Even for a vampire, the night could be incredibly cold. Mat sat on the balcony of the apartment that he and the rest of the cast shared during long period of filming on location. He was wearing a tight white shirt with three multi-coloured buttons at the collar. Just because he was a vampire now didn't mean he wasn't allowed a splash of colour in his wardrobe, plus, he'd always loved this shirt.
He heard a noise behind him and turned around. It was Ben, slowly sliding through the glass doors that lead out onto the balcony. "Hey" he said, putting his hands on the edge of the balcony wall and leaning over, looking at the street below.
"Hi" Mat replied, not looking back at his colleague but keeping his eyes fixed on the many lights shining in the darkness around him. "How come you're out here?" he asked.
"Larry's telling jokes again. Needed a break. There's only so many times you can hear 'Hey horse, why the long face?' without wanting to hit him." Ben replied. "Why are you out here? And what are you staring at?"
"I am out here because I like the lights. And the dark. The lights in the dark. They're... nice. That's what I'm staring at. You should know that by now."
"I know I should. I guess I just haven't adjusted to... well, y'know. How you are now." Ben replied awkwardly. He was the only person who knew that Mat was a vampire. The others were just apparently too amused by Larry's jokes to notice Mat disappearing into the night for hours at a time.
For a while, the two of them said nothing, they both just stared out at the lights. Mat was surprised that Ben still wanted to know him now he was so... different.
"Shall we go back inside?" Mat said suddenly, causing Ben to jump and grab hold of the balcony wall very tightly.
"Err, yeah I guess. Has Larry stopped?" Ben replied, looking through the glass doors to see the rest of the cast sitting around the sofas watching Scooby Doo on the television. Larry's mouth was shut. Good.
The two walked inside and sat down at the edge of the sofa beside Jim. Ben sat with his eyes fixed on the screen and Mat slumped down beside him and turned his head to face outside. He really did like the lights. "What've we missed?" Ben asked him, he loved Scooby Doo.
"Well," Jim began, "There's a vampire running around and Scooby and the Gang are chasing it around an apartment building."
At this, Mat sat bolt upright and stared at the screen. The rest of the people in the room gave him a rather funny look. "Like this one, do ya, Mat?" piped up Lawry from the other end of the sofa.
"Oh... err, yeah!" he said, trying to sound excited. This was the sort of thing that he really needed to not do. He didn't want to bring attention to himself, which was difficult considering he jumped every time vampires were mentioned. He slumped back down into the chair, this time watching the screen.
The next morning it was raining. Mat woke up, ran a hand through his messy bed hair and got dressed before walking out into the living room area. As usual, he was last up and the rest of the cast were sitting around the sofa with pieces of toast and bowls of cereal. Well, all of the cast except Ben who was sitting on the floor with his cereal so he could be closer to the television which was once again showing Scooby Doo.
“Morning, mate!” said Jim through his extremely buttery toast. This was followed by grunts of “’rning” from the rest of the recently woken actors. Mat grabbed the box of honey loops from the side and sat down beside Ben on the floor and began eating them from the box. He didn’t like milk much anymore.
He tried to say good morning to Ben but was straight away shushed as Scooby was unmasking the monster and it was crucial that Ben see who it was for the millionth time. Mat really hated repeats.
A while later the group got ready to go off to their filming location of that particular day. As their cars pulled up Mat as relieved to see that they were at a forest.
“Someone’s happy” whispered Jim beside him. Mat often wondered that Jim suspected something, he constantly hinted towards Mat’s new love of dark places as if it was something to be concerned about.
Of course, Jim didn’t know. He just enjoyed teasing his castmates and taking photos on them on his iPhone in their silly costumes to keep the twitter fan girls happy. These pictures had caused him to notice that Mat was getting steadily paler as the filming went on, however.
“And cut! Well done everyone. That’s a wrap for the day!”
There were three men on set - Mat, Jim and Ben. The others had all left for the day, their parts finishing just before lunch. Mat, Jim and Ben had been filming late into the evening, trying to get the dance routine for this song perfect. Mat had to take more breaks than usual and never said where he was going when he did. Jim noticed whenever he went missing, and was honestly starting to worry. He made a plan to talk to him as soon as possible.
Mat sat alone in his bedroom going over the script for the next day, although not really thinking about what he was reading. There was a knock at the door. Mat ignored it and continued reading. The knocking came again. “Hey, mate. Can I come in?” shouted Jim through the closed door. Mat sighed and put the script aside.
“Fine. Get in here.” he shouted back. Jim stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.
“So… umm… are you alright, mate?” he asked. Mat was slightly taken aback. What if he knew?
“Yeah, yeah I’m great. Never been better.” he smiled.
“Are you sure, mate? I mean, you’ve been taking a lot of breaks recently and not telling anyone where you’re going and you’ve just been looking down. And you’ve been getting paler and paler every day. You’re not ill, are you?” Jim was using his worried face. Not the face he used when Larry hadn’t turned up for the Aztec dance rehearsal, this was his REAL worried face. Mat didn’t want to lie to him. He was just as good a friend as Ben was. Maybe he should tell him.
“Actually, there is something I should tell you, but I don’t know how you’ll react…” He said slowly. Now Jim’s face was really worried. Just as Mat opened his mouth to continue what he was saying, someone in the other room shouted “Jim! Look!” and Jim instinctively turned his head towards the door, so that there was a lot of neck in Mat’s direction.
This had never happened before. Mat had never wanted to bite someone. He was new to this, he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to bite Jim, but before he could stop he found himself sinking his bright, white fangs into Jim’s neck. Jim almost yelled out, but the feeling of Mat’s fangs in his neck caused him to pass out.
Mat removed his mouth from Jim’s neck and was back in his own mind again, thinking clearly. “Shit!” he said, beginning to panic. “Shit, crap. Oh shit! What…” he continued whilst pacing around his room. Had he killed him? He looked at Jim laying in a most uncomfortable position on the bed. No, he’s breathing. That’s good. No jail. But what HAD he done? Was Jim going to be a vampire too now? Mat could remember someone calling Jim’s name just before he had bitten him. Someone was going to come looking for him. No one else had been in when Jim entered the bedroom though. Mat could use this to his advantage. No one knew he was in here. With out even thinking, Mat grabbed Jim and put him into the bed as if he was sleeping. “If anyone asked, say he wasn’t feeling well and crashed out there.” he agreed with himself.
He walked over to his door and pressed his ear up against it. He could hear Ben’s voice. Thank God! He opened the door a bit and popped his head into the other room. “Uhh, Ben. Can I see you for a minute. In here. Alone.” he said, without even realising quite how it sounded.
“Oh, sure. What?” he said, as Lawry and Larry sat on the sofa giggling quietly and making kissy noises. Ben entered the bedroom and Mat shut the door behind him.
“… I’ve had an accident” he said.
“For God’s sake, Mat! You called me in here to tell me THAT? Aren’t you too old for that anyway, or is it a vampire thing?”
“No, not that kind of accident, you flannel!” Mat laughed a little bit at this. He felt slightly at ease with Ben around. “Look in the bed.”
“In the bed?” Ben said, pulling back the covers a little bit and getting a shocked look on his face. “Oh, Jesus, Mat! What on Earth… why is Jim in your bed? At least he’s got clothes on. Look, you two can do this if you want but…” Mat cut him off.
“Look at his neck” he said quickly.
“Shit! Mat… why would you… what…” he backed away from Mat a little bit and stood against the opposite wall “err… stay over there. Please.”
“Ben… don’t be like that.”
“I think I have the right to be a little scared, Baynton. First you bite Jim now you’ve locked me in here. Would you like my neck?”
“Ben calm down! I’m not going to… I never could. I didn’t mean to. His neck was there and my brain went whoosh and then this and panicked and said some bad words and now I don’t know what to do!” Mat said desperately.
“Why Jim, though? You’ve seen my neck lots of times, like on the balcony the other night. Why didn’t your brain go whoosh for me?”
Mat froze. He’d never thought of that before. Why didn’t his brain ‘go woosh’ for Ben? Why had he wanted to bite everyone except him? Was there something more? No, couldn’t be. It’s silly. Mat’s train of thought was cut short when Ben began speaking again.
“So… is he dead?” he asked, the worried look on his face making Mat feel even more uncomfortable.
“No. He’s just… out of it at the moment. Why would he be dead?”
“Oh, I don’t know” Ben replied quickly, his voice raising at bit “Maybe, just maybe because you chomped on his neck a bit? I don’t need to be Scooby Doo or any member of Mystery Inc to figure out that when someone has two massive holes in their neck and the blood removed from their veins that they usually DIE!”
“Woah, Ben, man, calm down! He’s going to be okay. Well, not really okay but he’ll just be… he’ll be like me. I’m alright, aren’t I? You’ve never had a problem with me before!”
“You’ve never done THIS before.” Mat could see Ben shaking now and he felt awful for causing so much discomfort to the person that he would usually call his best friend. He couldn’t see them being friends for much longer. He knew that any second now Ben would make some sort of annoyed grunting noise and storm out.
“I’m sorry, Ben. I didn’t mean to, you know I didn’t! It’s not my fault… it’s just…” and then Mat was cut off by Ben making an annoyed grunting noise and storming out of the room. Mat was left alone with nothing but Jim totally unconscious in his bed and a million thoughts racing through his mind. One thought in particular was still bothering him, however. Why had he never wanted to bite Ben? As much as he hated to admit it, he’d had thoughts of biting all the others, especially Larry after his fifth awful joke in ten minutes on one of the early morning filming shifts.
He pushed Jim’s feet to the side and sat down, but as he did so he heard a noise from the other end of the bed. Jim was waking up.
“You’ve got a grump on” said Martha, setting her glass of wine down on the table and plopping herself onto the sofa beside Ben. He’d been sitting there for a while. Larry and Lawry had asked him to go out for drinks with them but he refused, saying that he had to watch the new Scooby Doo live action film that he’d bought on DVD at the beginning of the week. To be fair, he did have the DVD on, he just wasn’t paying much attention to what was going on on the screen. Martha reached across him for the television remote but he swatted her hand away. Even if he wasn’t paying attention she wasn’t allowed to turn it off.
“Err, Willbond?” she tried talking to him again. He continue to sit staring at the television. “Oi!” she smacked him lightly on the arm causing him to jump and realise what he was doing.
“Oh, oh what do you want?” he said, sounding a little more aggrevated than he wanted to.
“Gosh, sorry!” she replied and fell back into the sofa, folding her arms.
“Fine. I’m sorry. Just had a bit of a… a rough day.”
“Aww, can’t have been that bad!”
“Martha. You have NO idea.” he sighed. Martha bounced up the sofa and sat closer to him, leaning her head on his shoulder. Ben smiled. He liked Martha. He liked her a lot.
“Err, Willbond. Are you watching Scooby Doo again?” she asked, lifting her head and laughing at him.
“Yes!” He replied excitedly. He jumped up from the sofa, knocking Martha back a little bit accidentally, and grabbed the DVD case from across the room. “Look, it’s the new one. It’s not got the same people as the other one- Mr. Bean isn’t in it which is a bit pants, but it’s still great!”
“Sometimes Ben, sometimes I SWEAR that you are still a child. Up here, you are, anyway” He sat back down on the sofa and she sat close to him again and tapped him on the head.
