I am a crooked man

[vacabdication]

[ Yuma sends a message that she's left him a gift, and the first thing he checks is whether Ajay answers his phone.

There isn't a second thing. It's not as if they've never been out of contact, or as if Ajay's never failed to respond to his calls – he's a busy boy, after all – but it's enough to make Pagan feel as if his veins are filled with ice. The search is frantic and conclusive. When Pagan finds Ajay he's still breathing, though he won't be for long.

Pagan knows this because he can see Ajay's lungs, straining and exposed after what Yuma has done to him.

There isn't time to have a moral dilemma about it. Pagan uses his own fangs to open a vein in his wrist – one of the few ways to open him up that won't heal in mere moments – and presses it to Ajay's mouth. It makes a messy, desperate circuit when he bites deep into Ajay's throat, letting the rich taste of his lover flow over his tongue and drinking him down, and it's – it's terrible. There's no pleasure in the act when it's like this, no intimacy, no joy. He drinks and he drinks, and the little spark in living creatures that whispers survive when everything else in them says to give up kicks in, and Ajay drinks from him, too.

He feels the moment when Ajay dies. Feels the flutter of life leave him, tastes the blood in his mouth turn empty and dull. His scream is a howl, animal and raw, but it's brief. He closes the shutter Yuma has made of Ajay's ribs, folds flayed skin back into place, wipes the blood from Ajay's mouth as best he can and takes him home to the palace, to wait and see if a corpse will become the man he loves again.

~

He's there, of course, when Ajay first stirs. It takes days, but they're not quite as tense as that might imply – it's clear that it's worked in at least some capacity when Ajay doesn't begin to rot into the sheets of Pagan's bed. Gary had fussed at him while blacking over the windows, saying a room full of fine furnishings is no place for either a brand new vampire or a decomposing corpse, and it's the closest Pagan has ever come to firing the man. Ajay can wake and destroy the whole room and Pagan will count every ruin a blessing. And if he dies -

he doesn't, though, and robs Pagan of the poignant drama of wasting away alongside his cadaver. It's folly to think he'll understand any of what's said to him before he wakes fully, and so it's the only time Pagan will allow himself the futile gesture of asking Ajay to forgive him. He is a selfish old creature, but even he can see that forgiveness is something he doesn't deserve.

I couldn't bear it, he whispers. I couldn't lose you.

He cries, but without blood in his system there's no reddening of his skin, no tears to fall. He hasn't taken a drop since Ajay's, and has made up his mind that if Ajay doesn't wake he never will again.

~

He sleeps, eventually. It's been a long time since he's had to, though it's still nice to do. This isn't that lazy pleasure – it's exhaustion, pure and simple. He sleeps, and he dreams of Ajay in a frozen lake, pounding at the ice from below as Pagan scrabbles to get to him. He dreams of Ishwari on wings of fire, coming to cut his head off with a blazing sword for what he's done. Less dramatically but more terrifyingly, he dreams of Ajay getting on a plane and leaving, never to return.

He thinks it's that which wakes him, the pain of it, until he lifts his head and hears it. A groan, faint and disgruntled, in a sweetly familiar voice. His hands are on Ajay's face before he can think. ]

My boy. My beautiful boy.

Comments

[vaaris]

Yours. Only yours, always yours.

[ and he can't resist the urge to lean in and lap up that thin line of blood running from the fresh nick in pagan's lip, moaning as the taste of it washes freshly over him. already, he's trying to roll his hips down into pagan's lap -- letting out a little whine when the grip pagan has on his hips keeps him from being able to move in a way that's really satisfying, body already thrumming for moremoremore.

fortunately, when it comes to pagan, ajay has always known how to get exactly what he wants. ]

Pagan. [ right up against his mouth, both of their lips still slick with blood. ] Take care of me, make me feel good. I need you.

[vacabdication]

Always.

[ He'd been so entranced he hadn't even noticed that he was holding Ajay still, that Ajay was moving against his grip. Now, though, asked so beautifully, he's helpless to do anything but obey. Instead of holding Ajay in place those hands guide him upward, and Pagan hisses at the drag of it before he pulls Ajay back down as he rocks up into him. That gets a moan from him, low and wanton against Ajay's mouth before he repeats the action. The feel of it pulses through him, blissful. Love and blood and sex and the knowledge that now, finally, his Ajay will be eternal. It's all he's wanted since the moment they met. ]

[vaaris]

[ it's everything.

it's been years since ajay fooled around while high on anything, but fuck. even that didn't compare to this, every sensation alive and electric and dialed up to eleven. he matches pagan's moan with one of his own, nails dragging little pink lines of pressure along the other man's skin as he rocks himself into the rhythm pagan sets for them both. he could probably take charge if he wanted -- push pagan down and back onto the mattress, ride him hard and fast and greedy, but he doesn't. because pagan's been the one to guide him through all of this to far; he was the one to tend to him, feed him, and now it only seems right that it should be pagan's job to fuck ajay the way he needs.

what's between them now is something closer and more sacred than even what exists between lovers, and the idea of this new connection is a thrill. it's belonging, it's possession, it's forever. ]