wrapped his arms around the vampire’s neck. “Fuckin’ good to see ya, Uncle Macky,” he whispered, his voice suspiciously husky.



“Watch your mouth,” Mac muttered automatically, returning the embrace. “You’re not too old for me to bend you over my knee and give you a few good whacks, you know.”



“Yeah yeah,” Flack mumbled derisively, pulling back to take a good look. “So who can I thank for bringin’ ya back?”



As though they had a mind of their own, Mac’s eyes flicked to Danny, who was observing the exchange with an expression caught between curiosity and jealousy.



Flack eyed Danny with surprise. “It was you?”



Danny fidgeted, glanced at Mac and Stella, and finally nodded at the ground. “Yeah.” He was awaiting some sort of homophobic rant, so he was understandably shocked when Flack gave him a rather vigorous hug. “Ow… the hell?!”



“Thanks, Danny,” Flack told the Italian sincerely, releasing him. “Thanks for savin’ ‘im.”



Danny took a step closer to Mac and away from Flack and then cocked his head. “Did I miss somethin’? Between you two?” He was trying not to be jealous; he hadn’t heard the name that Don had called the vampire before the hug.



Mac just smiled. “I never told you? I’m Don’s honorary godfather, and have been almost since the day I met him.”



Flack saw it coming and his eyes widened. “Don’t you fuckin’ dare.”



Mac’s smile grew. “He almost walked off the roof of my building because he was trying to catch the Fourth of July fireworks over the harbor.” At Danny’s lifted eyebrow, Mac abruptly dropped to a crouch and put a hand above the floor to simulate a small child’s height. “He was this tall at the time.”



Danny glanced at the now-mortified Flack. “So you’ve known Mac since you were in diapers?”



Flack glared at the floor. “Training pants,” he growled through clenched teeth.



Mac stood again. “That didn’t smell like training pants to me.” He crossed his arms, and a darkly mischievous look crept across his face. “Now be a good boy, Quackers, and get to work.”



Danny and Stella glanced at each other and simultaneously bit their own lips, while Don’s face fell and he gave his godfather a positively wounded look. “That ain’t right, Mac.”



Danny managed to swallow his laughter. “Anybody else weirded out by this?”



“How do you mean?” Mac asked logically.



“I mean… you. You’re smilin’, you’re jokin’, you’re hot, I mean… who the hell are ya, and where’s Mac?”



“You mean I wasn’t attractive before?” Mac asked drolly. And then he smiled broadly. “Danny… I can’t thank you enough for what you did. I was starving, I was admittedly depressed, and it’s like you’ve brought me back to the world of the living. It’s like I remember how to enjoy myself and enjoy people again.”



Flack stepped closer to his godfather and put an arm around his shoulders and grinned at Danny. “You’ve only been workin’ with Mac for, what, four or five years now? I’ve known ‘im for as long as I can remember, and I gotta tell ya, Danny… this is the real Mac.”



“Except when it comes to the evidence,” Stella put in dryly. “There’s no difference there. But yeah, it is nice to see you smile again.”



Mac glanced around at his coworkers and scuffed a foot and looked at the floor. “I have to admit, it’s good to be back.” He gave a contented sigh and looked around at them. “And now that I’m back…” and he broke into another broad smile, “everybody get to work.”



Flack actually saluted him. “Yes sir.”



Mac waited until they’d all gone before he reached into his pocket for a ring of keys and then bent down to unlock one of the drawers in his desk. He pulled it open and ignored most of the objects in there until he found what he was looking for. He pulled the object out and closed the drawer and locked it and dropped his keys back in his pocket, and then he spent several minutes gazing quietly at the photograph.



And then he made his decision and put the little photo frame on his desk to one side, so that Mac would see it every time he used his computer but it wouldn’t be prominently displayed and leave guests wondering what it was.



And then Mac grabbed his suit jacket and slid it on and headed out into the lab, smiling at the image he was leaving behind him of a little boy in a police uniform hat and with cake and ice cream all over his face, hugging a giant Cookie Monster plush with one arm and hugging a certain vampire with his other. Both were unashamedly grinning like idiots.



After being so depressed and so hungry for so long… it was good to have the photo around to make him smile again.



It felt like it was okay for him to smile again.









Author's note: The only reason it took me so long to put out this chapter and the four chapters after it is because I hate text editors that make you put in all the HTML tags manually. It's a massive pain in the ass, and very time-consuming. *sigh* But those of you who haven't been checking my web page have probably been forced to wait a little too long for these.