Warnings: M/M slash, some blood and violence

Pairings: Boyd/Ives, Ives/Hart

Notes: This is revealed to be AU in the second chapter and you'll find out why then. Also I couldn't think of a title, that much is obvious.

Chapter 1

"You know why he wants you don't you?" Hart's question was almost off-hand and he glanced at Boyd only to ensure the younger man was listening. "He wants to make a family." Boyd didn't miss the sneer behind this final word, as if Hart thought the idea perverse or comical. "He's already got me – to act as protector. Now he's just looking for someone a little easier on the eye."

Hart lowered the axe in his hand where he stood chopping wood for kindling and straightened, meeting Boyd's gaze and holding it. It was all Boyd could do not to look away.

"You know what he did to me in the cave? He seduced me." This was uttered as if the answer were obvious. Hart took a moment to continue chopping the wood, knowing that now Boyd could not possibly stop listening even if he'd wanted to. "Not in as obvious a way as you might be thinking of course. Not in the way a woman seduces a man, more like when a predator calms its prey before delivering the final blow. And don't get me wrong, we didn't sleep together, at least not in that sense, but we ate and drank together, licked the blood from one another," he paused, curling his lip in disgust, "like animals."

Burying the axe in a nearby log, Hart ceased his work and straightened to his full height, fixing Boyd with a pointed stare. "I'm wary about you though... I think he wants you for something more. You've seen what he can do – I've seen the power he has over you. I don't think it'd take much. You'll be eating out of his hand in no time."

Boyd swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat. He wanted to object but Hart had delivered his speech with such certainty that Boyd himself was beginning to think it might be true. There was something undeniably lucrative about Ives and Ives himself seemed all too aware of it and Boyd was adamant he wouldn't succumb.

Ives was asleep, wrapped in layers of dark fur, his arm the only part of him visible where it hung down over the edge of the cot. Boyd could see the cross from the rosary at his wrist, dangling mockingly, as if Ives had consciously left his arm on show on the off chance that Boyd would see him.

Cautiously Boyd lifted the fur from around the other man. Ives was naked beneath the fur and yet again Boyd got the distinct feeling that Ives had planned this carefully, that he knew Boyd would come to him at night, knife in hand in an attempt to slay him. Boyd felt his fingers tremble around the hilt of the knife as his eyes travelled over the smaller man's body. He'd seen him naked before of course, as Colqhoun, and at the time thought little of it, but now as Ives he seemed different. Somehow his small and lithe frame held more appeal, the flat planes and protruding bones of his body more fascinating than he could remember any woman's soft curves ever being. He'd never been an enormous hit with women, he possessed the looks but not the confidence, but he knew that he'd never usually look twice at a man. This wasn't about sex, he reminded himself. This was a trick, a mixture of the blood lust that surged within him and the spell Ives had cast over him, over them all, with his knowing charisma. Once upon a time Boyd would have brushed Ives off as scrawny, with too foxish a face to ever really be thought of as classically handsome, but Ives had somehow elevated himself to something beyond the capabilities of his physical form and in that moment Boyd couldn't think of anything more desirable. Giving in to it would be so easy, but if he could just end it...

Boyd tightened his grip on the knife, clenching his teeth as he drew back before plunging the blade towards the sleeping man's bare chest.

A hand shot out to his wrist, the blade poised a mere inch from Ives' skin.

Boyd gasped, eyes darting to meet the piercing, near black gaze of the man beneath him. He moved to strike Ives with his free hand but he was easily restrained when Ives' other hand shot out to hold him in place above him.

"What is it, Boyd? You think you can kill me?" Ives chuckled, guiding the blade down towards his chest and Boyd's breath caught in his throat as Ives slowly drew the point of the blade diagonally across his chest, blood beading in a line across the pale white flesh in a deep, ruby red.

Ives laughed ecstatically as Boyd groaned out a mixture of despair and longing, the smell filling his nostrils, the urge to drink clouding his vision and he dropped the blade, pulling himself from Ives' grasp and scrambling to his feet, stepping away from the bed. Ives calmly craned his neck to examine the slash across his chest before dropping his head back against the pillow as he exhaled slowly, rubbing the blood across his chest in circles.

Boyd stood rooted to the spot, horrified at the display before him but unable to turn away. Ives was writhing on the furs, smothering his own blood down over himself, gasping in elation as he did so. He turned his head, fixing his half-lidded gaze on Boyd, mouth parted as his breath escaped in one long, shuddering breath.

"You don't know what you're missing Boyd," he purred, bringing his index finger up to his mouth and sucking the blood from it with obscene concentration, before running his hand down the hollow of his chest, his abdomen and down through the soft curls at his groin, toying idly with his cock.

"You're disgusting," Boyd sneered, forcing himself to turn away.

"Am I?" Ives breathed, his brow creasing in a slight frown, although his voice betrayed no genuine concern, only curiosity. "I don't know..." he mused, "I think you'd actually find me rather..." he paused, closing his eyes and inhaling deeply, parting his legs and pushing his hips up as he reached down past his scrotum and towards the puckered hole between his buttocks before pulling his hand back swiftly and collapsing back against the bed, turning back to Boyd and smiling when he found the other man's eyes back upon him. "...pleasant to the taste," he finished in a rush of breath.

Boyd's nostrils twitched in response to the smell of the other man's blood, now spread liberally about his lower half, giving him the appearance of a man who'd been brutally sexually abused (or gutted Boyd thought darkly), save for the almost euphoric expression on his face.

Yet again Boyd found himself having to physically force himself to look away, knowing his expression mimicked that of a stubborn child but unable to feign indifference. "No," he barely managed to mutter. In his peripheral vision he saw Ives stir, swinging his legs off the bed and getting to his feet, a white blur with a streak of red, like the ghostly apparition of a murdered man glimpsed only in the corner of his eye. He turned, hoping deep down that the vision would disappear before his eyes but Ives stood before him, still pale and terrifying as a ghost against the dark backdrop of the cabin, but unmistakably real.

"You see Boyd I know what you want," Ives said, fixing him once more with his penetratingly hypnotic gaze, his voice no longer a whisper of feigned longing but something altogether darker. He took slow, cautious steps towards Boyd as he spoke, as if he expected the other man to bolt at any moment. "There's nothing you'd like more than to engage in a little," Boyd found himself against herded back against the cabin wall, the length of Ives' body mere inches from his own as the shorter man leant up to whisper against his ear, "blood sport."

Boyd let out a bellow of rage, catching Ives off guard as he barrelled into him, using the slight difference in weight to his advantage to knock the other man to the floor, the blade falling from his hand and clattering to the floor. Ives landed awkwardly on his flank, managing to get his hands beneath him in time to stop himself from smashing his cheek against the floor. Boyd had time to register the look of unmitigated shock on Ives' face before descending on him, wrestling him down onto his stomach so that the other man was trapped beneath him, flat against the floor.

"Is this it?" Boyd growled fiercely into his ear, "Is this what you want?"

Ives was silent a moment before he chuckled. "Very good," he purred but Boyd hadn't mistaken the tremor in his breath, hadn't missed the fear that had flashed across his face as the other man had knocked him down.

"What are you waiting for?" Ives breathed and Boyd felt him shift beneath him, parting his legs and pushing his backside up to meet his crotch. Boyd snarled, pushing himself up onto his knees and rolling the other man over onto his back.

Again Boyd was sure that Ives' expression registered fear but his face cracked almost instantly into a smirk and he snickered cruelly at Boyd's apparent fury. "Did I offend you Boyd?" He sneered without a hint of apology and Boyd instinctively tangled his fingers in the back of the other man's hair, pulling his head back to expose his neck in an attempt to cut short his malevolent laughter, the silence that followed almost palpable, punctuated only by Ives' elevated breathing as he stilled in Boyd' arms, as if in the expectation of an assault.

What followed was not the vicious blow to the head Ives had prepared himself for, though it was an assault all the same, as Boyd fell upon him, lips and tongue hungrily lapping, sucking and biting at the wound on his chest. Ives groaned, grinding up against Boyd's still clothed body in response to the sensual feel on his lips against him, his legs wrapping around his waist and pulling him closer. Blissfully, Boyd didn't seem to notice, barely even registered as Ives reached down, snaking a hand between them and unbuttoning the front of the other man's trousers, using his feet to push them down around Boyd's ankles.