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“I need you to bite me.”
It isn’t a surprise that Alex is here. Henry could pick him up from outside, even over the thrum of the music and conversation; the redolent aroma of his blood that the neutralizers can never quite fully eradicate, the thump of his pulse that’s always a bit quicker than it should be. He could feel it the moment he walked into the room, wonders how many others like him picked up on it too. The sweetest thing that’s always just out of their reach. Alex knows precisely what he’s doing.
He leans his palms on the table Henry’s sat behind and bends forward, his shirt unbuttoned enough that Henry catches sight of the vial of vervain that hangs perpetually between his collarbones when the dim lights from the club gleam past them.
It’s not a surprise that he’s here. He always finds a way to grate on Henry’s last nerve somehow. Usually with weapons. But never once has he asked to be bitten.
Henry inclines his head to the side and traces a finger around the rim of his glass, ankles crossed as he leans further back into the scarlett velvet of the booth behind him.
“Why, exactly?”
“I don’t owe you an explanation.” Alex drags out the chair opposite and drops down into it, kicking his own legs up onto the booth beside Henry’s thigh. “Will you do it or not? I don’t like wasting my time.”
“You quite literally attempted to bury a wooden stake in my chest last month,” Henry points out. “I’m at a bit of a loss on why I should help you after your little outburst. It hurt my feelings, you know.”
“You don’t have feelings,” Alex says airily, brown eyes rolling off and to the side.
Henry’s fingers tighten around his glass. “What do you want from me, Alexander.”
“Alex,” he corrects familiarly. He drops his feet to the floor and leans his elbows on the table. “And I already told you. I need you to bite me.”
“And I’m supposed to believe that you’ve suddenly decided that doing so is not, in fact, ‘an ancient and predatory practice which is abhorrent and gruesome and should be eradicated from mankind at all costs’ ?” Henry echoes his own words back to him, raising a brow.
“I love a man who listens,” Alex sighs exaggeratedly, propping his chin in his hand.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Henry gestures, turning to leave his seat.
Alex slaps a hand down, curling it around his forearm. His palm is cool and clammy when it makes contact, and Henry narrows his eyes at the touch before Alex rushes to pull it away again. Henry doesn’t leave, but he doesn’t make himself comfortable.
“Look. It’s a win-win,” Alex continues quietly, his eyes calculating. “I can tell that you haven’t fed yet. That’s what you came here for tonight, is it not? It’s been weeks, Henry.”
“I’m not even going to ask how you could possibly know that,” Henry says.
Dark pink lips twitch across the table. “Always underestimating me.” Alex shakes his head. “What’s the difference between taking me home versus all these other people? I’m a willing participant, after all.”
Considering him for a long moment, Henry tracks the darkness of his eyes and the slightly paler complexion and doesn’t bother giving an answer until Alex is shifting impatiently in his seat. Suspicious doesn’t begin to cover it, but if Alex wants to insist on playing the same games he always does, Henry’s going to indulge a bit. Hardly anything truly amuses him anymore.
“And if I don’t want you?”
Alex laughs, loudly enough that several other patrons glance in their direction, human and vampire alike. He’s never minded the attention, thrives on it really, but Henry could do without it.
“Good one, H.” Alex taps his fingers on the table and leans forward again, their elbows a handful of inches apart. “Come on. You’ve gotta be starving, sweetheart. Let me give you what you need, yeah?”
Wanting Alex’s blood is nothing new. Wanting Alex as a whole is nothing new. But Henry knows that it’s a dead end—one that will most likely lead to his own demise if he allows himself to drift too far into his orbit. No matter how attracted Henry is to him, how much he’s imagined the sweetness of his blood on his tongue, how much he’s envisioned the contrast of Alex’s skin against his bedsheets, it doesn’t change the facts. It doesn’t change who they are.
Henry, born into a role he never asked for, and Alex, born into a bloodline bred to exterminate him.
“Go home, Alex,” Henry sighs, standing from the table. He slips his coat back onto his shoulders. “Not once have you ever needed something from me without an ulterior motive. I don’t believe you’d change that now.”
There’s a pause as he waits for the comeback, Alex’s mouth always moving faster than the rest of him. But when Henry glances down at him, Alex seems zoned out staring at the empty booth Henry’d just vacated.
Carefully, Henry places a hand down flat in front of him and leans down. “Unless you’d like to tell me what it is you’re actually after?”
It seems to knock Alex out of his trance. His chair scrapes the floor when he pushes it back and stands as well, crossing his arms over his chest as he attempts to go nose-to-nose with Henry and reaches nose-to-chin at best.
“I already told you I don’t owe you an explanation,” he grits. “Can’t I just be curious? What if I just want it because I want it?”
“Because I have no reasonable guarantee that you don’t want it so that you can end my life while I’m busy fulfilling your request.”
“You make it sound like it’s a job,” Alex snarks.
“I hardly imagine you’d go easily,” Henry returns.
“I’m asking for it, aren’t I?”
“You are,” Henry confirms. “And I’m leaving. Goodnight, Alex.”
Stepping neatly around him, Henry slips both hands into his pockets and heads for the exit. Alex had been correct about his assumptions — Henry had gone out to feed, and he’s aware that there are likely more than a handful of willing participants in this room alone that he’s leaving behind. But they all seem sour in comparison now that Alex’s scent has blanketed the room, Henry’s stomach turning with a familiar ache.
He makes it several steps away before Alex is cursing and stumbling after him. “Wait! Fucking—wait, okay?” he breathes, tugging on Henry’s coat until he stops.
Henry cocks a brow and turns to face him, and Alex begrudgingly does not make eye contact when he speaks.
“Went to track down a mark. Got found out before I wanted to. He stabbed me. There was a hemotoxin on the blade.”
Henry visibly stiffens.
“What.”
Waving a hand, Alex shakes his head. “I’m fine. The scar’s already healing. But I don’t—the venom’s still in me. I didn’t realize what it was at first. And the only way to get it out at this point is—”
“Is if a vampire extracts it from you,” Henry finishes. He curses, tugging a hand through his hair. “Christ, Alex.”
Seemingly less confident now, Alex shuffles on his feet, which Henry’s now beginning to realize is perhaps more of a side effect of the toxin than simple restlessness. “Yeah. And you’re the only one that I think might actually hesitate before draining me completely, so.” Alex shrugs. “There’s your reason.”
Whatever’s swimming inside of Alex’s bloodstream is poisonous to him but not to Henry, and after waiting this long it’s unlikely that they’ll be able to remove it all through means of a medical procedure. Alex typically tries to avoid hospitals regardless, Henry knows. The stab wound on its own would be hell to try and explain away.
“How long has it been?” Henry asks.
“Almost a month.”
“Alex.”
Alex’s eyes snap up to his and narrow. “And when was the last time you fed?”
It’s Henry that glances away this time, his mouth closing before another argument can leave it. It’s been… longer than it should be, perhaps. His entire body aches with it, but that isn’t anything particularly new.
With a sigh of his own, Alex steps closer. “I told you. We can make this mutually beneficial. You take care of the venom, I get rid of your hunger. That’s it. Then we can get back to our normal lives. No harm, no foul.”
Lips pursed, Henry tries not to inhale too much of the scent that greets him with Alex so close, his eyes dipping down to the vial hanging from Alex’s neck, filled with enough vervain to paralyze him if Alex deigns to use it.
He reaches up to tap gently on it with his knuckle. “You can’t wear that if we do this.”
“Then you can’t wear this,” Alex fires back, lifting Henry’s hand up between them until his ring glints in the light. Henry’s jaw clenches.
“It’s my only form of protection,” he hisses.
“Same here, sweetheart,” Alex smirks, tugging on his own necklace. “This is a two-way street.”
So. Neither of them will have any defenses against each other. Brilliant. Henry might very well be sealing his own gruesome fate. And yet—
“Fine.” He spins without making sure Alex is following and heads for the door. “Come on.”
He can hear Alex’s doubled footsteps quickening behind him. “You…we can just do it here, if that’s easier.”
“It’s concerning how little you seem to notice the effect you have on people,” Henry says grimly. He doesn’t have to turn around to know that Alex is grinning, crooked and wide.
“On you?”
“Your blood is especially enticing,” Henry explains shortly, quickening his pace.
“Because I’m just so damn sweet?”
“Because of your bloodline, Alex.” Henry shoves open the door and watches Alex slip past him through it, shivering in the cool night air. “You already know all of this.”
“Sure I do, but it’s real nice hearing you lay it all out for me, H.”
It comes out in a drawl, his accent much more pronounced than Henry’s heard it before. He doesn’t necessarily think that’s a good thing.
It’s a ways down to Henry’s car, and by the end of the walk he’s got hand splayed over Alex’s back to keep him steady on his feet. Henry curses when Alex sways as he pulls away for a moment to open the door for him and incline his head toward the passenger seat.
“Get in.”
“Aw, what? No super-speed for me tonight? I wanted to teleport.”
Rolling his eyes at Alex’s pouted lower lip, Henry bodily shoves him into the vehicle and buckles him in.
“Unbelievable,” he mutters, shutting the door and then crossing to his own side with the speed of an average, perhaps a bit shaken, human — the only one of which he’s capable.
Alex commandeers the radio on the drive back to Henry’s flat, which is just about what Henry would have expected. It’s the most mundane act that Henry’s ever seen him carry out, and the way he fiddles with the knob for the volume makes something in Henry’s chest shift. Alex folds his legs up in the passenger seat and cranks up the heat, and Henry forces himself to look away.
He herds Alex through the lobby and into the elevator, thankful for the late hour giving them a clean trajectory for Henry’s floor. Henry stands pin-straight by the doors as they ascend, the weight of Alex’s gaze on him the entire time as he leans back casually against the adjacent wall.
The second they’re safely inside of the apartment he does up the lock and presses Alex’s back into the wood of the door, his hands immediately dropping to Alex’s waist. After a brief, chaste check to make sure that he doesn’t have anything else that could kill Henry hidden there, Henry drops onto a knee between his legs and checks his ankles, too.
“Woah, at least take me out to dinner first, sweetheart,” Alex chuckles, reaching down to card a hand through his hair.
Henry slaps it away. “I’m making sure you don’t have another weapon concealed somewhere.”
“Well that’s significantly less fun,” Alex frowns as he stands again, hands dropping back to his sides. “And here I was thinking I was about to get lucky.”
“You’re awfully lively for someone who is actively dying of hemotoxin poisoning,” Henry notes, slipping off his coat and hanging it on the hook once he’s a bit more comfortable having his back turned to Alex.
“Hey. I’m being proactive, aren’t I? I tracked you down. You do the rest.”
“What is it they say—” Henry feigns thoughtfulness, turning back to him, “don’t bite the hand that feeds you?”
Alex smirks. “Right back at you, sweetheart.”
Henry hesitates in the entryway, tense air hovering between them. With a measured movement, Henry raises his fingers to his opposing hand and grips the cool ring wrapped around his pinky, easing in a breath simply for the familiar comfort of feeling his ribs expand as he eases it off and drops it on the side table by his keys. He straightens his shoulders and raises a brow in Alex’s direction.
With mild surprise, Alex bobs his head at the action, then reaches up in a single movement to raise his necklace up and over his head. It lands right next to Henry’s ring on the table with a metallic clang.
No defenses. Henry’s fingers twitch by his sides. Alex is the first one to step forward.
“Where do you want me?”
“I suppose the sofa is fine,” Henry attempts to keep his voice even. “You can sit on my lap—”
“Hang on,” Alex holds up a hand, “why your lap? I can just hold my wrist out and—”
The flash of fear in his eyes is unsettling at best. Henry tries to be gentle. “Hemotoxins must be extracted from the jugular vein, Alex. I’d figured you wouldn’t want to be underneath me.”
“Oh. Right.” Alex blinks several times at the floor and sways sideways, pressing a hand against the wall. “Forgot.”
This is, decidedly, not good. Alex is always on top of his facts, even when they’re the absolute last thing Henry cares to hear, and he never admits defeat. Henry wonders vaguely how he’s even managed to wait this long, then decides he should likely stop wondering and do something about it.
“Come on,” he says, reaching out to grip Alex’s elbow lightly and tug him toward the sofa. Henry drops down onto the cushion and leans back enough for Alex to make himself comfortable, but he doesn’t bother with grace. Or coordination.
He lands in a heap on Henry’s lap, a mess of lithe limbs and a nest of black curls halfway caught in Henry’s mouth as he wriggles around, his fingers digging into Alex’s hips in an unsuccessful attempt to settle him.
“Are you messy?”
Henry pauses. “Excuse me?”
“When you feed,” Alex reiterates with a huff, “are you messy?”
“No?” Henry furrows a brow.
“Okay. Fuck. Just checking,” he scoffs, smoothing a hand over his own chest. His heartbeat is far quicker than it should be. “I like this shirt.”
“You’re welcome to take it off, if you’d like.”
“Well, shit, H. Maybe you’re tryin’ to get me out of my clothes after all—oof!”
He won’t quit squirming, so Henry wraps both arms around his waist and arranges a leg on either side of himself until Alex is finally sitting somewhat normally and Henry’s able to reach his neck, no longer preoccupied with being worried about a knee to his groin or stomach.
“Damn. Pushy,” Alex grumbles.
“Dying.”
“Undead.”
“Classy.”
“That’s me.”
“Hush.” Biting back a groan, Henry swallows his irritation and reaches between them to undo several more of Alex’s buttons until he can get a hand underneath the fabric. He glances up to meet his eye. “Preference on which side?”
“I don’t think so?”
Henry pushes the shirt off of the shoulder nearest to him and watches the way goosebumps erupt on Alex’s skin. He shivers again, lightly, on Henry’s lap, his fingers curled into the sleeve of Henry’s own shirt on his bicep. Henry’s hand on his waist tightens.
Carefully, Henry lifts his other arm to press the pad of his thumb to the side of Alex’s neck, hears Alex hiss in a breath but raise his chin for Henry to observe nonetheless. It’s relatively easy to find the vein. Henry’s done this a million times. But the stakes are higher with Alex’s predicament — if Henry’s the slightest bit off there’s a chance he won’t be able to drain all of the toxin, and anything left behind could be deadly. Quickly.
Alex might just be the singular bane of Henry’s miserable existence, but Henry will be damned if he lets him die.
He slides his hand to the side to grip the back of Alex’s neck loosely, and it’s a testament to how far gone he is that he seems to lean into the pressure.
“Sorry, I guess. If I like, taste bad or whatever,” Alex mutters, eyes fallen shut. Henry’s lips quirk.
“Have you typically received unpleasant reviews in the past?”
It’s a common draw for a hunter to use their blood to lure in their marks, and it’s highly effective despite years of attempting to form a resistance against it. If Henry were only a sliver of a weaker man, Alex would have succeeded in his initial mission, years ago now, the first time he’d ever approached Henry and they’d begun their little game of reluctant predator and ardent prey.
Moments later, Alex is still silent. When Henry drags his gaze up from the warm expanse of Alex’s chest and collarbone, his brows have dipped, a concentrated divot in between them and a glazed look in his eye. It’s almost as if…
“No one’s ever tasted you before?” Henry whispers.
He can feel Alex’s teeth grit under his fingertips. “Don’t make it a big deal.”
It’s good advice. If Henry lingers on it for too long, if he thinks about how he’ll be the first, perhaps even the only, to have the privilege of knowing what he tastes like after years of nothing but believing it an impossibility, he may simply expire.
He clears his throat and grips Alex’s neck more firmly.
“Are you ready?”
With Alex’s short nod, Henry rolls his own shoulders and relaxes his jaw, letting his mouth part comfortably as prickling heat rolls through him and his fangs drop down to graze his lower lip. He noses along the side of Alex’s jaw, the scent of him much stronger here and without his ring to dull the potency. His lashes flutter against Alex’s skin as he lets his eyes fall shut, drawn into him.
His upper lip grazes thrumming warmth and Alex says, “Wait.” Henry pulls back.
“What is it?”
“What happens if you don’t stop,” Alex asks.
“I won’t go completely mindless, Alex,” he says. “I’ll know when to stop.”
Henry watches white teeth sink into the deep pink of his lips, reddened from Alex worrying it so much. “But what if you don’t?”
“I—I suppose you can fetch your necklace, if that would make you more comfortable,” Henry relents.
There’s a beat of thoughtful silence between them, until Alex eventually shakes his head. “No. That’s—that wouldn’t be fair. Let’s just—let’s do it.”
“Alex—”
He tilts his head to the side again so Henry can get to his neck, glancing away. “I mean it. I’m fine. Seriously.”
“Alex,” he repeats, more intentionally this time, “you have my word, alright? I know that that doesn’t mean much to you, but I have nothing to gain from hurting you. I never have.”
For a moment, the only sound around them is Alex’s heartbeat. Then, slowly, he nods.
“Okay,” he whispers. “Thank you.”
Henry’s fingertips delve further into his curls and tug his head gently to the side a bit more, and he presses his lips to the side of Alex’s neck and holds them there for a moment until he calms. It has the desired effect — Alex hisses in a breath, but his spine curves into Henry’s grip even more easily, his body surrendering to each point of contact.
He allows his lips to part more, his tongue dragging along the line of the vein and Alex’s sweet skin, a bit of sweat and from the club and cologne disappearing the more that Henry laves at him, smoothing wet kisses to the spot.
A shaky hand comes to rest on Henry’s shoulder, Alex’s breath halting in his throat as Henry’s teeth nick him, drawing a dot of blood to the surface. It’s not enough to savor the taste—or to taste Alex at all, really—but he thinks, even more so when Alex audibly whimpers, that he’s ready.
He presses one last barely-there kiss to the spot before he pulls his lips back to expose his canines, Alex’s skin yielding beautifully.
As does the rest of him. He tenses briefly before he sinks further into Henry’s arms, the hand on his shoulder making its way up into his hair. Henry holds him tighter.
He tastes the venom first. It’s thick from how long it’s been accumulating and it doesn’t taste particularly pleasant, but Henry’s glad for the fact that he’d picked a seemingly good spot that will remove it fairly quickly.
Then, slowly, the tacky, near sourness of the venom fades and Henry can taste nothing but sweetness underneath. Alex is warm and lively, rich and full with just a hint of something spicier as well. And smooth, so smooth without any of the cloying toxin left behind, and Henry could stay right here for ages, for days, for an eternity if allowed, drowning in the taste without bothering to come up for air.
But that isn’t what this is.
Henry isn’t an animal. Alex had promised him enough to fill and that’s it. Henry makes sure the next several small, slow pulls are gentle and indulgent, his tongue urging the pathway over his taste buds and down his throat to meet the moan that’s been trapped there since the moment Alex had fallen onto his lap.
Alex seems to realize that the poison’s been drained, and he shifts atop Henry’s thighs, strength returning to his limbs. His hand slides up into Henry’s hair and Henry’s certain he’s going to be roughly pulled away at any moment.
He’s pulled closer instead. He can hear Alex gasp right beside his ear, the distant groan as his grip tightens and spans out wherever he can reach. And he’s—he’s enjoying this, Henry realizes.
It’s a known fact that a bloodline like Alex’s would be enticing for Henry, but there’s never been anything to suggest that it could work the other way around too. Alex grinds pointedly forward in Henry’s lap, his cock half hard in his trousers, and Henry thinks there might be something to that.
Henry’s hands grip onto his hips to stop him from moving, but it seems to encourage Alex even more. He moans outright at the feeling of Henry’s fingertips digging into his skin and Henry summons every last shred of willpower to focus, taking only what he needs. Alex whispers something akin to please in his ear, and Henry allows himself one last drag of his tongue before he pulls away, smoothing his lips over the spot where two thin puncture wounds remain, the skin around them slightly pink.
Wrenching his head back, Henry feels the fullness hit him, glancing at Alex through half-lidded eyes. The hand in his hair tightens again as Alex tries to pull him back, a frustrated noise caught between his teeth.
“Why’d you stop?” he murmurs, his own eyes dazed as he frowns down at Henry.
“Venom’s gone,” Henry rasps, raising his upper lip as his canines retract. “I’ve got my fill. That’s what we agreed to.”
Slipping both hands to Henry’s shoulders again, Alex leans down over him and bumps their noses together, less than a breath away from his lips. He makes sure Henry’s watching before he grinds his own hips against Henry’s growing hardness, his mouth falling open and his face flushed more than Henry’s ever seen it before, lashes fluttering on his cheeks.
“And if I said I wanted more?” Alex whispers.
Henry squeezes his eyes shut at the ceiling and wills himself not to give in. He swallows, the last of Alex’s taste still lingering on his tongue, and faces him firmly. “I would tell you that your body still needs time to rest and heal.”
Alex chuckles against him. “Perfect. I’ll let you do all the work, sweetheart.” He reaches down to slide a finger around the buckle of Henry’s belt, and Henry grabs his wrist before he can undo it.
“Alex, no,” he says gently. “If you want me after this, you know where to find me. But I won’t do this while you’re not in the right headspace to consent.”
Some part of Henry’s sentiment must get to him, and Alex goes stock still on his lap, his hand falling away. His slightly narrowed eyes roam over Henry’s face for a second.
“You know I can’t be influenced by you, even without the necklace. It doesn’t work.”
“If you want me after this,” Henry repeats, his grip softening, “you know where to find me. Alright?”
The shift is instantaneous. Alex’s lip curls and brings his arms up to his chest, putting distance between them without actually moving off of his lap as he buttons up his shirt again.
“You know, you could have just said you didn’t want me. You really don’t have to go all chivalrous gentleman and shit. We both know you’re more than capable of taking what you want.”
“It is not that I don’t want you,” Henry attempts not to sound exasperated. “Despite my better judgment—and the fact that I’d need both hands to count the amount of instances in which you’ve tried to end my existence—there hasn’t been a single moment where I haven’t wanted you.”
Alex’s jaw works to one side as he finishes up the last of the buttons, refusing to meet his eye. He moves to stand and Henry prevents him from it.
“Let me go, Henry.”
“No.”
“You are aware that you’re actively contradicting yourself right now, right?” Alex spits, cutting him a glare. “I hate to break it to you if you changed your mind, but your rejection kinda killed the mood.”
“I didn’t reject you,” Henry huffs. “If you try to stand on your own right now you’ll fall over. I had to take quite a bit to ensure the toxin was gone, and I’ve fed from you as well.”
“I won’t fucking fall over.”
Raising his hands in defense, Henry lets him go. Alex pushes off of his chest and takes a single step onto Henry’s floor before he crumbles. Henry catches him on the way down.
Grumbling in his arms the whole way, Alex seems to be succumbing to the exhaustion by the time Henry has him laid out across the cushions, a pillow stuffed underneath his neck. He shifts and turns onto his side, his brows still furrowed to meet his frown.
Eyes still closed, he maintains his stand. “M’fine.”
“Just sleep, Alex,” Henry says quietly, draping a throw blanket over him and tucking it under his side. “Get some rest. You’ll be safe here.”
It isn’t until he’s halfway across the room, making a half-bed out of his own armchair that he receives any response; muddled and petulant, but softer at the least.
“Thanks.”
Henry lets his head fall over the back of the chair behind him as he attempts to get comfortable, his hands clasped over his stomach. His lips twitch, threatening a rare smile.
“Don’t make it a big deal.”
He hears Alex snoring minutes later, no doubt getting drool all over his throw pillow, but he presumes that’s an issue for tomorrow. The toxin’s been in his system long enough that he’ll probably be out for a while as it recuperates and heals.
Henry hardly ever sleeps anymore. Even less of the time does he dream. But he thinks back over the night, unexpected from start to finish, and wonders if perhaps he’d made the entire thing up in his head. It’s minutes before he turns his cheek and surrenders, full and sated, and tries desperately to hold onto the feeling.
It’s light outside the windows when Henry wakes with a crick in his neck and a sweet aftertaste on his tongue, the apartment eerily quiet. He sits up with a jolt, eyes landing on the sofa where Alex had fallen asleep the night before.
It’s empty now, the blanket folded and draped over the back, the pillow perfectly fluffed and situated in the corner near the arm, not even a dent in the cushion. Throwing his own blanket off, Henry stands and crosses over to the table in the entryway, touching the bare skin of his pinky finger out of nervous habit.
The air is cold, Alex’s scent distant. He’d left hours ago, then. His suspicions are confirmed, right there on the stretch of empty wood in front of him.
All gone: Alex, the necklace, and Henry’s ring, too.
He really should have known.
It’s a good thing that Alex’s blood is so potent, Henry thinks. Because, for all the time he spent waiting in his apartment, certain that Alex would give in and return eventually, it doesn’t happen. Henry’s hunger is sated more than it would have been if he’d only had regular blood, but even Alex’s begins to fade eventually.
The first week is fine. Henry tries to avoid going out if he can help it. It’s been a long time since he hasn’t had the weight of gold wrapped around his finger, lined with enough shield to keep his more primal instincts at bay and allow him to function almost completely normally in society. Alex had known precisely what he was doing taking it from him, but Henry’s just not sure what the goal was supposed to be.
The second and third weeks pass slowly. Henry gets antsy being caught up in the flat so he takes small walks at times where he’s certain he won’t run into anyone else. He doesn’t catch Alex’s scent even once.
The fourth and fifth he locks himself inside again. He’s agitated and he’s reluctant to admit that he’s nervous, a bit, on edge without knowing when—or if—Alex plans to return. He’s angry with himself for allowing it to happen in the first place.
By the sixth week, Alex’s blood has started to wear off. Henry can feel it ebbing away as the days go by, his hunger flaring to life somewhere around the start of week seven. He’s reduced down to a disgruntled hermit who is capable of nothing other than the most basic tasks, and when he actually manages to fall into a fitful sleep, he dreams of nothing but Alex the entire way through.
It ignites the hunger further, as it usually does when his thoughts begin to take Alex’s shape. Only before, Henry could lie to himself. Could pretend that perhaps the blood of a hunter wasn’t all it was rumored to be, could tell himself that it was such an impossible thing in the first place that it’d do him no good to imagine.
But now—now he knows what Alex tastes like. He’d had enough control before that he trusted himself to drink from Alex without the protection of the shield, but after weeks of going without, Henry is running out of options. He can’t simply find someone else, not without the ring. And not that he’d prefer anyone else, anyway.
The singular plus side to going without it is that his senses are heightened enough that Alex’s scent has become clearer and clearer. He’s back at the club where all of this started when Henry leaves his apartment in search of him and his own sanity, and Henry makes it across town in record time.
The lights are too bright, the music too loud. The bass seems to be pounding inside of his bones when Henry slips past the throng of people near the dark entryway, hands shoved into his pockets and jaw aching, canines threatening to extend the less distance there is between him and what his body craves.
Henry’s heard horror stories of vampires who become attached to bloodlines like Alex’s. The amount of control they wield once they’ve made their initial pull, how difficult it is to be satisfied with the taste of what once was enough and now never will be again.
And yet, here he is, going willingly. He should have known that nothing with Alex could truly be no strings attached.
It’s crowded tonight, Henry’s heightened senses overwhelmed. He uses Alex’s presence like a compass before he can even see him. It pulls him to the mass of bodies on the dancefloor, slipping like a shadow between greedy hands and quick feet.
Right there in the middle underneath the lights, he finds Alex. Not only Alex, though — Alex with fingers curled into his hips, a torso shoved against his own, a broad body obstructing Henry’s view. Henry—rather ironically, he’s aware—sees red.
He tells himself it’s because he’s incensed that Alex could be here, so carefree and nonchalant knowing fully the extent of what he’s put Henry through these last few weeks. How dare he get to walk around as if he isn’t in possession of something vital to Henry’s livelihood right after he’d saved Alex’s? It feels like he’s flaunting it, knowing Henry would come and find him eventually. He’s always enjoyed being watched. Being admired.
He tells himself it isn’t also because he’d rather the hands on Alex right now be his own. There’s no time to decide if he believes it or not.
Henry walks up to the pair without hesitating, bodily shoves the other man to the side and into yet another couple, and wraps his fist in the material at Alex’s shoulders, pushing him back through everyone else until he bounces hard against the wall behind him with a huff.
“Hey, H. Fancy seeing you here,” Alex grins, unperturbed by his antics.
“Where is it,” Henry grits.
Humming, Alex tilts his head to the side, bathed solely in Henry’s shadow. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”
Henry shoves him lightly again. With Alex in his sights, his control is rapidly waning. “I don’t have time for this, Alexander. It’s been weeks.”
“Oh, I’m aware,” he smiles.
A strangled noise lodges itself in Henry’s throat. “Good. So you’re also aware of the fact that you’ve stolen the one thing that has the power to prevent me from becoming entirely depraved, then.”
“Stolen is a bit strong, I think,” Alex frowns. “I simply borrowed it because, yes, I know what it does. I know your hunger comes back faster without it. And I also happen to know that you think I’m particularly sweet.”
His hands make their way up Henry’s arms as he talks, resting on top of his shoulders just like last time, when Alex was in his arms, was all he could think about, all he could taste—
“Did you forget the part where it also dulls my humanity?”
“Is that a problem?”
“Yes, it’s a bloody problem,” Henry snaps.
Alex’s eyes narrow. “Why? Because you might actually go after what you claim to want?”
“Because I might hurt you.”
“Says the man who saved my life last month and very gently wrapped me up on his couch for a nap afterward,” Alex argues.
Henry hangs his head as a wave of desperate hunger flares up inside of him again, squeezing his eyes shut against the current. He feels Alex lean up on his toes, his arms circled around Henry’s shoulders, his lips grazing Henry’s skin.
“I gave you what you wanted, Alex,” Henry murmurs, defeated. “You said we could go back to our normal lives after this. I did what you asked.”
“Well, now I want more,” Alex presses into his collarbone. Henry feels it when he tilts his head up, the warm breath on the side of his jaw. “Are you going to tell me you don’t?”
Henry shakes his head on instinct. “You already know what I want. But that doesn’t mean I get to have it.”
“I’m of sound mind, H. I haven’t been drinking. You’d be able to smell it on me. Taste it, too, if we got that far.” Alex smiles lightly again, his palm against Henry’s cheek to turn his face. “You have my permission now, which is what you said was holding you back before. What else is there? Do I need to go get myself mortally wounded again just to get your lips back on me?”
“Do not,” Henry nearly begs. Alex’s smile widens.
“Come on.” He coasts a hand through Henry’s hair. “What is it, H?”
Slowly, Henry’s fists unfurl from Alex’s shirt and slip down, over his chest, into the dip of his waist where they settle. The music is still too loud but here, in the darkness where he can focus solely on Alex, the clouds inside of his head seem to part again. He feels a bit clearer the more he tunes everything else out, and he hardly even notices that Alex is moving again until there’re fingers closing in around his wrist, drawing it up between their bodies.
Reaching up to his own neck, Alex pulls his necklace out from underneath the collar of his shirt. The glint of Henry’s ring catches his eye as Alex slides it off the chain and lifts Henry’s hand, sliding it back onto his finger.
All at once, the rest of Henry’s strength comes back, his regular senses along with it. The noise fades and the desperation dulls down to an ache.
Henry wants him just as much as he did moments before.
Alex lowers their hands but doesn’t let go. “There. You can tell me you don’t want me, you know. You have your ring now and we can just— go back to normal. Whatever.” He shrugs, then drags his gaze back up to Henry’s. “But I know that’s not what I want, and I really don’t think it’s what you want either.”
It might be the most genuine Alex has ever been before. Henry doesn’t need any heightened senses to see it — the nerves caught inside of his lower lip, the crease above his brows, his flickering eyes that typically refuse to look away.
Henry should leave him here. Should yell at him, probably, for what he’s done. How much he could have endangered them both based on an inkling that Henry might or might not follow him, how much he’d put at risk.
“You are, without a doubt, the single most infuriating man I have ever met,” Henry tells him. Just to be clear.
“Man. You really know how to charm your way into a guy’s carotid—”
Henry kisses him before he can finish, his hand spanning the length of Alex’s lower back to pull him in closer. He kisses much the same as he does anything else, with the same urgency and thoroughness Henry might expect from a mission. He’s determined, and now that he has permission, Alex’s hands are everywhere, on his shoulders, down his arms, over his chest and around his waist. He tastes vaguely like he had when Henry drank from him weeks before, but the wet, hot pushback of his tongue against Henry’s is yet another thing he’d thought surely would always be an impossibility.
He’s the one to pull away first, panting as his fingertips barely dip below the line of Henry’s belt and touch smooth skin, sticky from the humid dancefloor. He leans up again until his lips graze Henry’s ear, the lobe caught between his teeth.
“Take me to yours,” he breathes.
“You wouldn’t prefer the bathrooms?” Henry returns, unable to keep from teasing him a bit.
Alex cuts him a look much like the one Henry’d had when he suggested feeding here before. It turns much darker and more suggestive fairly quickly though, and he reaches out to tangle their fingers together again, pausing to press the words right into his mouth before tugging Henry toward the exit.
“It’s concerning how little you seem to notice the effect you have on people, sweetheart.”
They stumble through the remaining patrons until they reach the outside again, and Alex is visibly put off by the fact that they’d both neglected to drive their own cars here. He groans and leans his weight into Henry’s side as they take off in the direction of his flat.
“You sure that whole super-speed thing isn’t real? ‘Cause it’d be really useful right about now. I won’t tell anyone. Promise.”
Henry spares him a glance. “Desperate, are we?”
“Yes,” Alex grumbles, shoving him. “We are.”
He doesn’t argue, lets himself be pulled the rest of the way, a burst of movement amidst the calm city streets. For a long time, he’d despised Alex for being everything he was not. Bold, brave, willing to stand up for what he believed in, even if it meant almost certain death.
Alex was alive. And Henry would never be able to be that again. He’s never been very good at living in the moment.
But Alex always keeps him there, never lets him get ahead of himself or get lost in the hazy grayness of the past. From the moment they’d met, Alex takes up every one of his senses. It would be incredibly dangerous, really, if Henry weren’t so seasoned.
He’ll never tell a soul that he’d seeked him out a handful of times simply because the rush of Alex on top of him, a crooked grin and a hand around his throat, was a thousand times more desirable than the mundane of his routine, a day rolling into another into another. He’ll never tell, can’t tell, that he’s begun to separate his own lifetime into before and after.
And then there is, of course, whatever this is.
“Take off your clothes,” Alex breathes into his open mouth, pushing him up against the door of Henry’s flat once they’re inside.
“Bossy,” Henry murmurs. He’s reaching for his coat regardless.
With a cocky wink Henry’s sure no one else would be able to pull off, Alex squeezes his bicep once more before he steps back himself and kicks off his shoes. He uses a single hand to strip his own shirt over his head and drop it to the floor, then undoes his belt and pushes his trousers along with them, kicking them both aside when he’s finished.
Having only just begun to remove his own shirt, Henry raises a brow at his enthusiasm.
“What?” Alex asks. “I thought I’d make your weapons-check a little easier. No offense. It’s just faster this way, y’know?”
“Of course,” Henry agrees.
Without actually giving Henry any time to peruse his body for weapons, Alex steps forward again, clad in only his necklace and his tight black boxers, and presses the heat of himself up against Henry’s torso as he bats his hands away and begins undressing him himself.
Henry’s lips twitch, letting his hands fall to the side. It’s likely best not to get in his way, he thinks.
Alex’s fingers are nearly hot against Henry’s skin when they press up against his abdomen, pulling his shirt from his trousers and spanning over the sides of Henry’s hips indulgently. They both exhale, Alex out of necessity and Henry because he needs to ground himself, damnit, before he reaches up again to push the fabric off of his shoulders completely.
He pauses there for a moment, his eyes glazed and tongue dipping out to wet his lips, before he raises his gaze to Henry’s and yanks him forward.
“Come the fuck here,” he gasps, sealing their mouths together again.
It’s too easy to slip a hand around Alex’s slim waist, to pull him in close and count the notches of his spine underneath his fingertips. He’d thought, in the fleeting moments he’d allowed himself to envision Alex in this way, that perhaps he would be so overcome with his hunger that nothing else would matter.
He’d been mistaken. Alex is everywhere, pushing and tugging him closer, hard around the edges but soft under Henry’s palms and so eager , his thumb pressed to the side of Henry’s jaw. The scent of him, the knowledge of the blood running through his veins that Henry has tasted before, isn’t any more enticing than the rest of him is. Henry feels a wayward sting of guilt for wanting to hold him close enough to nearly consume him, but Alex’s tongue chases his own and his teeth sink into Henry’s lower lip enough to cut, and Henry thinks perhaps he isn’t alone in his thinking.
“Bedroom?” Alex asks once he’s got Henry’s belt undone, a hand slid inside.
“Behind you. Down the hall,” Henry returns.
He doesn’t bother kicking the door shut behind them when they make it there, too preoccupied with imagining the echo of Alex’s noises drifting through the walls. He hopes they memorize them somehow, for the times when the silence is near deafening.
Alex walks them backward until he hits the bed, and then promptly spins them and pushes Henry back onto the end of the mattress. He works his trousers the rest of the way off, his shoes as well, and looms over him with a coy smile, pressing one knee into the sheets beside Henry’s hip.
Henry’s hands roam as Alex leans down to kiss him again; the muscles in his arms, the span of his shoulder blades, his dark pink nipples and toned stomach, firm from years of training. Henry isn’t sure if he’d even needed it. Alex seems to have a natural knack for just about anything he does. It would be infuriating if Henry weren’t so thankful for it keeping him alive.
His fingertips drift down, sliding along the line of Alex’s boxers. He’s smooth here save for the trail of hair underneath his navel, and Henry intends to follow it, but he can't help pausing for a moment when the backs of his knuckles graze over a jagged scar just above his hip bone.
The mark. The stab wound. The thing that’d had Alex seeking him out for the first time, instead of always the other way around. Henry’d never imagined he’d feel such reverence for a patch of red, raised skin. He drags his thumb over it softly as his tongue grazes the back of Alex’s teeth, their mouths wet and Alex’s chest heaving.
Alex’s fingers circle his wrist lightly, but they don’t pull him away.
“I’m okay,” he whispers, pulling back enough to look Henry in the eye when he says it.
Henry says, “I know,” but he hadn’t realized just how much he’d needed to before this moment.
They lose themselves in each other again, Henry’s hand gripping the back of his neck as he rolls to the side and settles Alex underneath him. He goes easily but not without his own brand of recompense, his nails dragging up the length of Henry’s back, a hiss pressed into Alex’s mouth.
Alex keeps a hand in Henry’s hair as he lowers himself, curious as to what he’s able to get away with. Alex doesn’t stop him when he grazes his lips over his jaw or when he goes further, mapping out the familiar skin on the side of his neck with his mouth.
In fact, he seems quite keen about the whole thing.
“Fuck,” he groans, tipping his chin back even further.
Henry feels his legs wrap around his hips, pulling him down further. Alex uses the leverage to grind his hips up, their cocks rutting together through the material of their boxers. Henry lets a similar sound leave his own lips as he pushes down into him, his teeth nipping at Alex’s collarbone.
“Indeed,” Henry hums against him.
“If you kill me I’ll fucking kill you,” Alex swears, his grip on Henry’s hair tightening.
Henry glances up at him from his chest now, his lower lip catching briefly on the thin vial of vervain with a raised brow. “I’d expect nothing less.”
A breathless laugh tumbles out above him, and Alex wrenches his chin back down to his chest to give him a syrupy grin, blinking heavily as he runs a finger over Henry’s mouth and delves it inside until Henry takes it between his teeth, too.
“You know me so well,” he croons.
Whatever sweetness in his tone is quickly overpowered by the pointed roll of his hips up into Henry’s sternum. Henry presses a hand to the unblemished one and shoves it back down into the bed. Alex shudders beneath him.
When he tugs on the band of Alex’s boxers and receives a rushed nod in response, he lifts himself up far enough to peel them off of Alex’s legs before he lays back down in between the split of his thighs. He presses his lips to one of them indulgently, trailing them up and past Alex’s hard, leaking cock until he can graze them chastely over the scar as well.
He can see Alex’s lips part with a comment, and wraps a hand around the base of his cock before whatever it is can make its way out into the air between them. Alex’s back arches as if Henry’s burned him, but he’s just as quick to chase the touch.
It’s more than just a rush to have the full weight of Alex’s undivided attention when Henry gratuitously wets the side of Alex’s cock with his tongue, from his own curved fingers to the very tip. Just the slight taste of him there is enough to drive Henry wild, but he’s not ready to give in. Not just yet.
He taps the head of Alex’s cock against his lower lip, forcing an exhale just to watch the way it makes Alex shudder, shifting restlessly as he watches Henry with rapt eyes. Henry raises his fist but doesn’t loosen it, stroking him slowly.
“What do you want, Alex?”
“Fuck,” Alex says again, tossing his head to the side. “Whatever you want. Just—give me something. Anything.”
He’s going to regret that, probably. Henry tucks a grin into the spot where his hip meets his thigh.
When he still refuses to quicken his pace, Alex gets impatient and huffs, bending a knee and pressing the sole of his foot to Henry’s shoulder to push him back. Once he’s standing at the end of the bed again, Alex sits up and leans forward, very determined as he works the last remaining piece of fabric off of Henry’s body and to the floor.
Blinking up at him, Alex bends his head and kisses wetly at his abdomen, both hands hooked on either side of Henry’s waist. He must know what he looks like, Henry thinks, all lewd eyes and slick lips and the vision of Henry’s most forbidden fantasies—this is perhaps more lethal than anything else Alex has ever done to him. Henry refuses to tell him as much.
Instead, he slips his own fingers into Alex’s hair and grips down by the root, feeling the thickness of the curls between his knuckles. He tugs experimentally and watches as Alex’s head immediately follows the desired pathway, regardless of the heatless glare he receives in response.
His skin is wet with Alex’s spit by the time he finally gets a hand around Henry’s cock, less ambitious than Henry was but perfect nonetheless. He mouths up the side of him and takes his time doing it, his eyes fallen shut by the time Henry pulls his overwhelmed gaze back from the ceiling to watch him.
When Alex takes him in his mouth it isn’t anything like what Henry has conjured up in his head in the past. It’s so much warmer, so much tighter, and Alex is here, his touch and his scent and his smart mouth finally silent as he works more of Henry’s cock into his throat as if he were made for it. If Henry weren’t already dead, he’s certain this would do it.
“Good, Alex,” he breathes, stroking a hand through his hair again. “That’s it. You can take more for me, can’t you?”
It has the desired effect. Alex sucks in a breath through his nose and eases himself down further, nearly half of Henry’s generous length stretching his lips. Henry marvels at it, using his free hand to rub at the seam.
It’s been a long time since Henry’d felt like prolonging any sort of intimacy. Typically it’s just a side effect of feeding, a mutually pleasant exchange for both parties before they go their separate ways. Henry gets to feed, and he’s alright to supply an orgasm in thanks if preferred. Nothing with Alex could ever be quite so clinical.
Alex’s grip tightens briefly before it lowers, spanning out over his hips and then dropping down to grab the back of Henry’s ass. His hands are smaller but his fingers are long , and the span of them, digging into thick flesh and teasing along the seam at the same time, is dizzying. Henry keeps a close eye on him, shallowly fucking himself in and out of Alex’s willing mouth until it earns him a pleased, muffled moan. He smooths his thumb over the furrow of Alex’s focused brow and wonders why they hadn’t been doing this before.
Most likely because of Henry’s feelings and the fact that, no matter how much he wants, he and Alex can never be a realistic possibility.
Then again, he’d never considered this to be possible either.
Henry will deal with it later. He has time.
“Can’t believe this is happening,” Henry says quietly, without even really meaning to.
Below him, Alex pulls off with a wet noise, sucking his lower lip into his mouth as he lets go of Henry’s cock to stroke him firmly instead. He grins.
“I can.”
“Pardon?” Henry tilts his head. “This is what you were envisioning when you had a knife to my throat last summer? Or the year before that when you threatened to use this on me?” He loops a finger around the chain of Alex’s necklace and tugs.
“You’re really having a hard time letting that go, huh?”
“You’re right. Perhaps it was when you found me in Paris and attempted to throw me off the top of the Louvre that you found yourself lost in the thrall of my charm and good looks.”
“All of that was just foreplay, sweetheart,” Alex drawls, cataloging Henry’s moves and adjusting his grip accordingly, until conversation drifts further and further from Henry’s mind. “Had to see if you’d be able to handle me. It’s a process.”
“I think I handle you fairly well. Every time you’ve bested me in the past it’s because I’ve allowed you to have the upper hand, so—”
“Bullshit,” Alex laughs, “you have not. God, you’re such a sore loser.”
“I’m not sure either of us would qualify this as losing,” Henry murmurs. He pulls himself back out of Alex’s grip and bends until their faces are level, leaning a closed fist on the sheets beside him. He can feel the shudder of Alex’s breath against his lips, can almost pretend it’s his own. “Tell me, Alex. Do you think you can handle me?”
One of Alex’s shoulders barely raises, his eyes dropping to Henry’s lips. “Seems like a good time to find out, yeah?”
“Yes,” Henry agrees. “It does.”
He kisses Alex roughly as he pushes him up the mattress, chasing him as he goes. Once they’re at the headboard Henry drops down beside him and sits back against it and the pillows. Alex, having seemingly decided to go boneless, lets himself be manhandled up and onto his lap, and they both groan when their bare cocks slide together in their laps.
Henry grips him by the hips and pushes him back and sideways, until Alex is straddling one of his thighs instead. He smooths a kiss to the very corner of Alex’s wanting lips and swipes some of the hair back from his forehead, sweet in contrast with his next request.
“You said you were desperate,” Henry tugs him forward in a slow grind on his leg, “prove it.”
Another laugh gets caught in Alex’s throat, and he stiffens in his hold. “You’re not actually serious.”
“Oh, I am,” Henry assures, keeping his tone soft. “I know what desperate feels like. I’ve felt it the last month because of you. If you want to get off so badly, I fully intend to make you work for it. Don’t tell me you are unfamiliar with the concept of lex talionis, darling.”
“Eye for an eye? Really?” Alex asks. “S’that how we’re playing this?”
“Afraid so,” Henry feigns remorse. “I suppose I can make it a bit more enticing for you, however.”
“Oh, can you?”
“Mm,” he hums. He noses up the column of Alex’s neck until his heartbeat rises once more. “I’ve been waiting ages to hear you beg, darling. To know the sounds you make when you’re close, the way you look when you’re so lost in your pleasure you can’t possibly think of anything else,” Henry admits in a whisper, right beside his ear. He pulls the lobe gently between his teeth, waits for Alex’s gasp before he lets go and soothes it with his tongue. “So. You let me have this, and I’ll give you whatever you’d like in return.”
“Whatever I’d like, huh,” Alex breathes, considering.
“Sound like a fair trade?”
He chuckles. “Didn’t know you were so risky, sweetheart. What if I wanted you dead?”
“I think you’ve wanted that for quite a while,” Henry counters.
Alex pulls back the rest of the way, tugging Henry’s face from his neck to brush their noses together. He looks directly into Henry’s eyes as he kisses him, a barely-there touch.
“No,” he says. “I haven’t.”
Henry’s fingers curl around the back of his neck, kissing him properly this time so he won’t have to form any sort of coherent response for the confession. It feels too big for what they’re doing, too fast, but most things with Alex feel that way and if Henry’s learned anything from being around him sporadically these last several years, it’s that he’s going to jump into it headfirst anyway.
So he pushes the rest of the thoughts aside and refocuses, using his grip on Alex’s neck to pull him back only a hairsbreadth, heat simmering in his gut and spit smeared across their chins.
“Beg.”
“Fuck you,” Alex gasps, grinding down once on his thigh.
With a shake of his head, Henry drags his tongue over the spot where his canines are still concealed. Alex’s eyes track the movement. “Ah-ah. That’s not what I said, is it, Alex?”
“You’re so—” Alex huffs, even as he shifts forward, his cock dragging against Henry’s upper thigh and lower hip. “God. You’re so—”
“Take your time, darling,” Henry says.
“You’re so annoying,” Alex mutters. It’s underscored by a sharp moan as he ruts forward against Henry, taking the heat right out of his insult. “Fuck.”
“Feels good?”
It can’t possibly, Henry already knows. Alex is a bit wet at the tip but nowhere near enough for the slide of skin to be pleasurable or even remotely get him off. That was all intentional, though. Henry’s hands stay resolutely above his waist.
“You know it doesn’t,” Alex mumbles. He’s still grinding against Henry regardless. Henry smiles as he smooths a hand over his spine.
“It doesn’t?” Henry drags him closer at the same moment he hitches his leg up, making Alex’s rhythm suddenly and unexpectedly much rougher. “This doesn’t feel good, Alex?”
With a frustrated groan, Alex presses a palm to the side of his face and forces Henry’s head toward him. “Just fucking kiss me, H.”
They work up a steady back and forth, Henry’s tongue dancing over his lower lip, fucking into his mouth at the same pace that Alex’s hips work against his thigh. It’s already worlds better than Henry thought it would be, watching Alex lose his composure. He’s less careful as he begins to roll himself into any pressure he can get, a whimper stuck behind the confines of his teeth.
Henry’s about to goad him into admitting it when Alex surprises them both, ripping his mouth away from Henry’s after a particularly hard thrust.
“Please,” he gasps.
It’s Henry that curses this time. He slides the hand on Alex’s neck back up into his hair, tugging until he tilts back enough for Henry to lave kisses across his throat. His other hand tightens against Alex’s lower back, encouraging his increasingly frantic movements.
“That’s it,” he tells Alex, nipping at his jaw. “Just like that. What do you want, love? Tell me. Tell me and it’s yours.”
“You, fuck. Just want you.” He ruts openly against Henry’s thigh now, each of his muscles straining and working in tandem to chase the feeling. His mouth has fallen open now, his arms wrapped tightly around Henry’s shoulders for leverage. “Henry, please. Please. I need—need you to touch me, or—I need—”
Henry should keep him here a little longer. Should enjoy this to the absolute fullest extent possible, having Alex exactly where he’s always wanted him.
But maybe he’s weaker than he’d thought.
He doesn’t remember sucking the bruise onto Alex’s collarbone but it’s there in front of him when he pulls himself away, pressing the pad of his thumb to it just to watch the blood rush to the surface. Henry shushes him as he rolls them sideways, Alex underneath him once again.
He grinds down against Alex openly, pleased at the way his legs spread and lock to accommodate him and hold him there. His thigh and his hip are a sticky mess but it’s Alex—it’s Alex—so he doesn’t care, thinks he wouldn’t actually mind having the physical evidence of this branded into him somehow for the rest of his miserable, lonely eternity. There won’t be any coming back from this, he’s sure.
He drinks from Alex’s lips the way he would if it were the side of his neck, reverently and thoroughly, tasting every inch of him he’s allowed. He’s hot and flushed, writhing on Henry’s sheets and pent up with the building tension, Henry close behind him. And they could get themselves off this way, rutting against each other on the bed, but Henry’d promised him something, anything, and he intends to make good on that.
He pulls away long enough to ask, but Alex beats him to it.
“Bite me,” Alex begs. “That’s what I want.”
Henry swallows. “I—you’re certain?”
“I haven’t been able to think about anything else since the second I left,” Alex rushes. “Please, H. I—you don’t understand. I didn’t know it was going to feel like that. That it could feel like that. And I can’t get it out of my fucking head, I can’t think, I can't fucking sleep—”
Sealing their lips together again, Henry squeezes his side reassuringly and nods when he pulls away. “Okay. It’s okay.”
Struggling to prop himself on his elbows underneath him, Alex reaches up to rip the vial of vervain off of his head, tossing it blindly to the side. It lands somewhere to their left, the sound of the glass rolling on the hardwood settling in the air. Henry’s gaze darkens, and Alex falls willingly back into his sheets.
He has to steel himself for a moment at the sight, rolling his neck briefly as his jaw relaxes, his canines pushing at the surface as they begin to elongate. His eyes open again when Alex’s fingers press to the side of his cheek, curious.
“Does it hurt?” he asks.
Once they’re fully settled, Henry carefully grazes the tip of one of them with his tongue, allowing Alex to observe as he pleases. Most people aren’t usually interested in this part of it, but Alex has always been—and always will be—different from anyone else.
“No,” Henry says. “Are you comfortable like this?”
He’s half expecting Alex to shake his head, to want to be on top of him again. And Henry can’t entirely blame him for that, after all of the horror stories Alex has probably seen and heard in his lifetime. He’s certainly dealt with the worst of Henry’s kind before.
But Alex nods. Spreads his legs a little wider so Henry can move in a little closer. Tilts his chin up and to the side for the taking.
And then, once more, he says, “Please.”
Henry drops his head, presses his lips to the apple of Alex’s cheek, his temple, his cupid’s bow and his chin, the spot just below his ear that’d made him go mindless earlier in the night. By the time he’s settled his mouth over the side of Alex’s neck, his pulse is wild and unpredictable, but Henry doesn’t sense any fear. Only anticipation. Only want.
It’s foreign. Henry will mourn it for the rest of his existence.
He parts his lips and presses the blunt edge of his canines into the tender skin of Alex’s throat, holds himself there for a fraction of a second, and then sinks inside.
He thinks it’s a blur for both of them — that same sweet flavor that Henry’s been chasing the ghost of for the past several weeks comes back to him all at once, overtaking the entirety of his senses even with his ring on. Alex’s hands feel as if they’re all over him in the same moment, dragging across his shoulder blades, up his arms and in his hair, holding Henry still so he can work his hips up against him again for some relief.
Henry wholeheartedly agrees. His own desperation has returned, his mouth full and his body alight with the weight of his desire, the taste of Alex’s, the heady mix of them together. He slips a hand underneath Alex’s back to urge him on, grinding down against him as he follows his instincts.
He’s hyper aware of how much he’s already taken, careful to keep his pulls slow and measured so that Alex feels only pleasure in the process. In the brief intermissions he smooths his tongue over him, taking away any of the possibility of a remaining sting.
He feels Alex’s legs tighten around him, his calves pushing against Henry’s ass where they’re crossed at his ankles. His fingers twist and push Henry harder against his neck and his nails dig half-moons into Henry’s shoulder on the opposite side, and Henry knows it’s about to happen before Alex can even attempt a warning. Henry wants it to.
On his last pull, Henry sinks his teeth in as deep as they’ll go and takes a bit more than he had before, and the rush of it, he thinks, is what pushes Alex over the edge. It’s a wonder he manages to stay cognizant to work him through it before he’s falling into the abyss himself, pulling away from Alex’s neck with a deep groan as he shakes and spills over Alex’s spent, wet cock beneath him.
He’s not even managed to pull himself together yet when Alex yanks his head up and presses their mouths together, Henry’s lips and chin still smeared with his blood. He opens his mouth to tell Alex so but all it does is leave more room for his tongue to find its way inside and once Alex realizes what’s happening, he gasps, moans brokenly, and leans up to devour Henry’s mouth as if he’s starving for it.
Henry may well and truly expire tonight.
He lets Alex have his own fill as they come down together, until there’s only lazy rolls of hips and a messy back-and-forth of their tongues, Henry slumped onto his side as he hovers halfway above him. He doesn’t realize their fingers are tangled together and pressed into the sheets until sometime later, but neither of them make any move to pull away.
“Alright?” Henry murmurs eventually, letting Alex reorient himself. He hadn’t taken near enough to make him ill, but he reckons a head rush might be expected if he tries to move too quickly.
Alex peels his eyes open and leans up as if he might chase Henry’s lips one more time, then pauses and drops his head back to the pillow. He stares at Henry for a wordless minute, the beating of his heart dipping back down into normal range.
“You know,” he whispers, “I think both times you’ve done that might be the only times everything actually goes quiet.”
Before Henry can decipher if that’s a good thing or not, Alex is grazing a thumb over Henry’s lips once more, presumably to collect a stray drop of blood, and sucking it into his own mouth. He smiles softly at Henry’s expression, then untangles their fingers and, with the gusto of someone who hasn’t just had a slightly significant amount of blood taken from them, rolls to toss his legs over the side of Henry’s bed and sit up.
“Mind if I steal your shower, sweetheart?”
He stretches his arms over his head and cracks his neck, dragging his own fingertips over the place Henry’d bitten that’s already rapidly beginning to heal. Henry watches the muscles in his back shift and move underneath his skin. When Alex doesn’t receive an answer, he glances over his shoulder and raises a brow.
“Go ahead,” Henry rasps from the pillows.
“Thanks,” Alex says, standing experimentally as he finds his balance—surprisingly quickly. He saunters off toward Henry’s ensuite. “You might wanna join me, you know. Turns out you are kind of a messy eater.”
Raising a hand to his mouth subconsciously, Henry curses at the slickness still there. He pushes off the bed and heads for the bathroom as the shower turns on.
Alex isn’t capable of any sort of inhuman forces—that Henry knows of, anyway—but he certainly feels enthralled, led as if connected by string, as he follows Alex into the steam. The rest of it can wait.
The sound of someone picking his front door lock should likely be alarming. As it is, Henry stays precisely where he is on the couch, his ankles crossed on the coffee table and a book open in his lap. He’s perfectly capable of going to unlock it, but it’s become a part of the routine for them now.
There’s the slow squeak of the hinges and then the click of the lock back into place, a chain meeting wood. Footsteps in the entryway that pass the living room altogether to get to the kitchen, the suction of his refrigerator opening.
“Y’know, I’m not sure why I thought you’d suddenly have some gourmet fuckin’ meals in here.”
Henry turns a page in his novel. “I offered to have something brought in.”
“Generational wealth must be sweet, huh?” Alex calls back. “God. If you weren’t already dead I’d strangle you right now.”
“You know I enjoy a fair bit of choking, darling.”
The fridge closes, the cabinets smacking against each other as Alex rifles through them and Henry fights off a fond smile. Less than two minutes later there’s a weight dropping down on the cushion beside him, Alex’s legs tangled as he pulls them up and lays them across Henry’s lap until he puts his book away. He shoves a plate with two sandwiches between them.
Henry sighs. “I’ve told you—”
“I know, I know,” Alex rolls his eyes, “but it makes me feel weird to eat by myself. And it’s not like it hurts you. C’mon, H, be considerate. I’m a guest.”
“I suppose you’re right, though I can’t recall inviting you.” He picks up a corner of the sandwich, biting at the side as Alex does the same.
“It’s not me that needs an invitation, sweetheart.”
“It’s impolite to speak with your mouth full,” Henry reminds him.
Alex blinks. “Sorry. Not sure where you got the impression I’d like to be polite anywhere in your general presence.”
“Ah, but you can be so good for me, can’t you?”
He gets yet another preview of the insides of Alex’s sandwich when he sticks his tongue out. Henry swipes a crumb from his chin.
“Fuck you.”
“Perhaps later,” he offers. His eyes dip to Alex’s neckline, where the two puncture wounds from days before have long since healed but the bruise next to them remains. His taste is still a thick balm over Henry’s senses, and yet he’s a;ready craving more. That isn’t anything necessarily new, though.
Alex finishes his own sandwich and then steals Henry’s last bite as well. “Too slow, baby,” he says.
“I ought to drain you for that,” Henry tells him.
He shoves the plate away and seats himself atop Henry’s thighs, which is becoming rapidly familiar now. “You can try. I’ll go down to the farmer’s market and buy all the cloves of garlic they have and make you some nice decor to hang up around here.”
“Is this what they teach you in your training?” Henry cocks a brow. “Are there any other myths I need to dispel while you’re here? The only thing garlic will do is make the flat smell like garlic.”
“Ex-fucking-cuse you, you dick. I work hard to make this house a home.”
The grin spreads on his lips without his permission, but at least Alex mirrors it. He sways into Henry’s space, Henry’s hands sliding up onto his hips.
And landing on the firm backend of a dagger.
Henry sighs and swiftly removes it, dropping it to the floor behind Alex’s back. “You forgot one again.”
“I forgot?” Alex scoffs. “That’s on you, sweetheart. You forgot to check when I came in. At least I removed the one on my ankle. I’m thoughtful like that.”
“Mm, thank you, darling,” Henry hums. “Shall we go make sure you’ve not got anything else up your sleeve then?”
“Yes. I think we should. Thoroughly. You never know what might be up there, H. I might just be the death of you, after all.”
“Yes,” Henry echoes as Alex slips off of him and tugs him toward the hallway. “You just might be.”
Henry doesn’t know what forever looks like, but he knows he’s never really been more content with the now . He’d not have thought he’d ever believe anything of the sort, most especially not about Alex.
He eases the bedroom door shut and falls onto the mattress beside him and thinks he really should have known.