Desire, I'm hungry.
I hope you'll feed me.

Meg Myers - Desire

Training went late, as it often did with James, getting lost in our shifts, the dance and freedom there. When we finally slowed and I saw the clock, I was the first out of the gym, the depth of my Shift worrying me more and more as I saw how much James needed his, wondering how far behind him I was. A couple of months? Weeks?

I returned to my room and showered, letting the water change from hot to cold to hot as I turned the dial one way and then the other, letting myself feel the shock each time, the scalding heat before the equal but different sting of ice. It was a needed reminder that I could still cut through the confusion and feel fragments of clarity, of humanity.

I found myself repeating the mantra often after sparring with James, that I was still me, that I was still Human. Because I didn't feel like it when I was around him. It seemed like every time we fought, every time I could Shift without reservation or hesitation, I fell into my nature like a black hole. It was consuming, bottomless and crushing, something unstoppable. It was Heaven, but coming out of it felt like a half-life, like the world was somehow less without my power, or maybe without my Pair, the real version of him I only saw behind my reflection in his obsidian eyes. I stifled the thought.

I felt the water on my skin, felt the temperatures wavering between the two extremes, but I still felt the same inside, unable to thaw, to return to the real world, and I hated it. I stood under the water for far too long, letting it weaken me, letting it soak into me and soften me. When I finally emerged, my fingers were wrinkled and my body blotchy. I sat on the edge of my bed as I brushed my hair, letting it hang over one shoulder, it's damp bleeding a dark shadow that soaked down the side of my tank. I heard a soft knock and knew it would be Ailech, checking up on me. He was probably still worried about my horrible session with Cordelia.

I pulled my hair over evenly, to hide Jevin's scars and called him in. I always wore training gear when I was in public at the Vault, and though I knew Ailech had seen my scars before when he would heal me or I was dressed casually in my room, I didn't have any desire to show them needlessly to him. I regretted my carelessness immediately as I felt something like static, a current that ran down my spine as the door's handle turned.

"What do you want?"

I tried to sound casual, as I became far too conscious of the shorts I wore, and the fact that they weren't so much shorts. My top that left little to the imagination. The fear that maybe one of my bite marks was peeking from behind my wet hair. Even the fact that there was nowhere for him to sit in my room unless he moved my pile of dirty, sweaty clothes from the chair in its corner.

"Abraham mentioned that you wanted to learn glamours. Is that true?"

I ignored the flash of annoyance that Abby seemed to be having regular meetings with James now, sans me. I had never actually said anything about glamours to Abby, but I wasn't about to say that.

"Possibly." 

James kept his eyes on my face evenly, easily, emptily, but there was something strange in his stance, something strained. I couldn't seem to get my breathing even, to come and go as it should, so I kept my answers short, hoping my heart's rhythm would go unnoticed. I thought of Parish and Prey's teasing again and felt my lips fight a sneer.

James paused after my answer, as if expecting more, as if he sensed something, and I held my breath as I brushed at the ends of my hair lightly, making sure not to disturb their careful placement.

"Why?"

I swore in my mind as he came further into my room, letting the door softly click behind him, killing the chance of our conversation being brief along with the slight noise of the hallway that kept my room seeming casual, not quiet and intimate and alone.

"I want to learn everything I can. They come in handy, don't they? I mean, for you? You use them often, don't you? Or you did?"

I rambled and James' lips quirked up as his eyes turned to shadows. He knew I was uncomfortable. He probably knew I had thought it was Ailech at the door. He probably knew every damned thing going through my head, even without the Gift for it.

"That's because I'm soo good-looking, so easily recognizable, because I-"

"Look like your father?" I finished for him and appreciated the quick slackening of his face, the flash of surprise before he could hide it. I liked putting him off balance, it took the attention off of me.

"That's the real reason you used glamours, right? You aren't the only perceptive one."

James paused, his black eyes heavy on me, making me want to squirm, to hide, instead I raised an eyebrow and my chin, daring him to disagree, to try to argue. For a moment it looked like he wanted to, but then thought better of it. Few at the Vault won arguments with me, and we both knew I was right in this one.

"Yes, that's why I used to use them so often. And if you aren't in the mood to play, then tell me why you really want to learn glamours. They won't work on my father, you can't hide from him, and no one else knows your face. You being you is cover enough."

His voice was cold now, as if reminding me that I was no one in this life just as I had been before would ease the injury I had just dealt him. Instead of his reaction stinging, I realized I was game to play. Maybe he kept seeking me out because being around my Shift was as addictive to him as his was for me. Regardless, if he wanted banter, a game, if that's what he had come for, then that's what he would get. But I would finally stack the deck.

"Maybe it's because I'm so good-looking? Because I'd hate to have little love struck Humans chasing after me chanting my name. You are certainly selling me for cheap, aren't you, Pair?"

I acted mildly insulted, a hand fanned over my heart for added drama.

At my reply, his stance changed subtly into something looser, more relaxed. He thought he had goaded me into playing, into another of our conversations where we weren't actually talking about what it seemed, though neither of us knew the true topic, only that we didn't want to be the one to lose our undefined game.

His mouth twisted into a wry smile, it's curve tipping higher along his thin jaw, making my heart start it's erratic pounding once more. I swore at my own traitorous chest.

"Why? Are you worried they'll try to steal your virtue, little lamb? Remember, you're the dangerous one now. You're the lion, the wolves can't possibly hurt you."

"I was unaware I ever should have been cautious of wolves. I only know just the one, you see, and he seems harmless really, all bark."

James cocked an eyebrow.

"Have I just been insulted?"

"I don't know, should a lion be wary of insulting a wolf?"

"I was under the impression we were both lions in this scenario, no?"

During our short dialogue, James had made his way over to my window, glancing over his shoulder at me, that same little smile playing at the edges of his lips.

"I think you're much more the wolf than the lion here."

"The tame wolf?"

"Yes, the tame wolf."

"You're teasing me."

He had a look similar to confusion on his face as he spoke, though it was difficult to be sure with his depthless eyes.

"I enjoy teasing you," I answered, my own Shift pricking under my skin, wanting to share the air with his.

He squared himself to me, the light from the window silhouetting him in ghostly moonlight.

"And there's the first honest thing you've said this evening."

I smirked despite myself, enjoying the light feeling I had, the bubbling of something pleasant in my chest, the tingling of him on my skin, despite the corner of my mind that was red-faced screaming that we weren't friends, hardly even partners. I flung the door closed on that part. I was only playing with him, messing with him. This was still warfare, just the kind I could beat him at. At least that's what I told myself.

The look was stronger on his face now, of confusion or possibly amusement, still not without a hard edge due to his Shift, like he wanted to play a game that wouldn't be fun for anyone but him, in fact, might be quite unpleasant for everyone else involved. I wondered what such a game would be like. Violent, I'm sure. I didn't think James even knew how to play gently. I imagined his version of fun would always include some measure of aggression, ferocity, pain. I wondered if that was because of his past or because of what he was? Was I truly the same then? Is that why I had wanted him so badly, because deep down I knew he would be just as fierce in love as he was in every other emotion, just as vicious?

I realized I had been lost in my thoughts of him, his stare, whatever his version of play looked like, and I hadn't continued our script. James tilted his head in question in that canine way of his.

"You shouldn't be the one having trouble focusing, I'm not the distraction in the room," he said quietly, his smile tightening like the words pained him.

"And what might that be?" I replied quickly, not wanting to pause twice.

"Not a what, a who."

His voice was still soft, but a jolt lanced through me nonetheless. His statement sounded very much like a confession, the telling of a secret, the opening to an opportunity, and one I was starting to actually consider, but the energy quickly faded as I realized he had no intention of coming any nearer to me.

He was quite firmly planted in front of my window, looking very much like he was prepared to continue whatever conversation I lead him down from that exact distance. As if what he had just said wasn't the time any other man in the world would stride over and show me just what a distraction I was to him. Instead, James merely stood there, back to looking darkly amused, but no more so than he had before he'd spoken.

Then I saw it, a flick of his attention to my door, involuntary, quicker than a blink, a reflex, saccade, but I caught it, even in his Shift, I caught it. I let my eyes sink into shadows as I saw the slight beat of the pulse in his neck, rapid and strong and increasing.

"Do you want to know the truth, of what I'm thinking? Why I'm distracted."

A smile bowed my lips as I spoke, his head turning just a degree as he saw my grin, my darkened eyes, as he tried to discover what it was I had seen, what it was I now knew, but he was already given away. I knew exactly what he was trying to keep from me. He was nervous, not just nervous, he was afraid. I scared him, like this, teasing, flirtatious, one-on-one. Intimate. This had always been where I won, where I had the upper hand.

All that I could gather from just one glance, his desire to escape, his fear, all that and more. As much as he put on his act of absolute control, his show of never feeling any discomfort was just that, a show, an act, at least around me. He walked around like a hard, hollow shell when he was Human, and a god when he Shifted, but I was able to make him something different. I made him weak.

I had so rarely seen him unsure or uneasy, except when he was alone with me, when I didn't react with anger. Unsure was his default when I didn't let him control the conversation. When I didn't let him provoke me, when I didn't fight him, the thing he was most comfortable with, experienced with. Anger and violence he knew just how to handle, even enjoyed handling, but this was something new to him. I was something new to him, like this at least, not spitting and hissing. And it scared him. Because any sliver of intimacy terrified him.

I felt sadness begging to tug me down, asking why he felt that way, why his only real fear was closeness, softness, trust. I knew the answer, but I didn't want to feel sad right then. I didn't want to remember the past the man in front of me had endured. I wanted to use it.

At first I thought I wanted to use it against him. I wanted to win, and my crippling loss from the night before still stung. I told myself, repeated over and over in my mind, that this was a fight, just in a different manner than our normal, and that I could finally win because I finally had the advantage. I wanted to hurt him, or I told myself I did, but a part of me wanted to use his fear for him as much as me, to help him, though I wouldn't admit it. The same part that wouldn't admit I craved the closeness too.

I stared at him for a moment, letting the silence speak for me before I stood, walking toward him. Watching his eyes as they dropped before he forcefully dragged them back to my face. Watching as he swallowed hard, once, twice, as his jaw clenched, his little tells showing his nerves like a book I had written myself.

Violence, pain, intimidation, and calculated anger were things he was comfortable with, but I knew being in close contact with someone when he wasn't hurting them, fighting or killing them made him nervous, more so than anything else I could do to him. But I wanted him to feel that, though no longer for the reasons I had pretended seconds earlier. An entirely different emotion washed over me, one I hadn't felt for him for a long time, one I wasn't quite prepared for.

I wanted to protect him. Not like I had from Grayson, not like with Cordelia. This was the desire to ease the wounds of his past, to try to lead him in a new direction, a better one, a healing one, though I knew it wouldn't be pleasant for him along the way. But I liked that too, that it would be hard for him. That changing, growing, would hurt for him. I wanted it to.

When I was close enough, enough to see his chest's slow rise and fall quicken, close enough to appreciate just how amazingly still he stood, no movement besides his breaths, I stopped, pausing. I stood before him, my eyes never leaving his, though his had left mine more than once during my advance, showing his fear wasn't completely untainted by desire. That he wasn't staying because he felt he had to or because he didn't know my intentions. He wanted to stay, even if he would never be the one to show it first. Even if his eyes had glanced to the door as often as they'd run down my body, I knew he wanted to stay.

The black of his eyes wasn't unnerving to me, and I found it strangely beautiful to see him in his Shift through mine, without the distraction of having to block his punches or calculate my own. His eyes held a hunger behind the uncertainty that I could see even without their midnight color. Mixed with the hesitancy was something that scared me too, an intensity, a need I had never seen before.

With each step my skin heated more, and now I felt like I was burning, like my blood was boiling in my veins, scalding me as it rushed faster. It wasn't like our connection, not truly, that was still safely stowed away, too painful to remember, let alone tap into. No, this heat almost felt like his sign, though maybe not originating from him, but rather us.

Slowly, to be sure I had his attention, as if it was necessary, I pulling my hair back, showing my neck and collarbone, my shoulders, all baring the marks of my servitude to Jevin. All things I had kept hidden from the Vault for weeks. The ugly, jagged semicircles, the deep, larger gouges from his fangs, the smooth, light outlines telling the story of every night of my master's sick passion.

James' reaction wasn't what I had expected. His jaw tensed, his entire face hardening, his eyes widened slightly as they roamed from one mark to the next, and the next. I could tell he was trying very hard to control himself, to keep his emotions, his thoughts, covered and hidden, though that wasn't the surprise, I had expected that. The real surprise came a second later when something seemed to pass over his eyes and he raised them to meet mine.

They paled until the ink turned to the deep blue of a starry night, and I let mine follow, taking his cue, taking in their true color, and they weren't empty, or cold or dead as I had gotten used to. There was something new in his look, something understood. He slowly reached out across the narrow space between us, his gaze holding mine, until I felt the heat of his fingertips graze the base of my neck, before moving to circle the closest scar, then the one along my shoulder.

"I suppose we both have things we prefer to hide from the world."

As he spoke, his hand continued its slow journey, his fingertips just barely gliding over each mark, leaving a trail of fire in their wake. He took a small step closer, or maybe just leaned in, but somehow his body was only a hair from mine, and I again became aware of just how differently we were dressed. I could feel his pants against my bare legs, the sleeve of his shirt dragging slowly behind his hand as he traced Jevin's marks. Two lines of fire slowly winding over my skin.

The distraction made it so I almost didn't notice his other hand moving up my neck, until it was at the base of my head, his fingers running up into my hair. My body bent into his touch automatically, and I immediately felt his chest against mine. His free arm wrapped around my waist, holding me to him gently, the hand in my hair pulled me willingly into him, tipping my face up to his.

Then he hesitated, looking lost, almost like he wondered if it wasn't too late to change his mind, to retreat and hide behind his flat words
and empty apathy, but I wouldn't be denied, not now. I stretched up, leaning my weight into him as I wound my arms around his neck, feeling the soft tangle of his too-long hair run through my fingers, remembering the first time, the last time, I had felt it. The last time I had felt protective of him, like I would never let the world find him, touch him, hurt him ever again, like I would never let him feel pain again. But now, with his body against mine, his heat seeping into me, those feelings fled and something darker rose in their place.

Suddenly, I wanted to do anything but protect him. I understood the hunger I had seen hiding in his eyes, the crushing strength of the desire, the need so strong it was awe-inspiring, it was frightening. I felt my Shift break out of me without being called, and in that moment all I wanted was to bring him to my hell, to tear into his soul, to feel him in a way that fit every story I knew of our kind, inside out and bloody. It was a hunger like the bloodlust of a red Shift, something insatiable, something more ancient than me.

I wanted to break him, to hurt him. I wanted to hear him beg, to taste him, to skin him with my fingertips, my tongue. I wanted to kill him, but not because I hated him, but because I loved him, because I needed him, and somehow that was even worse, even more dangerous, something hungry and dark and violent and insatiable.

I now understood his hesitation, my mind was screaming that I needed to stop too. That I couldn't go back from the ledge I was approaching. That there was something to fear there, something I didn't understand. That I was breaching an act I couldn't undo. But that part of me, the part saying this was frightening for a reason, as a warning, the part trying to cover the desires I knew were black and charred, was drowned out by the rest of me, by the need that coursed through me, the need to destroy him and myself alike.

My fingers knotted in his hair and I pulled his face down to mine sharply, my rough movement eliciting a low sound from James, and I could feel it move through his chest into mine, like a growl. With that small noise, the part warning me to stop, telling me to listen to the rising fear, was smothered. I felt James' mouth on my own, and though his still felt uncertain, mine was not.

I tightened my grip on his hair, crushing him down into me and his response was immediate. As a groan passed his lips, the hand that had gently held the back of my neck tightened painfully. His arm around my back turned to a steel chain, squeezing the breath from me, grinding my bones, marking that the span of his control was spent as well.

His mouth found my bottom lip, dragging his teeth over it. He tasted like smoke and mint, but there was something sweet in the taste of him as well, something that made me drunk, not only with my desire for him, his pain and pleasure, but for something else, and I sucked it down like it gave me life. When our mouths parted, his bite drew blood and I jerked into him, something beyond me choosing my movements now.

I licked the blood that had crept to the corner of my lips, my eyes on James', watching as they flicked to black, matching my own. Then he was back, sucking from the torn skin. I moaned against his mouth, digging my nails into his neck and he hissed, swearing under his breath. Hearing him have such a reaction, feeling him tense against me, seeing the dark need in his eyes and knowing it was because of me, because I was touching him, made a power climb in me.

I could control him. I could do whatever I wanted to him. He was mine. I ran the hand that wasn't tangled in his hair up under his shirt, feeling the hard lines of his stomach, the hot skin, the strength of his chest. I almost didn't notice how thin he felt, how I could outline every bone under my fingertips. I pulled his hair back as I ran my hand along his burning skin, exposing his neck, and for a moment my Shift jumped, wanting nothing more than to sink it's sharpened teeth through his soft skin and rip. I kept the desire covered, but bit nevertheless, running my tongue along his collarbone before biting down, harder, once more.

James made a sound between a growl and a groan, clearly shocked by the pain. I let go of his hair as a low chuckle reached my ears, and when his eyes leveled with mine, there was dark pleasure clouding their black edges. In a moment he had me spun around, my back pressing into the chest I had been running my hand down just a second earlier, and my arms pinned behind me, between us. He pulled my hips back into him with a satisfied, deep groan at the contact, raising one hand to my throat, holding my neck to the side. He returned the favor of my bite, if slightly lighter than I had.

I felt his teeth grazing the curve of my neck, my shoulder, but where I had felt nothing when Jevin had done it, now I felt electricity rippling through me. I felt dizzy from my desire, and when James bit, I moaned, unable to keep quiet. He tightened his grip on my neck and I began to struggle, my usual panic for air fighting to break through the lust that filled my mind. But the sensation of his body pressed against me, his arm holding me, pulling my hips into his, his hot breath, his teeth dragging across my skin, it all mixed with the pressure on my throat.

Instead of fighting to be free, I moaned again, longer, louder, and dipped back into him, feeling heat spreading through my stomach, coiling, even as my vision blurred, even as I felt consciousness slowly retreating.

I heard a growled swear once more, but this time it was different, it sounded more like James, if maybe a younger version of him, the kind that would use such language. And then I was shoved forward, only just catching myself on the foot of my bed. I spun around, expecting James to be close behind, but instead he was backing away, his chest heaving like mine. His Shift carefully buried. I only took one step toward him before he raised his hand for me to stop.

"Don't. Don't come any closer," he said breathlessly.

My confused face was all the words I needed apparently, as James continued, slowly, shamefully.

"I was going to kill you. I wanted to, so badly."

Even as he spoke, his body's tension said he still did, still wanted to rip me apart, break me until I wasn't a person anymore, own my life and feel it flicker away under his fingertips.

"I wanted to kill you too, tear into you and feel you die as I fu-" I stopped myself as clarity slowly returned, snapping my mouth shut as I realized what I was about to say. I forcibly pushed my own Shift down as well, until the room bled color again.

"Oh, hell," I finished instead.

"Hell," James agreed.

I'm not even going to apologize for how long this has taken me, but I've found the Google Campus in Madrid and I think I can get used to this workspace. Sure, it isn't Korea, but it'll do...it'll do

T.