Roman

Ficlet: The Shining Dead

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 04:14:24 GMT

This is a gift for infernallysly, for her inestimable help with research for my (hopefully) next fic. As it turns out, my muse informs me that this ficlet will also be something of an outtake from said yet-unwritten fic. I have no idea what that means yet.

Title: The Shining Dead
Pairing: Eric/Godric, so platonic that it's really almost not there.
Rating: PG-13, for violent imagery
Word Count: 1064 (does it still count as a ficlet? Please say it does...)
Summary: Godric sees eternity in the stars.
Disclaimer: TB/Sookie Stackhouse belong to Charlaine Harris, Alan Ball and associates. No profit is being made from the writing of this fic.

_____________
Another close call. And what a close call. Eric wanted to roar. He wanted to tear those humans limb from tasty limb. He wanted to make them thank him for eating them quickly and not playing with them first. Those under-evolved sorry excuses for sentient beings. How dare they take silver to him. How dare they actually have good aim.

Entirely unimpressed with Eric's pacing and grunting and swearing, Godric lay down on the patchy grass, legs crossed and arms cushioning his head, as placid as though his skin hadn't been boiling a moment ago.

'You'll just call their attention.'

Eric let out a string of swear words so long a few of them were new even to Godric.

'Frankly, Eric, there's more to life than feeding. Calm down,' he pointed out once Eric had stopped roaring at the tree-tops. 'It'll go better tomorrow.'

Eric replied by pummeling an innocent old oak until its roots left the ground.

'Eric, sit down and stop defacing Nature.'

The oak's trunk splintered as Godric spoke.

'Eric, come lie down next to me and be quiet, please.'

Eric stopped punishing the tree for the humans' cheek and looked over his shoulder. Godric's tone had changed. This was an order.

'What for?' he asked gingerly. A glimpse of a scene he didn't even want to remember he had witnessed, let alone recreate, flashed in front of his eyes.

'Just do it,' Godric said, his tone coming dangerously close to a bark.

Eric shuffled his feet over to where Godric lay and sat down. After a beat, he lowered himself to the ground, levelling his head with his maker's and lying as stiffly as if a rod had lodged up his backside.

'What now?' he enquired, determinedly gazing down at his own nose and not at Godric.

'Look up.'

Rather wary of what he would find once he raised his eyelids, Eric obeyed. Above him there was just the sky. And silence.

'What is up?' he eventually asked. He was beginning to feel stroppy again.

'The stars,' Godric replied, almost reverent in his quiet tone.

Eric's mouth puffed with the strain of containing the huff that wanted to erupt, and again there was silence. A long, drawn-out silence, broken only by Eric's foot swaying against the scattered twigs while he waited for one of the stars to fall on them, or wink at them, or otherwise do something. None of them did, so he fidgeted. The thin, uneven grass was beginning to feel uncomfortable against his back.

'All right, I'm calm. May I get up now?'

'No. Look at them properly.'

'They're... there,' Eric said impatiently, racking his brain for the answer Godric wanted. He hated it when Godric started philosophising. He never felt less adequate than at those times. 'They're... pretty?'

'They are,' Godric agreed, in the most caressing of voices. Then, after a moment, 'They... are... enthralling.'

Eric's eyes rolled so far back in his head that for a second he saw only the black pit of his boredom.

'I knew someone once,' Godric said warmly, 'who told me that they're not really there. That they're so far away that once their light reaches us they'll have fizzled into nothingness already. Long, long ago. And the ones that are alive now... we'll never see them, because it'll be so long before their light gets here. Isn't it fascinating?'

Eric stared at him as if he thought Godric had completely lost his mind.

Godric looked at him and then back at the sky, adding a bit defensively, 'I think it's fascinating. They're still there, although they aren't... they still shine so long after they died--they shine more brightly, even, because we couldn't see them when they were alive...'

'Who?' Eric cut in.

'The stars.'

'No, who did you know who told you that?'

'Someone I once knew.' Godric closed his eyes and for a moment it was as if he were trying to recall who the person had been. Then he looked up again and the stars shone in his eyes, and it was clear that he had never forgotten.

'Was this what you did?' Eric couldn't imagine a more excruciatingly boring scenario. 'Lie down and look up?'

'Sometimes we looked down,' Godric corrected, his head lolling lazily towards Eric.

Turning immediately away from Godric's coy smile, Eric gazed up again.

'I don't know if it's true...' an uncertain lilt crept into Godric's voice. 'I like to think it is, though. That way the stars are a bit like us, in a way. We, too, shine more brightly once we're dead. We're only truly seen once we're dead, like the stars. In a way.'

'Who was it who told you that?' Eric repeated, facing him again.

'It doesn't matter.' Without tearing his eyes from the sky above, Godric took Eric's hand and pointed at a particularly bright dot amidst the maze. 'That one. Can you see it?'

'Who was it?' Eric pressed on softly.

Godric paused and looked at him, his hand still holding Eric's aloft, extending Eric's fingers towards the sky like the painting in that italian chapel. He liked that painting, even if it had bored Eric to tears. Eric no longer cared about the humans' thoughts on the afterlife. Godric rather thought, though he didn't voice it, that the man in the painting resembled Eric a bit.

'Someone who no longer shines,' Godric eventually said. 'Only in my memories.'

Eric was momentarily speechless but there was no awkward silence, for Godric shook his hand, entwining his fingers with Eric's to stretch them towards that one star that fascinated him so. 'Can you see it? That one?'

'Yes,' Eric murmured, his gaze trained on Godric's profile, framed by the near darkness of the waning Moon.

'You're not looking.'

'I am,' Eric countered at once. He didn't care about the stars, in the same way as he no longer wanted to learn this mysterious person's identity. But he did care about Godric's enthusiastic voice, about his shiny eyes turned excitedly towards the sky. So he summoned up the last shreds of his patience and followed his maker into the starry maze.

___________
THE END
(for now, apparently)

Snälla, True Blood People! Help with a canon point, pleeeease?

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:47:01 GMT

~~Hjälp!~~

... I will pay you back with drabbles. Please, please. It's for ~~fiiiiiiic~~ a good cause.

Can a generous soul please tell this ignoramus if:

1) The fabulous vampiric hearing (that Eric displayed with Lafayette and Royce) extends to other vampires--if a vampire, say, Bill glides silently into a room, will, say, Eric sense his presence or can a vampire actually sneak up on another unheard?

2) The show's blood bond works between vampires the way it does between vampires and humans-- do ~~Eric and Godric~~ vampires "feel" each other's emotions and whereabouts, ~~because you know they were chugging from each other like it was vintage cognac~~, or do you need ~~a cop-out~~ specific blood-drinking circumstances for that?

So far, I've written (as, I think, have most other TB fic writers I follow) on the assumption that there's a maker-child bond at least--but I don't understand the bond's limitations, and there obviously are some--Eric was clueless about Godric's "alive or dead" status for most of the season, so the bond gets lame with distance, at least; on the other hand, he knew exactly where to go when Godric spoke/called/mind-melded/IDon'tEvenKnow, so there's got to be a bond there. Does Godric switch it on and off at will? Lorena didn't seem like she had much of a clue about Bill... How does it wooooork? Does it even work at all, or do the writers change their tune about it every five minutes as they do everything else?! *whinewhinebitchmoan*

I knew my selective viewing would catch up with me some day.

~srs business is srs~

I blame Halloween, OK?

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:34:36 GMT

That's when I started writing this, at least. I have to blame something.

Title: Twice Lost
Pairing: Eric/Godric
Rating: NC-17/M
Warnings: Dub-Con pushing into Non-Con, frottage.
Summary: Long before sunrise, Eric had already had a glimpse of how it felt to lose one's maker.
A/N: This started out as a short fic for TB_Kink. I swear. I can't help being plotty and wordy, apparently. I will manage to write undiluted smut at some point. Please scroll halfway down for the bit that ~~justifies the rating~~ was originally my only focus.

________________
Yelping melodramatically to each other that Eric had cooties, lots of cooties, Sookie and Bill hobbled away, putting as much debris between themselves and him as they could. As Sookie's cute head bobbed out of sight, Eric's senses sobered up and refocused on their default target.

Godric.

Godric, trailing behind the others and stilling once they were gone to turn towards Eric.

The moment that trussed up human had revealed himself, the only things in his mind had been Sookie, her mortality and her proximity to that detonator. Godric, who had consumed every last one of his thoughts for the last few weeks, had slipped his mind entirely. Perhaps aided by the smell of burnt flesh, the realisation that he had simply forgotten about Godric hit him so violently that he could almost feel it rearing up and punching him in the gut.

There were actual tangles of limbs underneath charred furniture, wall chunks strewn everywhere. Blood seeped out from underneath the clutter, pooling around patches of silver-riddled flesh in corners of the place that had surely never seen flesh before, even if this was Godric's nest. It was impossible to tell which random body parts belonged to humans and which to vampires, but there were vampire bits in the chaos. They had lost a few of their own.

They could have lost Godric.

The overwhelming relief that they hadn't was currently overshadowed by the fact that Godric was still standing, but Eric had played no part in that. In fact...

'Are you healed?' Godric deadpanned, prompting Eric's mind to scramble about for an apology, for something resembling a phrasing that Godric might accept. Eric didn't apologise often, particularly not to Godric. He had learnt early on that it was frankly best to stay out of situations where an apology to Godric might be needed.

But one was needed now--the first, he suspected, of many. Powdered concrete gathered on Godric's hair, on his blast-bitten shirt. There was a generous sprinkle of blood on his neck, probably his own. Peeled paint and wood and dirt crackled under his feet as he shifted from one foot to another, waiting for Eric to reply. If he had died, Eric would have done nothing to prevent it. If he had died, Eric would have been flirting.

Godric eyed him up and down, as though trying to gauge a reply that way, and he had a sudden, absolutely ridiculous urge to cover the spots where Sookie's lips had been. If there was any saliva left on his body from her valiant efforts, Godric could surely spot its glimmer. Eric daren't look down himself to check. He didn't recall ever having been ashamed of his conquests.

This promised to be a memorable first time.

It had very little to do with how effectively he would actually have shielded Godric from the blast (being younger and weaker, he was probably better off being shielded by Godric). It was a matter of principle. Protect your maker. Protect Godric. When it really mattered, he had protected a human instead.

All at once, Godric's quietness, that very gentle sway of his head, felt very sad to Eric. Very disappointed. That cut into him most of all.

Stan's mangled body lay not too far from them, webbed fabric and entrails filling the distance between them all. Not completely dry spatters of blood slithered down Godric's skin, seeping into his collar. He could have died and Eric would have let him.

'Are you well?' Godric rephrased.

Knowing from experience that his maker's patience would not last much longer, and feeling himself shrink with each word, Eric lowered his eyes from the bloodied skin and directed the smallest of nods to someone's shattered calves.

Godric replied with an equally tiny nod, but Eric saw only his legs turning to wrestle out of the room.

A human girl, different from Sookie only in that she had been far unluckier in the protective vampire department, lay sprawled in Godric's way. He scooped her up, placing her gently on his formerly white sofa and taking a moment to arrange her pasty hair so that her cracked skull wasn't visible, to give her some dignity in death.

The explosion that Eric had expected didn't come, and he wondered for a moment if Godric was simply never going to acknowledge him again.

'Godric.'

'Hmm?' Godric turned away from the girl, but not towards him, as another corpse tumbled down from atop the now rickety table, its arm wrapping eerily around his ankles.

Clambering over the mess as carelessly as Godric was being thoughtful, Eric reached his maker just as he finished repositioning the battered vampire's body.

'Godric.' It sounded raspier the second time.

'Yes, my child?' Godric didn't look away from his former underling's open-eyed face, a quietness in his voice that had never boded well. That was Eric's - again, carefully limited - experience of it, at least. He was not comfortable with this new Godric who spared a thought for those who failed to survive and who made Eric guess at his intentions.

They knew each other too well, were too much a part of each other for this volte-face to be anything other than alarming. He watched extra hard for any signs that his bombastic fireball of a maker might resurface, but found nothing. He was left with this psychotically calm version of Godric, who now stood, head tilted up to him with the vaguest curiosity in his raised brow.

I'm sorry, his self-preserving instinct screamed at him to say, Forgive me. Other indignities along the lines of I didn't think, I didn't know, don't look at me that way, don't shut me out, followed in his addled brain. Mercifully, none made it beyond this lips, which clamped shut against his teeth just as he tested out a more dignified take on I'd have died if you did.

Godric's interest gradually waned, his brow unarching back into its usual position, and he looked away, turning to leave. At that, Eric's motor skills finally caught up, but rather than the subdued belly-crawl that the situation demanded, it was his fingers that moved first, reaching out for the dark crusts on his maker's neck.

Godric froze at the touch of his fingertips, his lids lowering to disguise the progression of his gaze towards Eric's hand. The intimacy of the touch was so clearly unexpected that Sookie would have screeched at his manners (Bill would no doubt have had the vapours), and the thought almost made Eric smile, because then... Sookie and Bill also thought that sucking shrapnel out of Eric's chest in the middle of an apocalypse was too intimate. They were a strange pair, those two. Eric and Godric, though... they could not possibly have been more intimate than they were, after so many lifetimes of pulling each other out of harm's way, pouring themselves into each other's veins at more turns than they cared to count, owing and granting each other so much in every way throughout the centuries that sometimes it had been difficult to know where the one ended and the other began. They only felt each other's touch once every few decades and still, any two people rutting away for years couldn't have become as close as they had.

So, somehow, amidst the chaos that ruled him at the moment, Eric rather thought that touching Godric's healed neck was the only natural, right thing to do. Even if he hadn't planned it, and even if all that he could feel was the harsh, uneven surface of the dried blood.

'It's stale,' Godric commented quietly, 'and it must be dirty.'

The words made his throat dance under Eric's fingertips, which did not retreat, but rather moved along with the vibration, slipping very lightly under his collar and hooking against the moistness of the blood that had wormed in. Absurdly, Eric heard himself croak out a meek, 'I wasn't going to lick it...'

Was that the hint of a smile pulling at the corners of Godric's lips? No, it was gone. It was a shadow.

'I should have come to you,' Eric muttered, almost as if it were an afterthought. I'm sorry. Forgive me. 'I should have shielded you.'

'It doesn't matter,' Godric replied, looking up at him as he spoke.

Something unknown inside Eric ripped apart in a way that wouldn't easily sew back up. It doesn't matter. Not 'you did you well, Eric,' or 'I understand, Eric,' or even 'Yes, you should, Eric. Next time make sure you do.' Not even 'Eric' at all.

As he considered this, his fingertips traced the length of Godric's throat and traipsed along his skin, beyond the blood, molding around the neck and cradling it gently when Godric didn't move. Godric was so cold, even to his touch.

He had to do a mental double take there. Cold? True, Eric himself was still lukewarm from having fed, but even so, Godric should not feel--how long had it been since he had fed? I require very little food any more? What did that even mean?

Godric looked away, perhaps looking for another carcass that he could straighten out. For all their intimacy, some gestures were inappropriate. The one flitting into Eric's mind at the moment was. That one human weakness when the one grabs the other's chin to "force" eye contact. Godric had done it to him once or twice in the distant past, before he got bored of the power play, but Eric hadn't, couldn't. So when Godric looked away, he had to let him.

And when Godric walked away, closing someone's legs here, tracing a random body part back to its owner there, Eric's arm dropped numbly and he was still reeling too much from Godric's words to stop him.

It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter?

Debris crackled and flesh squished under his feet as he trundled towards Godric, catching up with him just by the door, where he had stopped to stare at Stan's mangled body as if he were infinitely more interesting than Eric.

Eric's pride flailed tentatively. Even as a shredded corpse, Stan was all fireworks and nothing of substance, and certainly not a match for him. There was no possible reason for Godric to turn from him and towards Stan, for whom he had never cared, with whom he had never had a shadow of the connection they had.

Yet it was on Stan that Godric's gaze had rested, quietly, thoughtfully, almost apologetically, and it didn't shift when Eric's hand landed on his upper arm.

There was a hint of jealousy in his words when he tried to draw Godric's attention back to himself. 'It matters to me.'

Godric looked away from Stan and at a disembodied arm at their feet. He crouched to pick it up and it seemed to take up all of his concentration, even as he muttered, 'What does?'

It was perhaps a good thing Eric's hand was no longer around Godric's neck.

Scrunching himself down to look him in the eye, Eric clarified, 'I know I should have come to you.' I'm sorry. Forgive me. 'But she's human, she'd have--'

'You measured the pros and cons,' Godric cut him off, not a hint of playfulness in his voice. Godric had never liked it when Eric lied to him. 'Impressive.'

'You're still alive,' Eric muttered, somewhere between apology, self-loathing and unbound relief, possibly with a bit of desperation thrown in. This wasn't his most articulate moment.

'Yes, I'm still alive,' Godric sniffed, 'aren't I?'

A stroppy 'what else do you want?' lurked somewhere in his tone. Something about it was so ugly, so alarming that it made Eric's very skin prickle.

Giving up on the anonymous limb, Godric placed it beside the nearest human-looking form and rose. This time Eric didn't move from his position at his feet, and he must have looked too crushed even for Godric to ignore it.

'It doesn't matter,' he repeated, reassuringly now. 'Really, it doesn't.'

It matters to me. Eric didn't repeat it. This Godric didn't seem to particularly care about what mattered to Eric.

But this Godric, however disquieting he was, was still his Godric, still standing despite Eric's irresponsibility, despite the Fellowship lunatics, and what could have been was at once too possible and too inconceivable, and Eric's relief was too overwhelming--

His arms wound around Godric, and because even on his knees he was almost as tall as his maker, his face collided awkwardly with Godric's lower ribs, eventually nestling between them as his hands locked behind Godric's back and anchored them both in place. This was another of those rare inappropriate touches, as evidenced by Godric's instant jack-knifing up and Eric's own fumbling movements, but he didn't care. There might even have been a certain revulsion in the way Godric's arms had sprung up to avoid Eric's, but Eric did not care, because Godric was stronger than everyone, and when something displeased him he showed it, and Godric hadn't pushed him off, so Eric tightened his hold and enjoyed it.

Tonight could have gone differently. Eric could have been cradling a lifeless Godric. The only reason there would be no-one around would be because Eric would have kicked out all the sycophants, all the airheads who would have had no idea what they, what Eric had lost. He would have been alone, possibly still digging Godric out of the mess, and he wasn't now. So, in his gratitude, in his relief and his joy - and his guilt - he held his maker closer still and he enjoyed it, all of it: the tense frame between his arms, the feel of muscle through the sweater, Godric's legs standing against his stomach and not buried in the rubble, the way every inch he felt against him was whole and alert, and not pooling limply in nameless blood.

His hands tightened into fists against the back of Godric's clothing and the fabric rode up into them, baring Godric's skin against his wrists.

Godric was so cold. Was it paranoia, or did his skin feel thinner, more papery than before? Eric could almost picture him crumbling into nothingness in his hands from lack of nutrition, and he had a mad urge to feed him, force feed him if need be--but as the moments passed and Godric didn't reduce him to cinders, real or metaphorical, something of his own temper returned, and he still smarted from Godric's earlier refusal to feed.

'They will be waiting for us at the hotel,' Godric pointed out. As he breathed in to speak, his chest rippled against Eric's lips, and Eric tightened the embrace even further, savouring the feeling.

That was all he wanted, really, another moment so that he could reassure himself entirely that Godric had made it. He had barely had time to fully convince himself of it before that idiotic human had blown himself up, and then he had been busy hating his own hormones, but now at least he could settle down and just indulge in his drunken relief for a moment. Part of him considered flinging Godric over his shoulder and hiding somewhere where Eric could sit and stare at him until he felt fully reassured. He had done it once - the flinging bit - at some point in the Middle Ages, and Godric had laughed and laughed.

Godric didn't look like he would laugh if he did it now, so Eric relished in the embrace while he could, reasserting Godric's continued existence by breathing in his scent through the dusty sweater, all the while trying to shut out how icy he felt. I'm sorry. Forgive me.

'They'll be waiting for us at the hotel,' Godric repeated, his vocabulary seeming to have shrunk considerably in the blast.

Eric, whose interest in who was waiting where was currently below zero, mumbled something in reply, but the words sank gracelessly into Godric's clothing, and if he moved at all, it was only to splay his fingers across Godric's back and close them spasmodically again on the fabric to bring him as close as the laws of physics allowed.

It was so unlike Eric, all this kneeling, mumbling, touching without permission that, for a moment, it cut through Godric's supreme ennui. His hand ghosted down the side of Eric's face to rest at the nape of his neck, pressing gently into the hair, and Eric's shoulders quaked for a fraction of a second. The hand retreated.

And yet, Godric didn't force his way out of the embrace. Perhaps he thought he was being generous, letting himself be held. Perhaps he didn't quite know how to react to Eric's uncharacteristic openness.

'Shall we try moving, my child?' he asked, in that hollow voice that he used with Eric now. Why had Godric taken to sounding like he was talking about the weather?

If there was a command in the words, Eric chose to ignore it. Godric's chest rippled again against the corner of his lips, but it was a short ripple this time, as he had only one word to say.

'Move.'

The command manoeuvred Eric's muscles until he rose. Suddenly self-conscious, he straightened out Godric's sweater and humbly bowed his head by way of apology.

Godric was casting a pained glance at their surroundings, and as Eric finally made use of all their years together and recognised the expression on his maker's face, the small, embarrassed smile on his lips evaporated. He had seen that expression once.

Somewhere down a river in the Black Forest, they had been scrubbing out the remnants of dinner (stale blood had always made Godric's skin crawl) and Godric had good-naturedly mocked Eric's scars. Something about Eric's skills as a warrior and being a bit of an airhead. Eric had responded with something crude that he couldn't quite recall, but it involved Godric being an even bigger airhead, since even the blades knew he would only notice them if they dipped themselves in ink before coming for him.

The last words were still on his lips when it occurred to Eric that Godric had obviously not carved up his own back. His tattoos had been someone else's decision. He had been at someone else's mercy, once. It was almost inconceivable to him now, but his maker had once been a boy.

Godric, who rather looked like he wanted to supper on Eric's scars, had apparently had the opposite epiphany. Eric, who would forever be an infant vampire to him, had once been a man. Every mark that he carried from that period had been his own decision to make. Godric had had no say in the marks he carried.

That wasn't sympathy in Godric's eyes. Then and now, that was envy.

Godric's gaze swept the room without stopping on Eric, who was frantically going over his earlier words. 'I'm alive, aren't I?', he'd said.

What else do you want?

His hands reached for Godric's head, palming it perhaps a bit too roughly in his attempt to stop himself from smashing it against the wall until Godric came back to his senses (one of those very bad ideas, his own sanity chipped in to remind him).

Still, even as he actively tried not to crush his maker into powder, Eric knew that he was not being gentle, so why his fingers had not yet been snapped off was a mystery. Godric had never been one to withstand even the smallest amount of unwanted pain. The fact that he hadn't yet sent Eric reeling across the room was unsettling.

They were so wide, Godric's eyes, so unlike the narrowed slits that Eric remembered. They made him look younger, almost boyish, almost human. Almost breakable.

As Eric thought that he liked the narrowed slits better, Godric blinked at him. Once. Twice. His left eyelid twitched against Eric's thumb.

He had been pulling too strongly at the (thin, papery, cold...) skin. Godric was uncomfortable.

And somehow he was still in possession of all his limbs.

Repositioning his hands, Eric apologetically smoothed the skin around Godric's eyes, which still blinked in readjustment. It would have been comical if they weren't so wide, and light, and empty.

Eric could see himself reflected in them, if he leaned further in. As he did, his wrist brushed the dried crusts on Godric's neck and, unthinkingly, he scrubbed them with his palm. Usually, the more blood there was, the better, but here it made Godric look injured and Eric was uneasy with that idea.

His bloodied hand made an even bigger mess of Godric's neck, and Godric's head swayed, softly at first and then heavily, in sync with his movements. But his eyes were unfocused and Eric leaned further in to draw them back to himself.

And then, there had been a substantial shift in the universe, because what followed simply didn't add up. Eric had leaned in only slightly, he was sure of that. No more than an inch. Yet never in a thousand years had Godric's eyes been so near.

Godric hadn't moved at all. Yet that was one of his lips Eric could feel between his own.

He hadn't taken leave of his senses. He could recognise an upper lip. Godric's was definitely - somehow - in his mouth. It quivered a little because Eric was still scrubbing furiously at Godric's neck.

He stilled as soon as he made that connection, but as his hand rested lovingly and heavily on Godric's skin, it tilted his head just that little bit, pushing his lip further between Eric's and this was just becoming very, very awkward.

For a tiny moment, Eric considered his position (that would be half bent over, cupping his maker's head in his hands, his mouth closed in a pout against Godric's) and was at a loss about what to do. He was quite inexperienced in this.

"This" being "planting his mouth on Godric's", not mouths in general. He was by no means inexperienced regarding everyone else's mouths. These days they tended to be the swiftest road to reluctant necks, in fact, so he had made sure he was also quite good at handling them.

Godric's lip did feel quite parched. Eric's tongue instinctively flicked out to moisten it. He only had time to note that it was dusty before Godric withdrew, drawing an undignified, wet sound from Eric's lips when they found themselves parting against thin air.

For all Eric's earlier efforts to get him to talk, when Godric's mouth began to shape out what looked like it might become a sound he suddenly found that he didn't want to hear a single word. The eyes boring into his were so wide, so alive with surprise, they almost kick-started Eric's heart. His fingers went from cradling Godric's cheek to brushing his lips, lingering there where they were wet from Eric's tongue, burning them into his mind in a way he hadn't before. Godric closed his mouth and, as he did, his bottom lip dragged dryly against Eric's fingers.

Something about the sight of that made Eric's fangs itch to come out. This was thin ice he was treading though, so he had to reassure himself that they were safely recoiled. Strangely enough, it was only as he did so, his eyes trained on the glimpses of Godric's lips behind his fingers, that the baser part of him joined the scene.

He hadn't meant to bring Godric's head against his quite so brusquely - mostly because he had never been brusque towards Godric - but his free hand had been quicker than his mind, and their noses came together before their mouths did. Sparing barely a millisecond of appreciation for the great gift of instant healing, Eric shifted and then, yes, then they were kissing. He was kissing his own fingers more thoroughly than Godric's mouth, and it took him a bit to realise that it was probably best to remove his hand from Godric's lips before proceeding--but once he did, once he could actually trace Godric's whole mouth with his own, he wondered why on Earth it had taken him a full millennium to do this. In fact, he thought as his mouth tried to encompass Godric's in one completely graceless and yet totally satisfying swoop, how had he managed to live this long without kissing Godric? Surely he had at least thought of it at some point--he couldn't be that stupid, he thought, teasing the tip of Godric's tongue with his, drawing Godric's lips between his teeth, peppering the corners of his mouth and his cheeks with something halfway between pecks and nibbles, whatever came first. There may have been a bit of sniffing going on at one moment.

Godric's lips had finally parted for him at some point, and all that Eric could feel as he made his way along Godric's jaw was the way they felt against his skin. They felt much less ashy and cold once they were wet, he decided. They felt perfect. A millennium. How on Earth.

Just as he reached the junction between jaw and neck, Eric felt a small pang of frustration. Godric's hand was sliding up his arm, he could feel that, but there was no other reaction that he could latch onto. He was used to demanding groans and people tearing at his clothes by this point. But he had no experience of Godric in this way. He had glimpsed one or two scenes in the past, but Godric had always been quite private in this regard. Now that he thought about it, Godric had always gone out of his way to keep his trysts from Eric. He had never questioned his maker's judgement, because Godric gave him so much of his time already that when he wanted his privacy, Eric had to respect it. He wanted to respect it.

Godric's hand reached his shoulder, the curled fingers tickling the back of his neck. The veins in Godric's arm, however depleted, were so close. Eric checked again that his fangs were recoiled just as the tips of his teeth grazed Godric's collarbone, and the skin there rumbled again.

'There's no shrapnel there.'

Eric only noticed that his eyes had been closed when they snapped open at the words. He looked up... down... up at his maker, whose hand left his shoulder--again--breaking fully away from him.

There was a tiny, minuscule curl in Godric's mouth, a little sign of distaste that had never before been directed at Eric. Godric was mocking him.

Eric didn't know, nor did he care, whether Godric was mocking the trick he had played on Sookie, or the show of affection of just now. Godric, as he knew him, would not have cared about the trick. He would not have mocked the affection, if only because he knew that Eric equated sentimentality with vulnerability, and no-one other than Godric had ever, or would ever be privy to a vulnerable Eric. Godric liked this sort of exclusivity. He would not have mocked it.

But he had.

With his words, with his tone, with that infuriating curl in his lip, with the smug stance that he somehow maintained even if he had to crane his neck backwards to see as Eric, in his fury and his shame, brought himself to his full height. Even with his arm, slipping gently from Eric's rising shoulder and blazing a trail down his front until it dangled in the thick air between them. Every inch of Godric, down to his eyes, which had now decided to narrow infinitesimally in a parody of his sharp self, was mocking Eric.

How dare he.

Eric had never shown him the open concern he had tonight because never until tonight had he ever had to torture himself with ideas of what could have been. He had never approached him with this particular twist of affection because until now he had not known that he felt it. But he still knew his place. He would have taken any reaction, any reaction, without a complaint. Had Godric beaten him into a pulp that he would not forget for centuries to come for his audacity, Eric would have taken it apologising abjectly, because his maker mattered more to him than whatever kink crossed his mind during a moment of distress.

That, he had always been sure, was the reason they had cared for each other so very deeply for so very long when unfortunate infants like Bill were left to wrestle off their makers even after being officially released. Eric and Godric had always respected each other too much. Nothing had ever been meaningless. When Godric wanted to order him about, however demeaning the task, Eric submitted because there had always been a lesson in it. When Eric rebelled for whatever reason, Godric indulged him because he knew he had to nurture Eric's individuality. Nothing in the wider world, however enticing, had ever stopped them from coming back to each other.

When one of them had a rare moment of weakness, they had always dealt with it and strengthened their link with it. There was violence in it, occasionally. There was no mockery, no dismissal, and no sardonic words framed by any sort of curled lips.

How dare he.

Perhaps mistaking Eric's viperine stillness for acquiescence, which said volumes about how out of tune they were, Godric looked down and sidestepped him on his way out--again. Something inside Eric strained at the nonchalance, stretching until it snapped. He would eventually have to mourn it, whatever it was. It would not be pieced back.

Godric had taken maybe half a step when Eric reached behind himself, grasping his arm without so much as looking at it--knowing perfectly well where it was, because that was the depth of their connection.

His foot still hovered mid-step when Eric spun silently round and reeled him back. Godric's back collided with Eric's front with a muted sound and Eric's arms wound around him, all around him, so tight, so all-encompassing, that anyone other than Godric would have had trouble moving a muscle. One of Eric's hands found his jaw and gripped it viciously, tilting his head back against Eric's bloodied, clammy, dirty chest. A sound left Godric's throat that sounded a bit like a politely choked snort. That sound sent red blotches swimming in front of Eric's eyes.

There was not a hope that he would do anything to Godric that his maker wouldn't allow him to do. In his infuriated mind, though, that was as close to an ideal situation as he was going to get at this point. He wasn't even sure what he wanted to do anymore, but he wanted to do something, he had to do something, he would play it by ear for as long as he possibly could, and if Godric killed him in the process, then at least he would die standing up for himself.

Those eyes still mocked him, even as they crossed with the strain of looking up and back into Eric's. They purposefully searched Eric's eyes solely to make fun of him. That maddening curl in Godric's lip looked more pronounced under his grip. It positively humiliated him when Godric disloged Eric's other hand from where it clawed at his side and replaced it against his crotch.

Eric had clearly been the only one fighting overwhelming sensations.

Godric's brow moved almost unnoticeably. Eric closed his eyes so he wouldn't have to find out if there was more mockery on the way or if there would be pity, this time. Neither would be bearable. At his reaction, Godric's hand gripped his more tightly and pressed further against the loose, unstrained fabric, making the point clearly. Eric's erection had deflated at Godric's words. Godric's had never been there at all.

There was an almost physical sting to the humiliation when he reopened his eyes, his head bent low to avoid Godric's gaze. Looking down, he saw his hand held in Godric's, entirely under his maker's command. As ever. His fingers flexed against the fabric as though they couldn't believe the indifference. His pride growled. He had never been turned down so completely. He flexed them again and a diminute sigh of boredom was let out against his ear. His pride reared up and roared.

Slipping his hand from Godric's grasp, trusting his body's extensive experience for the first time that night, Eric ran his fingertips along Godric's waistband, under the tatty sweater, and when Godric made no move at all he plunged them unceremoniously into the jeans, checking the state of affairs for himself.

Godric was limp between his fingers, dormant as no-one had ever been at Eric's touch. With the addition of a hand, his jeans were tight, and Eric didn't have much room to manoeuvre, but he did his best, sliding down and around and into whatever free room there was in search of a reaction. Any reaction. If Godric wanted him to stop... well, he had only to stop him, because Eric certainly wouldn't.

He wasn't sure exactly when the mantra in his mind had gone from I'm sorry to Stop me, when Forgive me had become I dare you. Yet, amidst the nightmarish turn the evening had taken, he somehow felt that he was in more familiar grounds this way. I will stop if you make me. I will stop if you go back to what you were. His fingers tugged at the flesh, no longer searching but openly groping, pushing Godric against him. Godric's heels left the ground, but he didn't move.

Stop me. I dare you.

Now that he hadn't stopped, even in face of Godric's blatant disinterest, and seeing as he was still alive, he was quite curious about the look he would find in Godric's eyes. Raising his head and suppressing something like a shudder at the way Godric's head leaned uncharacteristically against his neck, he saw that Godric's eyes were wide again, dispassionately roaming the space, focusing on nothing and least of all on Eric.

His hand on Godric's crotch must have tensed crushingly, but he wouldn't know, consumed as he was by a burst of degraded anger so strong that he thought he might implode from it.

Releasing Godric's jaw to twine his arm around his middle, he spun him around and backed him against the door so fast even he forgot to measure the distances and they hit it at a wrong angle. Godric's back smashed against the splintered wooden panels and the door slammed againt the wall. One of its hinges fell off. Eric lost his balance, but not his claw-like grip, and after an indistinct half-second, they had landed in a bit of a heap on the gut-strewn floor, Eric sitting on his legs with one of Godric's bent up against his side and Godric's back against the creaking door.

And then his hands were on Godric, all over Godric, pulling him to himself, pushing him further against the door, his thighs rising against Godric's and cushioning them as the flurry of movement sent them up and down against the wooden panels and back against the dirty floor. There was one thing, just one, he wanted to do before Godric ripped off his head.

Disentangling his hands from wherever the hell they had been, he brought them up the sides of Godric's head, making sure they were rough, making sure they hurt just a little, so that Godric's eyes would be on his when he kissed him. He rose onto his knees when his mouth reached Godric's, so eager in its pounce that it opened wide and nearly swallowed up Godric's entire jaw rather than just his lips.

His hips pushed Godric's against the door, the door slammed against the wall and his fingers curled around Godric's head, pressing the scalp to make sure Godric's eyes didn't drift off into nothingness. At some point, his mouth closed against Godric's bottom lip, and then his upper lip, and again the bottom one, more tenderly than he had meant it, so he pushed up against Godric more firmly and pulled at his head so that the mouth would part for his tongue. One of Godric's legs was still on the floor, far too far. He wanted to feel Godric as Godric could feel him. If Godric wouldn't move, Eric would make him move. Shifting against his mouth with a groan, he reached out for the leg and wrapped it around himself just as his other hand slipped under Godric's sweater and pulled it up. His own torso was mostly on display, so it was only fair.

Stop me. Stop me. Stop me.

Their mouths broke apart when the hem of the sweater reached Godric's neck and Eric pulled it over his head, noting with a certain amount of self-satisfaction that Godric's never-breathing chest heaved ever so slightly before his eyes.

I dare you.

He wasn't happy to see that there was no change in the rhythm when he touched his lips to it, raking his mouth across the skin, teeth hooking on the outline of Godric's softly sliding ribcage. And he missed the sight of Godric's face. Covering Godric's chest again, he crushed their mouths together so quickly that he barely had time to see it. He had noticed that Godric's lips were still parted, and that was good enough. His hands slithered up Godric's back, tracing the tattoos that Godric had once been so sensitive about, and Godric's hips shifted against his lap, his legs unwrapping from around Eric. Godric's lips were softer, more distant against his skin, prompting one of his arms to hook tightly around Godric's neck. He would rip Godric to shreds if he pulled away condescendingly again. He didn't know how he would do it, but he would. He would actually rather be ripped to shreds himself than go through that once more.

Hmphm.

Which of them had made that sound? Just as he wondered that, he thought that it mattered very little. If there were still any non-hollow sounds left in Godric, he would find a way to wrench them out.

Stop me. I dare you.

His lip broke against Godric's teeth and in the second it took for it to heal he could taste his own blood, warm with tension, seeping into his mouth. Careful not to drink any of it, he scooped it up with his tongue and pushed it into Godric's mouth. Godric needed it more than he did. Also, the idea of forcing his blood into Godric's body was suddenly, eerily, attractive, so he pushed it into Godric's mouth and made sure it stayed there. This time, when his fangs came out, he didn't retract them.

Well, that low, surprised, shamed whimper had definitely come from Godric.

It made Eric's skin smolder.

His hand pulled at Godric's collar, and his mouth followed it, along the jaw, into the neck, into the shoulder once his fingers had torn enough fabric out of the way. He teased the skin, but didn't bite down. He was rather enjoying the way Godric's muscles tensed expectantly under the flesh, the way Godric's hand reluctantly found its way back into his hair. He particularly liked the way Godric's thighs gingerly inched back to his sides without him making them do it.

Not entirely enthusiastically, he pulled away just for a bit. He had never seen Godric like this, and chances were he never would again, so he wanted a proper look at it. Seeing the parted lips reddened with his blood, the exposed shoulder wet from his tongue, the arms wrapping feebly around his shoulders, was almost as enticing as feeling them. In fact, he thought as he reached Godric's eyes and they held his gaze steadily, coldly, mockingly, seeing the effect he was provoking might for once be even more appealing than feeling it.

His hands descended onto Godric's hips and, giving his maker a moment of absorb the feeling, because he wanted to see but he wanted Godric to feel, he gripped them further against himself, ensconcing him in his lap. The fabric wasn't quite so loose now. There was more to the way Godric's hips shifted in his lap than discomfort. Still Godric held his gaze, still he curled his lips at him, but there seemed to be more defiance there than mockery. Eric kneaded Godric's thighs so that they rocked twice, thrice, against his. Even as his hips thrust forward in Eric's hands, Godric's chin was up in defiance, as though he had merely asked Eric to service him.

No-one who was about to unravel in Eric's lap had any right to look so defiant. Not even Godric.

Knowing now that nothing would disconcert Godric more, he leaned in without slowing his rocking and kissed the corner of Godric's mouth. Then the other. Brushed the one with the tip of his tongue. Then the other. Godric's hips tightening against his and Godric's lips loosening on his. The very, very tip of his tongue finding Godric's and one of his hands leaving Godric's hip to wind around his back, slapping the sweater out of the way.

Godric didn't feel quite so cold now.

A small breath brushed his lips and he inhaled it, sending it back into Godric's mouth with the barest brush of his lips, the lightest flick of his tongue. His fingers drifted down Godric's back, insinuating themselves underneath the waistband.

Stop me. I dare you.

Godric tensed further and froze under his touch, defiance burning in his eyes but nowhere else in him as Eric rocked him steadily with one hand and pushed the other further down against his buttocks. Around them. Between them. No such thing as loose fabric now.

Godric's hips rocked on their own now. His eyes were closing. Eric kissed them open, unable to hide a smirk of victory. It turned into a bit of a grin when Godric's eyes blazed at it. He leaned further in, stopping a hair's breadth from Godric's lips to give himself the satisfaction of seeing them part without touching them. Godric pushed erratically against him now, and as his one hand settled between Godric's buttocks just grazing all those tiny, spidery muscles that tensed against it, his other hand left Godric's hip to hold his head against Eric's. He wanted to see this.

His experience of reading Godric's physicality wasn't quite as useless in this instance as he had thought, after all. He knew exactly when that wretched defiance would leave his eyes. That would be when Godric's thighs went from squeezing him to downright crushing him, which they did a second later. There was little defiance left in Godric's eyes when his rocking shifted from erratic to spasmodic. There was none when Eric lowered his lips to Godric's for a shadow of a moment. When Godric's arms on his back slipped an inch, he pushed the tip of his middle finger into Godric and froze there, wallowing in the feeling that Godric wanted more, committing to memory the tightening of Godric's body against him and the growl that escaped his lips even as he clearly tried to contain it. And the way every one of Godric's fingers splayed on his back. And the ridiculously open look in his eyes. And every other detail that he possibly absorb, because he was quite sure nothing could ever top this.

Or perhaps it could, it occurred to him as the thrashing in his lap reverberated through him and made his own movements turn fumbly. What a pity. He wasn't quite ready to let go yet, wasn't sure that he would ever be. Holding himself together just a moment longer, he pushed further into Godric, once, twice, again. Again. And again, and with another finger, gently now, roughly then, and again. Again. Again, and this time Eric didn't kiss him, because Godric was making sounds, and Eric was commited to unearthing as many of those as he possibly could.

When Godric quieted down, he shifted so that he could brace himself against the door with his free arm, half crawling over Godric, half pushing him up between himself and the abused wooden panels, and he thrust. He had no intention of pushing any part of himself into Godric apart from his fingers, and those he left there solely because they were siphoning words and whimpers and throbs out of Godric that Eric had never witnessed in him before. Still, he could not help but thrust forward, and forward, and he rather liked the idea that whatever happened was happening through their clothes. This, he wanted to feel. And this, he wanted Godric to see. Godric, who was now cradled in his lap and his arms, empty of defiance, still riding out the last of his shivers, the last of his sounds. How long had it been for Godric, Eric wondered, if he was still so strung against him. Godric moved along with his hips, and once he subsided, his head rested jerkily against Eric's shoulder as Eric pushed him further and further against the door.

Eric rose to his knees and his fingers stopped moving inside Godric, merely anchoring him in place as they rammed against the door and it broke off its remaining hinge, sending them half-sitting, half-lying against the wall. Godric moved further into Eric's embrace. For that one glorious moment when all he could feel was his own body flickering as close to life as it ever would, Eric pretended that Godric was doing it for him and not because the wall was filthy.

If his own climax was as long as Godric's, he didn't know it. It felt short, much too short, much too Godric-less. Watching Godric unfold in spite of himself, before him, with him, around him, had been far more memorable--but he would surely have done some permanent damage to himself if he hadn't followed Godric as he had, and he hadn't even been in a state to try, so now he had to hold onto the memory of it and make sure it never left him.

He was tired, he thought, lying back against whatever piece of splintered furniture was behind him. Not quite ready to let go yet, he hooked an arm around Godric and dragged him along. Godric still felt quite mushy against him. How long could it possibly have been? Eric sighed, ever so slowly coming out of his daze. He was really quite tired. He felt clammy. Godric was still forlornly draped on him, an arm haphazardly extended in the direction of dawn.

Dawn.

What time was it? It was still dark, so no danger of ending the night burnt to a crisp, but what time was it? Eric crinkled his nose and shook his head, trying to shake off the disorientation. He heaved himself onto his elbows and, as his middle section brushed skin where there should have been fabric, he forgot all about dawn. Godric's fly had come undone at some point and--he wriggled tentatively--apparently, so had his, but his clothes were still mostly in place and Godric's... not so much. He didn't remember doing that at all.

Considering the recent developments, he hadn't expected the sight of Godric's exposed backside to be quite so sobering.

Shifting around until he was sitting again, he glanced down at their rather dirty frames - there hadn't been blood there before, had it? - and shook his head again. Godric's head withdrew drowsily from his shoulder and he shifted smoothly off Eric's legs, casting an equally confused glance at his own unkempt self. While Eric's brain was still lined with cotton, Godric's seemed to have kicked back into motion in the blink of an eye. While Eric was still trying to acknowledge what had happened and how, Godric had already pulled his clothing into place and sat almost neatly, gazing at Eric with the same numbingly infuriating hollowness of before.

Shamed by the poise in Godric's eyes, Eric fidgeted with his clothing until it looked no more than respectably blast-bitten. Godric moved nary an eyelash, but there seemed to be approval in his immobility.

A number of non-sensical words crowded behind Eric's lips, but he couldn't bring himself to say them any more than he could bring himself to reach out physically to his maker, so he sat, and watched, and waited until Godric made a move.

He had hurt him. The thought was ridiculous, but it flitted through the jumble of his mind and whirled shamefully around in his brain. He had taken his maker at the most fragile moment he had ever seen him and he had hurt him. If nothing else, he had shattered Godric's trust in him.

As Godric had shattered his.

Maybe.

Eric may have assumed wrongly.

Godric was staring at him, his lips still red from Eric's blood and his clothes torn by Eric's hands. He was staring at Eric as though he had never seen him before. If Eric had assumed wrongly...

Then Godric very probably would have much preferred him to stop. And he hadn't done it himself because...

Because either Eric mattered too little for him to bother or too much for Godric to stop him.

He had to reach out. He had to say something.

He opened his mouth at last, but Godric spoke first. 'Are you well?'

Eric's mouth closed, pursed, may have trembled at the question. Godric had looked down momentarily to wipe imaginary dust off the ruined, blood-spattered shirt that Eric had torn, but he was looking at him again, and Eric had no choice but to answer.

He managed a fairly firm nod.

Godric nodded back and sat up, wiping his sides and casting a thoroughly disheartened look around.

'I'm sorry,' Eric murmured, reverting to his earlier mantra as Godric gave up on the room with a sigh. He knew even as the words left his lips that he was at once not sorry enough for an apology, and too sorry for words to convey it, but he could not help finishing, 'Forgive me.'

Godric looked down for a beat, and then turned to Eric. His voice was soft, but much clearer than Eric's. 'It doesn't matter.'

Eric was quite sure he gulped at that moment, and his eyes slid from Godric to the floor. Godric turned to leave. His steps vibrated along the floor into Eric's knees. He didn't stand, didn't move, made no attempt to follow Godric.

Perhaps it was that level of immobility that had prompted Godric to add, 'Really, Eric. It doesn't.'

There was no reassurance in Godric's voice this time. They may have been the smallest hint of aggressiveness, but Eric didn't dare read too much into it--again--so all he knew was that the polite reassurance of before was no longer there.

It mattered.

'They will be waiting for us at the hotel,' Godric's voice informed him from beyond the door. Eric didn't move.

They would, indeed. Sookie, in particular, would have her patience rewarded in her dreams. It was a pity she hadn't fallen asleep immediately after swallowing his blood. As it was, he wouldn't be able to join her as she slept.

Eric had lost his maker. He wouldn't sleep tonight.

____________
THE END

A/N: If you make it to the end, do let me know what you what worked for you and what didn't... please? Smut-writing is serious business, everyone. I want to get better at it.

Note: I don't know why Rich Text hates me so much, but if I have to html-code this beast manually just once again, I will hop on a plane and personally throttle whoever owns LJ these days.

Fic: The Child

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 21:28:56 GMT

Title: The Child
Rating: The naughtier side of R
Pairing: Godric/Eric
Show-verse/Book-verse: Show-verse
Spoilers: True Blood, up to 2x09; one very minor spoiler for Book 4 (a vampire trait)
Disclaimer: SS/TB belong entirely to Charlaine Harris, Alan Ball and associates. No profit is being made from this.
Summary: Godric hadn't known quite how possessive he was until he became a maker.
Notes: I was intrigued by the show's obviously devoted, but incredibly deferential relationship between Eric and Godric, and I couldn't stop thinking how something like that would have worked over the course of a millennium.

_____________

Such an exquisitely fast learner, his child was.

And so devoted. Among the memories Godric truly treasured - a tinier mesh with time, as the excitement of yesterday always, inexorably, became the tedium of tomorrow - the night when his first child had been born still shone, unblemished by the millennium that had followed. Not so much because it had been his first, but because he had known at once that it was unique.

He had bristled with long-forgotten human pride when Eric opened his eyes for the first time as a vampire, sparing all of a moment for a last remnant of timidity, and then proceeding to flex fingers and feel arms and legs and pull at his own hair. It was when Eric had frozen with a lock of hair between his fingers, staring at the paste of dirt and blood in it, victory shooting out of his eyes, that Godric knew he had made the right choice. Barely born and Eric was no longer Death's companion. Eric had become Death's superior, Death's cheater, Death's better.

And then, at last, Eric's eyes had turned to him. His lip had twitched, perhaps struggling with a variation on 'Thank you', and his demeanour, so defiant only now, swayed in doubt.

Reaching for his human recollections, Eric had opted for familiar ground--he scrunched up his considerable frame and looked down, head bobbing slightly in a warrior's nod. How awkward the Viking in him must have felt in this submission, so soon after having vanquished that greatest of enemies, Death.

Godric had been much vainer then, and very excited at the prospect of a companion after long centuries of solitude, so he had waited steadily for his child's next move, scanning him with the sort of expectation a human father might have felt about a son's first steps. It didn't matter that his lack of reaction added to Eric's discomfort. Godric had not been an accommodating vampire then, and he wanted to see what his child was made of before he started molding him.

Eric had reached further and further down, experimentally, somewhat spasmodically, until at last he had bowed fully, his knee touching the wood that would no longer show him into Valhalla. For a moment, Godric wished he could see Valhalla, just so that he could laugh in its face and shout at the gods within that they had lost, that every deity that refused to acknowledge his existence and that of his kin had lost, that he had stolen this one from them.

He reached out, resting a hand on Eric's shoulder and noting the slight ripple running beneath the fabric. What an interesting little cub he had, he thought, trailing his fingers along the side of Eric's neck, towards the spot that had signaled the end of Eric's human existence. The wound had already closed. Eric looked up and placed his hand over Godric's. His lips parted in an open smile, one that Godric cherished most, for he now knew that he would not witness many. Eric's smile tended to come out as a bit of a leer. On the rare occasions when he actually grinned, it was solely for Godric. There was something appealing in the idea that Eric's smile was, in fact, his.

His child loved him already, then. And all that Godric had had to do was kill him.

Godric thought that he might just be rather fond of his child too.

***

Godric sometimes wondered if every maker balanced out his child's traits so heartily. He found himself laughing more because Eric rarely did (even when he was joyful, which was rare; Eric could be exasperating sometimes), exuberantly telling stories of his past in the continent because Eric's storytelling was so monosyllabic (Godric rather hoped that the quiet, sulky stage would pass quickly, never to return), killing more and more viciously because Eric still resembled a human warrior far too much for his own safety--when Eric killed he still used his sword, swiftly and cleanly, giving Godric an urge to take hold of that sword and sharpen it on their prey's bones.

When Godric half tore a human's scalp before descending on his jugular, he told himself that he was teaching his child self-preservation. He wasn't entirely comfortable with the thought that had done it mostly for the gleam of admiration on Eric's eye. He was beginning to feel that, at times, he was more concerned about his child's needs than his own.

To counter this feeling, he sometimes sent Eric on his way, to hunt or find shelter on his own. He would happily have stayed by Eric's side, observing every thought process (he had, after all, never witnessed the awakening of a vampire other than himself), but he needed, as never before, to reconnect with himself, as well as teach his child that a vampire's only priority is himself.

He needn't have bothered, being as it was that Eric was the most self-effacing, the most deferential of children--at least in his experience: none of the vampire children he had ever met were remotely as endearing as his Eric. None of them ever stopped in their tracks to stare at their makers with the affection with which Eric gazed at him. Godric quite liked Eric's gaze. He hoped that he had never returned it quite so transparently.

'Eric, there is a human in the vicinity. Find him. Leave your sword.'

Some other times, he would test Eric's resilience. Because he could, but also to reassure himself that he wasn't becoming too attached to his child. He had seen the minds of makers and children alike be broken by separation--and separation always came. It had come for him, and it would for Eric. Godric would not be broken.

So, he had taken to disappearing. The first time he had vanished in thin air with Eric's sword, it was very close to dawn, and he could feel Eric's jolt of panic at finding himself alone and unarmed. Eric's increasing unease slithered under Godric's skin, a bit like a trapped animal's keening, which one can never unhear, and Godric had a frightful urge to go back to Eric's side. He must learn, he reminded himself, walking until the feeling in his insides was just light discomfort.

When he returned, Eric did not smile, but the way his face lit up gave Godric all the motivation he needed to disappear again, and again. He was rather pleased that he had found someone who gave him with such strong sensations. It had been a while.

'Good work, Eric. This is an excellent location,' he praised, handing back the sword. 'But you were unarmed. Why are your fangs not out?'

***

As with all things, a moment came when testing Eric ceased to be amusing. That moment was the day Eric decided to pay a visit to his former village. Godric had no particular reason to deny him, so they went. It had been years since Eric's death. Not so long that the place was unrecognisable - in fact, some of the fair, sturdy villagers they observed had clearly once been Eric's progeny. They looked older than him now, but the resemblance was uncanny. Eric saw it too. Never before that night had he shown interest in looking at his own reflection in the waters.

They spent the day not far from the village, Godric charging himself with food whilst Eric secured their shelter against the sunrise. When Godric returned with an unfortunate human, an unknown sensation welled up inside him. Eric was in a state of distress that Godric could not name. As he approached, a new, odd sound erupted from his child's lips. Eric had retreated to the farthest, most ensconced corner he could find and had begun to weep.

Godric couldn't recall a moment when he himself had wept, even when he was alive, and that the child he now knew so well had thought to do so, hidden from him, now of all moments, made every one of Godric's senses tingle in the most unsavoury manner.
For the first time since Eric had been born to him, he did not acknowledge Godric's arrival. He wept and wept, and slowly Godric decided that the scene displeased him. He made throaty, hitched sounds that grated on Godric's ears because they were ugly, he wiped frantically at his tears as though they burned him, spreading trickles of blood and sweat and saliva over himself, he hissed and gasped and groaned at the same time, coughing up drooly, senseless words haphazardly, and generally looked like he had no idea what he was doing.

His own mortality had fled him too long ago for Godric to empathise with this. For a moment he stood there, utterly unmoved, wondering if he could command Eric, as his maker, not to feel for his lost family. He remained silent, for he recognised a slinky inner voice coiling up to command that Eric feel for no-one other than Godric, and those were words he would not utter under pain of death. A thousand years don't go by without the permanent shutdown of some emotional extremes.

Ultimately, he decided to let Eric weep. To let him adequately bury his recollections. They were no threat. None of the mortals had ever, could ever give Eric what Godric had given him.

As the day wore on, the sound of Eric's prolonged farewell began to sound downright offensive to Godric's ears. That Eric would so mourn the loss of his mortality. The loss of those who did not shield him from harm in the battlefield. That he would feel more intensely about his former family than he did about Godric.

That he could still shed tears, and that he shed them for people who were not Godric.

He shut out the sound until nightfall. At the very moment the last ray of sun hid from the earth he slipped out, leaving Eric to his - much more controlled - hiccups. He really was the fastest of learners.

He returned with one of the villagers, dumping him unceremoniously between himself and Eric. The man had been so badly mauled that his face was unrecognisable, but the adorned handle of his dagger shone familiarly, and Eric stopped weeping long enough to acknowledge both the weapon and the deranged air about Godric's face.

Godric drank without taking his eyes off Eric, daring him to strike, daring him to feel more for the corpse than for his maker. Eric stared at the scene, at the blood trickling along the man's neck and onto the ground where they slept, and Godric's senses now picked up on an unease of a different nature. Inside Eric's very still frame now bubbled fear. Intense, irrational fear of oblivion, of irrelevance, fear that his immortal status might not be permanent--or that it might not be enough. That Godric might dispose of him as easily as he had made him, that he might not be strong, or sharp enough to navigate the waters of this new world of theirs.

Lifting his lips off the body, Godric waited until his child's eyes met his again, and then he gave the teeniest smile. Again the gleam in Eric's eyes. Excitement, and admiration for Godric's age, his strength, his disconnect--just like that, Eric was his again.

To Godric's knowledge, Eric had never cried again.

***

As they travelled down the continent (towards all those civilisations Eric had only known as plundering targets, Godric had said; as far away as they could go from the tempting echoes of Eric's past life, he added to himself when self-honesty struck), Godric preened inwardly at the unending chamber of marvels that he was to his child. Eric's was endlessly curious about Godric's travels, why he had gone north ('The midnight sun. I was too old to live without having seen it.'), the places he had been. Even then, he had known better than to enquire about Godric's own maker or Godric's human life. If Godric never mentioned it, that meant it was not to be brought up.

In all of his thousand years, Godric had never felt as powerful as when Eric gazed at him in such awe.

So he talked and talked, adding layers upon layers of details, because they made Eric's eyes shine, and Godric thought that Eric looked quite pretty when his eyes shone. Godric had always been a bit of a hedonist, and what better companion for a hedonist than a tense-browed, bright-eyed Viking with curious lips that barely suppressed the quiver of unasked questions?

There was pragmatism in Eric's curiosity--now that he felt and thought like a vampire, he wanted more than lore. He wanted to learn the rules of his world ('Are there any lands for us? Are there chieftains there? Laws that we must follow?').

Godric knew that his open pride of Eric's interest in power was a step into uncertain terrain. Too many makers had met their demise trying to pave the way to power for their children--too many had been blinded by the honey in their children’s words. But there was never any honey in Eric's words, and Godric was proud, and frankly, he was too old to bottle up the few thrills that he had left.

'There are written and unwritten laws, Eric. The written laws usually outlive those who made them. The unwritten laws we make for ourselves, and they'll only outlive us if we're foolish. As for land... we have the world.'

***

The one trait Eric had unburied from his human past was an inexplicable interest in women, and an inordinate need to exercise that interest in the human way.

Godric didn't feel very strongly about it at all--he was happy to indulge his child with an occasional treat, in the understanding that gathering "treats" was to be Godric's responsibility alone and that the best among them would be kept for a few days rather than immediately drained. If Eric had his way, he would relieve entire villages of their women within a night, and even a vampire as old as Godric had limited power against a thousand crossbows and the maddened populace wielding them. The fire in Eric's eyes whenever Godric plopped an unconscious female form on him was a sight worth beholding (how often had Godric glamoured women into his child's clutches just for that second when Eric's gaze burned for him, and not yet for the prey?), and Godric certainly didn't object to sitting in and observing those fleeting moments when Eric was all sense and no rationality.

That said, even to his proud eye Eric was not an interesting lover. The whole thing just looked rather messy, and Godric had come from a time and place when mating was, if not necessarily more pleasurable, at least infinitely more interesting than the hapless, animal rutting that Eric performed. And afterwards, just as Godric found himself bored into a half-slumber, Eric always looked absurdly proud of himself. He would eventually have to teach his child a thing or two about the matter before he metaphorically expired of ennui.

One day, when Eric's enthusiastically ramming body was sufficiently near that Godric would bother moving, he stood and grasped Eric's shoulder. He waited for Eric to come out of his daze and eye him, and then pulled him away from the woman, who dangled awkwardly between Eric's twisted frame and the wall. Godric didn't look at her, focused as he was on the mounting confusion on Eric's face. When he sensed that the uncertainty was beginning to be drowned by displeasure, he let his fingers slide from Eric's shoulder and traipse along the length of his neck, and into his hair.

Eric's neck, along with the rest of him, could not have been tenser, yet Godric thought that he could spot an infinitesimal difference in the set of the jaw, the curling of the fingers. He took his time learning the contours of Eric's scalp, the shadows dancing along the muscles in the back of his neck, rippling with every new inch of Godric's discovery in spite of Eric's best efforts to remain still. He knew, he could feel it in his veins that Eric was frantically guessing at his intentions. It was a rare, usually ominous, occasion when they touched. Eric was not used to being touched. Eric was certainly not used to Godric's breath on his neck. He wasn't used to Godric's breath at all.

Utterly silent seconds passed, and just as Eric seemed to lean into his touch, Godric fisted his hair, pulling the blond head back against his bared fangs. With the surprise, and the sting of the bite, Eric's own fangs retracted, but in a flash they were out again--through them came out a growl that Eric's throat had never before produced and he twisted into an impossible position to regain his balance. His leg muscles tightened and shook, and the woman's thigh slid down from where it had been around his hip. Godric replaced it there, lifting his lips from his child's neck and running his tongue very lightly over the closing wounds. They never did that.

'It is not in good form to simply pound into a lover. It bores me,' he chided gently.

Eric blinked in complete bafflement and Godric steered him ever-so-slightly towards the woman, walking away and leaving them to their business.

His life had been quite incomplete without that growl.

Sometimes, Eric was too fast a learner. At one point in the following days, Godric spotted what he thought he could adequately describe as too much contentment in the way Eric and his woman touched each other. Godric suddenly felt very hungry.

'I'm sorry, Eric. She smelled too good. I'll bring you another one tomorrow.'

Never again did one of their lady guests last more than a day.

***

It was a bitter winter in Central Europe, and mankind in general had made itself scarce. The moonlight filtered through the trees to where they sat, outside an unfortunate couple's country estate. Between owners and servants, they had had a bit of a feast a few nights ago, but the fairly significant size of the place meant that they could not remain there much longer. Someone was bound to notice the consistent lack of, well, life, and it wasn't worth the risk. They had already risked capture more than once in recent times--one of which they had only escaped because Eric had finally understood that fangs were more effective than swords--and even the revolutionary winds wafting from Italy were slow in reaching the inner corners where they liked to dwell. Lacking witches, the humans would gladly settle for a vampire or two.

Perhaps they could give it another few days. Eric sat in silence, gazing at the moon, lost in thought, very dapper in his "borrowed" clothing. Godric, who had not forgotten the silver cross melting into his skin during their latest narrow escape, rewound the farmer's untimely end in his mind, at the same time as he carved the man's stake.

'You'll end up impaling yourself.'

Godric raised the small stick to the moonlight. 'How long do you suppose this'll keep me dead? Five minutes?'

'I don't want to find out.'

'You can bite me to bring me back and then you'll be my maker.'

Eric gazed silently back at the moon.

***

Godric was restless. They had found themselves a new, fairly acceptable manor, but
winter was harsher still, and whereas it made their stay safer, it also meant that this time they were actually beginning to be hungry. There was no use in wasting their energies in hopeless hunts--the area was deserted.

He did not like to go hungry. Eric did not enjoy sitting aimlessly around, but he had decided to pass the time learning the country's language, and the house's library provided him with more than enough distraction. Godric, who already spoke the language as though he were a native, had very little in the way of amusement. He detested having nothing to do.

'Are you hungry?'

Godric didn't reply.

'You can feed off me.'

No.

'You need your strength,' Godric deadpanned.

'Don't you always say I'm young and sturdy? You, on the other hand...'

'How about I start with your tongue?'

'You're losing your sense of humour, Father.'

***

Later on that particularly chilly evening, Eric was dozing off by the edges of their new abode's fountain, feeling really quite hungry. They really ought to have saved the cook for later. The way his badly-accustomed body screamed for new blood didn't allow for deep sleep, so he hovered between rest and alertness, which he hated because it brought back echoes of long nights preceding a battle, and he no longer felt any connection to those times. He would eventually have to go off in search of a human somewhere but, for the time being, the frozen grass and the half-shaded moon were just too appealing, and he stayed put.

Not much later, an odd little image crept behind his eyelids. Godric crouching before him and staring. It had been so long since Godric had last needed to flex a muscle that Eric doubted he could still bend that far, but dream-Godric was quite nimble. He had fixed his gaze, a bit of a glare really, on a point in Eric's chest, and Eric drowsily wondered if this was a twist on the night he had been turned.

Then, there was a rustle of clothing and a tightening around his shoulders indicated that his shirt was no longer in its rightful place. Eric wriggled, adapting to it, and dream-Godric cocked his head. There was something faintly troubling about lying sleepily with his torso exposed to a sardonic gaze, even if it was a dream and the gaze was his maker's.

'What are you looking at?'

'Your scars,' dream-Godric deadpanned, reaching for his face. 'I'd missed this one.'

His fingertips slipped softly behind Eric's left ear, caressing the ridge at the base of his scalp. If he hadn't known before, now Eric was sure this was a dream. Godric didn't like scars. These days, he didn't like anything that was less than pristine.

'I like this one. It's well hidden.'

'Hmm,' Eric rumbled, the light scratch of Godric's fingernails reaching the marks on his chest.

'Now, why would you hold onto this?' Godric murmured.

'Well, I can't tear them off,' Eric mumbled reasonably.

'Really?' Godric said softly, lifting the Viking horn and making it gleam in front of Eric's half-shut eyes. 'Why not?'

Well, that sobered him up a bit. 'Godric?'

'Shhh.' Godric twirled the pendant between them as though its very existence offended him, and then looked over Eric's shoulder at the frozen fountain.

'Godric.'

'Silence,' Godric snapped.

Eric obeyed. When had he not? The necklace digging into his neck in Godric's grasp suddenly felt slightly... real.

'If I asked you to give me this necklace, would you?'

'Do you want it?'

'I abhor it.'

There was still something of the Viking in him, after all. 'I abhor the ink on your body, but I do not ask that you wash it out.'

'The ink on my body, as you call it, is a mark of divinity, not mortality.'

Eric didn't quite know what to say to that. Perhaps the lack of nourishment was affecting Godric's mind?

'Please,' he said, putting forth his arm as much as the mussed shirt would allow, 'feed.'

'No.' Godric dropped the pendant, all interest in it gone. As it fell, it grazed one of the scars that so displeased him.

Was this a test to his loyalty? Eric grasped the necklace, and just as he began to say that his maker could have it, he could have anything he wanted, Godric seized his jaw, puckering up Eric's lips rather comically.

'I asked you to be quiet,' he reminded him softly through gleaming fangs.

Eric waited as Godric studied his scrunched up face.

Casting another quick glance over Eric's shoulder, Godric brought his cheek up to his own and whispered in his ear, 'Anything?', in a tone so innocent, so full of expectation, that one would have thought he was the child and Eric the maker. 'I can have anything...?'

When have I ever denied you?, Eric wanted to say, but the words wouldn't come out. What was Godric going to ask of him? That he went away? That he self-immolated? Was Godric tired of him, did he want another child?

Godric's fang brushed his earlobe, and Eric began to think maybe Godric simply wanted to do with him as Eric had seen him do with other men on the rare occasions when he indulged. Godric's fingers were now on his scars, and his fangs dragged along the length of Eric's forehead, and down the side, pausing a hair's breadth from Eric's own. When Godric spoke, they grazed Eric's lips.

'Lie down on the fountain.'

Was that a joke?

'Lie down. On the fountain,' Godric repeated, his voice depleted of all playfulness.

Maybe Godric had lost his mind, after all. 'The ice is too thin.'

'It is not.'

'It will break.'

'You do not trust me,' Godric noted, sounding more accusatory than hurt.

'I will freeze.' And then, while he went through the torturous, painful recovery, Godric would be off. A dismissal for a dismissal--he much preferred a clear one.

Godric let go of him and sat back, refocusing on the Viking necklace for a moment. 'I see I wasn't alone in losing my sense of humour.'

'It's not--'

'What is it, then?' he hissed, pressing up against Eric like a cat mid-pounce.

Defeated, Eric hoisted himself up on his elbows, and then gripped the ledge, heaving himself onto it. With every inch of his back that scraped the frosty stone, bunching the shirt around his waist, an inch of his chest would scrape against Godric's fangs. He could feel the wetness of a spider-web-thin trail of saliva on his skin. Godric's deceitfully young arms were braced on either side of him, and Eric's skin rippled from the proximity. This was the sort of scene that Godric saved for his men, not for him and, even in his utter devotion, Eric had always had trouble understanding why so many of them so easily bent, sometimes literally, to Godric's will.

But why would they not, really?, he thought, lowering himself with great care onto the icy sheet that covered the basin. Once Godric had as much as cast them a glance, shown interest in any way, how could those men even consider denying him? He could barely conceive of it, he who wouldn't even bring himself to touch... The ice crackled underneath him, an ominous sound in the silent garden, and he tentatively adjusted his position, willing his weight to shift in a way that did not end with him being loosened from a block of ice by the morning sun.

When he felt that it was somewhat safe, he raised his head to face Godric in defiance. Would that be all? A corner of his mind wondered if the lack of fresh blood had rendered him delusional.

'All of you, Eric,' Godric pointed out, casually placing a hand on Eric's thigh and kneading it lightly as a hint. The surprisingly gentle (as comatose-inducing acts went) touch reached Eric through the fabric. Spreading his arms and fingers so as to gain some sort of leverage without actually digging his elbows into the pit of pain that awaited underneath him, Eric slithered along the basin until no part of him had access to firm, dry ground, and he closed his eyes. He could feel the different texture as the ice crackled and splintered on, waiting to engulf him.

He only knew Godric had shifted when his ill-tempered voice resonated just above his face.

'Ah, the Viking trinket. How I loathe it.'

Eric opened his eyes. Godric knelt daintily beside him, looking not at all concerned with the ice and very much like the excitable boy who had lured him away from Death's arms so very long ago.

'Do you know what I have?' Godric asked airily, pulling out a necklace of his own. A fang-shaped pendant not too different from his dangled from it. But Godric's was made of wood, and it reminded Eric of a miniature stake, and he had the urge to recoil from it. 'I carved it out of that stake. Curious, isn't it? It was going to kill us--and now I can defend myself with it,' he added, prodding Eric's stomach.

Eric drew in a sharp, deep breath to put as much distance between his skin and that thing as he could, ice be damned. Godric smiled and rested the stake--fang--on Eric's navel, making it stand on it.

'You don't like it?'

Eric's mind was too full of the feel of a pointy stick on his skin for him to reply.

'You don't.'

'No,' he finally rasped out.

'Why not?' Godric enquired sweetly, removing the stake--fang--from Eric's navel and running it along the pelvic bone that peeked out of his rumpled waistband.

Eric cursed inwardly. He knew he had to work on his skills for rhetoric under pressure --they weren't yet good enough that he could frisk his mind for wit when sharp wood was being pressed against him.

'Does it bring back bad memories?' Godric continued, moving that wretched thing lovingly along Eric's side, and down the other, and back to his abdomen. 'Would you perhaps like me to put it away?'

Yes, Eric said soundlessly.

'And how... terribly... offended... will you be... if I don't?' The stake--fang!-- returned to its course, along the pelvic bone and up the side, but this time scratching the skin. 'How... angry?'

The sound of his skin ripping under the wooden tip was louder in Eric's ears than Godric's voice, and it took a real effort for him to focus his eyes on Godric's.

'How... wounded?'

Eric didn't even know what the question was any more, but it didn't matter, because Godric had slipped into a language Eric hadn't yet learned, and he didn't seem to be expecting a reply.

All at once, a whiff of blood invaded his nostrils. It was instantly gone, but not before Eric registered it as his own. In a supreme effort, he raised his head, noting but no longer caring that the move sent his shoulder blades sinking considerably into the ice. The wooden fang wormed a trail along his torso, drawing bloody dots so tiny that they retreated into the healing skin even before they had fully surfaced. But he could smell them, and feel them, and it brought his senses to an overload. Godric gazed at the droplets as though he had never before seen blood.

At one point, he pressed more deeply and one, two, three drops whirred along Eric's abdomen, disappearing into the ice. He could feel each of them leaving his body. Between hunger, bleeding and the heightened reaction to Godric's knee brushing against his hip, he really did not need any more weaknesses now.

'What did you say, Eric?'

He wasn't aware that he had said anything.

Godric sat delicately astride him, leaning in to appreciate the wooden fang's progression on his neck, a bit like a painter observed a detail on canvas. Eric's face turned to his.

'Is there anything you want to say?' Godric picked up Eric's pendant and aligned it with his own, smudging it with blood and holding the set in front of Eric's nose. Eric's tongue tumbled against his teeth, trying to reach out for the blood.

Godric smiled, and his legs tightened against Eric, sending his lower body as deeply into the ice as the rest of him. Eric couldn't feel the cold, but he felt the wetness. And how insignificant it was when he also felt the touch of Godric's legs, and Godric's hand shredding his skin, and his eyes boring into Eric as though he were a work of art. Suddenly, it was eerily like a dream again, with Godric looking at him as he never had before, and it did not feel wrong at all.

The wooden fang hit a vein and he hissed, pleasure and pain and frailty shooting through him for all of a moment before the wound closed. Water swiveled to the surface, wetting the ends of his hair and softening the icicles that jabbed his skin.

'Do you want to get up?' Godric asked, sounding as if the possibility had only just occurred to him.

Yes, he meant to say, but the word got lost on its way when another vein was hit and Godric brought both necklaces to it, letting Eric's blood pour over them. He aired out the pendants, watching intently as the very dry wood absorbed Eric's blood and darkened into a richer brownish-red tone.

'Look,' Godric said excitedly. 'Now I have a Viking trinket too. Well, my trinket has a bit of Viking in it, at least.'

Eric looked away, sucking in his cheeks and hoping that the wound closed already, before he tucked into his own flesh.

Godric looked sweetly up at him. 'Are you angry at me?'

No. In all fairness, he didn't know what he was, but that was the word that his pale, starved lips tried to form. Godric ran the horn and the fang over them, smearing them in a tiny rivulet of blood.

'Will you want to leave me when dawn comes?' The question was the most caressing of murmurs, but Godric's eyes burned unmistakably. Eric had not known that he could leave his maker.

Never.

He did not get a chance to say it, however, for a moment later, grinning as if he had only just had the best idea of his life, Godric brought the wooden fang to his own lips, coiling the tip of his tongue around it without taking his eyes from Eric's own transfixed gaze. Pursing his lips around it, Godric pushed sharply. Blood immediately pooled around the corners of his mouth.

Eric's hand flew up to pull it back out, and Godric let him. Whereas the fang wasn't long enough to do as much damage as a stake, the pain must have been blinding, for Godric blinked tremulously, clenching his muscles into essentially crushing Eric's hipbones.

Registering that his maker was still all there, Eric actually breathed out in relief. Godric scowled at the human reflex. He leaned in and ran his tongue along Eric's lips, blending their blood and pushing it tentatively into Eric's mouth.

Blood. Godric's blood. In his mouth. Eric had never been so hungry. He had never been... his thought process slipped away as Godric's tongue pushed against his, preventing itself from sealing up.

Eric held onto his self-control as much as he could--longer than anyone else would, he liked to think. He gripped the wooden pendant in his fist as tightly as possible, shifting it so that it would pierce his skin and give him something else to focus on. Godric's tongue coated his with a layer of blood. He pressed himself against the ice, this time positively willing it to swallow him whole before he drained his maker. Godric's tongue ran over his teeth, layering them with blood so aged, so addictive, that Eric suddenly pictured himself, centuries in the future, searching hopelessly for something to match it. The wound was closing. If he could hold back just another second... Godric's hands reached up for Eric's head, delving into his hair and holding him in place while his lips closed against Eric's in something less like a blood exchange and more reminiscent of a...

And then he lost it. It wasn't even a conscious move. Before he knew it, his fangs were out, one of them digging into Godric's sealing tongue, and his free hand was on Godric's shoulder, clamping him in place. Godric could have flicked him away like an insect, but he didn't, and Eric was so beyond everything at that point that this particular detail only made it through his fuzzy mind much later.

Godric's hands were soft in his hair, and Godric's lips were soft on his-even the way his blood poured down Eric's throat was somehow soft, masking the superhuman strength beneath the delicate features. It was not Eric's rebellious hand keeping Godric in place. It was Godric's body keeping Eric where he wanted him. Godric's legs shifted against his, effectively cracking the ice and drenching them both.

Suddenly, the pain of freezing and the torture of unfreezing seemed like a small price to pay. So it wasn't just languid glances and quirked lips and the occasional glamour that drew people to Godric. His legs touched the bottom of the basin and the splintered sheet of ice dug into the small of his back, but Godric's fingers were actually caressing his hair, and even meeting the sun would have been worth it then.

His partners' eyes sometimes rolled back into their heads, and it had always seemed very odd to him. But he wondered if he was doing it himself now, for all of a sudden he couldn't see. Or if he could, nothing registered. It was strange how he could feel his normal energy levels returning with the blood influx at the same time as Godric seemed to be draining him of all said energy. He stiffened against Godric, and at least for that moment he would pretend to himself that the momentary ripple running through Godric's legs wasn't just his imagination.

He could feel himself tighten, his rejuvenated veins straining against his flesh, he could even picture a heartbeat there where he knew he had none, because he really, truly, felt alive.

Ever so slowly, Godric's mouth retreated, drifting away from his as Eric stared at it with glazed eyes.

'There,' the mouth said gently, 'that should keep you standing for a few more days.'

Eric rather thought that he would be up for at least a decade. He actually tilted his neck upwards and gave a few short, spastic sniffs that made Godric's lips quirk just so. He was kept at a short distance, watching as Godric's bruised lips healed and the tip of his tongue flicked out, very very whole, and very very teasing. Godric's hands left Eric's hair and spidered down his chest, lingering down at the spot where his blood met water.

Eric's eyes definitely rolled back into his head at that point. Sparing a very quick glance for Godric's angelic smile, he reached out and grazed Godric's neck with his bloodied fangs, feeling him tense against his mouth.

Tense, but not retreat.

Breathing in the scent of that unblemished skin just above the tattoos, Eric dragged his lips apart and bit down. Godric's fingers dug into his skin, and he sank his teeth in as deeply as he could. Godric whimpered against his ear. Here was something he didn't do with his partners. Eric hoped, at any rate. And that was the last thing he hoped for, because then Godric was mimicking his gesture, and crushing him against the ice, and pushing him against the bottom of the basin.

The only indication that their twisted embrace had lasted for quite a while came when Eric's body began to stiffen in something that he seemed to remember was called hypothermia (or, as he called it, "Ouch"). Godric, who wasn't quite as affected by it, noticed it too. He removed his fangs from Eric's neck, hauled him up against himself and out of the water, and waited until Eric decided that he had had quite enough of his blood.

Eric looked a little bit drunk when his fangs finally retracted, but Godric didn't dwell on that for very long, because he was also beginning to look a bit blue. In the time he took to reopen his eyes, Eric found himself back in the house.

Even a few centuries later, he had never quite disentangled that night's facts from the figments of his imagination. He wasn't sure that he wanted to do so. For now, he settled on crediting it, whatever "it" had been, with his newfound ability to see beyond gender (it had certainly given him an interesting 17th century). If ever he felt the need to know what exactly had happened... he would eventually muster up the courage to ask Godric.

***

Godric began to realise something in him had started to shift when news came that one of Britain's colonies was rebelling and he felt absolutely no interest in seeing it from up close. Eric would have liked it, but Godric couldn't even fathom going through the trouble and the risk of a long sea trip just so they could be part of another massacre. Europe kept giving them more than enough choice in that respect.

He wondered if age was beginning to take its toll on him at last. It was very unlike him to reject the possibility of watching as a new civilisation emerged. At Eric's insistence, he eventually agreed to go there sometime in the future, if a new country did emerge from this new mess, provided they could be sure those Indians people talked about were kept well away from him. He was beginning to feel a bit too old to see the fun in dodging arrows.

***

Godric fancied himself a clever, acute, observant vampire. Even so, there were elements of human life that he would never, ever understand. For example, how mankind had gone from Roman baths to shivery dips in streams whenever the workload or the deity of the day allowed. Everything was just so filthy.

This rather tedious thought process struck him shortly after they had arrived in Paris, as he stood on something resembling a sidewalk, trying his very best to avoid touching the wall. Eric had joined the crowd and was enthusiastically helping them tear corpses apart. He towered over them, which at the moment meant only there was more dirt on him than on anybody else. The scent of stale blood wafted into Godric's nostrils and made them twitch in revulsion.

The upside was that if they were to join a revolution (albeit accidentally), there was no better place to be than Paris. At least there was perfume to be found. He had been part of so many national upheavals over the ages that the French one didn't particularly jolt his senses, but he was grateful for their perfume. He hoped that it wouldn't go out of fashion.

Eric, on the other hand, still felt a bit cheated out of the American Revolution, so he was quite enjoying the unexpected fray. Nothing excited Eric quite like "the fray", Godric considered, not without appreciation. It was a trait Eric had inherited from him.

But its appeal was wearing thin for Godric. He could foresee how it would all end already, and to be frank, nothing would ever quite match the fall of the Roman Empire.

'Fathers make sacrifices for their children,' he reminded himself as Eric spun around to wave a disembodied limb at him. Of course he was better at the sans-culotte frenzy than the actual sans-culottes. What else...?

'You need a bath,' he whispered, knowing the sound would carry to Eric's ears. 'How will you show your face at church looking like that?'

In the crowd, Eric laughed and, momentarily, the smell was easier to bear.

***

The woman's shriek carried through the halls. For the first time in quite a while, Godric felt a grin tugging at the corners of his lips. A second later, Eric barged in.

'It would seem you have met your match.'

Eric gestured angrily towards the source of the scream. 'I... she... why didn't you stop me?!'

'I might have if you had informed me of what you were going to do.'

Eric huffed.

'The first few days are hardest. It will get better.'

The source of Eric's anger burst into the room much in the same way he had, destroying quite a bit of expensive furniture on the way.

'I wasn't like that when you turned me.'

'Well, I asked your opinion before turning you,' Godric pointed out, casting a glance at Eric's energetic progeny. 'Good evening, Pamela.'

She whirled around with her lips parted, clearly looking for an appropriate insult.

'It really is in your best interests to be polite to him.' Eric snapped.

'Good. Evening,' she clipped out, stomping back out of the room.

'Just teach her how to feed and let her tire. She'll be calmer once she's rested,' Godric said helpfully. 'She's just confused. You can tell there is joy in her.'

'What was I thinking,' Eric grumbled, walking out in search of his child and entirely missing the glum edge to Godric's voice.

***

Godric couldn't bring himself to like Pamela, or Pam, as Eric had taken to calling her, quite as much as she deserved. Both as a vampire and as a child, she was entirely adequate, but her arrival had signaled the beginning of a new era in Eric's life, one that did not include Godric. Eric had someone of his own to dote on now, and he did so unrelentingly (Eric had, of course, adapted to fatherhood as though it were his calling--how it surprised him not at all), casting aside his own instincts to hone Pam's--much like Godric had done all those centuries ago.

He would have liked to pin his disenchantment wholly on her but, compelled by the inconvenient penchant for fairness that had recently begun to surface in him, Godric had to admit that she was a symbol rather than a cause. The world, once sprawling and daunting, left him slightly weary and unimpressed now, whereas Eric still boiled with energy, with the same sharp curiosity that had led them through continents for so long. Pam was simply the most recent (if perhaps the most meaningful) tug at that curiosity, something that would always be new and exciting for Eric. She was neither new nor exciting for Godric.

He decided, then, that one last test to their ties was in order--no, not so much a test as an assessment. Something compelled him to return to his birthplace, which he had never revisited, and now it felt like it was the right moment to reassess his own individuality once again. He left without informing anyone.

In almost nine hundred years, he had never left his child's side for a long stretch of time, but his child had a child now. Circumstances had changed. During the first few nights, there was an uncomfortable silence where there used to be Eric's voice. He had to remind himself once or twice that he didn't have to watch over anyone other than himself this time. At home, his child must be embarking on the opposite journey.

He had forgotten how easily silence and solitude came to him.

***

Eric was angry upon his return. He had been worrying. He had also been kept in the dark, and Eric did not like to be kept in the dark. He would have accompanied Godric to world's end--had he not always been a compliant child (he found his own qualities all the more admirable now that he had the world's least compliant vampire girl as a child)? He still remembered his own painful return to his native village. Was Godric so alone in the world that he need go through that by himself?

'I haven't been, or felt the need to be alone since the night I made you,' Godric said calmly, sitting and watching as Eric deflated.

'And you do now.'

'Yes.'

'Why.' There wasn't even a question behind the word, just the acknowledgement of the blow.

Godric shrugged very lightly. 'We need new emotions as we age, stronger ones. You know that--you made yourself a child. New emotions are hard to come by at my age. I thought I'd revisit the ones I had forgotten.'

'Have you revisited them now?' Eric ground out.

Godric didn't reply. Eric looked as if he was going to say something and then thought better of it. He turned to leave the room.

'I'm sorry I had you worried. It was not my intention.' Godric paused. He may have to lie a bit. 'I won't go away again without telling you. I promise.'

Eric nodded without turning to him.

'Which is why I'm telling you now. I think I'll pay a visit to that former colony we heard about. It seems things are a bit quieter there now.'

Lightning-bolt fast, Eric was kneeling beside him, studying his carefully crafted blank face before replying, 'We'll go with you.'

We. A word that no longer included Godric. 'Your child is too young for such a long journey.'

'She is strong. She will make it.'

'She will not survive.'

Eric struggled with the concept, but he knew Godric was right. Pam was too young, too fragile, too hungry still. The sea trip would be too much for her. And Eric would never risk his child's safety, even for Godric.

Even for Godric.

When Eric found the words again, they were pained. 'Am I being released?'

Godric's fingertips ghosted through Eric's hair, eliciting a shiver. Eric looked up. His child faced release in the eye, as he did everything. He lowered his head until his forehead almost touched Eric's in their own little gesture of affection, which they had repeated so often over the centuries. Eric's eyes bore into his with such devotion, every inch of his frame so hopelessly attached to him, that Godric was absurdly relieved. For a second, just a second, it had crossed his mind that releasing him might be the best option.

'No.'

Eric's lips parted, letting out a tiny breath. Contrary to that long gone night when Godric had been brazen enough to curb his boredom by toying with Eric's feelings (would he ever atone for that?), this time the human gesture didn't anger him at all. Eric had always retained a little bit of his humanity, after all. He was beginning to think that Eric was so precious to him because of it, and not in spite of it.

'I would like you to join me there once your child is stronger. If you want.'

'I do,' Eric instantly replied. 'I will. We will.'

He threaded his hand through his child's blond hair again, thinking that it felt quite nice. Wonder why he hadn't done that more often while he had had the chance, he mused, shifting in his seat and beginning to stand.

Eric leaned in, lowering his eyes as if he were ashamed of himself and moving his lips as though he were fighting to keep the words inside. His lips were so close to Godric's that he could feel them. The most unwelcome surge of emotion of Godric's life erupted in him like the proverbial lava. He was suddenly so jealous of all those who had ever caught or would ever catch Eric's attention. His human wife, his brothers-in-arms, his petulant child, his own past self. He pictured himself snatching what Eric was so movingly offering and marking him, burning through him, weaving through him so deeply that their scents would never break apart.

I'd like to spoil you for everyone else. Eric's neck just underneath his fingertips.

'You already have,' he heard Eric murmur in reply, and he froze, plummeting back into reality.

He had to go. For Eric's sake more than his, he took his time peeling his hands and gaze off Eric's body, and he stood. He had to twist around Eric's forlorn frame but at last he had reached the door and was out of the room.

'Why didn't you just release him?' an unkind voice asked when he had barely taken two steps down the corridor. Pam had detected her maker's distress and had come over to help him. Godric found her momentarily endearing, even if she did need to learn discretion.

'Because he is mine.' His tone left absolutely no room for argument, so he turned and left, hoping she would have the sense to not go to her maker yet.

If his life was headed in the direction he foresaw, a moment would come when he would need Eric to obey him unblinkingly, and Eric would not want to do so. He couldn't risk releasing him.

***

And that moment had come, atop a concrete roof in Dallas, with yet another shrill girl listening in and hoping to shield Eric from pain. It wasn't quite as Godric had envisioned the scene, but it was appropriate. Comforting, even. Dallas had been good to him. The new continent had been good to him--given him a last gasp, one last chance to enjoy eternity.

No, little girl, I didn't offer myself out of foolishness. You'd be amazed at how few options a powerful vampire has when he wants to die. V dealers, underlings and adversaries... which among them would risk an attempt on my life? Which of them would believe it wasn't a trap if I bared my chest and handed them a stake?

When the time had come when he could see himself for the sadistic barbarian he had been, he did so without self-pity, for there is no point in lying to oneself. He had hated what he had seen. He disgusted himself so deeply that sometimes he wondered how his body could still contain the putrefaction within. When synthetic blood had become available, he knew that History was bringing vampires and humans together as fiercely as it had once separated them, and he had been grateful for the chance to witness it.

I don't think like a vampire any more, but I still think like Eric's maker. He knows me so well. He knows even in the throes of delirium I wouldn't simply fall asleep outside and meet the sun with my eyes closed. He would have known. It would have broken him. He's not quite as impenetrable as he seems and it--I would have broken him.

And then, in his relatively quiet corner of the world, the Fellowship had risen, spurred on by his disregard of his underlings' sanguinary instincts. They wouldn't question his reasons. They would be pleased to act like they had captured him rather than opened the door to him. Eric needn't know. He would be gone before Eric knew. And after the first shock, Eric would be all right, fast learner that he was. He was already a better vampire than Godric had been at that ripe young age.

When both suicide and death by a friendly hand are taken from you, how do you put an end to an existence you cannot bear? I am tired. I am fortunate. I've seen and done everything. I've somehow even made myself loved.

He had made one foolish mistake. He had broken his promise to Eric. He had forgotten.

I should have said something. That I was travelling, perhaps. That I had a new lover and did not want to be disturbed. I forgot. I didn't think Isabel would inform Eric so swiftly. Didn't think he'd take her seriously.

No. He hadn't thought at all. It hadn't occurred to him. And it had been foolish, for he had always known that if anything could make him question himself, it was Eric, with his bright, devoted eyes and lips that had only ever trembled for him. So Eric had come, with shiny eyes and trembling lips and his life in his hands.

Human tears are seeing me off. I have more than I deserve.

Eric had given him the tiniest hint of a smile before the power of Godric's command forced him into safety downstairs, and Godric understood. He had often pictured Eric trying to make sense of their last exchange before his move across the ocean--of why he hadn't been released. He now knew, and Godric couldn't look him in the eye as he left. He should have known better.

Godric, alas, was not a fast learner at all.

_________

SQUEE! Featured Story at Petulant Poetess!

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 23:32:40 GMT

*does the happy dance*

Havoc of the Opera is one of the Featured Stories for the 2nd half of November at The Petulant Poetess!

I can hardly believe it. I'm so happy. *squees shamelessly*

The apple of my eye...

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 22:52:32 GMT

Of course LJ had to put "chasing porn fic" at the top of its priorities just as I finally managed to sit down and finish rewriting my, er, little Harry/Snape piece. BUT... it's their site, and I'm using it for free, so... in compliance with the LJ TOS, Havoc of the Opera is archived at IJ.

Title: Havoc of the Opera
Pairing: Harry/Snape (Hermione/Other, Ginny/Other)
Rating: NC-17/Mature
Warnings: ANGST, Under-18, Het (side pairings)
Summary: 6th year. Dumbledore has a wildly unpopular idea to improve interhouse relationships. Harry improves his relationship with a teacher instead.
Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling and associates; every other recognisable work mentioned is the intellectual property of its creators.

Quick note

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 18:28:45 GMT

Have Horcruxed myself. (mainly to ensure that my material doesn't clash with LJ's policies. I hope House Fic doesn't collide with the company's delicate sensibilities).

... this is somebody else's wording, but it was too good to be used only once.

Really, really delayed MEME

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 22:52:55 GMT

tagged me for this over a month ago, and I only realised it few minutes ago, because I just lose at life. I'm so sorry for taking so long.

Post a list of your top five favorite fics you've written, regardless of fandom or the reason you love them. This isn't about the BEST things you've written, but what you LOVE most. Then tag five other people to do the same.

#1 and #2 are arbitrary, as I can't bring myself to choose between these two ~~apples of my eye(s)~~.Neither is perfect by any means, yet both are terribly significant for me.

#1: The Week After -- my first, rather recent, foray into House fanfic. Despite the fact that I chose SufferingInsanely!Chase to introduce myself to this fandom (how stylish and original, ha!), the reactions were rather nice, and I'm quite happy with this one. It was a first on so many levels (fandom, pairing, writing style), and it turned out much like I had planned. It's a quiet little piece that, for all its angst, was a joy to write. I can't help but adore it.

#2: Havoc of the Opera -- this Harry Potter fic took up ten months of my private life (and half the academic/professional one, too), and, as silly as it sounds, it played a large part in my personal growth during that period. It's enormous, riddled with all sorts of mistakes (which I've unsuccessfully been trying to edit for the last two years), and yet, there's the one chapter that I still believe is the best thing I will ever write. It was posted (in an archive) before LJ was all the rage, at a time when getting reviews was basically a matter of luck -- for almost a year, I had the most loyal, concrit-ing reviewers I ever met, and the whole experience was very uplifting, in a rather sour period of my real life. I still get the occasional review for it. I treasure it.

***

Apart from these two, there are few that really rank up there in the affection scale. I co-wrote two crack!tastic MSTs that were great, great fun, but are not something I would write today -- I heart the experience of co-writing them with my dearest friend, rather than hearting them.

There's always (#3) Afterparty, (House, M.D.) written for karaokegal 's Santa. It was/is my first completed Wilson/Chase, a fun process, and a nice training for future fics. The pairing fascinates me, though I seem to have a problem handling plotlines that suit it.

Then, there's (#4) Demeaning (House, M.D.), written for karaokegal 's 'Come as You're Not' Party, which was meant as a purposeful take on a usual cliché (in my other fandoms), but ended up causing a bit of a commotion because of the potentially triggering subject. Again, it was a first for me in many ways (pairing, subject...), and it was an interesting process, and a generally well-received one-shot. And it was interesting to see how the House fandom differs from my others even where clichés are concerned.

I suppose I can name (#5) Consequences of a Bored Mind (Harry Potter) as a bit of a landmark for me, as it was my first admittedly plotless, canon-less, senseless one-shot, with a crack!pairing to boot. Just a harmless little ficlet. An ultimately forgettable, but freeing experience, for someone like me.

Phew. I tag (if they haven't been tagged to oblivion yet, of course):
andrealyn
calistal
moondustwolf
nuerin
sexdrugsand

Sat, 31 Mar 2007 22:53:29 GMT

Hmm. I wrote this a couple of months ago, for this year's round of this year's round of santahouse_md, but never really got around to posting it elsewhere -- I just saw it out of the corner of my eye, and thought that I might as well give it a home. It's not brilliant, but it's something. This pairing gets too little loving.

Title: Afterparty
Pairing: Wilson/Chase
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: ... not really.
Summary: Wilson thinks it's time to move on. Chase wants to be remembered.

---

Reclined on the sofa, Chase observed silently as Wilson closed the front door with a sigh.

'Rough night?'

Wilson jumped at the sound and turned to him wearily.

'Yeah...'

'Emergency?'

Wilson nodded. 'Another kid winning the lottery twice, like your boss says. Hodgkin's plus Ewing's.'

'Poor kid.'

'It's under control now. For the time being, at least. Why aren't you at the function?'

Chase stood, with a shrug. 'It sort of died down when you left. Thought I might as well come home to a good book,' he gestured to Wilson's dog-eared copy of 1984.

'Good for you,' Wilson mumbled, hanging his dress jacket by the door.

'That'll be ruined if you don't hang it properly.'

Wilson went back for the jacket and laid it on the back of a chair, plopping himself down on it as well, head in his hands. A tense silence followed.

Chase eventually broke it, crossing the room to pour himself a drink, his back to Wilson.

'Is Eleanor still unresponsive to chemo?'

The tension was suddenly palpable. Wilson craned his neck to face Chase's back, a mere three feet away. 'You know her name...?'

'House brought in her file earlier today, while you were in the clinic - had us diagnosing her for ages. He lost interest in her when it turned out she didn't have Ewing's, after all.'

Wilson registered the information with some difficulty, only now realising that Chase hadn't yet changed out of his dress shirt and pants.

'She was stable when I left, by the way,' Chase added, finally turning to Wilson and exposing a loosened shirt and very dishevelled hair, but otherwise impeccable looks. 'So, really. Why won't you stop insulting my intelligence?'

'Chase...'

'No, really. We're both adults. It might actually be easier if we behave like, you know, grown-ups.' Chase sat back on the sofa, facing Wilson.

Wilson massaged the creases out of his forehead and sighed heavily.

'Should I have gone back to my own place?' Chase said tentatively.

Wilson was silent.

'Should I have packed my bags while I was waiting?'

Wilson shook his head, more in introspection than as an answer.

'Help me out, here. This is my life, I need to plan my immediate future.'

'This doesn't have to...'

'What exactly is this?'

Wilson sighed again, breathed in, and blurted out, 'I'm getting married.'

All things considered, Chase's reaction was remarkably nonchalant. He put down his drink and inched closer to Wilson. 'House finally said yes?'

Wilson threw him a disgusted look.

'Honestly! I just want to know the competition!'

'There's no... competition. You knew this was eventually going to happen.'

'No, I didn't. You overestimate me.'

'Don't make this harder than it is.'

'... it is? Funny, it sounded like you didn't mean to tell me at all. Were you planning on another staged emergency for your wedding day? Perhaps a night shift for the wedding night?'

'Spare me.'

'Spare you?'

Wilson picked up Chase's drink and had a sip. 'This has been great. It... still is. But it's not enough for me. It never was. And you always knew that.'

Chase eyed him questioningly.

'Maybe House is right,' Wilson went on, 'Maybe I am a masochist, maybe I need to be married to feel it's real, maybe I do get off on the pain of the divorce-'

'Oh, spare me. Your only claim to masochism is putting up with House for so long.'

Wilson shrugged. 'Well, I don't know how to explain it. I like you. I do. But she's... something else. It's different. It's...'

Chase smirked. '... a new toy. Just so I know, am I expected to come running to you when this thing crashes and burns, some three months from now?'

Wilson downed the rest of the drink and stood. 'Good night, Chase.'

Chase let out a sardonic laugh. 'Erm, where do I sleep?'

'Wherever you want. Just let me be,' Wilson replied tiredly, making his way to the bathroom.

Chase sat alone, absorbing the surreal conversation and registering, at last, that he had been forsaken for Mrs. Wilson n.º4. There was something maddeningly irritating in the thought that, no matter what he did, it would have turned out this way. Even more irritating was the knowledge that their apparent idyll of months couldn't beat the fact that Wilson was hard-wired to prefer women. He was just made like that.

Well, he certainly wasn't about to go down anonymously.

Chase ran his hands through his hair and followed the sound of the running water. The bathroom door was unlocked. Wilson was absently unbuttoning his shirt, shoes haphazardly set by the toilet. He barely registered the hands circling his waist, until they unbuckled his belt and pulled out the shirt tails.

'Chase,' he warned.

'Hmm?'

'Stop that.'

'Why? Don't you supposedly get off on divorces? This a bit of a divorce, isn't it?

Wilson swatted Chase's hands away and turned to him, being instantly trapped between the sink and Chase's wandering hands. 'Sex isn't going to make anything better, Chase.'

'When did that change?'

'Chase,' Wilson called more forcefully, as his trousers slipped down his legs.

'What...?!', Chase grumbled, from the crook of Wilson's neck.

'Get off.'

'I intend to,' Chase confided.

Wilson let out a swear word and slithered a hand between them, cupping Chase through his clothes and noting, with bitter satisfaction, that Chase momentarily stopped moving.

'Ok,' he clipped out, squeezing rather roughly, 'Is this what you want? Is this all?'

Chase leered and pulled Wilson to himself unexpectedly, shoving them both under the running shower.

Wilson broke the kiss, catching just a flash of the vulnerable, content lover he knew before Chase locked eyes with him and started rocking against his hand, mouthing obscenities at him and grabbing Wilson's shirt to pull him closer.

'Is this what you want?' Wilson repeated in a whisper, aroused in spite of himself, 'Is this how you want it...?'

Chase leered at him, saying something absolutely unprintable and rocking with more enthusiasm. Wilson began to get lost in the moment, in the mouth just inches from his, in the feel of the leg sliding around his to coach him into movement. Then, as the drenched shirt sending waves of frostbite through his skin was removed from his body, it occurred to him that this was an almost exact re-enactment of the very first time they'd had sex, months ago, in the hospital's showers, after a gruelling night that both assumed exempted them from responsibility. It had started just like this, with him in control, the freezing water making them more and more alert to the other's reaction, their expensive clothing being treated with utmost indifference under his own adolescent fervour, until Chase...

Chase used the wall as leverage and slammed Wilson against the wall, inching away from the kiss Wilson was seeking.

'Who is she, after all?'

Wilson blinked away the water. 'What?'

'Not Brenda. She would have bragged to the whole hospital. Linda is too independent, Jennifer is too cold...' Chase listed all the attractive females he could recall, in a voice that was much too strong for someone peeling away another's underwear against a bathroom wall.

'Chase!'

'I'm curious! I want to know who that wonder is that made you give me up,' Chase countered, hands sliding around Wilson's buttocks and further in, 'Christine... is a virgin... Isab--'

'Not anymore,' Wilson snapped, moving sulkily away from Chase's hands and only managing to nestle against Chase's groin.

Chase's eyes widened theatrically. '... I never would have thought. What a great lay she must be...!'

'She is, actually,' Wilson ground out, trying to will his erection away.

'Better than me?'

'I'm marrying her, aren't I?'

'Right, I forgot. Well, you need a stag night to remember, if that bore of a blonde is all you have to look forward to,' Chase awkwardly balanced himself against Wilson to toe off his own bottoms, and Wilson flattened himself against the wall dramatically, arms wide open, the picture of tragedy come to life.

Chase had to swallow a laugh. 'No,' he informed Wilson sweetly, 'you like to be on top. Might as well give you that parting gift.'

He swirled on the wet floor so that he was now between Wilson and the wall, and brought his mouth a millimetre from Wilson's. 'Unless, of course, you're not up to it,' he emphasised his point with a curling of fingers that had Wilson momentarily seeing stars. When his eyes could focus again, all that Wilson had in mind was wiping Chase's arrogant smirk from his face. He wasn't a freak. He didn't need this boy with delusions of importance. And he could make a marriage work.

Chase's smirk didn't waver as Wilson fumbled around with the soap and repositioned them. As Wilson entered him in one, long, thrust, though, it seemed to morph into a smile - a smile rather reminiscent of Christine's. The way Chase's body was entwined with his, too, was oddly reminiscent of her. The hand pushing his hair out of his face resembled that other, who had recently taken to coif him in the corridors. The candid, innocent way Chase embraced him was very familiar, and yet... Wilson tried to reach for the tap, stop the water and clear his mind, but Chase stopped him, his mouth reverting to a smirk, the languid rhythm Chase had set now unmistakeably Chase's, the hair falling onto his face much so much fairer than hers, the patterns traced by those hands much more provocative than hers.

Wilson closed his eyes, clawing at the memory of her, trying to keep in mind all those reasons why he'd picked her. Chase's lips brushed his, unmistakeably Chase's, not half as needy as hers, not half as needy as his own. Just a brush, as Wilson opened his eyes, Christine's image overlapping with Chase's, Chase's moves mimicking hers almost to perfection... Wilson braced himself against the wall as Chase's muscles began to tense around him, as his own moves turned erratic. Chaser laid his forehead against Wilson's, mouth hovering half an inch from his again, but never closer, his bright eyes so near that Wilson almost couldn't make out their colour. Wilson could swear that a sultry 'Oh, Doctor Wilson...!' had just made itself heard.

When he came to, though, Chase was airily, if wetly, disentangling himself and picking up his clothing as though nothing had happened. In a matter of seconds, Wilson was alone, his heart still racing, fully aware that he would never touch his fiancée again without thinking of Chase.

Foreman/Chase... by me. Be afraid. Very afraid.

Thu, 02 Nov 2006 06:07:29 GMT

This was written for karaokegal's "Come As You're Not" Halloween Party, and is ~~the walking, talking~~ proof that I should never attempt outright smut.

Title: Demeaning
Pairing: Foreman/Chase
Rating: Very much NC-17
Word count: 2617. No, no plot.
Warnings: ~~Ambiguous consent~~ Borderline non-con by the droves.
Summary: Pointless excuse for smut. Foreman wants Chase. Chase gives in. Much fun is had by... at least one of them.
Why it's a costume: Mostly, the premise is a (rather contrived) plotline recurrent in most fandoms I've encountered, which I never found terribly appealing - cliché, cliché, cliché; the pairing is new to me even as a reader; it's my first go at ~~non-con~~ ~~ambiguous consent,~~ er, this.
A/N: props if you can find the adaptation of the lyrics you gave me, karaokegal...!

‘So what do you want?’

Foreman put down the cup, cleared his throat and smiled so angelically it was out of character. ‘You.’

***

Chase sat stiffly on one end of the sofa, hands pressing tensely on the leather seat, forcing his own eyes to dart to and from the figure on the other end of it. Eyes fixed on the window, he tried to ascertain through the silence when Foreman would move next, reminding himself time and again of the reaction that was expected of him.

The silence grew heavier, and heavier, and tense, and, finally, there was a sort of bouncing pressure beside him, and through the corner of his eye, Chase spotted an ever-enlarging shadow moving closer. He pressed his lips together and commanded his eyes to remain open. Foreman tilted his chin, lowered his own mouth to Chase’s, kissing him softly, but surely, lowering himself onto Chase and making him lean back against the arm of the sofa.

Chase couldn’t prevent his eyes from closing, now, as his lips were nipped, his jaw line traced, his jumper removed, as a nose made its way under the collar of his buttoned-up-to-neck shirt. He dutifully let Foreman kiss, and nibble, and feel all he wanted, mentally reminding himself that this was not him, this was not happening to him, and he just had to be still and let it happen, and it was not him.

And yet, when Foreman’s hands untucked his shirt to graze his waist, his breath caught. Squeezing his eyes shut, he tried to ignore the cold touch that tickled its way under the waistband. Again, he couldn’t help it, and again, his breath caught when his jeans were unbuttoned, unzipped, pulled open. His hips wavered of their own accord, and immediately he froze, torn between responding to the touch and recoiling.

Foreman’s hands left his waist. He kept his eyes closed. For the briefest moment, all he could hear was his own breath, echoing ominously inside his head. Then, a hand grasped his arm, sliding down to the wrist and coaxing him into a sitting position. Chase reluctantly opened his eyes. Foreman was eyeing him quizzically. ‘Perhaps we could move this elsewhere?’ Foreman suggested, already standing, already making him stand, already guiding him down the corridor with a polite, yet unsurprisingly strong grip on his wrist. Chase conveniently ignored Foreman’s other hand, which sat casually on his waist, and focused on the door, looming closer and closer. Foreman released his arm to open it, and Chase couldn’t ignore the fact that the touch on his waist was no longer casual, nor light.

They stepped inside, Chase coming to stand by the foot of the bed with Foreman directly behind him. Chase stared ahead, thinking to himself that the bed looked too big for the bedroom – it looked out of the proportion, really (and had it grown since they entered…?). So concentrated was he that he barely registered Foreman releasing him altogether to close the door again. The clicking of the lock and the clinking of the key, tossed carelessly to the corner of the room, he didn’t register at all. The bed almost shone in the dim light.

He registered Foreman’s approach, though. The atmosphere was heavier even before Foreman reached around his waist with one hand, using the other to encircle his neck and make him lean back against the crook of Foreman’s neck. The warm breath on his right cheek wasn’t hard to deal with, and the smooth way it moved over the back of his neck to nuzzle his left was considerably bearable, so, Chase began to think he wouldn’t have a terribly hard time remaining collected throughout this whole thing. So, the hand tugging briskly on his hair to tilt his head, and the mouth crashing on his to swallow his gasp when another hand dove unceremoniously down his boxers, came as something of a surprise for him.

Between Foreman’s hand on his front, the erection on his back, and the hand on his hair, still arching him awkwardly, Chase’s knees unwittingly began to weaken, a response only made clearer by his jeans being wriggled down onto his ankles before Foreman’s attentions turned to his shirt. Rather than simply unbutton it, Foreman chose to snake a hand under the collar and deepen the kiss as he pulled the shirt down Chase’s shoulder, tearing half of it on the way, and leaving it there, restraining Chase’s use of his left arm whilst exposing a fair bit of his torso. Chase almost protested from within the kiss, but thought better of it, instead placing his hands on Foreman’s hips to still them and bring himself to a more upright position.

The very next second, he was lying face-down on the bed, and his jeans had been pulled off of him entirely, his shoes gone. The hands slithering up the back of his legs filled him with a sense of inevitability that made him lie perfectly still as the touch moved up his thighs, carefully avoided his nether region and slid up his back, enclosing his neck possessively and trickling down his arms, eventually pinning his wrists down. Chase pressed his face against the sheets and resisted the urge to squirm, as he waited for the next, rather obvious, move.

The wet, silken touch on the deep of his back was unexpected. It lingered there, neither teasing nor coarse, almost casual, for so long that Chase’s back felt warm, and prickly, and that patch of skin suddenly seemed like the only part of his body that had some sensation in it. He breathed in and out carefully evenly, through the sheets, remaining studiously limp as Foreman’s lips finally moved, leaving a moist trail on their way down Chase’s lower back. When they reached the barrier posed by the boxers, they simply pulled the fabric down with them, the ministration leading Chase to breathe out sharply and noisily. The boxers stopped by the curve of his buttocks, and his wrists were released. Foreman’s hands moved under him, pulling the front of his boxers down more courteously, and pulling his hips onto an upwards angle that displeased Chase immensely. He tried to close his legs, but Foreman was between them. He attempted clenching his buttocks and moving down, but Foreman’s head and hands, and tongue, were there, and, if anything, he was being opened wider. Feeling more exposed now than he had ever been, yet knowing that it wasn’t his place to complain, Chase groped around for the pillows and brought them tightly about his head, eyes closed, rather like an ostrich, refusing wholeheartedly to display his sudden timidity.

He was abruptly flipped over, and his hips were raised to an alarming angle that made him open his eyes groggily. Foreman was kneeling in front of him, gripping his lower back firmly and slowly raising his lower body, higher and higher, until… Chase closed his eyes again. Foreman’s hands were now hooked around Chase’s hips, his mouth moving rhythmically against Chase’s groin, and this might have been the blowjob of his lifetime if his back wasn’t hurting from the acrobatic arch and, particularly, if Foreman hadn’t picked this position knowing that it left Chase that much more exposed, helpless -- that it was that much more demeaning.

Foreman’s hands momentarily left his hips to roam his backside, pulling him even closer, and, seemingly, trying to coax a reaction out of him. Chase self-consciously disentangled his fingers from the sheets and remained insanely limp in Foreman’s hands, resolutely refusing to respond. And yet, Foreman did something down there, or up there, whatever it was now, which made his hips respond all on their own and drew a long-repressed moan out of him, a sound so earnest and needy that Chase cursed himself the moment it came out. His neck stung with the strain, now. He half-opened his eyes to check Foreman’s reaction, noting without surprise that he seemed hell-bent on drawing another such reaction, only twice as long. A droplet of sweat trickled merrily onto his navel, and up, or down, his mistreated shirt, when Foreman’s fingers felt between his buttocks, beginning to move inside of him as freely as they did outside, and all of a sudden it occurred to Chase that he had to get out of there. Out, and away, and now. He clamped his thighs violently against the head between them, and Foreman promptly dropped him, with a pained groan.

Paying no heed to his sore neck, Chase dashed for the door, where he had a bit of a row with the doorknob, which simply wouldn’t click it open. He was only just coming to the conclusion that it was locked when a hand landed on his shoulder and a voice grazed his ear to evenly remind him that he had agreed to be there. Chase froze, the other body coming to full contact with his. Time seemed to stop for a moment, until he decided that he would rather do this with his head held high – metaphorically, at least. Slowly, rather theatrically, Chase braced himself against the door, and waited. Foreman made some inane comment about willing martyrs and observed him. Chase didn’t move. Neither did Foreman. Chase resisted the urge to tap his fingers on the door and look over his shoulder.

Then, a warm body came up against his, and a hand snaked under his shirt, up his chest, and around his neck, pressing only hard enough for Chase to breath with some amount of care. Something cold touched the tip of his nose, and Chase frowned, opening his eyes. A condom. Foreman lowered it to his lips, pressing insistently, and Chase gingerly caught the wrap between his teeth, tearing it open and letting go at once. The hand on his neck tilted his head back, and the rest of him was silently pushed forward until he was sandwiched between the door and Foreman.

If everything hadn’t suddenly begun to happen at such a rapid pace, he thought he might have been able to guess from each predictable step what the next would have been: Foreman pulling his boxers a bit further down, just enough to give him working space, his ankles being shoved further apart, his chest pressed roughly against the door, that bloody hand leaving his neck to grip his hip, Foreman’s hot breath moving a few inches down his back, his hips being pulled back only to be slammed against the door as Foreman entered him harshly, in one, two thrusts that made him see black spots and stars of all kinds… but, by then, the discomfort was so much, the burning so ferocious, that Chase couldn’t be bothered with technicalities. He balled his fists, rested his forehead against the door, squeezed his eyes shut at a particularly callous movement from Foreman – and even then, his body decided this might be fun and proceeded to flush, and quiver, and move along with Foreman’s. Chase mentally berated himself and focused on feeling nothing at all. A lost cause, he figured, when Foreman angled his thrust just so, effectively wringing feeling out of him. The waistband of his boxers dug against his thighs, Foreman’s hand was now moving his on the doorknob in a positively lewd manner, he thumped painfully against the door with every move, and yet, if he just forgot about the circumstances, he just might… Foreman angled his thrust just so again, and Chase wheezed, blinded by the sparks behind his eyes. Foreman did it again, and he yelped, in spite of himself. Foreman did it again, this time pulling him into a kiss to smother the decidedly vocal response that followed. Chase pulled away to look down at the hand slithering down his boxers, and quickly made to pull it out, succeeding both in getting his hand tangled in Foreman’s and losing his balance, toppling backwards against him.

Foreman simply pushed him forward again, clasping his hips so forcefully that Chase needed no further warning and again braced himself. Foreman murmured some nonsense about them, and paradise, and this being it, and Chase being it, and Chase, wincing at the vice-like grip on him, idly thought that if paradise wasn’t better than this, he would have to schedule a long conversation with God once they met. Foreman held Chase’s head back, against his, now going on about Chase’s looks, and talent, and perfection, and calling him baby, and…

‘Don’t call me that,’ Chase hiccupped between thrusts. Foreman didn’t seem to hear him. Chase craned his neck to look him in the eye and clipped out, ‘Don’t call me that.’ The seriousness in his tone managed to shut Foreman up, or maybe it was something else, because the grip on him tightened and Foreman shoved him roughly against the door, and pushed into him in tiny, sharp, maddening thrusts that teased and hurt and burned all at once, and there went his shirt, and his boxers were digging against his flesh, and how was he going to explain the red welts on his wrists in the morning, and would he even be able to walk in the morning?, and… Foreman stilled against him, breathing out heavily and releasing him at last, but Chase didn’t feel terribly relieved, because the blood flowing freely to his hips again stung quite a bit, and Foreman was now sliding to the floor, taking him along the way. Chase was much too tired to resist, but it occurred to him that it would be great if Foreman slipped out, stopped kissing him, stopped touching him altogether, and just let him be, instead of keeping up that shameless grind against him.

‘Get out of me,’ he eventually ground out, sensing something akin to renewed interest on Foreman’s end. He shrugged away as he spoke, for effect – did it rather shakily, but the intention was there. Foreman pulled out, at last, and, hauling Chase back against him, half-led and half-dragged him back to the bed. There, in spite of Chase’s objections, pushes and shoves, but with all the gentleness that he had lacked before, he tugged at Chase’s boxers, minding the sensitized skin, and finished what he had started before. He would have liked to have taken his time, but Chase was in no condition to last long. Instead, he finished with a flourish, leaving a trail of kisses all the way up to Chase’s face. When he made for the mouth, Chase turned away. He attempted a touch on the shoulder, but Chase jerked away, mumbling something about buggering off.

Foreman laid back casually, contemplating Chase’s back for a moment, before asking offhandedly, ‘You all right?’

Chase mumbled something like ‘Shut up,’ and didn’t move. Foreman considered indulging him, but only for a second. ‘Robert…’

‘Shut up,’ was the acid reply.

Foreman lied back less casually, this time, and waited five full minutes – he counted the seconds – before reaching out and pulling Chase to him again. Chase tiredly resisted for an acceptable amount of time, and eventually let himself be burrowed against Foreman’s neck. ‘Are you all right?’ Foreman repeated. Chase didn’t answer. A tense silence followed.

‘I should be concerned that you have rape fantasies about me, shouldn’t I?’ Chase finally conceded.

‘Are you?’ Foreman replied quietly, repositioning himself in what he hoped was a non-threatening manner.

Chase didn’t answer, but let himself be petted, and let Foreman put his arms around him, and for the time being, that was enough.

‘For my birthday,’ Chase chirped a bit later, jerking Foreman out of his slumber, ‘I’ll put a leash on you. And I’ll have House do you.’

Housefic: The Week After, R, House/Chase

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 05:34:36 GMT

Whee! My first (finished) attempt at Housefic! -- haven't forgotten about the bunny you set loose, nuerin -- it's just giving me the hardest time, so I had to take a break from it. It's almost finished, though. I hope. :D

Anyway, here is my second-born:

Title: The Week After
Pairing: House/Chase
Rating: Light R
Summary: House ends their relationship. Chase's days at the hospital get longer and longer.
Disclaimer: Everything related to House M.D. belongs to David Shore and associates. I, rather pathetically, own nothing.
A/N: I'm very much a newcomer to Housefic, and The Ghost of OOC Past looms ahead of me, so really, criticism is very welcome.

---

On Monday, Chase was numb.

Alone with him in one of the labs, House had put an end to it. Firmly, coldly, as was his wont. Head ever-so-slightly hung, he observed – in silence, for once – the blur of emotions erupting at once in Chase’s expression. Surprise, incomprehension (pain?), shock (anger?), all crowded in front of his eyes for the briefest moment, immediately masked by a carefully crafted show of contention. Chase bowed his head, discreetly wet his lips, let out an almost soundless mumble that might or might not have been ‘All right,’, and took off. This was not the reaction he had expected, House thought, watching his retreating back. Still, for once, he had done the right thing – at the right time. He was rather satisfied with himself.

On Tuesday, Chase was hurt.

He ran every test, made every draw, shared every theory that was requested of him. But he didn’t make coffee, didn’t ask Cameron nor Foreman how they were doing, and he cared not for the weather outside. Casual banter would likely lead to tricky, dangerous questions such as ‘And how are you today, Chase?’, and he didn’t want to answer those. He knew he couldn’t match House’s nonchalant ‘It’s cloudy outside, my leg hurts and I’m surrounded by incompetents and dying people. If the coffee’s good, maybe getting out of bed today was worth it.’, so he just tried to be as competent as possible and live through the day. Sometime during a diagnosis, House snatched his ball out of Chase’s hand and promptly dropped it, as though something contagious had lodged in there. Chase was a second too slow in switching to a blasé look, and the severity of the condition Cameron was suggesting wasn’t enough to draw House’s attention back to the whiteboard, Chase’s pained expression gripping his gaze long after it was gone. All of a sudden, he wasn’t quite as satisfied with himself.

On Wednesday, Chase was dignified.

He didn’t elude casual remarks about his well-being, did House’s clinic duty as usual, didn’t compete with Cameron for the bright answers, he even made coffee before setting off for the NICU for the day. He actually managed a polite chuckle for one of Foreman’s pseudo-House-ish cracks. He was quietly friendly to the disoriented patients and he stopped here and there to comfort their relatives. But he redid every test twice, he was much too quiet, his responses were much too slow, his interest in the tasks at hand much too keen for it all to be natural. House didn’t quite know how to react to the quietly dignified stance, so he cornered Chase as he readied to leave for the night, noting the sudden quiver running under the lab coat. Wordlessly, he handed over Chase’s shirt, which had lain in a rumple in House’s sofa for the last few days. Taking in its washed and ironed condition, Chase froze for a moment, swallowed visibly and looked up with an expression too pungent for words. House uncomfortably realised he had made a mistake. Chase’s lips wavered as though he meant to say something, and House considered raising a hand to push Chase’s hair away from his eyes. Just as, in spite of himself, he commanded his arm to get moving, Chase looked down, gripped the shirt to his chest and sprinted past him. House had the sudden urge to slap himself.

On Thursday, Chase was humiliated.

He was quieter than ever upon arrival, staying just long enough to check that they had no new cases, and setting off for the NICU. His colleagues had to cross the hospital every time they wanted to see him. And they did. House made a point of stopping by every half hour to berate him for his unprofessional behaviour and demand his presence back in Diagnostics ‘… this instant!’. Every time, Chase would shoot him longing looks that would have raised questions, were they not in a unit where people were too worried about life and death to care about the doctors’ moods. Between visits, House exceptionally did his clinic duty without the usual fuss, scouring the place for new cases. He found one by noon. Or so he announced to the NICU, dropping in to personally drag his intensivist away by the elbow. Had Chase not chosen that moment to stare at him, he would have missed House triumphantly sticking his tongue out at the sullen-faced little girl whose doctor he had just stolen. Their new patient was released in just three hours, but Chase wasn’t. House probed and provoked, watching him go quieter and quieter, even as Cameron and Foreman were finally dismissed and he wasn’t. A few more hours of scrutiny, and Chase was just about ready to make the blunder of a lifetime. ‘Chase! What are you still doing here? It’s late. Go home,’ House barked from beside the window. Chase gave it half a second of forethought before walking up to House and resting a kiss on him. Soft, pleading, apologetic, much like Chase’s attitude of late. Taken aback, House let himself be kissed, held, touched, pulling himself together when Chase whispered something, something that should have been too low for him to hear, but it wasn’t, something that made him work his mouth into a leer and whisper mockingly back, ‘Sorry, can’t. Gotta go home. Hooker coming in an hour.’ The words pushed Chase away more effectively than a shove ever would. He looked around – trying to pull himself together, House guessed – and left, considerably more miserable than just a minute ago. Something about his air made House wish he’d been lying about the hooker.

On Friday, Chase was desperate.

It was the downside of having an expressive face. He arrived on time, as he always did, and yet, ten minutes later, everyone who had crossed him in the corridors knew better than to trust him with anything that even remotely resembled a medical procedure anytime soon. He wasn’t crying, nor having bouts of hysterics in front of anyone, nor lunging at people for no reason, but something about his paleness, the trembling hands, which he tried to hide by shoving them in his pockets, the bright, downcast eyes, kept most people at bay. Cameron earned a hiccupped ‘I’m fine,’ for her concern. It said something about the effect he was provoking, that even Foreman restrained from making smart cracks. House went as far as to listen to two blatantly dunderheaded suggestions for their current diagnosis before having him read the Encyclopaedia Britannica for the day. Surprisingly for the others, Chase obeyed, moving to a corner with the tremendous volume in his hand. For the rest of the morning, the only sign of life they heard from that corner was that of Chase fumbling with a page, every hour or so. At lunch, he took thrice his usual time to eat half his usual lunch, of which only two bites actually reached past his throat. Under the concerned gaze of his colleagues, he pushed the whole thing aside – House, passing by with Wilson, promptly snatched it – and returned to his corner, where he huddled up for the remainder of the day, although he couldn’t, for the life of him, remember what he had been reading all this time. Cameron stopped by, her trench coat already on, to check on him. He snapped up, as though waking up, and waved her away with a small smile. Foreman bid him good night through the door and commented that it was 9 pm, and maybe he could come out of detention. Chase stood and pensively took off his lab coat. A few minutes later, House came in, surprised to find him still there, gazing out the window. Looking around, he spotted Chase’s lab coat and jumper plopped on a chair. Chase turned to look at him.

‘Why?’ Chase whispered softly.

House stared at his open shirt and unbuckled belt, and didn’t answer.

‘Why?’ Chase repeated, letting the shirt fall from his shoulders and starting to pull down his trousers.

‘Chase…’ House rasped out somewhat warningly, ‘Don’t do that.’

He turned towards the door, but Chase got there first, at a speed no-one in the last few days would have thought him capable of. House thought that the vision of Chase slamming against the door, in his boxers, flushed to the roots of his hair, should have been amusing. Amazingly, it wasn’t.

‘Why?!’ Chase shrieked, this time.

It occurred to House that this might be the moment to attempt reasoning. How, though? His tongue felt too big, and, in spite of himself, his blood was rushing elsewhere.

‘Chase--’

‘Am I not attractive?!’ House cocked his head, and, for a moment, considered answering him. He was mercifully cut short by Chase’s approaching steps. He instinctively hobbled back a step or two, but Chase didn’t move closer. He stood in the middle of the room, arms wide open, as though putting himself up for display, for appreciation… for sale? No, House shook his head mentally. For the taking. For free.

‘Am I not attractive?’ Chase murmured, all pleading and confusion. ‘A day doesn’t go by without you commenting on my looks. What is it? Aren’t they good enough? Are they too much?’ Chase hadn’t looked him in the eye all day, and now it was House who had trouble meeting the bright, slightly unhinged stare that faced him. ‘Did I let you down?’ Chase’s voice was rather inaudible, now. House quietly shook his head, and pushed Chase’s jumper towards him with the tip of his cane. Chase ignored the gesture.

‘Have I done… have I changed? Has anything changed? What was it?!’ Nothing, House thought to himself, everything was just as it should be. Except for you, who should be home. He toyed with the cane’s handle, pointedly avoiding Chase’s eyes. Another look at that Adonis offering himself up and he’d be lost. They both would be. He was sure of it.

‘Look at me! What have I done?!’ Again, House shook his head negatively, and again he looked up to find confusion. ‘Then what--’ Chase trailed off, disoriented, twisting his fingers, chewing on his lips, and generally looking very much like a child. House, who had seen him in many moods, but never like this, hoped that the storm was over. And then Chase looked him in the eye again.

‘But I lo--' House dropped his cane and jumped him with a swiftness he didn’t know he was capable of. He was barely aware of his actions when he came in contact with Chase’s body. He was, however, aware that anything was better than undergoing such scrutiny, witnessing such vulnerability, allowing such primal need to erupt in a young man who was so obviously not ready to deal with it. Above all, anything was better than to let Chase say the words he had been about to utter. That he would not, could not, deal with. And, thus, he pulled Chase to himself, crushing their mouths together in something that only gradually became a kiss, held him, actually held him close to prevent Chase from even thinking about speaking again, tugged at his hair, gripped his hands, did a number of things that he absolutely mustn’t, backed against the window with a flash of pain that shot through his back and reverberated through his thigh.

It didn’t matter, it didn’t matter at all, because Chase was quiet – he had to be, on account of House’s tongue inside his mouth -- and he was slowly beginning to respond. And then, not so slowly, he responded in earnest, kissing back, pushing against him, pulling at him, tugging at clothing, tearing it, here and there, kissing, and wanting and crying, clinging to him and sobbing into him with the sort of need that a lover is no longer enough to meet.

Recalling this, House made use of all the strength he could muster and – again – put an end to it. Bringing his left hand between their chests, he pushed ever so slowly, breaking them apart as gently as he could. He was so very bad at this. When Chase opened his eyes, even more disoriented than before, House held his neck firmly with his other hand and placed a soft kiss on his lips, and another, and another, not allowing the bewildered young man to lean in, still pushing him away, still pouring kisses on him, another and another, until Chase was at arm’s length, and there was nothing more to say, nothing more to give. The rain fell heavily on the window, and the lights from outside reflected the droplets on Chase’s face, making it seem as though he was crying. House refused to believe anything other. Grateful that his own profile was shadowed, he turned towards the window, so that Chase could have some privacy. He didn’t hear Chase getting dressed, didn’t hear him leave, he heard nothing at all. For the first time in a while, he felt like a complete worm. For the first time in a much longer while, it made him feel ashamed of himself.

On Saturday, Chase didn’t show up for work.

THE END

Mon, 25 Sep 2006 17:17:29 GMT

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