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“Oh, Ro-oy.”
He shouldn’t even look over. It’s dangerous to acknowledge the unambiguous singsong tone, but it makes his whole spine tighten, and his chin jerks up despite him, and then it’s impossible to pretend he hasn’t heard.
“I’m not asking much, you know.”
Maes Hughes has never asked less than too much, but that’s beside the point. That’s a considerable distance from the point. That’s in another county and under another legal jurisdiction than the point by now.
“I’m working,” Roy says.
“You are not, you big, fat liar,” Hughes says contentedly.
“I am not fat.”
“You big, toned, attractively-muscled liar. You haven’t turned a page in two minutes and twenty-four seconds. You read faster than that.”
Roy has glanced up before he can stop himself. “You’re counting?”
Hughes flashes the best and worst of all the grins—the one with his eyes half-shut and gleaming, with the slice of ivory in the dim room just slightly crooked, with the fangs out and his shoulders slanted and his intent staggeringly unmistakable. The wicked one.
“What else am I supposed to do?” he asks. “Anyway, I have incontrovertible proof that you’re not working, and I suspect that’s because you’re tired and frustrated and thinking about how much you want me to bend you over your desk and fuck you until you sweat out every last vestige of the stress. Or until the noise disturbs someone. Or until your desk breaks. And whichever it is, I would be more than happy to oblige.”
There is a hot pulse in Roy’s throat and an answering throb in his groin. “Why can’t you oblige your wife? Isn’t that what she’s for?”
“This is why no one will make an honest man of you,” Hughes says. “My wife is not for anything. She is the light of my life and the source of my happiness and the inspirational muse of Nature itself as winter thaws to resplendent spring and… you’ve read the sonnets. I know for a fact that you stole one when you were dating that woman at the bookstore, because you forgot to change line about eye color, and she dumped you, remember?”
“Believe it or not, I don’t index and alphabetize all of my romantic failures while I lie awake wracked with self-pity every night,” Roy says, which is both untrue and irrelevant. “And for the record, I really don’t feel comfortable participating in your unfaithfulness even if I do have written and verbal permission.”
Hughes shakes his head in something akin to admiration. “You may be the most honorable rake I have ever had the unadulterated pleasure of seducing.”
“I’m pretty sure seduction is a highly adulterated pleasure,” Roy says, resisting the urge to tap the end of his pen on the report. “Especially when the seduction in question is adulterous.”
Hughes waves a hand. Roy is positive that he wasn’t this smooth before. Every gesture—every dip of an eyelash, every twist of his hips, every tightening pull of a muscle—is a viciously deft enticement. Every time Maes Hughes moves, he is irresistible.
“This is why you never get any work done,” Hughes is saying. “You talk too much, and you think too much, and you waste all of your remaining energy looking for the things other people think you should have—pretty girlfriends, nights at the theater, all of that faff. You and I both know you don’t want that. You just want somebody to talk to and curl up with and fuck into the headboard until you’re both too exhausted to psychoanalyze each other anymore. And I hereby happily volunteer.”
Roy flicks his pen and spins it around over his thumb. “Riza knows.”
“Knows that you’re getting laid, maybe,” Hughes says brightly. “Doesn’t know by whom, or how, or why, or any of the things that make a difference. This is exactly what I’m talking about—she’ll be perfectly content to let you enjoy it without asking questions. You’re projecting your own doubts onto other people because that’s easier than turning the critical assessment inward.”
“I thought we weren’t psychoanalyzing each other,” Roy says.
“I explained very clearly, my dear, sweet Roy, that there has to be fucking before the psychoanalyzing stops.”
Roy shifts in his chair. Getting a little warm in here—in this room, in this universe, in his pants. “It’s becoming somewhat difficult to cover the bite marks.”
“C’mon,” Hughes says, spreading his hands, tilting his head, grinning again, “be creative. Gracia has the most wonderful collection of silk scarves. Of course, I can’t imagine they’d flatter your complexion and the shape of your face quite as much as they do hers, simply because you’re not a delicately beautiful angel-goddess perfectly suited to soft, floaty accessories, but there must be something you can do. Put that sexy brain of yours to work.”
They both know that there’s nothing sexy about brains after you’ve splattered one out across the sand.
Then again, Roy thought he’d never be into bloodplay again, and… here he is, volunteering his vitals. No, not volunteering them, because he has work to do, damn it, and Gracia should keep her vampire husband locked up at night if he’s going to be like this.
Locked up and chained to the wall and gagged, eyes smolderingly hot and unwavering, and…
…and… fuck.
“Oh, Roy,” Hughes coos. “You’re blushing.”
“Am not.”
“I can smell it.”
“Wishful thinking.”
“And I can smell a lot of blood rushing elsewhere, if you know what I mean.”
“Your flawless grasp of subtlety never ceases to amaze me.”
Hughes stands, fluidly, and starts to saunter over to him. Roy has never seen a man use his hips quite like that—quite as well as that.
Shit. Roy crosses his legs. It’s too little too late, but it’s still better than nothing, right?
“My sweet,” Hughes purrs, “sweet Roy—you deal in subtlety and subterfuge and sub-par interpersonal relationships with colleagues daily. Let’s just make an exception during the night, shall we? It’ll be… rejuvenating.”
“You’re dead,” Roy says. “Nothing is rejuvenating.”
“Invigorating.”
“Bullshit.”
Hughes’s ineluctable sashaying has reached Roy’s desk. He takes the top corner of the report in two fingers, lifts it, and sets it aside. Then he perches on the edge of Roy’s desk and positively leers. “You have such a filthy mouth.”
Roy frowns and tries to make swallowing hard look natural. “Would you please cease and desist abusing my office furniture?”
Hughes’s eyes very nearly glow in the dark these days. “You think this is abuse? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
“Now that you mention it,” Roy says, “no, I haven’t seen a thing. I haven’t seen this salary report, or the list of candidates for promotion, or the evaluations of the treaty conference with the Drachmans. I haven’t seen a damn thing I’m supposed to be reading because your undead ass is on top of it all.”
Hughes plants a hand in the center of Roy’s desk blotter and leans in closer—too close. “You love my undead ass.”
Roy sets his jaw. “Not the point.”
“Exactly the point. You’ve got some weird self-sacrificing complex that makes you think you have to deny yourself anything that’s not productive. You’re going to burn out by thirty-five if you don’t pace yourself and set time aside to relax.” Hughes raises his free hand and drags his fingertips slowly down Roy’s cheek. “You need to unwind. In general, Roy, you’re so…” His fingernails graze the shadow coming out on Roy’s jaw. “…very…” He swoops in before Roy can retreat, and his damp mouth slides over Roy’s throat. “…tight.”
Roy’s voice emerges sounding more than a bit strangled. “Damn it, Hughes—”
“I can’t get much more damned at this point,” Hughes murmurs, and the sound resonates straight through Roy’s windpipe and burrows into his chest. “You might as well just sit back and appreciate it.”
And the thing is that Roy knows—knows for a fact that, despite all of the talk, despite the rather aggressive advances, despite the teasing gleeful hint-of-pain of sharp teeth on his neck… if he says no, Hughes will stop pushing. That’s what happened the first time, and the second, and the third—when the creature with his friend’s face materialized from the shadows, and only the fact that Hughes was wearing the kitten tie Roy bought him when they graduated saved both of them from finding out what happens when you set a vampire on fire.
But the whole thing was terrifying at first. Roy didn’t believe it—couldn’t believe it; couldn’t bear to believe it if it was going to get ripped away from him again.
Except then Hughes kept… showing up. When Roy locked the door, he slipped through the window; when that was closed, he infiltrated the ventilation system and dropped down into the middle of the room and wheezed a few times before he hauled himself up off the floor. He insisted he was real. He insisted he was himself, just with fangs and a few new… appetites.
Eventually, Roy caved, because he was. He was back. He was altered, but he was essentially Maes Hughes, restored, returned, reclaimed. And Roy just wasn’t strong enough to refuse that forever.
It took him another week of nightly visits to give in to the demands for rough, hungry sex, however. And several signed assurances from Gracia that it was really quite exhausting trying to satisfy her husband these days. And an uninterrupted hour of Hughes’s finest puppy eyes.
It’s still strange. It’s still almost too strange—almost, but not quite.
There’s also the small detail that Hughes doesn’t fuck like a vampire; he fucks like a god.
Well… shit.
“Okay,” Roy says as Hughes breathes hotly under his ear—and why and how vampires can breathe and bleed and have sex Roy doesn’t know or care or ever imagine that he’ll care about. “Okay. Just—” Gracia’s parents have been in town this week, so Hughes has been crashing Roy’s office every night, instead of every other. As a result, beneath the carefully-arranged uniform, Roy’s neck looks like he’s been wearing a choke-collar made of barbed wire. “—could you try another vein?”
Hughes has commenced the familiar process of climbing over the top of the desk, crumpling important documents in his wake. “Mmm. You’re delicious everywhere.”
“I would find that to be more complimentary if you didn’t mean it litera—ah.”
There’s the hand in his pants. For a man who has all of eternity, Hughes really doesn’t waste much time.
“You know you like it,” Hughes says, and Roy is not physically capable of protesting while that cool, graceful hand is doing such unbelievable things to his cock. Hughes doesn’t even pause in stroking swiftly as he crawls the rest of the way over the desk and straddles Roy’s lap; the chair creaks, but they’ve discovered on a number of occasions that it can hold their combined weight.
Roy wishes he wasn’t flushed and panting after only about thirty seconds of proper foreplay—kind of belies the playboy reputation, after all—but Hughes… tends to have that effect. Roy fights in a deep breath. “Were you always this good?”
“Oh…” Hughes nips so gently at the tender skin of Roy’s throat while his unoccupied hand unfastens Roy’s collar. “…probably.”
Roy’s hips are already rising into the pressure of Hughes’s hand; it’s murder on his back messing around like this, but who the hell is he to argue with something that feels this good? “Should’ve—done this when you—were alive.”
“Can’t say I didn’t think about it.” The chair creaks a little louder as Hughes mouths at Roy’s collarbones, pushing his shirt aside, hand still pumping hard, harder— “But I love my wife, Roy. I’ve loved her since I met her. And I love you, too, before you close up and get upset and feel so dreadfully used. I loved you differently then. It took dying to make me realize…” He drags his tongue over Roy’s nipple, and the goosebumps flood everywhere. “…that life is short, and love is fluid, and there’s no time to give a damn what tradition says I’m allowed to have.”
“Tradition—” Roy’s breath catches; Hughes just slid a fingertip behind his balls, and it is getting much too humid in his trousers; valiantly, he thinks, he makes a second attempt at his sentence. “Tradition says—you should be allowed—a six-foot hole in the ground—and some overpriced flowers—”
Hughes laughs so richly that it ripples, and Roy’s stomach flips. “Not the hole I’m interested in.”
“You’re—” Roy arches into the attention; this isn’t fair. “—sick—”
“Not so,” Hughes says, sliding off the chair to crouch between Roy’s knees. The moonlight sparks on his glasses and shines on his fangs. “I feel great.”
Roy wants to say something scathingly witty, but Hughes quits fussing and pries the fly of his trousers open, hauls his underwear out of the way, and takes Roy in all the way to the back of his throat.
Apparently vampires don’t have a gag reflex. Or patience. Or shame.
Roy focuses on not letting his skin combust—it’s a bit touch and go on that front—and fists a hand in Hughes’s hair. God. God.
It only took one mishap with an unfortunate puncture wound and a lot of screaming and some rolling around on the floor not letting Hughes lick up the blood to teach the man to keep his lips firmly over those dangerously prominent canines. The trial and error—and the howling in agony, and the ensuing impassioned promises that it would never happen again, c’mon, Roy, baby, I’m sorry—were worth it, though. Just about anything would be worth it for this.
Hughes’s touch is cool, but whatever circulates through his system must do so differently in his mouth, because it’s as warm as any that’s ever closed over Roy’s dick and sucked vigorously. God, Roy can’t grip the armrest hard enough; his knuckles might well be aching from how hard he’s clenching Hughes’s hair, but he’s too overwhelmed to feel it; everything has narrowed in to the heat, the suction, the velvet stroke of Hughes’s tongue, the tight press of his lips, the excruciatingly slow shift back and forth—
“Fuck,” Roy gasps, and he’s too taut all over—straining to hold back, hold in, hold on—to care if it’s a bit clichéd. “Fuck, f-faster—”
Hughes draws back—draws all the way off, with his glasses sliding down his nose, and looks up at Roy with his eyebrows raised. Roy’s hand is still in his hair; Roy’s throbbing erection is swaying between them; this is insane, and damn it, that miserable bastard has no right to stop—
“You know the greatest part about being dead?” Hughes asks.
Roy hates this game. He always plays it anyway. The prizes are spectacular. “P… presumably… the incredible sex drive and the rather f-fortunate detail that you have not one, but two willing partne—”
“Not having to take any orders,” Hughes says, “ever again.”
They’re both still but for breathing. Roy’s dizzy with the force of the anticipation, which slammed in to drown him and hasn’t quite washed back out to sea. His whole body is one hot, low, desperate pulse of wanting. The beat of his blood takes no prisoners.
It’s not like he’s ever had dignity. He was a child, and then he was a smug idealist, and then he was a murderer, and then he was a mask. He should be the one on his knees, the one offering, the one tracing thank you with every twist of his tongue. In these moments, with Hughes, he is a man—no more, no less. And that alone is beautiful.
“Faster,” Roy says, panting, “please.”
Hughes winks, and the few fragments of Roy’s entrails which had remained intact dissolve into searing goo.
Then Hughes applies first lips followed by tongue followed by whole talented mouth again, and Roy doesn’t care; Roy will just melt; Roy will just die. Dying in the throes of hip-jerking, gut-wrenching, heart-trembling pleasure sounds positively marvelous. No more paperwork; no more gold stars gleaming out of reach; no more fighting to think faster than everyone around him. Just this heat building in his every molecule, quivering, spreading, brimming, spilling, an endless supply of heat that sates but never quenches—
Hughes hums in the back of his throat and digs his fingertips into Roy’s thighs; there’s a harsh jolt in the pit of Roy’s stomach, and he curls his hand tighter into Hughes’s hair; his hand must hurt by now, but that sort of pain is nothing like the indescribable beautiful revelatory agony of not yet not yet hold back crush it down make it last—
Every centimeter of Roy’s skin is alive with the rhythm, back-forth one-two blaze-cool; the sweat beading on his forehead starts to run; his heart hammers out some ungodly percussion no army could ever march to, and it’s wonderful, it’s vibrant, it’s entirely his, and he’s giving it to the man who coaxed it from him—
“Hughes—” His voice sounds low, sounds hoarse, sounds unsteady, sounds close. He cracks an eye open, watches fascinated as the saliva gleams, as he’s accepted, over and over. “H-Hughes—”
Hughes doesn’t break for a moment—doesn’t even pause—as he looks up into Roy’s eyes and murmurs something that must be his name.
And Roy gathers all of the spitting sparks and roaring white warmth in his shaking body and nestles into the solace of no-space-to-think, and then he lets go.
The room jitters back into place, fizzles once, and settles. He manages to focus just as Hughes finishes licking his lips.
“All right,” Roy says. His lungs are still heaving; his heart is still pounding; this is the best possible time. “Your turn.”
Hughes’s grin softens just a little—mischief still flits around the corners, and his eyes stay bright. If it wasn’t for the sharp edges, he would look utterly unchanged.
He leans in and kisses over Roy’s femoral artery before he sinks in his teeth.
Roy always flinches when the fangs first pierce his skin; it hurts, and somehow he tends to forget how much. After the initial sting, though, it’s a duller kind of pain—like an IV needle, acute and obtrusive but bearable. Once he acclimates, it’s almost pleasant just having Hughes so close—to have him staying, after losing him to Gracia and then losing him altogether. The warmth of Hughes’s mouth as he laps up every last drop of Roy’s blood is comforting despite the admittedly rather disturbing nature of the larger situation.
Roy has learned to take what he can get. This is equivalent.
And it’s really not… bad. The gentle pull of the blood from his veins is sort of primal, somehow, and the soft, helpless noises Hughes makes—well. Roy would give a great deal more if he had to.
There’s also something to be said for how clean this is—logistically; literally it’s a bit stickier and wetter and more likely to stain than any other arrangement Roy’s ever had. But it’s terrifically… useful. Convenient. Simple. Roy has his life, his work, his daylight; and then he has this. He has his intellect and his long-spun plans and the battlefield that sprawls out over the entirety of the future; and he has an outlet that he never has to quantify or justify or explain. It’s lovely. It’s very neat.
…fuck Hughes for always being right; he really does think too much.
“Ah…” His hand quavers just slightly as he touches Hughes’s hair. “That’s—I’m starting to feel a bit—”
Hughes laps at his skin so avidly that he wants to take it back. No, it’s quite all right. Drain me. Take it all. Before he can prostrate himself on the altar of absurd, lightheaded self-sacrifice, Hughes is drawing back and beaming up at him, eyes impossibly bright.
“Weak in the knees?” Hughes asks. “I understand I have that effect on a lot of people. Don’t take it too hard, darling.” His forehead creases almost imperceptibly. “Maybe I’d better walk you home to make sure you don’t get ravished in the streets.”
Roy presses a fingertip to each of the puncture wounds on the inside of his leg. This should be even more ridiculous than it is. Sitting in his desk chair, with his clothing more or less torn off and his dick hanging out, with a vampirically returned Maes Hughes hunkered down between his knees—it’s hysterical, isn’t it? But then there’s something utterly liberating about being close to someone who doesn’t question your basic ludicrousness.
“If I go staggering home with the likes of you,” Roy says, “people will think I’m drunk.”
“If they recognize me,” Hughes says cheerfully, “they’ll think they’re drunk. C’mon, I want to see you home. Don’t give me that look. Didn’t your mother ever teach you to respect the dead?”
“That is never going to be funny,” Roy says.
“It’s such a tragedy,” Hughes says, “that you were born without a sense of humor. Come on, get up. I’ll drive you. Much less likely to end in us toppling into the gutter, or you getting into the gossip columns, or passersby from Investigations screaming shrilly. It’ll only take a couple minutes.”
And Roy… is helpless against him, against this. He’s powerless for once.
It feels amazing.
“Much as I’m enjoying the current view,” Hughes says as Roy levers himself upright with the armrest, head spinning like a nightmare carousel, “I’m afraid you’re societally obligated to put your pants back on.”
Roy glares.
Hughes grins.
And before he knows it, he’s being shepherded to sit on the edge his bed, and a glass of water is being pushed into his hands.
“There’s a good boy,” Hughes says, perching next to him and stroking at his hair.
“Shut up,” Roy says.
“You’d despise it if I actually did.”
“I would find it extremely suspect.”
“You’d hate the silence.”
Roy looks at him. He’s too tired and too weak and too bone-deep contented to lie. “It almost killed me.”
Hughes hears that for what it means—his eyes darken; his smile tilts. He elbows Roy in the ribs, rather mercilessly, and then kisses him on the forehead.
“You would have been in excellent company if you’d died,” he says.
“Shut up,” Roy says, and leans against his shoulder a little more.