A promise fulfilled

[onceaviking]

Eric unlocks the door - and locks it behind them once they are inside.

The room looks much as it did the last time, Emcee was there. A framed picture of a moonlit ruin has been added to one of the walls and there is a stack of file folders on the desk as well as a couple of books.

The bed is made and the decanter on the small table seems to have been refilled.

Eric walks inside, the way you do when you own a place, leaving his flip flops by the door, and unzipping his track suit top.

He turns to look at Emcee, his gaze heavy and measuring.

Comments

[onceaviking]

Eric watches him turn away. Silently.

A little while passes.

Then he says, "I let you drink a little deeper than I should have. It'll pass." Reaching over to rest his hand ever so lightly on Emcee's neck. Feeling his heartbeat.

"Next time, I'll be more careful."

He doesn't hear it himself. Pam would have called him out on it, but he really doesn't hear it, how there is now a next time. Just like that.

Caressing his jawline with his thumb. Slowly.

"My blood is very powerful. It's effects here are mild in comparison to what might happen at home."

His voice is pitched low. Intimate. Confiding.

[i_am_your_host]

Not helping. Oh god, not helping.

He swallows hard at Eric's touch. Eric will feel his pulse is strong and fast, his skin still flushed, just because he's touching him. He doesn't need to have his blood in him to feel this way, but it sure isn't helping.

Taking a short, sharp breath, he shifts his position. Not exactly away from Eric. Just over onto his stomach, with his arms folded under his chin. He doesn't look at him.

"It's not just the blood, darling," he murmurs. "In hindsight, it's a good thing I did drink as much as I did, because if I didn't, I think you might have actually hurt me again."

He turns his head, looking at him a bit askance, his face partially hidden by his arm.

"Which is why I wanted to bitch at you. But I'm all right."

[onceaviking]

"Yes," Eric says, his eyes drifting away from Emcee's face. "I did get a bit - carried away. Sometimes, I forget how fragile you are. Humans."

"But you're not hurt. I'd be able to smell it."

Tripping perhaps, but not bleeding anywhere.

He rubs a hand over his face. And then he says, "Not just the blood?"

[i_am_your_host]

He turns his head a little more. It's not an apology, but he wasn't fishing for one anyway. It's close enough.

"No. I have to be more careful, too. Sometimes I forget how dangerous you are," he adds, paraphrasing him.

Not an accusation, not blaming Eric for anything. Just a statement of fact.

[onceaviking]

"People often do," Eric says.
Agrees.

Sometimes, and he is not prepared to admit that, even to himself, he forgets it too.

He stretches, the muscles moving smoothly under his skin.
Between the six or seven hours at home and this, he is feeling positively alive. It shows in the little, pleased hum when he is done stretching, and the way he runs his face (and nose) along his own hand and arm. Small traces if whom he used to be, back when his muscles needed stretching and his skin got covered in his own sweat.

[i_am_your_host]

He says nothing in response to that. It could be to his advantage that people forget. That they forget their distrust, their fears, their instincts. And then they end up being careless, doing something stupid.

Emcee still wonders why he still trusts Eric. Sometimes it seems like a stupid thing to do. And he doesn't want to be stupid.

He watches Eric with a smoky lidded eye, his face buried half against his folded arms. It's like watching a lion lounge around right next to you after a satisfying meal. Sure, he's just fed, but you know he could always eat again.

Still, he's fucking beautiful, and it's not fair.

"I ought to go take a shower but if you keep doing that I may never leave," he mumbles against his arm.

[onceaviking]

Emcee is perceptive. It's an art form really, among vampires. Being able to make humans forget just how dangerous a vampire right next to you is.
Of course, with mainstreaming, it seems as if a lot of vampires are mainly concerned with making themselves forget how dangerous they are.

And that is indeed dangerous.

He turns his head to look over at Emcce. "Hmm?"
He heard him perfectly fine.

[i_am_your_host]

Now that forces a snorted chuckle out of him, and he rolls his eyes as he rolls over and sits up, wrapping his arms around his knees.

"Your innocent face is the least convincing of your expressions, darling. You might take another decade or so to work on that one."

[onceaviking]

"Really? I thought I was doing pretty well," Eric says, not at all embarrassed at being caught out.

"You can look if you like. I don't mind."

[i_am_your_host]

And there he goes, being charming. Making him forget.

"Oh, I know you don't mind. You don't do modest very well either, you know," he adds cheekily.

"Although, I will tell you, when I was a woman and you came up to me with your charming face on, I have to admit, I was rather smitten with that one. That is a good face. Keep that one."

[onceaviking]

"I am rather partial to that face myself as well," Eric says, smiling.

"If you want to, you can touch as well. It sometimes creates an urge."
The blood.
Or intensifies an existing one.

[i_am_your_host]

Annnnd there's the face.

He utters a short, exasperated half sigh, half chuckle.

"Ugh, darling, don't talk to me about urges. All of this, here?" He makes grand, sweeping gestures up and down Eric's body. "That is one big urge. All of it. Really. Honestly, I amaze myself that I am even sitting here within three feet of you, because resisting an urge as large as you requires a ludicrous amount of willpower, and I really ought to be taking that shower right now."

[onceaviking]

Eric laughs.

"Off you go then," he says. "Hang up the towels.when you are done."
He is rather enjoying smelling of sex right now. The way the scents layer. He can almost pretend his own scent is in there as well. Somewhere.

He stretches again and curls up on his side.

[i_am_your_host]

With a twitch of his lips, he slips off the bed.

"Yes, dear," he mutters like a beleaguered spouse, barely reining in a smirk as he crosses the room. Sparing Eric a glance over his shoulder, he enters the bathroom and closes the door behind him.

While in the (glorious) shower, he makes a mental note to write an act about big urges. Herman can play the urge. If it made a vampire laugh, then it ought to go over well with a drunk and horny crowd.

He also debates over whether he should stay or leave.

Pretty much if he wants to do something stupid or not.


Some twenty minutes later he emerges from the steam-filled bathroom, naked and scrubbed clean of blood. Glancing at Eric again, he heads for his clothes on the chair.

[onceaviking]

At some point while he was gone, Eric has taken off the soiled bedding and balled it up. It lies on the floor, the bloody traces mostly hidden.

Eric is still on the bed and it seems as if even a vampire might get tired from too much exercise.

He is sleeping.

Not the way he does during the day, on his back, still and cold and corpse like. But on his side, one hand palm up, next to his face.

His skin even still has that faint pink hue.

It's not a deep sleep.
He still looks peaceful.

[i_am_your_host]

Eric didn't say anything about dawn coming.

Perhaps he's just napping.

(So maybe his innocent face works in this particular situation. A little bit.)

Emcee quietly pulls on his trousers and buttons up the fly. But before he puts on anything else, he wanders about the room a little, barefooted. He peers at the picture of some sort of old ruins on a moonlight night and wonders what its significance is. Or if it's just something Eric likes.

[onceaviking]

"It's from Italy."

He even sounds drowsy, his voice soft and low.

"I bought it in a shop in New York because I remembered sleeping there, once. With Godric. There was a crypt or something."

[i_am_your_host]

He turns his head at the sound of his voice. And then looks back at the picture, seeing it in a completely different perspective now.

"It's beautiful." In a haunting, poignant way.

Godric.

He slips his hands into his trouser pockets and ambles back over to the bed. Sitting down on its edge, he draws a knee up to his chest and wraps his arms around his leg.

"What happened when you went back through your door?" he asks quietly. Eric knows when he means. It seems like such a long time ago when he found him on the couch, so distraught.

[onceaviking]

For a long while it seems like he might not answer.

Then he says, "I closed the door behind me. And I felt him die. Inside of me. It was over quickly. And he wasn't afraid."

[i_am_your_host]

He watches him, face bare.

And it seems like a long while before he answers.

"I'm sorry, darling," he murmurs.

"I suppose it is some comfort to know that he wasn't afraid. He felt no fear and so you did not have to feel any either. The girl was with him, wasn't she?"

[onceaviking]

"She was," Eric says.
And then, so softly it is almost hard to hear, "She cried for him.her cheeks were wet when she came down from the roof. And he - "

He hasn't told anyone. He hasn't even allowed himself to think about it. But he felt it. He felt it.

"He was joyous. Right before the pain. There was nothing but -"

He'd felt like he couldn't breathe, as he stood there, in the hallway, the blood already trickling from his ears and nose. Like he needed to breathe and couldn't.
Joy and wonder and he had been so full of his own grief and pain and -

[i_am_your_host]

There is a whole expanse of bed separating them.

But the Emcee is moved enough to cross it, to sit by him almost leaning against his hip, and to lay a hand on his shoulder. (Eric's skin is still warm-but-not-warm to the touch.)

It is difficult for a human to completely understand, but he can clearly hear and see Eric's conflicting emotions.

"And you wonder why he would feel such joy in his release when at the same time you were in anguish."

[onceaviking]

He looks away.

"I miss him."

He sounds small. Sad.
Lonely.

[i_am_your_host]

His faint voice is a heartbreaking contrast to the huge hunk of shoulder that the Emcee is stroking right now.

He sighs deeply.

"I know you do, darling."

He doesn't look at Eric directly, if that helps him (nobody likes being stared at when they're vulnerable), his hand still on his shoulder.

[onceaviking]

"But I can't. Not at home."

Being vulnerable is dangerous. And it wouldn't be fair to Pam. She needs him to be strong. Not weak.

So he doesn't feel it. When he is at home.

It's different here.