It was a while before Damiano's higher brain decided that functioning might be worth it again.

He blinked and tried to convince his cognitive functions to cooperate with his senses properly. The first thing he noticed was the taste of blood in his mouth. Definitely pleasant, but unhelpful. The second was that he was lying flat on his back. This was slowly followed by an ache in his back and the realisation that he was lying on the carpet, not the bed.

Thomas was hanging over the side of the bed, staring at him, looking dazed.

"You okay?" Thomas asked.

The best Damiano could do was make a noise of agreement because most of his thoughts were still scattered by the echoes of pleasure rippling through his body. Ethan's head appeared next to Thomas.

"How did you get down there?" was the drummer's enquiry.

That was a harder question, because Damiano had no idea. Given the very slight ache, he assumed he had fallen, but he couldn't exactly say when or how.

"Check he remembers his name," Victoria's voice floated from on high, "because, holy fuck, I didn't for a while there."

He could relate, but he didn't really appreciate the laugh that came along with the pronouncement.

Thomas reached down and offered him a hand, which he took and carefully sat up.

"That was a rush," he finally managed to put some words together.

"Yeah," Thomas agreed.

Only as he moved did Damiano realise he was a bit of a mess. His abs were covered in smeared come that was beginning to dry. Which led to the questions, when had that happened and how long had he been on the floor? He noticed several other things as well, not least of which were that, for a start, the bed was a wreck with holes in the sheets, as if someone, or more than one someone, had ripped through them in several places, and each of them was pretty wrecked too.

"Shower?" he asked.

"Don't wanna move," Victoria said from where she was still sprawled bonelessly towards the other side of the bed.

"Not sure my legs work," Thomas agreed.

"And while those are both valid points," Damiano replied, "I am decidedly sticky, so I'm betting you are too, and Vic, you've got jizz in your hair."

"What?" Victoria sat up sounding less than pleased.

She glared at him and Thomas and it was definitely one of their faults since Ethan had been in entirely the wrong place to be responsible, but there was no way Damiano was taking responsibility.

"You were closest," he said, dumping Thomas right in it.

"And you had your hand on my dick," Thomas countered.

"Then I will apologise and wash Vic's hair for her if she will let me," he responded, accepting his fate, "but right now, ugh, shower."

"Don't we need to talk about what happened?" Ethan asked as Damiano climbed to his feet.

"Shower first, talk later," Victoria decided for them.

Since Damiano still needed to get his head straight, he was glad she agreed with him. He grabbed Thomas' hand and dragged him towards the bathroom too. He was feeling a bit possessive and he wasn't up to arguing with himself, even though that was new. Desperate, needy, wanting, protective were all emotions he would freely admit to, but possessive wasn't usually in his repertoire, not within the group. He put it down to blood and vampires and went with it.

"We're all getting in the same shower?" Ethan asked, as Victoria followed.

"Apparently," Victoria replied.

It was a bit of a squeeze even given the large shower cubicle, but they managed. Damiano washed Victoria's hair for her and gave her a head massage, and he washed Thomas' for him too, because there was blood on the ends. Ethan had his beautiful dark mane up in a bun and declined when Damiano offered, so did not get his hair washed or his scalp massaged.

Hence Damiano went back to Thomas. The punctures he had made on the other man's neck were nothing but little white marks already and even fading from that, but when he sucked on them Thomas' legs went weak, so Damiano counted that as a win.

"There's not enough room in here for sex with four of us," Victoria said, even as Damiano grinned in self-congratulation. "And we need to talk about what happened before anyone gets carried away. I do not want to see if vampires can drown because we all pass out in the shower."

Damiano growled and whined a little, but they did pile out of the shower. When they made it into the other room, Ethan pulled the discarded duvet over the wrecked bed and they all climbed back on so they could sit comfortably and talk. Damiano made himself comfortable towards the headboard and dragged Thomas to him to use as a cuddle cushion.

"Comfortable?" Victoria asked, eyeing them both.

"It was the blood okay?" Damiano replied. "Apparently when I drink from someone I'm a possessive bastard. So be warned."

"I don't mind," Thomas said, relaxing against him with a smile.

"Speaking of blood," Victoria said, "what the hell happened?"

"Pleasure overload," Thomas said. "I didn't think it was possible to come hard enough to pass out, but I stand corrected."

"It felt like a gestalt," Ethan said, tucking his long legs up underneath him. "Everything kept circulating between us and that seemed to make it bigger and bigger."

"That's what it felt like to me too," Damiano put in. "Like reflections that merged and magnified until there was nothing but pleasure left."

The other two made noises of agreement as well.

"It was mind blowing," Victoria said with something of a distant look on her face.

For a while they fell into companionable silence.

"Anyone seen this mentioned in the archive?" Victoria finally asked.

"No," Damiano said at the same time Thomas and Ethan expressed similar sentiments.

"Could it be like the dream?" Thomas asked.

"Maybe," Victoria mused.

"I think we need to talk to Sofia about this," Damiano said as he thought it through.

"That would mean telling her we're having sex," Victoria pointed out.

"She's psychic, she probably knows already," Thomas said, trying to make a joke out of it.

Victoria gave their youngest member a hard stare for that.

"She wouldn' tell anyone else," Damiano said, "and this might just be us being us, but we should make sure."

What they were to each other was private and they had all learned that the fewer people who knew about private things the better in their line of work. However, Damiano trusted Sofia. They hadn't talked much, but she had helped them find Victoria and that counted for a huge amount in his book.

"When were you thinking of?" Victoria asked, a small frown maring her brow.

"Now?" Damiano suggested with a shrug. "It's not late yet and I know I'll sleep better if we have an idea of what happened."

Victoria shared a glance with Thomas and Ethan. She did not look comfortable.

"I don't mind calling her alone," Damiano said as the others hesitated. "It would probably be less awkward, and I could fill you in afterwards."

"Okay," Victoria said after a few more moments of heavy looks, "I say yes. What do you two think?"

Thomas shrugged where he was leaning against Damiano's chest.

"I don't mind," he said, "whatever the rest of you think."

"We need to know," was Ethan's opinion on the matter.

"Just, Damià, remember to put some clothes on first," Victoria said, breaking the tension nicely.

He stuck his middle finger up at her and tried to convince himself he should get a move on and let Thomas go.

~*~

"Hello, Damiano," Sofia greeted, "how are you today?"

"Good," he replied, "thanks. You?"

"Very well, thank you," she told him. "I have been having a couple of days off, since no one has had need of my services."

"Oh, sorry to have disturbed you," he said.

"Not at all," she assured him with a smile, "I am always happy to talk. What is it you wished to talk about?"

Damiano sat back, leaving the phone propped on the table.

"Something happened," he revealed, "something a bit like the dream, only different."

"And you're worried about it?" Sofia asked.

"Not exactly worried," he replied, "just confused. It was good, amazingly good actually, but it caught us by surprise."

"Go on," she nodded.

It was crunch time. He took a deep breath.

"There's one thing you need to know first," he explained, "we're not just sleeping in the same bed, we're sleeping with each other."

He could have been more graphic to get his point across, but for some reason he shied away from that when it came to Sofia. It made no sense, after all Sofia was a lot older than he was, but he had far more to worry about than that tiny aberration of his psyche.

"For fun and relaxation, or for deeper reasons?" Sofia asked, completely not shocked by his revelation.

"Deeper reasons," he told her. "All four of us."

"If it is not too personal a question," Sofia said, "were any of you having physical relations with each other before Tera's attack?"

"No, we were just friends," he replied. "We were close, very touchy feely friends, but none of us were sleeping together. It's been a near thing a couple of times, but we never crossed that line until now."

"Thank you," Sofia said and gave him another of her smiles. "Now, what is it that has happened?"

Damiano took a deep breath. He didn't usually have a problem talking about sexual things, but he was finding this conversation somewhat difficult.

"We were having sex earlier," was as close as he seemed able to get to anything more explicit, "and Thomas asked me to bite him."

"Had you bitten him previously?" Sofia asked.

"I'd never bitten anyone before," he admitted. "At the time it seemed like a natural progression, but when ..." he faltered for a second as the memory of the moment flashed through his head in vivid detail. "When I bit him, it was as if our pleasure combined and amplified and pulled in Vic and Ethan as well. The only way I can describe it is mindblowing, and we lost time."

Sofia's eyes opened in surprise for a moment before she smiled.

"Congratulations," she said, clearly pleased about something, "you achieved rapport."

"Rapport?" he asked. "I don't remember seeing anything about that in the archive."

"Yes, well, the archive has its limitations," Sofia replied with a light chuckle. "Rapport is something talked about only in private and I am almost sure there are many members of our community who do not believe it is possible at all."

"Okay," he said.

"Rapport is a moment between loving couples, or in your case all four of you, where the individuals' vampire natures rise and almost become one. Pleasure is shared so completely it reflects between those involved to create a resonance of ecstasy," Sofia explained.

"So why don't some believe it can be done?" Damiano asked.

"Because they are incapable of giving of themselves in such a way to make it possible," Sofia told him. "It requires a level of trust and synchronicity which can be incredibly hard to reach. Some couples take years, decades even, to achieve it."

His instinct was to ask, 'Then how did we manage it?' but he suspected there would be no clear answer, and he had a couple of ideas of his own.

"Are we moving too fast?" was what he asked in the end. "Could this be bad for us?"

"What do you feel?" Sofia asked and sounded just like his therapist for a second.

Only when she asked the question, it seemed like it was deeper somehow, given her abilities. Damiano sighed and pushed his darker thoughts away, doing his best not to let his paranoia get in the way of his consideration.

"I feel there is nowhere I can fall that someone won't catch me," was what he chose to say eventually.

He had doubts, fears, but that was at the heart of it all. He had always had doubts and fears and yet now he knew, at his core, that no matter what, he could not fuck up enough to lose those he loved.

"Does this closeness frighten you?" Sofia asked.

He shook his head, that was easy to answer.

"Do you think it frightens any of the others?" she continued.

He repeated the gesture, although he couldn't say why he was quite so sure.

"So this isn't the same as the dream?" he asked, because he needed time to think about the rest.

"It has similarities in that it underlines the connection between you all," Sofia replied, going with him without pushing thank heavens, "but rapport is a completely different level. It is a visceral and instinctive act involving blood, a significant trigger for us all. It is purely metaphysical and comes from your underlying vampire nature. From the way you described the dream, it was at a much more human level."

That made sense to Damiano and he nodded.

"Personal relationships between vampires can be intense," Sofia told him, "but they are most often very rewarding. Your instincts will be a good guide. Allow yourself to follow them."

He nodded again. He had more questions, but those few simple words settled him in a way he could not quite fathom. They had gone from friends, to each others' support structures, to so much more in such a short time. His instincts whispered to him that it was right, even as his higher brain worried. That Sofia backed up was he was feeling rather than what he was over thinking helped. He hoped they would do the same for the others as well.