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They’ve come to an agreement.
It came about when Jasper nearly starved to death a few weeks ago — he’d refused to hunt that night, struck by a series of horrific flashbacks to the captivity in Amsterdam, fangs aching, bloodlust making his head spin — when Guy had accidentally cut himself on a bottle cap in a cheap motel they shared. The wound had bled much more profusely than expected, which made Jasper lose control of himself. He pinned Guy against the ground and lapped and suckled at his thumb like a hungry dog, trying to get every last drop. He’d bit him, too, right in the centre of the palm of his hand, deep enough that Guy had to beg Jasper to stop, because it had hurt too much. Only when Jasper felt bone shift and crunch under his teeth, he let go.
What followed was a bunch of very awkward, much-too-vulnerable conversations about what it was that happened to him in Amsterdam. Jasper, though he tried his best, found it difficult to find the words, exactly. They used me was the most common sentence that first night. Guy didn’t understand, and it was frustrating for Jasper to try and explain. They continued the conversation the next night, when Jasper had had some time to sleep in his blacked-out bathroom that functioned as a coffin.
The day after, they spent most of the night trying to figure out a way to communicate. They tried sitting back to back, not looking at one another as the words went stale in the air, still no actual, honest recountings of what happened. They tried writing it down in a journal and burning the pages after it was read by the other, but Jasper still lied on the pages in blue ink. They even tried to have sex about it, but it led to a lot of frustration and the mood getting killed with every passing comment and thought and memory of what happened, violence seeping more earnestly through the cracks and threatening to make the sex more painful than pleasurable.
Those conversations — about Amsterdam, about the blood going in, the blood going out, the way that Jasper’s fangs didn’t want to listen anymore — were disjointed and often led to nothing, until Jasper finally let Guy into his mind.
That’s a strange feeling altogether. Jasper has felt Guy root around in his head before, of course he has — but Guy’s much better at it now. His methods are smoother now, subtler; Jasper barely even noticed he was there the first time he allowed him in, feather-light, like a whisper. He can feel him if he focuses, but Guy’s presence is so subdued, so barely-there that it makes his head hurt to try. It’s only when Guy wants him to know he’s there that he truly feels him.
And tonight, he does.
Jasper is fidgeting. He has been fidgeting since the sun’s gone down and Guy left for a while — Jasper doesn’t recall what he went to do, but he knows he’s alone. It’s so insistent, ever since he woke up, the ache in his incisors, the writhing in his stomach, the stab of hunger driving a pick of ice behind his eyes. The motel is filled with sweaty people, the smell of their flesh and their blood carrying through the air and making Jaser’s head spin. He forces himself to lie on the bed, eyes pinned to the mysterious stain on the peeling wallpaper, arms and legs wrapped tight in a fetal position. He feels pathetic, being like this: the inability to hunt, to feed, something he enjoyed so much before, makes him want to curl up and die. Perhaps that is what he’s doing right now, curling up into himself that maybe his stomach will consume him whole before the night is over.
He feels Guy before he sees him. Guy doesn’t make an attempt to make his presence in Jasper’s mind hidden — they’re past that point. Jasper exhales heavily, closing his eyes, dry from the staring, and leaning into the caress of Guy’s mind against his. It’s a velvety kind of touch today, much like how Guy’s hair feels between Jasper’s fingers, but it’s marred and tainted by a sudden flash of panic and fear when Guy finds the hunger possessing Jasper’s mind. Behind the door, he can hear hurried footsteps and the fumble of the keycard to the room and the lock.
The door swings open to reveal him: Guy, face flushed, plastic bags hanging off his arms and the faint smell of human food heavy in the musty air of the motel. His eyebrows are knitted together in that typical way of his — but this is just what Jasper imagines he looks like right now, since he refuses to turn around.
“I told you to let me know when it gets bad again, Jasper!”
Guy’s voice cuts through the headache and the smell and Jasper wants to turn around, wants to look at Guy, but his body doesn’t listen to him. He remains on his side, back turned to the door. He remains quiet, forcing himself to take deep breaths, even though he doesn’t need to.
There’s shuffling behind him, the sound of plastic bags being placed down. He feels the air in the room shift as Guy moves closer to the bed. The sound of Guy kicking off his shoes. The sound of Guy stripping the first layer of his clothes off. The shifting of the mattress beneath him, then the warmth of Guy pressing against his back, his blood-filled body making the chill of the room a little more bearable.
Guy snakes his arms around Jasper, pulling himself closer to him, lips brushing the nape of Jasper’s neck. His voice is much gentler, much quieter. “We have an agreement, remember?”
Their agreement consists of the following: when Jasper feels the stab of hunger, true, utter hunger, and he cannot bear to hunt that night, he lets his mental walls down and lets Guy in, making him aware of it, and Guy will feed him via a cut into his skin — whether it be his wrist, chest, thigh, or other body part — and feed Jasper from the wound until he’s no longer about to turn feral. Then they’d heal the wound with Jasper’s blood, and Jasper promises to hunt the next day, even something as small as a rat or a stray cat, anything that’s swollen with blood and promising to sate him at least until the next sundown. It’s worked three times before; three times Guy had hurt himself in order to save the vampire he chooses to spend his time with. Three times that haven’t left a scar — no markings left on Guy’s wrist, stomach, or thigh, but Jasper memorised the exact place of each, and makes a point of it to kiss him there as often as he can.
“Jasper?” Guy asks. “Do you hear me?”
“...Yeah, I hear you.” He finally breaks free of the frozen position he’d been in, managing to turn over and face Guy. His stomach growls as he does, earning him a pointed look from Guy.
After a long moment, Jasper speaks. “Did you eat?”
Guy nods. He keeps his gaze resting on Jasper’s, a soft blue in the dim light of the motel. “Don’t,” he says. “Don’t try to distract me from you by talking about myself. Yes, I ate. You should too.”
Jasper exhales sharply, managing to keep the words I can decide for myself, you’re not my mother behind his teeth, but not managing to not grimace at the thought. The thought of eating makes him nauseous, even more nauseous than his hunger is making him. But he also knows Guy is right.
“We can try the neck tonight,” says Guy. He grabs Jasper’s hand and leads it to rest at the curve of his neck, pulse noticeable beneath the skin, which is so soft and so young. “If you’re ready for it.”
Jasper isn’t, but he nods anyway. He has to get over this one way or the other.
“You won’t let me die, right?”
Guy’s tone is joking on the surface, but Jasper feels the fear that hides behind it. That fear of death appears every time they talk about Jasper having to feed, and no matter the amount of reassurance Jasper provides, the thoughts just won’t subside. Flashes of the moment in the basement in Guy’s mind, the moment where Jasper had him pinned, fangs out, ready to strike. It’s never happened like that again, not that way, not with any real wish to kill Guy. Jasper moves his hand up to play with Guy’s hair, wrapping a curl around his finger and twisting it around.
“You know I won’t,” Jasper whispers. You’re much too precious for that.
The corners of Guy’s lips twitch up, almost a smile. He looks like he wants to lean in and kiss Jasper, but refrains from doing so at the last second — Jasper has to admit he’s only a little disappointed — and he pushes himself up from the bed, taking his shirt off, exposing a lean body with the slight hint of muscle and small tufts of body hair under his arms and down his stomach, leading into his waistband. Jasper raises an eyebrow at him.
“I don’t want bloodstains on my favourite shirt.”
“Funny,” says Jasper, “I believe that shirt is mine.”
His attempt to lighten the mood is met with a small chuckle from Guy, who takes the small pocket knife they’ve been using for this… thing and flicks it open with a practiced motion. Jasper lets his eyes linger on Guy’s hands for a moment too long, before Guy sits down on the bed again and hands him the knife.
The first time they’d agreed to do it this way, Guy had offered his wrist. Jasper didn’t want to at first, but the moment the scent of Guy’s exposed skin hit him he couldn’t refuse anymore — he took the small pocket knife from Guy, shallowly cut a line on his wrist, and drank from it like a man starving… which he was. Is.
It had taken Jasper an overwhelming amount of self restraint not to drink Guy dry, especially when he tasted so sweet. But he managed, and Guy felt okay after sleeping for a while, as Jasper went out that same night to catch vermin off the streets to fill up what he was still missing, without having to drink more human blood.
“Ready?” Guy asks. His voice is quiet but sweet, a gentle kind of tone that makes Jasper want to rip his head off. He still doesn’t know, not truly, how to handle the affection.
“Ready,” Jasper replies. “Yell at me if I go too far.”
“You know I will.”
The motion is near perfectly practiced — surgical, almost. Guy inhales sharply as the burning pain of the cut registers in his brain, and he nervously awaits Jasper to lean in and take what he needs. All of this takes less than a second, because Jasper is licking and sucking at Guy’s neck before the blood could start to drip down.
It’s exhilarating. Guy’s blood melts on his tongue in the mixture of spices that was on his food, and he can still faintly smell coming from the plastic bags on the ground. There’s another flavour there too, one that Jasper can’t place, but which makes him drink from Guy in gulps.
His fangs ache. They want to get involved, but Jasper refuses to let them make an appearance. Not when Guy is already writhing under his mouth, how he clings to his clothes and shakes with the pain, with none of the pleasant buzz of a vampire bite. Not when the sounds coming from Guy are unmistakably pained.
Guy has to feel this hesitation, because his hand goes up to the back of Jasper’s head and his fingers run through his hair, urging him on. “It’s… okay,” he manages to say. “Do what you have to. I’m okay.”
But his voice is strained. Jasper feels so terrible about this, for making Guy cut himself because he’s too fucked up to hunt, that he pauses his generous gulping to kiss the wound instead, tongue lapping against it still, catching the slow ooze of blood, but almost worshipping the raw edges where the skin splits. This new sensation makes Guy relax a little bit, dropping his shoulders and letting out a kind of sigh Jasper has never heard him make before. Jasper continues, kissing and licking the wound rather than the animalistic slurping. He finds this more enjoyable, too, now that the desperation within him has settled to a low simmer, more than a pot threatening to boil over.
“Jasper…” Guy mutters, noticing how Jasper has slowed down significantly.
Let me, Jasper thinks, taking Guy’s head in one hand and letting him lean sideways, allowing him more room to mouth at the wound. He gives a satisfying scratch to Guy’s hair while Guy sinks into the feeling with another one of those unfamiliar sighs. Guy’s surrender allows Jasper to be more… wanting in his licks, his kisses. I want to try something.
Guy gasps when Jasper pushes his tongue into the cut.
Within Guy’s mind, Jasper can feel the conflicting sensations: the pain and the sharp, icy stabs that go through his muscles with each movement of Jasper’s tongue, contrasted to the almost shameful thrill of pleasure, the feeling of being penetrated in a way that was so unorthodox, it’s a second away from being sinful. Guy thinks about the times where Jasper had gone down on him, how it felt the exact same way as Jasper’s tongue caressing every part of him, dipping into him at moments where it mattered. It captures the same, erotic feeling as receiving head does, but this is much more intimate somehow — Jasper actually, genuinely reaching inside of him and tasting him beyond the first layer of skin.
When Guy moans, Jasper feels like he touched a live wire.
It’s unexpected, to say the least. Guy’s been vocal every time Jasper has drank from him, making little sounds of pain and discomfort but urging Jasper on to continue drinking, until he gets a little light-headed. But it was always that: sounds of pain and discomfort. Not of pleasure, like they are now, high in Guy’s throat and full-chested, warm, bringing a sweeter taste into his blood.
There’s still pain on the edges of Guy’s mind, but it’s much more subdued now, like he’s leaning into it and finding enjoyment in it. Jasper has suspected, known, that there’s pleasure in pain for Guy, and that the two of them get intertwined whenever Jasper is around, and he fully uses this to his advantage. It makes him feel better about feeding. It makes him not think about the fact that what he is doing is eating.
Jasper pushes into the cut again, deeper this time, trying harder. They’ve avoided the big, dangerous arteries in the neck, the cut deep enough to bleed, but not kill, and shallow enough to not cut through the muscle. It’s really warm, here, nestled between the layers of Guy’s skin, and his blood is more flavourful here. It’s a meal — and it makes Jasper think of how he refused to bite deeper into the skin of the bodies laid out in front of him in the Amsterdam Motherhouse.
That thought makes him groan into Guy’s neck.
Guy’s mind is still pressing up against his, of course it is, it’s an embrace in its own right. It’s still the same velvet softness, but it’s wet and heavy, lost in thoughts and memories of previous couplings in dim rooms between sheets that smell of dust. His presence overwhelms and shrouds the thoughts of Amsterdam, and Jasper goes back to eagerly exploring the cavity of the wound. Guy keeps Jasper’s memories at bay, replacing them with his own for a moment, letting him enjoy the motion of feeding again.
But his fangs never descend.
Jasper, in return to Guy, pushes his own feelings into Guy’s mind, the intoxicating thrill of drinking blood, before the experience was tainted, how it feels to push into Guy, how he clenches around him in that specific way. Guy moans again, and Jasper feels like he burns from the inside out.
His licking and sucking and caressing becomes more insistent, intenser, as Guy continues to moan against Jasper’s ear. The sound becomes more frequent. Jasper notices how Guy presses his thighs together, his hips moving up without him meaning to. He likes this.
Guy tries to say something in return to that thought, but he lets out a broken moan and a gasp before his whole body goes taut, his back arching in that typical way, falling back onto the mattress as he comes untouched.
Jasper runs his tongue on the edge of a sharp tooth and heals the cut before he pulls away. He trails his nose along the length of Guy’s throat, kissing the spot slowly and deliberately.
What the fuck was that?
Jasper can barely breathe. He almost doesn’t dare to.
“Jasper, I’m okay,” Guy says, breaking the spell of the quiet. His hands tangle in Jasper’s hair, taking him away from his throat and letting him look at him.
Jasper is scared for a moment that Guy is still bleeding. He doesn’t dare to look at his neck for a moment, and his fangs ache again, his wrist burns with the memory of forcing his own blood into the mouth of an unconscious body on a gurney. But he makes himself look, and there is nothing on Guy’s skin — only a few spots of blood where Jasper was a little too careless, too excited, with his tongue.
He brings his hand to the spot, a cold hand making Guy shiver. “Are you…?”
Guy laughs. It’s soft, and breaks more off the quiet. The sounds of the motel come back to Jasper’s ears, now that he’s not just focusing on Guy’s heartbeat. He takes Jasper’s hand in his own and leads it down his pants, where Jasper can feel exactly what kind of mess he’s made of him.
“I knew you had a skilled tongue, Jasper, but I didn’t think it would be that skilled.”
Jasper smiles.