Archive of Our Own

The house is nothing less than a small castle, and Jayce looks up at it through the tinted back window of the taxi with increasing shock. When he’d signed up for this summer job he’d been looking for a free trip across the ocean to the french countryside, but he’d expected a cottage and maybe a small garden but not…

“Z’is is zee chateau,” the driver says helpfully in his fulsome accent. Jayce had taken enough French to get through mandatory classes and a bit of holidaying, but he’d kept the car chatter to a minimum when he realized the driver didn’t speak the best English.

“No kidding,” Jayce murmurs, fogging up the glass and leaning back with embarrassment. He gives it a cursory wipe with his sleeve. The driver comes around and opens the door for him, Jayce steps out into the hot countryside, the air fragrant and verdant, vines crawling up stone pillars lining the curved circle of the driveway.

Jayce barely notices the driver taking out his two suitcases, and flipping through a notebook.

The house has him breathless. Its height could be intimidating, but it feels regal. The pale stone facade is trimmed by dark turrets and delicate shingles. The windows are plentiful but narrow. Somehow the chateau feels alive.

“It has – mm – an energy to it, yes?” The driver says with a lopsided grin. He offers Jayce the bill and Jayce pays, nodding. “I have – ehh – schedule to return in two weeks, correct?”

“Uh, y-yes, yes, correct,” Jayce agrees. “I’m heading back home in two weeks.”

“Like others,” the driver agrees. “Brave young boys. Very brave.” Jayce notices belatedly he has a bit of a stoop, circling back around the sleek black taxi and folding himself into the driver’s seat. They exchange a wave and Jayce watches him leave, the car kicking up a bit of dust as it zooms back towards the long country lane to return to the city.

Jayce turns back towards the beautiful mansion, and jumps.

There is a man staring through a second story window at him, pale and shadowy and intense. For a moment Jayce thinks his eyes must be golden by the way they shine in the light, but then in a blink, the figure is gone and only a swaying curtain remains.

Was that –

The front doors open, the sound of creaking of old heavy wood and the clack of lion-headed knockers. Jayce leans slightly but cannot see who opened them. He drags his heavy suitcases across the gravel drive and lifts them up the small lip into the house. They clatter on the tiled mosaic floor. A shiver pricks at his skin. There’s no one around.

“H-hello?”

His host is supposed to already be here, waiting to meet him. Insisting on Jayce coming for an extended stay so they can get to know one another before the event. Before the thing that Jayce is getting paid a tidy little sum to offer. Just a small thing. Just a drink of his human blood.

But he’s nowhere to be seen.

The house smells like lavender and wood and something musty, like a place that is very old, but when looking around it is tidy and polished. A large wooden staircase stands to one side of the atrium with dark curling banisters. There is a low couch for taking off shoes, and a delicate circular table standing in the way of everything carrying a vase far too large, overflowing with red and purple flowers. Jayce tries to close the doors quietly, but they bang into place and echo loudly, the lion headed knockers clattering and making him wince.

“Welcome to Chateau du Lierre.”

Jayce spins around.

A man stands at the top of the staircase dressed in black. The man, the one from the window. His eyes shine with that same eerie golden hue, brilliant in contrast to the shadowy slice of his lean figure. He’s in a slim suit with a high collar that caresses a sharp jaw. Russet hair flicks up playfully around his ears, matching the small smirk on his lips. Jayce feels his heart slam in his chest.

“Jayce Talis, I presume?” The stranger's voice is deep and patient, drawling in an accent that isn’t French but something lilting and old.

“Yes!” His own voice sounds too loud in his ears, too excited, too much for the calm dark of the house. It carries, echoing the way the door had. Jayce clears his throat and tries again, aiming his voice deeper, “I mean, yes. It’s nice to meet you… It’s Viktor, right?”

“It is a pleasure to meet your acquaintance.” Viktor doesn’t step any closer from where he stands, one hand wrapped around the dark wood of the banister. “Please leave your bags where they are. I am sure you are tired from your long journey.”

“Oh.” Jayce releases the handles, swallowing hard. He’d expected a handsome man, but not like this. He’s seen vampires before, there are more than a few that work as international models or who own fortune 500’s. They look like average people, albeit unaging and always carrying a timeless old-fashioned air. But not Viktor. He watches from the top of the staircase with a regality that makes Jayce feel unsteady. He matches the house in its grandeur.

“Your home is even more beautiful than in the photos,” Jayce tells him, hesitating before looking at a small pair of dark shoes at the bottom of the stairs. Right. He bends down and takes off his tennis shoes, leaving himself in white socks as he ascends the plush, patterned runner that decorates the steps.

It’s dark in the house, especially compared to the brilliance of the afternoon light streaming in through small windows here and there. Small sconces hang on the walls but impart very little light.

“I will give you a tour,” Viktor says, gaze raking down Jayce as he ascends to meet the man, “later. First I will make sure you are acquainted with your bedroom.”

Jayce swallows. He can’t help but think back on the extensive applications he’d filled out, the options he’d selected. His preferences between being bitten and a needle drawing, if he’d like to get to know the host he’d be staying with, or simply stop by as a dinner guest. And, most clearly in this particular moment, if he’d like to offer intimacy as part of the deal.

After all, it is widely known that vampire venom can induce all kinds of feelings. Jayce had grinned at that section of the application with all the confidence of a man in a dorm room looking forward to a free holiday to France. Just the idea of his cortisol levels skyrocketing and arousal nearly guaranteed made the entire idea exciting. It's half the reason there are so many programs like this one, that allow humans to enroll and be tested for cleanliness and volunteer to be… well, fed from.

And now there’s an ancient, well-dressed man looking him over from head to toe, stepping back only half a step to allow him space on the landing. Despite the vampire being nearly a head shorter than him, Jayce feels crowded in.

He’s going to be devoured by him. And soon.

Viktor’s lips curve into a smile, the corners of his eyes crinkling a little, and the peek of a delicate fang glints in the dim lighting. Jayce swallows when the vampire takes his hand, and he kisses the back of it, their eyes locked on one another. Viktor’s mouth is cool, his touch delicate. Jayce holds his breath, blood rushing down his body and straight to his cock.

“I must say, your photos as well do not do justice to your beauty, Jayce.”

“Oh.”

Viktor’s laugh is a deep whisper of a thing. He releases Jayce’s hand and looks at his face, eyes flicking over Jayce’s features. Inspected. Admired. “What a privilege to me, for walking art to grace my house for a fortnight. I will enjoy it greatly. Come, your bed is this way.”

Jayce watches in stunned silence as the elegant slip of a man walks away, limping just the slightest bit.

There are moles on the vampire’s face… beautiful imperfections. Jayce’s mind races, trying to memorize a visage paces ahead of him. He follows with a much heavier step, trying not to seem as eager as he is.

Viktor leads him past several closed doors, most with light peeking out in little slivers from under the gaps that the vampire notably avoids.

“Thank you for having me.” It feels strange to walk in silence, nearly awkward, especially when he can barely take in the beautiful maison when his eyes keep catching on the bit of skin peeking out at the nape of Viktor’s hair… the tiny gap between his soft turtleneck and the flick of brassy brown. Pale white… hiding another mole just barely visible.

“It has been a while since I have enjoyed a guest here. I hope that you will find the estate to your liking. There is plenty to do… if you have the patience for it. Some do not appreciate that I am eh… disconnected, you might say, to the outside world.”

“The no wifi thing,” Jayce remembers.

“Yes. Though I do have a telephone in the library that you are welcome to use for your international calls. You will find there is not much for… how do you say it, cell service?”

“Right, that’s okay, don’t worry. I’m excited, honestly. I just finished my finals and I’m ready to totally disconnect.”

The smile that’s given to him, a casual glance back over a tailored shoulder, makes Jayce’s stomach clench with desire. How can one man be so… so…

“I must admit I am a little self-conscious to have a student of architecture in my modest home.”

“I don’t think anyone would call this place modest, but don’t worry… I’ll probably only sketch it a little, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course. Consider the Chateau yours while you are here.” Viktor pauses at a door, there is no light spilling out from it and when he steps inside, Jayce can see there are dark curtains covering the windows, similar to the ones Viktor had been hiding amongst when he’d first arrived. The room is modest, with a four-poster bed draped in heavy red velvet. It looks like something out of a fantasy novel… the ceiling is painted to look like a sky, with cherubs peering out behind clouds.

“I can’t believe I get to stay here,” Jayce says with a laugh of disbelief. “It’s so different from back home.” From a dorm to a private bedroom with a real fireplace. This is going to be an amazing vacation.

“The bathing room is down the hall, it is marked. My room is further along, but if you have need of anything, you need only call for me and I will find you.”

“Right. You’ve got good hearing, don’t you?”

“It is alright,” his host says modestly, tucking a bit of hair behind one ear. “Dinner is at six. Down the stairs we just took and through the blue room to the left. After dinner, perhaps a tour. For now I will let you rest and… if you wish to explore, Jayce, I invite you to. This house has many secrets to impart for those curious enough to seek them out.”

The way Viktor looks at him sidelong, mischief sparkling. A dare, a delight, urging Jayce’s excitement on. Not tempering him but beguiling him. Arousing him.

“I’ll take a look around,” Jayce says, trying not to sound as excited as he feels. Trying not to let his own gaze drag down the fine dark buttons of Viktor’s suit and linger on the way it nips in his waist so enticingly. “See you ah… at six.”

“I am pleased to have you here, Jayce Talis.” Viktor turns and his ass snag’s Jayce’s attention and doesn’t let go. Delicate, perky, peeking out between the tails of his suit jacket. He barely looks up in time to see his staring be noticed, and Jayce’s cheeks flush.

Viktor merely raises an eyebrow and slips out of the room.

The next two days pass in a peaceful blur. Jayce spends hours exploring the maison, sketchpad under one arm, discovering enticing hidden alcoves, peering out of windows and climbing steep ladders to find a windy walkway at the pique of one rooftop. The house is kept dark during the day, and Jayce starts to make a mental roster of each room by the colour and patterns of their curtains that keep each space vampire-safe. Green and gold for the room with the piano, dark purple in the room with all the star charts, and blue in the library, which is floor to ceiling with dark wood shelves and an endless supply of beautifully bound books catalogued in Viktor’s own personal fashion, making titles impossible to find the traditional way.

Jayce borrows six of the heavy tomes and lays by the pool, sunbathing and sweating in a pair of shorts. He spends hours reading Brontë to the sound of birds playing in the hedgerow next to the lap pool.

“I cannot believe I’m getting paid to do this,” he mutters, stretching out and marking his place with a sprig of lavender he’d found already tucked into the volume. Jayce checks his phone, no new messages beyond the ones he’d sent to his mum and best friends when he’d landed safely in Toulouse. They trusted he was perfectly safe, which he was, and that he needed this break… which he did. Besides, Viktor had said the cell service was bad out here in the countryside.

Distantly, a bell rings and Jayce is pulled from his thoughts at the same time his stomach growls. His body has started to get accustomed to the set meal times, and the cheery chime that marks them thrice a day.

He stacks his books and makes his way inside in a pair of flipflops, closing the side door and drawing the curtains politely. When he turns he nearly walks headlong into Viktor, dressed in his traditional black suit and standing far too close.

“Oh! Shoot, sorry. You scared me,” Jayce says, trying not to make his flinch too obvious. The man is dead quiet. No pun intended.

“Did you enjoy the pool?” Viktor replies, his voice patient but laced with amusement. Unlike Jayce, he doesn’t step back to put space between them.

“Yeah, I love it,” Jayce admits, scratching the back of his neck and feeling very underdressed. “I’m just gonna get a shower real quick and I’ll be down to eat.”

“There is no need to stand on ceremony, Jayce. You may come as you are.” Jayce looks down at himself, his college swim team trunks, thongs and nothing else. When he looks up, Viktor’s eyes are visibly on his bulge.

“Uh… no it’s okay, Viktor. I’ll be fast.”

“Mm,” the vampire replies. Is he disappointed?

Jayce inches around him, then heads for the doorway. “I’m a bit too sweaty for your dining room upholstery. It’s hot out today.”

“So it is.”

“You’ve got to tell your chef how good they are to me,” Jayce says, trying not to devour his meal like an adolescent with an empty pit of a stomach. He’s mostly been lazing around, and has no need to feel so voracious, but Jayce has found himself with an unexpected appreciation for French cuisine. It helps that every meal feels like a five star event, usually a few courses long. Even the lightest meal of his day, the tray of breakfast he finds outside his bedroom each morning, is always hot.

“Oh?”

“I’ve looked but I can’t ever seem to find any of the staff around here, but it’s so clean and the food is so good, you must have a few people who help, right?”

Viktor sits at the far end of the long table, his place setting holding no plates and no bowls, only a glass of water that he sips at while admiring a newspaper (La Gazette, Monday July 13th, 1789; part of Viktor’s extensive literature collection).

“Help? No, I prefer my privacy, Jayce. With you as the exception, of course.”

Jayce pauses with a mouthful of mushroom and leek quiche nearly to his mouth. “You don’t have anyone to help you? This house is enormous, Viktor.”

“And I have a lot of time,” Viktor replies, that curious little smile on his lips that Jayce has started to feel a thrill to inspire, even when he’s clearly smiling about Jayce’s naivety.

“Are you saying you’ve been cooking all of my meals?”

“And washing your laundry,” Viktor teases, carefully setting down the delicate and ancient newspaper and smoothing his fingers over the faded paper.

“My-” Jayce feels his cheeks warm and he stuffs the quiche bite into his mouth so that he doesn’t say anything else stupid. If he’d known Viktor was washing his underwear, he’d have offered to do it himself! Hell he should have done that anyways but… truthfully he hadn’t thought about it. These last few days have been so relaxing he hadn’t worried about anything.

Viktor’s laugh is a deep, quiet thing, marked more by the shaking of his shoulders than by sound. “Do not worry, I enjoy taking care of you Jayce. I understood the responsibilities of such a task when I extended my offer for you to stay here.”

“You’re a really good cook,” Jayce says, blushing down at his plate. “Like… really good.”

Viktor’s answering hum makes Jayce’s skin prickle, as if his entire body is alert to even the smallest pleasure that the vampire expresses. “After so long not being able to properly eat myself, it is reassuring to hear that the old recipes are still suitable to a modern palette.”

“Maybe you can let me bring a few recipes home with me, my mom would love these. And my sister, actually everyone would love them.”

“If you’d like, I can show you how a few are made, if you can be pulled away from reading romance novels by the pool for any amount of time.”

“You can’t tease me about reading romance when those books are from your library, Viktor.”

“Touche.”

Jayce sketches plein air, a borrowed easel standing in a crop of manicured grass, his pencil scratching alongside a ruler pressed to the paper, marking out the guiding lines of his careful drawing. He glances over the rims of his glasses at Chateau du Lierre, taking in its angles and replicating them into as technical of a drawing as he can manage. It feels wrong, really, to be working with such strict rules. Working perfect angles and precision in a place like this, where blue butterflies will land on his knuckles now and then. They fan their wings and lickthe salt from his skin before lazily taking off again to circle him and then descend on the gardens he’s made a home in today.

“You really live up to your reputation,” Jayce murmurs to the house while working on his drawing, trying to imagine the hidden corners and make up for the obscurity that decades of thick ivy have obscured with their verdant leaves.

“As do you,” comes the sultry voice of his host.

Jayce spins, nearly knocking over the easel altogether. Viktor chuckles. He’s dressed all in black, even his hands are decorated with slim leather gloves. He holds the curved handle of a parasol that is heavy with lace trim cascading over Viktor’s shoulders like so much spider silk spun to protect him from the afternoon glare.

He looks like a widower in mourning. He looks beautiful.

“Are you supposed to be out here?” Jayce asks. “I thought vampires–”

Viktor waves a gloved hand with no concern at all. “Direct contact with the sun is not pleasant, true, and it takes a very long time to recover from such burns, but dressed as I am, I do not see much reason to worry. Unless you plan on chasing me through the garden, Jayce, I will be perfectly safe.”

“Chasing you?”

“Perhaps more of a nighttime activity, if you care for my preferences.”

Jayce opens his mouth, closes it, then opens it again, but Viktor is stepping closer, focused on Jayce’s sketch.

“This is beautiful work. When I read about your education I did not quite understand the beauty of such a profession, but you have given the house a kind of energy that makes it feel alive, Jayce. Incredible to see it, simple lines becoming so much more.”

“Oh. T-thank you. It’s just a perspective piece. I figured I might as well do a few while I’m here since they’re on next year’s curriculum. I can hopefully get ahead of the workload by having a few already done… Do you really like it?”

“I would hang this amongst my oil paintings very happily,” Viktor says, leaning closer to the work and taking it in with more care than Jayce himself even feels about the piece. “Perhaps I can convince you to leave one here in my care.” Viktor looks up at him, head tilted in the shade of his parasol, dark brows raised expectantly.

“It’s not that good,” Jayce mutters after a pause.

“Perhaps it is similar to my cooking,” Viktor says carefully, straightening himself and smoothing down his suit jacket, “you simply cannot taste the quality of what you are making. But I assure you Jayce, your skill is not small. I only wish you were staying longer so that I could ply from you a much larger piece. The dining room could do with such refreshment.”

Jayce has seen the collection of art and statues in Viktor’s home, and he knows nothing of it could even compare to the scratching he’s done today… but he smiles all the same, and cannot help but believe Viktor. He believes that the vampire really does like the art that much, as if it could compare, just a little.

“Speaking of dining,” Viktor says, “I am about to start with your dinner and I wondered if you may want to accompany me for the making of it. You expressed interest before…”

“Yes!” Jayce says, brightening to have the subject changed. “Yes I’d love that, Viktor. Let me just pack up here, I’ll meet you back at the house in a few minutes.”

“Wonderful. I look forward to seeing what else your hands are capable of.”

Viktor wears a black dress shirt rolled up to his elbows, the first three buttons undone, exposing his pale neck and a new mole that Jayce has to try very hard not to stare at while the vampire guides him through the steps of thinly slicing potatoes.

The scent of rosemary and butter permeates everything, and Viktor’s small nods and touches have Jayce going through the motions of cooking more slowly than absolutely necessary. The vampire’s small murmurs of, “behind you,” and “yes, that’s the way,” and, “ah, tch, be careful, Jayce, with that knife,” are amongst the most distracting phrases he has ever heard in his life.

He manages through the dauphinoise while Viktor prepares the vegetables, and the two of them both hover over the pan when Jayce sets in the thick steak Viktor has picked out for him. The cut is crusted with spices and far too large for just Jayce to eat.

“You will need the iron, mon chéri, do not try to protest. Besides, we both know you can manage it. How else will you have energy to do laps in the pool each day, if I do not continue to feed you so well?”

As it crackles and cooks, Viktor tells him he knows when it needs to be turned by smell alone and Jayce laughs, until he realizes Viktor isn’t joking at all.

“Is your sense of smell really that strong?”

“Oh yes,” Viktor says, leaning against the counter and looking at his own nails. The gesture is so unlike Viktor, especially dressed like this, that it takes Jayce a moment to realize that Viktor looks self conscious.

“So that’s how you always know where I am,” he teases, gently nudging an elbow into Viktor, earning him a fluttering of eyelashes and a startled doe-like expression.

“Is it unsettling, Jayce? I do try to pretend at humanity, for you.”

How is it possible for someone so beautiful, so elegant to feel worried about what Jayce thinks about him?

“I don’t think it’s unsettling. It’s just you, Viktor. I don’t really think of you as anything but… yourself. Human or not, it doesn’t bother me.”

“Oh.”

A handful of heartbeats sit between them, Jayce taking in this vulnerable look on Viktor. In a moment that look will be gone, and Jayce might never see it again. What else could make Viktor look at him like this? What other worries were in his heart that could be so disarming.

“The steak is done,” Viktor says softly.

Jayce sucks in a breath, breaking his reverie, and he tongs the steak out of the pan, setting it onto a board to rest as per Viktor’s instructions. And, as they start to assemble the final plate, things go back to normal. Viktor’s expression returns to its sultry smiles and Jayce pretends like he doesn’t know how to cook just so Viktor will keep showing him every little thing, right down to stripping the rosemary and sprinkling it over the steak.

“Now just to cut it,” Viktor says, producing a knife.

“You want it sliced, right?” Jayce reaches without looking, and he feels the warmth of blood before the pain even registers. He looks over slowly, the strange sensation of curiosity overtaking any kind of fear.

Viktor holds the knife, golden eyes wide with alarm, frozen as he takes in the accident. Blood runs from a slice in Jayce’s palm where he’d grabbed the blade, and it patters softly onto the floor between them.

“Oh, shit,” Jayce says, a laugh piloted by shock coming from him.

“I will get the first aid kit.” Viktor says abruptly, as if torn from his own shock.

“It’s probably not that deep,” Jayce says, bringing his hand closer to himself and flexing, grimacing to see the split in his skin. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“It looks very bad, Jayce.”

“Not makin’ you hungry?”

“Your humour about this is completely unwarranted, I’ve cut your hand open.”

“I’m the one who didn’t look– grab me that cup and a towel.”

Viktor flickers across the room to do just that, his speed a startling blur that Jayce can’t even track. A moment later Viktor stands in the exact same spot, mouth set into a fearsome scowl, offering Jayce what he’d asked for.

Jayce takes the cup and he runs the edge up his forearm, catching the blood, then setting it onto the counter with his hand over it, where it splashes slowly into the cup.

“What on earth–” Viktor nearly flinches at the display, and the way he swallows only rallies Jayce’s good humour.

“Well, you might as well eat with me,” Jayce teases. “Since I’m already bleeding.”

“I am not supposed to drink like this, Jayce, it is a medical procedure!”

“Appetizer then?”

“Appe- Jayce!”

Jayce laughs, and his head spins a little when Viktor laughs too, a hoarse deep thing that feels shouted out of him at the sheer ridiculousness of the situation.

The cup fills lazily, and when Jayce’s fingers start to get a little cold Viktor takes his hand carefully and he presses the clean towel to it, folding Jayce’s hand into a careful fist. “I must insist you sit now,” Viktor orders. “Before you fall down on me.”

“We’re not done making dinner!”

“I do not really trust you to use a knife after this, Jayce. I will finish it. Come.”

Jayce is led, Viktor holding his injured hand and setting an arm around Jayce’s waist as they walk through to the dining room. With their gaits matched he can feel the small limp in Viktor’s pace, the small difference in it, and he cannot help but wonder what kind of injury he must have. Something before he was turned into a vampire, or was it recent?

Despite signing up for all of this… Jayce finds there is precious little he actually knows about vampires, besides their dietary preferences and penchant for big french houses.

Viktor pulls a chair up alongside Jayce’s and sits facing him, cradling Jayce’s hand and pulling away the towel to grimace at the welling pucker of Jayce’s injury.

“I hope this doesn’t mean I can’t swim anymore this summer,” Jayce sighs.

“Well it would,” Viktor murmurs, voice quiet, eyes soft as he dabs away the blood. “With bandages and tape it would be better that you do not submerge it.”

“Damn.” He’s glad he is sitting down. Jayce isn’t quite sure if it’s the blood loss or Viktor’s proximity making him dizzy now. He smells like lavender and tarragon, and when he looks up through his dark lashes at Jayce those golden eyes pierce through him, and the tingles in his body seem to spread all over.

“But there is another way,” Viktor says slowly, his gaze moving across Jayce’s face, nearly flickering away, but Jayce leans to catch his inspection again.

“What?”

It’s that look again, that moment of vulnerability. Uncertainty on a man who should not wear it.

“Vampires are not so elusive that you need to pretend you don’t know, Jayce.” But when Jayce shakes his head, Viktor momentarily bites his lip with idle consideration, his fang pulling at the skin, sharp and white and elegant. “My saliva has healing properties, to aid in non-lethal drinking… I could use some for you, to heal your hand. It would feel strange but… you could swim as soon as tomorrow, I expect.”

“You have healing spit?” Jayce’s brows rise, “why didn’t I know about that?”

“It is something not easily synthesized,” Viktor murmurs, “and so not marketable to humans, I suppose. And it is intrusive to… apply, as you can imagine.”

“You’re gonna spit on me?”

Viktor’s voice drops, and he swallows visibly. “Licking is better.”

Warmth pools in Jayce, sending his chilling body up a degree, swallowing up the tingling sensation of blood loss and redirecting everything left straight to his gut. “M-makes sense,” he says intelligently.

Viktor watches him and leans back slowly. “I will get the first aid kit.”

“N-no, it’s fine you can… you can do it, if you want to Viktor. It’ll taste good for you, right?”

“A vampire is about to drink your blood, you’ve cut yourself open, and you are concerned that it won’t taste good to me, Jayce?” Viktor wonders, his mouth quirked into a crooked smile. Jayce nods and Viktor huffs another one of those raspy laughs. “I am sure you already understand that this is not an obligation of your staying here, yes?”

“I know.”

“Running headlong into things with a smile on your face, you must have B type blood.” Viktor sighs.

“B positive,” Jayce says, offering up his hand and feeling so wholly foolish, dizzy and, strangely, very aroused.

Viktor looks at Jayce’s hand, failing to hide his amusement with a small shake of his head. His russet hair falls over his forehead in a messy, distracting way. “Well… before you lose any more…”

“Bon appetite.” Jayce leans back in his chair, letting his arm relax as Viktor supports it fully and leans in close. His breath is warm against Jayce’s cooled skin, the way he breathes in and exhales with a barely audible sigh.

Jayce feels the heat of Viktor’s tongue, smooth and wet, darting out briefly against the cut. He laps at Jayce, as light as the wings of the butterflies that had kept Jayce company in the garden. He licks carefully, tasting after each small drag of his tongue and going again, eyes shut. The only sign of his enjoyment is his grip on Jayce’s elbow steadily increasing, fingers nearly trembling. A silent betrayal that brings Jayce a ridiculous but brilliant pleasure. He puts his spare hand over Viktor’s, squeezing gently.

“Good?”

Viktor licks more, his tongue strokes lengthening briefly, the warmth increasing, the flat of his tongue dragging up the length of Jayce’s cut, wet with saliva that tingles just a little as encourages Jayce’s skin to stick together, bonding and sealing the ugly pucker into something smoother.

The vampire sits up, sucking in a shuddering breath. He takes a napkin off the table, finally releasing Jayce, and he dabs at his mouth, cleaning away the smallest smudge of blood from his lip. His eyes are shut, as if looking at Jayce now will fracture the composure he is clearly fighting to maintain.

Jayce takes back his hand, watching the skin knitting together in real time… just like magic. “Wow.”

“Mmm,” Viktor agrees, leaning back in his own chair. With his shirt unbuttoned as it is, hair tousled and sleeves rolled up, he looks the most undone Jayce has ever seen… and the bliss on his face, the way his expression is pinched…

“There should be some paintings of you around here,” Jayce says, feeling too brave, too warm and excited. “You’re just as beautiful as this house, the estate… especially like this. I wish I was a portrait artist.”

Viktor cracks his eyes open, staring at Jayce. “Between the two of us, Jayce, it is you that should be painted in oil. Though it would be a poor replica for the real version of you.”

Viktor shifts and stands then, all slim waist and snug trousers. He walks towards the kitchen. “I will serve dinner for you now, Jayce. You will need as much red meat as you can get.”

After the ordeal of Jayce’s cut hand, Viktor comes by more frequently. Jayce spends an afternoon reading in the library, holed up in the one spot where he has a little bit of cell service, waiting for messages from home that don’t come.

Viktor sits silently, sitting on the sofa across from him, a blanket draped over his knees despite the summer heat, taking in what looks like the most boring book on botanicals that Jayce has ever seen. His quiet companionship is steadfast, offering Jayce comfort he hadn’t expressed his need for.

The next day Viktor joins him in the piano room where Jayce sketches one of the more interesting windows in the house, and when Viktor offers to play for him, Jayce accepts.

Music keeps him company through the entire morning, until the sun of the afternoon starts to brighten the room too much for Viktor to stay. Jayce feels the loss as insistently as the messages he’s been missing from home.

His hand fully heals quicker than should be possible. All that remains is a shiny pink line running the length of his palm, a mark he thinks will probably scar, a permanent memory that he feels a strangeness for wanting to keep.

The summer weather in France seems hell bent on killing Jayce the day he wakes up already sweating. He’d intended to spend the day hiking in the forest nearby, but Jayce finds himself changing those plans, padding outside and going directly to the glistening water of the outdoor pool.

The dark blue tiles around the perimeter are hot. Jayce winces, dipping his feet into the water one by one to ease the heat before he strips off a pair of loose trousers to reveal his snug swimming shorts. He tosses them onto a lounger and – suddenly feeling a twinge of intuition – Jayce looks up. From the second story window a shadow lingers amongst the green and gold curtains of the piano room, watching. Jayce has caught Viktor watching him before like this, but the moment is always fleeting, a shadow vanishing deeper into the house upon being noticed.

Today Viktor stays.

The hot tile burns under Jayce’s feet, but not nearly as much as the thrill of Viktor’s attention burns in him, stoking a blush to his cheeks.

It is insanity that has him tugging up the hem of his shirt while he looks up at that window, and he pulls it up revealing his smooth stomach and toned chest before tugging it off over his head, and tossing it onto the lounger.

Viktor watches with a hand pressed to the glass and his fingers curl to scratch down the pane.

Jayce smirks and dives into the water.

He doesn’t see much of Viktor the rest of that day, when the lunch bell rings a meal is set out for him, but his vampire companion isn’t present. Dinner is similarly quiet and Jayce feels, for the first time, that he is alone in the house.

The long empty dinner table feels too large. The single candle set by his plate, the only setting in a space fit for twelve, gives a pang to Jayce’s gut.

He eats and washes up his dishes before putting them back into the cupboards, the room lit by the candle that he’d carried with him from the dining room. He brings the candlestick through the hall and, with a sigh, Jayce allows himself to follow his now-familiar evening ritual.

He curls up in a deep red velvet chair at the back of the library. The windows are dark and drawn, the fireplace low and rosy with embers from a lack of tending. He sets his candle on the side table that keeps the company of Jayce’s phone and charger and a stack of romance books that he’s been determined to read. They have been doing well enough filling the hole that gapes wider and wider in his chest.

Jayce makes himself read twenty pages before powering on his phone.

One message from his mum, replying to his text from days ago wishing her a nice weekend. Her reply is a heart, and you too honey! But nothing else. His immediate disappointment is waylaid momentarily with an email notification, but when he opens it the message is advertising a fourth-of-july sale from a sports store back home, and his emotions take a dramatic nosedive from there.

No messages from Mel, that’s to be expected. But it still hurts not to hear from her. Their amicable breakup – and it is, it is amicable – was eight months ago now, and Mel had spent the summer moving to the east coast to set up her new life in New York. He’s happy for her. Long distance was never going to work. But not waking up to her messages isn’t any easier in the south of France as it had been in the pacific northwest. It was supposed to be easier.

There are no messages from Sky either, and he has to forgive that too. Her summer internship had taken her on an expedition to Antarctica during its coldest months, and he’s pretty sure her cell service is even worse than his right now.

But Cait?

He’d expected Cait to message. He’d expected a dozen messages a day from her, hearing about his step-sister’s wild dating life, and her terrible job and whatever else she had to fill the space and keep him company in the way she did best. He misses her most of all.

Jayce presses his phone to his chest, trying to will it into the hole inside of him, the lonely spot that he cannot quite figure out how to fix.

He watches the coals glow in the fireplace, and he watches his candle burn itself down, and Jayce watches his stack of books wait patiently to be read, but tonight he cannot find it in his heart to open them and escape.

The door to the library swings open a little while after Jayce’s candle has extinguished itself. Soft footsteps pad between the tall bookshelves, a shadow weaving in that Jayce watches unmoving and feeling a kind of paralysis in his wallowing.

Viktor’s figure is barely outlined, a streak of moonlight carving a single line across the room in white and painting the vampire’s cheek as he places a book onto a high shelf, leaning on a cane that Jayce has never seen before.

Jayce watches him struggle momentarily, mutter a curse under his breath and stretch up onto his toes, but only for a second when he cannot support himself.

“Do you need–?”

“Mon Dieu!” Viktor jumps a foot, flinching into the bookshelf and making it tremble. Jayce has never heard him so much as raise his voice before, let alone shout.

“Sorry!”

“Tch! Jayce!” Viktor scolds immediately. “You frightened me! What are you doing here alone in the dark at this hour?”

“I was just waiting for a message, I’m sorry Viktor, I didn’t mean to startle you.” He gets up, feeling incredibly guilty now, by the way the vampire is holding his chest.

“You nearly restarted my heart.”

That draws a chuckle out of Jayce, despite himself. “I’m really sorry. Here, let me help you with that book.”

Viktor pushes it into Jayce’s hands and steps aside. “I am the one who is supposed to be lurking around at night, did you forget?”

“I’ve never seen you lurk.”

“That is because you usually keep a very sensible schedule.”

“Didn’t you, I dunno, hear my heartbeat or something when you came in?” Jayce has to stretch a little too, wedging the book in and pulling out the marker Viktor had left to remind himself of the borrowed book’s place. He hands it over to Viktor.

“Your heartbeat? I am glad I cannot. I would be driven to excitement at all times, Jayce. Tch, no, I am as easily snuck up on as anyone.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Maybe I should put a bell on you,” Viktor teases.

Jayce smiles at him, looking at the way the moonlight plays with Viktor’s hair. He’s so… here. After all day being gone, feeling his presence again is a kind of balm that Jayce wants to wrap himself up in.

“Are you heading to bed now?”

“Mm, no I have been in bed all day. My leg has been bothering me,” he says without further explanation. “But I am feeling how you say… stir-crazy. Are you going to sleep, Jayce?”

“I don’t think I can.”

“Mpph, well then I will make use of you. I’d like to go down to the forest, and I could use a steady arm under mine. Get your shoes.”

The forest? In the middle of the night? Jayce only nods in agreement.

The evening air is fragrant with the scent of night-blooming jasmine. The vines that look like ivy on the house by day have come alive with thousands of tiny white flowers that gleam in the moonlight. Jayce offers an arm to Viktor who leaves his cane behind and tucks himself against Jayce, holding his elbow and upper arm the way couples do in the Brontë books Jayce has been reading.

Viktor points them in the direction of the winding path at the end of the garden where the shadow of the forest lies, and Jayce obediently goes, supporting Viktor’s slight weight with each casual step.

“Tell me, Jayce…”

“Hm?”

“What did you do to entertain yourself today?”

Jayce keeps his gaze straight ahead. I wondered where you were, he doesn’t say. I felt lonely without you. I felt lonely without my family. I wasted a beautiful day in the French countryside just to be sad. “Not much.”

“It was a very warm day,” Viktor observes.

“Yeah, another scorcher. It’s amazing all of your flowers stay in bloom.”

“They love this heat,” Viktor murmurs. “I do not mind it either, it feels good in the evening. If I close my eyes I can imagine I am walking outside on a sunny spring day again.”

“Don’t close your eyes, you’re the only one who can see right now,” Jayce says with a nervous laugh.

“Oh so you do know some vampire abilities?”

“Just what I hear about on tv,” Jayce reassures him. “I’m not some kind of stalker.”

“If you are a stalker, you have been a very respectful one,” Viktor says pragmatically, making Jayce smile despite himself.

“Glad to hear it.”

They enter the forest and the path narrows. Viktor presses close and Jayce pauses their step. “Here… let me put an arm around your back, is that okay?”

“Mm.”

Viktor’s waist is even slimmer than Jayce had imagined. The narrowness of it under his suit jacket is so slight that Jayce’s fingers easily cup around, holding him steady and close. He tries to speak, but his voice abandons him, and Jayce only starts to move them ahead.

He feels Viktor’s hand slide up his back too, settling his long fingers against the divot of his spine.

“You are even warmer than a spring day,” Viktor says quietly.

“Sorry, I was under a blanket for a bit.”

“Mm, no it is nice. This close… I think I really can hear your heartbeat.”

“And?”

Viktor’s glance up at him is hard to see in the dark, but his smile is a brief, teasing thing that Jayce doesn’t miss. “Just as I predicted.”

“Do you want to walk apart?”

“No, Jayce,” Viktor says in his quiet voice.

They walk together in silence, picking their way down a trail that Jayce can barely make out. Viktor nudges him around a fallen tree and Jayce helps Viktor step over it. They pass through a thinner area where beams of moonlight reach down around them like spotlights, casting the world in black and white, except for Viktor’s warm eyes that seem to almost shine.

They weave amongst heavy boughs and pass through the peace of the forest at night.

Viktor’s pace slows and Jayce mimics him, their bodies somehow having become in sync, guiding one another to silently stop at the edge of a clearing.

“I have been wanting to show you this,” Viktor whispers so quietly that Jayce leans closer to him, until their faces are nearly brushing. Viktor smiles at him just a little, and he touches Jayce’s cheek, turning his gaze towards the clearing.

The moonlight has washed this space too in its nighttime monochrome. The clearing looks as if it had once been a stand of tall grasses, emerging and flourishing where the trees have parted, but most of the grass has been pressed down by shadows.

Jayce’s jaw goes lax with shock.

A head lifts amongst the sleeping creatures, and the branches of its crown turn with a quiet regality as a stag looks towards them. He watches Viktor and Jayce for a long moment and Jayce holds his breath until the beautiful deer lowers its head again, and returns to its slumber.

There must be ten or so of them, beautiful now that Jayce knows what he is looking at, a herd of elegant deer with delicate spots on their coats, making them look dappled in the moonlight they doze under.

“They don’t mind us being here?” Jayce whispers, trying to be as soft as Viktor had been.

Jayce feels Viktor shake his head, their cheeks brushing. “They do not come often, but when they do, I take great care to ensure they feel safe. I saw them cross the field this morning and hoped they’d stay to sleep.”

Viktor leans against Jayce and he takes the weight. He can feel how right Viktor is, how peaceful this place must be for the deer not to care that they stand and watch over them at their most vulnerable. Jayce has never been so close to a wild animal like this before.

“Sometimes,” Viktor goes on, his voice brushing against Jayce. “I will be alone for months on end. I will not see another living soul… and then they will come, and they will stay for a while, and I do not feel quite so lonely anymore. I miss them when they are gone, and I wish that they would not leave, but… while they are here, I take great comfort in it.”

Jayce feels his own loneliness well up inside him, in that dark little hole he has been trying to fill. He feels Viktor echo it. He feels him see it, and he holds Viktor a little tighter.

“It is not easy.” Viktor says.

“No.” Jayce agrees.

“But two weeks is such a long time, an oasis, in my isolation.”

A tear clings to Jayce’s eyelashes and he sniffs, trying to will himself to sensibility. But all he can think about are the messages he isn’t getting, and Viktor being away all day, and how, at the mere sight of him, Jayce had smiled again.

He cannot bear to think of returning to the house and inevitably letting Viktor go. His touch is a comfort that feeds him, that he has been starving for.

His grief carves a wet line down his cheek.

Viktor touches his face again, those warm eyes muted in the darkness. Viktor’s touch is soft, his fingertips brushing into Jayce’s hair. He leans close, and Jayce feels his eyes close on their own. Another tear slides down his cheek, caught by the press of lips against his skin. Another kiss, then another, carefully tasting up the track.

“Viktor…”

“Don’t cry,” Viktor whispers, his breath warm. “Your tears taste too good to me, Jayce. I beg you, do not cry. I am here… we are not alone tonight. I am here.”

Jayce wraps himself around Viktor, and their heads fall to one another’s shoulders. Jayce feels a kiss against his neck, and he clings to Viktor as if he can fill his loneliness with this.

Viktor knocks on his door to wake Jayce for lunch and they sit together and talk about Brontë to the sound of one of Viktor’s favourite records.

Later Jayce is joined by Viktor in the garden while Jayce drafts up a sketch of the house from the east side. Viktor sits in a small chair under his dark parasol, reading contentedly and offering periodic compliments of Jayce’s work. Between them, Jayce steals little glances at Viktor, wishing not for the first time that he could replicate the man’s likeness with any kind of skill.

In the evening Viktor entices Jayce into a game of chess in the library where Jayce is soundly defeated three times over, despite Viktor claiming to go easy on him. Jayce drinks every cup of tea that Viktor prepares for him, until the late hour has them both hiding yawns into their elbows.

The following days are much the same. Activities that had once been done alone were now shared. Jayce sits on the counter while Viktor cooks. Viktor chats through the window while Jayce sketches. Jayce prunes the garden when Viktor’s leg starts to bother him too much, and they shelter together inside when the sun gets too high.

Viktor gives Jayce a personal tour of his favourite artworks in the house. After the sun goes down, Viktor joins Jayce for a swim, his lithe pale body a distracting glimmer in the dark water.

They dry off and reconvene on the sofa in the library and watch a downloaded movie off of Jayce’s phone, and Viktor talks through the entire thing, asking questions and inching closer, and stealing some of the blanket until they are pressed against one another wholly and Viktor has his head resting on Jayce’s shoulder.

Jayce stays very still, hoping Viktor doesn’t notice, and he soaks in every single moment.

The days tick by far too quickly, but somehow they feel longer than all of the days previous. Time spent with Viktor is time better spent. His heart feels less lonely and he stops checking his phone in the evenings, instead finding reasons to make his companion laugh.

It takes time… but the pain eases, and he starts to feel lighter. Jayce starts to keep a journal, filling it in after he’s in bed each night, detailing every moment that he is loath to forget. He cannot have this forever. He cannot keep these feelings, this happiness, but he can write it down and remember it.

“You know, there are shadier places to live,” Jayce says to Viktor, taking the towel-lined basket under one arm and heading for the garden door just off the kitchen.

“Mm?”

“It’s hardly sunny at all in Seattle,” Jayce says, opening the door as little as possible to minimize the light that tries to flood in.

“Yes but Seattle isn’t France, it isn’t… here,” Viktor says with one of his gestures. “It isn’t home.”

Jayce fills the basket with Viktor’s garden tomatoes and a cucumber and a few brilliant peppers, and when he brings them back inside, Viktor is humming to himself as he cooks.

“There are a lot more people in Seattle, it would be less isolated.”

“Mmm?” Viktor says. “Are we still discussing this?”

“I’m just trying to help.”

“I know you are, but I do not want people, Jayce. I am not lonely for people I am lonely for…”

Jayce sets the tomatoes onto the counter and looks up to see VIktor looking at him, a gaze so soft, so… sad. It cuts him harder than the knife had.

“It is nearly time, mm?” Viktor says instead.

“Tomorrow,” Jayce agrees, a weight on his chest.

Viktor nods and sets his shoulders, seeming to shake off the grief. “Then I had better make this pasta one you do not forget, Jayce.”

“Are you comfortable?”

It’s the second time Viktor has asked and the third time Jayce has resisted reaching out to squeeze reassurance into Viktor the way he wants to. The vampire is working too carefully to jostle, setting up a mini blood-drawing laboratory on the coffee table, complete with a cannula designed to pull blood very slowly from Jayce to make the process as comfortable as possible. There’s a hot water bottle tucked under the blanket at his feet, and Jayce has already finished a cup of tea.

It would all be very comforting if it wasn’t the middle of summer. As things are, he's already started to sweat a little.

“Jayce,” Viktor insists.

“I think you’re more nervous than I am,” Jayce teases with a smile.

“You have not seen how much blood I am about to take from your body,” Viktor counters with a roll of his eyes, the expression so casual and familiar that it makes Jayce’s heart thump. It’s wonderful how relaxed Viktor is around him now, his walls down, kneeling on a cushion and chiding Jayce for his naivety.

“Well I know how much a pint is,” Jayce offers.

“Knowing and seeing are different.” Viktor leans close, reaching under the blanket to pull free Jayce’s arm. Bare chested as he is, Jayce tenses just a little at the way Viktor’s knuckles brush briefly against his side . His arm is positioned, wiped down and Viktor stares at it for a long moment.

“Something wrong?”

Viktor shakes his head, blushing just a little. “No, no. Nothing.”

“Were you looking at my veins just now?” Jayce teases. Viktor stiffens a little, and Jayce laughs. “You were!”

“I was only visualizing,” Viktor protests, embarrassment rare in his tone but oh so satisfying to hear.

“Visualizing biting me, prince of restraint?” Jayce presses more. “Admit it!”

“It helps with the process, tch, Jayce you are a rude donor.”

“I’m not rude, and I’m probably the most delicious donor you’ve ever had. You’ve been fattening me up and seasoning me with the best meals I’ve ever had in my life for two whole weeks.”

“Jayce!” Viktor covers his face as if to hide a flush he cannot fully produce, but he denies none of it.

“You’ve been watching me eat every single bite,” Jayce teases.

“I was keeping you company, and it was a mutual favour to us both.”

“A mutual favour,” Jayce repeats, his cheeks aching. “Well here’s one more, I want to see you drink what you harvest.”

“Absolutely not!” Viktor says, eyes flashing with surprise.

“Why? It’s my blood, I should see it go to good use.”

“It’s private. I am going to go to my bedroom and have it privately, in a dignified way.”

“With me there,” Jayce hedges.

“If you want to be invited to my room, Jayce, there are other ways you could have asked,” Viktor replies, his little crooked smile returning and sending a bolt of heat into Jayce.

“Yeah?”

Viktor swallows, and through the snug collar of his turtleneck, Jayce watches his throat bob.

“I want to see you eat,” Jayce says, lowering his voice to imitate Viktor’s own, that serious way he speaks. “I want to see you eat in your room, Viktor… and when you’re done, I want to taste my blood on your lips. How’s that for asking?”

Viktor stares, stunned to silence. He leans back on his heels, sucking in a rickety little breath. “Oh.”

Jayce feels the adrenaline of his question race through him and he wonders if that will change how the blood tastes too, if Viktor will be able to identify the flavour of excitement. “It’s our last night,” Jayce whispers.

“Yes,” Viktor replies. “Well… when you ask like that…”

Jayce watches the small quiver in Viktor’s fingers as he disinfects the crook of Jayce’s inner arm. He readies the needle, fresh from its packaging and Jayce obediently closes his eyes. He barely feels the pressure, listening to Viktor instead. The small hitch in his voice and his sigh when the blood starts to wend its way down the tubing and into the warming carafe sitting on the floor between them.

It’s a slow process, but not unpleasant. Wrapped up as he is, Jayce lets himself relax into it, feeling more grateful for the hot water bottle as the minutes tick by and a small chill comes through him little by little.

Fingers brush his cheek.

“M’okay, feels fine,” Jayce says.

Viktor’s hand slides up, carding very carefully through Jayce’s hair and petting him, lifting away, and petting again in slow repetition. Jayce can feel how close Viktor is, but he doesn’t open his eyes. Part of him wishes Viktor would lean closer, that he’d press their lips together.

“You are so beautiful,” Viktor whispers. “The most beautiful man I have ever met, I think.”

Jayce opens his mouth to speak, but Viktor continues, his voice holding that quivering vulnerability that Jayce has found himself chasing.

“The moment I saw you get out of that car… I did not know what to do. I was too afraid to come down the stairs, I was too afraid that the mere sight of you would stir something in me.”

“You…”

“It was good intuition, wasn’t it?” Viktor laughs very softly. “We are nearly done. Just a few more minutes.”

“Viktor?”

“Yes, Jayce?” He asks like he’s afraid.

“Hold my hand?”

“Oh.” An exhale. “Yes, I can do that.” Viktor’s hand slides into Jayce’s and Jayce holds it tight, hoping it’s enough of a comfort.

When the blood draw finishes, Viktor’s careful hands remove the part that’s inside of Jayce’s arm and there is pressure when Viktor squeezes a cotton ball to the pinprick. Jayce listens to him pack up, and peeks over at Viktor whose expression is gentle as it meets his gaze.

“You should probably wait a moment before sitting up.”

“But I want to go upstairs with you.”

Viktor considers him, tipping his head and shaking it slowly. “That is not a very good idea, Jayce. I only eat once a year, and it can be, eh, intense. I do not think I would be able to control myself around you, if you were there.”

“You’d bite me?”

Viktor hums as if amused by the idea, but denies he’d give in to such urges. “I do not think so. I cherish you, Jayce, and I do not wish for you to make a hasty decision that you will regret.”

Jayce lifts his hand and, for the first time, caresses the sharp angle of Viktor’s jaw. “I’m not going to regret you, Viktor. I couldn’t.”

Viktor looks at him, one more time, with one of those rare expressions. His eyes are wide, so brilliant, so surprised.

Jayce urges him close, just a small pull, and Viktor leans in, his mouth parted. Jayce kisses the curve of his lower lip, a gentle question answered with Viktor’s breath and his whisper of Jayce’s name.

The kiss Jayce gets back is just as delicate.

Jayce feels as if the room has ignited, the heat between them stoking to a roar but exchanged with the gentlest of touches. It is the faintest taste of a temptation he wants to swallow whole.

“Are you sure about this?”

Jayce slides a hand up Viktor’s back and he tangles his hair into wildness as he tugs him down for a firmer kiss.

“Mmph,” Viktor barely protests until his knee nearly knocks over the carafe of blood. They part to steady it, and Viktor’s head falls back, his chest heaving with a huffing laugh of disbelief. It’s as if he cannot believe Jayce wants him like this, which seems absurd to Jayce, who is looking at the world's most charming vampire knowing they’ve just kissed.

Jayce starts to sit up, and when Viktor protests Jayce hands the carafe of blood to Viktor by way of distraction. “Have some. We can go upstairs by leaning on one another, Viktor.” There’s a smile blooming on Jayce’s lips that has his cheeks aching to smother. “I want to see your bed, and I want to see you eat, and I want to do everything I’ve been fantasizing about when I go to bed every night… alright?”

Viktor watches him and slowly lifts the jug. His eyes still on Jayce, he takes a small drink. He swallows it with a shivering groan; Viktor’s mouth is stained red, his fangs are caught on his teeth. He looks like a vampire so much more in this moment than Jayce has seen in the last two weeks, and he looks at Jayce like he wants to eat him.

Jayce desperately wants him to follow through.

“Just as I thought,” Viktor’s voice is barely louder than a whisper, raspy with emotion. “It has an addicting quality… like your tears, like the way you smell. Your blood is a fascination to me, Jayce. Everything about you...”

“My tears?”

“And you make it impossible to resist you,” Viktor continues, lashes fluttering as he tries for the last time, to resist the urges of his body.

With a blur Viktor stands and offers Jayce his hand, and Jayce takes it.

Viktor looks up at him, panting just a little. Jayce wonders if adrenaline is crashing through him just as hard as Jayce’s own, driving his heartbeat on a raging course.

Jayce folds first, crushing Viktor’s bloody mouth against his and tasting the coppery tang of blood. It’s messy and warm and draws out a groan from Viktor that has Jayce’s cock stealing the rest of his blood.

They kiss all the way to the stairs, pausing on the first landing. Jayce is pressed against the railing and gasps when Viktor licks up his neck and growls against his ear. It’s all Jayce can do to hold their bodies flush together, feeling the slim hardness of Viktor’s excitement as the vampire finally lets himself lose control.

This is happening, it’s really happening.

They ascend and at the top of the stairs Viktor is on him again, throwing his weight into Jayce in a bout of fresh kisses, sending them both crashing into a vase that breaks when it hits the floor. Despite Jayce’s protest of laughter, Viktor doesn’t stop the feral kiss and it’s only by a miracle that Jayce manages to get Viktor out of his shirt, feeling for the first time how smooth Viktor’s skin is. There are so many more moles, more than he can count.

They abandon Viktor’s shirt amongst the spilled poppies and jasmine, his vampire leading the way with a firm grip down the darkened hallway of the chateau’s upper level.

Viktor’s room is draped in heavy black curtains, with an enormous bed as its crowning jewel. There are towels laid over the dark bedspread that Jayce only registers when he pushes Viktor onto the plush mattress barely saving the carafe from spilling again.

“What are these for?”

“The mess I am about to make of you,” Viktor gasps out. “The mess I would have made of myself thinking about you.”

“The mess,” Jayce wonders, but Viktor is taking off his own belt in a display of debauchery. He throws it to the side with a recklessness that makes Jayce laugh with hysteria. Breaking things, throwing things, this is Viktor undone, the Viktor Jayce created.

Viktor tugs his fly open and he shoves the waistband of his pants down.

Oh!

“You don’t want to eat first?”

“Aren’t you hungry too, Jayce?” Viktor wonders, arching a brow.

Fuck yes, he is.

Viktor’s hip bones are angular, tempting Jayce to grab them. His thighs are revealed, milky and narrow and framing an unruly mess of hair that flicks in waves around a cock just as slender as he is.

“Help me,” Viktor instructs, falling back and giving up on undressing himself once he’s captured Jayce’s full attention.

Jayce gives Viktor the blood and the vampire holds it close, watching Jayce through half-lidded eyes. He dips a finger into the liquid, and draws it out shining with blood. Jayce watches frozen in place as Viktor licks himself clean with more patience than he thinks Viktor has left in him.

“This is what you were going to do alone?” Jayce hooks his fingers into Viktor’s pants pulling the fabric off of Viktor inch by inch while those golden eyes flutter.

“Mmh, I was going to drink half of it perhaps… and the rest, Jayce, I was going to use to bathe myself in it here on this bed. I would imagine you fresh from that pool, wet and upon me…” his eyes are shining with arousal, Jayce can hardly even believe he’s tugging pants off of this man’s body, his erect cock between them.

“Yeah?”

“Verbose when you’re aroused, aren’t you?”

He can’t even imagine how red his face must be right now. “Viktor…”

By comparison Viktor’s ankles are so dainty, so pale. Jayce takes off his socks one by one and holds them for a moment, squeezing.

“Undress for me, Jayce. You have teased me enough with those abhorrent swim trunks of yours. I want to see you.”

He’s never stripped before, but Jayce pauses with his fingers on the hem on his shirt. A wine glass catches Jayce’s eye on the bedside table, the kind Viktor drinks water from during the day. He pads over to it, smirking at Viktor’s disappointed little tch when he isn’t given a show.

“Sit up here,” Jayce murmurs, patting the pillows that Viktor has wholly ignored.

He is glared at before Viktor obeys. Jayce takes the pint of blood in its cumbersome carafe and he pours half a glass, setting the larger portion onto the bedside and handing Viktor the drink.

“This suits you better.”

Viktor takes it, eyes searching Jayce. “And now you strip for me?”

Jayce cannot help but laugh, “yes, Viktor.”

He does. It's an awkward thing, though he puts his heart into it, turning and shimmying out of his clothes little by little while Viktor murmurs his approval and takes increasingly less dainty drinks of his long-awaited dinner. A little flush starts to colour Viktor's cheeks and, incredibly, he looks more vivid.

Maybe Jayce can’t restart Viktor’s heart by startling him, but he looks nearly human in complexion by the time Jayce is naked, leaning over the bed and caressing Viktor’s calves indulgently as he makes his way up towards that waiting mouth.

There is nothing human about Viktor’s kisses. The teeth, the taste of blood, the way he cannot be gentle or careful, and cuts Jayce’s lip.

Viktor barely manages his apology, licking at the wound and groaning again. Every half-formed word is a rasp of desperation that sends jolts of desire straight to Jayce’s eager cock. Jayce cannot believe any of this, his arms wrapped around Viktor and holding him close. Every bit of Viktor is pressed against him and it feels right.

“How can you expect me to be satiated after only taste of you?” Viktor wonders, tangling their bodies together, his leg tossed over Jayce’s hip.

“Have another tomorrow,” Jayce says recklessly.

“You will be leaving tomorrow, and you will be too weak.”

“No,” Jayce says, tugging Viktor’s hair and watching the vampire go lax. “You can’t be sensible while you’re also touching me like this, Viktor. That’s not fair.”

It’s fascinating the way Viktor lets Jayce play with him, letting Jayce lower his mouth to the mole at his throat and suck against it. The little sighs of pleasure the action earns him has Jayce’s cock hard against Viktor’s lean body.

“Mmph, you want me to lie?”

“I want you to tell me what you want.”

Jayce feels the sharp points of Viktor’s fingers dig into him, holding him close enough to grind up against, their cocks meeting and sliding together with a friction that has them both gasping out in pleasure.

“Fuck,” Jayce moans against Viktor’s neck. “Don’t stop.”

All of the build up, all of those sly smiles, all of Viktor’s teasing and his casual looks, his flirting and his final agreement to this, culminates into a spooling desperate heat in Jayce’s gut that demands release.

“I want you,” Viktor says. “I want to devour you, Jayce. I want to drink from you each morning and kiss you senseless each night. I want to swim with you in the sun,” Viktor admits. “I want ah–”

Jayce wraps a hand around both of their cocks and he strokes them together, a dry friction. It makes Viktor arch his back and Jayce watches every motion. He wants this too, he wants all of it.

“Jayce,” Viktor gasps out.

“Keep talking,” Jayce urges, feeling crazed when he opens his mouth and bites against Viktor’s throat.

Viktor gasps, voice fracturing into a raspy deep moan. Their cocks both twitch and Jayce keeps up the pace of his stroking.

Warmth pools over his cock and Jayce thinks Viktor must have come, but when he looks down Viktor is pouring his wineglass out over them, and their cocks are coated in thick warm blood, slickening the glide and feeling–

Jayce’s stomach tenses and he squeezes himself hard, trying not to come right there at the sight of it all. The insanity of it, of seeing their skin painted this way, a gluttonous display.

“Do not stop,” Viktor grits out, his voice as tortured as Jayce feels.

The sloppy wet sound of his stroking is debauche.

Viktor squirms in his arms, panting. “Yes, yes–” Viktor whimpers. “Kurva–”

Jayce feels him come, feels his cock flex. A staccato of quick little spurts painting Viktor’s stomach and making the vampire tremble all over with shocks of pleasure. Jayce caresses Viktor’s cheek and smothers his gasps with a kiss. Jayce tastes his lips, and licks the sharp length of Viktor’s fang.

“Nn–” Viktor’s protest is weak. “I am not done.”

“I wouldn’t dream of being finished,” Jayce teases.

And then, before he can blink, Jayce is flipped onto his back. With Viktor kneeling over him. There’s fire in his golden eyes. He slides a finger up the length of Jayce’s cock and Jayce twitches at the switch in control, at how easily he will surrender to this.

“Do you want to know what I really want?” Viktor asks in his low, sultry voice.

“God, yes.”

“I want to pour this blood all over you, Jayce. I want it warmed up by your body, and then I would like to lick up every drop while you beg me to let you finish.”

He tips the wine glass again, and blood runs over Jayce’s chest, warm and sticky. It smells metallic, but feels good. It feels like lube, it feels erotic. The most precious part of him stolen, painted onto him, and devoured.

Jayce nods with a desperate and dizzy agreement. “Then what?”

“I want to rub myself on you, I want to feel it sticky between us,” Viktor admits. “I want… Jayce I want you. This.” He leans over Jayce suddenly, with his unhuman speed. “I am not ready, Jayce… I do not want to let you go.”

“Viktor–” But their mouths meet again and Viktor silences him with a dominating kiss. Jayce lets him, Jayce lets him have everything.

He’s panting when Viktor is done, pressing Jayce down with a hand to his bloody chest. Jayce cries out when Viktor grips his cock and starts to stroke him off, admiring the shape of him the way he’d look at a statue. Assessing, calculating.

The blood comes next, a fresh glass filled to the very rim. He holds it high above Jayce and tips so slowly… it dribbles down the stem, making a mess, and splashing down in a rivulet to paint Jayce in bright red.

Viktor’s chest heaves with excitement and Jayce’s own is matched, his cock stroked distractedly by Viktor’s slender hand. Pleasure scratches through him and Jayce tenses, gasping.

He’s descended upon. Viktor’s tongue licking at him, his teeth scraping. Their cocks grind together again, freshly slicked. Jayce wraps his arms around Viktor and he holds him close, crushing their bodies and rocking his hips up as they both drive towards climax in their messy slick desire. Viktor moans into his skin like a man who has lost his mind, and Jayce knows he sounds the same.

He has found insanity.

He has found pleasure and passion and madness all at once. He has made a mess in a vampire’s bed.

Pleasure grips him, lust kisses him and something else, something equally desperate, equally warm keeps his hands moving to Viktor’s face, caressing and petting and kissing him with stained lips.

Blood is shared between them, the towels are soaked, their bodies painted again and again. They grind together and take pleasure in touch. Viktor mocks fucking Jayce, squeezing his ass and riding his cheeks until they both come, aching and doubly spent.

With exhaustion Jayce pulls Viktor close, bundling him in his arms and wrapping them both in blankets to fend off the growing chill. He pours one more glass of blood, the last of the batch, and plies Viktor with it.

He presses kisses to Viktor’s temple as his lover obeys and finally indulges in a proper meal… and to reward him, Jayce works an idle hand over Viktor’s soft cock, teasing whimpers from him that Viktor never asks to cease.

When the meal is done, Viktor tucks himself against Jayce fully, their bodies entwined and messy and tired. Jayce holds him tight and despite exhaustion begging to claim him, he tries to memorize this moment and save it in his mind.

He can feel Viktor’s eyelashes against his chest and he wonders if he is doing the same.

“Jayce–” the question comes like an exhale in the darkness, as if Viktor is afraid of Jayce hearing it and answering.

“I want to stay,” Jayce replies.

A hand tangles itself in Jayce’s own hand and holds him tight. Viktor shifts ever so slightly, and their eyes meet in the darkness.

“Then stay. The Chateau yours while you are here… and so am I.”

Their next kiss has a tenderness that warms Jayce more thoroughly than any summer day ever could, for it is not their last and won’t be for a very long time.