What's in a name? He found himself thinking. That which we call a rose, By any other name would smell as sweet…
Horribly cliché, he knew, but it seemed to fit how he felt as he lay bruised, torn, and a little broken in what he thought now was only ironically called 'The Sanctuary'. He had forgotten how it felt to be at the mercy of someone else; excepting, of course, the bastard vampire insects that held him captive. But this was…something else entirely. Being a vampire did not let any air out of his already monstrous ego, quite the opposite, but losing that unique omnipotence did a little. Obviously not enough or he would have known when to stop, when he pushed too many buttons, when he touched a nerve much too raw.
But he didn't, and now he was…dirty. In more ways than one. All because of his stupid mouth. His father was right; if he'd just learned to keep his mouth in check it wouldn't have gotten bruised so often. He guessed that after 130 years of forgetting how to bruise, relearning was a particularly harsh lesson.
What did he say? He didn't remember the taunts that led up to it, but the finishing blow was…
"I'm doing my job, John. Always have been. If someone had done theirs in a certain river a century ago…"
He had been turned away from Druitt at the time; looking at a computer screen. He did it on purpose; to give his words a little more bite if they were said almost offhandedly. Perhaps if he hadn't been so arrogant he would have seen the flash in the Ripper's eyes, remembered that he wasn't immortal anymore, apologized in some way and saved himself from…this.
But he didn't, and the long, dark figure launched himself at him; a figure that seemed to have no other use than for murder.
He had felt the initial contact with Druitt, and didn't have time to be scared before there was the peculiar feeling of falling without motion, of being nowhere and everywhere at once. And being able, for just a moment, to really feel someone. And what he felt was dark, cold, and inextricably twisted, and it wanted nothing more than to render the flesh from his bones.
When they landed, Nikola was crushed under the larger man as they fell onto the floor of a dark, damp, cold place. Suddenly, the weight was off him, and he was lifted bodily by the back of his suit and flung across the room where he fell unceremoniously against a wine rack where the bottle necks dug mercilessly into him before he crumbled onto the ground.
Again, he was lifted, by the front of his suit this time, and a steel fist slammed, with much more force than he had remembered, into his face.
Dazed, he only managed a few vague attempts to get up before John stalked calmly over to him, kneeled, straddling him, and began, to put it eloquently, to beat the shit out of him.
Druitt readied the first blow carefully, allowing Nikola to give some embarrassingly futile attempts at defending himself before it began. He lifted him a few inches off the stone floor by his cravat before hitting him; again and again and again.
And again.
He hadn't had a beating like this even when he was young. When he received the Source Blood and realized his new existence, he vowed to never to be dominated again, and when he got into a fight with his father when he returned home one day, he nearly beat the older man to death.
Now that he knew what it really felt like to fear for your life in such a violent way, he almost wished he hadn't done it.
The cravat tore with the force of another blow, and Nikola's head hit the unforgiving stone. Druitt simply picked him up again by his lapels and hit him again, letting his head hit the floor with a cold smack.
About the third time he did this, John stopped. He noticed that Tesla wasn't moving anymore. For a second he wondered if he'd lost too much control and gone and killed the skinny rat. But a stir from the slender man beneath him, an eye cracked open, and a pained smirk reassured him, if not enraged him further. But the blood running from Nikola's nose and between his lips made him still his next blow, and the cold violence gripping him relaxed a little. He set Nikola's head more gently onto the ground and got off of him. He put a hand on a stone column and hung his head a little as he wiped his knuckles on his trousers. He heard Tesla's movements as he gasped for breath through blood and saliva, struggling to get up.
Finally, Tesla managed to get into a sitting position against another column, gasping a little partly from exertion, but mostly from pain. John leaned against his column and slowly sank down into a sitting position by Nikola.
Even sitting, Druitt was bigger than him.
Suddenly, Nikola felt intense anger for having being beaten like that, and he wanted to fight back in the only way he could. It might kill him, but he knew that now he was mortal, he would die, and it would probably eventually be at the hands of John one way or another, so why not now? Why wait for getting old and getting feeble; when he could no longer cut with his tongue, when his words lost all their bite? If he submitted now, then he would always back down, and the decline would begin.
Nikola had felt something other than hard fists digging into him during the abuse; something a little…lower. He hadn't noticed it while he was having his ass handed to him, but he realized it now. And he was going to use it.
"I had no idea-" he began.
Druitt continued for him.
"That I felt so strongly about that day? Of course I do! You don't think that I blame myself too? And to have you-"
Nikola interjected.
"As I was saying," he continued, "I had no idea violence got you so…"
He looked over at John's trousers.
"…excited."
Druitt snorted a little in indignation, and a little in surprise.
"Don't be lurid, Nikki."
Nikola wrinkled his nose at the name.
"Is that why you killed those whores, then?" he snarled. "Because it was the only way you could be normal with Helen? Did you tear those girls apart so you could-"
Druitt was on him in a flash and he was once again pressed into the floor; this time by his neck as he struggled to free himself; grabbing at the larger man's hands as he held him down.
He could definitely feel it now. Hard and insistent against his hip, John's breaths coming heavy and his face and ears a little flushed.
Nikola managed a smirk before he bucked suddenly upwards, grinding his bony hip hard against John, his hand tightening around Telsa's throat as he gripped him with the other hand and surged back against him in small circles.
Tesla chuckled as best he could and lay still. John, furious at being called out and then laughed at, hurled him once more across the room. Nikola landed face down on the flagstones and managed to get to his knees before John reached him. He kicked him hard in the ribs and he fell gasping to the floor. Druitt took this opportunity to undo his trousers and kneel over Nikola before he knew what was going on.
When he felt John's length pressed against his ass, and felt John's hands fumbling with his trousers he wasn't able to get a word out before the catch on his pants slipped and Druitt's hand was tangled in his unruly hair, pressing his head into the floor, the other lifting his hips and pulling down his pants roughly to expose his buttocks to the chilly cellar air.
"Shut up," Druitt said in a rough and husky voice near his ear, "You bloody asked for it and you know it."
Nikola was going to argue but stopped; this wasn't what he'd thought would happen, but he supposed that there were reasons why suicide by serial killer was rather rare. Though, to be honest, it could still be an outcome. So he just tried to relax as he felt John pressing a couple spit-slicked fingers into him before readying himself for the actual penetration.
He didn't waste any time, and in a single thrust was all the way in and this earned him a strangled cry from Nikola. The scrawny weasel hadn't made a sound, not once while he was having the crap beaten out of him, but his hands near his head were clenched and he was sure that if he could see his face there would be tears.
The thought of this made heat flash in his lower belly and he pulled out and slammed back in again. Each time earned him a hiss from the slender, girlish body beneath him, and it got him even more turned-on. But every time he came close, he would stop and catch his breath, allowing himself to soften a little before continuing again.
He didn't know how long this went on for, but he shifted position to stop his legs from cramping and thrusted again, but this time getting another kind of gasp from the younger man that made him pause. Nikola's member had twitched; he was getting off too. Then he realized;
He wanted Nikola to enjoy this as much as himself.
Perhaps one did not want to be loved, so much as to be understood.
He deliberately angled for that spot again and again, eliciting groans of pleasure mixed with pain from the irritating genius.
The hand in Nikola's hair relaxed and moved to between his shoulder blades; resting his hand there as opposed to holding him there.
Nikola lifted his forehead off the ground and shifted his weight to one forearm as he tried to touch himself. John slammed his head back onto the floor as an order to stay put as he stilled his movements in Nikola. He replaced his arm near his head and let out a whimper of frustration. John was sure he was painfully hard now; and he must also be in such tremendous pain.
The thought that he was causing both and they were causing Nikola Tesla to cry made his member twitch and nearly made him come right then. But not yet, he wanted Nikola to come before he did; he wanted to hear Nikola beg for it.
So he cinched one hand tight around Tesla's balls as the other hand gripped the inventor's member as he thrusted deliberately slowly and working his penis in short, hard jerks as Nikola cried out in pain and frustration.
"Please," he whimpered "please, John! Just let me- let me-!"
John leaned in close to Tesla's ear.
"Tell me, Nikola," he said in a breathy whisper, "What is it you want me to do to you?"
There was a cry of anguish that made his whole body tense because it was mingled with the self-hate of defeat.
Nikola was submitting; before, John had only the physical upper-hand, and any victory would be hollow. They both knew that. Nikola was giving in to him, and now his dominance was complete.
Everyone knows that true power is given, not taken.
"Fuck me John!" he gasped, "Please! Fuck me! Let me come! Fuck me hard like I know you wanted to screw those whores in Whitechapel! Please…John…"
Nikola's begging trailed off and in a few well-timed thrusts and jerks Nikola was coming all over himself and his hand; and John was certain he heard sobs from the smaller man. He allowed him to recover some before returning to his relentless thrusting into Nikola's now-too-sensitive body. Now he began to struggle and writhe away from him so John gripped the back of his neck much too hard and held him down. There would be bruises there as he gripped even harder when Nikola began to fight even more.
"Stop it! John! No! Please, stop it! I can't-! I can't-!"
John's mouth hung open in an 'o' shape as his eyes fluttered closed at the delicious begging for mercy coming from the normally arrogant man as he gripped Nikola's raw member again. Nikola's cries petered out into inarticulate cries of frustration and pain as he beat his fists futilely against the stone. He had never known pain like this; not even Gregory's Amplus Navitas made him feel as bad as he did now.
The worst part was that he was close to coming again.
And he had also never known self-hatred like this before.
John leaned over him and sank his teeth deep into the place where his neck met his shoulder, in an eerily vampiric way whose irony was not lost on him.
Humiliatingly, that was what sent him over the edge for the second orgasm in the last 10 minutes.
He came dry, and with a strangled, pitiful cry as he clenched tightly around John's member.
It was the combination of that cry and the clenching that finally sent John over the edge, and he came with a stifled roar as he kept thrusting into Nikola's now bleeding hole.
He had never known an orgasm like this.
Not even when he tore those prostitutes apart all those years ago did he come like this.
They both collapsed; Nikola passing out and John simply incoherent as he fell asleep.
When John awoke, Nikola was still out and he had curled himself around the engineer's small, damaged body.
Damage he inflicted.
John started suddenly, jumping up and backing away from Nikola where he lay. A rare moment of clarity was upon Druitt; as he shook and trembled. He suspected that when he satisfied the Thing in him, it slept, leaving him alone.
Alone with what he'd done to one who had been one of his closest friends. The impulse to clean up overwhelmed him; and the irony of it hurt. Like always, the guilt rushed upon him and he almost wished the creature back so he wouldn't have to feel it. But he could wait; Nikola couldn't.
He checked him for any potentially fatal injuries and, finding none, put his pants back on, wiped the grime off his face and carried him to the foot of the cellar stairs where he teleported back to the computer to grab the platter that Nikola used to carry wine. He teleported back to the stairs and threw it down after Nikola and promptly teleported back to his own room. The Big Guy was probably looking for them and if he hadn't heard them before, would certainly have heard that. He showered, washing the blood off his hands and genitals and turning the water to a dangerously high temperature; letting it scald his skin.
He couldn't feel clean.
He never felt this way after killing the prostitutes; a quick shower and the burning of clothes in some far-away place and he was done. But now, even as the clothes floated down to the bottom of the Caspian Sea, he still felt the blood on him.
It stained him like pomegranate juice from a fruit stolen from a cart; marking him, branding him, proving simply by its presence what he'd done.
He kept scrubbing even when he felt something other than water and soap running down his skin.
Which brings Nikola back to goddamn Shakespeare.
Perhaps love and hate were just different names for the same emotions; one did to others the same things in the name of one or the other.
He'd always found Shakespeare to be rather pretentious; but he was beginning to really understand why his trash, what would now be called 'pulp fiction', were considered classics.
They were easily quotable and could pertain to almost anything. Though this little drama couldn't be in any way, shape, or form be compared to Romeo and Juliet.
Even if it could be, he refused to be Juliet.
The Big Guy found him eventually, and was suspicious of his story that 'he fell' after he was practically carried to the infirmary.
"Off what?" the Big Guy grunted, "A building?"
But left it at that. Nikola wouldn't allow a full examination, but allowed him to treat his other injuries. The number that Druitt did on him hurt, and he had bruised up, but it was going away already as Helen's medical supplies and treatments were well above even the best private hospital's standards. It helps to be friends with the world's most foremost medical genius, if equally unknown medical genius.
After he was patched up, he dodged questions from an angry sasquatch and hid in his room. He actually hadn't been here before; all his time had been divided between the library, the wine cellar and the couch. When he bathed, which was not frequently, he simply used the medical showers closest.
But he found a bathtub in his room. A large one; deep and wide and he wanted nothing more than to sink into its warm depths. But he first had to fill it up; and that would take forever.
He decided to turn on the bath and, after adding ample soap to the water, left to get as much wine as he could carry.
He wasn't as picky as he normally was, he told himself that it was because his bath awaited, but he purposely avoided the places of disturbed dust where their melee had taken place.
His arms full of wine; he limped the short distance to his room and put the bottles on the floor of the bathroom. Helen had selected his room with his thirst in mind; thoughtful woman as she was, he thought. He loves her so much…it aches like his insides do now.
He then shrugged off his clothes in a very un-Nikola Tesla like way, leaving them in a heap on the tile, and got into the soapy, warm water with a sigh.
It hurt, it stung, it ached in places he'd not like to think about, but it was the good sort of hurt; the kind of pain that comes just before it goes away completely.
He unceremoniously uncorked the first wine bottle and drank straight out of the bottle. Again, anyone watching who knew him would be astonished at his behavior.
His prediction was right; the throbbing pain subsided, and he began to feel warm and drowsy and safe. He couldn't remember how muck he drank, but the bottle in his hands was half-empty. Or half-full; if that Zimmerman child were here he'd make a big deal out of it. His eyes felt heavy, and the pull he felt towards sleep he hoped would be the soft, lush arms of Morpheus and not cold, sharp tendrils of Icelus.
His arm hung out of the warm water, the wine bottle hanging precariously from his fingers.
This was how John found him; slumped in the tub with 8 empty wine bottles and one half-empty one dangling in his hand, almost falling and spilling onto the floor.
He was lying so still in the water, John thought for a moment that he might have killed himself with alcohol poisoning; never mind his inhuman tolerance to the stuff.
After about 10 minutes of deliberation and watching Nikola sleep, he carefully stepped towards him and, kneeling, gently lifted the bottle from his fingers and set it down just in reach. Freezing again for a few minutes like a cat, he moved to press his fingers to his only living victim's throat.
But he never got a chance to feel for the all-important pulse because at the moment his fingers touched the helpless man, he spoke.
"Come to finish the job, Jack?" he murmured.
Nikola's eyes fluttered opened slowly as the Ripper's fingers withdrew from his skin like a frightened butterfly.
But before he opened his eyes, John was gone; only the last, recoiling tendrils of energy remained as he teleported away.
Nikola only chuckled softly, tiredly, and picked up the bottle and took a few lazy sips. He drained the last of its contents as he let it fall with a heavy thump to the floor.
"Now who has the power, John…" he breathed as he fell unconscious.