Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me.
Warnings: Sexual content, and, uh, blood? XD
The first time he meets Blackwood, Coward loses himself in glittering, dark eyes that promise worlds, promise everything. Anyone else who has ever known Coward thinks him too young at best, weak, at worst. Blackwood has known him but scant seconds, but the look in his eyes say I see you; you cannot hide. I see who you are.
Coward has vivid daydreams, sometimes, of slicing his enemies apart with a knife, watching their skin open in elegant lines. He dreams of hurting them. He wants opportunity. He wants a purpose.
"I think we shall get on quite well," Blackwood murmurs, "don't you?"
Coward inhales, inexplicably feels blood rush hotly to his cheeks; he is furious at himself for his blush, for appearing a callow youth in front of this man. But Blackwood smiles, a hard, amused smile that says he expected nothing less. That this is the reaction he intended to effect, and Coward has simply succumbed to his wishes.
Coward wonders at the fact that no one else seems to see it, besides Blackwood's father, who looks at him fearfully at times, like he is afraid of him but does not quite know why. Everyone else seems to be fooled by Blackwood's stately charm, his manners, his deception. Coward recognizes the menace beneath the velvet covering, recognizes it as he does in himself.
"I believe we shall," he says, and somehow his voice remains steady.
The blood inside of him still burns, set alight with new purpose.
The first time Coward kills, it is at Blackwood's behest. As it should be. As he has known it would be, from the time they first met.
Blackwood is young, still, but he speaks with the surety of a man twice his age. This is enough to incite irritation in many men, irritation that sparks into fury at the sight of Blackwood's cool, amused smiles; he smiles as if everyone else has no worth save for his entertainment.
On this occasion, it is a man named Benjamin Weston, and he looks at Blackwood like he hates him. Blackwood looks at him like he knows he could crush him in an instant, if he desired to waste any effort on this man. They are arguing, and Blackwood's eyes flick toward Coward for but an instant, and suddenly Coward know what his role is to be.
And so Coward interjects; inserts himself smoothly into the argument and takes on the role of Blackwood's supporter. He is careful to be polite, deferential, and thoroughly, innocently infuriating. It is a careful mixture that has done him well in the past, and it makes Blackwood's eyes glitter with real amusement, not the contemptuous kind he saves for men like Weston.
Coward continues until he achieves his intent: Weston, caught up in his fury, snarls at him, "Tell me, how does one find such an ardent supporter as yourself? Does he shower you with riches when you are finished, or is his company in your bed enough payment for you?"
There is a beat, a break in time, a charged silence.
Triumph floods Coward in a heady rush; fools like these, so easy to manipulate. So easy to bend to your will. It is barely any challenge at all. He feels the weight of Blackwood's eyes on him like a steady, welcome hand.
He is exceedingly careful to refrain from showing any of this on his face. Instead, he expertly dons an expression of stiff shock and outrage, and when he says quietly, "I am afraid I cannot let an insult such as that stand; I must demand satisfaction," it is all he can do to keep the delighted, wild laughter out of his voice.
Coward has not killed before, but he has never taken up a pastime that he does not keep at until he is flawless. It ends how he knows it would—Weston lies dead upon the ground, his blood flowing scarlet and rich. Coward studies his own hands; steady, not a tremble in sight. He bends down under the pretext of checking if Weston still lives (as if he could not recognize death when it is in front of him, as if the taste and the smell and the sight of it doesn't send a delighted tremble down his spine) and draws his hand away, stained with Weston's blood.
After, Blackwood takes Coward aside and pushes him against the wall; stares at him intently like he is flaying him open, reading every secret thought and desire.
If Coward were a different sort of man, he might wonder if he hasn't been manipulated by Blackwood, as he himself manipulated Weston into his death. Being the man he is, however, Coward recognizes that it cannot be manipulation when he sees it, when he welcomes it, when Blackwood's every wordless command speaks to something demanding and hungry inside of him. He has been waiting for a man such as this his entire life.
Blackwood closes strong fingers around Coward's wrist and raises his hand, still stained with blood, up in front of his face. His thumb brushes feather-light over the red. "Beautiful," he says, and Coward does not know if he means himself, or the blood, or the death-touch that still hangs over the two of them.
It matters not, though; perhaps all three are one and the same.
The first time Coward enters Blackwood's room, locks the door behind him, and falls to his knees in submission the way he has been dreaming of for months, Blackwood looks anything but surprised.
He says nothing in words, but his eyes speak volumes.
"Whether or not you choose to take me," Coward says quietly, "I am yours."
Blackwood sets his drink down upon his desk. In two steady strides he is standing in front of Coward; Coward draws in a breath, inhales the scent of leather and spices. Blackwood's hand grips his chin, tips it upward.
"I know you are mine, Daniel," Blackwood tells him, thumb pressing into the hinge of his jaw. "I have known it from the moment I first saw you, when I saw the bloodthirsty whore lying hidden behind the pleasant young lord's mask you wore. I saw what those fools around us had missed." His hand slides down until it encircles Coward's throat, tightens, until Coward has to close his eyes dizzily against the spots of color floating in his vision. Blackwood quite literally holds Coward's life in his hands. "If I had told you at that first moment to go down upon your knees for me, you would have done it even then, would you not?" Coward swallows, shaking, feels the blood rushing in his ears. "You were a weapon lying in wait for the right hands to use you, and I intend to use you in every way I can. Will you let me?" Blackwood asks, smooth and calm, entirely sure of the answer.
Anything, Coward thinks, certain that he will lose consciousness and never be happier in his life. Anything, anything you want; my hands will do your work, my gun is there for your bidding, my life is yours to do with as you wish.
Blackwood releases his throat and effortlessly pulls him to his feet in the next instant. The air rushes into Coward's body like the sweetest thing he has ever tasted, and he gasps it in, knees buckling under him, vision fading into black, then slowly returning color into his world. Blackwood holds him up with an arm encircling his waist as if he weighs nothing at all; Coward clings to him, desperate.
"You need only say it," he finally says, and his voice is rough and used to his own ears. "Anything you wish. Anything at all."
And then his head is drawn up and he is being kissed like he has never been kissed before; as if Blackwood intends to swallow him whole, consume his essence and leave but a husk of a man behind. Blackwood kisses his mouth bruised and swollen and releases him only when his legs are once again too weak to hold his weight.
They lie together on Blackwood's bed, and Coward wants anything, everything, every last thing this man would give him. Blackwood does not turn him over onto his stomach; instead he pushes him down on his back, slides oil-slick fingers into his body, enters him with one smooth thrust that makes Coward cry out like he is dying. Perhaps he is, at that. Perhaps he is being killed like this, bit by bit, slowly resurrected into a different man.
He digs his fingers into Blackwood's back until he draws blood, until he gets a human sound of hunger out of him; and then he lifts his fingers to his mouth and tastes iron, and that is what finally pushes him over the edge into completion.
Blackwood stills inside of him, watching him narrow-eyed and hungry. He leans in and bites Coward's mouth in return, sharp and savage until the hot taste of blood blooms on his tongue once again; Blackwood pulls back, lips stained red, looking satisfied. An exchange has been made.
Coward believes in nothing more than he believes this: they are meant for each other, and this world is theirs for the taking.
The first time Blackwood spills his blood in front of others, Coward can't breathe for the power of it.
The knife sets coldly against his hand, slides back, draws red to the surface.
"The ritual requires it," Blackwood had said, but his eyes, fixed on Coward, say I enjoy nothing more than making you bleed.
The men with them today have sworn their allegiance to Blackwood. Coward has sworn his already a thousand times, in cries and blood and fervent promises, in the way he swallows Blackwood's cock down, in the firing of his gun and the insidious blade of his words. He will swear it a thousand times more. He will never grow tired of it.
"Then I will give the ritual what it needs," he had told Blackwood then, but now he says silently, for you.
For us.
-Fin-