**Interlude 7 - Reveal what rites the Gods immortal please, and what the means their anger to appease

The days that followed Colombe’s finding Fabien’s half-dead body slumped in her doorway would likely be a blur when he looked back on them. Weak as he was with the loss of blood and the exhaustion that flayed his nerves, the boy did little but sleep, his throat dark with blood and the thin skin under his eyes vivid with bone-deep weariness.

The pair were cautious towards each other for a time. There was a hesitancy in the girl’s demeanour that hadn’t been there since the earliest days, but it seemed the dreadful knowledge they had gained about one another could be, if not forgotten, at the very least skirted for a time and they quickly remembered the rhythm of their companionship.

There was much left unsaid but in that gap, intimacy carefully blossomed.

She allowed the wounded boy to stay in her room. His makeshift bed of blankets was reconstructed on the floor but as he recovered his strength they would just as often have their one-sided conversations in her bed, talking their pidgin language of gesture and word until their heads slumped on each other’s shoulder.

The wound at the girl’s collar healed to a dark scab that lended her something of a roguish aspect, and then eventually a fine white scar. Fabien’s injuries healed much more slowly, to his great frustration, and would be tender for a long while yet. Colombe insisted on wrapping his neck with fresh bandages although it was likely this was just as much so she could avoid looking at the grisly mark of the vampire’s teeth.

She was busy as ever with the myriad tasks required to keep the house running, and during the day her visits back to her room and the friend that waited for her with the affection of an excitable dog were brief. The vampire had not provided her another opportunity to purchase food and for a time meals were sparse - a crust of bread and a slab of hard cheese or an apple misshapen from where she’d cut the rot away. But soon enough the master of the house relented and she returned from her foray into the living world with plenty for hot meals and a few bottles of wine tucked under her arms for them to share in the evening.

The vampire did not intrude on their hideaway. Even Colombe saw him rarely, as he spent much of his time away or sequestered behind the austere double doors of his bedroom. There were days he did not return home at all.

Fabien took these rare opportunities to stretch his legs, nervously haunting the halls with ears strained for any sign of the vampire’s return. Whether intentional or otherwise, their paths did not cross.

These getaways were infrequent. Colombe did her best to accommodate his requests for trinkets to pass the time and would often return to find the clothing and scraps of paper affixed to her walls shivering in the breeze of an open window with her friend perched sukily on the rooftop, wisps of smoke in his air and his fingers smelling of tobacco.

There came a time, however, when Colombe could no longer tolerate the clutter her bedroom had become and, between gathering empty bottles to discard and blankets to launder, she ushered the protesting boy from the room. She did not have to speak for him to understand that he was not welcome back until he presented himself bathed and in fresh clothes.

“D'accord, d'accord, je pars.” The boy rasped in irritation as he turned towards the door.

But despite his sour expression, the urchin made sure to brush his lips in playful affection against the girl's cheek before she closed the door in his face.

Once barred from the comfortable safety of Colombe's room, the boy released a heavy sigh. His stumbling gait was heavy on the stairs, and each step groaned in protest as he slowly descended. Weeks of inactivity had left the boy much weakened, and even the most simple exertion left him sharp of breath and sluggish of limb.
The youth's long fingers skimmed against the wall for support, his heavily shadowed eyes perpetually sharp with frustration.

The boy crept through the house with the slinking caution of an alley cat, glancing tentatively along the lonely stretch from the girl's stairway with a halting caution. His pallid features were tense as he awaited signs of the master of the house, and he only dared venture out when satisfied that he was alone.

Beyond the great curtains and closed shutters, the sun had already began to weaken in the sky, sinking below the jagged lines of vast city.  Late evening beckoned shadows to gather conspiratorially in corners, and spread like spilt ink across the floor.

As such, the traumatised urchin was deeply relieved to find that Colombe had already lit the lamps in the bathroom. And once inside, he swiftly began the process of filling the large basin with water. The door to the bathroom was however left half open, so confident had the boy become in the vampire's absence.

Fabien slowly began to remove his clothing, exposing his increasingly wan skin to the soft light. Despite the cheery glow of the lamps, the boy's complexion was sickly, the shock of blood loss etched into the sharp jut of his bones.

Exhausted by his solo excursion, he leaned against the lip of bath tub, caressing the thin folds of his eyelids with a look of weary distaste.

When the basin was full, the urchin began to the unwind Colombe's carefully applied bandages from about his throat. His fingers lifted, tentatively exploring skin that was marked by soft bruises, their swirling patterns like those of a moth wing. The flesh about the puncture wounds was finely raised, and still angry and raw from the vampire's teeth.

The boy lingered on the wound, his head bowed forward and his sharp features concealed beneath the sweep of his fair hair. For a time, he appeared quietly preoccupied with his unhappy memories, his teeth clenched and eyes narrowed in fierce displeasure.

Then like one awakening from a bad dream, his spine straightened, and with a shuddering breath he slung the bandages aside like a petulant child, and began to slip into the warm water.

The dark house gave no sign of holding any life besides that which he had just left. The floorboards above creaked with Colombe’s movement, soft thuds and clinking glass faintly audible as she went about her tidying in earnest, but the ground floor was veiled only in the hushed shadow of early evening. There were no signs of movement for his cautious eyes to detect, no sound of footsteps to reward his pricked ears.

The smeared handprints and splattered droplets of blood that had marked Fabien’s dismal trail to Colombe’s room had vanished. They had been scrubbed clean from both walls and floor. The pair had not spoken of that night, and what she had made of the boy’s gruesome path was anyone’s guess.

The low flicker of the lights did much to restore cheer where it illuminated the room, but the shadows that lurked outside only seemed blacker in contrast. As quiet as it was, only the trickle of water and his own breath disturbing the silence, the boy was liable to jump at the vampire’s soft voice.

“Good evening, Fabien.”

He filled the open doorway. Only the glow of his pale eyes and bone-white hair was clearly visible until he stepped into the circle of wan light. He wore a deep emerald dressing gown that made him look very tall and very thin, and gave him something of the countenance of a venomous snake.

“I trust you would not protest at my joining you.” There was nothing about the statement that implied a question and, indeed, the vampire had moved to the side of the tub before the boy had any opportunity to respond.

His skin was flushed with a rich, ocher glow that reddened his cruel lips and left little doubt that hot blood freshly thrummed in his veins. He perched at the edge of the tub with a poise that would have been difficult for any other person to maintain and regarded the boy with eyes that did not quite follow the correct lines of his bruised body.

“Comment tu te sens?” he asked, with such exquisite concern it was hard to imagine he could have been the one to have brutalized him. His hair was unbound and fell, a froth of fresh cream, over his shoulder when he inclined his head. “Well enough, I hope, to speak with me a moment.”

Fabien had, of course, only just began to wearily sink into the luxurious warmth of the steaming water. His eyes had fallen closed, and a soft sigh of pleasure has slipped from his parted lips.

The vampire's arrival caused the poor youth to draw inward breath, as he lurched forward from the water with an ungainly splash of activity. He turned towards the open door, hair dripping and one hand anxiously gripping the lip of the bath.

“Uh ...I-” He managed to softly reply, as he brushed back his sodden hair with nervous fingertips. The boy's moments were at once self-consciously, a slow drawing together of thin limbs, a modest placement of the hand between his thighs. As if, even after all this time, he still felt the vampire's moonlit gaze was able to take in every inch of his exposed skin.

The urchin's heavily shadowed eyes followed the vampire as he moved towards him. And despite himself, he found his gaze drifting up the vampire's body, starting low and hovering at his throat, his eyes, his mouth.

The vampire would not be able to see the admiring tilt of the boy's head, nor how his pupils flexed, dark and wide, like one beholding something so achingly beautiful they cannot but look. But his breath was low, and there was a stillness in his limbs that suggest the vampire had every ounce of his attention.

Then, and with some considerable effort, he managed to break his stare and slowly straighten the curve of his spine.

“I have been better, Monsieur.” He replied tersely, his words stunted by deep, unmistakable hurt. “And I have been much worse.” The boy turned aside and reached for the cloth he had placed nearby to clean his skin. He kept his eyes away from the vampire's sightless gaze.

“Si tu veux.” The urchin murmured, and strove to maintain an air of feigned nonchalance that was almost painfully unconvincing. And with his eyes still low, Fabien busied himself with the task of washing his skin, much too preoccupied to spare his host a fragment more of his full attention.

The boy swept the cloth up the length of his arms, before lingering on the sore flesh of his throat. He held the warmth cloth there, allowing the heat to penetrate flesh that ached much too deeply.

“You … you are not staying out then, Monsieur?” He ventured carefully, wincing through his attempts to clean the angry puncture wounds. “I did ...not expect to see you here tonight.”

He rolled his shoulders sharp shoulders, and thumbed the sodden cloth between his hands. They trembled faintly, causing a soft ripple to extend from between his knees.

Tariq watched the boy from the corner of eyes that could not see, his gaze hazy beneath the delicate hoarfrost of his lashes. The water lapped at the firm copper sides of the basin with a crystalline trill as if in delight at Fabien’s response.

“Oui,” the vampire said softly, as though savouring the word on his tongue. “I can imagine you have been worse.”

If there was a gentle innuendo skittering in the words, it was swiftly lost in the ivory teeth of the vampire’s smile at the boy’s lackluster assurance he was feeling well enough to talk.

“Don’t be churlish,” he said conversationaly. The glint of corvid humour in his pale eyes was not entirely unkind. “It is unbecoming.”

He turned and slipped one long leg into the warm water of the tub in a feline stretch, his weight resting with the other on the floor.

“Were you hoping to avoid me until you perished of old age?” The nonchalance with which he maintained his balance on the edge of the tub was infuriating. It was clear he wore nothing beneath the sumptuous weight of his robe and Fabien was treated to a great deal of the smooth skin of his thighs.

“It is not a hopeless plan and would not be the first I was astounded at the short fuse on which you burn away your lives, but it would have required a fair bit more stealth on your part.” He idly smoothed away a droplet of water that had collected on the skin above his knee with the tip of his finger.

“In fact,” he said archly, his eyes unfocused. Delicate wisps of steam curled upward where his calf met the warm water. “It is the same deficit in slyness that I wished to speak to you about.”

He paused before continuing, his fingertips lazily skimming the surface of the water. His hand was perilously close to stroking the wet skin of the boy’s knee.

“I do not know that you would survive if I were to act on my initial impulse and take one of your clever fingers as penance for disturbing my belongings.” When his eyes caught the lamp they flashed silver and uncanny. “Many of which survived an age before your ancestor’s ancestors were a gleam in their mother’s eye.”

“I thought instead I might give you the opportunity to slake the boundless curiosity that urged you to go snooping about my things.” He leaned back to loosen the tie about his waist and the fabric slackened, slipping from the curve of his shoulder and exposing the silver cobweb of scars that circled his throat.

“And perhaps if I answer your questions now there will be no need to rummage through my personal effects in the future, hm?”

Fabien froze, desperately trying to avoid examining the parts of bare flesh that were within his eye sight. He dared not stretch a finger, nor shift a ankle for fear he accidentally brush against the smooth stretch of his host's dark skin.

The urchin kept perfectly still, a stone effigy with gaze resolutely fixed on his hands, and features half shrouded by his hair.

His breath was steady at first as he listened to the vampire speak, but it quickly grew panicked  and breathless. With stirring heart, he lifted his chin, eyes wide and lips parted in a brief expression of white hot terror as his memories resurfaced.

“Monsieur, I- I'm sorry, I didn't-” The boy interrupted with breath ragged, and pressed his spine firmly against the side back of the bath like a frightened animal. Skin that had already begun to pink pleasantly in the heat turned crimson in shame.

When the vampire made no effort to reach for him, the urchin's muscles began to soften. But his eyes remained downcast, and he guiltily worried the edges of his wash cloth  like a peasant child caught thieving apples. If he was surprised at the fairness of the vampire's suggestion, he did not speak it, nor was he quick to respond. Instead, when his voice came, it was once again hard and faintly accusatory.

“This is not a trick? A game? You are... not angry with me?” He asked, all feral wariness and bruise stained eyes which were still dark with displeasure.

The urchin lapsed into a contemplative silence as he considered the vampire's offer. He stirred uncomfortably, his jaw tense, and a faint frown pinching the muscles across his brow.

“They are … really so very old, Monsieur?”

It was little above a whisper, and each word infused with the distinctive note of awe the vampire would be well familiar with.

“They... must be special to you... to have survived all that time, non?”

Tariq’s robes were precariously loose around his midsection, saved from slipping off entirely only by the sleeve he had not yet shrugged from one shoulder. In the dim light of the lamps, hints of gold glinted in the seams where they had been stitched in shimmering thread.

“No tricks,” the vampire said, sounding rather wounded the boy would suggest otherwise. “Pas de jeux. You would not have to ask if I were angry.” Something flashed in his pale eyes at this last, a glimpse of the radiant hell-fire gaze he had worn last the boy had been unlucky enough to meet him, but it was extinguished already when he turned his face to the urchin.

The vampire’s hips shifted and he languidly slid his other leg to the knee into the warm water. His long frame was only a hair’s breadth from slipping entirely into the bath, although he displayed a feline reluctance to dampen his clothes.

He managed to refrain joining Fabien in the tub, instead lifting his head as though pondering the boy’s question. He tapped the tip of a finger against the crook of his leg.

“Some of them are really so old,” he said. “And some recall familiar ghosts.”

He did not elaborate on this. He turned a foggy eye to his guest and said dryly, “Are you going to squander my good will on frivolities, mon chéri? You tempt me to invent a more absorbing way to fill our time.” This did not require elaboration.

When his host spoke, the urchin lifted his chin, and his expression was hard and still marked by faint distrust. He attempted to avert his gaze, trailing one lean finger over the surface of the water.

Every so often his attention was forcefully claimed by a glimpse of his host's skin. His dark eyes were drawn to the sleek muscle of the vampire's thigh, before fixating on the curve where his neck met his shoulder. He lingered there with youthful fascination, examining the threads of scar that lined his host's collar.

The boy followed the movement of the vampire's leg, and he swallowed thickly. THe shifted uncomfortably in the water, and moistened his lower lip with the pointed tip of his tongue.

“You will then...  really answer any question I have?” Fabien tested, with a voice which sounded faintly preoccupied.

“What is ...what is it like to die, Monsieur?” The youth began nervously, and his eyes searched for signs of displeasure to appear in the vampire's expression.

His hesitation did not last long, and without sparing a breath to allow his host time for thought, he began to question him again. The water sloshed against the sides of the bath as the boy rearranged his slim limbs, unfolding his body like a flower bud reaching through the spring frost.

“And- how- how was it that you died? I do not understand it. Who was it that hurt you? And why? And how did it happen? Is it hard to remember so long ago?”

Tariq’s withered gaze lingered on the boy’s sullen form. “I will say what I can,” he agreed cryptically, bracing a leg against the edge of the bath.

Fabien’s nervous question drew a breath of laughter from the vampire. “I ought to have guessed you would promptly lunge for questions whose answers you will not grasp.” It was not unkind. His voice was hoarse with warm affection.

He contemplated this request in silence, his finger set to tapping once more. As if come to some conclusion, he sighed. “Very well.”

He stood contemplatively, a soft sway taking the emerald hem of his dressing gown. Warm water swirled around his calves. “I will say what I can,” he repeated, his eyes foggy and distant. “But you will listen, and you will not interrupt. I will need to think.”

Despite this caution, the vampire at once became the most distracting sight in the room as he languidly allowed the robes to fall from his shoulders and into a heap on the floor. He wore, as suspected, nothing beneath, and the dark deer-red of his skin was richly vibrant.

He sank casually into a sitting position with his back resting against the edge of the tub. The water rocked and crested with his movement. The tub was large, but it was not so large that even with one knee raised in a manner that could generously be said to preserve a fraction of his modesty, the other did not press familiarly against the boy’s thigh. The curve of his shoulders gleamed wetly.

He closed his eyes. A moment of silence passed as he gathered his thoughts.

“I suspect,” he said carefully, gathering his long hair and letting it fall over the side of the bath so as to prevent it from getting wet. “That time moves quite differently for you than it does for me.” When he opened his eyes, they did not quite find the boy.

“Imagine….the span of a year. How long it would take to live all those hours, all those days, how they would drag on without something to occupy all that time. Then think of that year folded over itself, again and again, a hundred times, and how those same days would pass for one who had seen a hundred years, or a thousand. It is not - there are echoes, of all things. Comment dit-on… I can plant a seed in the earth and love both the beast that died to nourish the soil and the tree it will become at once, because you do not mourn someone who has only just left the room.”

His voice remained even and low, but his brow furrowed. After a moment’s consideration he took a different tack;

“Events, even in the distant past, do not fade from memory. They are changed, they are woven into the blood - just as an apple you eat does not disappear, it becomes the hand that held it and the teeth that tore its skin.”

Unconsciously, he raised a hand and idly fingered the raised scars at his throat. His tone was nearly wistful.

“All this to say, yes, I remember what it was like to die. I will carry the memory of death in my body always. Let me think of where to begin.”

The sound of the water lapping against the side of the tub was unnaturally loud in the silence. The vampire shifted, leaning back to rest his head on the edge as he sifted through the dusty labyrinths inside his skull for the proper words.

“I would not tell you that you have not known pain,” he said at last. His eyelids fluttered shut, his breath deep and even in his chest as he retraced the ancient threads of his memories. “But I do not know that you can appreciate the perfect suffering that can be thrust on a body by an assembly united only by their desire to force you to surrender something you cannot give.”

His voice was bleached of emotion. He recited the words with impassive precision.

“I do not know which mundane agony - the blade, the lash, the endless thirst - can truly be said to have taken my life. But I can say it was… that who wished to prevent it who left the most enduring marks.” Again his finger traced the edge of a scar almost fondly.

He was beginning to warm to the topic and the words came easier. His eyes remained closed as he spoke in that hypnotic rhythm that came so naturally.

“He would have wanted me to tell you he was a physician, and it is apt. He possessed a deep understanding of life in all its messy, itinerant passions. He sought to prevent my death and tried, again and again, to rouse my body back to wakefulness.”

The corner of his mouth held the faintest trace of a smile. “He failed, clearly. As I remember it, I took a breath, was unable to take another, and was dead.”

He rolled a hand out of the water in a lazy gesture, droplets spilling from his fingertips.

“I understand it would be gratifying if I told you I conversed with great poets, sat at the side of the gods in warm sun and perfect contentment, smuggled some exceptional knowledge back to the land of the living. But the truth of it is that I died with my thoughts razed to mere wisps of smoke in the great fire of my body’s torment, and awoke after a time with a hunger that I had never known. In the interlude there was no cacophony of screaming voices, no familiar friend to serve as comfort or guide. There was only silence. I drowned in black water, unable to take a breath with lungs I did not possess, and I was alone.”

The silence after he concluded was unbearable. When the vampire opened his eyes, they shone like quicksilver.

“Perhaps it is different for others; I cannot say. We are only given one chance to die and I have squandered mine. For the better, I think.”

The lean muscle of his body become taut as he lazily stretched, something sly about the roll of his shoulders when he turned his gaze back to the boy.

“There is your answer. Pas de jeux. I would like to know what you make of it.”

Fabien nodded solemnly, acknowledging the vampire's request for quiet with a soft “Oui, Monsieur.”

At the sound of rustling fabric, the urchin's chin lifted sharply, followed  by his bruised eyes. For a time, the youth barely remembered to draw breath. Even the slight touch of the vampire's skin against his leg caused his pulse to quicken.

Had his host not been blind, he would have been momentarily subjected to a flushed featured look of aching longing that was hastily concealed beneath false displeasure.

If he had managed to regain his composure, as soon as his host began to speak, and despite himself, the boy's expression immediately brightened. Soon his storm cloud eyes were luminous with curiosity, and his body began to incline forward.

The boy was silent thereafter, his dark eyes unblinking. It was difficult to discern what aspects of the vampire's speech made sense to him, how much he was able to decipher of what he spoke. But something in his host's explanation caused the fine hairs on the boy's skin to rise, despite the steaming heat of the water.

Fabien had scarcely drawn a breath since the vampire had begun to speak, and he released it, low and shuddering into the silence. The leg that rested against the vampire was so tense that the muscles trembled faintly. He swallowed softly, his youthful brow pinched with thought as he contemplated all that his host had said.

“It is... a lot, Monsieur,” was all he initially managed to say.

“But really you saw nothing? Rien du tout?” He rasped, and his voice trembled with concern “No one was waiting? Pas de jugement? That is … is not at all like the preacher's tell it.”

The boy paused, his heavy breath echoing about the room.

“But it sounds terrible.” He continued softly.  “And you were hurt badly- but I do not understand why. For a crime? And then you were-” The boy paused, embarrassed at his youthful eagerness.,  “I mean I- can ask more questions, Monsieur?”

Tariq was still and silent as his captive audience digested his tale. Very gently, his hand came to a rest around the top of the boy’s ankle, the tip of his thumb stroking the tension of his calf.

“It is,” he agreed when the urchin broke the silence, a thread of soft amusement wending through the words.

However, he bridled at Fabien’s next observation and his hand slipped away.

“Your preachers-” The word bristled with irritation. “Did not yet exist when I died. Neither, I expect, did their god. He would not know me, and I would scorn his judgement.”

He leaned forward and his hair skimmed over the water behind him like a ghostly veil. “You seek to find resolution where there is none. No grand purpose, no divine plan, no splendid elucidation to illuminate the muck in which we crawl.”

His eyes flashed. “Only men and monsters, and the difference between them as uninspired as a set of sharp teeth and une soif de sang.” His own sharp teeth snapped shut with an audible click of bone and he leaned back as though only just aware of the vehemence of his own words.

His body was all burnished copper and the water-slick dapple of shadow and reflected light. He silently regarded the boy with a bright avian eye that betrayed its blindness only in the haze of white that obscured what its true colour may once have been.

“It was a kind of terrible,” he mused. He rested his forearms loosely on the edge of the tub, the arch of his wrists adorned with silver that complemented the scars about his throat. His utter lack of discomfort at his guest’s silent scrutiny of his body seemed to come as naturally to him as it would a wildcat. “As are most deaths.”

The question elicited a rather roguish turn of the vampire's lips. “You may ask more questions,” he said lightly. He shifted, creating an open space between the crook of his legs that dissolved what little effort he had made to preserve his modesty. “If you come to me so I may see how your throat is healing.”

“Alors c'est tout pour rien,” the boy breathed.

Fabien's eyes were dark and unblinking, the muscles around his mouth and brow still tightly wired with concern. Something in the vampire's words made him flinch, and he caught the flesh of his lip between his teeth.

His frown deepened, and he at last tore his eyes away and looked down at his hands. The boy flexed his lockpicker's fingers beneath the water, examining his skin like one in a trance.

“So, then we just... suffer? We suffer, my people suffer a lifetime, but some do not? And it is just so?” Despite the quiver in his voice, each word crackled with anger and frustration. “And it is ugly, and short, and then it is over?”

The boy fell into a stunned silence, and it was only the vampire's offer which seemed to shake him free of his own ruminations. He eyes began following the arch of the vampire's knee, up to his gleaming chest and curve of his lips.

The boy's breath caught at the back of his throat, and he moved without even contemplating his host's words. The water stirred around their bodies as the boy approached, his lean limbs brushing against the firm muscle of the vampire's inner thigh.

As soon as their bodies touched, the boy began to tremble, and his movements became painfully hesitant. He sought to navigate into the spaces around his companion's body with all the reverence of a devotee at a burning alter. And when it did not come easily, he grew fiercely distressed by his own gracelessness.

The urchin slipped one arm into the space beside the vampire's waist, until he was arranged in a tangle of limbs  supported by hands and bony knees. The water lapped against the bow of his spine, and his lips were but a breath away from his host's mouth. Droplets of water fell from his hair like spring rain.

“Where ah – how should I?” He murmured in embarrassment.

The boy lingered in his animal-like sprawl, his eyes widening as he suddenly remembered why he had moved so close.

“Monsieur when... when we met, when you saved me-” He rasped, daring to meet his host's sightless eyes as he spoke. “Why- why would it matter to you that I would prefer to live fighting?”

“And how- how can you bear it? For so long? What then of your life before you died? And companions and – and lovers-”

“If it is all for nothing, then what- what will happen to me? Why are we even-” There was growing panic now in the boy's words. As though every part of his mind was attempting to find a clear path through the vampire's words, but had become lost in the dark.

Fabien did not have to linger in his uncertainty long. When he came near, the vampire reached to pull him close. His hands had been warmed by the water. He gently molded the boy’s thin limbs with firm insistence and pressed him against his body so his spine rested against the vampire’s stomach, so low the sharp arch of his collarbones kissed the surface of the water.

Tariq crossed an arm over the boy’s waist, the tips of his fingers grazing the inside of his thigh. The other hand instinctively reached to brush the wound at his throat but was interrupted, fingers curling back toward his palm, by the tremble of fear in the boy’s tone.

“Eho, eho,” he said. “None of that.” He pressed his palm to the base of his throat and tipped his chin up to meet his pale eyes. In the dim light, the cold glitter of his gaze was like ice in a brittle winter night.

“All things must die,” he said in the gentle tone of one soothing a startled animal. “You know this.” A finger stroked the taut skin of the boy's upturned neck contemplatively.

“Many lives are short and ugly. But you are not many; you have but a single life, and it is currently in my care. There are not many deaths I cannot prevent if I wish it.” For the briefest moment, his tone sparked like flint against steel.

He released the urchin's chin, although his hand continued to linger possessively at his collar.

The corners of his lips quirked upward at the boy's fearful question and a rasp of amusement coloured his tone when he replied. “Think carefully, Fabien, as to why your tenacity might appeal to me. Then dwell for a while on what state a more fragile creature might be in your place.”

The hand at his waist slunk low enough for fingers to brush against the curling hair between his legs. His grasp at the base of his neck applied just enough pressure on the delicate cords of his throat to persuade him to reconsider protesting this.

His voice was cat-tongue rough. “Why are the scant years I had before my death of more interest to you than the many more I have after? There is much pleasure to be had on this side of those black waters.”

Although he spoke softly, the words dripped from his tongue hemlock dark and just as heady. “I can show you how I manage to bear it, if you would like.”

With the vampire's hands upon him, it soon became clear how weakened the injured urchin remained, his body was easy manipulated under his host's hands.

There was no protest in Fabien's limbs as he slumped wearily against his host's chest with his breath ragged in his throat.

The sullen creature's expression only changed when he was confronted with the vampire's eyes. And for a time, the soft sound of his voice and sent the boy into a breathless silence. Soon his lips were parted, and grey eyes half-lidded with a look of quiet longing.

It seemed then, that his host's soothing words had gone some way to alleviate the urchin's fears, his muscles lax and limbs full of restful heaviness.  But then with a soft shake of the head,  he grew tense again, and his heart began to pound as fiercely as before.

“But it... but it isn't so. How can it be so? Even while I am here with you, Monsieur - I am weak. I am useless.” He rasped, his body shifting uncomfortably against his host's bare skin. “J'ai été impuissant. Et je suis toujours impuissant.”

“And then, I will not always be like this, I will get weaker still – and I will not be the same.” The dawning realisation of this caused a look of sadness to pass like a ghostly shadow over the boy's youthful features.

“And then it will not matter- then you will not want me any more.” He continued, his voice trembling as he spoke.

The urchin became briefly distracted from his misery by the vampire's beautiful hands moving across his skin. He swallowed softly, the muscles of his throat flexing beneath his host's hand. There was a slight shifting of his thighs, an almost imperceptible widening and stretching of muscle.

“Ah, but.... n-non. Everything about you … is of interest to me, Monsieur.” he murmured softly. “I want to know everything.”

The boy's finger's hovered over the vampire's knuckles as though to gently dissuade his hand from slinking lower.

"It has always brought you pleasure then, Monsieur? To be as you are? Even though... you must kill, you must always kill?"

The shadows that haunted the room seemed drawn to the vampire. They robed him in a darkness that only the flashing silver of his eyes resisted, dulling the warmth of his skin to ash and tangling in the hair that snaked in wet tendrils down his bare shoulders.

Tariq seemed to take a good deal of satisfaction from the boy’s weakness as he shaped his limbs like warm wax to settle against his skin. He was not cruel, but the firmness of his hands left little room to disobey.

His sharp teeth glinted in his mouth when he spoke. “I have made no pretense of your… weakness, as you say. We both know it would be a trifling thing to take your life.” The hand that held his throat shifted, fingers splayed as though in contemplation of this thrilling prospect. It was not so tight as to impede his quickening breath, but he would no doubt feel the pressure of it like a collar when he swallowed.

“But I do not believe you are useless. It would serve you well to banish the notion. If I found you had no worth, I would have had my fill of you and my dove would have buried you beneath the trees.”

Fabien’s gentle attempt to deter his creeping hand proved futile as his palm slipped lower, arm moving across his stomach, middle and forefinger spread to encircle the base of the skin between his legs.

“You will wither and you will die because you are, like all things that live, un esclave à mort.” He held the words on his tongue like they belonged to him. They were almost affectionate in his mouth, cradled possessively between lips.

“What I am is freedom from that yoke. How am I not to take pleasure in that release?” Fabien’s receptiveness, the faint stretch and widening of his body did not go unnoticed, and could not go unreturned. The vampire’s fingers curled beneath the water, found the skin between the urchin’s thighs and took it languidly in his palm.

“You have asked this before, and I am coming to believe it is the tiresome fulcrum on which you will revolve for some time yet. Yes, it pleases me to kill. I enjoy it. It is what this hunger demands, and it is what these teeth and this cunning were sharpened for.” This was a dangerous topic, and no doubt the boy would feel the stirring against the small of his back as the vampire warmed to the subject.

“I was killed, and reborn as a hunter of men. It is no more complex than that. It does not wound me to be as I am. If all things must die, why must it be distasteful that I should be the one to take the life? If plague or pox, misfortune or mistreatment will claim a life within a paltry year or two or ten, why should I be deprived of having my fill?” Slowly, as though to punctuate his point, he stroked the skin he had captured, his hand firm against the boy's throat.

Fabien fell into a breathless silence as the vampire spoke, his feline eyes unblinking as he strained to follow the thread of his host's words. The boy's fingertips continued to carefully graze the skin of the vampire's hand, as if to imply he desired no further interruptions to their conversation.

But in spite of this weak protest it was clear that he was struggling. And when the vampire's fingers curled about his thin neck, the back of the boy's skull rolled back against his host's chest.

Thereafter, each breath that left his parted lips became steadily, and unmistakably uneven. And the hand that slunk low across his body would soon discover how heated the youth had already become.

Unsurprisingly, the urchin's desperate attempts to maintain focus on their discussion began to waver. It was only when the vampire mentioned his enslavement that the boy's eyes sharpened, and his muscles stiffened in agitation.

“I-I cannot make sense of it... it seems so... pointless. Why do ...why do we even... why do I care to live at all?” He murmured, stirring uncomfortably against his host's bare chest.

The vampire's hand curling around his roused skin tore the boy away, severing his thoughts from lingering further on this unhappy revelation. The urchin's lower body ground against his host's slick skin, and the words were spilled from his lips were delivered on a sharp exhale of breath.

“P-pardonnez-moi, Monsieur... it ... it, ah.... as you say,  it is hard... for me to understand.”

The muscles of his throat flexed against the vampire's palm, each breath shuddering against his firm grip. His fingers, bone-white beneath the water, hovered nervously before they brushed over the curve of his host's knuckles.

Fabien's grey eyes followed the movement of the vampire's hands over aroused skin, the mere sight of which caused the boy's pulse to quicken further. When his grip grew firm, one of the boy's knees rose, and lower back arched unthinkingly deep into the space between his host's thighs.

This time, when boy's hand moved to curl around the vampire's wrist, there was nothing in his touch to suggest he wished him to stop.

“Ahh- h-have there... been others... others you have kept with you... others like me? He managed to rasp, his hand trembling over the vampire's wrist.

The water was beginning to cool, the lights dimming to will o'wisp sparks as the night wore on. Tariq's body was likely a welcome warmth where it pressed hungrily against the boy.

The vampire stroked the base of Fabien's throat with the point of his nails as though to quell the existential dread he had kindled. “Do not dwell on it,” he said silkily. “You are alive, and you are here now. It is enough.”

This dubious wisdom was rather undercut by the sharp hiss of breath that followed as the urchin's body, made supple and wanton in his hands, writhed against him. There was a sulphurous tongue of smoke in his voice when he replied.

“Hard, is it?” His hand, having found no resistance, palmed the skin between the boy’s legs teasingly. “It will come in time.”

Fabien's breathy question distracted him from this indelicate line of thought and for a moment his hands stilled.

“There have been others,” he said. “Many, from your perspective.” The hand at his throat slipped down his shoulder and gently lifted the thin stem of his wrist, dripping, from the water.

“An old man must be allowed his indulgences.” Something not entirely wholesome twisted pale-white in the words.

The vampire turned the boy's wrist inward to allow him to press the delicate blue flesh to his mouth like the meat of an exotic fruit. The kiss of his sharp teeth was hardly more than a pinprick, but blood sprang eagerly from the vein as though called by a lover. The flick of his tongue against the skin was hot and wet.

“Were they like you?” he echoed, his low breath whispering along the taut skin of his wrist. “Some were willful, yes, and inquisitive even when it did not serve them to be so.” His tone was feline in its playful quality. “Many were reverential, simpering for fear of attracting my ire, all with thin skin at their throat and soft bellies filled with blood that made me ache to put my teeth to them.”

The words were smoky and the boy did not have to turn and see the vampire's eyes to imagine they had ignited a glowing silver at this talk. He released his wrist before continuing.

“But you are unlike any in that you are alive and here with me now. It is your blood on my lips and your heart pulsing against my palm.” The boy slithering against him had irrefutably gotten the vampire’s blood up, and he shifted to move the uncomfortable pressure at the boy’s back to rather obtrusively between his thighs.

“Fabien,” he said in a quick breath. “If you have finished sulking in your mouse hole, I want - I would like for you to continue your recuperation with me, in my bedroom.” The practiced movement of his hands was painfully distracting. “Beginning tonight. Now.”

The urchin's breath was a low rasp as his body continued to softly and slowly writhe against the vampire's warm, wet skin.

The delicate flesh of his throat pebbled where the vampire's nails grazed it, and boy's breath caught in his throat. As instructed, he did not question his host's words. Instead, his thin shoulders trembled lightly, and the beat of his heart slowed like a hound calmed by its masters hand.

It was only when the vampire's attentions returned to the hot, hard skin between his thighs that his pulse quickened once more.

“Ah, Dieu.” He whined, his hips thrusting weakly towards his host's clever hands, until he was abruptly left wanting, with toes curled and stomach muscles tight.

He released a ragged, frustrated breath and attempted to turn his head to see as much of the vampire's mouth as he could.

There was no resistance in the muscles of the boy's arm, blood-loss had made his limbs soft and heavy. His bruised eye lids flitted  towards the exposed skin of his wrist, watching in still fascination as the vampire drew him towards his beautiful mouth.

The soft pressure of his teeth caused the boy's lips to part, and at the slick press of his tongue, something close to a whimper escaped the urchin's throat. Even after the vampire had released him, the boy's hand remained in the air, his fingers clenched and his eyes half-closed.

“Je … jeparie qu'ils étaient ennuyeux, Monsieur.” He managed to rasp, his youthful brow creased and eyes fox-sharp. His voice had warmed with mirth, but there was something which jutted from the surface like shards of broken glass. Some note of displeasure at the idea of past rivals.

He abandoned the subject only too quickly at the press of the vampire's eager flesh between his softly spread thighs. The boy's chest tightened, and at the sound of his name, his lower body ground against the vampire's hips.

He attempted to turn his head once more, his features flushed and lips reddened with desire.

“I... I have been thinking of you... every night, since ...you-.” He murmured, his grey eyes wide and expression tight with longing. “And I...I wanted so badly... to come to you, like before I-”He struggled to explain, before quickly becoming frustrated by deficiency to do so clearly.

And so, quite suddenly, the boy's hand began to lower, and droplets of blood struck the water like red ink. His hand continued to slink lower, before it slipped between the crook of his thighs to allow him to cautiously curl his lockpickers fingers around the tip of the vampire's aroused skin.

“I want you to fuck me.” The boy pleaded, his voice hoarse and nervous.

He rose then, offering his body with a sudden lascivious tilt of his hips, and insistent, if not rough and inexperienced twist of his hand.

“S'il vous plait, Monsieur.” He begged softly.

Tariq’s attentiveness to their conversation was melting away like a tongue of fog in the light of the sun as Fabien grew ever more receptive to the misdeeds of his wandering hands. The grind of his water-slick body proved a heady distraction, and the vampire only hummed abstractedly at the boy’s observation. His mouth was still faintly blushed with his blood.

The twist of the boy’s hands on the hard skin between his thighs plucked a rush of breath from the vampire’s chest. The urchin was sure to feel the muscles of his stomach tighten.

The vampire had been teasing, the stroke of his fingers coquettish, but as Fabien lifted and made his convincing case, he broke like a froth of water gushing from a cracked dam. His pupils expanded like a splash of ink in water. His breath quickened in his throat.

“Comme vous le souhaitez,” he breathed, his voice thick and snarled with want. The water spattered around them as he sat up and slid to his knees, slipping the boy to the space before him. Their skin moved slick against one another.

"But we do it properly, comprenez vous?” He slipped his hand around the curve of the front of his throat, his wet hair sticking against his skin. “And without peasant fumbling. Lift your hips.” The command was mere courtesy, as he roughly hefted him into the position he wanted him. His fingers splayed at the small of his back were warm, his cock warmer at the cleft of his ass. He held him close by the hand on his throat, the both of them on their knees like worshippers of an old and dissolute god.

If Fabien were clever, now would be the opportunity he took to brace himself against the edge of the tub - the hungry press of the vampire’s body very nearly demanded it.

There was no baptism of sliding fingers to stretch him, no wheedling groundwork laid to prepare him for what was to come; the boy had asked to be fucked, and the vampire gave him what he wanted without prologue. With the ease of experience, he entered him. It was a shallow thrust as he found resistance by the muscle. The vampire hissed something unintelligible in a hot breath and hefted the boy’s hips to improve his angle.

“Se détendre,” he instructed throatily. “Do not fight me and I will give you only good pain.” There was a raking of humour over the words that he echoed from the boy’s own mouth, but Fabien would have little chance to contemplate it as the vampire shifted his grip on his throat and rocked into him once more.

Fabien, with his thin limbs heavy and heart racing, was easily guided by the vampire's hands. He pressed his weight against his host, and half-turned his head to steal a glimpse of his sightless eyes. At the sound of the vampire's voice, the boy's legs began to tremble beneath him.

His breath was ragged when the vampire's hand enclosed his throat again, and the boy gave no indication of having understood his words. At the firm press of his host's fingers, his skull tipped back in a indulgent flex of muscle, and he released a soft, breathy sound of encouragement.

It was only when his body was moved, when the vampire's hands were moving him into position, that he began to grow uncertain.  A faint frown drew tight the muscles of his forehead, and he grew still.

“Uh, I don't-” He stammered in soft confusion, and began to turn aside, to pull away from the hand that bound his thin neck.

The boy's fragile attempts to undo what he had put into motion were quickly suppressed by firm press of the vampire's hard flesh between his thighs. The boy's entire body grew tense, and when he spoke again, a note of panic had woven its way into his voice.

“M-monsieur, I have.. I have not really-” He murmured, his pulse beating fiercely against the vampire's palm.

Then, realising he had no desire to begin choking into the vampire's hand, he made a floundering attempt to reach for the side of the bath. After a nervously fluttering of fingers, he clung there with feline displeasure, his heart racing.

The boy could feel the heat of him now, pressing between his legs. The vampire felt like little but hard muscle and smooth skin, and something urgent that made the boy's mouth dry and his stomach muscles knot. But he had little time to contemplate regretting his plea, as the vampire sank into him with a force that made him release a soft gasp of pain. His spine curved like a bow, and his rope scarred wrist trembled as he clung unsteadily to the lip of the bath.

“Ah! Merde!” He whimpered,, as his body grew stiff and reluctant with discomfort.

The boy was quiet for a moment then, all rasping breath and soft sounds of pain as he struggled to adjust to this new sensation of fullness. And then vampire's voice came, and the boy's harsh breaths began to slow, and to deepen.

“O-oui, Monsieur” He managed to gasp, before flinching when vampire entered him again, deeper. “Jésus.” He hissed from between clenched teeth, his entire body quivering beneath the vampire. “Je ne peux pas.”

Tariq's bones were softly shivering with a tension like a cord drawn taut around the neck of a hare. He did not respond at first to the boy's harried protests, and should Fabien turn to see it, his pale eyes were hazy and unfocused.

As though by instinct, his hand slid down to the base of his throat, cradling it in his palm with tenderness. The urchin's resistant clenching plucked a hot breath from his chest. The water that lapped at their stomachs was cool now, but the vampire's skin was warm where he pressed against the trembling boy, every taut muscle betraying his body's hunger for vicious things.

He had the gall to laugh at the boy's soft curses. It seemed to return him to this here and this now, and some of the terrible tension bled from the harsh lines of his body.

"Fabien," he said teasingly, the teeth in his smile audible in his hoarse tone."I am the one who tells you what you can and cannot do." His hand pressed insistently along his spine, forcing his lower back to arch pleasingly.

"I will be the one to tell you how much you can take." The stiffness of his reluctant body was proving an impediment and the vampire eased only slowly into the soft heat of him. He paused, his breath nearly a gentle panting.

"But, très bien - I will ask nicely."

His hand disappeared from its loving grasp around his throat and reappeared again around his waist, holding him close. His clever fingers found the skin between the boy's spread thighs and quickly set to work coaxing it to acquiescence, stroking the head of his cock in his palm with experience ease.

"I will have you," he breathed, his wet hair sticking in tendrils to Fabien's skin. Gently, whether the boy's body opened up to him or not, he began to find a rocking rhythm in tune with the motion of his hands, the thrusting of his hips, his want profane and hungry and impossible to turn aside.

The sound of Fabien's ragged, pained breath echoed about the walls of the bathroom like a soft prayer.

The urchin's eyes were dark with faintly panicked discomfort, unblinking and half narrowed in something like concentration. His face was half obscured by strands of wet hair which clung serpentine to the curve of his cheeks, and sought to coil about the vampire's hand.

The boy had not yet succumbed  to the strained, unhappy cries of frustrated displeasure which threatened to spill from his throat. But the vampire was sure to feel them there, heavy as a stone in the curve of his neck. And tangible in every out-breath, where through sheer force of will they had not bloomed into a tearful request for more gentleness, more time.

The urchin fell into a stubborn silence, his tongue encased behind his clenched jaws. But he eagerly lent his weight into the vampire's palm. And hen his host bid him to bend, the boy did so, despite the hands which still gripped the lip of the bath, knuckles bone sharp beneath his skin.

When the vampire slipped deeper into him a further time, a sharp “Ah ”escaped from between those gritted teeth.

And though he did not thank his host for such consideration, the urchin's body responded gratefully to the vampire's gentleness. The skin between his slim thighs twitched eagerly, embarrassingly receptive to the vampire's attentions and much too slick with arousal.

And then, the boy's soft, wincing displeasure at each thrust began to change into something else. And the vampire's hands on him seemed to unpluck him like a tied ribbon, and caused a softening of muscles that began somewhere in the boy's firm stomach.

“Oh” he murmured in youthful surprise.

The boy's lower body stole a fraction more of the vampire's support, as he began to slip into delicious abandon with a widening of his thighs, and backwards tilt of his skull as he closed his bruised eyelids.

Then the urchin seemed no longer so distraught, nor so focused on his pain, but on the way the vampire was touching him. On the sensation of his host's wet skin against his back, on the sounds that were escaping his lips, on the way he moved inside of him. The boy's skin flushed, and the
flesh in the vampire's clever hands began to heat and throb desperately into his palm.

Still he stubbornly attempted to hold his tongue, until some small, muffled sound was teased from his lips. It began as half a word, a question that fractured and bled into an uncertain moan as  his hips moved in a slow, thoughtless rolling.

This was work that Tariq knew intimately, and it was work he was undeniably good at. As the boy turned to liquid glass in his palm, the vampire responded coaxingly, teasing those soft, delicious moans from his lips with finesse.

His hips jerked, too eager. He slowed. His hand slid along the wet skin of Fabien’s waist and curled about the bone of his hips like the horn of a saddle as if to guide him, the tip of his fingers digging into the joint where pelvis met thigh.

The smell of him was autumnal; of leaves crumbling to dust and the chill of a sullen moon as though it were night wind and not blood that stirred in his veins. It was potent as the smell of damp earth as the spider-web tremble of his body wove against and within the boy, his boy.

As pained pants melted into gentle, appreciative gasps, the boy’s slow unravelling drew a pleased murmur from the vampire.

“There we go.” His breath quivered cool on wet skin. The words were drenched in smug satisfaction. “There’s my good boy.” The hand between his thighs thumbed the skin approvingly.

He had leverage, now that he had opened to him, to ease in deep, and the vampire took the opportunity with relish. The thrust was polished and smooth but not entirely kind and it evoked a short groan from Tariq’s chest.

Fabien’s body rocked back and forth as he was driven into again and again. Water sloshed and splashed against tub, trembling limbs, spraying the taut arch of his stomach. The hand at his hip tightened almost to pain.

The vampire’s lips dragged against his shoulder. His teeth were sharp on the skin, his mouth wet. He would feel rather than hear the hum of his moaned breaths, the hoarse whispers of his inarticulate praise.

He had to hold the shape of the boy's name in his panting mouth, a sound but not a word, before he could speak it.

"Fabien." He was so achingly deep, the thrust of his cock glancing off a bundle of nerves in such a way that was apt to make the urchin squirm and yelp.

"Je suis sur le point-" He broke off with a hiss. His hair draped in damp curls over the boy’s back. "I want to be inside you.” There was an urgent suggestion in the statement, every word punctuated by the sharp rocking of his hips.

Fabien yielded to the vampire's touch like a gelding finally accepting the bridle. The sound of his host's voice, the soft words of praise and his hand on the boy's aroused skin were almost too much to bear.

The urchin released a small, sharp moan and his lower body writhed under the press of his host's fingers. The boy was painfully hard, and the slightest brush of the vampire's hand had him bucking into his palm. When his  lips were upon the boy's skin, his exhales were almost a sob.

Fabien did not protest when the vampire's grip grew too rough. Nor when he took the boy in a way that stripped the air from his lungs, and caused his vision to fragment. He let his host have him, his exhausted body utterly at the vampire's command.

When his host thrust so deeply into him, Fabien released a sharp, aching cry that punctuated the sound of their panting, groaning breaths. His spine arched cat-like, and the urchin was left writhing exquisitely beneath the vampire's chest.

His grip on the bath grew lax then, and for a moment he became wholly dependant on the vampire's strength. No doubt he would have lost his hold entirety, were it not for his host's hand there to stop him. The boy bowed his head low, and attempted to stifle his hungry moans and appreciative whimpers into his rope scarred wrist.

He had been silent before, but at the sound of his name the youth managed to lift and half turn his head. His finely shaped eyes were distant, and glazed with pleasure.

"Ah...O-oui," was at first all the boy managed to give him in return.

"S-s'il vous plait...M-monsieur." He encouraged in a soft whine, as his body moved in a flex of muscle.

"V-viens dans mon cul." The boy whimpered with trembling eagerness. And in agony, his hips ground back against the vampire's cock, pushing him deeper, urging him on.

Tariq was relentless. Where the boy gave ground, he took it, mouth hungry on skin and body taut to trembling, stiff with sex. His breath growled in his throat. His breath burnt the air. His belly was stoked to blazing.

His body shone like burnished copper, wet with water and the gleam of his exertion. He mottled Fabien’s skin purple and blue with his rough hands, scarlet with his mouth, the wound at his slender throat still ox-blood red. When his hand drew away, the dark stain of a bruise was already blooming on the pale skin of his hip.

The boy did not have an opportunity to turn his head aside; the vampire took his jaw in his hand and set his mouth to his lips with a clash of teeth. The taste of his tongue was bright with copper.

In the pitch and plunge of their bodies, the point of a sharp tooth caught at the corner of the boy’s mouth and drew blood. It smeared his tongue red.

The hot pulse of blood and the urchin’s breathless plea proved too much to bear. He thrust as deep as he could into his trembling body and stilled with an animal groan that shuddered in the boy’s mouth. Heat surged obscenely between the boy’s thighs, splashed deep in the pit of his stomach as the vampire gave way to his exhausted body.

He released the boy’s jaw and rocked wearily back on his heels. He bowed his head, hair trailing, and rested his forehead on the curve of the boy’s back. The room was silent save the trickle of water and their panting breath.

“Très bon.” His voice was hoarse, but his uncanny humour still prickled against it. He lifted his head and pressed a kiss to the curve of Fabien’s shivering spine. “I can take direction.”

Gently, slowly, he eased himself from between the boy’s thighs with a sharp hiss. The shock of separation was nearly painful, and he quickly gathered his warm body against him as though to remedy it. His pale eyes were lidded, his hands insistent on tangling in the unruly curly of his damp hair.

“Je vais te tuer,” he observed softly, his heart pounding like a bird’s wing in his bare chest.