Chapter Text
“Say it!” Jasper seethed. Gone was the playful charm, his handsome face contorted with betrayal. He repeated the command, softer yet no less threatening. “Say it.”
“I don’t want to die,” Guy hissed. It was a truth, if not the truth that Jasper was trying to manhandle out of him.
Genuine confusion made the vampire pause. “What?”
Guy held Jasper’s eyes, even knowing what they might promise, having witnessed the horror that was his fucked-up menagerie of vampire minions. “I don’t,” Guy gritted, lips a soundless snarl of indignation. “Want to die.”
Jasper laughed, husky, infuriating. “Boring,” he dismissed. “Try again.”
“Fuck you!” Frustration and claustrophobia made Guy stupid. He never had been able to control that self-sabotaging instinct to hurl defiance in the face of anyone who thought they knew him. It had been that way since his mother had died, since the never-ending parade of pitying looks began. He didn’t need it. He didn’t want it. And all those friends that had pulled away like what had happened to him might be contagious? He didn’t need them, either.
“Oh poor little guy, what a saaad backstory you have. My mommy’s dead and I have no friends, boohoo. I had to do everything on my own and school is so hard when you’re the smartest most misunderstood boy in the room.”
Guy lunged up; their bodies collided. He tried to throw Jasper off, to wrench free only to cry out in pain when Jasper forced him back down. He pinned Guy’s wrists with renewed fervor, crushing him back down to the concrete. How dare he, Guy seethed. How dare he! “Fuck you! You don’t—”
“Yeah, we’ve covered that one already. Fuck me. You’re so original. You know what? This is the problem with boys like you, Guy. You’ve got a pretty face and all this curly hair,” Jasper's hand shot out and Guy couldn’t hold in the whimper at the lethal speed of it, one moment cinched around his wrist and the next trapping his jaw in a grip that made his teeth ache, “and one skill that’s more of a party trick, and you think it makes you special. You think the world will bend for you until you get what you want. Well puppy, I don’t fucking bend.”
Guy’s body was convulsive with fear, yet still that self-destructive tendency itched, a long-ago emotion or a reaction that may have once been healthy but had long since curdled until it was forever enflamed. He couldn’t quell it, the itch wouldn’t let him back down, that fire in him that burned and snarled and snapped when people tried to control him, tried to tell him who he was.
Helen had compiled some paltry file on him, watched him from afar through grade averages and doctor’s notes and thought that was enough to give her insight in his experience. No, no he didn’t accept that. She had no idea what it was like. She had no right to make demands of him, as Jasper was doing now. He was not a tool, as the man had so dismissively claimed in the car. Surviving foster care had made him strong and he was smart, because even if Helen had paid his university bills, he’d proven himself worth of the ivy leagues long before her check cleared. He didn’t owe Jasper an explanation about Doris, because if they weren’t partners in this then they were nothing at all.
He stared up into those unnaturally blue eyes. There was no other choice with that iron grip on his jaw. He said, voice snide even as it shook, “You seemed pretty eager for my help yesterday.”
A smile curled the corner of Jasper’s mouth, a mean one. “Eager. What an interesting choice of words. Eager, is it? Is that what you believe I feel for you?”
Guy didn’t realize Jasper’s face had descended closer to his until the vampire’s breath spooled over his forehead, ghosted across his cheeks. The air changed like the world had tilted and the direction of the wind now howled from an unnatural direction. Guy’s lips trembled. He feared the softness of the question more than the earlier rage. That at least he understood. He didn’t know what this was. The space between them sparked with an invisible charge. Adrenalin sang through his veins, making him cold. “I-I”
“I-I” Jasper mimicked his stutter, blowing the words into his ear, making Guy shiver. “You what Guy?”
“I don’t know what you want from me.” He squeezed his eyes closed.
“No,” Jasper barked and Guy winced. “Open your eyes and look at me, little man.” Reluctantly Guy obeyed, peering up into a gaze that pierced him, split him open. It stripped him, naked, exposed. “I want you,” Jasper continued, “to be honest with me. Isn’t that all I’ve ever asked?”
Jasper had asked for quite a bit more than that, all but drop-kicking him into peril the very next night after they’d met. Guy jutted his chin, but before he could argue Jasper’s lips brushed against his now exposed throat. He froze, all his carefully erected trappings of defiance dissolving instantly beneath the primal terror of incipient death. This was no longer a misunderstanding, no longer an authority doubting or demeaning him. He was prey. Teeth pricked his throat, teeth that promised a meaningless end in a cold, empty garage somewhere in a shitty London neighborhood where no one would see or remember or even care.
“Yes, let’s talk about tonight, shall we?” Guy’s mind was chaos. He had no control. It was impossible to suppress the memory that bobbed to the surface like a dead body in a lake. Unbidden he felt again that spike of dismay when Raglan had betrayed him, traded him like trussed-up sacrifice. The panic of realizing he’d never had any control of the situation. The bald vampire wrenching their faces close, the strength of those fingers able to crush his skull unless he proved his ability. His worth as a tool.
He didn’t think his body could withstand much more of this. How long until his heart gave out? He must reek of dread. He’d already thought he would die once tonight. He’d walked out of room slick with blood and viscera, but he’d survived. Please don’t let it end now.
“Yes, there it is,” Jasper crooned against his throat. Goosebumps erupted across Guy’s skin, radiating across his body like an explosion unfurling from its molten center. “Such a mess for such a well-spoken, educated little boy. It really seemed like you were going to talk your way out of it. Right up ‘till you didn’t.”
Guy stuttered, frantic to free himself from this situation. “I t-tried. You know that. I did everything that I could—”
“Shhhh.” Jasper’s hand slid up, covering Guy’s mouth. “Daddy’s talking right now, little man.”
“Mhmm!” Hard to breath. Impossible to think. Pinned to the ground, unable to move or flee or speak. Panic caught up with him, took him down like a pack of wolves. He’d never had a chance, just like in that hotel. All that righteous indignation sustaining him abandoned him in a sudden, vertiginous woosh that left him reeling. Guy had made a catastrophic error somewhere along the way. He was too afraid to feel shame at the tears pricking the corner of his eyes.
“I thought you’d be a mess after Checkers turned that room into rubble and guts. All that blood. All that carnage, just for little ol’ you. But you weren’t mess. You didn’t fall apart. You emerged onto that balcony and as you peered out over the city you looked...” His eyes went distant, almost reverent. Guy gasped through his nose, free finally from that searing gaze. But it was back a moment later, burning into his eyes, demanding his compliance, his utter and total honesty.
“Do you like the mess, Guy? Do you crave danger the way other people crave fame or sex or attention from a daddy that loves their brother more or love from a guy that’s just not that into them? See, I see this little shit-fit for what it is. You think I’m blind, that I won’t notice you tossing your head back when my teeth get close? What a pretty picture you make with your throat exposed.” Unbidden, the memory of earlier that night. The cold ceramic of the clawfoot tub. Jasper’s hands in his hair, coaxing his curls away from the wound. That intoxicating haze in his brain and how easy it had been to let his chin drift up, to let this dangerous man take his face in his hands and tend to him. He hadn’t known what to expect when Jasper’s thumb had brushed so carefully over his cut. Even though he was scared, he wanted to know, needed to know. When blood had meet blood it had been euphoric, leaving him breathless, staggering to grab hold of the sink before he fell.
Jasper’s eyes went stormy, their darkness pulsing with a heat that was not anger but still terrified Guy. “I think you know what you’re doing.” Jasper rumbled, that boiling heat in his voice causing Guy’s hair to stand on end. “You want me to see.”
Guy tried to shake his head but only managed something like a spasm. Jasper had the audacity of accusing him of starting this when he’d been the one to slap him to the ground like a school-yard bully over fucking Doris, a girl he’d spent a grand total of five minutes with. If Jasper heard this thought, he ignored it.
“Oh, no?” He was amused now beneath his fury, the two uncompanionable emotions twisting his laugh into something unsettling. “You’re telling me it didn’t get your blood going? All of that chaos, all of those people Checkers slaughtered to save you? I’ve been alive a long time Guy, and I’ve seen people walk away from shit like that more times than I can count. Normal people? They shit themselves. Blubbering and crying and traumatized. But you, baby? You walked across that blood like a carpet had been rolled out for you. You liked it. It made you feel alive.”
Guy’s voice came out a muffled challenge through Jasper’s stifling fingers. “I survive. It’s what I do. What’s your point?”
“See? Still so fucking feisty. Even when…” A stinging pain over the racing artery in his throat. Guy yelped. It was only Jasper’s sharp nails, pinching the skin like a mother cat might carry its misbehaving kitten. “All this defiant bullshit? All your self-pity? That’s fucking average. But the way you came strolling right up into this dump that first night and claimed that chair and demanded my attention? The way you followed me into that cramped elevator, down into my spooky dungeon and looked my precious horrors in their ugly-as-sin eyes? The way you let me, a freaking vampire, clean up your blood? That’s not normal Guy. I like not normal. Not normal makes me notice you.”
His hand slid down over Guy’s throat like a collar cinching around his will. Panic threw itself against the confines of his body, pounding against the bones of his chest like another heart. “Get off! Let me go!”
The echo caroming back of the walls sounded desperate even to him. He knew Jasper would not heed his frantic plea. He wanted to sink through the pavement, wanted to be safe. The sensations in his limbs were subsumed to a pinched, bloodless tingling, hyperventilating beneath the weight pinning him. He felt like he was floating.
“No until we’re done.” The pressure on his captive wrist increased and he cried out.
“Jasper, Jasper please!”
“It’s please now, is it?”
“I’ve come too far to die here. Not now. Not like this. I’m trying.. I want to… I need to… I need, I need—please don’t, please j-just—” His caged breath faltered. He was drowning in his own body. His face buzzed. Darkness swam at the edges of his eyes. God he wanted the pills he’d dumped out like an idiot. Had that really only been an hour before?
“Shh, shh,” Jasper shushed him. His thumb brushed against Guy’s trembling bottom lip, not unkindly. “Pretty, so pretty when you’re scared. I bet you know that too, don’t you? Do you think it will make me pity you? Do you think it will make me want you?”
Guy’s lips parted, but no words came out. Jasper drank in the shape his mouth made with an intensity that made Guy want to shrivel and disappear inside the blackness eating away at his vision.
“We’re not done,” Jasper said, slowly, wrestling to control some instinct. “Talking about tonight.” He reached out his his free hand, stroking the mark on his face he left there only minutes earlier when he’s knocked Guy to the floor. It was both comfort and warning, the tenderness in his fingers that had wounded him saying, This feels good now, doesn’t it? Don’t make me hurt you like this again. “Tell me what you felt when you saw that vampire feeding from that boy.” The image swam into his mind, the two entangled in the back room of the hotel, the sight strange and illicit. “Yes,” he coaxed. “Go on, think about it.”
He recoiled from the idea of giving Jasper what he wanted. But was it defiance, this time, or did he himself not want to see? Why did he not want to see?
One of Jasper’s hands curled into his hair, stroking the curls. The other teased his bottom lip lower as if to prepare him for the confession. Guy was no longer restrained. But he didn’t run. He couldn’t. He could only resist, and even his will was failing. “I don’t owe you anything.” The words had hardly left his mouth before Jasper yanked his head back with a force he feared snap his neck. He cried out. “Ah! Let go!” He scrabbled for the hand fisting his hair. One of his nails broke against skin that was like stone.
“No until you answer my question. Just confess already. I want you to say it.”
He tried to demand, to plead, to beg. All that came out was a yowl of pain. It hurt, but the pain also punctured his panic attack, the black spots bleeding away. Despite what he’d thought a moment before, Jasper was not bending him further than he could take.
“Fancy that, mister college over here. You lip off to someone stronger and faster than you and they give you the classic back hand. You’re the freaking drunk that stumbles into a bar spoiling for a fight. It’s a predictable chain of events, Guy, so what does that tell you?”
“You’re crazy. You’re a deranged, sadistic fucked up old man.” Far from angry, his voice was clogged with tears, the petulant misery of a child forced to recount just how they’d managed to shatter the entirety of his mother’s favorite tea set when they knew sling shots weren’t allowed inside. Guy could not escape.
“It tells me,” Jasper continued, “You like being knocked around just a little bit. Know why? Because you can’t be honest with yourself. You don’t want to admit what you felt tonight when you saw that human offer up that juicy little wrist of his like a stripper flashing her tits at passing cars. You want something but you won’t let yourself ask for it, so what do you do? You flutter your eyelashes, you blink up at me demurely with those adorable blue eyes and ask me to drag it out of you.”
It was the night he’d met Kevas and they were dancing together when Olivia’s hand found his throat and he’d melted between the heat of their bodies. It was later and he was on his back and Kevas was on top of him with her hand pressed down, hard, so hard on his chest. The whole time they’d been together he’d thought of that hand on his throat.
“Please…”
“Yes, getting closer. Please what?”
Tears streamed freely down his cheeks now. They hardly registered, distant heat apart somewhere outside the screaming noise in his body.
“This is easy, so easy. C’mon Guy. Think back, I want you to picture that moment. You in the chair in the hotel room, looking through that doorway.”
“A-are you going to kill me?”
“Haven’t decided yet, my dude.” Jasper brushed his fingers over his eyelids, and Guy let them slide closed. The darkness only intensified his awareness, stripped him, made him naked, exposed. His breathing so loud, ragged.
“Now,” Jasper said and his whole body bucked toward that sound in the dark. This time instead of stone battering him back down, Jasper’s body yielded against him, for just a moment creating a complimentary shape. “Go ahead.”
He saw the whole scene again, the wrist proffered like an offering. As he remembered, he felt Jasper’s hand on his chin, thumb once again tracing his lower lip, coaxing it down. “That’s right, keep going.” In his mind eye he saw the fangs bite down, and that moment twinned with this one, and just as he had then, his lip suck inwards. Jasper’s thumb followed the tongue down inside him, pressing into Guy’s mouth to the knuckle. Guy didn’t stop him.
“And now,” Jasper said. “Once again, say it.” His thumb swirled over his tongue, tantalizing, comforting, challenging.
Guy sealed his lips around Jasper’s thumb seeking stability as inside his mind the vampire drank from the boy. Outside his fog he heard Jasper groan, his body hitching abortively as though denying himself something. His palm cupped Guy’s chin and he didn’t know whether the vampire wanted to hold them apart or pull him closer.
As the boy was drained in his mind, Guy’s body heated like he was the one drinking the young man’s blood. He was a chemical tangle of so many emotions: awe, horror, fascination, horror at his fascination, that horror only deepening the heady pulse of perverse longing in his body. But for what? And why did he want it? He could not define it to himself in words, not then. It was like lightning had struck his world and left him reeling in the candescent flash. In the blindness an all-consuming desire emerged to understand the new, wild, savage landscape it had so briefly revealed. He wanted, wanted, wanted so profoundly that he ached. He had longed for things before, the respect of his professors, money, security in that money, a life where he could cushion himself from the chaos of other people’s minds. But never had he wanted something like this. God it hurt, knowing how small his life had been before, knowing that he might be snatched from this beautiful, unpredictable savage garden of Jasper’s world before he’d had a change to discover who he might be in it.
“I wanted,” Guy admitted finally. It was hard with Jasper’s thumb in his mouth. “To know what it was like.”
“Yeah?” Jasper withdrew his finger and Guy flushed, the present rushing back. “Which one? The toothy one or the one getting sipped like a pina calada at ladies night?” Guy’s body pulsed, throbbing. There was nowhere to retreat and there was nothing left in him but the truth.
“I don’t know,” he said, barely audible. Jasper was not satisfied with the answer, but he knew that he had won, so he waited patiently until Guy said: “both.”
“There it is.” He cradled the side of his face and Guy didn’t even need to be guided back, he bared the elegant curve of his neck as if it were his body’s natural shape.
Jasper’s mouth descended, teeth pricking quivering skin. “Do you want to start now?
“I’m… I’m scared.” Had he ever admitted that before? Had he even realized how violently he always pulled back from letting anyone see?
“Hmm,” Jasper hummed against him, considering. It tingled both outside and inside Guy’s body. “I can work with that. Yeah, I think we can make this work.” He planted an exaggerated kiss on Guy’s neck in the same place he’d moments before been threatening him with his sharp nails and even sharper teeth. Guy let out a strangled breath, nerves jangled and raw. “We’re going to work this out, my man.”
Guy sagged in relief. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to staunch the flow of involuntary tears. With his shirt pulled up over his thumb, Jasper swept away his tears with a tenderness that was impossible in the wake of his earlier violence. This did something to Guy he didn’t understand. He flushed despite how insufficient an apology the gesture was. But for moment, just one rare moment, he let himself be still, let himself bask in the feeling of being cared for. His breathing slowed, the tingling in his face and hands receded and he found himself leaning toward the touch as it receded.
With only the faintest touch of sarcasm, Jasper said. “Honesty is hard but I knew you could do it. I’m proud of you.” Guy’s flushed deepened as Jasper continued, “anything else you want to admit while we’re being all open with each other? It’s a safe space. He cocked his head in that way he did, the same way he had when he’d first caught Guy spying at the restaurant. “Well, it is now.”
The cadence of a joke, but Jasper’s eyes were serious.
Guy’s eyes drifted over the vampire. The anger had gone, and with its departure Guy realized what had caused it. Insecurity. Hurt. Jasper had trusted him with the trauma of his past. He had spoked aloud things he had no other being, mortal or vampire. It wasn’t about Doris, not really. Guy’s withholding was a slap to an extended hand. They had not known each other even two days. Guy did not yet know if he wanted to take that hand. It was insane for Jasper to expect that Guy trusted him already. But he was sorry that he had hurt him.
“I’m sorry,” Guy said.
The playful challenge slid of Jasper’s face. It was clearly not what he’d been expecting, because it took a moment for him to respond, “Huh?”
He retreated far enough that his weight no longer pinned Guy to the ground. He crouched nearby, some strange and distinguished silver-haired animal, tracking him with hooded eyes. In that moment Guy could see how Jasper was man and monster both, beautiful and strange and capable of such destruction, and yet still a being with soft places that could be injured.
“You’re right. I’ve been withholding. But that’s not what I’m apologizing for. This is all new to me, and I’m trying, I’m really trying, because I want this. I need you to know that. I want to find out what happened to my mom.” Guys sat up as he spoke, nearly keeling over as a renewed wave of dizziness struck him. Jasper caught him almost automatically, helping him lean back again the nearby wall. His gaze was guarded, but behind the stony expression of the hawkish mouth, vulnerable. Guy chose his words more carefully than he had in the car, knowing how easily the situation could crumbled into confrontation again.
“But I want more than that. Tonight made me realize I want to understand why I am the way I am. Why I’ve got this stupid fucking curse in my head that I can never turn off.” He thought of the vampires in the hotel room again, the memory, the horse and the feeling of wind in his hair. It haunted him. It exhilarated him.
“The Talamasca promised me they could help. But they break their promises. And then I found you and you promised the same thing. You told me you never lie, but, man, I barely know you. I hedged my bets, because, wouldn’t you? But I’m not going to throw you under the bus. A few weeks ago, I thought the best thing I could be is a lawyer. I didn’t know to want more than that. But now I do want more than that. You confessed something to me, and I didn’t know what to do with that, and I’m sorry. I didn’t grow up in the Talamasca. This world is new to me and it’s going to take me a fucking second to figure everything out. Ok?”
For someone who has spent the past six years of his education studying how to make persuasive arguments, it was a rambling confession. He didn’t know if it aided his chances of survival or damned him. But it needed to be said. Maybe he should want to betray Jasper to the Talamasca. It was a half-truth to say he didn’t. It had been his plan when he’d strolled so arrogantly into the London Motherhouse. But he didn’t know if he could anymore, even after everything that had just happened. He’d expected evil. Shouldn’t a vampire be a monster? But what he’d found was a person.
Guy was careful to shield his deeper thoughts. To make up for it he looked steadily into the other man’s critical gaze, letting him swim deep enough into his mind to find the honesty there.
“Lovely. Your point, pup?” Jasper leaned close, both hands on the dirty ground, shoulders high, face hunched, an awkward and yet somehow absurdly confident position.
“I...” he hadn’t expected to need a thesis. “We can be partners, and you can depend on that. Depend on me. But trust is earned, I guess. You can’t shake it out of me.”
“Oh, I think I just proved that I can.” His grin was maddening.
Guy scowled, jutting his chin. Jasper stalked even closer, and Guy was once again boxed in. “There you go again,” Jasper huffed. Guys eyes were wide. He started as Jasper slapped on hand on the wall next to him, the other drifting in close to smooth the wrinkled line of Guy’s mouth which had slipped from scowl to consternation. His breathing quickened through his parted lips, his eyes looking up at Jasper who’d raised himself up onto his knees and was looming over him. “God you’ve got to stop looking so damn…” Guy waited for the thought to finish his thought. He wanted him to finish.
Jasper’s voice was low, smoky. “Vampires? We feel things fast. And hard. And deep.” Jasper’s lips drifted towards Guy’s ear, words spilling slow and thick like honey into Guy’s ear. His breathing hitched at the way Jasper’s layered meaning over each word until the brief confession was transformed into pages and pages of sonnets and epic poems that buzzed with meaning in his head. Jasper leaned even closer, lips brushing the skin beneath the curve of Guy’s ear. “I thought you understood that. I thought you might be the same. But if you’re not, I need you to a least keep up and get with the program. Capiche?”
“Mmm,” Guy rasped, not recognizing his raw voice, ruined by crying. Why was he doing this to himself? Courting disaster once again. “Pretty impatient for an immortal.”
“Oh sweet thing, you have no idea.”
Guy wanted to say something flippant. That stupid, defiant part of him leaning towards a catastrophe he had so narrowly avoided. His mouth worked, and Jasper watched, darkly amused, but in the end Guy held his tongue because he wasn’t suicidal despite what Jasper might think. It didn’t matter. The other man read the silent challenge on Guy’s face.
“I may live forever but I have no interest in patience. I don’t wait. Not because I’m a vampire, oh no. This is who I am baby. I reach out and I take what I want.”
Guy swallowed. Opened his mouth.
There was no time to speak.
Jasper didn’t wait this time, didn’t coax him close with splayed fingers as he’d done in the bathroom. He snatched Guys face and yanked him forward, their lips meeting in a kiss that was both violent and yielding. The violence was not pain, did not crush or bruise, rather the violence was need. Guy melted under it. He submitted so easily, God how quickly he gave in, unresisting as Jasper’s tongue penetrated the seam of his lips. It was the most profound kiss he’d ever experienced and he wanted to cry again, but it was over a moment later, a brief exploration and Jasper pulled away.
Guy swayed, would have collapsed if not for the wall behind him.
“Had to do that at least once,” Jasper was saying through the fog of Guys shock. He licked his lips. Grinned slyly. “Just in case you change your mind and decide to run out of here screaming. I’ve wanted to taste you since I saw you peering up at me through that camera. So pretty. And so fucking insolent. Why is it that the pretty ones always say such nasty things? Hmm?”
“Fuck off,” Guy scoffed. But he was shaken. He raised trembling fingertips to his lips, certain they’d been transfigured by the experience, but then dropped his hand. Jasper noticed of course.
“A mouth like yours is begging to be punished. I don’t make the rules.”
“Cut it out.” He hunched, turning his head to the side.
“Oh he’s embarrassed, a blushing virgin.” He mimicked Guy’s voice in an unflattering falsetto. “Oh you beast! You heathen! Never shall I allow you to pluck my sacred flower, for I save that most sacred gift for another who is worthy. No, back you savage, you brute, oh… oh...” His voiced dipped suggestively, “Oh, well you make a convincing argument, and if you keep doing it just like that… yes like that... oh, OHHH!” His voice shot up into a ridiculous squeal.
Guy pulled up his shirt over his mouth but it was too tight to cover his eyes, so he hid them in the crook of his arm.
Jasper’s laugh faded. He could feel the presence of his gaze. Guy’s whole body was tense and he refused to meet his eyes. Then, fingers in his hair. He couldn’t help but wince, his scalp still sore where Jasper had wrenched his had back.
“Hey,” Jasper breathed, his voice settled back into its normal register, dry and faintly amused. “Hey look at me, Guy. C’mon. Don’t be like that, look at me.”
He wanted to say no, but knew he was acting childishly, so after a moment’s hesitation, he did.
“Do you remember what you asked me?”
“Uh…”
“Last night, after your whole little spiel. You told me all the reasons we should team up. What did you ask me after?”
His throat felt suddenly dry. He licked his lips like he’d done then when he responded. “Are you… are you interested.”
There was no trace of Jasper’s teasing now. When he spoke, he was deadly serious. “I’m interested Guy. I am really fucking interested.”