58. Consequences of Being a Dumbass

" D id our date really have to be at a putt-putt?" Harlow groused as he swung his club. He winced when the ball went flying.

The thing looked to be an actual hazard as it pierced into and out of the plastic mountain of ice cream, where it then kept going, breaking down a small metal sign, right before it finally embedded into a far retaining wall. Even from this distance, he could see the chunk of cement and plaster that crumbled to the ground when it hit.

"Yes," Foxx snapped, and he pointed towards his ball that was now a wall fixture. "Because of THAT right there! And this date will last all day if it has to! Until you start figuring out how to hold back!"

He eyed the vampire. The sun was up, so the man was dressed in a simple brown bear sunsuit. But he knew that underneath, Foxx was looking very coordinated, clothing wise. Under the onesie, the vampire had on a light purple sweater, and patchwork overalls that bunched at the ankles like sweatpants did. Color wise, the patches were different shades of green and purple, and while some blocks were solid, others had flowers and vines in them. To go with it, Foxx had a puffy cap that was green and brown patchwork, which sort of matched both the overalls and his brown boots, but that had been left in his Jeep.

"Still…mad about that shoulder thing, huh?"

"Hmm, now that you bring it up… YES! I am still mad."

Harlow sighed. "Didn't we work it out, you know…with Wes?"

"Yes, but you complaining about being here, when I'm pretty sure you realize WHY our date is here, after the first two animatronics that you broke, has renewed my anger. Let's look at the bigger picture, shall we? In case you haven't looked at a calendar recently, it's May 15th. Meaning, it's been almost two months since your change, Harlow! It's time for you to put up or shut up. Get your strength under control, or else ."

The vampire glared pointedly as he gently hit his ball through the tiny hole at the bottom of the mountain of ice cream, and started walking around it to see where it had stopped.

Sighing again, he picked up the bucket full of extra balls and followed. It's not like he didn't want to get it under control. That shoulder thing hadn't exactly been a picnic for him either… Not that he'd ever say that to Foxx out loud. But it definitely had been one way to go from hard to limp and panicking in a flat fucking second.

As he came around the large plastic mountain of ice cream, he eyed the vampire while he putted his ball into the hole, before bending down to pick it up.

"I mean, it's been like two weeks. You can only be mad for so long, Foxx. I am trying… And I really didn't do it on purpose."

The vampire's eyes narrowed at him. "I know you didn't do it on purpose. And yes, it has been two weeks. Two weeks with very little progress. Which is why we are here destroying Wacky Jackie's Putt-Putt Palace, instead of me destroying you !"

"More like we're about to get kicked out of Wacky Jackie's Putt-Putt Palace," Harlow grumbled.

The vampire shook his head, and with a huff, his boyfriend started down the path to the next hole.

Grimacing, he…smartly remained quiet as he kept up.

"We are not going to be kicked out," Foxx said when they reached the end of the path.

"I don't know, I've pretty much broken every hole so far." He eyed the new one, which happened to be not as large and domineering as the previous one, but possibly more annoying, with gumdrops sliding over the course, and gingerbread men randomly popping up out of the ground.

"It's fine. In case you didn't notice, we are the only ones here. Because I bought out the place for the next month, and told the guy that if he left us alone, any damage would be covered, with an extra bonus of money added for upgrades. I signed a contract and everything. The human had bloody dollar signs in his eyes, I swear."

"The next…month?" Harlow choked.

Foxx ignored him and set his ball down in the slight dip that was at the start of each course. He gently tapped it, sending the ball rolling past multiple gum drops, and it made it halfway before being stopped by a gingerbread man.

The vampire squinted at his ball for a moment, before turning to him, his expression was not…friendly. "Yes, the next month. We are getting your strength under control. And this place is perfect because it's in the middle of fucking nowhere, with a buffer of woods between it and the closest towns. To add on, three weeks from now, I booked us a week at a cabin situated on a large swath of land, so we can begin trying to bring out your blood burn state. Because Daydric is not going to wait forever for you to get that under control, and he is no doubt correct that your bloodline powers will appear when least convenient, and likely stronger than we want right now. And we really don't need to be dealing with out of control blood burn, out of control strength, AND unpredictable bloodline powers at the same bloody fucking time! Now, putt!" The vampire pointed towards the dip.

Fucking hell… Glaring at the dip, Harlow dropped the ball down. After taking a deep breath, he eyed the hole in the distance and hit it, wincing as it took the head off a gingerbread man, and kept going until it was out of sight.

"Have you…never ever tapped a ball before?" Foxx stared at him, clearly baffled. "Harlow, if that is as lightly as you can tap it, you'd have broken every single thing and person you've come into contact with since turning!"

"I have…just… I mean, I don't always think when I do things, and I guess sometimes I naturally hold back… But you are… You're staring…and…"

"By the Goddess, are you seriously trying to tell me that I'm making you jumpy?!"

He grimaced. "No… It's more…I may be overthinking it."

Foxx rolled his eyes. "Fine, I'll look away so you don't overthink!" The vampire spun away. "Try again!"

Harlow let out a heavy sigh and…put another ball down.

"Oooh." Foxx winced when the bright red clown nose that Harlow's ball had just plowed into started to spark.

Over the course of the last three hours…Foxx had come to a conclusion about Harlow's strength issue. He figured that ninety percent of the time, the man managed to function without breaking things. But the only reason he did, was because he mostly didn't think about it at all.

While sure, some of that ten percent of destruction wasn't because he'd thought about it, but due to him forgetting about his strength, as he tried to do something with the same amount of force as he used to… But the majority of it was definitely due to the dhampir thinking about it. Harlow had been correct, he did in fact overthink, and either adjusted too much or…misjudged. But they had made progress…

Harlow groaned. "Foxx…I think…we should stop for today. It's been hours…and I don't seem to be any closer to having this under control."

"No! That's not true! See if this was earlier in the day, you'd have put the ball straight through the clown, but instead you only embedded it!" Foxx slapped the dhampir on the back. "Be proud, old man! You've lessened your destruction! And that is the point of us coming here… Progress! Though we may need to find someone to take care of that sparking."

"To progress," the dhampir said with zero enthusiasm.

Foxx giggled. "Progress is progress. It'll get easier. Once you are able to hold back while overthinking, then the mistakes you make while not thinking at all should lessen too."

"Is that what you do when you need to adjust?"

"Finally asking questions, huh?"

Despite what Wes had said, Harlow hadn't asked a single thing until now.

Harlow eyed him. "You can't just…tell me what I need to do?"

"You're a big boy, open your mouth."

"I wonder if Wes realized how stubborn you were when he asked you to work on it with me."

Foxx smiled sweetly. "As stubborn as blindly destroying Wacky Jackie's Putt-Putt Palace for three hours before finally asking a single question?"

"Point made." Harlow chuckled. "So, how do I figure out how much I need to adjust?"

"Simple, put a ball down and hit it as hard as you can. As you hit it, try to memorize how hard you hit it, and what that feels like."

"Hit it as hard as I can?" Harlow grimaced. "You sure that's a good idea?"

"Yes."

"Okay…"

The dhampir grabbed a ball from his bucket, a bucket they'd had to fill multiple times as the man kept losing his balls in things.

Setting it down, Harlow took a deep breath. "Here…I go."

The man swung and the ball went flying. Bursting through the face of the clown, it kept going through the retaining wall surrounding the place, and off into the woods, disappearing in the distance.

"How…thick are these woods again?" The dhampir asked hesitantly.

"It goes on for miles. But no worries, your ball will stop right about…" Listening to the sounds of wood shattering, he smiled when finally, there was a distant thud. "There. It's now stuck in a tree somewhere. Okay, do you have in your mind how it felt to hit it as hard as you could?"

Harlow nodded.

"Good. Hit it at half that strength."

The man's brow rose. "Half?"

Foxx nodded. "Yes."

"Okay." Harlow tilted his head and grabbed another ball, setting it down.

The man took a deep breath, lined up his club and hit it. The ball did go flying, much higher than one would want for putt-putt, but as it hit the clown, instead of embedding itself, it bounced off, lightly bouncing a few more times on the fake grass before rolling to a stop. While there was a noticeable indent on the clown…that was all the damage it caused.

Harlow's mouth dropped open as his arms slowly fell to his sides, the club hanging loosely now as he stared at his ball.

Foxx giggled and clapped cheekily. "Oh look, you did it!"

The dhampir turned his head sharply in his direction, his eyes narrowed. "You…"

He smiled sweetly. "Me?"

"Why the FUCK was I destroying shit for THREE hours when you could have just TOLD me how to do THAT?!"

"Consequences of being a dumbass."

"You're such a fucking brat!" Harlow hissed.

Foxx's smile widened. "Yes, but just think, if I'd have told you, you'd still be a dumbass. But now, since you've suffered, you have hopefully learned to NOT BE a dumbass, and will open your mouth next time."

"Half…" Harlow groaned, rubbing at his face. "I just had to hold back half."

"No, what you needed to do was figure out what your maximum was, so you knew HOW to hold back half, and then from there you can now adjust to where you actually need to be. If you noticed, half of your strength is still stronger than most humans, and also too much for this course. Your ball still went flying and caused damage. If I hit at half strength like you did, so would mine, because as we have seen, our strengths are now comparable and at a similar level. Half, while always a good starting point in understanding your strength, it isn't always where you need to adjust to.

"Strength, unfortunately, doesn't always increase the same way, or as much or as little each time. The whole reason you couldn't figure out where you needed to adjust to was because you didn't know by how much you needed to adjust. To add on, even knowing all this, it doesn't always make it easy to judge what is the appropriate level of strength to use in every situation."

"Thus you causing internal bleeding."

"Exactly. And the reason why is…well…because people take damage easier than other things do, and unfortunately, humans don't exactly volunteer to let me test my strength on them."

Harlow sighed, shaking his head. "You are such a brat."

"I am." Foxx giggled, dropping his club so he could wrap his arms around the man. "But I'm your brat."

Harlow tossed his club aside, and on the club landing without damaging anything, the man turned in his hold and wrapped his arms around him. "You are. All mine," Harlow growled, pressing a kiss to Foxx's lips. The man was smirking as he broke the kiss and asked, "We have this place all to ourselves, right?"

He smiled, despite knowing what Harlow was really asking. "No. I'm not having sex with you in a putt-putt palace."

The dhampir chuckled. "Aww, come on… We could get hot and heavy near the sparking clown."

"No, old man!" Foxx laughed.

Harlow's mouth opened, and whatever he'd been about to say never came, because the man's phone started ringing—the secure one. He only knew which phone was ringing because, about a week ago, Foxx had set the ringtone for that particular phone as the Jaws theme song.

"Duty calls." The dhampir released him and pulled out the phone, swiping across the screen. The man smirked at him when he succeeded at answering on his first try.

Foxx rolled his eyes and just patted him on the shoulder in praise.

"Harlow, and I assume, Foxx as well," Tony started.

"Yep, I'm here!" Foxx chimed.

"It's time. Go to Sunfall, Illinois. It's about two hours from Hazard, but you'll still get there before the ‘fun' starts. Gear and further instructions will be waiting for you when you arrive. We stopped at least SOME of the werewolves in that area from being infected, as the man you two captured was responsible for poisoning a group there. But the vampires have likely already been dosed for hours, which makes sense, as that poison takes longer to spread. Get there and be prepared for a giant ass mess."

It was only longer due to how low the dose was. In the time since Doc had figured out the counteragent for the vampires, he had also figured out the timelines. No matter how high the dose was for werewolves, it activated around the same time. But for vampires, the higher you went, the more immediate effects changed. For example, the victims collapse instantly at higher doses, being aware of their threads shredding, instead of suddenly feeling sick and attacking. Doc now thought that if they hadn't arrived that day to save him, he'd have died before getting a chance to attack anyone.

"Objective?" Harlow asked.

"To save as many as we can, but as always, do not sacrifice yourselves to do it. After it's all said and done…we will be exposing Maverick. It's far past time that he is dragged from the shadows. Now get moving. I'll be meeting you there."

Foxx blinked. "You're coming?"

"Yeah, I'm coming. I'm in charge of the operation in that area. There haven't been any attacks yet, but we were about to gather the other locations, due to…finding a few rats in our system. To note, there will be hunter groups from outside our Guild there, because as always, we still have our normal hunts on top of this bullshit. But everyone who will be present has been vetted by Sephira for loyalty, and every paranormal that needs to has agreed to, or already has been dosed with the counteragent. You'll be on standby when you arrive. To make sure we are able to respond as quickly as possible, teams will spread out around their designated cities. Where local law enforcement can be trusted, they have been given access to the counteragent."

Harlow cursed. "You are trusting cops to?—"

"What we are doing is trying to save as many lives as we possibly can. Get your asses here." The call disconnected.

Foxx met Harlow's gaze. "It all comes down to this."

"Let's fucking go, I guess. Don't get dead, brat."

He snorted. "Let's go!"