[fic] The Hunted - Chapter 14/? - PSoH
Jun. 16th, 2008 09:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yellowhordeDisclaimer: I don’t own Petshop of Horrors and I make no money from this or any other fanfic I write.
Pairing: Leon x D
Category: Supernatural/Alternate Universe
Rating: R
Warning: Violence, Language, Sexual Situations and Hermaphrodite!D
Title: The Hunted
Author: yellowhorde
Notes: This was written for NaNoWriMo 2007
Previous Chapters: Previous Chapters: Prologue 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13
“I’ve got to keep moving…” Joshua Fletcher gasped. Sweat trickled into his eyes, stinging. He swiped it away, leaving a smudge trail of blood – his blood – across his forehead and the bridge of his nose. “I’ve got to keep going. I can’t let them get me. I won’t.”
Overhead, the moon glided silently across the sky, peeking between the overhead branches, taunting the wounded man as he stumbled through the dark, making his way painfully through the tress and underbrush. The frantic beating of his heart roared in his ears and his breath burned through his overtaxed lungs. He wanted to stop, to rest, knew that he wouldn’t have a choice in the matter much longer, but he forced himself onward because he couldn’t take the chance, he had to keep moving… or die.
And right now he wanted to die. Or at least he thought he did. Never in his life had he ever suffered such searing agony. His flesh still screamed where that bitch cop’s bullet had slammed into his left shoulder, and he could feel the deadly silver burning, spreading its deadly particles into his flesh, his blood where it was whisked through his body, poisoning him. Killing him.
And the damned thing had to have been silver, he thought bitterly, or at least silver plated, otherwise his supernatural healing abilities would have kicked in by now and the wound would have closed without leaving so much as a scar to mark the spot of injury.
“Goddamn cops,” He wheezed painfully, “I wasn’t hurting anyone. I just want to go home.” The last words were those of a lost child’s, scared, tired and desperate for familiar surroundings and people that loved him.
After he had fled the scene of the attack, Joshua had torn across the wilderness in full werewolf form, covering the mountainous terrain much faster than he would have been able to as a mere human, wound or no wound. Once he judged that he was safe and out of hearing and scent range of any hunting party that might be in pursuit, and in no immediate danger of discovery, he had dropped wearily to his knees and transformed back to a human.
There had been several moments of internal conflict on whether he should change back or not because as a werewolf he was stronger, faster and better equipped to deal with anything Man or Mother Nature might decide to throw his way. But in the end, he figured it would be safer to transform back into his human state. After all, hunters and other bloodthirsty gun activists in California had a reputation of shooting werewolves, even suspected werewolves in human form, on sight. The whole fucking state was crazy.
He didn’t know if it was from being wounded or because he had forced a transformation twice in the same day without the help of the full moon, but after he was back to his original form, his stomach was lurching horribly and when he tried to climb to his feet, a wave of dizziness forced him back to his knees where he gulped and panted until the urge to vomit subsided. The symptoms were awfully similar to the ones he had experienced when he had donated blood right after his eighteenth birthday. That was, of course, before he had been diagnosed with Lycanthrope Disorder. There wasn’t a blood bank in the country that would accept his donation now, no one who would want to risk the werewolf’ curse.
Eventually the upset stomach and dizziness took a backseat to the painful burning that radiated from his shoulder and the dull, thudding monotony of his seemingly never ending trek. With each step he took, pain clawed through his body. In time that too became a blur as each individual ache and pain blended into the other until there was nothing but Pain and the dogged need to press ever onward.
Roughly a half hour after nightfall, he felt a warm trickle of liquid snaking down his chest. Touching his fingertips lightly to the wound, he felt blood seeping through the make-shift bandage and sling he had made by tearing off strips of his shirt.
“Shit,” he mumbled and leaned wearily against the nearest sturdy tree. He didn’t dare sit down, he didn’t know if he would have the strength to get back up again.
Grunting, he tore off another section of cloth and tied it clumsily over the wound and hoped that the scent of fresh blood wouldn’t attract any predators. He kept his eyes and ears tuned for sounds of movement, of pursuit, but the night was eerily silent.
For the past few hours he had been traveling in a more or less southwestern direction, doing his best to stay alongside the Antelope Valley Freeway, which eventually merged with the Golden State Freeway. As he stumbled along wearily, he sensed that the ground was beginning to slop downward and, judging from the haze of electrical light just over the trees in the distance, he had almost reached the city of Los Angeles.
Home.
Now, as he pushed his way through still more bushes, hungry, exhausted and weak from loss of blood, Josh took a few moments to gather his wits. He needed a plan if he was going to get out this mess. His original thoughts had been to get home to his family but he wasn’t sure it that was such a good idea now. The cops would be sure to look for him there, but where else could he possibly go? Who in their right mind would help a known werewolf, let alone one who had attacked a police officer?
It was self-defense! He thought bitterly and slapped an offending branch out of his way with a snarl. But they won’t give a shit one way or the other. I’m a werewolf – a goddamned monster - so, of course, it’s my fault.
And that more than anything infuriated him to no end. He hadn’t gone looking for trouble when he fled the Institute, but trouble sure had found him - by way of baying dogs out for blood. Whether his actions had been in self-defense or not, he had attacked one of the officers of the LAPD. That alone guaranteed that they would be hounding his ass. Cops tended to take assaulting an officer rather seriously and he knew they would stop at nothing to track him down. And this time, they would shoot to kill.
Joshua’s foot snagged on an unseen tree root and he was jarred rudely out of his thoughts. He stumbled forward with a curse, flailing his arms out desperately in an attempt to catch hold of something, anything, in order to break his fall, but there was nothing large enough at hand.
Desperately, he tried throwing his weight backwards to keep himself from falling on his face but in his haste he ended up overcompensating. As he overbalanced, his feet skidded along the sloping under cushion of pine needles and slipped neatly out from under him. He clawed at the trees, bushes and dried grasses as he tumbled down the slope but to no avail. A howl of agony ripped past his lips as he tumbled to a halt at the base of yet another hill and his injured shoulder came into sharp contact with a tree stump concealed by an overgrown bush.
Josh curled into a defensive fetal position and lay in the foliage panting for breath, helplessly blinking tears of pain and frustration from his eyes. Battered and bruised, he closed his eyes and prayed for an end to his misery. But if any deity heard him, they chose instead to turn a deaf ear to his lamentations.
He didn’t know how long he lay there but eventually exhaustion claimed him and he fell into a light, restless sleep. It was not restful, this sleep, but fraught with the savage baying of hounds and the unmistakable sounds of pursuit. With a gasp, his eyes snapped open and he strained his ears but he heard nothing but the sounds of nature and the whistling of the wind as it wound its way through the trees and mountains.
Wait, there was something… Joshua drew in a breath and held it as he listened intently.
Not pursuit, exactly, he figured, but rumblings of an automobile from just over the ridge. Nervous, he hoisted himself to his knees and crawled awkwardly to the top of the rise. Sharp rocks and branches stabbed into his knees and the heel and palm of his good hand, but he did his best to ignore them. When he reached the crest of the ridge, he hunkered down and peered between the dry grasses at the scene below.
It was a gas station, he saw, and a rather old one judging from the almost antique red and white fuel pumps. He could make out an old Mobile sign with its red O and sporting its winged horse mascot. Mentally comparing it to old photographs he had seen in his high school history class so long ago, he guessed that the original station with its white adobe and red Spanish tiles had been build sometime in the thirties or forties. The owner apparently wasn’t much in keeping with the times for the only indication that he was still in the 1990’s and hadn’t fallen into some weird time warp was the very current gas prices on display near the pumps.
As he watched, a stout man in overalls got out of his battered blue Ford truck and waddled inside, presumable to pay – in advance, Josh noted with some amusement - for his gas, and maybe pick up a snack or two for the road. Josh watched the transaction through the plate glass window. The overalls man smiled and joked with the cashier, who was certainly no spring chicken with a ring of hair as white and fine as snow circling an otherwise bald head. The purchase was wrung up and money exchanged hands. With another smile and a wave, the stout man returned to his truck, filled up, then drove away into the night.
For a long time Josh simply sat there, waiting to see if any more cars were going to pull up. Despite its ancient exterior, the station, which displayed a sign saying it was open 24/7, sported an ATM and, more importantly, a pay phone. No cars pulled up and the street leading away from the station was black and deserted. Inside the station, the cashier fixed himself a cup of coffee, then buried his nose into a crumpled copy of the Los Angeles Times.
Joshua gazed longingly at the payphone. He knew that there was no way he could walk to his mother’s house. He was tired, hungry, and his wound was still oozing blood. There was just no way he’d have the strength to get there. And he couldn’t risk being seen walking the streets in his injured state. No doubt by now, thanks to the police and the media, every single citizen of Los Angeles would know that there was a werewolf on the loose and they’d be on the look out for him.
But if I called for a ride… He dug his hand into his front jean pocket where he had stuffed his change after leaving the gas station in Acton. He couldn’t remember exactly how much money he had left, but he knew it was less than a dollar. Praying that any change he had hadn’t fallen out of his pocket when he took his spill, he breathed a sigh of relief when his fingers found several coins down with the lint. Three quarters and a few pennies. Just enough, he thought, to make one phone call.
Tucking the coins back in his pocket for safe keeping, he pulled himself wearily to his feet and started to make his way carefully down the slope. The last thing he needed was another fall. Once his feet hit solid concrete, he hurried over to the payphone, turning his head this way and that as he made sure no one was watching.
What if it’s out of order? Josh thought as he reached for the receiver. These payphones, he knew, were a prim target for vandalism and thieves. Or what if all it does is take my money without connecting me? It happens all the freaking time!
His heart seized at the thought, but he didn’t see any out of service signs and the only thing missing from the mini-booth was the telephone book, which he didn’t need anyway because he was dialing home, for Christ’s sake. And he had memorized that number along with his full name and home address when he was three years old at his mother’s insistence.
Scarcely daring to breathe, he picked up the receiver and the sound of the dial tone sent relief washing through his system. Licking his lips, he deposited the correct change into the coin slot then dialed his home phone number with fingers that weren’t quite steady.
The phone rang… and rang… and rang.
“Come on, come on,” he hissed under his breath, “someone pick up, please!”
He chewed at the ball of his thumb anxiously as the phone continued ringing. Movement off to the side caught his attention and he turned his head sharply as a disheveled man wearing little more than rags lurched toward him carrying a crumpled brown paper bag in one withered hand. Though he was still maybe twenty feet away, the rotten stink of him was unbelievable. Whoever he was, he hadn’t come into contact with soap and water for a long time.
How the hell did he slip in under my radar? Josh wondered, wrinkling his nose and trying to take only shallow breaths as the miasma surrounding the man drew nearer. Christ, he stinks! What has he been rolling around in, garbage?
“Hey, mister,” the hobo croaked, as he shambled closer. “Got any change?” A cagey grin revealed rotten teeth and swollen red gums. Grimy toes protruded from tattered sneakers and the skin on his face and arms was covered in red pustules.
“Uh… yeah,” Josh mumbled, digging back into his pocket and fishing out the rest of the coins. He dropped them into the hobo’s outstretched hand. “Sorry, that’s all I’ve got.”
“Every bit counts,” the hobo grinned and dug a dingy bottle from the sack and took a long pull of urine-yellow liquid. Some of it spilled down onto the scraggly beard on his chin. He belched and dragged his sleeve over his lips, then held the bottle out in open invitation.
“The name’s Harvey. You want to take a slug of this?”
“Uh… no, that’s alright.” Josh hedged and suppressed a shudder. “I’m trying to quit.”
“Good man,” Harvey mumbled, tapping his finger against the bridge of his nose in a knowing fashion. “Drink will kill you if you give it half a chance. Come on over to my place if you change your mind.” Slowly, he stumbled off and Josh watched him with a growing sense of pity.
On the other end of the line, the phone was picked up and a sleep-heavy voice mumbled, “Someone better be dead.”
Josh clutched at the receiver, his heart thudding wildly at the familiar voice of his younger brother. “Ian? Ian, it’s me, Josh! I need help, man.”
“Josh?” All trace of sleepiness vanished from his brother’s voice to be replaced by something sharp and wary. “The cops were by here the other day asking about you. Said you escaped from the Institute. Is that true?”
“Yeah, it’s true.” Josh’s heart seized in fear when he heard the cops had been at his house looking for him. Shit! What was he going to do now? Swallowing hard, he forced a cheerful touch on nonchalance into his voice that he most certainly did not feel at the moment. “That place was pretty lame. No pool, no video games. Sucked ass, man.”
Nervously, Joshua chewed at his bottom lip and cast his eyes in the direction the hobo – Harvey, his mind whispered – had shambled in. The wreck of a man stumbled over to a dumpster nestled off to the right and slightly behind the main building, pushed the top back then clamored inside the bin, no doubt searching for a late night snack.
No wonder I hadn’t been able to detect him before, Josh thought sadly. The poor man lives in garbage, eats garbage. Hell, his whole fucking life must be garbage. And why is he out here all alone? Where is his family? Doesn’t anyone care?
“There but for the grace of God go I,” he whispered, and shuddered.
“What are you talking about?” Ian asked, perplexed.
“Never mind,” Josh’s grip tightened on the receiver until the skin over his knuckles showed white half moons. He hadn’t seen or even talked to his brother in three years and all of a sudden he’s on the run, him, a dangerous werewolf, and calling his younger brother in the middle of the night from a payphone out in the middle of nowhere begging for help. It was a fucked up way of reach out and touch someone.
Though he was thrilled to hear his brother’s voice, he wasn’t so sure that contacting his family hadn’t been a mistake. Ian had said that the cops had been by asking questions about him. It seemed pretty likely that they would stop by again, perhaps even with a search warrant. And then where would he be? His family could be charged with aiding a fugitive.
While he didn’t want to drag his family into his problems, he didn’t have anyone else he could call, and no money to contact them even if he had. All of his friends and associates had pretty much dropped him like a hot potato as soon as news got out that he was infected with Lycanthropy Disorder. All the get-well cards and cards that had been on the table next to his hospital bed had been replaced with cold, accusing eyes and open hostility and fear.
“Where’s Mom?” He finally asked and closed his eyes as a wave of dizziness rolled slowly over him, sucking him precariously close to the end of his endurance.
“She’s in Sacramento,” Ian said with a yawn, “Attending some werewolf rights rally.”
Shit. She had something about that on her last visit. Talk about bad timing.
“Look, bro, I need your help here.” It embarrassed him that his voice was trembling, but he wasn’t able to make it stop. “I- I need help…. I’ve been shot… and….” His throat clicked as he tried to swallow. “It’s real bad.”
The wary quality in his brother’s voice dropped away instantly. “Jesus Christ! Why didn’t you say so in the first place, you idiot?” He demanded. “Where the hell are you?” “I’ll come pick you up.”
At first Josh thought it was relief that made him feel so weak in the knees - relief that his brother would help him, that after the initial wariness his natural love and concern for his older brother had become apparent once he learned of the severity of the situation - but dark spots were starting to crowd his vision and he realized with dim horror that he was starting to lose consciousness.
“Shit, I don’t know…” He groaned, shaking his head in an effort to clear it. “I’m at some old Mobile gas station that looks kind of like a Spanish mission.”
“Dude, I don’t what one you’re talking about.” He could hear the panic starting to build in his brother’s voice and it echoed his own. “Can you see a street sign or anything?”
Squinting around, Josh tried to find a street sign, a neon land marker, something. He settled for a battered sign near the end of the drive. “Hold on, I can’t read it from here. Give me a second.”
Unsteadily, he moved closer until he was able to make out the sign, then returned to his previous spot and mumbled the street name to his brother. The black spots were breeding like rabbits, wolfing down huge chunks of his vision with spectacular greed.
“Yeah, okay. Yeah, I think I know where you are. Uh….”
Ian’s voice was becoming muffled, fading as if into an encroaching fog. The phone’s receiver slipped from suddenly lax fingers and Josh’s eyes rolled white as he slumped to his knees. He swayed there for a second then collapsed, his face meeting rough concrete and not even that fresh pain could rouse him from his stupor.
“Just stay put, Josh… a-and I’ll be there in no time, okay? Okay?”
Dimly Josh could hear his brother’s voice as it piped out of the black receiver that dangled from the payphone, twisting side to side with a hypnotic metronomic rhythm, but Ian’s was getting smaller and smaller, slipping away at subway speed as the darkness surrounded him. It was surprisingly easy to let his mind wander, like falling asleep in the snow, the pain faded away as his mind unhinged itself.
Joshua Fletcher had finally reached the end of his endurance.
*
Leon Orcot was, by necessity, an early riser. Years of having to get up with the sun had molded him in ways he couldn’t even pretend to understand. It didn’t matter if he’d only gotten a few hours of sleep the night before or not. Once his internal clock told him it was time to get up, he was up, or at least awake, whether he wanted to be or not.
It’s not always a bad thing, he thought, glancing down at the sleeping man nestled next to him with one arm draped over his chest in an almost possessive manner.
D’s enviable long lashes brushed dark as soot against the smooth porcelain of his skin. Smiling a little, Leon ran his hand through D’s hair, brushing back a few strands that had fallen across his face. In the pre-dawn light, he could just make out the faintest hint of shadow under those extraordinary eyes. He would bet some serious money that the Count had been losing some Z’s over the last few days worrying over the little ‘marriage’ his grandfather had arranged for him when he was still a child.
It also hadn’t helped that they’d both stayed up to the wee hours of the morning for the past two nights becoming intimately familiar with each other’s bodies.
All in all, it’s been a very enjoyable weekend, he thought with a grin, if you ignore the whole being-mauled-by-an-enraged-werewolf thing.
Feeling more relaxed than he had in a dog’s age, Leon stretched awkwardly – he found the figure of eight brace and sling holding his left arm to be annoyingly restrictive – then leaned back against the pillows and dropped his hand lightly on D’s creamy shoulder. The other man made a soft 'mmm' sound then turned his face into Leon’s chest, nuzzling him like a sleepy kitten. It felt so good having D curled up next to him, so goddamned right… it was almost scary.
Despite the pain in his shoulder, Leon felt a strong stirring of desire, but he did his best to ignore it. He might be up for a quick round of hanky panky first thing in the morning, but he doubted D would share his enthusiasm. Besides, he needed to take a shower then grab some clean clothes from his apartment. Later he fancied a quick dip in the hotel’s fabulous swimming pool and a breakfast fit for a king. It wasn’t often he got to camp out for the weekend at a luxury hotel on someone else’s dime, namely D’s grandfather’s, and he planned to fully enjoy himself in the time he had left.
But nothing was going to get done if he stayed in bed all day. If he was going to get anything accomplished before having to check out and pick up his brother at three, he felt that an early start was in order.
“Wake up, sleepyhead,” Leon crooned, giving D’s shoulder a small shake.
D stirred, shifting so he was able to look him in the eyes. His brows formed a delicate frown and Leon had to smother a soft laugh at his rumpled appearance. While he was a morning person, D obviously was not. In fact, the Count’s inability to wake up in the morning was one of the reasons he depended so heavily on him to procure the delicious fruit tarts he so adored from that expensive bakery downtown, Madam C’s.
“What time is it?” D asked, turning his sleep-heavy eyes to Leon with mild disapproval.
“Almost six,” Leon replied easily, glancing over at the red digital display of the alarm clock on the nightstand.
“Heavens above,” D murmured and dropped his head back on Leon’s chest.
“You still tired?”
“Exhausted,” Came D’s muffled reply. He pressed a kiss to the warmth of his chest and Leon could feel his lips stretch into a smile when he shivered in response. “But in a very good way, I assure you, Detective.”
Leon cleared his throat as D stroked his hand smoothly along his torso, dragging the tips of his nails lightly along his skin, eliciting hordes of goose bumps in their wake.
“I need a shower.” He mumbled, a cold one, he mentally added, and began to gently extract himself from D, being careful not to jar his shoulder any more than he had to.
He was surprised when D caught hold of his hand as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and was getting ready to stand. Turning his head, he met D’s flushed gaze with puzzlement.
“Stay with me,” D leaned forward, head bowed, his dark hair fanning forward to conceal his expression. “Please,” he whispered. “Just for a little while longer.”
“But… I…” Leon was puzzled by D’s behavior and he wasn’t quite sure how to respond. So he gave an amiable half-shrug and went for the tried and true methods that had worked in the past. “Don’t you want breakfast? I hear they have fantastic fruit tarts here.”
“There’s still plenty of time for that,” D murmured and instead of going into a fit of orgasmic glee, as Leon had expected, and taking the bait, he instead caught his lips in a gentle kiss. When he pulled back slightly, his eyes were bright and his face slightly flushed. His gaze darted almost shyly to Leon’s blue ones, silently gauged his reaction, almost as if he were searching for approval.
What’s with this guy? Leon thought, frowning, He swings between demure and demanding as easily as I change my socks.
Curious, he shifted on the bed, bringing one hand to D’s shoulder. D bit his lower lip lightly at the contact. His eyes slid closed and he sighed softly. Something triggered in Leon’s mind and he grinned, suddenly sure he knew what D’s problem was.
With a teasing smile he slid his hands slowly down D’s arm, before skimming his fingers along his side as D had done to him only minutes before. He reached lower and when D gasped and tried to shift away in obvious embarrassment, he knew he had found the answer to his question.
“You’re horny,” he announced, then laughed. “Why didn’t you just tell me?” Leaning forward, he pressed his lips to D’s forehead. “I could’ve taken care of it for you.”
“Hormonal,” D corrected, primly, “Not horny, thank you. And I didn’t want to pressure you.”
“Can’t pressure the willing,” Leon quipped and eased himself back against the pillows, assuming, what he now joking thought of as ‘the position’, lying on his back, propped against a mountain of pillows. He reached for D, who remained where he was, looking, for lack of a better word, unhappy.
“What is it? D?”
“I’m not normally like this,” D murmured and his voice was so low Leon had to lean forward to hear him, “so forward about the demands of my own body.” He moved his shoulders in a vaguely dismissing gesture. “When I hunger, I eat, when I thirst, I drink. All of my physical needs are met, but, desire… That is something I’ve never allowed myself to truly feel, not before I joined with you.”
He glanced at Leon, whose brows had winged up. “Never?” he asked, incredulous.
“Oh, I’ve felt desire before, Detective,” D corrected quickly, lest he give Leon the wrong impression. “I suppose I should say that I never allowed myself to act upon such feelings.”
“Okay. So…what’s the problem?” Leon asked, trying to understand what D was telling him, and more importantly, why. But he somehow sensed that he was too oafish, too male to fully grasp the significance, and there had to be one, otherwise, why would D be telling him this? No doubt Jill would tell him that he’d never understand because he was just a guy, but damn it, so was D… sort of. True, he certainly wasn’t like any guy he’d ever met… Oh, hell, he wasn’t even entirely male.
Male and female, yin and yang, D had to balance both his feminine and masculine sides and it couldn’t be a simple task. Conflicting feelings, alternate ways of looking at the world, of responding… being. Men and women were different, damn it, and not just in the parts they sprouted. Leon knew that he would probably never truly understand D because there was no one on earth like quite like him. But that didn’t mean he didn’t want to try.
“The problem,” D snapped, “As you so elegantly put it, my dear Detective, is that I can’t shut them off anymore! I- I-“ He threw up his hands with a frustrated cry at his apparent inability to express himself.
“Whoa, D,” Leon lurched upright, wincing as the bones protested the sudden moves. “Calm down, now, just breathe, okay?”
Awkwardly, Leon pulled D into a rough one armed embrace, resting his forehead against D’s. “It’s okay…” he murmured, running his hand along D’s back in soothing circles, “Just relax and, you know, tell me what’s wrong.”
“Being around you… now… You make me feel so much and it’s… it’s overwhelming. It’s like something inside me swells when I see you and sometimes…” Unconsciously, he placed one trembling hand over his heart. “It isn’t pain, exactly, more like an ache, a powerful yearning and… and I can’t control myself.”
Ah, Leon thought, so that was the problem - control, or more precisely, D’s loss of control.
Without a word, he pulled D against him and gently lowered them both until they were lying back down on the bed. D went down willingly enough, but simply rested his head on his chest and refused to meet his eyes, as if embarrassed by his emotional outburst, of his loss of control, which was ridiculous because, except for where sweets were concerned, Leon would have to admit that D was one of the calmest, most collected people he’d ever met.
At least, he thought with a rueful grin, as long as he wasn’t badgering him about his manners or the disaster area that was his apartment or the girly pictures on his walls, or any of the other one hundred little things he did that set him off.
D’s anger he could deal with, hell, he would prefer his rage to… whatever this was. At least he understood D when he was angry, knew what had set him off and why. He’d never been one of those touchy-feely, get-in-touch-with-your-inner feelings guys. He liked his feelings like he liked his scotch – straight up.
“This is all Grandfather’s fault,” D mumbled unhappily.
Leon didn’t know what exactly what D meant by that, but he assumed that it had something to do with the contract. Hell, if he were in D’s position, pressured by his family to get pregnant in order to basically save their race from extinction, he’d probably be pretty messed up, too.
“D, feelings aren’t things that you can just turn on and off like a light switch, you know?” Absently, Leon stroked his good hand through D’s short hair. “I can’t tell you what you should be feeling or how you should be dealing with them, but I’d say that your best bet would be to follow them, wherever they lead you. We have them for a reason.”
He felt D slowly relax against him and he smiled when he turned to look at him with somber eyes.
“You’re a surprisingly wise man, Leon Orcot,” D said softly, and leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the lips. Then he smiled mischievously as he stroked his hands down along his chest, skimming his abs and dipping daringly lower, “for a human. I shall follow your sagely advice.”
He kissed Leon again, and if Leon had any trouble reading his obvious intentions, any misunderstandings were immediately cleared as D cupped his hand around his flaccid cock, forcing a surprised chuckle from him.
D captured Leon’s good hand with his own, entwining their fingers and bringing them up to his lips. He buzzed the knuckles with his lips, then drew Leon’s arm above his head, where he pinned them against the pillows.
“I thought you were tired, D,” he laughed as he felt a renewed stirring of lust as D fondled him into life.
“I’m not that tired, Detective.” D smirked and lowered his head to take one of Leon’s nipples into his mouth. He teased the nub to erection with his tongue, nipped it sharply which caught Leon by surprise.
Grinning, he soothed both the pain and Leon with a tender kiss. “Just trust me, alright?” He murmured, throwing Leon’s own words back at him. “If you don’t like it, we’ll stop. I promise.”
And that was how, despite his best intentions, Leon ended up having a late start anyway.
TO BE CONTINUED…
CHAPTER 15
As always, constructive criticism is welcomed.
Pairing: Leon x D
Category: Supernatural/Alternate Universe
Rating: R
Warning: Violence, Language, Sexual Situations and Hermaphrodite!D
Title: The Hunted
Author: yellowhorde
Notes: This was written for NaNoWriMo 2007
Previous Chapters: Previous Chapters: Prologue 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13
“I’ve got to keep moving…” Joshua Fletcher gasped. Sweat trickled into his eyes, stinging. He swiped it away, leaving a smudge trail of blood – his blood – across his forehead and the bridge of his nose. “I’ve got to keep going. I can’t let them get me. I won’t.”
Overhead, the moon glided silently across the sky, peeking between the overhead branches, taunting the wounded man as he stumbled through the dark, making his way painfully through the tress and underbrush. The frantic beating of his heart roared in his ears and his breath burned through his overtaxed lungs. He wanted to stop, to rest, knew that he wouldn’t have a choice in the matter much longer, but he forced himself onward because he couldn’t take the chance, he had to keep moving… or die.
And right now he wanted to die. Or at least he thought he did. Never in his life had he ever suffered such searing agony. His flesh still screamed where that bitch cop’s bullet had slammed into his left shoulder, and he could feel the deadly silver burning, spreading its deadly particles into his flesh, his blood where it was whisked through his body, poisoning him. Killing him.
And the damned thing had to have been silver, he thought bitterly, or at least silver plated, otherwise his supernatural healing abilities would have kicked in by now and the wound would have closed without leaving so much as a scar to mark the spot of injury.
“Goddamn cops,” He wheezed painfully, “I wasn’t hurting anyone. I just want to go home.” The last words were those of a lost child’s, scared, tired and desperate for familiar surroundings and people that loved him.
After he had fled the scene of the attack, Joshua had torn across the wilderness in full werewolf form, covering the mountainous terrain much faster than he would have been able to as a mere human, wound or no wound. Once he judged that he was safe and out of hearing and scent range of any hunting party that might be in pursuit, and in no immediate danger of discovery, he had dropped wearily to his knees and transformed back to a human.
There had been several moments of internal conflict on whether he should change back or not because as a werewolf he was stronger, faster and better equipped to deal with anything Man or Mother Nature might decide to throw his way. But in the end, he figured it would be safer to transform back into his human state. After all, hunters and other bloodthirsty gun activists in California had a reputation of shooting werewolves, even suspected werewolves in human form, on sight. The whole fucking state was crazy.
He didn’t know if it was from being wounded or because he had forced a transformation twice in the same day without the help of the full moon, but after he was back to his original form, his stomach was lurching horribly and when he tried to climb to his feet, a wave of dizziness forced him back to his knees where he gulped and panted until the urge to vomit subsided. The symptoms were awfully similar to the ones he had experienced when he had donated blood right after his eighteenth birthday. That was, of course, before he had been diagnosed with Lycanthrope Disorder. There wasn’t a blood bank in the country that would accept his donation now, no one who would want to risk the werewolf’ curse.
Eventually the upset stomach and dizziness took a backseat to the painful burning that radiated from his shoulder and the dull, thudding monotony of his seemingly never ending trek. With each step he took, pain clawed through his body. In time that too became a blur as each individual ache and pain blended into the other until there was nothing but Pain and the dogged need to press ever onward.
Roughly a half hour after nightfall, he felt a warm trickle of liquid snaking down his chest. Touching his fingertips lightly to the wound, he felt blood seeping through the make-shift bandage and sling he had made by tearing off strips of his shirt.
“Shit,” he mumbled and leaned wearily against the nearest sturdy tree. He didn’t dare sit down, he didn’t know if he would have the strength to get back up again.
Grunting, he tore off another section of cloth and tied it clumsily over the wound and hoped that the scent of fresh blood wouldn’t attract any predators. He kept his eyes and ears tuned for sounds of movement, of pursuit, but the night was eerily silent.
For the past few hours he had been traveling in a more or less southwestern direction, doing his best to stay alongside the Antelope Valley Freeway, which eventually merged with the Golden State Freeway. As he stumbled along wearily, he sensed that the ground was beginning to slop downward and, judging from the haze of electrical light just over the trees in the distance, he had almost reached the city of Los Angeles.
Home.
Now, as he pushed his way through still more bushes, hungry, exhausted and weak from loss of blood, Josh took a few moments to gather his wits. He needed a plan if he was going to get out this mess. His original thoughts had been to get home to his family but he wasn’t sure it that was such a good idea now. The cops would be sure to look for him there, but where else could he possibly go? Who in their right mind would help a known werewolf, let alone one who had attacked a police officer?
It was self-defense! He thought bitterly and slapped an offending branch out of his way with a snarl. But they won’t give a shit one way or the other. I’m a werewolf – a goddamned monster - so, of course, it’s my fault.
And that more than anything infuriated him to no end. He hadn’t gone looking for trouble when he fled the Institute, but trouble sure had found him - by way of baying dogs out for blood. Whether his actions had been in self-defense or not, he had attacked one of the officers of the LAPD. That alone guaranteed that they would be hounding his ass. Cops tended to take assaulting an officer rather seriously and he knew they would stop at nothing to track him down. And this time, they would shoot to kill.
Joshua’s foot snagged on an unseen tree root and he was jarred rudely out of his thoughts. He stumbled forward with a curse, flailing his arms out desperately in an attempt to catch hold of something, anything, in order to break his fall, but there was nothing large enough at hand.
Desperately, he tried throwing his weight backwards to keep himself from falling on his face but in his haste he ended up overcompensating. As he overbalanced, his feet skidded along the sloping under cushion of pine needles and slipped neatly out from under him. He clawed at the trees, bushes and dried grasses as he tumbled down the slope but to no avail. A howl of agony ripped past his lips as he tumbled to a halt at the base of yet another hill and his injured shoulder came into sharp contact with a tree stump concealed by an overgrown bush.
Josh curled into a defensive fetal position and lay in the foliage panting for breath, helplessly blinking tears of pain and frustration from his eyes. Battered and bruised, he closed his eyes and prayed for an end to his misery. But if any deity heard him, they chose instead to turn a deaf ear to his lamentations.
He didn’t know how long he lay there but eventually exhaustion claimed him and he fell into a light, restless sleep. It was not restful, this sleep, but fraught with the savage baying of hounds and the unmistakable sounds of pursuit. With a gasp, his eyes snapped open and he strained his ears but he heard nothing but the sounds of nature and the whistling of the wind as it wound its way through the trees and mountains.
Wait, there was something… Joshua drew in a breath and held it as he listened intently.
Not pursuit, exactly, he figured, but rumblings of an automobile from just over the ridge. Nervous, he hoisted himself to his knees and crawled awkwardly to the top of the rise. Sharp rocks and branches stabbed into his knees and the heel and palm of his good hand, but he did his best to ignore them. When he reached the crest of the ridge, he hunkered down and peered between the dry grasses at the scene below.
It was a gas station, he saw, and a rather old one judging from the almost antique red and white fuel pumps. He could make out an old Mobile sign with its red O and sporting its winged horse mascot. Mentally comparing it to old photographs he had seen in his high school history class so long ago, he guessed that the original station with its white adobe and red Spanish tiles had been build sometime in the thirties or forties. The owner apparently wasn’t much in keeping with the times for the only indication that he was still in the 1990’s and hadn’t fallen into some weird time warp was the very current gas prices on display near the pumps.
As he watched, a stout man in overalls got out of his battered blue Ford truck and waddled inside, presumable to pay – in advance, Josh noted with some amusement - for his gas, and maybe pick up a snack or two for the road. Josh watched the transaction through the plate glass window. The overalls man smiled and joked with the cashier, who was certainly no spring chicken with a ring of hair as white and fine as snow circling an otherwise bald head. The purchase was wrung up and money exchanged hands. With another smile and a wave, the stout man returned to his truck, filled up, then drove away into the night.
For a long time Josh simply sat there, waiting to see if any more cars were going to pull up. Despite its ancient exterior, the station, which displayed a sign saying it was open 24/7, sported an ATM and, more importantly, a pay phone. No cars pulled up and the street leading away from the station was black and deserted. Inside the station, the cashier fixed himself a cup of coffee, then buried his nose into a crumpled copy of the Los Angeles Times.
Joshua gazed longingly at the payphone. He knew that there was no way he could walk to his mother’s house. He was tired, hungry, and his wound was still oozing blood. There was just no way he’d have the strength to get there. And he couldn’t risk being seen walking the streets in his injured state. No doubt by now, thanks to the police and the media, every single citizen of Los Angeles would know that there was a werewolf on the loose and they’d be on the look out for him.
But if I called for a ride… He dug his hand into his front jean pocket where he had stuffed his change after leaving the gas station in Acton. He couldn’t remember exactly how much money he had left, but he knew it was less than a dollar. Praying that any change he had hadn’t fallen out of his pocket when he took his spill, he breathed a sigh of relief when his fingers found several coins down with the lint. Three quarters and a few pennies. Just enough, he thought, to make one phone call.
Tucking the coins back in his pocket for safe keeping, he pulled himself wearily to his feet and started to make his way carefully down the slope. The last thing he needed was another fall. Once his feet hit solid concrete, he hurried over to the payphone, turning his head this way and that as he made sure no one was watching.
What if it’s out of order? Josh thought as he reached for the receiver. These payphones, he knew, were a prim target for vandalism and thieves. Or what if all it does is take my money without connecting me? It happens all the freaking time!
His heart seized at the thought, but he didn’t see any out of service signs and the only thing missing from the mini-booth was the telephone book, which he didn’t need anyway because he was dialing home, for Christ’s sake. And he had memorized that number along with his full name and home address when he was three years old at his mother’s insistence.
Scarcely daring to breathe, he picked up the receiver and the sound of the dial tone sent relief washing through his system. Licking his lips, he deposited the correct change into the coin slot then dialed his home phone number with fingers that weren’t quite steady.
The phone rang… and rang… and rang.
“Come on, come on,” he hissed under his breath, “someone pick up, please!”
He chewed at the ball of his thumb anxiously as the phone continued ringing. Movement off to the side caught his attention and he turned his head sharply as a disheveled man wearing little more than rags lurched toward him carrying a crumpled brown paper bag in one withered hand. Though he was still maybe twenty feet away, the rotten stink of him was unbelievable. Whoever he was, he hadn’t come into contact with soap and water for a long time.
How the hell did he slip in under my radar? Josh wondered, wrinkling his nose and trying to take only shallow breaths as the miasma surrounding the man drew nearer. Christ, he stinks! What has he been rolling around in, garbage?
“Hey, mister,” the hobo croaked, as he shambled closer. “Got any change?” A cagey grin revealed rotten teeth and swollen red gums. Grimy toes protruded from tattered sneakers and the skin on his face and arms was covered in red pustules.
“Uh… yeah,” Josh mumbled, digging back into his pocket and fishing out the rest of the coins. He dropped them into the hobo’s outstretched hand. “Sorry, that’s all I’ve got.”
“Every bit counts,” the hobo grinned and dug a dingy bottle from the sack and took a long pull of urine-yellow liquid. Some of it spilled down onto the scraggly beard on his chin. He belched and dragged his sleeve over his lips, then held the bottle out in open invitation.
“The name’s Harvey. You want to take a slug of this?”
“Uh… no, that’s alright.” Josh hedged and suppressed a shudder. “I’m trying to quit.”
“Good man,” Harvey mumbled, tapping his finger against the bridge of his nose in a knowing fashion. “Drink will kill you if you give it half a chance. Come on over to my place if you change your mind.” Slowly, he stumbled off and Josh watched him with a growing sense of pity.
On the other end of the line, the phone was picked up and a sleep-heavy voice mumbled, “Someone better be dead.”
Josh clutched at the receiver, his heart thudding wildly at the familiar voice of his younger brother. “Ian? Ian, it’s me, Josh! I need help, man.”
“Josh?” All trace of sleepiness vanished from his brother’s voice to be replaced by something sharp and wary. “The cops were by here the other day asking about you. Said you escaped from the Institute. Is that true?”
“Yeah, it’s true.” Josh’s heart seized in fear when he heard the cops had been at his house looking for him. Shit! What was he going to do now? Swallowing hard, he forced a cheerful touch on nonchalance into his voice that he most certainly did not feel at the moment. “That place was pretty lame. No pool, no video games. Sucked ass, man.”
Nervously, Joshua chewed at his bottom lip and cast his eyes in the direction the hobo – Harvey, his mind whispered – had shambled in. The wreck of a man stumbled over to a dumpster nestled off to the right and slightly behind the main building, pushed the top back then clamored inside the bin, no doubt searching for a late night snack.
No wonder I hadn’t been able to detect him before, Josh thought sadly. The poor man lives in garbage, eats garbage. Hell, his whole fucking life must be garbage. And why is he out here all alone? Where is his family? Doesn’t anyone care?
“There but for the grace of God go I,” he whispered, and shuddered.
“What are you talking about?” Ian asked, perplexed.
“Never mind,” Josh’s grip tightened on the receiver until the skin over his knuckles showed white half moons. He hadn’t seen or even talked to his brother in three years and all of a sudden he’s on the run, him, a dangerous werewolf, and calling his younger brother in the middle of the night from a payphone out in the middle of nowhere begging for help. It was a fucked up way of reach out and touch someone.
Though he was thrilled to hear his brother’s voice, he wasn’t so sure that contacting his family hadn’t been a mistake. Ian had said that the cops had been by asking questions about him. It seemed pretty likely that they would stop by again, perhaps even with a search warrant. And then where would he be? His family could be charged with aiding a fugitive.
While he didn’t want to drag his family into his problems, he didn’t have anyone else he could call, and no money to contact them even if he had. All of his friends and associates had pretty much dropped him like a hot potato as soon as news got out that he was infected with Lycanthropy Disorder. All the get-well cards and cards that had been on the table next to his hospital bed had been replaced with cold, accusing eyes and open hostility and fear.
“Where’s Mom?” He finally asked and closed his eyes as a wave of dizziness rolled slowly over him, sucking him precariously close to the end of his endurance.
“She’s in Sacramento,” Ian said with a yawn, “Attending some werewolf rights rally.”
Shit. She had something about that on her last visit. Talk about bad timing.
“Look, bro, I need your help here.” It embarrassed him that his voice was trembling, but he wasn’t able to make it stop. “I- I need help…. I’ve been shot… and….” His throat clicked as he tried to swallow. “It’s real bad.”
The wary quality in his brother’s voice dropped away instantly. “Jesus Christ! Why didn’t you say so in the first place, you idiot?” He demanded. “Where the hell are you?” “I’ll come pick you up.”
At first Josh thought it was relief that made him feel so weak in the knees - relief that his brother would help him, that after the initial wariness his natural love and concern for his older brother had become apparent once he learned of the severity of the situation - but dark spots were starting to crowd his vision and he realized with dim horror that he was starting to lose consciousness.
“Shit, I don’t know…” He groaned, shaking his head in an effort to clear it. “I’m at some old Mobile gas station that looks kind of like a Spanish mission.”
“Dude, I don’t what one you’re talking about.” He could hear the panic starting to build in his brother’s voice and it echoed his own. “Can you see a street sign or anything?”
Squinting around, Josh tried to find a street sign, a neon land marker, something. He settled for a battered sign near the end of the drive. “Hold on, I can’t read it from here. Give me a second.”
Unsteadily, he moved closer until he was able to make out the sign, then returned to his previous spot and mumbled the street name to his brother. The black spots were breeding like rabbits, wolfing down huge chunks of his vision with spectacular greed.
“Yeah, okay. Yeah, I think I know where you are. Uh….”
Ian’s voice was becoming muffled, fading as if into an encroaching fog. The phone’s receiver slipped from suddenly lax fingers and Josh’s eyes rolled white as he slumped to his knees. He swayed there for a second then collapsed, his face meeting rough concrete and not even that fresh pain could rouse him from his stupor.
“Just stay put, Josh… a-and I’ll be there in no time, okay? Okay?”
Dimly Josh could hear his brother’s voice as it piped out of the black receiver that dangled from the payphone, twisting side to side with a hypnotic metronomic rhythm, but Ian’s was getting smaller and smaller, slipping away at subway speed as the darkness surrounded him. It was surprisingly easy to let his mind wander, like falling asleep in the snow, the pain faded away as his mind unhinged itself.
Joshua Fletcher had finally reached the end of his endurance.
*
Leon Orcot was, by necessity, an early riser. Years of having to get up with the sun had molded him in ways he couldn’t even pretend to understand. It didn’t matter if he’d only gotten a few hours of sleep the night before or not. Once his internal clock told him it was time to get up, he was up, or at least awake, whether he wanted to be or not.
It’s not always a bad thing, he thought, glancing down at the sleeping man nestled next to him with one arm draped over his chest in an almost possessive manner.
D’s enviable long lashes brushed dark as soot against the smooth porcelain of his skin. Smiling a little, Leon ran his hand through D’s hair, brushing back a few strands that had fallen across his face. In the pre-dawn light, he could just make out the faintest hint of shadow under those extraordinary eyes. He would bet some serious money that the Count had been losing some Z’s over the last few days worrying over the little ‘marriage’ his grandfather had arranged for him when he was still a child.
It also hadn’t helped that they’d both stayed up to the wee hours of the morning for the past two nights becoming intimately familiar with each other’s bodies.
All in all, it’s been a very enjoyable weekend, he thought with a grin, if you ignore the whole being-mauled-by-an-enraged-werewolf thing.
Feeling more relaxed than he had in a dog’s age, Leon stretched awkwardly – he found the figure of eight brace and sling holding his left arm to be annoyingly restrictive – then leaned back against the pillows and dropped his hand lightly on D’s creamy shoulder. The other man made a soft 'mmm' sound then turned his face into Leon’s chest, nuzzling him like a sleepy kitten. It felt so good having D curled up next to him, so goddamned right… it was almost scary.
Despite the pain in his shoulder, Leon felt a strong stirring of desire, but he did his best to ignore it. He might be up for a quick round of hanky panky first thing in the morning, but he doubted D would share his enthusiasm. Besides, he needed to take a shower then grab some clean clothes from his apartment. Later he fancied a quick dip in the hotel’s fabulous swimming pool and a breakfast fit for a king. It wasn’t often he got to camp out for the weekend at a luxury hotel on someone else’s dime, namely D’s grandfather’s, and he planned to fully enjoy himself in the time he had left.
But nothing was going to get done if he stayed in bed all day. If he was going to get anything accomplished before having to check out and pick up his brother at three, he felt that an early start was in order.
“Wake up, sleepyhead,” Leon crooned, giving D’s shoulder a small shake.
D stirred, shifting so he was able to look him in the eyes. His brows formed a delicate frown and Leon had to smother a soft laugh at his rumpled appearance. While he was a morning person, D obviously was not. In fact, the Count’s inability to wake up in the morning was one of the reasons he depended so heavily on him to procure the delicious fruit tarts he so adored from that expensive bakery downtown, Madam C’s.
“What time is it?” D asked, turning his sleep-heavy eyes to Leon with mild disapproval.
“Almost six,” Leon replied easily, glancing over at the red digital display of the alarm clock on the nightstand.
“Heavens above,” D murmured and dropped his head back on Leon’s chest.
“You still tired?”
“Exhausted,” Came D’s muffled reply. He pressed a kiss to the warmth of his chest and Leon could feel his lips stretch into a smile when he shivered in response. “But in a very good way, I assure you, Detective.”
Leon cleared his throat as D stroked his hand smoothly along his torso, dragging the tips of his nails lightly along his skin, eliciting hordes of goose bumps in their wake.
“I need a shower.” He mumbled, a cold one, he mentally added, and began to gently extract himself from D, being careful not to jar his shoulder any more than he had to.
He was surprised when D caught hold of his hand as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and was getting ready to stand. Turning his head, he met D’s flushed gaze with puzzlement.
“Stay with me,” D leaned forward, head bowed, his dark hair fanning forward to conceal his expression. “Please,” he whispered. “Just for a little while longer.”
“But… I…” Leon was puzzled by D’s behavior and he wasn’t quite sure how to respond. So he gave an amiable half-shrug and went for the tried and true methods that had worked in the past. “Don’t you want breakfast? I hear they have fantastic fruit tarts here.”
“There’s still plenty of time for that,” D murmured and instead of going into a fit of orgasmic glee, as Leon had expected, and taking the bait, he instead caught his lips in a gentle kiss. When he pulled back slightly, his eyes were bright and his face slightly flushed. His gaze darted almost shyly to Leon’s blue ones, silently gauged his reaction, almost as if he were searching for approval.
What’s with this guy? Leon thought, frowning, He swings between demure and demanding as easily as I change my socks.
Curious, he shifted on the bed, bringing one hand to D’s shoulder. D bit his lower lip lightly at the contact. His eyes slid closed and he sighed softly. Something triggered in Leon’s mind and he grinned, suddenly sure he knew what D’s problem was.
With a teasing smile he slid his hands slowly down D’s arm, before skimming his fingers along his side as D had done to him only minutes before. He reached lower and when D gasped and tried to shift away in obvious embarrassment, he knew he had found the answer to his question.
“You’re horny,” he announced, then laughed. “Why didn’t you just tell me?” Leaning forward, he pressed his lips to D’s forehead. “I could’ve taken care of it for you.”
“Hormonal,” D corrected, primly, “Not horny, thank you. And I didn’t want to pressure you.”
“Can’t pressure the willing,” Leon quipped and eased himself back against the pillows, assuming, what he now joking thought of as ‘the position’, lying on his back, propped against a mountain of pillows. He reached for D, who remained where he was, looking, for lack of a better word, unhappy.
“What is it? D?”
“I’m not normally like this,” D murmured and his voice was so low Leon had to lean forward to hear him, “so forward about the demands of my own body.” He moved his shoulders in a vaguely dismissing gesture. “When I hunger, I eat, when I thirst, I drink. All of my physical needs are met, but, desire… That is something I’ve never allowed myself to truly feel, not before I joined with you.”
He glanced at Leon, whose brows had winged up. “Never?” he asked, incredulous.
“Oh, I’ve felt desire before, Detective,” D corrected quickly, lest he give Leon the wrong impression. “I suppose I should say that I never allowed myself to act upon such feelings.”
“Okay. So…what’s the problem?” Leon asked, trying to understand what D was telling him, and more importantly, why. But he somehow sensed that he was too oafish, too male to fully grasp the significance, and there had to be one, otherwise, why would D be telling him this? No doubt Jill would tell him that he’d never understand because he was just a guy, but damn it, so was D… sort of. True, he certainly wasn’t like any guy he’d ever met… Oh, hell, he wasn’t even entirely male.
Male and female, yin and yang, D had to balance both his feminine and masculine sides and it couldn’t be a simple task. Conflicting feelings, alternate ways of looking at the world, of responding… being. Men and women were different, damn it, and not just in the parts they sprouted. Leon knew that he would probably never truly understand D because there was no one on earth like quite like him. But that didn’t mean he didn’t want to try.
“The problem,” D snapped, “As you so elegantly put it, my dear Detective, is that I can’t shut them off anymore! I- I-“ He threw up his hands with a frustrated cry at his apparent inability to express himself.
“Whoa, D,” Leon lurched upright, wincing as the bones protested the sudden moves. “Calm down, now, just breathe, okay?”
Awkwardly, Leon pulled D into a rough one armed embrace, resting his forehead against D’s. “It’s okay…” he murmured, running his hand along D’s back in soothing circles, “Just relax and, you know, tell me what’s wrong.”
“Being around you… now… You make me feel so much and it’s… it’s overwhelming. It’s like something inside me swells when I see you and sometimes…” Unconsciously, he placed one trembling hand over his heart. “It isn’t pain, exactly, more like an ache, a powerful yearning and… and I can’t control myself.”
Ah, Leon thought, so that was the problem - control, or more precisely, D’s loss of control.
Without a word, he pulled D against him and gently lowered them both until they were lying back down on the bed. D went down willingly enough, but simply rested his head on his chest and refused to meet his eyes, as if embarrassed by his emotional outburst, of his loss of control, which was ridiculous because, except for where sweets were concerned, Leon would have to admit that D was one of the calmest, most collected people he’d ever met.
At least, he thought with a rueful grin, as long as he wasn’t badgering him about his manners or the disaster area that was his apartment or the girly pictures on his walls, or any of the other one hundred little things he did that set him off.
D’s anger he could deal with, hell, he would prefer his rage to… whatever this was. At least he understood D when he was angry, knew what had set him off and why. He’d never been one of those touchy-feely, get-in-touch-with-your-inner feelings guys. He liked his feelings like he liked his scotch – straight up.
“This is all Grandfather’s fault,” D mumbled unhappily.
Leon didn’t know what exactly what D meant by that, but he assumed that it had something to do with the contract. Hell, if he were in D’s position, pressured by his family to get pregnant in order to basically save their race from extinction, he’d probably be pretty messed up, too.
“D, feelings aren’t things that you can just turn on and off like a light switch, you know?” Absently, Leon stroked his good hand through D’s short hair. “I can’t tell you what you should be feeling or how you should be dealing with them, but I’d say that your best bet would be to follow them, wherever they lead you. We have them for a reason.”
He felt D slowly relax against him and he smiled when he turned to look at him with somber eyes.
“You’re a surprisingly wise man, Leon Orcot,” D said softly, and leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the lips. Then he smiled mischievously as he stroked his hands down along his chest, skimming his abs and dipping daringly lower, “for a human. I shall follow your sagely advice.”
He kissed Leon again, and if Leon had any trouble reading his obvious intentions, any misunderstandings were immediately cleared as D cupped his hand around his flaccid cock, forcing a surprised chuckle from him.
D captured Leon’s good hand with his own, entwining their fingers and bringing them up to his lips. He buzzed the knuckles with his lips, then drew Leon’s arm above his head, where he pinned them against the pillows.
“I thought you were tired, D,” he laughed as he felt a renewed stirring of lust as D fondled him into life.
“I’m not that tired, Detective.” D smirked and lowered his head to take one of Leon’s nipples into his mouth. He teased the nub to erection with his tongue, nipped it sharply which caught Leon by surprise.
Grinning, he soothed both the pain and Leon with a tender kiss. “Just trust me, alright?” He murmured, throwing Leon’s own words back at him. “If you don’t like it, we’ll stop. I promise.”
And that was how, despite his best intentions, Leon ended up having a late start anyway.
TO BE CONTINUED…
CHAPTER 15
As always, constructive criticism is welcomed.
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Date: 2008-06-19 06:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-22 05:34 am (UTC)