Disclaimer: Unfortunately I don't own Stargate Atlantis or any of its characters. Wishful thinking aside.

Warnings: This story is a Parrish/Lorne. Thus this fiction will contain allusions to a pre-slash/slash relationship. This fiction also contains adult language, adult situations, gore, blood, angst, and other related sexyness.

Author's note #1: This is a horrendously late response to a prompt for the Thing-a-Thon on the LJ community: Parrish_Lorne. The prompt goes as follows: "Lorne/Parrish - Parrish is a vampire."

Before the Blood Dries

"…David.. David.. Damnit, stay with me! Come on Doc, you gotta-.."

Awareness returned with a snap. - Evan. He blinked into the stillness. Eyes fluttering open as his hearing shuddered. Sending the words that he knew were echoing out into the air above him into a sluggish tangle of broken off syllables and drawn out verbs. – He didn't understand why-..

"Don't you go anywhere on me Doc… Com'on, look at me!..."

Something was different. Wrong. He could smell it, scenting the difference on the air as the wind shifted. He could all but taste it. Something had changed. Something wasn't right… - His tongue flicked out to trace blunt teeth and came back with the taste of bitter iron and smelted copper.

–Oh..

And as his own blood flooded over his tongue, rising up from his throat in frothy, bubbling waves, memory returned with a rush. That was the thing about blood. It kept within it more then just your life, but an essence of yourself as well. Memories, snatches, impressions, it was all there. Locked away under the flavor of heady, mineral rich iron and sun-set red. Complex in a way that even Earth's most prominent medical authorities could never even hope to understand.

"No! – Oh god...Shit! - Parrish!"

Long lashes ghosted across the deepening hollows that stood out below his eyes. He could almost feel it, the way the facade was slowly beginning to crumble. With his lashes morphing into feather light pin pricks that clumped and stuck together as they skated across blood spattered skin. - But as ghastly as it might have looked, it was to be expected. There was just too much damage. Too many main arteries had been hit. - The odd arterial spray must have all but drenched him by now. He could only imagine what he must look like… - What Evan must being thinking…

Either way, it wouldn't be long now. It wouldn't be long before light blue irises would be replaced, morphing into vicious silver, and blood-shot crimson. Before his canines would drop down, slithering out from the gums to flirt with the delicate skin just below his lips. Promising both desperation and violence in turn as the urge to feed only grew stronger.

- He needed it. Blood. He needed to-

"Parrish, god damnit look at me!"

He blinked. Was someone talking to him? - Confusion flowed through him in a series of jarring, disconnected waves as a shadow-strewn figure he hadn't even noticed before now, shifted above him.

Familiarity rippled across the surface of his conscious mind. Brain struggling to recognize the compact, muscular form even as it hunched over him, blocking out the sunlight as a swath of scratchy, cotton fabric fell across the length of his neck. Blunt fingers and calloused palms slipping across his blood smeared skin as the beige cloth abruptly disappeared and a sudden burst of pressure blossomed across the span of his ruined chest.

He knew those hands.

His nostrils flared and suddenly he was all but drowning in the other man's scent. It was a jumbled up diaspora of spent gun oil and caffeine drenched adrenaline. A virtual melding pot of violence and unexpected gentleness as the tang of raw Kevlar and muted after shave almost overwhelmed the tenuous siren song of unoxygenated blood, and bitter sweat.

He smelled fear, anger, grief, and determination. The scent of panic oozing sour and stagnant in the background, churning like the threat of bile even as the tempered, sweet edged softness of an emotion he couldn't quite define rose to the forefront. - It was light, transparent even, but undeniably present all the same..

He got stuck on it. Stalling over the complexity of it as the blunt, callous rimmed fingers returned. - Pressing, rubbing, and pulling at his skin as desperation ran rampant. The stink of fear only rising as the world regressed, breaking down into roaring echoes and wordless cries that seemed obscenely out of place in the warm summer air.

Static buzzed around the edges of his vision.

It wouldn't be long now.. He wouldn't be able to hold it back..

His gum line ached, canines throbbing as his baser nature fought to make itself known. Burbling to the forefront as his senses sharpened. The hunger lancing through him as he fought for control.. He had to focus. - Think of something else.

…That tempered sweetness? That emotion without a name? …Yes. - Think of that…

- He was somewhere in the middle of trying to find his way back to that strange, unknown little emotion when awareness finally slammed home.

…Oh god no… – Evan…

A/N: Sorry this is so short, it is more like a teaser introduction then anything else. *Please let me know what you think? Or indeed if I should continue? Reviews and constructive critiquing are love!

"It is worth dying to find out what life is." -T.S. Eliot