(Vampire Hell)
Chapter 8: Shiai no Kokoru
(Chapter 8: Mind Games)
By early evening, the rain had subsided, though the gutters of the streets still had water flowing in them. Relena and Quatre walked beside each other slowly, neither of them daring to look at the other as they spoke. "Who was it that hurt you?" Quatre asked innocently.
Relena thought a moment, then quietly answered, "The only person whom I've ever loved..."
"Your creator?" Quatre grinned to himself, though the grin did not show in his voice.
"Yes. I don't remember him, and I suppose I've killed him by now, but I still feel so angry towards vampires. Why do they have to be so cold-blooded and evil?"
"Not all of them are."
"You don't seem to be."
"I'm not." Quatre smiled, then stopped walking and turned to her, running his fingers through his rain-saturated hair and flinging some of the water onto the sidewalk. "Would you like to go somewhere fun tonight?"
Relena blinked oddly. What could he mean, someplace fun? She gave him a questioning look, then asked, "Where?"
Quatre shrugged, "Oh, just some place fun. You know, maybe a concert or a circus, or carnival..."
Relena almost smiled. "There is a circus in town right now..."
"You wanna go?"
Relena nodded, and they continued walking, side by side. Quatre timidly brushed his hand against hers, waiting for a reaction. There was none. He frowned, then took her hand in his own. She nearly gasped, but stared at him instead. "Quatre...?"
"I like you, Relena."
The girl smiled to herself.
~~~~~~~~
Darkness...
Pure darkness.
No sound, no sight, no smell, no taste.
Everything was gone.
Everything but who he was and what he felt, sitting down on nothingness, his eyes blacked out by an indulgent silk blindfold, the tie of it wound up in his hair, pulling slightly.
All was nothing for one long instant as he felt lips trace his own, and suddenly, he was greeted with a taste. A warm, wet taste that resembled faintly the taste of old blood, the smell even. Yes, he could smell now. The scent of the boy in front of him, now sitting atop his lap, the long, thin legs wrapped around him. Lavender... Hazelnut... Violets... Chamomile... Blood...
All the smells mingled together, making the entire situation all the more erotic. Heero felt his body go limp suddenly, and he fell back on the bed, lightheaded. His wrists were being bound now, he could feel it. Leather. He could smell it. The nearly overpowering smell of freshly cleaned leather. So tight around his arms...
He felt his shirt being removed slowly, but not with hands. A knife slowly grazed his skin, the cool blade sliding sinfully along the flesh as the shirt made a ripping sound. Yes... he could hear now. "Are you afraid of me, Heero?" a small voice asked from very far away, yet it was so close he could feel the breath blow along the edges of his ear.
"I could never be afraid of you, Duo," the elder vampire answered, wanting so badly to reach forward with his bound arms and caress the smooth skin of his coveted child. His fingertips ached for the touch... his mind yearned.
Duo smiled to himself. Always so impatient… He doesn't realize the insanity of the situation. "Heero..." he whispered, and the man smiled. "Stupid, naive Heero..." The smile faded. "How strange you are to believe."
"Believe what?" Heero felt himself suddenly grow wary of the situation. His arms bound, his sight blocked. He felt very defenseless.
"To believe that I would ever want you back. Quite the contrary, my dear, lovely Heero. I want you dead."
Heero nearly gasped, but held it back. He would not let his child get the best of him, no matter what. He then calmed himself quickly, ignoring the fact that he had a blindfold on and was currently tied to the bed. It made no difference. He knew, no matter what happened, that he would come out on top. Not only was he the elder of the two, but he also had more power. Duo, of course, was ignorant of this fact, so he continued to play along, acting as if he were scared.
"Always so perfect... always treating me like a child. Do you have any idea how that felt?"
"No."
"Well, you're about to. You're completely helpless. I'm about to do things to you that you would never have dreamed.... not even in your worst nightmares."
"Duo..." Heero silenced himself when he heard noises coming from the corner of the room. Faint noises, something akin to scraping. He knew immediately that Duo must be rummaging around somewhere, looking for something.
The noises stopped, and Heero continued. "Duo, what are you planning to do?" He tried to remain calm and collected about this, but being deprived of sight and movement was slowly grating at his mind.
He heard Duo laugh, a soft, careless laugh. "I plan to kill you, Heero."
Heero smirked. "Duo, you know you can't do that."
Duo's barriers faltered for a moment, and Heero caught the slightest hint of apprehension in his mind. "Oh?" he asked as if it made no difference what Heero thought. The noises continued. "Can't I??" There was slightest hint of sarcasm in his voice.
It was Heero's turn to laugh, now. Beginning as a light chuckle deep in his throat, then slowly forming into a heavy, outright laugh. Duo stopped his search in the corner of the room and cast Heero a wary glance before returning to his work. A small section of the concrete wall had been pulled away, revealing some of his favorite toys. He reached far into the depths of it and pulled out a long whip, then shrugged to himself, thinking, "This will have to do," and stood, slowly walking over to Heero.
The older vampire smirked lightly, looking as if he were relaxing on a quiet afternoon, and not tied to a bed and blindfolded in a room where so many others had died. Duo stepped forward once again, this time tightening the whip around his hand. "What are you thinking, Heero?" he asked of him as he stroked the whip lovingly, admiring the tightly bound leather threads.
"I'm thinking many things, Duo."
"Oh?"
"I'm thinking that if you try to hurt me, I'll hurt you back. I'm thinking that you've lost your mind. I'm thinking that it was a mistake to ever make you a vampire. That you've let the power go to your head, and now you think yourself to be invincible."
Duo snorted. "Oh?" he asked sarcastically, then cracked the whip in the air above Heero's face. Unfortunately for Duo, Heero failed to even flinch at the noise.
"Duo, I'm going to give you fair warning, just this once. Either release me now, or face the consequences."
Duo quickly jumped onto the bed, standing above the bound vampire, a leg at either side of his stomach. "Don't you dare tell me what to do!" he barked, snarling like a wild beast. He continued, lowering his voice to a whisper, and calming himself. "You've told me what to do for long enough. It's my turn now."
Duo sneered at the whip in his hand, then tossed it aside like a piece of garbage. "This thing is pointless. You're no fun to play with. I'm just going to have to kill you." He rummaged around in the blankets of the bed and found his large dagger that he had used to remove Heero's shirt, the silver blade of it glinting in the light coming from the bare bulb over their heads. He held it lovingly in his hands, then crawled back over and straddled the elder vampire's hips. "If you weren't such a goddamn stick in the mud, we could have had some fun before you had to die," he whispered, stroking the edge of the blade over the bare chest below him. Heero remained silent, his brow furrowing in concentration.
"One last time, Duo. Let me go. Now."
Duo snorted at him. "I'm not going to let you go, Heero. I'm going to kill you!" He raised the dagger up in the air, preparing to drive it straight into Heero's heart.
That's when it happened, quickly as a bolt of lightning. Duo never saw it coming. Heero didn't even move, but the leather straps that bound his hands and legs suddenly snapped, and he leapt forward, grabbing the dagger from Duo with one hand, and wrapping the other hand around his waist. They both went falling backwards into the bed, Duo immediately screaming and flailing about with his free hand and legs.
Heero quickly got him under control, as if the small boy underneath him had no strength whatsoever. He pinned both arms with one hand and then removed the blindfold with the other to see Duo nearly hissing at him in disgust. "Get off of me!" he shrieked, struggling for all he was worth to remove Heero's body from his own. Heero tossed the blindfold away and pressed the tip of the dagger to Duo's throat. The boy stopped short and stared up at him. As he swallowed heavily, the dagger pressed into his neck even more, letting out a slight amount of blood to trickle down onto the bedspread and quickly turn black. Duo couldn't help but smile up at him, then. "Heero… always so perfect. I always wanted to be like you."
Heero blinked down at the younger vampire, but refused to say anything. A thousand thoughts were swimming through his mind. How he'd wanted to come back to Duo, to have his son cherish him as he had before. To be looked up to and admired for all that he was, all that he did. He missed that about Duo; the way his eyes had sparkled when he was around him. The way the younger man had clung to his sleeve like a lost puppy on the streets as they went searching for their next victim together. Why couldn't it be like it was before?
"I always wanted to be like you," he continued, nearly a whisper now. Duo's face slowly fell to the side and he looked lost. Utterly lost. That was the only way Heero could describe the emotion seen in the depths of the braided vampire's eyes. "I was never strong enough for you, though. You were always better than me at whatever we did. You never treated me as an equal. You treated me like a child… like a possession. All I ever wanted was to be seen as an equal. To have half the strength that you had."
Heero slowly removed the dagger from his throat, and leaned back, all of this news taking him as a total surprise. "Duo… I never meant to treat you like a child. I always did view you as my equal. That was the only reason I ever made you a vampire; because I thought you were worthy of it. I thought you could handle it. I believe I may have been mistaken. Everything that makes us… it also twists and perverts who we are. It brings out the worst of us."
Duo blinked out a tear, his face still turned away from his creator. It fell down his cheek and onto the bedspread. A look of confusion crossed his face as he reached up and wiped at the salty trail left behind. "Heero," he breathed to the man above him, a whisper in total awe of the situation. "Heero, I'm crying." He turned his face back to him, and now a smile was alight on his features, his eyes still welled up with tears squinting slightly in utter joy. "Heero! I can cry!" He threw his arms around the vampire above him and pulled him down, holding the stunned vampire's cheek tightly against his chest and kissing the top of his head rapidly. "Heero… you made me cry, Heero. Thank you so much. I'm not dead inside. I'm not cold. I can still feel… Heero, thank you." He continued to babble meaningless words as Heero wrapped his arms around him, too, tightening the embrace. It felt so good to smell him again, to feel his child against him. He wondered if Duo would ever know the pure, true, undying love he felt for him as he began to slowly stroke his hair. His hand slipped around to the younger vampire's chest and pulled at the opening of his shirt, ripping off the buttons carelessly and sending them scattering to the floor with faint clicking sounds.
Duo first wondered what the other man was doing, then realization
came to him, and he took control, raising Heero's head from his chest and
leaning forward to latch onto the vampire's neck tenderly while his hands
worked themselves down to his black pants and began unlatching the button
and pulling on the zipper.