It had been so long…over a century since he had woken up beside someone, in a proper bed, or fallen asleep glued together with sweat and sex…over a century without languid kisses, or endearments in the dark from someone who actually knew his name.
He’d never let himself wish for real love. Over time even desire had become a burden. He would never be loved the way normal humans were, or even normal vampires—and not that long ago he’d been able to stand it, but…
Damn that boy a thousand times.
What would it have been like, he wondered in spite of himself, to have David as a lover? Mutual destruction, surely. They’d never make life easy for each other. David had shagged his way through half the Court already and the going opinion was that he was spectacular in bed, but emotionally distant. Deven doubted they’d last very long once the initial passion had burnt out.
What he truly craved, above and beyond any sort of passion, was to be understood…accepted, as despicable and stained as his soul was, without any demand, without any condition.
But no one got that in this world. The lucky ones at least got the tempest for a while before it faded into doldrums. He would, at this point, be grateful for that much.
And what a tempest it would be…he had seen David undress enough times, and fought against him enough times, to know how he moved, how those lovely muscles responded to a challenge. All David really needed was a tattoo, on his back perhaps, or a shoulder, and he’d be a work of art.
Oh, the things he could do to a body like that. And that mouth…holy God.
Groaning, Deven turned over on his side, mindlessly kicking off his shoes and grabbing a pillow to pull down over his eyes. The booze was dragging him swiftly from pleasantly drunk to nauseated, and though it would pass in moments, the aftermath wouldn’t be much better—sobriety was not a condition he enjoyed, but neither was a hangover. Luckily, after a full night at work followed by the confrontation with David and a drinking binge, he was exhausted, and there was a good chance sleep would catch him before the hangover did…
…for once, he was lucky…and even luckier, though that luck was bittersweet, in dreams.
He could feel a mouth on his, warm and wanting, and the heat of a body pressed against him…the pain of wakefulness faded away beneath that heat, along with awareness of everything except the strong hands traveling over his chest, one encircling his upper arm to hold him close. There was no wall behind him, no smoky bar corner concealing them from view, no fear of discovery…just the softness of sheets and lips, the slow sweetness of kisses melting into each other.
Even asleep, he knew it was odd—he never had good dreams, only nightmares. By now he should be on his bare knees in gravel for the twelfth hour running, hearing his child’s voice droning through the Divine Office…or tethered to a bed by a golden chain at his neck until he could bear it no longer and…
But no. Not this time. This time he could smell sweat and leather and skin, could feel nails digging into his bicep and tracing the lines of the angel’s wing, the old scars seeming to melt away under the touch…could feel his beloved, hard and insistent against his hip, hear the catch in his breath…hear him murmur against Deven’s lips…
“Wake up.”
Damn it.
I’m dreaming.
He’d never been so reluctant in his life to open his eyes. Even without a hangover, it was excruciating to give up that fleeting moment of oneness, to renounce the dream. It could have been a minute long, or an hour, but it was over, and hopefully he would forget it.
He opened his eyes…and gasped.
Tentatively, almost shyly, David smiled.
Only You
I watch you sleeping for a while before I make the choice.
Am I only here because of Anna? Did the trauma of her death override good sense and drive me to finally, finally admit what I want, to consider this as a reality? Would I ever have come here if I hadn’t killed her?
My mind plays down every possible iteration of the events of this night, the continuous drone of my thoughts analyzing, picking apart every sentence, every observation…I can never stop thinking, and that endless river of ideas and facts has always kept a certain distance between me and other people…I can assess a situation and come up with a dozen solutions in minutes…yet here I stand, uncertain, hand on the doorframe, those last few steps the most difficult I’ve faced in decades.
It’s not that I don’t want to…God, I do. I tried to bury it, first in work and then in Anna’s company, but even she knew I was fooling myself. “I know you don’t love me,” she said, not the least bit upset. “But that’s all right, you know. You’re so closed off…you’ve never made me any promises and I never asked for any. But I knew from the beginning you loved someone else.” She never knew whom, exactly, that someone else was, and I have no idea how she would have reacted if I’d told her, but we both understood that there was only so deep our relationship could go.
There are a thousand ways to love someone, and none is perfect.
I was surprised that Anna could even sense that much from me. She was always so attuned to people’s feelings, I realized not long after we met that she was a mild empath—not powerful enough to need training, but enough to catch things from the man she was sleeping with. That was, in fact, how she figured out what I am. Realizing your lover is a vampire in the middle of sex is a bit of a mood killer, but she was almost instantly fascinated and not once afraid.
I’m going to miss her so much. She was a remarkable woman and would have made a remarkable vampire. We could have learned so much together. The shock wore off almost the second I left her still, cold body on a gurney outside the hospital where the humans would find her. Her family deserved to know. They would search for her for years in growing despair unless I made sure she was found. Leaving her there, her hands folded on her chest and the blood washed off her throat, the reality of it finally hit me, and I had to lean against the hospital’s brick wall around the corner, heart constricted with the loss, unable to breathe.
As if to help me stay sane—in a rather insane way—on the long walk home, my mind immediately returned to you, to the look on your face when I accused you of being heartless. It’s not as if I’m the first to say it…in fact I’ve heard Torvald say you have a sword for a tongue and a broken whiskey bottle where your heart should be…but I’m the first I know of who hurt you with the words.
And as angry as we both were, it was almost funny how my body reacted to your mouth on mine. It felt like I’d been dropped into a volcano.
I took Anna away, came home, cleaned up the bed, took a shower…and sat down to think.
I knew what I wanted to do. Heart, flesh, both were in solid agreement. My mind, however, balked, and we had to have an extensive debate.
My emotional equilibrium has always been a source of pride. Closed off, Anna had called me. Showing emotion is admitting vulnerability, and the thought terrifies me…so does what I’m feeling now. I can hide it from the world, but I had to give up trying to hide it from myself. I wanted to believe it was just physical attraction—and that would certainly be strong enough to draw me here—but Anna’s words forced me to face the truth, another reason I am grateful to have known her.
I’ve been in love a number of times in my life, and it never lasted. “In love” is a temporary affliction; if you are lucky it becomes something lasting that still retains elements of that first flush of infatuation. Lizzie and I loved each other passionately, but she never made me feel like I was losing myself to a force of nature that I couldn’t, and didn’t want to, fight. I am drowning in this and I crave that drowning desperately. I suppose it’s unhealthy, but honestly, I don’t care. Desire has completely overridden self-preservation. I feel, sometimes, that if I lost you I would go insane.
It’s possible I’m already there.
It’s also possible this could be a problem given that you are my superior officer and routinely send me into potentially deadly situat
ions. I shake my head, smiling slightly. If there’s a problem, I’ll quit. Anything else I need to learn about combat, you can teach me outside the Elite. I have enough money to finance twenty vampires just like me for a hundred years apiece. This is, and always was, for fun.
I don’t care what the others think. Very few people here matter that much to me. Faith would be thrilled, the Prime would probably fire us, and aside from that, the rest could fuck off. Faith has been pushing me toward this for months, thinking her hints are so subtle; there’s almost a desperation in her prodding, as if she has something to lose if this doesn’t happen. I’ve told her it isn’t her problem, but her inner world remains a mystery to me, so who knows what motivates her?
You are a mystery to me, too, but for different reasons, a riddle I cannot resist trying to solve.
I edge closer, still holding onto the doorframe as an anchor. The fireplace is crackling merrily, but even without its warm light I would be able to see you sprawled out on the bed, still dressed, yet another night of drinking taking its toll.
I shut the door silently behind me and lock it before turning back toward the bed.
You drink too much. That’s putting it mildly, in fact. Vampires have our own form of alcoholism—it’s not a physical dependency, as the drug passes through us too quickly, but the emotional addiction is just as rampant among our kind as humans, and we come to depend on those short escapes from reality. I know some of what you’re escaping from, but nowhere near all of it. You seem to be single-handedly keeping the California whiskey industry in business.
Part of that is my fault. I know that now. We’ve both been circling around each other, around this, for months. Trying so hard not to touch has only made it worse.
Closer, and closer, until at last I stand beside the bed—it’s a testament to everything you’ve taught me that I can sneak up like this without waking you, but it also tells me just how upset you were and how drunk you got. I can see your face now…every time I’ve ever seen you asleep you’ve looked like you were in pain.
Once, after a rough but successful night in the gang wars, we came back to my quarters to have a celebratory drink and both passed out from exhaustion. I woke to the murmur of your voice as you talked in your sleep. Though I’ve never been Catholic, my Latin is excellent, and I found the words in the library: the Divine Office, the endless daily round of chant and prayer performed in monasteries. It was also interspersed with snatches of other languages I recognize, but those words were far less benign, equal parts begging for relief from torture and praying, over and over, for God not to abandon you. Those words made me blind with impotent rage—I couldn’t strike at whomever hurt you, and at that time, I couldn’t even comfort you the way I wanted. The rest of your murmurings were in Gaelic and I was a little relieved I didn’t understand it.
Tonight however you are silent. Lying on your side, left hand curled up near your face against the sheets, you look so young and so old at the same time. I can barely breathe, standing there, and I want so badly to touch you that the sudden overwhelming need makes me dizzy.
I can still walk away. I can slip back out the way I came, lock the door, and go back to my solitary bed, safe, changing nothing. I can retreat behind my emotional walls and stay there.
But is there really any going back? Perhaps we could apologize to one another and move on, trying to keep our friendship as that and nothing more, but from now on we would know the truth. It is out in the open between us now and would hang there, a ghost damned to haunt the edges of everything we do together. I can’t stand the thought of the discomfort, the distance we’d both feel obliged to put between us after this, unless…
You’ve accused me many times of thinking too much. Trust your instincts, you say. Knowledge is useless without action. You have no idea how impossible that is for me.
But for once I have to stop. The force of my own mind is paralyzing me. No more thinking. No more weighing consequences. There is only now, and the sense, deep down somewhere beyond reason, that this has to happen, that to keep fighting it is as pointless as it is agonizing.
Slowly, I move onto the bed, stretching out beside you, more than a little amazed that you haven’t woken up already.
We’ve never really been this close before, except a moment here and there during sparring when one of us would land on top of the other. I’ve allowed myself, many times, to consider how lovely you are, and again I take a moment to let my eyes travel from the long eyelashes against your cheek to the curve of your neck, the graceful line of your body. It’s a terrible cliché, but true: you remind me of an angel. Not the chubby-cheeked cherubs in paintings, but like the one on your arm, a warrior, filled with light and fire and the will of God.
You shift slightly, turning your face a little more up toward me. My heart is pounding so loudly I’m surprised it doesn’t wake you up.
Now or never.
Now.
I turn my head to kiss the palm of your hand, and it twitches, but you still don’t wake. Smiling, I lean in and touch my lips to yours softly, expecting every movement to startle you and, in all likelihood, get me injured, but to my delight, you simply sigh, lips parting to mine.
Now I am the one who feels drunk. I slide my arms around you and pull you against me, kissing harder, the taste of you once again setting me on fire. It’s a burning that I’ve been aching for for months. I am afraid to stop, even to take a breath—if I stop you’ll almost certainly wake and this moment I’ve stolen will probably end…and probably badly.
Finally, though, I have to lift my mouth from yours. This is wrong. Whether you’ll kiss me or kill me, you should be fully aware of what’s happening.
I nuzzle your ear and say, quietly, “Wake up.”
You sigh again and murmur, “Damn it…I’m dreaming.”
I hold back a laugh.
Your eyes flutter open, dazed from sleep at first, then sharpening—you tense up and your eyes silver out instinctively, but then they return to normal as you realize who I am and where we are.
Still, you look wary until I smile. We stare at each other for a long moment.
You lift a hand and touch my face, something like awe in your eyes. “Is this real?” you ask softly.
I nod. “Yes.”
You frown slightly. “Are you sure this is what you want?”
“God, yes.” I kiss you again, this time more insistently, and I can feel your surprise—and how it dissolves into desire. But there’s one more thing, it seems, you have to know:
“Have you done this before?”
The meaning of the question is evident, and I smile again. “Of course.”
You look genuinely taken aback by that. I suppose you thought based on my reputation among the Court, and my relationship with Anna, that you would be the first man in my bed. I admit it’s been a while, and few and far between, but I’m fairly certain I remember the basics. Perhaps the best way to prove it to you is to show you.
“I know what I’m doing,” I say wryly, then take your mouth again, this time with all of the intensity that’s been slowly consuming me since the night we met. My hand wraps around your upper arm, and then moves around to your back and down, stopping at your waist to slide around in between us. I snake the hand into your clothes, find what I’m looking for, and without any hesitation, curve my palm around and draw my hand up its length.
You gasp, stiff all over, turning pink. I would never say this out loud, but I think you’re adorable when you blush. “All right,” you manage. “I believe you.”
I chuckle into your ear and stroke again, eliciting another ragged breath, then another, and another. “That’s nothing,” I tell you. “Give me five minutes and I’ll have you screaming.”
A tremor runs through you and you press your hips up against my hand, panting, “I don’t think it’s going to take that long.”
I can’t help it; I laugh, and so do you, before kissing me hard and reaching down to pull my shirt out of my belt
and up over my head. We’re both grinning as we strip each other—there’s no fumbling like there would be for most people touching for the first time, and I wonder if it’s because we’ve both been imagining this moment and visually memorizing each other since our first bout in the training room. I remember you throwing me to the ground about half a dozen times that night—and even then, as aggravating and humiliating as it was to be so easily beaten, I kept noticing things I normally wouldn’t, like the way your shoulders moved and the edges of black ink I could see now and then when your shirt shifted. I wasn’t able to admit I wanted you for a long time after that, but parts of me were certainly aware.
I hear the rank insignia on my collar hit the wood floor, and yours follows. As soon as your shirt is off and your tattoos are bare to me, I run my tongue along the angel’s wing. You’ve been having them colored in—they were both black and white when we met, but now the angel is almost completely done and the demon barely started. The ink itself is slightly raised, and though the image does a good job of camouflaging the long parallel scars covering your upper arm and back, I can feel them, like reading a relief map of some dark wilderness you wandered in, lost, for years.
You taste like leather and whiskey. The firelight erases the weariness you habitually wear, along with your sorrow, like a shroud; but your muscles are hard, carved out of years and years of fighting, and their implied strength is even more intimidating naked than it was clothed…but perhaps intimidating is the wrong word. More like intoxicating.
Met by Midnight: Shadow World Stories and Scenes, Vol. 1 (The Shadow World) Page 3