#dynamic: theo & alec. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

monstersandmaw · 4 years ago

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Male vampire x male character (nsfw) Part Four

Edit which I’m including in all my works after plagiarism and theft has taken place: I do not give my consent for my works to be used, copied, published, or posted anywhere. They are copyrighted and belong to me.

Sorry for taking 84yrs to post this. I thought I had shared it. Sorry. Hope you enjoy all the same.

Wordcount: 10,904 (story total: 23,704)

Heads up in this part for continued, but easing, tense familial relations, some angst/heartache (not heartbreak though), and some (consensual) blood drinking.

Part One (sfw), Part Two (nsfw), Part Three (nsfw)

Alec let out a shaky breath and crossed to the sofa, sinking down onto it as his legs finally gave out. “Vampires,” he said, hardly daring to believe the word he was uttering.

“Yes.”

“And you’re one?”

“… Yes.”

“And my family…?”

Sebastien’s voice was tight on the other end of the line as he said, “Hunts my kind. Well, those of us who aren’t registered with the ‘Guild of Hunters’ —” his tone turned acrid as he spat the words out, though he kept his voice low and quiet.

“What does that even mean? I don’t know what any of this means… And did you know about my family? I mean, before? When you started dating me?”

Sebastien took another deep breath. “Yes. I knew. And it was a long time before I fully convinced myself that you did not.”

If Sebastien had thought it was some kind of trap, that would explain his reticence at the beginning for sure.

“And were you planning on telling me any of this?” Alec snarled. God, his chest hurt so much. The deception was like Jeremy cheating on him all over again, only this time the betrayal was coming from two fronts at once: from his love life and from his family. Not that he’d had all that solid a relationship with the latter to start with. Perhaps this explained why.

“I hadn’t planned on becoming your boyfriend at all,” Sebastien snapped.

“So, what, I was just a quick diversion? A casual fuck you kept coming back for because I’m such a fucking chump? Is that it?”

“No,” Sebastien sighed. “Not at all. I fell for you. Like the horrid cliche I am, the vampire fell for the hunter, and by then I had no idea how to tell you. I’ve not been with a human before, so this is all very new to me.”

Alec ran his fingers through his dark hair to buy himself a moment. “You… You haven’t?”

“No.”

“How… How old are you?”

“Do you really want the answer to that?”

“Yes!” His phone was slippery in his fingers now from the sweat on his palm but he couldn’t bring it away from his ear long enough to put it on speaker. He needed answers.

With another cavernous sigh, Sebastien said hurriedly, “Very well. I was born in 1897 and turned on the battlefields of the Great War — World War I, that is. I was dying, and a vampire named Felicity who had been working as a field nurse turned me. My first run-in with your family was not long after I moved from France to America. They were working with the American Hunters’ Guild on a case which had nothing to do with me.” He let out a shaky breath and said, “I got in the way and I nearly died. Those were the days before the treaty, of course, and before I moved to England.”

Despite his still-spinning mind, Alec managed to croak, “What treaty?”

“Those of us who get our blood from sanctioned blood banks and do not live-feed are exempt from being hunted like animals.” He spoke like he was quoting from a law code; cold and clinical; detached.

God, the way he said it made Alec’s skin crawl. It was as if he were being permitted to exist on the grounds of good behaviour and, he supposed, that was exactly the case. Even so, Alec couldn’t help the next words that just fell out of his mouth. “So you weren’t planning on feeding from me?”

“Of course not,” Sebastien retorted but then appeared to rein himself in with yet another steadying inhale. “No. It’s been decades since I’ve fed from a human directly. I didn’t plan on starting with you.”

Alec slumped back into the sofa cushions and stared up at the ceiling of his tiny apartment. “Fuck.”

After a long silence, Sebastien’s gentle tenor sounded in his ear. “Are you alright?”

“No,” he said. “I’ve never been close to my family - my dad was always an arsehole, but… I can’t believe Theo’s involved in all this. He was such a sweet kid, and we were really close until…” he swallowed thickly around the rising lump in his throat.

“Until?” Sebastien prompted when he stalled again.

“I can’t believe this is all real,” he muttered. “Until he turned sixteen and started to ‘work out’ with dad. I was at uni by then, getting my fine art degree, but whenever I came home he was just… different. Harder. Sharper. More focused. Guess it makes sense now… Well, as much as… you know…” he gestured vaguely to the empty apartment with his hands, “… as much as all this can make sense. Fucking… vampires…”

After a heartbeat, Sebastien added softly, “Quite literally.”

Despite himself, Alec snorted. “So… where does this leave us?”

Now it was Sebastien’s turn to feel clearly uncomfortable. Eventually he said, “Alec, I don’t think it’s wise for me to see you currently. Not with your family being what they are.”

His heart twisted, even though he’d been half expecting it. “You still think they’d… what, stake you, or whatever it is that vampire hunters actually do to you lot?”

“There are many ways to kill a vampire,” he said flatly. “And your family knows all of them, probably more. You need to work this out with them first as well. Talk to your brother. He seems the more reasonable…”

“I can’t believe Ellie’s in on it as well. And my mother? Fuck…”

“Talk to them.”

“Will I still see you at work at least?”

The awkward silence told him all he needed to know, even before Sebastien said, “I just sent in my letter of resignation.”

“That was quick,” he hissed, stomach dropping. “You only just left.”

“Supernatural speed,” he replied bitterly. “Comes in useful for typing papers and getting out of awkward situations…”

That sparked another question in him. “Supernatural powers, huh? Can you turn into a bat too?”

“No.”

Then he thought of Sebastien’s Halloween outfit. “Wolf?”

He thought he detected a faint smirk in Sebastien’s response. “No, sadly. No shape-shifting for me. Felicity is not of any extraordinary bloodline, and thus, neither am I.”

“Right,” he grunted. “Of course. Is she… is she still around?”

“Felicity? Yes. We meet every now and again. She and her wife spend most of their time in Venice these days.”

“Her wife? She a vampire too?”

Sebastien swallowed audibly. “Yes.”

“Did Felicity turn her too? Would that make her wife your sister?”

“No.”

He frowned. “Did she know her as a human though?”

“Yes.”

After a moment of spinning thoughts, Alec asked, “Did… you turn her?”

“One doesn’t tend to turn one’s own intended. Between a sire and their turned, there can grow… tension. Not always, but it can be enough to ruin a relationship that was seemingly solid before. Something about exchanging blood changes the soul… or so we think, anyway. It was an honour to be asked to sire her.”

“Right.” Alec felt slightly sick. “Will I at least see you before you leave?”

“I think it best if we don’t. Not while your family is still… ‘investigating’ me.”

“Are you really in danger from them?”

“Quite possibly. My name is on the treaty, but…”

Something twanged painfully again in his chest, swiftly followed by the fizzle of fear through his veins. “But what?”

“But vampires and hunters are not supposed to sleep together, Alec…”

“Don’t bang the enemy? How very Romeo and Juliet,” he snorted. “Fuck. Why does every good relationship I have turn to shit?” he asked, not of Sebastien but of the universe itself. “What did I do?”

“Alec —”

“—Don’t. Don’t make it worse by apologising or something. It’s fine. We were only together a month. I’ll get over it. You’ll move on. Heck, you’ll fucking live forever, right? What’s a month to you anyway? Nothing, right?”

The bitterness in his own voice nearly choked him, and without thinking, or even saying goodbye, he just hung up and let his phone lie in his limp fingers on the sofa cushions. It lit up and rang a moment later, but he didn’t answer it. Six more times Sebastien tried before finally giving up.

Kay was an absolute blessing in the next few days.

He didn’t tell her immediately about the whole vampire thing, but after he’d calmed down enough to be able to look at Theo without immediately busting a vein in his forehead, he hashed the basics out with him, and then told her everything. Alec told her about his newly-discovered, secret family occupation which, apparently, stretched back centuries. He told her about the fact that his eldest sister and younger brother were monster hunters in their spare time, and he told her the real reason Sebastien why had vanished overnight without a trace — yes, Alec had gone to his apartment building, only to be politely informed by the doorman that Dr. Dulac was no longer in residence and did not leave so much as a forwarding address.

That, above almost everything else, shattered Alec’s hopes of seeing him again. Like thistledown in the wind, Sebastien had simply flitted away somewhere else.

She took it about as well as he had to start with, but when she saw the seriousness in his eyes, and when, three weekends later, she came to his apartment for a definitely-not-awkward dinner with Theo, she saw video footage that Theo and his father had captured from various hunts of supernatural creatures beyond only beautiful vampires. Then she believed him. Ghouls, ghosts, reanimated corpses, demons… you name it and Theo could tell you about it.

Alec spent Christmas with Kay’s family, and Theo met him for New Year drinks in the city, joined by Ellie. It wasn’t anything like the family dynamic he’d always longed for, but the new degree of openness between them went some way to mending his still bruised heart. Slowly. Gradually. Piece by tentative, honest piece. He never joined in, but Theo started to tell him a bit about what they did. It still sounded barbaric to him, but at least it was true.

He had no word from Sebastien, and the number he had saved in his phone had been disconnected.

With the arrival of spring, Alec found himself more than usually dissatisfied with his job. He was a good teacher, and he enjoyed seeing his students’ talents evolve and grow, but the ever-increasing admin ground him down, and the politics of the faculty and the university as a whole wore on him.

“Have you seen this?” Kay asked one afternoon as they shared a takeaway coffee beneath the drifting cherry blossoms. Petals spiralled down like pastel pink and white wedding confetti, and he watched with an absent smile as a terrier snapped and sprung around on his hind legs trying to catch them while his owner stood and talked with her friend nearby. “Oi!” Kay asked, digging him in the ribs.

“Hmm?”

“Have you seen this?” she asked, shoving her phone under his nose.

He blinked, refocusing his eyes, and read the article’s headline aloud. “Council offers artists the chance to win a sponsored exhibition in the town hall with this unique competition.” He blinked. “So?”

“So?” she gawped. “You can’t be serious?”

“Send me the link. I’ll forward it to my students. They might like that.” That earned him a smack upside the head, and he scowled. “What was that for?”

“Alec, you might be the dumbest smart guy I know,” she said. “I showed it to you so that you could enter it, you giant idiot.”

He blinked. “Me?”

“I saw those charcoals you did the other week of the cathedral! They were amazing!! And the abstracts too… I still want one, by the way.”

“It’s already wrapped up for your birthday,” he groused. “You really think I should do it?”

She rolled her eyes and drained the last of her coffee without gracing him with an answer. Of course she thought he should.

“When’s the deadline?”

“Next Thursday,” she said without looking at him.

Alec licked his lips and swallowed. “Will you help me pick some images to submit?”

Her answering grin was feral.

In all honesty, Alec forgot about having even entered the competition until the letter dropped through his door six weeks later announcing that, to his utter astonishment, he had been selected as the winner. Tears blurred his eyes and he sat down heavily at the tiny kitchen table. He’d never entered any of his own art into anything like this in his whole life, and the first time he does, he gets a whole fucking public exhibition out of it?

“Maybe this year won’t be so bad after all,” he murmured. “New year, new start…” His chest still ached when he thought about Sebastien, and he hoped he was doing alright, wherever he was.

Theo had been searching for him, probably by way of apology for lying to his big brother for all these years, but he’d turned up very little. Sebastien had gone to Venice first, it seemed, presumably to spend time with Felicity and her wife, but had disappeared completely after that, with only rumours flickering here and there that he was in Paris, St. Petersburg, Prague, and then potentially Florence. Maybe.

“Venice seems like a pretty sunny place for a pair of vampires to live,” Alec commented, but Theo shrugged.

“They don’t burn up immediately in sunlight, or your professor would never have been able to take a day-job at the university. They’re sensitive to it, some more than others, but it takes a full day of constant sunlight beating down for them to burn properly.” The callousness of his brother’s response shook him, even after all these months, and Theo must have seen it on his face because he sighed. “I’m sorry,” he said, and then added, “You really loved him, didn’t you?”

Alec shrugged. Yes, he wanted to say. I thought so. “I only knew him for a month or so,” was what he said carefully instead. “And even then… turned out I didn’t know him anyway.”

Theo, who had been lounging on Alec’s sofa with his legs spread and his head tipped back into the cushions while Alec made supper, asked quietly, “Did he seem… normal to you?”

“Normal?” Alec asked, not sure he’d heard his brother correctly.

“Yeah�� like… did you ever suspect he wasn’t… you know…?”

“Human?”

Theo grunted and nodded his head. “Yeah. I guess.”

“No. Obviously not. Never crossed my mind. Why would it have?”

Theo scowled and turned his eyes to regard him. Alec knew that Theo looked like a younger version of himself, if maybe in better shape, and he wondered if he’d have the same steely look in his eyes if he’d been deemed ‘man enough’ to become a hunter, or whatever bullshit criteria their arsehole father had used to select which members of his family were to become soldiers and which would live normal lives.

“What?” Alec demanded.

“But you slept with him, right?”

“I’m not talking about that with you,” he said, briefly brandishing the wooden spoon at him.

Theo pulled a face. “I’m not asking about your sex life. Gross. No, I mean…”

In that moment, Alec spotted a flash of something in his brother’s blue eyes that softened him to the kid. He turned off the gas and went over to where Theo was now sitting hunched over with his elbows on his knees, running his hands through his hair. When he looked up at Alec’s approach, his face showed open vulnerability in a way he’d not seen since they were young children and Theo had got himself into trouble at school.

“What’s going on?” Alec asked, seating himself next to his little brother.

Theo bobbed his knee like a deprived caffeine addict and bit his lip. With glassy eyes, he croaked, “I keep asking myself if we did the right thing…”

“What do you mean?”

The bravado of Theo’s early twenties melted away to become a worried, frightened, guilty little boy again and he said, “I mean… if what we do is right…”

“You mean… hunting?”

“Yeah,” he croaked.

“What set this off?”

His brother quirked him a humourless smirk and said, “You always did know when something was bothering me.”

Alec remained quiet, just watching him.

“We teamed up with some hunters from Edinburgh for a ‘vamp gone rogue’ case and we finally found her yesterday. She… She’d been turning people; trying to amass some kind of small army to take over from another vampire further up north. She was insane… like, completely, sociopathically insane, but… the people she turned… they were just…” he blinked, and Alec saw with a jolt that his eyes were full of unshed tears. “They were still just people.”

He feared he already knew where this was going. Still, he asked, “What happened?”

“Father wanted to put them down. They were terrified, chained up… still on the point of lashing out…”

Bile rose in his throat. “Oh god…”

“One of the hunters said she knew of a vampire who could help rehabilitate them; help them adjust to their new lives. One of them didn’t want to live as a vampire though, so father just…”

Theo didn’t need to finish that for Alec to know that father had ended the newly-turned vampire’s life in a heartbeat. “And the rest?”

“The other three went with the hunter. I don’t know what happened, but… I trust her. It’s just… father taught me and Ellie that vampires are mindless killers when they feed… that you can’t get close to them, that all they want at the end of the day is blood no matter what they tell you… but…” he looked up at Alec. “You’ve been fucking miserable since the whole Sebastien shit-fest. I know you’ve been trying to hide it, and you’ve got the exhibition coming up next weekend, and that’s great, but… I know you’ve stopped putting yourself out there. And we did that. We fucked it all up for you. I just…” he ran his hands through his hair and sent it into wild disarray. “I just wonder if you could really have been happy with him after all.”

Alec pulled his brother close and hugged him. “I’m not going to lie,” he murmured into his brother’s dark hair. “I’m furious with father for keeping everything from me, and for making you and mum and Ellie lie to me and Angie about it as well, but… if I hadn’t seen Sebastien’s eyes go red — yeah, I thought it was just a reflection or something — and if I hadn’t seen the way he sleeps literally like the dead… I’m not sure I would have believed you anyway. I don’t forgive him for it either, but…” he sighed deeply. “I forgive you, Theo. And Ellie.”

“And mum?”

“I’m still working on that.”

Theo went slack beneath him and snaked his arms around his brother’s waist for a moment. “Thanks,” he mumbled into Alec’s shirt.

“You’re still coming to the exhibition?” Alec asked as he pulled back and went back to the stove, giving Theo a moment of privacy to pull himself together.

In truth, Alec was a little shaken too. Their relationship had been slowly patched over the intervening months, but it still wasn’t particularly close, and the matter of Sebastien had been a permanent, proverbial elephant in the room. That Theo was questioning their father’s teaching came as an immense relief to Alec though. He poured them each a glass of wine, and the two spent the rest of the evening in a quieter kind of closeness than they’d yet shared.

When the evening of the exhibition drew round, Alec was quite frankly, a bit of a mess.

“C’mon,” Theo grinned, patting the lapels of his jacket down for him and grinning up at him. “Where’s that Twayblade hunter courage, huh?”

“Must have skipped me and all gone to you,” he quipped back. “Fuck. I’m so nervous. Why am I so nervous?”

“No fucking clue,” Theo chuckled. “You’re awesome and they’re gonna fucking love you.”

“Language,” Alec said instinctively and Theo’s laughter redoubled.

“You’re a big fucking hypocrite, you know that?” Theo laughed just as Kay sidled up with three glasses of champagne awkwardly held between her hands.

“Help a girl out here, would you, boys?” she asked, proffering the glasses to them.

Alec resisted the urge to down it in one — he’d probably only choke on the bubbles anyway — and filled his lungs instead with a big gulp of air. He tried to send all his nerves into the air and then blow it out of his body in one heaving sigh to leave him calmer, but it just gave him a head rush, so he sipped the wine and turned to look around the gallery from the corner where he’d been lurking.

“What if no one shows up?” he blurted, earning him a scowl from Theo and a pout-and-eyebrow-raise combo from Kay.

He needn't have worried in the end. The marketing team had done their work, and within an hour the place was heaving and all but three of his pieces had been reserved. Scratch that. Two.

The fact that almost all of his students had turned up as well to cheer him on and trade high fives, and scrounge free alcohol and food from the canape trays, warmed him in ways he didn’t know were possible.

Overwhelmed and a little bit tearful, he stepped out of the town hall’s main exhibition space and into the small corridor that led to a fire exit and a grotty back car park beyond, letting the flush die down from his cheeks. This was what he’d really wanted right from the moment he’d graduated all those years ago; to be an artist in his own right, with people buying his work at exhibitions… It almost made him giddy to think that he had a chance to do this full time now. It seemed that Sebastien had been right when he’d said he could really make something of himself.

Ah, there was the crash in his mood that he’d been waiting for. Nothing good lasts forever, right?

Would Sebastien have been proud of him if he knew about this? Would he have been there that night, by his side? Would they even have lasted that long anyway, even without his family’s interference?

The noise in the room was gradually dying down when he gathered enough courage to step back into the echoing hall. The pale wooden floors gleamed in the low light, the white of the temporary exhibition walls almost glowing, in stark contrast to the black and grey of his charcoals. He’d chosen mostly charcoals for the show, with a few acrylic abstracts for flavour, and apparently people loved them. Every single one had a red ‘sold’ dot beneath the label now, he noted as he cast his eyes around the room.

Then his gaze snagged on someone standing with their back to him, hands clasped loosely behind them, a long, silver-blond ponytail hanging down their back. And Alec’ vision slipped sideways.

Sebastien.

It had to be him.

No one else stood with posture like that. No one else was so tall and lean and elegant and god-damned graceful, even when just standing still. And no one else stood quite as still as that.

He let out a ragged breath and swayed slightly, glancing around. There was no sign of Theo or Kay just then, and only one or two couples meandered admiringly around the room. And there, fixated by one piece in particular, stood Sebastien.

Inhaling for courage, Alec approached and came to an unsteady halt a few feet away from him. He didn’t look real, somehow. His beauty had always been striking, but now in the low light he seemed like a mirage, with his warm olive skin and contrastingly pale hair, that cut-glass jawline and —

— He turned and met Alec’s gaze with dark brown eyes alight and glassy.

“You’re here,” Alec breathed, at a loss for anything else.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Sebastien said, and the sound of his voice sent a wild tingling through Alec’s whole nervous system. The man — vampire — looked uncharacteristically shy, uncertain, as he half turned to face him.

“Gotta say,” Alec said, scratching the back of his head, “I wasn’t expecting to see you again.”

“Should I leave?”

He chewed his lower lip for a second and Sebastien’s eyes tracked the movement before he blinked and looked back at the charcoal in front of him. It was of the Lady Chapel of the cathedral; one of the most tranquil places Alec had ever been. A shaft of light lanced down from a Gothic window high on the right, scattering fractured shards of light onto the stone floor, and behind it, just barely visible as a grey, misty outline, sat the small altar.

“You’re religious?” Alec asked.

“Mm,” Sebastien nodded. “Surprising, I know, given my ‘condition’, but there you have it.”

All the smalltalk then suddenly boiled up into thick irritation inside Alec and he scowled. “Where have you been? And why now? Why come back now? What do you want?”

He must have raised his voice fractionally because the couple admiring the seascape to their left shot them slightly scandalised looks, as if he’d started swearing in a sanctuary, and he bit back the wave of anger, halting it in its tracks.

“Shall we step outside for a moment?” Sebastien asked and Alec nodded tersely.

Passing Kay and Theo who were sitting in the chairs near the drinks table, Alec cast his eyes at them and watched Theo tense visibly. Kay laid her hand on his thigh and shook her head, at which Theo nodded and sat back, eyes hard, mouth set, but at least he didn’t appear to be on the point of leaping out and staking Sebastien on the spot.

Alec mouthed a silent ‘thank you’ at them both, and followed Sebastien out on to the street.

“You’ve patched things up with your family then?” Sebastien began, standing perfectly still beside the brick wall of the Victorian building while Alec paced.

“Mostly just with Theo, but yeah. Why are you here?” he asked again.

“Honestly? I missed you. Couldn't get you out of my head. I went all over Europe, and even to Asia briefly, and nothing I did distracted me from you, from leaving you. I had to come back.”

“You could have called,” he said, instantly regretting the way it came out like a petulant teenager’s sulking.

“And what would that have achieved?” Sebastien asked evenly. “I was hundreds of miles away.”

“You could have come back sooner? Talked to me in person?”

Sebastien sighed. “I was afraid that your family would come after me. I needed to disappear.”

“Theo convinced father to let you go. As you said yourself, your name was on the treaty, and you didn’t hurt me or hypnotise me, or whatever… did you?”

“No,” he said, pale brows pinching with evident distaste.

“Could you have?”

Sebastien levelled him with a dark look. “Yes, but… that’s not something I enjoy doing. It’s a survival mechanism — to make people forget what they’ve seen — it’s not something to be used lightly.”

“Ok, but you could have, and you didn’t, so that was another reason to let you go,” he said. God he wanted to kiss him. The realisation hit him like a gut punch and he turned away. Alec ached inside and out for those lips, those hands, those eyes… “Fuck,” he whispered, barely audible. “Are you staying?”

“Do you want me to stay?”

Alec rounded on him, frustration pouring out of him again. “Don’t answer my question with one of your own. Are you staying or not?”

Sebastien remained eerily calm, but a heartbeat later Alec saw that it wasn’t serenity in his eyes but sadness. “If you want me to, I’ll stay. I want to try again, Alec. I want… I want to be with you. I’ve never felt for anyone what I feel for you.”

“Feel? As in… present tense?”

“Yes. It hasn’t faded. Not with all the days and distance between us.”

“God, you sound like a shitty romance novel hero…” he scoffed. “I almost believe it.”

Sebastien spread his hands and said, “I am who — and what — I am. You know me, Alec, in a way that no one else ever has. I was utterly myself with you, except for the fact that I kept my nature from you. I hope you can at least understand why, if not forgive me. Everything else was genuine. I have never done that — been that open, that vulnerable — with anyone.”

“Even knowing what my family are?”

“Even then.”

Alec looked up at him and saw his own reflection in those dark, rich brown eyes. “Show me.”

Sebastien’s angelic face soured into a confused frown. “Show you what?”

“Your eyes. Your fangs. Show me what you are.”

“Now?”

He looked around. The street was empty on either side, with the only people around gathered outside a bar further up the street.

When he turned back to say yes to Sebastien, he found blood red eyes glowing in the man’s face. “Holy fuck,” he hissed. Every already-chiselled line on Sebastien’s face had sharpened somehow, his cheeks hollowing a little, perhaps to account for the additional hardware he now sported in his mouth, and his eyes seemed a touch more sunken. And they glowed as if lit from within.

Heartbeat thrumming out a wild tattoo, he stepped closer and Sebastien went utterly still. His chest ceased to rise and fall, and he didn’t even blink as Alec raised his fingers to his left cheek. “Show me.”

Sebastien swallowed and parted his lips. Angling his jaw a little to one side, he showed Alec the elongated canines, three quarters of an inch long. “Careful,” he murmured as Alec made to touch them. “Vampire venom is potent, even in small doses.”

“Does it really do what the hunters say it does?”

Sebastien’s red eyes glittered almost playfully. “I don’t know,” he smiled, seeming to relax a fraction. “What do they say it does?”

“Drives your victims wild, acts like a date rape drug, makes humans lose their will and their inhibitions…”

At that, a hardness returned to his features and his lip twitched in a lopsided snarl, like a wolf backed into a corner. “That’s certainly one take on it,” he said. “It creates a rush of euphoria. It’s supposed to make feeding a pleasant experience for all concerned. Endorphins in the blood make the taste sweeter, and the human feels no pain or fear.”

“Right. Gotta say I like that one better,” Alec said with a shaky smile. “But I’m not gonna risk it right here… And fuck me, your eyes are incredible.”

“They’re still red, hmm?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

Closing his eyes and tilting his face upwards a little more towards the cloudy night sky, he inhaled deeply. His features softened again, and Alec watched, fascinated, as the slight bumps behind his closed upper lip slid away into nothing, presumably as his canines retracted into his gums. When he opened his eyes, they were their usual, endlessly dark brown once more.

“Better?” Sebastien asked, oddly self-conscious.

“No,” he said. “Just different.”

Something prickled on the back of his neck and he turned to find a woman silhouetted against the light of street lamp halfway up the road. “Friend of yours?” he asked, tense.

“Felicity. She came with me.”

“Why? Surely you don’t need a wingman… or, you know, woman.”

With a tiny smile, Sebastien said, “You make me more vulnerable than you realise, in more ways than one. And we weren’t sure if your family would be here.”

“Or whether they’d want to flambé you…”

“Precisely.” He inclined his head and the woman did the same, turning and vanishing even as Alec blinked.

“Can you do that too?” he asked, still gawping after her.

When he turned back, he found that Sebastien had stepped in close to him - close enough that his faint, woody cologne wafted gently around them and he felt his knees wobble slightly. He’d missed this. Oh god, he’d missed this. “Mmhmm,” Sebastien hummed. “I can.”

“Kiss me,” Alec whispered. “Please…”

Sebastien didn’t need telling twice. He took Alec’s face in both his hands and crushed a passionate kiss to his lips so hard that Alec’s mind went perfectly blank for a few beautiful seconds. When he came to, he grabbed Sebastien’s narrow hips and tugged him close, making the vampire grunt as their bodies connected.

This time, he took Sebastien’s ponytail in one hand and began to pull on it gently. Sebastien yielded at the pressure and tipped his face back, exposing the entire column of his throat to Alec without resistance. The gesture left Alec stunned and breathless. In his research with Theo over the past months, he had learned that for a vampire to expose their throat to another implied absolute trust. Overwhelmed, he pressed his lips to the bare skin and felt Sebastien gasp, grabbing at his shoulders suddenly to keep himself upright.

Over and over, the vampire shuddered tangibly beneath his touch and gasped sharply again, panting. As he shifted his hips against him, Alec felt Sebastien’s growing hardness, and at the same time, Sebastien drew back, eyes screwed shut. “Stop,” he laughed. “Not here.”

“I want you,” Alec moaned, one hand on Sebastien’s chest. “Fuck, I’ve missed you so much.”

“I want you too,” Sebastien smiled, opening his eyes. They glowed scarlet again. “And because of that, this —” he said, gesturing to his red eyes, “— isn’t going to go away quickly this time.”

“This too?” Alec said, boldly cupping the obvious bulge in Sebastien’s smart black trousers gently with his hand and making the vampire groan.

“Yeah, that too.”

“Your place or mine?” Alec asked with a dizzy grin.

“You decide. I’m booked into a hotel one street over for the next two days,” he said. “If that affects your decision in any way.”

“Yours,” he said. “I… I’ll just…” he looked over his shoulder and caught sight of the exhibition banner dangling by the door. “I should…”

Sebastien nodded slowly. “I’ll be here.”

“You’d better be,” he snarled as he adjusted himself and prayed no one would notice. He took a few steadying breaths on the threshold of the town hall and then disappeared inside.

Kay raised her eyebrows at him when he reappeared.

“Not a word,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Your hair’s a mess,” she said conversationally. “Is it windy outside?”

“Fuck off,” he grimaced and she laughed. “Where’s Theo?”

“He left out the back way,” she said. “But he told me to tell you to enjoy yourself tonight, and that he’ll stand by whatever makes you happy.”

Unexpected tears prickled his eyes and he tugged her into a hug that was probably meant for his brother.

“You can thank us later,” she said, shoving him off her. “Go be with your Prince of Darkness…”

“I’m not sure how much he’d like you calling him that,” he said as he stepped back. “I’ll have to wrap things up here first…”

It seemed to take forever, but he finally found the events coordinator and after an interminable conversation full of congratulations, agreed to stop by the next day to take down the exhibition and sort the sales out. His heart was thudding when he stepped back outside, but he let out a huge sigh when he saw Sebastien leaning against the brick building, face tilted towards the moon that was just peeking out from behind a bank of cloud.

“It’s like one of your charcoals,” Sebastien said without tearing his eyes from the sky.

Alec crossed to him and smiled when Sebastien met his gaze, red meeting blue. Alec slid his fingers into Sebastien’s where his hand hung quietly by his side.

“Ready?” the vampire asked.

Alec nodded, and let Sebastien lead him back to his hotel.

They barely made it into the lift before Alec was kissing him, backing him into the mirrored sides of the lift with a thud before the doors had even closed. He stopped suddenly, drew back and laughed, and Sebastien — who looked like he’d just got whiplash — asked, “What?”

“Vampires do have reflections after all…”

Sebastien rolled his eyes and gave an indecorous snort-laugh. The sound was rich and warm and it filled Alec’s whole consciousness for a moment. “It’s only the antique ones with genuine silver backing that don’t show our reflections. Technology has evolved, thank goodness. Now, if you don’t mind, you were kissing me senseless…”

“Sorry,” he laughed, grabbing Sebastien’s white shirt collar and tugging him down again. They nearly didn’t get out of the lift at Sebastien’s floor, but as the doors began to close again, Sebastien slid his foot into the path of the doors and dragged Alec out.

Clothes landed in a steady line on the carpet between the door of his hotel room and Sebastien’s bed, ending with them both in only their boxer-briefs on the pristine white surface of the bed. Alec was tipped back onto the duvet and lay there staring up at Sebastien who was now no longer hiding his nature from him at all. Red eyes blazed in his face and as he opened his mouth to breath heavily, the tips of his fangs were just visible. There was no denying that he was a vampire.

“Was it like this before?” Alec asked hoarsely. “I mean… did I just not see it?”

“I had to work very hard to rein all this in,” he said, kneeling on the bed and crawling a little way up it. His own boxer briefs strained at the crotch where his erection tented the fabric, and Alec’s own black ones were stained with a little spot of wetness where his cock twitched with eager interest. “I only let it slip once or twice, but you were distracted at the time.”

Alec smirked and then moaned as Sebastien’s palm skimmed up over his groin and over his stomach. He’d always been a bit self-conscious about the softer parts of him, but Sebastien worshipped him like he was some kind of immortal god, lavishing attention on him over and over until he was shaking and gasping and sweating. “Please!” he begged after what felt like hours. “Oh god, please…”

Sebastien slid off the bed and deftly removed his own underwear before encouraging Alec to lift his hips for him and drawing his boxer-briefs down too. Before Alec could think or process what was happening, Sebastien was between his legs again and had swallowed the entire length of his cock to the back of his throat in one.

“Oh fuck,” he hissed, mind whiting out.

Sparks of pleasure shot up his spine as Sebastien worked him alternately with his mouth and his hand.

He teased him, licking the slit at the tip where pre-come beaded profusely now, teasing the delicate folds of skin until Alec thought he was going to shatter apart with want. Just before it got too much to bear, Sebastien would take him back into the wet heat of his mouth and work the underside of his cock with his tongue, swallowing occasionally and making Alec’s head spin all over again.

His balls tightened and he spread his legs wider, instinctively opening himself to Sebastien.

The vampire moaned against his cock and Alec whimpered. Pulling off him, an obscenely inviting thread of saliva and pre-come connecting them briefly, Sebastien sat up and reached for the top drawer of the bedside table. “Vampires neither catch nor transmit diseases,” he said, “But if you still wish to use protection —”

“— I haven’t been with anyone since you,” he rasped. “And I’m clean anyway…”

“As you wish,” Sebastien smiled, withdrawing an almost-new bottle of lube and sitting back down between his legs. Alec eyed it and Sebastien laughed shyly. “I opened it last night…” he admitted and Alec grinned.

That smirk shattered into an open-mouthed groan as Sebastien’s finger slid inside him and he began to prepare him. There was nothing perfunctory about it either. Sebastien took his time to work him open, his fingers fucking into him slowly, almost reverently, until he crooked them and Alec yelled as white-hot pleasure shot through him.

“Still so sensitive,” Sebastien crooned and Alec just shivered in response. His thighs were quivering too now from the effort of not bucking upwards into the empty air, his cock drooling freely over his slightly soft stomach with each futile twitch. He knew he was a wanton mess, and he couldn’t quite find it within himself to care. It seem to drive Sebastien wild anyway.

When Sebastien added a third finger, still stroking up and down his thigh with his other hand, Alec broke.

“Please, please, please,” he whimpered, out of breath and desperate. He cracked his eyes open and looked down at Sebastien to find that his red eyes had been almost eclipsed by his blown pupils. He gave a weak buck of his hips to try and encourage Sebastien to get on with it, but the vampire seemed utterly transfixed by him. He worked his fingers over Alec’s prostate gently but with absolute precision, and it was going to make Alec lose his mind altogether.

“Pleasepleaseplease, I need you, please…” he wailed as Sebastien’s mercifully short and blunt fingernail caught him just so and sent another jolt through him.

Finally the vampire moved, but as he withdrew completely, the loss almost shattered him. “Shh,” he smiled, stroking a soothing circle at Alec’s hipbone. “I’m still here…”

Alec whimpered like a wounded animal but his foggy brain accepted that the loss was only temporary, and he watched as Sebastien took his own flushed cock in his hands and slicked lube up the length of it in a couple of efficient strokes, head bowing under the attention it was receiving at last. He’d focused solely, completely, on Alec’s pleasure for all that time, and the realisation sent a fresh wave of lust rolling through Alec’s entire body.

He spread his legs, but Sebastien caught Alec under his left thigh and raised his leg easily, exposing Alec completely. Before Alec could process anything, his tip was nudging at Alec’s entrance, and then he had sunk all the way in to the hilt.

Sebastien froze then, bowed forwards over Alec like a supplicant, canines openly bared, eyes screwed shut, not even breathing.

“Sebastien… please…” Alec grunted. He’d never felt as full and whole as he had with Sebastien inside him, and yet this wasn’t enough. He’d ached for this. For months, he’d ached for it, and still it wasn’t enough. “Bast, please…”

Finally, the vampire opened his searing red eyes and began to move.

Slowly at first, he picked up his pace until Alec’s back was arching and his fingers clawed great furrows in the sheet beneath him. With each thrust, Alec saw stars at let out little fractured, broken gasps. Sebastien was quiet, almost silent, while Alec himself was unable to stop the sounds from tumbling out of him. He moaned and whimpered, gasped and cursed and begged until Sebastien yanked him further down the bed and lifted his hips a little way off the mattress entirely.

From this new angle, it was so blindingly good that Alec went alternately taut and limp with ecstasy. “I’m close,” he gasped over the slap of Sebastien’s hips meeting his skin.

The vampire snarled then; an inhuman sound that sent the hairs prickling all down Alec’s body.

“Come for me,” Alec begged in a whisper, opening his eyes and watching as Sebastien chased his release with a ferocity he’d never shown before. He wasn’t careless with his strength, but he was certainly forceful. Had Alec wanted to grunt ‘stop’, he knew the vampire would halt, but that was the furthest thing from his mind as he watched the flawless perfection of this man above him. “God you’re so beautiful,” he whispered. “Come for me, Bast…”

And at the sound of his name, uttered in little more than an abbreviated wheeze, Sebastien went still, hips spasming as his spine arched back like a bow at full draw, mouth open, head thrown back, fangs bared, eyes rammed shut, a sheen of sweat covering his perfect, bronze chest, his silver hair falling around him like a veil.

The sight of him like that wrenched Alec’s orgasm from him with such sudden force that he almost blacked out, and he clenched around Sebastien’s still-twitching cock as he spilled all over himself. Vaguely, he felt Sebastien trying to withdraw, but he grunted, “Don't… not yet… please… I… unngghh…” Unable to finish the sentence as the last shock waves fluttered through him, Alec went limp against the bed, breathing hard, his blood roaring in his ears.

He wasn’t sure how much time passed before Sebastien did finally move, but eventually he slid his softening cock out of him and Alec grunted at the cool slide of the vampire’s release down his thigh. He was too spent and exhausted to care about the mess though, and as Sebastien collapsed onto the bed beside him, he cracked one eye open.

Sebastien lay on his left side with his cheek pillowed on his bicep, facing Alec with his eyes closed, and he didn’t seem to be breathing. Tentatively, clumsily in the daze of his recent, mind-blowing orgasm, Alec reached out and touched the delicate skin on the inside of his arm. Sebastien jolted like he’d received an electric shock, and opened his eyes. They still burned bright red, but the rest of his face seemed a little softer somehow.

“You alright?” Alec asked.

Sebastien nodded.

“Been a while too, huh?” Alec grinned, flopping back down to stare at the ceiling where little points of light still sparkled across his vision every now and again.

“Not since that last night with you,” he said, words slurred with exhaustion. “Unless you count my rather pathetic climax alone last night, which I certainly don’t.”

“Not at all?”

He shook his head but didn’t speak again. The vampire lay perfectly still — perfectly undead — and perfectly vulnerable beside him without even a sheet to cover him. His cock now lay soft across the top of his right thigh, still drooling a little and making a mess on his olive skin. Not half as much mess as Alec was currently sporting over his torso, he mused with another smile.

With Sebastien showing no sign of stirring, Alec rolled carefully off the bed and headed on shaky legs to the shower. When he returned, Sebastien hadn’t moved, and he slid in beside him, drawing the sheets up around them and lying there to stare at him in the dimness of the unlit room, processing everything. Sebastien was back, and apparently wanted to stay. He could hardly believe how well that day had gone.

Waking the next morning with a cool, lean body pressed against him, Alec sighed, relieved that it hadn’t all been some kind of fever dream brought on by the stress of the exhibition.

The fact that the man next to him was an undead vampire who didn’t breathe in his sleep was a bit unnerving, and the way he had his cheek now resting on Alec’s collarbone and his nose pressed against his neck should also probably have been a bit of a warning, but Alec couldn’t bring himself to move, except to place a soft kiss on his forehead.

Suddenly, as if surfacing from boundless depths, Sebastien’s body heaved and he drew in a great, sucking, rasping inhale through his mouth. His lips brushed against Alec’s pulse and Sebastien began breathing heavily there for a moment.

“That will never not be weird,” Alec murmured.

“Apologies,” Sebastien muttered, trying to roll away. He paused, freezing, and then whispered, “I fell asleep…” as if that was something miraculous.

“Yeah, you passed out almost as soon as we both finished,” he snickered.

Sebastien turned his big, dark, doe eyes on Alec and said, “No, you don’t understand. Vampires don’t just shut down like that the way humans do. We only sleep somewhere we know is secure and safe…”

“Oh,” Alec said significantly as the realisation plunged through him. He tucked his arm under Sebastien’s head and tugged him closer so that their bodies were once again flush with one another. “I’m glad you felt safe…”

Sebastien sighed, trailing his fingertips across Alec’s chest in absent circles. His cock twitched too, and Alec shot him a look.

With a bashful smile, Sebastien said, “I can’t help that I find you attractive, Alec…”

“Wasn't complaining,” he grinned.

It was a long time before they rolled off each other that morning, with the sun well up and the sheets damp with sweat and tangled around their ankles. Vampires, it seemed, had a longer refractory period than humans, but Sebastien also came so big when he did that Alec wasn’t surprised. He gave everything to Alec when he came that Alec could quite happily lie there all day just staring at him as he came down afterwards.

The room was chilly, however, and when Sebastien seemed to have dozed off again around ten o’clock, he headed to clean up. Again.

As the steam billowed around him, he tipped his head back into the stream of searing water and nearly yelped as the shower door opened and let in a rush of cold air as Sebastien stepped into the stall as well. Cool hands found his waist and then strong fingers kneaded his arse appreciatively before Sebastien kissed and nibbled up his shoulder and traps to his neck. Instinctively, Alec tilted his head to one side and Sebastien moaned, pressing open-mouthed kisses there over and over as the hot water coursed around his lips.

The sensation must have been too much for him because he pulled back sharply with a hiss and Alec turned to face him, water still streaming down around them. Sebastien stood frozen, eyes red, staring at Alec’s neck. “I shouldn’t…” he began. “That was stupid of me… I…”

“What happens to the treaty if the human is willing?” Alec found himself asking. He’d thought about it a lot before drifting off the previous night. If Sebastien had wanted to drink from him, to feed on him, what would happen to the tenuous peace between hunters and vampires like him.

“Don’t,” Sebastien said through gritted teeth. His canines were elongated, Alec noted.

“What happens?”

“The only way it’s permitted is if the human agrees by written contract to become the vampire’s source.”

“‘Source’?” he asked. “That sounds like an official title.”

“It is,” Sebastien said, relaxing a fraction and putting his hands back on Alec’s hips. His cock stirred with interest and Sebastien smiled. He leaned back in, as if proving to both of them that he could do this, and kissed down Alec’s neck again from the junction of his jaw all the way to his collarbones. He ground his hips against Alec and they both began to harden again.

Alec’s hand went to Sebastien’s cock and he started to stroke him gently, knowing he was still sensitive from their last round. Sebastien let out a ragged exhale, the cool breath making Alec shiver slightly in the heat of the water.

“So…” Alec pressed gently, thumbing across the top of Sebastien’s flushed cock.

“Hmm?�� he asked, a little stunned.

“What is a source?”

“A human becoming a vampire’s source means that the vampire drinks only from that human. It’s… an ancient - ah - custom,” he said, gripping Alec’s shoulders as Alec upped the speed and adjusted his grip to tighten just a little around his now fully hard cock. “Rarely used today, but still… nngh…”

“Mmm?” Alec grinned, loving that the vampire’s thoughts were unravelling under his touch. “Go on.”

“You’re a menace,” he laughed breathily, nipping playfully at his neck and then kissing him hard. Alec’s back suddenly hit the icy tiles behind him and he yelped, rearing into Sebastien who wasn’t all that much warmer, though the heat of the water was raising his body temperature from the ambient temperature of the room.

“So if…” Alec began, somewhat distracted as Sebastien’s kisses continued and the vampire raked his fingers through Alec’s wet hair, scraping luxuriantly across his scalp hard enough to make him break off and groan. “If… if I wanted to become your…”

“Don’t,” Sebastien whispered. “Not yet. Not so soon after… all this time.”

The subtext was clear. Let’s see if this is going to last before I risk my life with the hunters guild and your family, shall we?

“Fair enough. Nothing to say I can’t suck you off now though, right?”

“Nothing at all,” he whispered and then immediately cursed as Alec sank to his knees and did just that.

It was only as he was handing in his own letter of resignation that the truth really sank in for Alec. He’d gone from post-grad assistant in the department to a full lecturer, where he’d stayed for six years, and now he was moving a little way out of the city, and moving in with his boyfriend of a year. A vampire, nonetheless. His life had gone from miserable to wonderful in that relatively short time.

Sebastien met him at the edge of campus after he’d handed the letter personally to the head of department. Standing under the verdant cherry trees, Sebastien looked like a vision. He wore tight, dark jeans and a loose shirt, half untucked, with his long hair tied back in a loose plait, fly-aways wisping around his head like mist. Alec walked straight up to him as the vampire opened his arms, flung his own arms around Sebastien’s neck, and hugged him.

“All done?” Sebastien asked without pulling back.

He nodded and popped back down from his toes. They were both tall men, but Sebastien had a few inches on him still. With a slightly doe-eyed expression, Sebastien smiled and kissed him gently. “I love you,” he said softly between kisses.

“Come on, you big sap,” Alec said. “I’ve got to be out of my apartment at four.”

“Such a romantic,” Sebastien sighed melodramatically.

With Sebastien’s supernatural strength, loading up the little van they’d hired for his stuff didn’t take long, and after giving his keys back to the landlord and signing the final bits and bobs, they were on the road.

The old farmhouse had been a find of Sebastien’s, and it needed some work. “Well, what else am I going to do on long, impossibly sunny summer days while you’re running your own business from the little art studio at the bottom of the garden?” Sebastien had laughed when they’d first viewed it, the back of his hand pressed to his forehead in a terribly ‘put upon’ gesture. “I might as well spruce the place up.”

“It needs more than a light ‘sprucing up’,” Alec had said, brows raised at the rotten wooden beam and the tired 1950’s kitchen. “And don’t tell me you made your wealth flipping houses back in the day.”

“Would you rather I told you I robbed the Bank of England and they still haven’t noticed?” he replied archly before planting a kiss squarely on Alec’s scratchy, stubble-darkened cheek.

With a scowl, Alec had shot him a look. “I honestly don’t know whether that’s a lie or not…”

“It’s a lie,” Sebastien snorted. “I can’t believe you think I’m a criminal.”

“You’re a vampire,” he’d retorted. “You could probably have just walked in there and demanded a small fortune in gold ingots and they wouldn’t have objected…”

“Please. I do have some scruples. And besides, I only use my charms on poor, miserable artists to get into their pants…”

“And their hearts too, apparently,” he’d scoffed as they’d left the dilapidated house with Sebastien’s hand in Alec’s back pocket, fingers firmly cupped around his arse.

It took another six months for the work to be completed, and even with Sebastien’s not inconsiderable talents in the DIY and home improvement departments, they still had to call in a team of builders to fix the pointing in one wall and to sort out a few other structural issues. But by the end of the work, the farmhouse was quite frankly the most stunning place Alec could ever have dreamed of living. Exposed oak beams and a fireplace big enough to park a tractor in were only half of the best features of the place.

One clear, frosty evening in late October, the pair sat outside on the recently finished patio, a small cast iron fire-pit crackling away and sending sparks and heat twisting up into the night sky, a glass of wine each in one hand and their free hand clasped around the other’s.

“Bastien…?” Alec said, not taking his eyes from the mother-of-pearl points of light in the sky above.

“Mmm?”

“I’ve been thinking a lot lately about… about becoming your source.” He didn’t miss the sharp inhale from his partner, nor the way Sebastien went completely still in the wooden chair beside him. He also didn’t say anything. “I’d… I’d like to ask how often you’d need to feed from me, and… what the repercussions would be for me as the human…”

Still Sebastien didn’t speak for a long time, and Alec worried he’d spoilt the serenity of their evening with the sensitive question. Finally, the vampire cleared his throat and Alec realised with a jolt that he was near tears.

“Bast?”

At the sound of the pet-name, Sebastien blinked rapidly and two mirroring tears tracked down his cheeks in perfect synchrony. “I thought you’d forgotten all about it,” he said in a hoarse croak. “I didn’t want to bring it up again.”

“You should have done, silly,” Alec groused, and he was met with a watery smile that didn’t meet his eyes at all.

“Well, to answer your questions,” he said, trying to sound unaffected even if he clearly was. “Every three months is safe enough, so long as you take an iron supplement. If you don’t, you might feel a little more tired right afterwards. We generally take slightly less than a person would give at a blood donation, if that helps put it into context.”

Alec turned and frowned at him.

“What?”

“You’ve gone all clinical,” he said, shuffling a little and setting his wine glass down on the edge of the stone fire pit. “Do you not want this anymore?”

Sebastien swallowed thickly and looked away. In the ochre and copper flicker of the flames before them, his suddenly red eyes seemed to glow like coals. “More than you know…” he rasped.

“Then what’s the problem?”

He chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment before turning back to face Alec with glassy eyes. “I’m frightened.”

Alec’s scowl deepened and he rose from his chair to straddle and sink down into Sebastien’s lap. Settled in his new position, he kissed Bast’s lips and stroked his loose, white-blond hair out of his eyes. “Of what?”

“Losing control. It’s been… decades since… If I hurt you, Alec… it would break me.”

“How about we start small? Just a taste?”

Sebastien looked so young then in the firelight. He suddenly looked like the twenty year old man he had been when he’d been conscripted into the army and sent out to battle to die, only to be turned at the eleventh hour by a nurse in a field hospital who’d seen something special in him. Thank god she had, Alec mused.

Alec leaned back a little and brought his index finger slowly to Sebastien’s lips. The vampire swallowed, red gaze drifting down to watch its approach before looking back at Alec’s face, searching, questioning, doubting.

Alec nodded and slid his fingertip a few millimetres into Sebastien’s mouth. The vampire inhaled, closed his eyes, and then opened his mouth properly. Alec brought the pad of his fingertip to the underside of his right canine, and pressed.

After a moment, the pressure gave way and a prick of pain like a needle pierced his skin. A bead of blood welled there instantly and he withdrew to let it swell. Sebastien clearly smelled the blood because his pupils dilated and he sucked in a sharp breath.

“Easy,” Alec said. “It’s only a drop.” And with that, he turned his finger over and held it above the tip of Sebastien’s tongue.

Paralysed in a heartbeat of terror, Sebastien sat rigid, frozen, wide eyed, but Alec lowered his finger to meet the slight roughness of his tongue, and Sebastien’s eyes rolled. He moaned and let his tongue play across the tiny pinprick wound, fingers digging into Alec’s hips. The tiny wound had already stopped bleeding, but he sucked gently, drawing a little taste more. Then he released Alec and stared at him, a look of stunned awe on his beautiful face.

“How was that?” Alec asked, briefly thumbing a fond arc across Sebastien’s cheekbone before dropping his hand.

“Manageable,” Sebastien murmured.

“Ok, I have to ask, do I taste good?”

The tense spell that encapsulated both of them broke and Sebastien cracked a smile, fangs and all. “Yes,” he rasped.

“So… I can become your source?”

“If you wish it, yes. You can withdraw the honour at any time. I won’t hold you to it.”

“Good to know,” he said, only half laughing. A moment later, he said, “When… When do you want to start… you know… properly. Formally?”

Sebastien’s eyes had drifted to the rabbiting pulse in his neck.

“Now?” he asked. “It’s only been a few weeks since you went to the blood bank though…”

“That’s…” he said, hands finding Alec’s waist and holding him gently. “That probably works in my favour this time. Are you sure you want this?”

“To be ‘yours’ on your terms as well as mine? Of course,” he smiled, and watched as another tear rolled down his perfect olive cheek. He tilted his head to one side, feeling a little sheepish, and said in barely a whisper, “Whenever you like.”

“Really? Now?” Sebastien hissed, chest suddenly heaving. “Just like that?”

Alec laughed quietly. “It’s not as if we’ve just met. I know you, Bast. I trust you. I wouldn’t offer this to just any old vampire, you know?”

Unable to stop the smile from twisting his lips, Sebastien finally relented with a nod. “Alright. But not here. You’re going to want to be more comfortable.”

“But I’m already comfortable here,” he whined playfully, wiggling his hips in Sebastien’s lap, eliciting a deep, rumbling groan.

With a roll of his red eyes, Sebastien sighed. “Stubborn arse,” he grumbled without sting.

“You love my arse.”

“Yes, you’re right. I do,” he said.

Tenderly he ran his thumb down the line of Alec’s carotid and inhaled deeply. “I love you,” he whispered. And then he leaned close. He took his time kissing Alec’s neck until he was gasping and rocking his hips against Sebastien.

“Please…”

“Last chance,” Sebastien said against the skin of his throat.

Alec shook his head. “I want this. I’m yours.”

So the vampire sank his fangs into the artery. After the initial surprise and sting, Alec’s whole body lit up as the venom hit his bloodstream, and he bucked into Sebastien who held him still with what should have been frightening ease. There was no fear behind the gesture, only longing and love and sweet, aching, rolling, unending pleasure.

“Oh fuck,” Alec moaned, going limp in his arms as Sebastien began to feed, withdrawing his fangs to draw more deeply on him while he held him easily in his arms. The vampire moaned, lips locked against his skin so as not to spill anything. The motion of his throat suddenly fascinated Alec as he swallowed down his own life-force, but before he could raise his hand to touch fingertips to his Adam’s apple, pleasure exploded in his mind and he forgot everything.

When he came back to himself, he was inside, lying on their bed, with a small, soft dressing over his neck, and Sebastien sitting quietly on the bed beside him, staring down at him and holding his hand. As he blinked his eyes, he frowned. “What…?”

“It’s intense the first time,” Sebastien murmured fondly. “I did say you’d want to be somewhere more comfortable.”

“ S’perfect,” he slurred. “Fuck me…” he added, more curse than command.

“Maybe later, hmm?” Sebastien smiled. There was a flush to his cheeks that Alec had never seen before, and a brightness to his eyes.

“C’mere,” Alec said, patting the bed beside him. With Sebastien lying silently next to him, Alec rolled over and hooked one leg over Bast’s thigh. “Love you,” he mumbled, sinking into a deep and exhausted sleep, even as Sebastien’s hand came up to cradle his head.

The vampire smiled, kissing his forehead. “I love you too.”

___

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