damnpire | Kenos Inbox

[D thinks Matt sounds a lot like some women he has met on the Frontier, the human ones who had a soft spot for vampires. The brief image of a young woman comes to Matt's mind; beautiful, pale, with long and dark hair done up with braids, large and dark brown eyes.]

There are some people you can't help, not if they don't want to help themselves. Don't let Silco mistreat you simply because you don't want to hurt his already fragile feelings. He'll use what he can against you to get what he wants. It won't matter if you're kind to him or not.

Did he drink against your will? I could smell him on you before.

[ Matt receives the image curiously, considering the woman's beautiful face. Quetzalcoatl's sunbeam warmth.

He wants to say I don't expect anything from him, which is mostly but not entirely true. He wants to say I don't want to help him. That, too, isn't quite it.

Matt's arms fold protectively over his chest. He looks down; he doesn't need to look at D to know exactly where he is. ]

Tell me to tell you about it, [ he says, soft. ] Order me.

[D's mood sours ever so slightly. It isn't anger, and it isn't directed at Matt. It's... distaste, Matt realizes. Internalized. There is a great deal of distaste in the request on his side.

He has long accepted he is half of a monster, but he hasn't ever accepted inflicting that part of him on anyone else. This isn't like ordering Matt to not do something foolish. This isn't like ordering Matt to get back from whatever insane cliff the man might jump from.]

You already know I wouldn't do that to you.

[Testing. To see if Matt is also testing him.]

[ Matt remembers D telling him something to that effect, before the bite. He remembers not really believing him. But he couldn't sense his emotions then the way he can now. The distaste that roils as if it's lurching in his own stomach. ]

You told me you didn't want to compel people against their will, [ he says. Still quiet, but with a slight questioning note in his voice. ] So if I wanted you to do it, it wouldn't be ...

[ But he doesn't want to ask D to do something he'd genuinely hate. Matt's already carrying enough shame; he couldn't inflict more. Even though a part of him aches for that warm, easy feeling, the yes coursing through his veins--he can do without it. He's told people things like this before, hasn't he?

Has he ...?

Matt's quiet for what feels like a long time. He doesn't look at D, and he keeps his arms wrapped around himself. ]

I got lost, [ he says eventually. Even his thoughts are stilted, as if resisting coming together to shape a whole story. ] In Kowloon. And he found me.

I tried to talk my way out of it ... tried some magic tricks. I even started a fire. [ Matt's lips twitch. ] But it didn't work. He told me to hold still, that he wasn't going to kill me. That he wanted to teach me a lesson about spying on him. [ Matt adds, unnecessarily, ] He thought I was spying on him.

[It's as bad as he figured it would be. He's dealt with Silco several times, all of them terrible.

D's angry compassion swells slowly up like a sturdy fire, warm on the verge of the pleasurable sting of heat. He lingers there in the vastness of the mental space, burning and quiet. Not many people get to understand just how caring D is outwardly, not when he presents himself so stoically. (For good reason, professionally back home, at least.) Most of his love language is acts of service; the quiet dispensing of his time to others without fanfare. Something only for them.

But here, through the solid bond of communion, he is clearly sympathetic.]

I'm sorry that happened to you. Are you alright?

[ Oh, no.

Matt had been bracing himself, half-consciously, for judgment. For being regarded differently, not that he knows how D regards him now. (Vaguely female-coded ...?) He expected anger. But he wasn't counting on compassion--certainly not compassion he's forced to believe, through the sheer, incontrovertible weight of their connection.

To top it all off, D has to go and say the worst possible things. Matt swallows.

As long as he isn't being kept on the rails by vampiric compulsion, he doesn't answer the question directly: ]

I went back. He didn't ask me to.

I've been donating once a week.

[Well, he notices the lack of answer to his question, but tables it for the time being.

The burn hones inward onto Matt, lighting up the area of him with a powerful and protective sort of warmth, studying him, through him rather than looking him over. Not unlike drawing thread through the eye of a needle.]

If it's your choice, I won't stop you. But that is too much blood too often. You'll get sick, or you'll die.

[He is a bit worried now, admittedly.]

Tell me how you're feeling about it.

[This isn't about what had happened in the moment, so he isn't ashamed of the hint of reverberating edge to his tone, the first brushes of a command.]

I want your honesty.

[ There's a moment of surprise, almost protest. D may feel a sensation like fingers brushing the hair tenderly off his neck. Not Silco's: these hands are whole, their skin smooth. Losing this much blood was fine with Vincent, so why wouldn't it be fine now?

Though D sounds very certain. And he is a research scientist with an interest in blood. Matt nods carefully, once. He doesn't try to resist the sensation of warmth, of protection. Normally he'd feel embarrassed to accept something like that--he'd try to laugh it off, like he did with Tezcatlipoca. But right now ...

He's tired.

He breathes into the feeling of D's voice, and doesn't try to order the words in his mind. Just lets them come. ]

I miss Quetzalcoatl so much.

[ There are other things, of course. Silco's bottomless hunger, Matt's resignation to being devoured. But this is what pours out first. ]

I know I didn't know her like some of you did. But she's a god, so--I did, in a way. Like daylight, or the wind.

And after he did that, I thought ... fuck him, I'm not going to respond by hating him, or trying to hurt him. I thought about what the Feathered Serpent would do, and that's--

Sacrifice.

So other people can live. Doesn't matter if they deserve it or not.

[D is not surprised Matt had a real Quetzalcoatl liking. That tracks, knowing the two of them. Quetz, who tried to get him to skinny dip with her in the ocean what feels like so long ago. Very hilarious.

He lets Matt spill it out to him with no real order, lets Matt talk. He is a good listener because he is often so quiet.

Sacrifice he understands. Sacrifice, Matt will learn later in Aetos's laboratory, is something with which he's deeply familiar.]

Mm.

[A part of him wants to command Matt not to feed Silco at all. But that isn't his decision to make, is it? He stands by hating the idea of being in so much control of someone else they have no autonomy.]

Don't feed him as often as you are anymore. There are ways to find other blood in Highstorm. [...] Does he hurt you when you go?

[ Yet again, Matt finds he's braced himself for judgment, or bafflement, that isn't coming. It's a small bit of relief, one that allows some of the tension he's holding to unwind. ]

Not as often, [ he agrees. He balks a bit at the notion that there are other ways to find blood, since he imagines that part of what Silco enjoys about their arrangement is a certain sense of power and control. You can't order that off the menu at Bloody Marie's. (Or maybe you can?) But he doesn't want to get sick over this. Even Silco expressed something similar, back at the start. ]

He doesn't hurt me, [ Matt adds. ] There's a drug that dulls the pain.

It's not addictive.

[Might be surprised what you can get at Bloody Marie's if you ask nicely enough.

The pinch to his mental mood is the equivalent of brows furrowing. "It's not addictive" doesn't really assuage much of the worry here. He seems to do a lot of worrying for someone who acts like he doesn't really care on the outside. Occupational hazard of forcing detachment.]

He must if you still feel the way you do about what happened. Pain doesn't have to be physical.

[ D's worry is oddly flattering, but it also worries him. Matt imagines D hours from now, walking around his house full of animals, still thinking about this conversation.

Raisin'll be there, at least. That makes Matt feel a little better. ]

Maybe it's lingering, [ he admits. ] From the first time.

[ And the time before. Before any of them from Kenos or the world called Horos ever knew him--that first night he met Vincent. Which is far outside the scope of the current conversation. ]

[Concerning. He doesn't even know, but concerning!! So yes, he will be pondering over this in the house for a while.]

Lingering makes you require a substance to go through with it each time?

[Not all vampires can have your stupid ero bite, D, thanks.]

What exactly made it uncomfortable the first time? The force?

Oh, [ comes Matt's reply, followed by a sheepish, ] no, sorry, without the drugs it'd hurt like hell.

[ So the answer to "does he hurt you" is apparently, by D's metric, "yes." Oops. ]

......

[The mental equivalent of the Drew Scanlon blinking gif at Matt. Hello? He literally just asked you if Silco hurt you, you stupid little sex magic man.

The silence is the pointed question looking mentally at Matt.]

[ slgdjg my out-loud laugh ]

... So if you mean "does what he's doing hurt inherently," then yeah, [ Matt allows. ] Definitely my least favorite bite among the kinds I've had.

[ There's a brief, teasing flicker of emotion, a pale echo of ecstasy and union. Maybe it's not strictly necessary to muse fondly on what he can recall of D's bite right now, but Matt will take any opportunity to lighten the mood. ]

[BOTH. It was both. He had been concerned about BOTH. Not every vampire can have his stupid ero bite, however, so he is stupid.

Mentally, D is very quick to "look away" from the teasing in a hilariously polite and surprisingly shy manner. The sensual bite is extremely embarrassing in the way of a formal man clinging desperately to some kind of etiquette.

Very Liem Talbott of him really.]

You should leave him be.

[ Matt zeroes right in on that shy, sudden shift in attention, like an affectionate shark who scents blood in the water. His mood dims at D's words, and he replies-- ]

Yeah.

I know.

[ --but he can't help flitting back to that sense of D's discomfort. It feels a little easier to address than the question of exactly how he'll disentangle himself from Silco. How he might be able to make the disentangling stick. ]

It's okay, you know, [ he adds. Amused, but gentle about it. ] I mean--you know what I'm like. I'd be the last person to judge you for how getting bit feels.

[The shy embarrassment doesn't grow, but it doesn't fade away either. D stews in it, embarrassed maybe because Matt can sense it here without him being able to conceal it more than anything.]

It isn't something that should be imposed on others. It's... false. An illusion.

[Matt is undoubtedly interested in him, but generally... the feelings this act imposes on other people is fraudulent.]

People should feel those things on their own, not because a vampire is biting them.

What is "real," though? [ Even thinking the words, Matt can't help a carbonated sparkle of mental laughter. Associations follow: smoke blown through parted lips, the heavy smell of weed. Globules in a lava lamp. ] I mean, I think I get what you're saying, in the sense that ... the sensations are coming externally, or through a process we think of as ... extrinsic, to how people normally arrive at those feelings.

[ Despite the fact that he finds D's awkwardness pretty cute, frankly, Matt's trying to be delicate. ]

But it doesn't mean they're invalid, or illusory. I respect that that's your experience, just, for me ...

Especially not with consent. It wasn't an imposition.

[D sort of mentally wrinkles his nose, and it's hard to say if it's from the tease of the association, or the fact he can recall the exact scent from his memory, stronger to him because his sense of smell is horrendously powerful.]

The feelings are there as they are in everyone, but Frontier vampires twist them and use them for their own purpose, putting them where they wouldn't otherwise be, in most cases. So that their prey won't resist.

Most people would feel as you did with Silco. That is what the sensation tries to conceal.

[ Matt frowns. He feels some resistance to the idea that D and Silco might be alike in any respect, but it takes a moment for the words to form. ]

Pain is ... interesting, for me. [ Carefully. ] Not good, exactly. But it's not the worst thing.

[ Another pause. ]

The part that was bad about what he did is that I couldn't stop him. He didn't ask me. [ There's almost an echo to this, bouncing down and down the hallway of Matt's memory. ] If he'd asked me I might've said yes. Even knowing how bad the pain was gonna be.

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