Disclaimer: Unfortunately I don't own Stargate Atlantis or any of its characters. Wishful thinking aside.
Warnings: This story is a Parrish/Lorne. This particular chapter will have man on man goodness. Thus, slash. Just so everyone is on the same page. - This fiction also contains adult language and adult situations.
Author's note #1: This is a horrendously late response to a prompt for the Thing-a-Thon on the LJ community: Parrish_Lorne. The prompt goes as follows: "Lorne/Parrish - Parrish is a vampire."
Before the Blood Dries
Chapter Nine
When Lorne finally spoke he nearly jumped right out of his skin. Startled from the depths of his own impassioned thoughts as the man shifted in place. Too stuck on the slow, callous roughened spirals the man was etching into his skin. - Favoring the lightly bruised flesh in a way that had him all but mesmerized. His baser nature rising just underneath the surface, control shot through and paper thin as his canines ached. Dropping down and retracting on pure impulse as saliva pooled across his tongue. - Mind torrid, conflicted, and all but roaring for release as instinct and need demanded his response.
Insisting that he take what was so clearly being offered as both sides of his nature struggled to make sense of the man's actions. To a human it could have been a simple, meaningless gesture. But to a vampire? …Fuck, such an action was akin to foreplay… - …And he couldn't help but admit, that watching the man touch his mark was affecting him far more then he was willing to own up to...
Fuck the learning curve; they were dealing with a freaking mountain.
"- It wasn't bad. - I mean. I don't… It was..." The man trailed off, fingers halting their slow, torturous circles. - Pausing instead over top the twin nicks that marked where his canines had sunk home. The pads of both his index finger and his thumb pressing down in a way that had him shifting restlessly into the covers. Plucking and pulling at the coverlet until he forced himself to still. Trying his best to ignore it when his sharp nails extended, sinking deep into the thin mattresses as his fists curled and clenched around the edge of the bed.
"– You know, honestly, I don't know what that was." Lorne finally replied. Letting loose a small, embarrassed sounding chuckle as he palmed the back of his neck, clearly at a loss to describe it. - But seemingly buoyed to explore it further when he chanced a nod in response.
"And for you?" Lorne asked. "I felt..I mean…Does that always happen? Is it always that, um..intense?" The man finished. Innocently hitting the brunt of matter right on its god damned head.
Crap.
He froze. Saying nothing as the man started pacing again. His movements slow, but growingly restless the longer the silence stretched. Fixing him with a series of small, but growingly significant looks as he circled, prowling about like a coon hound that had caught the scent of fox on the wind.
"No. No it doesn't." He finally admitted. Closing his eyes for a brief moment as his tongue flicked over his gums, canines extending behind the meager barrier of his lips before he could stop the slide. – Only this time he couldn't find it in him the force them back. He just couldn't..
"Then why were you so..? - Because you were really… I mean, when you were… well, you know." Lorne tried, descriptions eventually failing him as he abandoned words in favor of splaying his fingers into the air. Gesturing off behind him as the memories of that moment back on the planet filtered over them both.
"I mean was it just because of the blood?" Lorne pressed. Voice heavy now, precise and focused, like he somehow just knew.
"No." He snapped, willing his nails to retract as he rose up from the bed. Joints cracking loudly in the forced quiet as the man moved forward, advancing dangerously close every time he sought to put some distance between them. Feeling cornered, and somehow over matched as the man refused to let the matter rest.
"..Doc?"
His head spun. He'd hoped to avoid this. He'd been so scared of ruining everything that he'd nearly forgotten what lay beneath the surface; the feelings, the emotions, the very core of why they were right here, right now. – God, he felt like pulling his hair out. He felt like pushing the man up against the wall and doing things to him that he was positive there wasn't even a name for. He felt like…
He sighed audibly. – …Say what you wanted about Major Evan Lorne, but the truth was that he was a determined little bastard. - A beautiful, stubborn, son of a bitch that didn't know when to leave well enough alone.…
"David."
He bit back a snarl by the skin of his teeth. Canines grazing across the inside of his lower lip as annoyance finally got the better of him. - Apparently this was going to be a day for the revelations of a host of different truths. Because he could think of no other explanation other then to tell Lorne the truth. …Again. He just hoped that he wasn't wrong..- That what his senses were telling him was more then just sugar pills and wishful thinking.
"Look. It's not.. – I might..kind of..like you." He finally sighed, the words barely audible as he fidgeted in place, peering up at the other man through long lashes. - Cursing both himself and his apparent inability to express himself in vernacular above that of a couple of fifth graders exchanging Eskimo kisses underneath an elementary school jungle gym.
Ironically, the man took it better then he did. Because at first Lorne didn't react at all. There was just..nothing. No disgusted shouts or horrified exclamations. Not even the cold scent of frozen iron, the smell he'd come to associate with that of anger and betrayal. Nothing. – Instead Lorne's face went blank. Body freezing, statue still and expressionless as the man's gaze went inward. - As if his reaction was more internal then anything else.
Either way the suspense was tortuous.
But just when he was about to stutter out something, an apology or perhaps even a plead, the man suddenly stirred. Cheeks hollowing as he exhaled a long held breath, running a hand through his already mussed up hair as Lorne tilted his head to the side and met his gaze.
…And like a ray of sunshine in dead winter, something that looked suspiciously similar to that of relief, flirted with the slow upturn of the man's lips….
– He blinked. Relief? He didn't understand… - But by then it was too late. Because as quickly as it had appeared, it was replaced by that of thinly veiled determination and unmistakable purpose.
A base growl rumbled up the length of his throat as he took in the man's scent. Hissing when he realized he could glean nothing from it. It was too confused, devolving and reforming until it was nothing more then a free falling mess of chaos and conflicting emotions. The man's scent changing so rapidly that even he couldn't get a bead on what the man was about to do.
"I'm going to try something.." Evan suddenly blurted, tone lilting off at the end like he'd started off intending to ask a question but had changed his mind in mid word. - Suddenly leaning in far too close, crowding him up against the wall beside his desk in a way that had him inhaling sharply. - Scenting the man from blood to bone, nervous sweat to clenched fists. All the while finding himself completely unable to ignore the heady scent of warm iron swelling up under the thinness of the man's skin.
"Evan, what are you doin-mmph!"
But by then the man's lips had already fallen across his. - Explosive, insistent and just the right amount of desperate that it sent sparks lancing across his skin. Keen senses imploding as reality orbited off into star bursts and static. - And he didn't even get a moment to recover, because without even so much as a fair warning the man was already hungrily devouring his lips. – Tongue dancing between blunt teeth and the sudden sharpness of his canines with hardly a pause to the contrary. …Like they didn't even matter to him at all…
- But what was more was that he sensed confidence in that kiss. Confidence, desperation, and hope all rolled up into one. - And was for those reasons and perhaps those reasons alone, that he couldn't help but return it. Leaning forward into the press as he gave as good as he got. Fingers curling around the arch of the man's throat as bare skin abruptly met with bare skin.
When Lorne eventually managed to pull back, it was a near thing. All sloppy, lingering kisses and fingers that just couldn't seem to separate themselves from the others skin. - Almost gasping for breath as they rested their foreheads together. Leaning into each other unabashedly as fingers and hands curled fast around each others arms, as if reluctant to let go even for the slightest of moments.
- It was ridiculous, confusing, and god damned perfect all at the same time.
"I am going to go out on a limb here and say that we definitely want the same thing." Evan murmured. Chuffing a laugh into the base of his throat as spit-slick lips brushed enticingly along the curve of his chin. Arching downwards with the light, grating, burn of stubble roughened skin.
"Because drawing from the evidence, I might kind of like you too." The man continued. His grin shy, but undeniably heated as his gaze strayed back towards his lips.
He just stared.
Because it was then, with all the clarity of a fucking lightening bolt to the brain; everything suddenly made blinding sense. - It was that smell. That one scent he hadn't been able to define. - So much like arousal, yet intrinsically more in its complexity.
- Evan wanted this. Him... …Everything he was despite all odds.
Christ…
A/N: Please let me know what you think? Reviews and constructive critiquing are love! – One or two more chapters and I plan on wrapping this up!
"It takes more courage to reveal insecurities than to hide them, more strength to relate to people than to dominate them, more 'manhood' to abide by thought-out principles rather than blind reflex. Toughness is in the soul and spirit, not in muscles and an immature mind." - Alex Karras