Chapter Text
Vespera House was sick. Its bones were crumbling, and its breath was the dank rot of wet earth. It sat atop the craggy rocks overlooking the sleepy-quiet town of Wulfhyrst, staring down at them, ready to pounce. It had laid empty for generations, the locals said in hushed whispers, never daring to fully look at the decrepit monstrosity that loomed in the clouds above them. Children, wrapped in furs and with the comforting hug of warm milk in their bellies, would dare each other to glance up, in the dead of night when even the stars were sleeping, at the windows of Vespera House, hoping to catch a glimpse of the something that lurked in the halls, of the flickering of candle-light in the windows that the adults would never admit to seeing. Vespera House was sick.
Michael Wheeler had been discharged from the army for fighting. Something that he thought was utterly absurd. The jumped up corporal, eyes wild and bloodshot, had attacked him first, swung at him with a great meaty paw, for a reason that Mike still couldn’t fathom — something slurred about his accent, or his silence, or perhaps it was just the corporal's need to hit something that wouldn't immediately break. He’d swung back, of course, clenched fist making contact with the angular edge of the corporal’s jaw eliciting a sickening satisfying crunch, like the leaves that crunch underfoot in autumn. His commanding officer had stormed over, and before Mike could even blink, he’d been discharged, tornado-fast. He’d planned to die in the army, lay down his life for a noble cause he only half believed in, and so the civilian life that extended before was a more terrifying prospect than the idea of a sabre being lodged between his pearl-white ribs.
Fate, in its cold humour, delivered Mike a single sheet of vellum from the firm of Pynchon & Rowe, solicitors, and a cast iron key. It concerned the final settlement of a nebulous trust and the outright purchase — for a sum so low it felt like a threat — of the freehold for Vespera House, Wulfhyrst. When Mike had sent a letter back, asking how the deeds for a house he’d never been to in a village he couldn’t pronounce had ended up in his hands, addressed to him, paid for by money he didn’t have, what he received sent a torrent of ice shooting up his spine. The reply, when it came, was a single page, torn as if by teeth from some ancient ledger. He found it, one morning on his floor, having been shoved through the gap underneath his door. One corner was wholly saturated with a rust-brown stain that flaked when he touched it. Blood. Old blood. Across it, in a scratchy, shaking scrawl that worsened as if the writer's strength failed, the letters bleeding into the stain: do not come here.
Mike did not do as instructed.
Mike’s journey to Wulfhyrst was a silent, fog-drenched one. He arrived, huffing slightly from exertion, the pack strapped to his shoulders almost pushing him to his knees, at close to midnight, his path for the last few hours bathed in the milky haze of the full moon. The key in his pocket, was almost comically-large and always cold to the touch, regardless of how long it was grasped in Mike’s sweaty hand. He followed the path as it snaked through the body of Wulfhyrst, vein-like, up the contours of the valley, until, panting, he collapsed at the front door of Vespera House. For longer than he intended, Mike sat, slumped against the wooden door of the house he apparently owned, listening to his own heart’s crescendo in his chest. When his heart had calmed, Mike stood to thrust the key into the lock, and with a great heaving whine, the mouth of Vespera House slowly swung open.
Mike stepped into the reception hall, grand and echoing, his footsteps clacking against the cold marble floor. A great spine of a staircase snaked up directly in front of him, mahogany-dark and nestled against the wall. The landing at the top of the staircase was abyssal, a void that seemed to stretch into infinity. To the right of the staircase, at the very centre of the room, was a harp, a tall, proud thing, that was positioned carefully in front of a small stool. Everything in the room was covered in a thick layer of pillowy dust, except the harp, that was so clean, so shiny, it was almost implausible. The rest of the room was unremarkable, a few chairs shoved against the wall, candles drooping in their patinaed brass holders, except
Mike stalked over to one of the candles and prodded it with an almost-trembling finger. Instead of cold and solid, as he had expected, the candle gave under his finger, almost butter-soft. The wick was blackened, and as Mike rubbed it between thumb and forefinger it dissolved, leaving a carbon smudge on the pads of his fingers. This was a candle that had been extinguished no more than a few hours before, at most.
Stepping back, and tripping on his own feet, Mike walked backwards until his back was flush against the wall. His hand was fully trembling now as it clutched the pistol tucked neatly in the holster under his long coat, finger resting on the trigger, a familiar comfort. Nothing happened. The house was as silent as it had been, the only sound echoing through the now cavernous feeling room was Mike’s own shuddering breaths.
As he calmed, finger still on the trigger of his pistol, Mike wrinkled his nose. A metallic, cloying smell, sharp as a copper coin on the tongue, wafted through the room, underneath a cloying, rotten-sweetness that made his stomach tighten—a fleshy smell, like old meat left in a larder. It smelt like screaming hands scrabbling on crimson-soaked earth, like war, like loss. Mike knew the smell. Blood, flesh, meat. Death. Something had died here. The rational part of him knew that he had to leave, that nothing good would come from a house that smelt like death, but Mike didn’t leave, couldn’t leave.
For the next few hours, Mike explored the downstairs. Arterial corridors snaked off the reception hall, leading to various studies, libraries, and before long, Mike stumbled an enormous kitchen. The smell of decay immediately overwhelmed him, and it took all of his strength not to vomit. In the centre of the room was a large wooden table, with various rusted knives lying haphazardly on its surface. When Mike gingerly picked up the smallest of the knives, globules of a congealed reddish-brown liquid slipped from the edge of the knife and fell onto the table, tiny droplets trickling into the deep grain of the wood. Mike let the knife drop out of his hands, the metallic clatter calling out in the dark room.
A shadow flashed in the doorway of the kitchen. It was gone inhumanly fast, but it had lingered long enough for Mike’s eyes to process its presence, and something reckless and stupid in his heart told him to follow, to chase it. Mike scrambled through the kitchen, bloody knife quickly forgotten, and charged blindly down the labyrinthine corridors of Vespera House. As he burst into the reception hall, chest heaving and pistol drawn, a small flash of light caught Mike’s eye. A candle seemed to float down the upstairs landing, illuminating nothing but the pallid, clawed hand holding it, before it disappeared from view entirely, being swallowed up by the bowels of the house.
“Hello?!” Mike yelled, regretting it almost as soon as the word had spilled from his mouth.
The only response was a singular creek of a floorboard above.
Without thinking, Mike charged up the stairs, two at a time, and the stairs groaned in agony beneath his feet. When he reached the top of the staircase, Mike shivered involuntarily against the noticeable drop in temperature. Downstairs, whilst not warm, had been a fairly comfortable temperature, and certainly had been a welcome protection against the bitter wind of the outside. Here, however, as Mike stared at the darkness that unfolded before him, the cold wrapped itself around him, needy and heavy.
Mike groped his way down the corridor, hands stretched out blindly before him, scrabbling along the walls, knocking into picture frames and other items hanging on the wall that he couldn’t see. He didn’t bring a candle upstairs with him, and even if he had, he didn’t have matches in his pocket to light it. Every corridor and room downstairs had been dotted with windows, bathed in the milky moonlight, bright and almost-comforting, but up here, there was nothing but the abyss before Mike’s eyes. His finger caught on what was probably a nail, sticking dangerously out of the wall, and Mike hissed.
“Shit,” he muttered, shaking his hand, the cut already stinging. He could feel drops of blood running down his index finger, and he could feel them dripping off the end of the finger onto the floorboards.
Something stirred in the room to his right.
If he hadn’t been directly outside, he wouldn’t have heard it. It wasn’t much, the shuffling of footsteps, perhaps, the sound of something being dragged across the floor.
Mike pushed open the door, bleeding finger shoved into his mouth.
Whilst the room was empty of life, it was full of …
Canvases.
Moonlight poured in through huge windows, bathing the room in a silvery haze. A lit candelabra sat in the corner, the flames of the four candles dancing angrily, their peace disturbed by Mike’s presence. There were canvasses leaning against every available surface, tubes of paint littered the floor, and paintbrushes were stuck haphazardly in glasses of murky water. Mike stepped further into the room, letting the door close behind him with a gentle click. He picked up the small canvas closest to him, inspecting it with an ignorant eye. It was a face, twisted and warped, mouth curled in an ugly snarl, beset with teeth that were too big and too sharp to be entirely human, crimson smudges on the tips of the canine teeth. The eyes were wide and wild, pupils blown to obscure the entire iris. Mike lay the canvas on the floor and picked up another. It was the same face, the same bitter sneer, the same feral stare. The other canvases were much the same, the same face staring at Mike.
As he moved through the room, idly swirling paintbrushes in their murky water, picking up canvases to stare at that same unsettling face, Mike realised he was breathing incredibly loudly, which puzzled him. His chest wasn’t heaving, and the anxiety that had settled in his bones from the moment he arrived in the house was beginning to release its grip.
Mike held his breath, but the stuttering breathing continued, and Mike could swear it was coming from –
There was a man in the left corner of the ceiling.
The man was staring at him, arms and legs bent at awkward angles, spider-like and utterly wrong. He was suspended in a frozen crawl, clinging with a dreadful intimacy to the peeling plaster where the wall met the ceiling.
Mike stared at the man, blinking dumbly, unable to move, feet glued to the floor in fear. The man stared back at him, before releasing his grip on the wall, and tumbling to the ground with unpractised stiffness. Mike pulled the pistol from his holster and held it out before him with a rehearsed steadiness. The man walked towards Mike, and with a sweeping gesture, knocked the pistol from his hands.
“I told you not to come here,” the man said, voice gruff and scratchy with unuse.
“What?” Mike asked dumbly, stepping backwards, out of reach of the man with the large eyes and pallid face.
“The note. I told you. I told you not to come here, and yet – you came. Why are you here?” the man asked, turning away from Mike, and stalking back towards the window.
“I – I don’t know. I bought it, I think? I had – a letter from – lawyers. It was cheap, I could afford it.” Mike replied, watching the man as he lifted his face to the moon with closed eyes and the twitch of a smile playing on his mouth.
“You must leave.”
“Why?”
“This is not your house.”
Mike rolled his eyes, impatient. “This is not your house. I bought it. Who even are you? Why are you –“
The man at the window turned around, and Mike’s sentence died in his mouth. The man before him was pale, unnaturally so, skin pallid and snaked with purplish-grey veins. His face was gaunt and pointed, skin draped carefully across bone. His eyes, set back slightly in his face, were what Mike thought to be a deep brown, the same mahogany as the grand staircase, but upon closer inspection, they appeared to be beetle-black. He was the man from the painting, but – different. Softer, somehow. The same wild eyes, feral in their intensity, the same ghoulish tinge to his skin, but behind those wild eyes lay something quieter, something that made Mike forget his pistol where it lay on the carpet, lost amongst the tubes of paint.
“I have lived here for –“ the man paused, eye twitching slightly. “A long time, I have lived here for a long time, and I have no idea who you are, turning up suddenly in the middle of the night, forcing your way into my house,” the man started stalking towards Mike, finger pointed, as if ready to jab Mike in the chest, “into my home, insisting it is yours. Well, it is not. You must leave. Leave this place, do not come back.”
“I cannot leave in the middle of the night,” Mike replied, stepping backwards again, back now flush against the door, door handle digging in painfully. “It is too dangerous.”
The other man laughed, a weird sound, the sound of someone who hadn’t laughed for a very long time, the laugh of someone who may have forgotten how. “How can you be sure you’re not in more danger here?”
Something had shifted in the other man’s face, a flash of something almost predatory, but Mike chose to ignore it.
“I have a pistol, I can defend myself against you, should I need to.”
“Your pistol is currently on the floor.”
“Yes, it is, but I am quick, I’m sure I could grab it before –”
Before Mike could finish his sentence, the other man had stepped back, grabbed the pistol, and was now aiming it directly in the centre of Mike’s face, the muzzle of the gun nestled against his nose.
“What was it that you were saying? You could grab it before me?”
Mike’s eyes crossed slightly, trying to focus on the barrel of the gun. “Wha – How did you –“
“I’m very fast,” is all the other man said, before he dropped the gun at Mike’s feet. “What is your name?”
Mike picked the pistol up from where it lay on the ground, and put it back in his holster. “Michael. Yours?”
“William. Master William Byers. You may stay until the morning, but you must be gone before the sun sets tomorrow. There is a room three doors down with a bed you may sleep in. Do not try to find me tomorrow, I will have left before you wake. Goodnight, Michael.”
With that, William gently moved Mike to the side, away from the door, before slipping out. Even through the thick fabric of his coat, Mike could feel how cold William’s hands had been.
William had been true to his word, and three doors down from the canvas room there was a small room with a bed and not much else. Mike shoved the dresser against the door, as a precaution, before taking off his coat and sweater, leaving only his undershirt. He slumped on the tiny bedframe, the mattress thin and scratchy through the thin linen of his shirt, but Mike didn’t mind, and he soon fell into a slumber that was disturbed by dreams of mouths that were too big and eyes that stared at him from the dark.
When he awoke, the sun was already high in the sky, full and bloated, bathing the village underneath the craggy rocks that Vespera House sat on in sunlight. Mike glanced at the door, where the dresser remained unmoved. William hadn’t been in his room last night, of this much Mike was certain. He stood up, legs aching from the long walk the night before, and dressed in the same clothes he had worn yesterday.
The house was silent as Mike walked down the corridor that was still black as darkest night due to the black of windows, before he emerged into the reception hall, sunlight cascading in from the large windows. Mike sat at the top of the stairs, and rubbed the side of his head, trying to soothe the beginnings of a migraine. The house was still silent. William had told Mike that he would be gone before he woke, and that Mike had to be gone before the evening. Mike knew that he really really should leave the house of the strange man who lurked in the corner of ceilings and painted horrifying self-portraits, but the issue he attempted to bring up yesterday still remained.
He had nowhere to go, and this was technically, legally, his house.
Mike picked up his bags from where he had discarded them yesterday, and took them back upstairs to the tiny room with the small bed.
When Mike awoke that night, he realised he has forgotten to move the dresser in front of the door.
He’d spent the day cleaning, wiping dust off the surfaces in his tiny bedroom, he’d lit a fire in one of the studies downstairs, and he’d eaten half of the rations he’d brought with him. He’d need to venture down into Wulfhyrst tomorrow to buy provisions. William hadn’t returned, not even when the sun kissed the horizon, and not even when the darkness enveloped the house in a frosty hug. Mike had spent the day alone, cleaning, and cooking, and trying to complete the mental map he had of his new home. Some of the doors were locked, and Mike had only been given that one cast-iron key. He must ask William about what lay behind those doors.
When Mike awoke that night, the second night in the tiny bed with the scratchy mattress, it hadn’t been to silence. It had started quietly at first, quiet enough that Mike had almost slept through it, but it built and built, an angelic sound that danced through the house. Music. At first, it was just the plinking sound of strings being plucked, no tune to speak of, but as the sound grew and grew, as it became bolder and bigger, it morphed together into the most wonderful cacophony.
As Mike tiptoed towards the door, pulling it open with his breath held, the sound grew louder, swirling and dancing in the air until it was all Mike could hear. Mike edged his way down the corridor, small candle clutched in his hand and lighting his way, following the sound to the reception hall. Mike burst onto the main landing that overlooked the reception hall at precisely the same moment that the sound crescendoed, before it fell gently downwards, furious yelling replaced by comforting whispers. William was sat on a small stool, fingers plucking the string of the grand harp that sat in the middle of the hall. William’s hands were flying over the strings frantically, and whilst Mike didn’t recognise the piece, he was more than content to crouch down on his haunches, lest he be seen by William, close his eyes, and listen. The tempo peaked and troughed at seemingly random intervals, and Mike wondered idly whether William was playing a pre-existing song or whether he was having his hands be guided by the invisible muses, letting his body become a conduit.
“I know you’re there,” William said. “You didn’t leave.”
Mike didn’t say anything, and William didn’t stop playing, but his hands slowed, the music becoming languid, almost lazy.
“I told you to leave, and you didn’t.”
“I don’t want to leave,” Mike said, before standing up, and walking across the landing and down the stairs to where William sat curled around the harp. “Where did you go today?”
William stopped playing. “I have business out of town that I must attend to. Every day. You must leave, Michael.”
Mike brushed the harp with the pads of his fingers, and William blinked up at him, eyes wide and pleading. “You must leave,” William repeated, voice low, dangerous.
“Why can’t you leave?” Mike shot back, before slumping into one of the plush, dust-covered armchairs. “You leave.”
Plucking a single string idly, William sighed. “I cannot. I – I am stuck, here. The caretaker of Vespera House. We look after each other.”
Mike sank back in his armchair, letting it swallow him whole. “I suppose we are at an impasse, William.”
They fell into a warped sort of routine. Mike would occupy himself during the day, either wandering down into Wulfhyrst to collect supplies – food, wood for the stove, occasionally the sickly-sweet mead the local inn sold in huge honey-coloured glass bottles – or tidying the house, cleaning and scrubbing what couldn’t possibly be decades worth of dust off sideboards and silverware, and he would never see William.
At night, Mike would sleep in fits and bursts. He’d wake in the middle of the night, and wander the house, looking for his housemate. William would always be playing the harp, or painting in the canvas room, hair sticking up around his head madly, paint smeared across his face. Mike would settle in a chair and watch him, as his hands flew across the canvas with a fierce intensity. Sometimes, Mike would fall asleep in the chair, listening to William’s idle chatter about something he wouldn’t remember the next day, and when he woke, he’d find himself with a crick in his neck, and a blanket draped across him. Mike would look for William, but he’d never find him.
Mike never saw William during the day.
Everything went wrong when Mike dropped a glass on his foot. He’d been walking up the stairs, retreating to his bedroom after listening to William play the harp for hours, and he’d dropped the glass he’d been holding. Water sloshed everywhere, and a shard of glass about the size of a penny lodged itself in the top of Mike’s foot.
“Fuck!” Mike yelled, falling to the stairs. He grabbed his foot, which was pulsing blood out onto the wood of the stair with every heartbeat.
William shoved his harp out of the way, and ran halfway to the stairs before he stopped, face twisted in concern and – something else.
“Are you – okay? Michael, are you okay?”
“What does it fucking look like? I’ve got fucking – can you help me?”
William shuffled forwards, eyes glued to the blood pouring out of Mike’s foot, and he lifted his own foot, hovering it over the bottom step of the stairs, frozen.
“I can’t – Michael, I can’t – I have to – I have to go. I have to leave. I have to – get away from you.”
Before Mike could protest, or call William a cock for not helping, William had gone, barrelling down the corridor towards the library. Mike watched as, hands trembling, William unlocked one of the doors, and disappeared behind it, the door slamming behind him with a tremendous thud. William had locked the door from the inside.
Cursing, Mike hobbled to the kitchen, tenderly pulled the shard of glass from his foot. Once his foot was bandaged, Mike made his way towards the room that William had disappeared into. He knocked twice.
“William?”
No reply.
“William? Are you okay?”
A shuffling sound came from within, and then a horrible crack.
“William?!” Mike repeated, voice growing more insistent. “What the fuck?!”
Still no reply, and so Mike retreated to his bedroom, pride and foot injured equally.
The silence that settled over Vespera House in the days that followed was oppressive, thick as the cloud that blanketed the town of Wulfhyrst beneath them. William had become a phantom that Mike barely saw. The door to the canvas room, which had previously always stood slightly ajar, an invitation to a sleepless Mike, was now always firmly closed and locked. Most nights, as Michael haunted the halls, trying to find William, he’d hear the final thunk of the key as it turned in the lock of the canvas room, a not so subtle rejection. The haunting whispers of the harp that had lulled Mike to sleep no longer wept through the house after midnight. The instrument itself now sat in the reception hall, draped in a linen shroud. Michael spent most of his sleepless nights in the library, bandaged foot propped up on a cushioned stool, nose in a book about something he’d barely remember the next day.
On the occasions he did see William, a spectre in the corner of his eye, or a shadowed figure disappearing through a door, Mike always tried to call out, and it was always in vain. William wouldn’t even look at him, let alone talk to him. The memory of the incident on the stairs played in a loop in Mike’s mind – the shattering of the glass, the pain of the glass as it stabbed his foot, the shaky timbre of William’s voice before he had practically sprinted away, his face contorted by a visceral, panicked terror.
One night, when sleep evaded him, Michael limped to the window in his bedroom, watching as the dense, woollen fog crept in across the garden, swirling in ribbons before dissolving into nothingness. Mike watched idly as the fog danced before his attention was caught by a dark shape stalking through the chalky mist.
Mike watched as William, barefoot and wearing only a loose white undershirt and black trousers, walked across the lawn, seemingly impervious to the midnight chill. William tracked across the lawn, in a seemingly aimless path, before wandering over to the old stone fishpond, a perfect circle of black water with a film green algae. William sat on the edge of the pond, legs folded beneath him, and stared into the murky water. For a long, long time, Mike watched as William stared at the water. Mike, almost entranced by this point, watched as William picked up a stick, and dipped it into the water, disturbing the surface, whisking it back and forth. Disturbing his own reflection, perhaps. After discarding the stick, William stood up, and was absorbed back into the mist.
It was the house that pushed them back together. Vespera House was sick, and three nights after Mike had watched William drift across the lawn in the fog, she began to collapse. Her ancient, rheumatic body groaned, and a section of rain-soaked roof from the ceiling in Mike’s bedroom detached with a sigh and a crash. Mike had, thankfully, been in the library, reading a book about plants native to Austria, when he heard the crash. By the time he’d found the location of the crash, William had already been there. They both stared up at the gaping wound in the ceiling of Mike’s bedroom, flakes of plaster snowing down on them. Before Mike could ask what they should do, William had moved. He returned to the bedroom holding a rickety looking wooden ladder, and a small box of tools. William climbed the ladder, and begun assessing the damage, securing anything loose with the hammer in his left hand and the nails he held between his teeth. He worked in perfect silence.
Once William was convinced that there was no immediate danger of further collapse, they stood together, both staring at the – now slightly less terrifying – hole in the roof. William scratched at his neck, and jumped violently when Mike grabbed at it. Embedded in the skin just above his knuckles was a large splinter, ragged and angry. Wordlessly, Mike pulled it out of William’s skin, and William just watched him, eyes fixed to Mike’s face. Mike couldn’t look up at William, as he was transfixed by the beads of dark liquid that welled at the site of the splinter. They didn’t run and flow like blood, bright crimson, but moved like molasses, thick and slow. William glanced down at his own hand, his expression unreadable, and wiped his hand on his trousers.
William turned, and made as if to leave the room, but Mike stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
“William, please. What have I done? You have barely looked at me since – since I hurt my foot.”
William didn’t move, just stared at where Mike’s hand rested on his shoulder.
“You’ve done nothing wrong, Michael. I promise. It is me who is … afflicted.”
“Afflicted?” Mike questioned, moving so he was stood in front of William, eyes searching. “Are you unwell? The sight of blood … does it sicken you?”
A harsh laugh escaped William’s lips. “No, Michael. No, it does not sicken me.”
“Then what?” Mike pushed, stepping forwards, forcing himself into William’s space. William did not move. “Why have you stopped talking to me?”
William sighed and dragged a hand over his face. He looked tired, desperate. “You are –“
“I am what?”
“Temptation,” William spat. “You are temptation, Mike.”
Mike blinked at William’s use of his nickname. “Temptation?”
“Temptation,” William repeated, the word softer now, almost tender. He looked at Mike, eyes pleading for something Mike didn’t know how to give. “You tempt me, tempt me to forget, to give in, to abandon … everything, that I have promised to be, promised to not be, everything I have clung for – for a very long time.”
Mike stood his ground, holding William’s gaze stubbornly. “Forget what? Abandon what? You’re not making sense.”
“The hunger,” William hissed, reaching out to grab at Mike, hands scrabbling at his arms until he was holding both of Mike’s arms against his side with surprising pressure. “I am always hungry, Mike. I want –”
“What?” Mike whispered, transfixed by the way William’s eyes were shining in the darkness, unnaturally bright. “What do you want?”
William groaned, and began to move his thumbs, rubbing them in tiny circles against Mike’s skin.
“I am hungry, Mike,” William repeated, eyes falling to Mike’s mouth for the briefest of moments, before they continued to fall. William’s eyes locked onto the side of Mike’s neck, and Mike gulped, watching as William’s eyes traced the movement.
Standing before him, covered in plaster dust, with crazed insistent eyes trained on his throat, William looked utterly beautiful. The sharp, angular planes of his face, the depth of his eyes, the curve of his mouth, Mike found it utterly magnetic.
“What if,” Mike started, voice trembling despite himself, “what if I’m hungry too?”
William’s eyes snapped up to his, “you should be afraid.”
“I am,” Mike admitted, nodding slightly, “but I’m also – I’m also … here. Hungry.”
Mike moved his arms, pushing against the pressure of William’s hands, freeing himself. He reached out towards William, slowly, as if trying not to spook a wild animal, giving him every chance to run away. His fingers brushed the fine wool of William’s waistcoat, flitting over the delicate thread, over William’s chest. William just watched him, eyes following Mike’s hand as it moved up to his shoulder, then to the side of William’s neck. His skin was freezing.
“Mike,” William whimpered, a final, pathetic warning with no weight.
It was the sound of his name, falling from William’s mouth like a prayer, which shattered the last of Mike’s resolve. He dipped his head and pressed his mouth to William’s. For a terrifying heartbeat, William was rigid, mouth frozen. Mike began to pull back, humiliation coiling in his stomach, but William, with a sound that was half groan, half whimper, chased his mouth. The kiss was starving and wet, tongues sliding against each other immediately. William grabbed at Mike’s waist with a bruising intensity, a strength that was almost terrifying, and yet he kissed Mike with such tenderness it could be mistaken for nervousness. Mike tangled his fingers in William’s hair, scratching at William’s scalp just barely.
In the shifting intensity of the kiss, one of William’s canine teeth, too large, too big, too wrong, caught the delicate flesh of Mike’s lower lip, leaving a small wound. It was the merest scratch but bled instantly, a bead of blood, warm and coppery, easily licked away but immediately replaced.
William froze, hands digging into the fleshy swell of Mike’s arse. He broke the kiss with a strangled noise and stumbled backwards. The smoke-grey irises of his eyes had been swallowed by enormous, blown pupils. Mike was pinned by William’s feral, inhuman stare, filled with a hunger that transcended anything Mike had ever experienced.
“Will,” Mike whispered, and that was all it took.
Will was on him again, but wasn’t kissing him, at least, not really. Will’s mouth was fastened to the tiny wound on Mike’s lip, and he was sucking. A violent, full-body shudder racked Will, and low, guttural moans vibrated from deep within the cavern of his chest into Mike’s, an animalistic ecstasy. Will pushed Mike back until he was against the wall, arms coming up to pin Mike there, his mouth returning to Mike’s in a true kiss this time, mouth possessive, ravenous. The coppery taste of his own blood sent Mike’s head swimming.
This is insane! The rational part of Mike’s brain shouted, he’s going to fucking kill you! But he ignored it, focusing instead on the way that Will groaned into his mouth.
Will tore his mouth away, panting, and rested his forehead against Mike’s, his entire body trembling with desire and something else. His lips were stained a faint, rosy, pink. He looked utterly debauched, beautiful and horrifying in his madness.
“Do you see?” Will said, something like fear draped over the words. “Do you see what I am?”
Mike, breathless and lightheaded, his lip throbbing with a sweet, sharp sting, looked at Will standing before him, and swallowed. “ I see … something.”
Mike lifted his hand, and traced a finger along the line of Will’s mouth, before carefully lifting his top lip, and running his finger along the canine. “I see … something,” he repeated.
Will made a faint, desperate sound. The frenzy in his eyes flickered.
“It is certainly something,” Will repeated.