Chapter 6
#TeamFelix vs. #TeamCallum: One Reporter Investigates
by Sonia Kramer, posted on vanityfair.com
If one wishes to understand the intricacies of the most heated vampire controversy of our times, one need only look at the fan cams.
On TikTok, they number in the thousands, with view counts in the millions. Video after video with titles like “POV: Your summer romance with Felix,” and “Toxic, chaotic, tantalizing Callum.” They refer, of course, to the two main love interests in the Blood Feud series by August Lirio: Felix Hawthorn, the gallant romantic hero, and Callum Yoo, the devastatingly attractive bad boy. Both teams offer photo montages and video clips set over romantic music, but the tone and timbre could hardly be more different.
On #TeamFelix, the colors are soft and the music is dreamy. Fans imagine Felix taking them for a post-sunset picnic (not pre-, lest the object of their desire burst into flames and perish), a moonlit swim, a ride on horseback under the stars. They wear flowing gowns and flower crowns, and Felix gently grazes his fingers against their cheeks. In the videos, Felix is usually portrayed by male models with Raphaelite features—Timothée Chalamet has featured prominently since news broke that he’ll be playing the character onscreen. Felix fans are self-designated “soft girls,” and they long for a man as sweetly sensitive as they are.
The Callum girlies, not so much.
The #TeamCallum cams are grittier stuff, underscored with aching rock music, set in dark alleyways and moody hotels, featuring players clad in mesh and leather. There’s no need for an itinerary of romantic activities in these cams; one gets the sense that there’s really only one activity on the menu, and all it requires is a bed (or a chair, or a desk, or a wall).
An easy way to summarize the teams would be to say that #TeamFelix wants to be loved, while #TeamCallum wants to get fucked. But this reporter thinks there’s something slightly more interesting at play: #TeamFelix wants permission to experience every emotion in the world. But #TeamCallum? They don’t want to feel anything at all—except ecstasy. But hey, doesn’t everyone want to feel that?
Transcript of unheard voicemails from the inbox of Tess Rosenbloom
Voicemail from Joni Chaudhari [August 11, 11:24 a.m.] : Hey, it’s me. I figured you wouldn’t pick up, and I guess you’re never gonna respond to my texts, so I’m just trying this because…I don’t know! Because you showed up at my birthday party after not seeing you for three years, and then just ghosted again? Why did you come at all? And why won’t you tell me what’s going on? I hate this, Tess. I can’t believe you’re doing this again. Please just call me, okay?
Voicemail from Mika Cox [August 11, 9:41 p.m.] : Hey, hope you’re feeling better! I’m calling because Taylor said you haven’t been answering your texts—I covered for you, but do you know when you’ll be back? Not that I think they’d really fire you or anything, but like, you know, probably a good idea to keep in touch? Hope you’re doing okay, babe!!
As a rule, Octavia Yoo did not care for human men. She detested their natural stench almost as much as the noxious products they used to mask it (she felt so-called body sprays ought to be banned as an act of law or god, whichever went higher), she found their opinions on politics and literature to be reductive and dull, and their utter lack of emotional awareness (and tendency to turn to acts of violence rather than identify one feeling) was tedious in the extreme. Octavia had always avoided men whenever possible—unless she needed something from them. Which was the only reason, at this particularly strange and lonely moment of her life, Octavia’s favorite person in the world was a human man named Nicky Galanis.
Nicky was a night watchman at Bergdorf Goodman, and he gave Octavia everything she needed.
The problem with having lost her powers in the dead of summer was that the sun set too late for Octavia to visit most of her favorite stores. On the rare occasion that she could make it in somewhere by eight, the places were usually pretty empty, making it much more difficult to slip into a fitting room and steal anything she fancied—a process she disliked in the best of circumstances. Octavia had hoped Tess would be back with Callum within a few hours of having gone into Bar Between, but it had been an entire day, and Octavia was getting restless. What was she supposed to do, hole up in that hotel forever? Repeat outfits? Certainly not!
So Octavia went to Bergdorf’s just after sunset and watched who came and went. When she saw Nicky, middle-aged and pudgy with a kind face and a hip flask, she knew she’d struck gold. She sold him some sob story about having lost her grandmother’s necklace in the fitting room a couple of hours earlier, and he let her right in to try to find it.
“Oh, sir—what was your name?” Octavia asked, smiling through her tears.
“It’s Nicky, Nicky Galanis.” He doffed his little night watchman cap like a character in a Frank Capra movie. His face was flushed and he smelled like cinnamon and rye—as far as male scents went, not bad at all.
“Thank you, Nicky.” Octavia took his hands. “You have no idea what this means to me—oh, I could just kiss you!”
And then, without waiting for any sort of a response, she leaned down and did exactly that. It wasn’t a fast kiss, either; Octavia had seduced thousands of lovers, and she knew exactly how to make someone’s knees weak. When she felt Nicky go woozy beneath her touch, she moved to his neck and sunk her fangs into his flesh.
It wasn’t the best blood she’d tasted—it didn’t even come close—but after a decade of animal blood, the warm stuff in Nicky’s veins might as well have been the steak omakase at COTE. Octavia drank deeply, indulgently, until Nicky lost consciousness. She didn’t want to kill him; he’d wake up later with a bit of a headache and probably think he drank too much, maybe wonder if Octavia had been real at all, convince himself the wound on his neck was a spider bite. By then, she’d be long gone, and the empty shopping bags she’d brought with her would be filled with dozens of gorgeous new outfits—enough to last at least a week, maybe even two? Surely Tess would be back by then. How long could it possibly take to deliver one simple message?
“I just can’t figure it out. It doesn’t make any sense!”
Joni was pacing her living room, which still bore some scars of the previous night’s party—a cigarette burn here, a sticky patch there—but was mostly back to normal.
“No, this doesn’t make any sense.” Nasser flopped back onto the couch and gestured toward Joni’s outfit. He looked fabulous in a purple silk caftan; she was still in her cutoffs and a threadbare Columbia tee she often slept in. “The concert starts at midnight, it’s after eleven, and you look like you got in a fight with your closet and lost.”
“I can’t dress up twice in one weekend, it’s against dyke code,” Joni grumbled. “Give me some of that.”
Nasser handed over his joint, and Joni inhaled deeply.
“Okay,” she said, trying to let the pot open her mind, to invite new possibilities she hadn’t yet considered. “Let’s think this through. Why would Tess come to my party?”
“Because she loves you, stupid,” Nasser replied, his voice thin as he held in a hit of his own.
“But then why would she leave so quickly?!” Joni could hear her voice edge into whining, but she didn’t care. “Why reappear just to ditch me all over again?”
Nasser sighed. “You have to ask her.”
“I tried! I called, I texted, I DMed, I’d stand outside her apartment with a damn boom box if I knew her address, but nothing’s working.” Joni’s voice hitched in her throat. Damn it. Wasn’t it bad enough that she’d gotten too drunk at the party and ended up spending an hour in the bathroom, crying and puking and wishing Tess were there to laugh their way through it? Why couldn’t she brush this off, put it all behind her as easily as Tess could?
“Okay, first of all, Lloyd Dobler was a total stalker, and if you did the boom box thing you would be too.”
“Rude.” Joni nudged Nasser’s leg with her knee.
“I know Tess showing up totally spun you out, but then, I have to ask…why did you invite her?”
“I don’t know.” Joni sighed. “I guess I assumed she wouldn’t come.”
“And you could add that to your little list of grievances against her?”
“Ouch.” Joni leaned her head onto Nasser’s shoulder. “Not wrong, though.”
“I’m not saying you don’t have a right to be mad at her,” Nasser said gently. “But if you really do want to repair the friendship, you might need to try a different approach. Maybe see it from her side? She came all the way up here and left after twenty minutes. Something probably upset her.”
Joni frowned. “Like what?”
“I have no idea.” Nasser took another hit. “But she’s not in Siberia, she’s at a hotel in Brooklyn. Maybe get on the subway and ask her?”
“You think I should just like…show up at her job? How is that not a stalker move?”
“They have security, don’t they?” Nasser shrugged. “If she asks you to leave, you’ll just leave. But I bet it’ll mean something to her that you cared enough to go all the way down there.”
“Maybe…” Joni considered it. It certainly sounded better than sending angry texts and leaving desperate voicemails for the rest of time.
“You know my favorite thing about this plan?” Nasser asked.
“What?”
Nasser kissed Joni on the tip of her nose, then stood up and headed toward the door.
“Once you actually start talking with Tess, this won’t be my problem anymore.”
The Georgia lobby was mostly empty by the time Octavia got back from her shopping excursion; the lobby bar closed at midnight, and it was getting close to one a.m. Octavia really wanted a cocktail—it wasn’t too late to put on one of her lovely new dresses, head to a bar in the neighborhood, and find someone to feed on. Or sleep with. Or both! Octavia glanced at the front desk as she passed by, hoping Tess would be there with good news to report. But the desk worker was the same woman who’d been there the last two nights, with black hair in a bun, a disaffected air, and a name tag that read Mika. She was talking to a tall, bedraggled girl in a Columbia hoodie and frayed cutoffs who seemed agitated for some reason. Maybe she was on drugs? Hmm, maybe she had something fun to share with Octavia.
“Please,” the hoodie girl pleaded, “I know it sounds crazy, but we used to be best friends.”
“I’m sure you understand why we can’t give employees’ home addresses out to strangers.” Mika the desk worker spoke with the practiced patience of a person who handled unreasonable requests for a living.
“Yeah, I’m really sorry.” Hoodie girl looked close to tears. “I didn’t mean to put you in a bad position or anything. I just thought, if I could see Tess, you know? If I could just talk to her.”
Octavia froze at the mention of Tess’s name. Who was this girl? If she knew Tess, was there any way she could know about Octavia? No, there couldn’t be—Octavia had been with Tess the whole time between leaving the hotel and going to Bar Between. Even so, Octavia wondered if she should leave the lobby right away, or if that would just draw more attention. But before she could decide, the girl turned around and almost smacked dead into her.
“Oh shoot, sorry, I’m so sorry.” She shook her head.
“It’s just a bump, I’m sure we’ll both recover,” Octavia clipped. “If you’ll excuse me…”
But the girl was staring straight at her, transfixed with wonder.
“Oh my god,” she whispered. “Octavia?”
Damn.
“Sorry.” Octavia smiled calmly. “Must have me confused with someone else.”
She pushed past the girl and toward the elevators, sharing a conspiratorial glance with Mika along the way. This was good—if the desk worker thought hoodie girl was out of her mind, then there was very little chance of her saying anything that could blow Octavia’s cover.
But when she pressed the button to call the elevator, the girl in the hoodie was holding up her phone right in Octavia’s face.
“This is you, right?”
Octavia gaped—it was a photo of her and Callum at Truman Capote’s black-and-white ball.
“That’s…not…” she started, but the girl swiped on her phone to show another photo, this time of Octavia and Callum hanging out with Josephine Baker in Paris in the 1920s.
“This is you too.” Hoodie girl swiped again: Callum and Octavia in the background of a tourist’s vacation photo from Jeju Island. Octavia had seen that one during the brief flurry of Blood Feud– truther research that led her to Tess—it made her heart ache to remember the years she’d spent traveling around Korea with Callum, finally connecting with their culture after so many years denying it.
The elevator doors slid open with a ding. Octavia could brush off this girl, get in, and pretend this never happened. But the girl had a hungry look about her; there was always the chance she’d keep at this, come back to the hotel, raise exactly the kind of attention that could get Octavia kicked out of her suite (which was, disappointingly, in Brooklyn, but which was still quite comfortable and extremely free). She turned to the girl and sighed.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Uh, Joni. Joni Chaudhari,” she responded, her tone suspect.
“I’m Octavia Yoo.” Octavia held out her hand to shake. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
The blood drained from Joni’s face. “You mean—you’re really? I mean. No. You can’t possibly—you’re not really…”
“Really, with all the shock and awe?” Octavia exhaled heavily. “You were so certain it was me a second ago.”
“I just can’t believe—you’re really a vampire?!?”
“Keep your voice down,” Octavia hissed.
“Oh my god, and you’re in Tess’s hotel. Does that mean Tess knows?! And what about the Isle? Is that real too?!”
Octavia patted Joni gently on the shoulder.
“Why don’t you come up to my room and we can talk? There’s a lot to fill you in on.”
“Really??” Joni’s eyes lit up, but then she frowned. “Wait. You’re not gonna kill me, are you?”
“I’m glad you think so little of my intelligence as to imagine I’d murder someone I was seen with on camera in the lobby of my own hotel mere minutes beforehand.”
“Of course not!” Joni let out a trill of anxious laughter. “That’d be so stupid. Duh. Sorry.”
As they stepped into the elevator, Octavia was unnerved by the way Joni wouldn’t stop staring at her.
“Could you ease up on the gawking? It’s rude.”
“Sorry, it’s just that you’re so beautiful,” Joni murmured. “Um, and an immortal demon from hell or whatever.”
Octavia hit the button for the pool deck and said a silent goodbye to the dancing, the blood, and the sex she wouldn’t be having tonight. But as the elevator began to rise, so did her spirits. It would be nice to have a devoted little minion who could run errands in the daylight.
Octavia flashed Joni a dazzling smile, and Joni moon-eyed right back at her.
Perhaps this night wasn’t a total loss after all.