Chapter 2: You Broke The Dark
Nada played with a loose curl as they walked home from school. It was the last day meaning that they had simply put their hair into two buns and left the rest to do whatever it desired around their neck and down their back. Nada gasped and stiffened when someone grabbed a handful of their hair yanked them back.
"Frick! Ow, okay, uhm, hi!" They nervously laughed, "I'm Nada and I don't like it when people I don't know touch my hair, so if you could, y'know, back off and leave me alone, that would be great, thanks. Have a very good day, though, okay?"
Nada expertly stunned the assailant and nearly got away until someone from school had seen what happened and copied the move, "Nada, how you doin'?"
This time, Nada shrunk and their eyes widened, "I- it's not Nah-dah, it's Nay-dah," they quietly said. "Please let go, you're hurting me."
"Yeah, you're not a boy, no boy would think that a little tug hurts. You're a girl."
"Brad, I've been telling you this elementary school, I'm not a girl or a boy, I'm nonbina- ah! B- Brad!" Nada squeaked, putting their hands on Brad's wrist, "Brad, let go please."
Brad continued to tug and pull on the blond curls, occasionally throwing them around until he had accidentally pushed Nada a little too hard and they had hit their head on the brick wall of a corner street and passed out, blood quickly surrounding them. Brad licked his lips, took Nada's glasses off and stepped on them before running off.
"This isn't my room," Nada calmly said. But then they realized that they weren't home and they weren't in a hospital and they didn't know where they were and Miss. Matino was going to kill them for not getting back to the home on time, "This isn't my room!"
"Woah there, Bud, it's okay. Put these on and let us explain-."
"Oh God, you're going to kill me and I can't even see you! I'm practically blind without my glasses and-."
"Take a breath."
"There's two of you! You're partners! Y-."
"Listen, please. I promise you we aren't going to hurt you. We found you laying in a puddle of blood so we brought you to our house, cleaned you up and helped you, even fixed your glasses," the second voice calmly and gently said, pressing Nada's glasses in their hands. "If you want to go you can."
Nada slid their glasses on and tilted their head, "If I say what I'm thinking I'm gonna sound like Little Red Riding Hood, so could you please explain?"
"Teeth are fangs and ears are pointed because we're vampires," the first man shrugged.
Nada nodded, "Did you drug me when you brought me here? Are you gonna train me to be your little killing machine? I'm too Baby to be a killing machine!"
The second man hit the first man's arm, "Khalid," he hissed. "He isn't lying and we didn't drug you, I promise. Ask us questions and we'll be able to give you more direct answers."
"What do I call you?" Nada weakly asked, "And what are your pronouns?"
"I'm Nasir Anderson-Howard and this is my husband Khalid Howard-Anderson. We both go by he/him pronouns. You can call me Anderson or Nasir and my husband Howard or Khalid. Yourself?"
"Nada Smith, they/them," they introduced, playing with their fingers, "uh. First question, did you turn me into a vampire?"
"We did," Anderson nodded.
Nada pressed their tongue to their teeth and felt their ear under guise of tucking a curl behind it, "I don't feel any personal changes."
"That would be because it takes a few weeks for them to fully come in," Anderson gently said.
Nada tilted their head, "If that's true how come he still has basic human ears?"
Howard chuckled and Nada caught a glimpse of his fangs, "Surgery. Nas is a stay at home husband and when he isn't home his hair covers his ears. He's a photographer."
"So you did it as a protection measure? Like when people get their dog's ears cropped legally?" Nada asked.
"Not the comparison I would have gone with but yeah, I suppose," Howard nodded, leaning against the wall.
"D- do vampires really drink people's blood? 'Cause I don't think I can do that."
Howard gave him a smile that was more of a quirk of the lips, "Some do, usually a few drops from an animal or a close friend, but we feed off of energy."
"Energy?"
Anderson nodded, "Emotions, basically. Like happiness, fear, anger, things like that. Parties, schools, places like that where one can go under disguise. But you can also get it from another vampire."
"Are there any true facts from books and movies and stuff?" Nada weakly asked.
Anderson looked at Howard, "Kal?"
Howard looked up at the ceiling, "We can't enter a house without being invited in which makes it hard to find a house, iron is a no-no, we heal pretty quick, speed is enhanced as well as strength and metabolism, we age slower if not at all and diseases that would normally be caught by a regular human don't harm us," he listed.
"So we can go to churches?"
"As long as no one happens to press an iron cross or crucifix on you, yeah," Howard nodded.
Nada smiled a little, "And I can still go to the creek and jump across the stepping stones?"
"You sure can," Anderson chuckled.
Nada started to bounce on the bed, "And I can still relax in the sun?"
Howard smiled too, "You sure can Bud."
Nada's smile fell suddenly and they went back to playing with their fingers, "I'm gonna have to back to the home. You don't want some stupid kid, do you?"
Anderson and Howard shared a look, "We actually did," Anderson gently said, "most of the reason we brought you here instead of a hospital."
Nada's head shot up, "You want to adopt me?" They squeaked.
"If you'll let us," Anderson nodded, "it's up to you."
Nada laughed and hopped off the bed, running to the couple and hugging them tightly, "Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you so much."
The couple hugged him back, laughing lightly, "You picked a blond baby for our first kid, Nas," Howard chuckled.
Anderson shrugged, "I don't know about 'blond baby', Kal. Did you see the way they shot across the room? They're definitely a blond bullet."
Nada giggled, "You two are total goofs," they gasped and looked up at them, "am I gonna get siblings?"
"Preferably," Anderson nodded.
Nada squealed and hugged them again before pulling away and dancing around the room to music only they could hear, their long blond curls bouncing and swirling as they moved.
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