Chapter Text
Coming to in the dark, still walking, still putting as much space between him and Jasper as possible, he fumbles with the front of his slacks. The dark grey woolen coat has kept the cold out well enough, but he can’t keep gripping at his crotch or else he’ll die of embarrassment. The zipper is easier to fumble with than the strange metal clasp on the inside of the waistband, so he untucks his shirt and covers the popped open fly.
Whipping wind and the sound of vague dripping coaxes his senses to return bit by bit. The uneven floor twists his ankles this way and that. His ungrateful feet had been numb with adrenaline earlier, when all he had to walk on was flat pavement and now his feet flare with pain along the cobbled street. How long has he been walking? How far? Is it far enough? Will Jasper come looking? Does Jasper even care?
The thought makes him choke.
Guy’s sure there isn’t a single molecule of him that isn’t vibrating in distress. The cold doesn’t reach him so much as the encompassing hard bite, turning his skin taut and tough in response. He’s choking on tears, leaving his cheeks wet and clammy. Guy knows he’s talking and he has zero idea what he’s actually saying, but he knows it’s the same damn thing he’s repeating. Every once in a while he’ll jerk his face to look behind him, crane his neck too fast and stare, manically with pinprick pupils and thin breath, teeth and tongue mumbling the same shapes.
Eventually the dull dark colours occasionally illuminated by the moonlight or street lamp are washed away by artificial light. Vibrant red LED’s advertise corner shops and big brightly lit screens of food tempt the late night wanderer. Not Guy, he stumbled past food and clothing on an unsure path and eventually washed up next to a strip of pubs, night clubs and strip clubs. The bright red of the earlier signage turned into deep magenta, royal purples and neon yellow depictions of long legs in stripper heels and pouty lips.
It’s only after his ears give with a pressured pop that the voices start rushing back in- whether they ever stopped or his distress and adrenaline narrowed it all down Guy doesn’t know. He finds himself yearning for the quiet, mourning that he hadn’t even had time to appreciate it.
With sound comes the gentle beckoning of a woman, her hands adorned in rings and painted with a stunning lilac reach tentatively towards him.
“What are you apologizing for, baby?”
Guy makes a softly distressed sound, hoping his confusion gets across to them. She moves a little closer and his weak, needy heart lets her. He never learns, never stops trusting on sight.
“Oh sweetheart, who left you all alone… Such a sweet face” She pets him like a lamb, gentle and unusual, but welcome nonetheless.
With the lady comes several others, pouring out of the strip club like a steadily leaking tap, they try not to surround him, instead hovering close the way one might cup their palm around a weak flame. The removal of the chill calms some of his shivers.
They whisper amongst themselves about speculations about him, about a dom, they notice his limp and frown in concern.
A woman in leather and tight black coils rubs his woolen coat against his arms, pursing big red lips in worry. Another, caramel hair, a tight red dress and light, soft skin hands him a martini glass of ice water to bring him back to himself as they try to convince him he’ll be safer inside, where they can take care of him.
He hums, it sounds nice.
He must black out at some point, or at the very least he drifts off, because now he’s in the backroom of a club. His woolen coat is taken away, he whines softly at the loss of comforting weight before he’s given a blanket to wrap around his shuddering shoulders, he digs his frozen nose into the fabric. It smells unfamiliar and he’s brought back to his experience in foster care, of black bags filled with all his clothes, his toys. The blankets and beds with the wrong smell surround him and his mother is nowhere to be found, even in photographs.
Guy’s glassy eyes barely comprehend their directions as he’s passed this way and that. He’s poked and prodded in the gentlest of ways until a tentative hand brushes over the seat of his slacks and he hisses, whimpers and curls in on himself. Sympathetic coos spiral through his ears pleasantly and he relaxes into the arm wrapped around his blanket-clad shoulders.
Eventually, they manoeuvre him onto his front, the position has him wheezing out choppy breaths with his vision blackening again before soothing hands are petting him like the family dog. Settling, Guy finds himself floating in a neutral space as they gently tug his pants down and hiss in pity.
“Sorry, love, can’t put lotion on this. There’s cuts and all, so we’ll have to settle for cleaning and getting you into something soft.”
There's more mutters amongst themselves, something about wipes and silk, about being kept on his tummy but Guy’s too busy sailing down a windy stream. It’s gentle enough, but his raft isn’t very big and his left hand dangles, catching the wetness of the water as he trickles down the river. There’s two roads up ahead, he can’t see far enough in front to know which one to take… Just a little longer, then he can decide…
There’s a sting behind him, a lifting feeling. The water bobs him up and down. Water-saturated moss sits below his face, cradling his head. His raf must begin to sink, because he feels a cool softness ride up his body, can feel his head just about to sink.
“Gonna kill whoever did this. Can you tell us who did this to you, sweetness?”
Guy shakes his head, all jagged edges, sharp objects in a murky lake. He breaches the surface and comes down hard.
His head is sitting on dark thighs when he comes to in a new, heavy headspace, nails scratching softly through his hair. Being on his front starts to ache but he isn’t allowed to turn over, is softly reprimanded for trying to flip onto his back. Guy can’t help the tears that come.
They spring to his eyes, stinging his nose once more as the air in his chest stutters it’s way in and out. He can make out through blurry eyes a figure crouching down to his eye level, their knuckles stroking from his cheek to his chin in a graceful arc.
He turns twitchy in their care, flinching away from sudden movements and apologising for just about anything. He knows he’s coming across pathetic, a bleating kid, but he can’t help it when it all feels like they’d be having a better night if he just wasn’t here.
They shush him, soothe him, stroke his hair and his skin as he wails and cries out.
“So bad, so bad, did so bad. Don’t wanna be so bad, but ‘m terrible, I lied an’ then I didn’t take it. Didn’t take the punishment, ran away like a baby, ran away like a bad boy, I'm bad, mommy.”
Coos and reassurances become the background noise to his repetitive mantra like some shitty pop song about guilt and-
“-Was so scared, mommy, didn’t wanna hurt, not then, not there. He was really scary this time, didn’t want to hurt, but I lied, I deserved it-“ He soon dissolves into nothing but a convulsing fountain of hot, feverish tears, the soft and firm voices of the ladies reassuring him with declarations of protection, of harm if his dom comes knocking but Guy still feels bad.
Jasper wasn’t evil, sir wasn’t mean, Guy had made him that way, had pushed him to the brink with his poison. It felt like there was always a dangerous thing inside of Guy, infectious and deadly. He always drove people away, whether he did something or they did something- He was the common denominator.
As he drifted aimlessly in the dark lake, trying to fight against the current, hoping to reach the shoreline, Guy agonised over the Jasper from before. Kind, gentle, generous Jasper and nothing had shocked him more than the vampire being unexpectedly… Affectionate and accommodating, more accommodating than any foster parent, friend, teacher or any human for that matter he’d ever met.
Something sharp dug itself into his chest, behind his ribs and pulled viciously. His thoughts tore him up and mutilated himself remembering the feel of soft sheets, of the cleansing sting against his skin, of the burst of vibrant, plentiful food on his tongue. No one had ever done that for him. And he’d repaid that in provoking Jasper, making the older man an attacker, making him volatile, and Guy had left him to deal with the guilt as he ran off. Made a victim out of himself.
Jasper wasn’t like that.
He remembers sobbing in the vampire's lap just an hour ago, lamenting how he wished to be with his Jasper. How he wanted the man as he usually was. That simply wasn’t Jasper, he reassured himself, it was Guy and his poisonous touch.
It’s then and only when he arrives to this conclusion that he feels the hand trailing through his hair stop. That all the noise cuts out, vocal and mental alike. Abrupt death of movement deeply unsettles him until he feels it.
†
Jasper can’t feel the cold, hasn’t for a long time and likely never will again, and yet he feels something whipping against his skin nonetheless. Feels the nipping pain of cold air breaking through thin fabric. The sensation of pins and needles render him almost immobile, if it weren’t for the desire, the need to push onwards.
He follows Guy’s trail like a hunter, tracking down feathers ensnared in branches, deer tracks in the mud, the sudden silence of a forest. Everything narrows down to the trails of his flighty, fragile boy.
He has to fix it.
He wanders the streets of London with his jaw hanging just slightly, his teeth grow dry and he doesn’t care. No steam billows from his dead maw, he is cold, colder than the night.
He has to fix it.
Leather shoes beat against the ground in a steady motion, he paces like an animal, a beast, down this alleyway, through this park. He is reduced to worry and instinct.
He has to find Guy and fix it.
The air smells of salt and he has to steel his relieved joy when he remembers the exact scent of the humans despair. His base fear. Jasper feels shame lick at his heart, acting like an animal in the hopes that instinct and the taste of a distressed psychic will help him track his- Guy.
Jasper pretends as if he can’t track Guy down by sheer remembrance of how his breath smelled sweet and his clothes were doused in a distinctly human scent alone.
Instead, he follows the copper and catatonia in the air.
It was a long trail, erratic and aimless. At some points Jasper couldn’t be sure if he’d been down this street before, he was too focused in following Guy’s psychic trail blindly to worry about looping.
He’s kicking rocks, shoes dragging when the beginnings of rain spray onto the top of his head. Looking up instinctively, his eye catches on a building, the lights turned on and by the tiles it must be a bathroom. A woman is doing her hair, the hair is long and straight and yet, the brown colour triggers the image in Jasper’s mind of short, curled hair poking out between clawed fingers. Before he can stop himself, he’s seeing wide, tentative eyes soften at his words, tears of understanding and a deep empathy.
The fondness and excitement he’d felt then, the rapid feeling should have alarmed him. The force of it, a typhoon spiralling from Jasper’s perception of Guy all condensing into a concentrated image in whorls. He’d assumed too much, given very little time. Felt too hard, fell too fast. The emotions and trust between them was intensely great, the speed of it not unlike a racing, erratic greyhound.
None of the high could have prepared Jasper for the low. For the fall from grace so heavy that just remembering the concrete oppression of that garage made his insides squirm.
This was what he hated most about himself. It wasn’t the first time to have happened, to have cost him a deep connection. His joy becomes his anger, pride and care becomes dethroning them from the pedestal in his heart. Rage rattles through him soon enough, rattling the earth and splitting bonds in two, in three, in billions of tiny cracks until it’s all utterly unsalvageable. Until all that's left is to leave and start over.
Jasper felt as if he were Sisyphus on earth, pushing up, up, up on a slow, gruelling climb. He’d met this fascinating, spitfire of a boy, had catalogued his pain and his rage and his beliefs- Both said and unsaid, and filed them away. Had let the pieces fall into place on their own.
That bloodied and grazed forehead, the rabbiting heart, the wide eyed glaze of fear. Do forgive him, for being a tiger with its favourite food dangled before it. He’d been suspicious from the start. Had allowed the boy to tail him, to waltz into the motherhouse and talk all pretty to him, had hazed the boy.
And then he’d patched him up.
Not originally part of the plan but he’d told himself we can work with this. Had reinforced his mental shields around the young psychic, brimming with untapped power. Feeling the gentle beating of Guy’s heart against his cool palm, the pulsating artery went blissfully ignored in favour of those eyes. Oh, those eyes.
Beautiful blue skies, meant to float on a cloud and admire the shade, to say look, how very blue.
And to care for him after? It was a rush, an addiction. He wanted more. Wanted to take the boy to bed, make him breakfast every morning, talk shop and admire the workings of that pretty sharp jawline whilst his pretty little head got to work to get them his book. He’d wanted more.
Guy had given.
The boy’s head, unlike Jaspers, was unprotected, zero shields. Only problem with reading his mind was Guy essentially being a living walkie talkie constantly tuned into everyone within a five mile radius. It was miserable, and Jasper was only peeking. There was something to be said about pain tolerance over time, but the way the young man popped his pills said otherwise. Spoke of a desperate pain, a coyote biting off a trapped limb in excruciating pain.
Jasper had… Leant a hand. It was…
Exciting.
He could hear the trust in the psychics mind, but tasting in the air, the salt of his tears, the sweet breath of relief? It was utterly intoxicating.
Their relationship expanded, snowballed. Became an avalanche. Too fast, too much and far too soon if the state of them right now was anything to go by.
Because suddenly they’re in a hotel room, covered in useless blood spilled and Jasper can feel the heat of that old home of his, of the viscera.
“What a mess.”
Then, the 7-5-2 slips right through his fingers, or more accurately, it was never hovering between his hands at all, not in the slightest.
Then, he was holding the vial containing the blood of the ancient vampire he’d mercifully set free. Ripping off a head. His own blood boiled, his anger only sparking off and catching into a small fire at Guy’s queasy reaction. Child, his mind had seethed, he’d stepped back until they got to the car. Hoping to shake off this reactionary anger.
He was not so lucky. Guy’s mind was blank, utterly blank and who the hell can shield their mind in such a way, that efficiently, in under four days? Trick, it’s a trick. Lied to you the fire whispers again, licking at the top of his ribcage, and he can’t help but feel like Orpheus, doubtful and about to turn around.
Jasper felt a curious touch at the bottom corner of his mental shields, had felt fingernails toying as if trying to peel a sticker off of the desk of the insatiable, fidgety student.
The flames dried out his throat, filled his lungs and head with smoke. Using you. Fooling you.
He’d felt played.
He tried to breathe, expel the smoke.
“Ah. Pretty pretty girl, you’re really making the rounds, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about…” Stupid, foolish fucking boy. Goddamn idiot of a boy. The very definition of transparent.
Who was she, then? He’d rolled it around in his mouth like a gobstopper, letting the air between them grow thick and hostile. Pretty pretty girl… Outside force? Another vampire? Talamasca? Surely the boy isn’t so stupid as to get in this far with him and still keep one foot in that god forsaken organisation. One foot in the damn grave, this kid was.
So Guy had played him, then. Treated Jasper like a gullible, dimwitted goddamn fucking fool.
Snap.
Crackle.
The fire in him had grown too big, the gentle soothing rush of air, now a pressurised roar. Stepping out of the car, beckoning the boy, watching the boy try to run away, to try escaping this?
Pop.
Nose to nose, Guy’s eyes were wide, begging what did I do?
Oxygen had met his fire with a sharp burst of raw anger. The crack of the back of his hand had met Guy’s cheek and sent him collapsing to the ground, folding up like a cheap fucking lawn chair. A young thing, his boy, needed to be taught a lesson.
The cork had gone flying, red bubbling out of his wine bottle but there was nothing to celebrate. He’d gorged himself on drunken resentment.
What Jasper did was wrong, and the last thing Guy must want to see is him, his face, hear his voice. The boy must hate him now, but then his mind had drifted, a thought catching in his net of Guy, helpless and shivering, with a knife in his abdomen, or being shoved against a wall and touched. It compelled him to raise from the rubble like fuckin’ Nosferatu and his goddamn crypt.
So here he was, following the slowly shortening red string, imagining it knotted to Guy’s pinky finger and allowing a desperate hope to fuel his legs to keep moving. He didn’t stop to feed, didn’t even think about it.
Close. He’s close.
Neon yellow lights curling and depicting a pair of women's legs in heels presents itself on a backdrop of luminous purple. In there, his mind screams and Jasper, in striding over with more and more confidence, has a thought. He worries the idea of Guy, vulnerable and in a strip club, between his teeth. Fears the worst as images flood his brain, each one more alarming than the last and desperation joins the feeling in his bones. The world stops. Not everyone, just two. Another mind remains and Jasper grasps the feeling of panic like a lifeline and follows it through the dark.
He rushes through swathes of frozen bodies bathed in multicolour, rich and bright tones cascading over him. An eerily still photo captures no Guy within its frame, no spunky psychic, no brave stupid human, no deeply hurt boy. His psychic path cuts out in the entryway and before the vampire can rationalise, he’s thinking steady thoughts of passed out, kidnapped, murdered in a dark alley, drink spiked and whisked away that all circle the drain.
Jasper becomes a shark, ruthlessly jamming himself into every nook and cranny, every room, slides between bodies with an uncanny ease. His teeth stay bared the entire time.
There.
Backroom.
A frenzy takes over, he imagines he would've seen red bubbling and fizzing at the edges of his vision, bolting to the door where Guy’s distress hangs like fog. Instead, he feels as if plunged in cold dark water. Jasper wades through blind and comes out sluggish and slow into the room where the only thing in sight is wobbling blue eyes.
They're glossy with tears and Jasper aches.
“Hey, baby.”
“J’sper?” Guy’s words are slurred, lips drooping in a frown, jaw sluggish and tired. His hair looks sleep mussed, curls rumpled like a pups. Fondness fills the space just behind Jasper’s sternum as he sits down across the room. He can’t fault this miserable little human for the slight he's made.
“Yeah, I’m here, I’m here…Why don't you come here?” Soft, gentle words paired with a gently curling hand beckon the boy.
Guy looks scared and tentative as he slowly extends a leg to the ground, his feet touching the floor in a perfect arch. The gesture comes off as a mix between a ballerina, a subdued animal and something fantastical. A mystical monster of some sort, yet far from the modern interpretations of such words.
This beautiful thing slowly moving towards him was a divine omen, a swift warning.
Jasper’s unnatural phenomenon.
Where Guy finds them close, too close, Japser takes refuge in their proximity, feels every inch of the racetrack of blood through his veins. Feels the very beat of his heart as if it were Jasper's own.
Guy closes the distance between them, Jasper only coaxing. The backs of Guy’s thighs slide across the tops of cold legs. He situates himself in Jasper’s lap, clad in someone else's silk pyjamas and he has no energy to hide how he winces at the pain of seating himself. Jasper relishes in the stubborn glint in blue eyes as they stare down, daring the older man head on as if he’d ever dissuade his boy right now. Not from this, never from this.
Guy’s fingers fidget at the dainty knotted ribbon at the front of the pyjamas, but remains locked in eye contact with icy blues. He wants to see Jasper’s face, his eyes, he needs to.
“Hi.” Jasper smiles.
“…Hi.”
“How are you feeling?” Rubbing Guy’s arms, Jasper falls short in warming the skin through cool fabric.
Guy sniffs.
“M’ fine. Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine, sweet boy. Came looking for you…”
“You did.” Guy sighs, as if Jasper walked out a fairytale. This poor foolish thing.
Jasper chewed on his thoughts for a moment, rolling the dice in his mouth, leaving it up to chance what he’d say next.
“Didn’t hear you use your safeword.” His eyes stay fixed on Guy’s hip where he rubs circles with his thumb, not wanting to pressure Guy with intense eye contact.
“Yes, yes I didn't, you didn’t do anything wrong.” Oh, Guy just jumps at the chance to defend Jasper, his poor boy. He can’t help but get lost in the sea of the human’s eyes. It’s a window on a ship, the water lapping against it to allow you to peer into the deep waters. There’s more than abandonment wounds in that ocean.
“Oh, but I did baby, didn’t stop when you stopped wanting it” Guy never did want it. Guy whines against his neck, burying himself there.
“Needed to be punished.” He insists, digging deeper like he wanted to melt into the cold skin he pressed against.
“What you needed was to be talked to. I won't tolerate lying like you did but I wasn't supposed to punish you there, not with how I felt. Too angry like that, baby, too mad. Scared myself.” Jasper croons into soft curls.
“It’s my fault.” Guy’s face grows hot with tears, jaw chattering like they did back against the concrete and the vampire soothes, pushes fingers through his hair and quiets his self flagellation.
“Shhh, shhh, don’t do that, just rest. Just come lie here for a moment.” Jasper trails the tips of his claws up and down the feverish back covered in silk, pressing them closer the more the younger man shivers in pleasure. Jasper doesn’t say anything when he feels his neck grow wet or when Guy begins to shudder.
On one of many passes up and down Guy’s back, he tries to thumb at the silk waistband, wanting to check for himself that the younger man is okay, that he’s not reopening anything by sitting like this. He only sees a flash of ruddy, blotchy skin beginning to bruise, the newly scabbed skin of streaks slashed into the soft flesh before Guy lets out a terribly broken sound. He flinches and Jasper can’t let Guy sit in his fear the same way he let him sit on his wounds.
He coos, slowly running both hands through Guy’s hair to let him know where they are, hushing the feeble noises right next to the human’s ear.
“S’ okay, s’okay baby, not gonna hurt you. Just wanted to see, it’s okay I won’t look, sweetheart.”
It’s not unlike gentling an animal, a spooked horse Jasper pets the snout of and imitates a soft noise in some half baked attempt at getting the message across.
“Just wanted to make sure you're okay, did they help you?”
“Yeah” Guy confesses wetly.
“Well, that was very nice of them, what lovely ladies… I always forget how fragile humans can be.” Jasper murmurs. A great shudder moves through Guy before his shoulders begin to jump and jolt with no tears left.
“Sorry daddy.” Ah… Still in somewhat deep, then.
“No, don't apologize, doll, my fault, daddy's fault, yeah?” He bounces Guy gently, securing his waist to hover his hips just above Jasper’s so his bottom isn't irritated. Takes his time soothing him some more, kissing the side of his neck. Guy nuzzles his warm cheek to Jasper’s cold skin.
“… Are you sure you’re okay?” Oh, his darling boy.
“Yeah baby, I’m okay”
“No.” Guy insists.
“No?” Jasper murmurs into his hair.
“Talk, you gotta talk, tell me. Why?” It hurts to get the words out through the thick haze in Guy’s brain, but Jasper’s hiding and that means he might pull away, might leave. Guy’s voice, thick with tears, breaks under the question, fingers digging into Jasper’s shoulders as the icy fingers pause their petting.
“… I got mad, very mad and I thought I knew what was best for you, thought I needed to do something right then and there or else you'd do it again.” The shame is relentless and comes out in the gravel of the vampires voice, flaying him alive as his thought process and failure is brought into sharp relief.
Guy holds the silence for a moment.
“Won’t lie to you again.”
“No, I know, forgot you're not really a puppy.” The human’s head burrows under Jasper’s jaw again. He wonders if the position is so appealing to Guy because of their closeness or because Jasper couldn’t bite Guy like this. His boy has situated himself so that the vampire would have to struggle to make it work.
“Yeah… Was scared, really scared… Wanted to get away, wanted to find your book but you got mad at that, too.”
Jasper winces.
“I thought you were trying to run away…” Jasper says slowly.
“No!” The air between them shifts and those pretty blue eyes, frantic and more vibrant than the southern sky pin him into place with his desperation. Jasper presses his index finger against Guy’s lips, just hard enough to feel the give.
“I just got so scared you'd leave me, that instead I made it all so much worse. I’m so very sorry, sweet boy.”
“S’okay Jas, I’m okay, you don’t have to worry about me.” God, his eyes get so wide and starry when he’s like this, placating and reassuring Jasper.
“No? You’re my guy?” Jasper can’t help but ask as he hides himself this time, tentative desire spoken into pretty curled hair.
“Yeah.” Guy’s breath is warm and sweet against Jasper's neck, a soft puff and Jasper's cheeks pull into a wide smile.
“There he is… There’s my good boy.” Jasper pulls back only so he can duck. A kiss is pressed to every mole he remembers along the line of Guy’s throat.
The boy’s pulse doesn’t pick up so much as start pounding where his carotid sits, hard and passionate as Guy melts back into hot tears with Jasper's gentleness returning, a tidal wave of relief and self loathing wiping Guy out in a slow and steady leak.
Guy finds himself leaning heavily into his need to please, trying desperately to ignore the sunken feeling in his guts. His stomach feels caved in, a kind of stammering or sick fluttering motion in the organ. If he can just do this, just push past this black mold growing in his stomach, he can make sir calm down. Jasper must feel so guilty, and it’s for something that Guy did. He lied to Jasper and Guy can see sir pulling apart for it.
He lets Jasper run cool thumbs along his undereyes and Guy leans into one of his palms. Nuzzles into the skin and gives a chaste kiss with his eyes fluttering open to look up at the vampire.
Look at me, says the eyes.
Focus on me, says the hands.
He knows how to use these things, to appease, to calm, to reassure. Guy knows what to do, how to put Jasper’s mind at rest. Knows to smooth his hands over broad shoulders, to wrap his arms behind the vampire’s neck. He can take control of the situation with the space between their stomachs, not with kindle and carnal desire, but with the softest of brushes. Knows to whisper a kiss just where Jasper’s neck meets the hinge of his jaw. He’s so far outside of his body right now, that it doesn’t matter. He can give Jasper just enough of his mind to gentle him, too.
The more Guy peppers kisses along the vampire's skin, the more Jasper’s own hands regain confidence. Calloused skin roams over the silk, catching on the bottom of his shirt and this time Guy doesn’t flinch when Jasper tugs at the silk. He arches his back against the cold hands cooling down the skin on his lower back as Jasper trails up the ridges of his spine and Guy pours all of his softness and neediness into wherever heat meets chill with a languid fervor. They slide together for a while, nothing more than reassurance and sense as steam billows up, building a smokescreen between them.
Lips find lips and the tender slide rises a gritty sigh of contentment in the vampire, causing a soft smile to tug at Guy’s mouth, a gasp leaving suddenly parted lips as he’s swept safely into the air, in Jasper’s arms. Instinct drives him to cling on tight.
“Are you sure there's not anything else I can do for you, puppy? You don't hurt down there?” Tender words murmured into the soft, drifting clouds of the human’s head.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Yes it does, baby you didn't earn that punishment.”
“But I did, I lied to you” Guy insists, watery eyes overfilling once more with genuine remorse and jesus, Jasper’s going to have litres of water lined up for Guy to drink when they get home...
But for now, the real struggle lies between Jasper trying to get a proper grip on the sick worry he feels for the human and the state he put him in, and trying to push away the satisfaction that curls in his belly that Guy takes lying to him seriously, that he won’t do it again. The taste of it coating his throat and settling in his stomach is saccharine and all he can think to say is-
“Okay, okay, it’s alright, you’re alright.” The act of settling Guy makes Jasper feel giddy, a bubble of excitement and absolute pleasure building in his shoulders. The knowledge that Guy will be honest, that he’d tell the truth to keep the vampire around,
“I know you didn't mean it now, you know that, right? I scared you huh? Scared you real bad. Didn’t even give you a chance to explain, just cornered you and made you hurt. Oh, doll, I’m so sorry” Guy’s nose rubs its way harder into his neck, the hard and warm line of bone digging into Jasper’s skin makes him feel alive.
Gravity shifts when they start to move through the stagnant world again, frozen coloured lights and stiff bodies caught in sensual motion. Guy doesn’t stare for long, startled by the gentle bobbing of Jasper’s hold like a buoy in the ripping sea. He grasps onto the tether with aching, reddened fingers and a cry of distress, refusing to let go. Anything but the lonely stretch of water as Jasper steadily walks them home.
“It’s okay, all is forgiven, my Guy. Just gotta be better, yeah?”
Elation was served in a full glass and Guy gulped it down, let it fill him with its finite warmth. Guy had never been given a chance like this before. People always saw sense and hit the road as soon as they could, immediate betrayal seemed to follow him. Not Jasper, the vampire will stay as long as Guy… Behaves.
Guy can do that, he can be better. Anything to make him stay.