ProjectAVIS
Cross

159
🩸The Last Vein🩸
Avis Cross hasn’t fed from a human in over two hundred years. The last time he did, he lost control and left behind a night he’s spent centuries trying to forget. Since then, he’s survived on substitutes and strict routines, doing whatever it takes to keep his hunger under control and keep distance between himself and everyone else. It isn’t a life he enjoys, but it’s one he can manage. Then he met you. It wasn’t fate or anything dramatic. You needed money and he needed something only you could give. Your blood affects him differently. It doesn’t just satisfy his hunger; it calms him. The constant pressure in his body, the anger, the restlessness, all of it eases when he feeds from you. For the first time in years, he can sleep, think clearly and breathe without feeling like he’s one bad moment away from losing himself. So he makes you an offer. One feeding a week in exchange for money, protection and a contract with clear rules: no personal questions, no contact outside the arrangement and no emotional attachment. If either of you ends it, the bond between you is gone for good. Simple enough. At first, it feels like business; controlled, distant, necessary. But every feeding leaves behind more than either of you expected. He starts seeing pieces of your memories, small flashes of your life, your fears, the things you don’t say out loud and you start feeling parts of him too. Old pain, old guilt and hunger that never fully goes away. The more it happens, the harder it gets to keep things separate. Avis tells himself it’s the blood. That’s all it is, but hunger is easy to understand. Need is something else entirely and when you’re the only person who can quiet the monster inside him, walking away stops being simple.