The nice thing about Knightsbridge and Dannerly Court in particular, is that one lives in the city, without having all of the traffic. Rush hour is eternal, but in the confines of the ritzier halls and cul-de-sacs, one would never know.
From the shower comes Edward. He's soaking wet, but is presently wrapped in a thick white towel. He steps back into the bedroom proper and picks up his watch, sliding it easily upon his wrist. A smile is tossed towards the bed where his lover lays, safely ensconced beneath sheets and blankets, a pillow beneath the young man's head.
Nevermind that his feet are at the carved Moor-inspired headboard and his golden hair dangles near a foot-corner of the iron pole that rises there.
Edward smirks and clasps the fix on his watch. Hands come to his waist, shifting the chisel of his body in a slightly different fashion. Once done, he picks up a glass of water on the wall table and downs it, letting the coolness slide along his throat.
On a normal evening, he is an early riser. The sun sinks below the line of the horizon, the sky still pink, and his gold-green eyes blink open. He can usually feel it, and it stirs him.
Not so tonight...
The sinking of the sun has come and gone, twilight turned to evening. In a matter of an hour or two it will be full-on night and Valan Montague is still sleeping. Evidence of blood on his skin, there is the smell of it, it is thick, and the sight of it, unmistakable. Sex cloys on the air in a kind of humidity, aided by the steam from your shower. He wears you, Edward...
There is a sudden noise. A sudden motion beneath the covers, the kicking out of a leg. Jerking, ungainly. A far cry from his usual, more sensual beginnings. This is no Venus on the Half Shell. It's more like Bacchus after a three-night booze-up and orgy.
There is a groan, soft.
A twist, and Edward looks to the bed behind him. The water's finished and the glass set down.
Edward moves over to the nearest side of the bed and turns on the light. A soft glow spills opposite your head. He then walks around the foot of the bed, closer to you, looking down to see your face there.
No? Not awake yet?
He departs. In the bath area, there's a bit of noise, but soon enough, Edward returns to the foot of the bed. This time, he has a towel around his neck and a glass in his hand.
But he remains rather wet.
His motions are the jerky marionette motions of a newborn vampire. He doesn't have your fortitude... well, any Fortitude for that matter...and the effects of the previous evening still linger. He's better than he was, however...
His hand comes up and Valan rubs his eyes, opening them. They blink and then they narrow immediately. Something is wrong with the bed. Where am I?
"Ami..." he manages, the first coherent word in hours. "Ami...?"
Eyes open more widely and wheel around the room. After a moment, he recognizes it and then realizes he is sleeping upside down and diagonal. Valan rolls over, eyes seeking you out and finding you at the foot of the bed.
What a mess he is. What a gorgeous mess...
And when I look at you, ami... I recount scattered images. Recollections I barely remember. The visceral knowledge that I had you inside me, I can feel that, and of what we did. Wild. Unabashed. I smile. I smell you all around me...
He does not know that he bathed in you...
Glorious, he is. The vicomte would never think to call himself that. But it remains true. The fighter's body offers a glass of water to you in graceful extension, a slight smile affixed at his lips.
"I'm here."
"Drink this," Edward says softly. Then, he smirks. "It's water..."
Water? You see him process that for a split second, realizing that...yes... his mouth is cottony. Water would be nice. Valan moves slowly, plodding to his hands and knees, then he sits up upon his knees, such a pose, and takes the glass.
He takes a long drink before he looks down at himself and it is a good thing he swallowed. You see the shock move through him, a physical ripple, and then his mind -- and his scattered memory -- catches up. He looks up at you and smiles a knowing smile. "Merci, ami," he murmurs.
I need to bathe. Now that I know I am covered in it, I can feel each atom of it...
"I need to get in the bath," he says in English, a literal translation. Take a bath, he means.
"Do you?" Edward asks. A brow lifts. He's having at you. "I can understand it, if you want." The polite smile returns, but he's not offering much in the way of segue into conversation. He'll let you do the work for now.
"Oh, here," Edward offers, taking the towel from around his neck. Thick and lush as the one around his waist. It's slightly damp. One of his feet comes to rest on the frame around the bed, which causes his towel to part slightly, revealing a thigh. "Do you want me to draw you a bath or...will a shower be alright?"
"Shower," he murrs, taking the towel you handed to him, burying his face in it, rubbing the skin, waking the flesh. He takes another drink of the water and then looks at it. At you. At the side table that seems forever away. "..Amazing..." Valan says beneath his breath, exhales a bit and then moves, tries to move, to the side-table to set the water down.
He looks to you between the folds of the towel. "I feel like I have been run over, ami, by a tank..." That would be you, ami. "Dieu..." he whispers, smiles guiltily, and manages one half of a chuckle. "I think I will take a pillow to the shower with me..." I could sleep on my feet.
"Why do you look guilty?" Edward asks, needing something right now. He stands and takes the glass from your hand, setting it upon the night table. There, he picks up two cases: one silver and one a duller pewter. Both are set beside him when he returns next to you.
The bed sinks again with his weight as Edward sits and faces you. The pewter case is opened and his cigarettes fished out. He doesn't normally smoke at home, but this is as good a time as any to start. "I'd say," Edward lights up, "...that you were the tank, ami, but..." now his smile comes as he tilts his head to touch flame to cigarette, "...that wouldn't be true." The light clicks and is set back into the case, which is closed. Edward inhales a few times and lets the smoke rise to his nose. Then, the lit smoke is offered to you.
A hand rakes through golden hair, rubs and musses, wakens his scalp and then he takes the cigarette. He takes a breath of it, holds it a moment, then lets the smoke curl from his mouth. Yes, I needed that! Valan smiles, hands the cigarette back to you and lies back upon the bed.
"Oui... you were the panzar..." And the cocaine. He turns his head against the surface of the bed, eyebrows lifting as he looks to you. The smile is slight, but is true. "I can't handle metaphor right now," he whispers. Philosophy has gone to hell. Valan grins. "You fucked the living daylight out of me." And then he laughs.
Living daylights. That's funny.
Edward likes the image of him as a panzer. He laughs softly at it and takes the cigarette back.
He needed that too.
"I hate to tell you," Edward smiles, "...but I was the one fucked." He leans in over you, cigarette held aside. "Royally, fantastically...like a proper schoolboy." By his upper classmates, of course. The cigarette is put back between your lips. It's yours.
He stares at you from above, eyes unafraid to meet your own. Meaning there. "No one," anyone, "...has ever done to me what you did to me, Valan." Edward means it literally. "Fucking hell," he exhales, closing his eyes and opening them again, "...I wanted..." he swallows, "...to become a permanent part of your ass, Valan. Christ, even now," he shakes his head, looking at his lap, "...it's like I'm fuckin' summoned there. My knob," his hand waves, helplessly, "...in your ass. Christ. How fuckin' insane is that?"
Valan Montague stares. There is a blinking, the raising of eyebrows, and then a crooked smile. "I thought it was that way the first night, ami..." He rolls over, half upon his naked side, his gold-green eyes fixed on you. There is something of amusement there, maybe, or maybe he's just glad to hear you say that his ass is irresistible. That his ass should be the north star to your compass needle. Ha. If only he could vocalize that...
"I think it would be more insane if you didn't want your ... knob?" what a phrase! "...in my ass. At least, it would be very disappointing to me..." Finally, a chuckle. "But... to be sure... I am glad you felt royally fucked, Vicomte. As suits your station." And then he grins, the Modern Man.
Afterall, why shouldn't it be that way?
There's an exhale and the defeated arch of his brows. "I wasn't thinking like that," he explains, "...not that first night. Not until...last night." Oh, you don't understand. "I...met you, ami. And you made me happy. The fucking...was...actually," believe it or not, "...secondary. I liked you. And you were just you. You happened," Edward's head tilts and his eyes widen, "...to be..."
Say the word.
"A bloke."
How embarrassing.
Edward snorts and shakes his head as he looks up to the canopy. "I didn't go into L'Empereur looking for anything. Just a drink with my mates. No plans or fuckin' designs," there's William and Davydd in that comment. "I glanced around, and...then you were standing there. Just...there. Some person, with a drink, smiling at me, wanting to sit down...with me. Of all people. Brilliant, it was."
"The funny part is, if you had been some bird, I would have immediately assumed that...well, you wanted to fuck me. That's it. And I would have understood that, it'd happen, and it'd be done like the setting sun. But you weren't. And I think...I thought...well..." Edward grins as he looks at you, "I didn't think any of that. I'm not sure why. I didn't ... presume you were...well..." what's the phrase?
"Maybe you were. You knew more than I did, I guess. What a fuckin' shite-for-brains," Edward says, putting his hand to his eyes.
"I didn't think about what I was doing. And I'll just say now -- I still don't fuckin' know." How to think about you or to think about all of this. "How did I get here?" Edward wonders, albeit with a slight smile.
"I just never thought of you as a...bloke," it's hard to say that word, "...until...last night." Edward looks up sheepishly to you.
His hand lands on the bed beside him. Come here. Valan rolls over onto his side, curling up there, knees drawing to his chest in a slow stretch. His mouth pulls in a quizzical smile. "I knew you were not gay... per se... but when we left, I thought you were at least bi-curious." I converted a straight boy. "I liked you, but..." he chuckles, "... when I saw you, I wanted to fuck you..."
"And when I kissed you in Fleurlil... you carried me up to the bed and had me. What did it mean to you then, ami?" No teasing here, you are serious and so is he. "From a basic standpoint, not emotionally. But.. obviously... I was a man." Now what am I? Good question. It's all so meaningless now. We are just flesh.
"When you saw me squatting on your cock," Valan says, smile softening in thinking of it. It was so fucking hot, Edward. "... it became real. There was no mistaking it. A woman might bounce on your lap, but she won't bleed for you, she won't meet you mass for mass, she wouldn't take you up the ass. She wouldn't be so bold as to squat there, impale herself there and just bounce until she came, regardless of whether or not you were actually enjoying it." It is the lack of selflessness that makes men as they are sexually. They are in it for themselves, for the drive of it, for the feel of it, they forget their partners exist. "Last night, you were fucked by a Man," he says it and he understands. "How did it make you feel... do you want to be fucked by the Man again?"
He winces at your characterization, but does not refute it.
"No," Edward says, "I want to royally screw him," he explains, frowning a little. "If this is how it goes," Edward adds, then pauses, quirking. "Then it's...different." The words don't sit well with him. His face says that. "No, that's not what I mean. I mean...well...what you said," Edward gives up. "I was...just along for the ride," he murmurs, not really sure what that means. But, it confuses him. "I was...just...hanging on. Fuckin' spinning insane. Watching someone else...do my job." That sticks in his throat. His power and dominant energy usurped, even if he wasn't the one taking it in the ass. Somehow, it was exhilirating and confusing.
"As for Fleurlil," Edward shrugs. "I...wanted to know you. To impress you. To see if you'd...care about me. But that...isn't this." It isn't what's happening now.
"I don't know, Valan. I...don't understand...what's happened to me..."
"Just...fuck it, alright? It was a stellar brillant shag for us, huh? Let's get you to the water box," Edward dismisses it all, turning away to stand up to help you.
Valan makes no move to get up and follow you, give you his hand to help him up with your customary strong yank. "I get you, ami..." A strang mix of idiomatic English and French. "And it is okay not to ...want me to be so dominant. Usually, I am... more than content to have you do the work, ne c'est pas?" A gentle smile and he sits up on his own power. "Do not worry about it, Edward. You can look at it as if nothing has changed, or that everything has changed." What a philosophy. "At the end of the day, I am still a man. And so are you. If I am squatting on your cock while you lie back and enjoy it... what does that really change? Just positions, ami. That's all. It's just a position."
He sits still for a minute, wincing with a rush of blood in his ears. "It was stellar brilliant," he murmurs in English. And then he sits there for a minute. Finally, he offers his hand to you. Gimme a tug.
"I don't understand...why I like it or why...you make me happy."
That's all.
Edward is quiet when he says that, not seeming to have too much more to say. He stands suddenly and grabs your arm, indeed dragging you off the bed. Edward's sudden despondency swells to push out any delight that was in the room. He can feel it, and immediately takes a step back from you and the bed.
"The water will take a minute," he says, heading to the bath.
"Do you have to understand it?" Valan wonders quietly. He looks down at himself. "I am dead-not-dead. If this can be understood, why is desire such a hang-up?" Now he's the one who's confused. Of course, just now it doesn't take much, admittedly.
Did I jump across for nothing? Are you tired of me already? Are you going to pull that 'I realized I'm not gay' line? This is what you get for sleeping with straight, dead boys, Valan.
"I'll wait on it, you don't have to do that," he says. "Do ... whatever you want, Edward..." Even if it means you don't want to be here. Tonight. Tomorrow. Whenever. It's not like we can do a do-over or take-backs. I can't change anything. What's done is done.
That gets him to stop.
He sniffs, wiping at his dry nose.
"I want you," Edward states, stepping in again. "Maybe," he pulls at the towel around his waist, tightening it again, "...I don't need to understand it, no. And," a bob of his head, "...right, um, in the context..." it's rather a minimal issue.
"Christ, that's why I stopped taking that shite," he suddenly says, waving an accusing center finger at the silver case on the bed. "That shit makes me fucked."
Golden eyebrows rise. "I think maybe you should find another... weapon of choice, ami..." There is a small smile, but Valan needs a shower. He needs the refreshing untaintedness of clean water. He needs to wash away the confusion. The hangover. The residue of cocaine and your blood.
He steps up to the door of the bathroom and hangs onto the lintel for a moment. Eyes widen and for a brief instant he looks as though he is going to be sick. "I do not know if I should do it again." He smiles a little, nausea passing. "If it is going to feel like this the next day..." Famous last words...
Edward passes you at the lintel, sure that you'll make it. "You'll get used to it," he says, heels thudding on the Italian marble as he walks through to the shower. A couple of seconds later, the water can be heard in the glass shower. "I shouldn't have...put that much...to you. I'm sorry," he apologizes over the rising steam. "That...experience...wasn't fair, hmm? I just wanted you know...what your body's like now. Amazing, isn't it?" he asks, at a cabinet now to find you towels.
The smile spreads slowly. "Stop worrying, ami. It was amazing... I will feel better after I shower," I think. Valan lays a hand on you as he comes to the shower, he leans in and kisses your shoulder. "Do not worry, ami..." he whispers there.
"So," change of subject, "...what do you want to do tonight? It is a new night, ami. Do you want to go out?" Maybe it will help, Edward...
"If you feel you want," Edward says, taking a step back out of the shower so you might enter. His holds your hand to steady you. He shrugs, "I thought I did," he confesses, "...but now..." Edward just grins. Despite himself and his gak-induced doubts, the towel around his waist shows the truth of it.
Gold-green eyes traverse you, and the smile curls. "I think... staying in tonight would be for the best. You can take care of me," he announces in that way that only Valan Montague can, "...I have many needs, as you know..."
And don't you though...
"You can join me if you want..."
Will you let the boy shower in peace? How gak-addled are you? Valan steps into the heated water, letting go of your hands with a squeeze. "Dieu," he sighs there and he stands there, closing his eyes and letting the water drench him, face, chest, groin. Blood pools in the drain and is swept away.
Finally, you bring a smile to his face. The vicomte-come-sullen-bloke watches you for a long moment, considering the offer.
"Maybe you should not have me on you," Edward finally says, politely. A gesture, even if he wants otherwise. "Maybe I've done enough, hmm?"
"You can do more when I get out of the shower, ami..." He turns with a smile, and he leaves it at that.
You worry too much. But maybe you didn't really think about it at all until last night. Not when we were racing down the mountain, not when we were sharing blood, not even when I opened my eyes to this second life. But it's not as if you have to define It... or Us... or Yourself overnight, right? It's taken you 600 years to do this...
Posted by rowan at September 19, 2003 10:42 PM
