Rian Martin had had a miserable life.

Sometimes, when he sat huddled on a dirty stoop trying to avoid the cold winter rain sluicing from the awning above, he would let himself actually feel the biting pain of his loneliness. He did not believe in fate, or God or any of it – how could he? His life was shit, had always been shit, and there was no chance of it ever getting any better.

He was a street kid, a runaway – and there were many more like him on the mean streets of this city. His story was not more special or unique than the next dirty, tattered kid – orphaned at eleven by a car wreck, no other family to claim him and warded to the state. He was bounced around in foster homes for almost two years before he ran – there were probably good, honest folk out there who fostered, but in Rian's experience the people who ran the boys' homes were indifferent at best, and downright abusive at the worst to their unwilling tenants.

So he ran.

There were countless kids on the streets already – the lost children, those who lurked in sewers and alleys, waiting for a pocket to pick or an unattended dumpster to paw through. They saw the dark side of the city and embraced it. It was a dangerous, hard, and cold life. If you were not arrested you faced freezing to death in the winter and being hunted by the monsters that roamed the night in the summer. He was in for a short and painful life, but at least this life was his by choice.

Everything changed, though, the winter past his sixteenth birthday. He was among the old guard by then, almost old enough to pass for an adult. That meant the possibility of getting a real job, somewhere that they did not look too closely at the job application, or the fact that the applicant did not have a real address or phone number. However, Rian made ends meet by having the stickiest fingers of anyone on the streets, and no one ever caught him. He had proved his mettle by picking the pocket of an armed police officer – twice.

He had followed this mark for two blocks – a gay couple, he could tell at a glance. Even if they were not holding hands and cooing over each other like most of the couples out on this winter's evening, the way that they exchanged quick glances, made eye contact and smiled told Rian all that he needed to know. The subtle cues almost reminded Rian of his own parents … and more than anything, he hated those reminders. He lost his chance at happiness. Why did anyone else deserve any better?

It was simple work, a billfold and a wallet tucked in the back pocket of blue jeans. Rian did not hesitate nor linger, and neither of his marks even glanced in his direction. Confident in his success, Rian stopped watching his six.

This was his first mistake.

The shortest of the pair caught up to him. No one had caught Rian, ever, and he did not have any idea how the man made him this time. The man seemed more amused than upset, although he took Rian's own wallet in recompense – along with a taunt of trying to get it back.

Rian's hatred only grew. When he finally tracked the man down to demand his wallet back, though, the strangest thing happened. A door opened to him he had never had open before.

A job.

Under the table, behind the scenes – Rian was used to these sorts of things. He lived his entire life outside the lines and there was little difficulty in adjusting his plans to do errands for his new boss. Always during daylight, pick-ups and drop-offs, mundane things like grocery shopping and random trips to the hospital. The man paid handsomely, and Rian did not ask any questions.

Winter's chill might have put an end to him that year if his boss - "For fuck's sake, call me Ed already" - had not opened the door one day and eyed his shivering form. An offered couch, a heavy blanket, some warm food...

Things were changing.

He finally got curious one day, and picked the lock on the soft cooler he transported from the hospital. With all the pick-ups and drop-offs Rian presumed the man to be a drug dealer of some kind – albeit a pleasant, goofy one – but he was surprised and a little disturbed that the entire cooler was full of marked, nearly-expired blood bags.

It sent a tremor of fear through him. Living on the streets the rumors ran rampant. Kids would disappear all the time, and sometimes it was social services, and sometimes they would find a hand, or a foot still encased in a shoe, and occasionally they would even a full body, doubled over and tucked in some alcove in the sewers. There were things out there in the night that you did not speak of – to suggest that they really existed was to court foolishness, but to deny them was to seal your own wretched fate.

When Rian finally confronted them both about the contents of the cools, the revelations was at the same time ridiculous, and anticlimactic. His employer was a werewolf. His lover, a vampire. They did not hunt nor hurt people; in fact, quite the opposite – they protected them against other werewolves and other vampires. It was the sort of resolution straight out of a B movie. Rian had stumbled into quite literally the weirdest mundanity possible.

They were good to him. Ed treated him like a kid brother, bought him all sorts of things and even added a game system to the television that he kept in the apartment. Rian got his own key. The vampire, Roy – he was a bit more aloof than Edward was, but he was far kinder than Rian would ever expect a vampire to be.

Perhaps there was something to fate after all, if Rian could leave the badness behind and trade it for this strange, broken but happy little family of freaks.

He should have known that it was too good to last.

Rian turned seventeen living in an apartment for the first time in his life, if the company of a vampire and a werewolf. They celebrated with pizza and beer – Roy making disapproving faces while Edward rolled his eyes and handed off a longneck bottle of beer. There was no warning as to how little time Rian had left.

Somewhere along the line, he had started helping Edward with his "missions." Rian made friends with the witch who ran the New Age shop that Edward frequented. He would provide backup for Ed during daytime missions, the times when Roy did not venture out of bed due to the strain of daylight on his senses. It would be a rare mission that all three of them would embark upon together – but they were careful never to put Rian on the front lines. The fact that he was included at all – never mind considered a valuable member of the team – made him feel like they cared about him. It was a warm feeling, of friendship and camadarie that he had never really known before.

This mission was mostly a rescue and recovery mission; a little girl, heir to a long line of magic-users had been kidnapped by some dark beast of the night. Rian protected the child while Roy and Edward fought the beast, but the ghoul tossed Edward aside like a sack of potatoes and came for them. There was no time to do anything but put himself between the ghoul and the screaming girl, and then the talons of the creature took his life.

It did not hurt to die as he expected. Rian could not scream as his vocal cords were severed. He did not feel anything, truthfully, as he hit the cold cement floor hard. He saw the creature go down under Edward's weight, the sleek lupine form turned almost grotesque in its fury.

He would be avenged.

The world went black, the last sensation a warm mouth covering his own and the metallic taste of blood on his lips.

'At least I was happy, in the end.'

Three days later Rian Martin opened his eyes to see the patterned drywall ceiling of the bedroom that Roy and Edward shared. He came awake all at once, from unconscious to conscious in an eye blink, and aware of everything all at the same time. The sun was setting behind the heavy drawn blackout shades; no light eked through and yet he still knew it was sunset by the heaviness in the air. He could hear everything, the people outside arguing in the parking lot, the heartbeats of Edward and Winry in the living room, and ….

...Roy, who sat up straighter when Rian's eyes turned to him wildly.

He opened his mouth and croaked a noise, unable to form a word. Roy smiled at him sadly; as Rian's hands went to his throat and touched tender, still-torn flesh. "You haven't healed, yet," Roy said softly. "You'll need fresh blood for that."

Rian opened his mouth and ran his tongue over too-sharp teeth as the realization settled in. He could almost feel the regret coming off Roy and his eyes flickered to the other vampire. "I'm sorry," Roy murmured. "It was the only way."

Rian … smiled.

He did not have to be afraid any longer.

He was home.