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the healer has the bloodiest hands	By : lacrimalis Category: -Misc Video Games/RPGs > Slash/Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 427 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: Vampyr (2018) was developed by DONTNOD and published by Focus Interactive. I may own a copy of the game, but I claim no ownership over the intellectual property therein contained. I do not profit from this transformative work.

Chapter List
- 1-leaders bleed, period
- 1
A/N: Please forgive me the growing pains and hiccups. Long-time AFF reader, first-time poster. :') If you like Vampyr, I hope you'll stay tuned for my upcoming fics as well!
I wasn't sure how to declare everything within the existing content tags, so here are a few things I missed: dubcon, menstrual sex, menstrual blood eating (it's vampire media, somebody had to do it), frot, fluff, biting, trans male character... happy end?
Enjoy!
McCullum is tempted to hover, but this isn’t the first house call Reid has made to Priwen headquarters, and so far everyone has been on their best behavior.
Even Reid’s first visit hadn’t been as bad as McCullum expected. It probably helped that McCullum didn’t make it mandatory, so anyone tempted to hiss and spit at the leech in Priwen’s halls simply steered clear of the exam room. And any recruit in poor enough health to brave Reid’s presence would be taken care of. So everyone got what they wanted—and Reid’s satisfied patients would vouch for his conduct.
Really, the most McCullum could complain of those first few visits was the waste to Reid’s time. McCullum could only impose on the man so much, after all, and if taking care of Priwen’s members took Reid all night for all their heel-dragging, he could hardly ask Reid to come around twice a week.
If McCullum hadn’t taught Priwen’s members so well to emulate his own intransigence, then maybe they’d be benefiting from more frequent check-ups with Doctor Leech.
But tonight he’s considering asking Reid to increase the frequency of his visits after all, because the turn-out is good. Plenty of Guard members seek Reid out of their own volition early in the night, and they keep coming, such that McCullum doesn’t even have to entertain Reid with card games or conversation like he usually does to kill time between each of Reid’s walk-ins.
It's a good thing, McCullum tells himself. But his deck of playing cards begins to burn a hole in the chest pocket of his coat, when he realizes Reid might not have time for idle games tonight. And discomfited, he realizes he genuinely has nothing better to do if Reid is otherwise occupied—having come to a stopping point in Priwen’s bookkeeping in order to make himself available tonight.
And he’s not about to crack the books back open now. He already prefers patrolling with the Guard to putzing around in the office, as important as he knows administrative work to be. He’s not going to go back to it just because he’s a bit abashed at having cleared his schedule for nothing.
Tagging along on a patrol unscheduled is out of the question. Everyone might be behaving tonight, but he’d be a damned fool to leave his recruits alone with a leech, no matter how well-behaved.
His stomach turns with uncharacteristic anxiety, and McCullum scoffs at himself. He doesn’t need to eat his fucking heart out over this. Reid isn’t going to demand an explanation if McCullum comes to see him. He’ll probably just smile drolly like he always does with a cheeky glimpse of fang, far too enthusiastic by far at the prospect of socializing with his natural enemy.
Even if Reid playfully asks, to what do I owe the honor, a card game is just as good an excuse as any.
And there’s the record-breaking number of walk-ins to congratulate the man on, besides.
Reid dries his hands and drops the towel over the edge of the sink with a satisfied sigh. Priwen’s members have warmed to him unexpectedly quickly, and the evening passed mercifully without anyone kicking up a fuss. With a glance at his pocket watch, Reid considers packing it in and stopping by to see whether McCullum is amenable to one of their usual card games, but...
His teeth ache fiercely, which means he’d really better feed before doing anything else. Though it’s unusual—Reid is assiduously conscientious about his feeding schedule, and toothaches aren’t generally an attendant symptom of his thirst unless he’s neglected his appetite for several days.
And he knows he hasn’t, which suggests an environmental factor is to blame.
Obviously he’s been performing in a medical capacity all night, but Reid likes to think he’s come a long way since that disastrous impromptu surgery at Nurse Crane’s clinic. His mastery of self is much improved, and in point of fact his professional responsibilities didn’t even put him in contact with much blood tonight. He re-dressed a few wounds, re-sutured a couple of clumsy stitches, but most of Priwen’s members were suffering from the same garden variety illnesses as the rest of London’s population—common cold, hay fever, food poisoning, etc.—which necessitated commensurately noninvasive treatments.
Reid leans in toward the mirror above the sink to examine his eyes. They were clear and blue at the beginning of the evening, and while he might have expected to see some veins of pink as a result of his exposure to his patients’ blood, the reality is more severe: apart from the iris, his eyes are completely washed out with the pink of ruptured blood vessels—or whatever physiological cause can be credited to the change in vampires, Reid amends.
A question for one of Edgar’s experiments, perhaps. In the meantime, Reid is on his own to solve the mystery of the hour.
It might be that he hasn’t tried to conceal his nature tonight. He hadn’t seen the point—the Guard knows what he is, and the more adventuresome recruits are openly enamored of his ability to identify their ailments by smell and blood sight alone.
Of note is the fact that Reid has never tested the endurance of his heightened senses—mostly because it never occurred to him that they might have limits. He always likened the washed-out gray and gleaming red of his second sight to opening his eyes, or shifting his attention from one conversation to another in a crowded room.
But it’s apparent now that it’s more akin to holding his arm up for several hours, and only realizing that he has exhausted the limb beyond further use when he relaxes it—or perhaps foolishly deciding one morning that he’ll go all day without blinking, and suffering the predictable consequences.
It could be that, in carelessly permitting his fangs free rein of his mouth, and by abusing his blood sight in what he thought was a harmless indulgence that might endear him to Priwen’s recruits if nothing else, Reid has rendered himself unexpectedly vulnerable.
A raw nerve. A hair trigger.
And though Reid does not need to feed right now, he realizes with dawning dismay that he has duped his thirst instinct into expecting a meal, and having been deprived all evening it is now forcing the issue by way of his throbbing fangs and his dry, aching throat.
It’s inconvenient—but fortunately for Reid, the odds of encountering any blood between the makeshift exam room and the front door is infinitesimally low. He’ll just see himself out, and make his apologies to McCullum the next time he sees the man for being so uncharacteristically graceless in his departure. Surely McCullum will understand—and Reid’s reasoning stands to be a matter of scientific interest, so the resultant conversation will be more than elucidating enough to be grounds for forgiveness.
Still, Reid can’t entirely dispel his disappointment. This is the first night Priwen’s members have set aside their pretense of mistrust long enough to fully occupy Reid’s time and attention, and as a consequence he hasn’t seen hide nor hair of McCullum since he arrived. It might have even been cause for celebration, inasmuch as was customary for the understated tone of all their exchanges: McCullum might raise a glass to Reid in wry toast, courtesy of his private liquor stash, and Reid might rotate his wrist in a sardonic, abbreviated bow.
Congratulations, Doctor Leech, on ingratiating yourself to the enemy—or something to that effect.
Well. If Reid dithers, his compromised state will surely expend Priwen’s nascent hospitality in a heartbeat. Better to make himself scarce before it becomes an issue, and come back to commemorate his newfound welcome with McCullum another day.
Reid leaves the tidying to someone in better control of their faculties than him—another imposition which he will redress to McCullum at a later date—and gathers his meager supplies, tucking his medical bag under his arm as he opens the door to the exam room—
—And comes face-to-face with McCullum, his hand frozen in a loose fist prepared to knock.
Reid’s throat is sun-baked when he says, “McCullum.”
McCullum lowers his fist, regarding Reid’s eyes intently. “Doctor Reid,” he says slowly. “You look like shite.”
Reid’s throat works around the urge to swallow, but he can’t quite manage it. He opens his mouth to make his excuses, offer up some kind of explanation—but his words dry up when a singular, unmistakable aroma floods his senses through his open mouth, and his breath hitches hard in his chest.
Blood.
McCullum’s blood.
On occasion, in the safety of his own thoughts, Reid has guiltily indulged the thought that it's a shame he’ll never taste McCullum’s blood. Technically he tasted it during their duel at Pembroke so many months ago, but no matter the strength of Reid’s initial fascination with McCullum, fascination is no substitute for intimate familiarity. Reid knows by now that that, above all others, is the most significant factor in determining the palatability of an individual’s blood.
Or to dispense with academic euphemism—the better one knows a person, the tastier their blood will be.
... For vampires, that is. Contrary to Thelma Howcroft's insistence, Reid highly doubts the same holds true for humans.
In any case, be it by fortune or caution, Reid hasn't had occasion to so much as smell McCullum's blood since their duel at Pembroke. But now that he has, his suspicions and shameful fantasies are, unfortunately, proven devastatingly true. The intensity of the scent deprives Reid quite suddenly of all his other senses. The world is awash with red, insubstantial motes of darkness swirling in the air like dust devils.
Sweet red. Decadent red. And a pounding drum beat in Reid's skull—a battle march. Quickening its tempo, spurring him on.
Calling him to battle, and to blood.
When McCullum goes to knock on the door to Reid’s office, and Reid opens the door before he can, McCullum expects some sort of jibe—for Reid to smugly inform McCullum that he heard him coming, and what kind of hunter can’t sneak up on his quarry unnoticed?
What McCullum gets instead makes his blood run cold.
Because Reid’s eyes are shot completely through with blood, red as pomegranates—an omen of dark temptation. In McCullum’s vast and varied experience with leeches, eyes like that only mean two things: that the leech in question has just gorged themselves on blood—or they’re about to.
Given the absence of a bloodbath in the office behind Reid, that just leaves the latter possibility.
Though McCullum is on high alert, ready to sound the alarm at a moment’s notice, his strategic mind can’t discount the parts of this picture that don’t add up: Reid has his medical bag under his arm, for one thing, which is a strange choice if Reid has suddenly decided to go on a killing spree. And everything about Reid’s face screams hunted rather than hunting.
“McCullum,” Reid croaks, and the undisguised distress in his ravaged voice cinches McCullum’s decision.
He doesn’t sound the alarm.
“Doctor Reid,” McCullum says slowly. “You look like shite.”
Reid opens his mouth, and McCullum sees a flash of lily-white fangs against the inflamed red of Reid’s gums. Then Reid’s jaw locks, and his pupils go wide, and his eyes hone in on McCullum’s throat as the last fleck of blue in his eyes is swallowed up by the red.
McCullum kicks out Reid’s shin and shoves him. Reid’s medical bag lands at McCullum’s feet, and Reid backpedals with all the grace of a drunkard, stumbling into the table against the wall opposite the door, just barely catching himself on its wooden surface.
Claws of blood and shadow sprout gargoyle-like from his fingertips, but Reid digs them ferociously into the table’s surface, pulling deep furrows of wood shavings rather than bringing his claws to bear against McCullum.
McCullum steps into the room and over Reid’s medical bag, closing the door behind him. He draws his sword and perches its point at Reid’s neck, tapping the underside of Reid’s chin with the flat of the blade to get his attention.
“Get ahold of yourself, Reid.”
Reid blinks hard, red-washed gaze unfocused as it casts about the room. He drags a hand up his face, pressing his palm into his eye as he tangles his claws in his hair. His fangs are exposed in an anguished snarl, but his jaw is snapped firmly shut. It’s clear that his rational mind is waging a fierce battle with his inner beast.
What remains to be seen is if it’s a losing one.
“McCullum...? I can’t see,” Reid pleads, like there’s a damn thing McCullum can do about that. “I—I need you to leave.”
McCullum tsks, unimpressed with Reid’s forward planning. “And then what? You think one of the others will fare better against you like this?”
Reid blinks several times, eyes pointed vaguely in the direction of McCullum’s face—though it’s painfully obvious that Reid can neither see his face, nor resist the urge to let his gaze wander with open hunger down to McCullum’s heart instead.
Reid shuts his visible eye with a furrow of consternation in his brow. “... Fair point,” he concedes unhappily.
McCullum hesitates. Reid’s in no state to leave or sort himself out, but he’s docile for the moment. Now’s their best chance to remedy the situation, if there’s anything to be done at all. As the leader of the Guard of Priwen, McCullum's reputation of never being wrong is not unfounded. He has an exceptional talent for strategy, honed by his vagrant adolescence under Carl's tutelage.
McCullum takes stock of the situation:
Reid has somehow succumbed to blood madness in the middle of Priwen’s stronghold, which complicates the prospect of getting him out the door unseen—and discretion is crucial on that point, because while much of Priwen has shown unexpected tolerance of Reid's presence, not a one of them would see the picture Reid makes now and make the mistake of not shooting him.
Begs the question why McCullum isn't leading by example.
Because there are only two ways for this to shake out: Reid tearing a bloody swath through Priwen, either to slake his thirst or escape the stronghold, killing plenty of good Priwen soldiers before finally being subdued himself; or, McCullum cuts Reid down where he stands.
Neither option is ideal, obviously—Reid is a powerful ally, and having such a formidable Ekon sympathetic to Priwen’s cause, one who considers such vast tracts of London to be under his protection, gives Priwen an incalculable advantage over the rest of vampire-kind’s perfidious scourge.
But the path of least bloodshed is obvious.
Even still, McCullum’s gut churns at the thought of what he must do. Reid cowers in fear of his own looming hunger, trembling imperceptibly with the force of will required to hold himself still beneath McCullum’s blade. It’d be a damn shame, McCullum muses, if all Reid’s efforts to cling to his Hippocratic principles only ended in the same inglorious fate every other leech has met at the business end of McCullum’s blade.
And there is, it dawns on McCullum with slow, creeping apprehension, a third option.
He tightens his grip around the hilt of his sword, as if this will give him a firmer grasp on his inner resolve. But when he looks down the unswerving line of steel and sees at its end Reid’s visible eye tightly shut, his expression crumpled with despair, McCullum feels his resolve dislodge.
He lowers his blade.
A knot forms at the base of his throat, his body rejecting the irrational decision his mind has come to. “Reid,” he says around it, determined to say his piece before he comes to his senses. “If—”
“McCullum—” Reid says at the same time, and for a moment the deadly tension is overcome by the awkward uncertainty of whose turn it is to speak. Reid, being the one more possessed of desperate urgency, is the first to break the silence. "My medical bag is behind you. Could you get one of my blood serums for me?"
"Blood serum," McCullum repeats numbly. "Right." He walks backward to the medical bag, keeping an eye on Reid. As if he needs to—as if Reid was anywhere close to taking leave of his senses as badly as McCullum nearly had. He’s lucky Reid is too busy composing himself to notice the horrified look of self-reproach on McCullum’s face.
Because he’d almost rationalized offering Reid his blood.
Almost, he thinks, with a quiet huff of incredulous laughter at his own insanity. There was no almost about it. If Reid hadn’t spoken when he did, McCullum would have disavowed every principle and conviction Carl had so painstakingly impressed upon him over the years in a single foolhardy moment. The old brute must be on tenterhooks in his grave, waiting to roll.
McCullum’s heel knocks against the medical bag, and he kneels on the floor and drags it in front of him. Reid’s blood serums are easily found—laughably prominent and ready to hand, considering how much closer still McCullum’s descent to lunacy was by comparison.
Reid’s eyes hone in on the red vial when McCullum lifts it, which suggests there’s enough blood content therein for it to be seen through the bloody haze miring his sight. Reid holds out a hand, and McCullum is so preoccupied feeling sick at himself that he nearly tosses the syringe over without a second thought. But Reid’s claws are hard not to notice, with their dark red hue and their jagged, unnatural length. Moreover, there’s a tremor in them that McCullum can see from across the room.
McCullum stays his hand. “Can you even hold this right now, Reid?” he asks.
Reid’s hand falls from his face in surprise, and he blinks at his claws like he doesn’t know how they got there. “I—I’m sure I...” But Reid has complained to McCullum about patients pridefully ignoring their limits too often to not recognize when he’s about to do it himself. He sags in abject despair, covering his face with his trembling claws. “No. I don’t think I can.”
Watching Reid fall apart at the seams is torture. McCullum hasn’t seen much of Reid’s combat skills since that fateful fight at the Pembroke, but when they talk, Reid casually alludes to accomplishing feats that would make a Vulkod blush. Like that’s just a regular Tuesday for him. Reid is so absurdly powerful that McCullum suspects he’s nigh on invincible, so he’s never even considered the possibility that he might outlive the man.
The thought that he might soon have to consider it after all threatens to gut him more roundly than Reid’s death-dealing claws ever could.
“I’ll do it,” McCullum says. He was already going to risk getting drained by the man—what’s coming within arm’s reach of him, compared to that?
Reid drops his hands in alarm. “McCullum, no! It’s not safe. I can’t—if you come any closer, I don’t know if I...”
McCullum shifts his grip on the syringe—from readying an underhand throw by the barrel to settling his thumb on the plunger—and says, “I doubt you getting all worked up is going to help us any, Reid.”
Reid’s jaw snaps shut, and he braces his hands on the edge of the table, where his claws audibly dig new furrows into its underside. “McCullum, please,” Reid says, tremulous. “Don’t put me in this position.”
McCullum may be feeling reckless, but he supposes there’s no sense in taking preventable risk. He pulls his scarf from around his neck and tosses it to Reid, a red ribbon of benediction stretching across the distance between them. Reid snatches it clumsily from the air, staring at it with open incomprehension.
“Bite down on that, then, if you’re going to get in a lather about it.”
McCullum can imagine the Reid he’s grown so well-acquainted with objecting to the indignity of this on principle, as if he were a dog to be muzzled. It speaks to Reid’s desperate state that he shoves the scarf in his mouth immediately, without so much as a peep of perfunctory complaint.
Then he braces his claws in the table again, correctly surmising that there is little else he can do to prepare for or forestall McCullum’s approach.
McCullum stands, watching right back as Reid keenly tracks his movements. “Does it matter where I stick you with this?” he asks belatedly. “Does it have to be the neck?”
Reid shakes his head, and McCullum sees no reason to wait for Reid to get any more worked up. McCullum lifts his sword toward Reid again, making his measured approach and angling the blade to fit between them as he closes the distance. With every step Reid coils even tighter with tension, until his shoulders are bowed and the table is groaning in protest. Right before McCullum comes within arm’s reach, Reid screws his eyes shut. He isn’t breathing at all—and McCullum realizes this must be a deliberate attempt to do all he can to avoid smelling whatever set him off.
When McCullum comes to a stop they’re barely a foot away, and McCullum imagines he’d be able to feel Reid’s ambient body heat if he still had any left to give. The table creaks beneath Reid's trembling claws, and McCullum wastes no further time.
He uncaps the needle with his teeth and stabs Reid in the chest with it. He depresses the plunger, watching the red serum drain from the barrel.
Reid throws his head back with a wolfish snarl, which gives way to an unequivocally human groan of pain, pressed tightly through scarf and gritted teeth. When he sags against the table, the worst of the red in his blinking eyes has faded to rheumy pink, and his irises are restored to their clear, temperate blue. McCullum yanks the hypodermic syringe free, and Reid grunts, clutching the injection site with his hand—sans claws.
McCullum lowers his sword and steps back, and Reid pulls McCullum’s scarf carefully from between his teeth.
“Thank you,” Reid gasps. He scrubs his palm against the injection site, no doubt already closing beneath his clothes, and laughs with delirious relief. “I have half a mind to hug you, though I hardly trust myself so close to your neck at the moment.”
McCullum is experiencing a heady, nauseous relief of his own, and despite himself he has half a mind to hug Reid, too, when he considers how badly that could have gone. But the man’s bloodthirst is a very real and present concern, and they probably shouldn’t tempt fate now that Reid is out of the woods.
So instead McCullum stands there feeling cast adrift: sword in one hand, used needle in the other, and a needle cap between his teeth. Reid drops his hand and blinks, and seeing McCullum’s unusual duel-wielding, gestures for the syringe.
“I’ll take that.”
McCullum hands it over, plucking the cap out from between his teeth and depositing that in Reid’s open palm, too.
“Thank you,” Reid says again. He drapes McCullum’s scarf over his forearm to free his hands and caps the syringe methodically. The motion is so steady that McCullum might never have guessed Reid had just been on the brink of bedlam—but for the quiet, shaky exhale Reid emits as he pockets the sheathed needle.
McCullum does not follow suit by sheathing his sword. “What was that all about, Reid?” he demands, still feeling some residual queasiness from it all. Maybe Reid has something for McCullum’s persistent nausea in that bloody bag of his.
Reid grimaces faintly and starts fretting with McCullum’s scarf, looking more embarrassed by the question than he is afraid of the implicit threat of McCullum’s blade. He’d be insulted, but frankly Reid is easier to fluster than he is to scare, so he’ll hold off on taking offense until he hears just how embarrassed Reid ought to be. “I can’t be sure, but I suspect I over-extended my blood sight this evening, and it induced a sort of... craving. Obviously I don’t make house calls on an empty stomach, but it seems...”
McCullum can’t see how eyestrain would reduce Reid to such a state. But then he gets it. “Like looking in the window of a sweet shop all day.”
Reid’s countenance grows even more abashed to hear his patients compared to custards and candies. “I’m not especially enthusiastic about that analogy, McCullum,” he chastises. “But given the circumstances, it’s... not an inaccurate one.”
“How’d you manage that?” McCullum wonders. Reid has told him before that he only uses that particular skill sparingly, disliking the temptation, the way it reduced everyone around him to a web of alluring red. “Can’t imagine you need leech tricks to diagnose the lads’ and lassies’ runny noses.”
“Ah, well, a few of them were curious about the extent of my sight, so I ended up giving a few demonstrations...”
Given the state of the man, this is undoubtedly an understatement—ostensibly designed to shift blame from the dunderheads who asked him to perform for them in the first place. As if that will stop McCullum upbraiding them for it later. “Reid,” he groans, sheathing his sword so he isn’t tempted to drub Reid across the head with its pommel. He half-satisfies the urge by snatching his scarf violently from Reid’s hands. “You’re not a bloody show pony!”
Reid wrings his hands together fretfully in the absence of McCullum’s scarf to play with. “There didn’t seem to be any harm at the time...”
McCullum pinches the bridge of his nose with a sigh. “You daft cunt.”
“In any case,” Reid says, eager to move on from the subject of his biddable idiocy, “I’m aware that I’m not in any state to practice medicine. I was just on my way out.” He gestures to his medical bag sitting forlornly by the door. "I’m sorry I can’t assist you with your injury, but I suspect your field medics will be able to help you with it, whatever it is."
McCullum shoves the damp scarf in his pocket and frowns bemusedly. “Appreciate the concern, but I’m not injured. Wouldn’t say no to some antacids, though.”
“What?” Reid says, looking comically befuddled. “McCullum, I—not that I blame you, of course, but if I’m not much mistaken, it was the scent of your blood which... exacerbated my condition.”
McCullum’s frown deepens. “I think I’d know if I were injured, Reid.”
“Yes, of course, but...” Reid’s brow furrows in consternation and concern. “You said you wanted antacids? Are you experiencing heartburn, by any chance? Chest pains?”
“No,” McCullum says, beginning to grow a bit concerned himself. “A bit nauseous, is all.” Reid’s eyes narrow, and McCullum scowls judgmentally. “Are you using your bloody leech eyes right now?” he demands.
“This is important,” Reid insists, darting his eyes across McCullum’s chest. “If your lungs are hemorrhaging—”
“And what are you going to do about it? Like this?” McCullum demands, lifting his hand in a succinct gesture which encompasses Reid’s whole situation. “You going to perform surgery with your claws?”
Reid winces, evidently disliking the mental image, but he straightens and gets a determined look about him—his, I am a doctor and this is a matter of medical urgency, look. “The serum will tide me over. I’m not just going to leave if you need emergency medical intervention—I can give you a prognosis and get you to a hospital, at the very least.”
McCullum throws his hands up and places them on his hips, shrugging impatiently at Reid to get on with it, then.
Reid sighs, relieved. “I need you to take deep breaths. Tell me if you feel any pain.”
McCullum does as Reid asks, waiting for the man to finish snooping in his lungs. In the back of his mind squirms the niggling fear that Reid will take notice of his surgical scars, but he reminds himself that Reid is monitoring his blood, not undressing him with his eyes. And anyway, McCullum has plenty of old injuries that have left their mark. There’s no reason Reid should single those out among the rest, even if he can see them.
“Would you mind turning around?” Reid asks. Then, with a hint of his customary irony, “I’d walk around you, but I don’t think you’d appreciate the optics of that.”
McCullum snorts. “Fine, but keep your eyes above the belt,” he says wryly, though he’s only half joking. Reid can’t see anything but his blood vessels, McCullum reminds himself. But the thought of the man looking long and hard enough at McCullum’s abdomen, that he might be able to make out the shape of things...
Reid laughs, and McCullum does not examine how Reid’s accompanying droll smile eases the last of the tension remaining from their knife’s edge confrontation. “Of course. I am a gentleman, after all.”
McCullum turns around, breathing with exaggerated depth and lifting his arms in jesting presentation. “What’s my prognosis, doctor?”
“Well, your lungs seem fine,” Reid says. “I suppose it could be your stomach... Would you turn back around, please?”
McCullum obliges, and Reid strokes his beard as he squints at the place McCullum’s stomach sits. Maybe it will be his stomach. What with the nausea, and discomfort...
Suspicion takes root in the back of McCullum’s mind, confirmed in the next breath when an unmistakable cramp stabs through his gut like a sword. Horror quickly overwhelms his astonishment, but the shock lingers long enough that he waits too long to tell Reid his services won’t be required, and he has no time to come up with a plausible excuse.
“McCullum? What’s wrong?” Reid asks, watching McCullum’s body far too closely to have missed such a dramatic reaction.
“Nothing,” McCullum says, voice strained and unconvincing.
Reid frowns. “You stopped breathing, McCullum. I asked you to tell me if you were in pain...”
McCullum is frightfully aware of the precarious position he's in, subject to Reid’s scrutiny now of all times, when the man is such a bloody mother hen. “I just,” McCullum says, floundering, “realized what’s wrong.”
“Oh?” Reid says, curious and relieved. “What is it?”
“None of your fucking business,” McCullum snaps. He regrets it instantly, seeing the way Reid’s face falls, but he can’t afford to be irresolute here. “Now turn off your leech eyes before they fall out of your head. You’ve got to eat.” He moves to Reid’s side to place a firm palm between his shoulders, herding him toward the door.
“McCullum, wait—please,” Reid entreats, bringing them to a stop in the middle of the room. “You would tell me if something was wrong, wouldn’t you?”
McCullum stifles a groan. “I don’t know, Reid! Maybe I would. But you can’t help me with this.” Reid wilts, and McCullum hates to see the man so goddamn dejected. “Come round this time next week,” McCullum says impulsively, “and you’ll see for yourself that I’m fine.”
Reid heartens at that, his demeanor lightening visibly with a hesitant smile. “I’ll hold you to that,” he promises, and he finally allows McCullum to usher him the rest of the way to the door.
“Be my guest,” says McCullum as he turns the knob. He’d bend down to get Reid’s bag to hasten the man’s departure, but he’s anxious about agitating his gut and setting off another conspicuous cramp. Reid is a grown man, he can get his own damn bag.
But of course Reid has to kneel instead of bending over, ever the conscientious doctor, despite being an immortal who has little to fear from the consequences of poor posture. And of course the sight of Reid kneeling fills McCullum’s head with an abundance of untimely prurient fantasies, all the more inconvenient for the fast-approaching oversensitivity that always used to trouble him when this was a monthly occurrence.
Rebelliously, his cunt throbs in response to Reid’s unseemly position, and Reid goes rigid in the very same moment.
McCullum shuts his eyes and sends up a desperate prayer, but it’s a bit late to make good with God now. When he opens his eyes, Reid is standing with his medical bag over one shoulder, staring at McCullum in astonishment. McCullum raises his eyebrows angrily, daring the man to say something.
Carl always did say that if you knocked on enough doors asking to see the devil, eventually he may answer.
Reid’s cruel answer is, “You’re menstruating.”
Fury pools at the base of McCullum's skull, hot and slow as magma. His hand is on the doorknob, and he makes use of it to slam the door loudly shut. Reid jumps, and McCullum says darkly, “What of it?” Then, because it bears mentioning, “And what’d I tell you about keeping your eyes above the belt, Reid?”
Reid at least has the decency to look contrite. “I—I didn’t intend to pry any further,” he swears. “But with the smell of your blood so close, I think my blood sight triggered on its own, and... I’m sorry.”
“Yeah? You’ll be even sorrier,” McCullum assures him, “if I catch wind of you telling anyone about this.”
“What?” Reid says, looking taken aback. “McCullum, of course I wouldn’t tell anyone—”
“And how am I to know that?” McCullum demands. “What guarantee do I have that you won’t breathe a word of this to anyone?”
Reid’s lips part, but he quickly closes his mouth again, looking preemptively chastened.
McCullum closes his eyes, taking a deep breath and counting to ten. “... If you were about to say you don’t breathe—”
“Sorry,” Reid says quickly, confirming McCullum’s hunch.
“I’m going to fucking kill you,” McCullum tells him. “I should have killed you five minutes ago when I had the chance.”
"That's a bit unkind," Reid complains sullenly.
"Life's unkind," McCullum says, and as if to prove him right, another cramp lances through him. Instinctually he grits his teeth and resists the urge to comfort himself—but Reid already knows, so there's little point in letting his body suffer through neglect to stop him figuring it out. McCullum hooks a thumb around his hip and digs his middle and index fingers into his iliac crest, hissing in discomfort.
"Is the pain severe?" Reid asks. "I can prescribe painkillers—" So saying, he opens the medical bag under his arm and starts rifling through its contents.
McCullum drags his free hand down his face, mortified and infuriated. "I don't want your fucking painkillers, Reid."
Reid has a medicine bottle in each hand when McCullum makes this pronouncement, and their contents rattle dejectedly as Reid's shoulders slump. "Are you quite sure? It’s really no trouble...”
Reid’s egregious avoidance of the elephant in the room only makes McCullum angrier. He feels nauseous with more than cramps now, at the thought of what Reid must think of him. Better to receive prompt condemnation than remain uncertain, just because Reid won’t speak his bloody mind. He throws his hands up and demands, “Don’t you have anything else to say?”
Reid ducks his head penitently, as if McCullum has just whacked him with a rolled-up newspaper. “I... don’t think it’s my place to speak on it. I apologize for prying earlier, but surely you... understand my concern? In any other circumstance, smelling your blood would have meant...” Reid trails off with a sigh, closing his eyes as if he must spend a moment in the illusion of privacy to gather his tumultuous thoughts. “I’m sorry—I doubt you want to hear my excuses. You have every right to be upset. But I don’t intend to withhold medical care just because you’re upset with me.”
Reid’s evasiveness is irritating, but McCullum can appreciate the principle of Reid’s offer, if begrudgingly. And he might have his pride, but the whole reason Reid is here to begin with is to provide Priwen with free medical care. There’s little sense in McCullum rebuffing Reid’s offer purely out of spite. Painkillers don’t come cheap.
McCullum crosses his arms and sighs loudly through his nose. “Fine,” he relents unhappily.
Reid sighs as well, but in evident relief. He looks at the bottles in his hands. “Do you have any allergies?”
“No.”
Reid nods and uncorks one of the bottles. “And how is your pain?”
This impromptu check-up is incomprehensibly surreal, given that McCullum can still hear his world avalanching around him in enormous drifts. “Well it’s not bloody sunshine and roses, I’ll tell you that for free.”
Reid glares toothlessly at McCullum, looking a bit persecuted. “That’s not especially helpful. What are your cycles usually like? Is the pain more severe than usual? Or is this typical?"
"Don't typically have a cycle." McCullum says the word like something unpleasant he'd rather keep at arm’s length.
This makes Reid hesitate, holding the bottle of painkillers sideways above his palm just short of actually dispensing its contents. "Have you experienced..." Reid is too busy looking thoughtful to catch McCullum's challenging glare. "... premature menopause...?"
That seems to be the mystery of the hour, doesn't it? "I thought I had, since it's been years. Evidently that isn't the case."
Reid's brow furrows. "McCullum, if it's been a significant amount of time between this cycle and your last, you... really ought to be examined. Do you have a gynecologist? Or a primary care physician that can refer you to one?"
McCullum snorts. "Not unless you count back-alley sawbones as primary care physicians." The suddenness of the whole thing took McCullum badly enough by surprise that he hasn't considered what he'll do about it. Track down his sanitary pads, for one. Get back on his hormones, for another. But in the here and now, McCullum is forced to acknowledge that Reid is probably right.
The look on Reid's face suggests that Reid knows it too, but he isn't enthusiastic about breaking the news to him.
"I suppose you'll be offering, then," McCullum surmises.
"I'd hate to impose any further," Reid immediately qualifies his unspoken offer, "and I'll admit I'm not licensed in gynecology—"
McCullum rolls his eyes. "If you think back-alley sawbones are licensed in anything, Reid—"
"But yes, I believe I would be able to examine you. Nothing invasive," Reid hastens to assure him. "My blood sight is good for that much, at least. And if your pain is an indicator of an underlying problem, it would be best to ascertain the nature of that problem before treating your pain."
"Fine," McCullum relents for the second time in as many minutes. He glances at the door. "But if you intend to ask me any more bloody questions, we're taking this to my office. I'm not keen on being overheard."
"Of course," Reid readily agrees. "Wherever you're most comfortable."
Comfortable, he says. As if McCullum can take comfort at all, given the circumstances. Reid's sheepish expression suggests he has an inkling that his phrasing leaves something to be desired, so McCullum mercifully refrains from laying into him for it. It's not as if he has the time to spare, in any case—a detail of which his traitorous gut sees fit to remind him with another stabbing cramp.
McCullum throws the door open and stalks to his office, Reid at his heels.
—
When McCullum co-opted the theater as Priwen’s new base of operations, he took the star dressing room for his bedroom and office. Its spacious dimensions and preexisting furniture made it well-suited to both purposes, and it obliged his love of theatrics: the room’s gaudy ostentation is something McCullum can enjoy without inviting scrutiny by choosing it, since it was like that when he got here. And considering the late hours he keeps, it’s convenient to have his bed six feet from his desk.
It is here McCullum takes Reid for his impromptu check-up.
Reid has been to McCullum’s rooms for business and pleasure both (though mostly just card games, no matter how many times McCullum has imagined the man in his bed). Memorably, Reid once paced the room for over an hour as he expounded on the shortcomings of a lately-published scholarly article in his field, while McCullum made quiet, tired noises of interest and folded paper airplanes, sending them sailing toward Reid and trying to catch the man mid-flight.
McCullum can’t help but wonder if there won’t be any more nights like that after this.
Reid spares McCullum the trouble of figuring out just what to say by speaking first. “It would be best if you were lying down for this.”
McCullum reaches the center of the room and spins on his heel to face Reid, his tattered coat whipping the backs of his knees with an irate snap. “And what’s second best?”
Reid looks like he’s about to argue, but when he works up the nerve to speak all he says is, “Sitting. Somewhere comfortable, if possible.”
McCullum surveys the room. There’s a chaise lounge against a near wall, which he quickly decides is the most suitable place. It’s a damn sight better than the bed, for one thing, and somehow he thinks the simple wooden chair at his desk won’t provide the elbow room he’ll need for whatever Reid has planned. McCullum pulls his scabbard free of his belt and marches over to the chaise lounge without a word, sets his sword down within arm’s reach, and plants himself on the center cushion. He drapes his arms over the back of his seat with insouciant confidence, legs splayed to dominate the space.
Reid comes to stand in the space between McCullum’s legs, and he sets his bag down at his feet as he kneels between McCullum’s thighs.
Oh.
McCullum may have objected to lying down in a knee jerk aversion to positional vulnerability, but if he’d spent half a second considering that the alternative might be this , he would have thought better of snubbing Reid’s professional opinion on the matter.
“Would you mind removing your belt?” Reid asks, which certainly doesn't help.
“‘Scuse me?” McCullum says. “What happened to ‘nothing invasive’?”
“Ah—rest assured, your belt is the only thing I need you to remove—to feel your abdomen. I apologize for being unclear.”
McCullum holds Reid’s pink gaze as he thumbs his belt buckle loose and yanks the length of leather free. Rather than discarding it, he folds the belt in half so the buckle sits snugly against the outside of his hand, and the rest of it trails in an ominous loop from his tightly closed grip. Reid nervously tracks McCullum’s arm as it returns to draping over the back of the seat.
“What’s the matter, Reid?” McCullum asks. "You afraid of a bit of leather?"
"I can't say I'm especially enthusiastic about what you're implying..." Reid grumbles as he pulls his stethoscope out of his bag.
"I suppose you'd better be on your best behavior, then."
Reid's brows draw up and together, as if he is excessively burdened by this ultimatum. But he nevertheless dons the eartips of his stethoscope and holds the bell up to McCullum's stomach. The metal disc seeps coolness through McCullum’s shirt, a gentle furrow in Reid's brow as he listens to several points on McCullum's gut.
"Nothing out of the ordinary," Reid reports. He withdraws the stethoscope's bell and removes its eartips from his ears. When it's tucked back in his bag, Reid lifts his hands to hover in front of McCullum's stomach. "I'm going to touch you now, if that's alright."
McCullum tightens his grip on his belt, and Reid glances at the improvised weapon furtively. "You'll know if it's not alright," McCullum assures him.
Reid's touch is not tentative, but it is gentle—the mannerly touch of a medical professional. "Please try to relax your abdominal muscles. I can’t feel a thing like this."
McCullum's core is always a little tense. Softening his stomach, making it vulnerable beneath Reid's cool hands, takes considerable effort. He manages though, and the corners of Reid's eyes pinch with blood sight.
"I can't help but notice your liver looks a bit inflamed," Reid murmurs, pressing lightly on the soft spot just below McCullum's sternum.
"I'm Irish," McCullum reminds him.
Reid's mouth twitches into a faint semblance of a smile. "Yes, I suppose you are." He inches down McCullum's abdomen with gentle, probing touches. The only sounds in the room are Reid's fingertips sliding across McCullum's shirt, and McCullum's breathing. Reid’s middle and forefinger pause beside McCullum’s hipbone. “I noticed you massaging this area. Is this where the pain is worst?”
“Yes,” McCullum says, and Reid barely presses down at all, but McCullum still grunts feelingly between his teeth. “Reid—”
“Sorry,” Reid says quickly, retracting his hands so McCullum can soothe the site himself. “I think your suspensary ligaments might be weakened.”
“My fucking what?”
“They hold up your reproductive organs,” Reid explains. “The organs themselves are quite a bit lower, but the termination of the suspensary ligament is where many people experience cramps. The ligament can weaken in post-menopausal patients, which may mean you’re in more pain than usual... How is your pain, by the way?”
If it’ll make this appointment shorter, McCullum supposes he ought to entertain the question with something other than bitter mockery. "Barely tolerable,” he says. “Getting worse."
Reid offers him a look of pity, which McCullum staunchly ignores. “I'll try to be quick, then. Are you sexually active?"
McCullum grinds his teeth. “Depends who's asking."
Reid coughs. "Let me put it to you another way: is there any chance you might be pregnant?"
McCullum scoffs. "No."
“And are you taking any medication?”
“No,” McCullum says again. At this Reid hesitates, and McCullum impatiently snaps, “Spit it out.”
Reid taps his fingers nervously on his thighs. “Well—I thought perhaps you might be on hormones, if nothing else.”
“We can’t all walk the primrose path, Doctor Reid,” McCullum says crisply. “War’s been on, in case you hadn’t heard. Between injured veterans and Spanish flu cases, the medical sector’s been a bit overburdened. Don’t expect I have to tell you that.”
“No, you don’t,” Reid murmurs, looking rueful and thoughtful. "But supply lines have been mostly restored since the armistice, so I don’t expect it’ll be difficult to get them for you."
McCullum is about to snap that he doesn't need Reid telling him how easy it is to get medicine, until the 'for you' sinks in. What, Reid’s going to bankroll his medical bills? "That's mighty generous of you," McCullum says suspiciously.
"I do give free medicine to most of my patients. I believe you've told me off for it before," Reid reminds him.
McCullum remembers now. “And I was right,” he insists.
“Yes, well, that being the case, I suppose I will simply have to live with being wrong.” He holds his hands up inquisitively. "May I continue?"
McCullum pulls his hand away from his cramping suspensary ligament, and Reid returns his hands to McCullum’s hipbone. “I’m going to feel out your reproductive organs now, just to make sure I’m seeing them correctly.”
“Sure,” McCullum grumbles.
Reid traces the ridge of the hipbone down, then allows his probing touch to slide off the bone toward McCullum’s pubic mound. McCullum’s stomach jumps, his grip tightening reflexively on the belt. Reid stills accordingly at the creak of leather.
“Getting a bit low there, Reid,” McCullum says, but it’s more grousing than threatening.
“Apologies,” Reid says. “This is where your ovaries are.”
Hearing that makes McCullum’s skin crawl, but he ventures, “All good, then? Blood’s where it’s supposed to be?”
Reid snorts. “Yes, it seems so.” His touch moves to the midpoint between the ovaries as he has indicated them. “Your uterus seems to be tilted backward, but that’s consistent with weakened suspensary ligaments. It’s also nothing to worry about—unless you’re experiencing painful intercourse,” Reid amends, “in which case you might try different positions—or if you curl your knees to your chest, that can temporarily move the uterus to a more comfortable orientation.”
McCullum is a little thrown by such a no-nonsense assessment coming from the habitually demur doctor. He is visited unwillingly by the vivid image of Reid pushing McCullum’s knees to his chest for an entirely different purpose, in some kind of wildly unprofessional physical therapy session. He smothers the humiliating thrill the thought inspires with a sneer. “You know an awful lot about cunts for not being licensed in gynecology, Doctor Reid.”
Reid removes his hands, by all appearances finished with McCullum's examination. He looks faintly embarrassed—whether by McCullum's remark itself or his word choice is unclear—and clears his throat as he rifles through his bag. "Well, studying abroad availed me of several opportunities to study outside my discipline..."
McCullum rifles through the file in his head of things he knows about Reid: a combination of Priwen's diligent intelligence operatives and Reid's own divulgences in their late night conversations. "Ah," says McCullum. "France."
Reid clears his throat again. "Yes... The French are much less reserved about these... disciplines." Strangely, Reid glances at McCullum's belt when he says this. In a series of movements that would not look misplaced in a carnival game of chance, Reid transfers several medicine capsules from large bottles into smaller vials, which he stoppers and presses into McCullum's hands. "Antacids as needed," he says, "and painkillers—take one, and if the pain persists take another, but I don't recommend taking any more than four at once."
McCullum accepts the vials and swallows one capsule from each, and he watches as, in another flurry of well-practiced movement, everything in Reid's hands disappears into his medical bag or his coat pockets. Then Reid stands with his bag and steps away.
"I really ought to be going," Reid says, "but I can bring hormones this evening if you're not busy—"
“Hold your bloody horses,” McCullum interrupts. He deposits the vials in the chest pocket of his coat—ignoring the formless sense of loss when he brushes the deck of cards—and unloops his belt to resecure it around his waist. Reid squirms in the center of the room while McCullum makes himself presentable. “I don’t think I’ve adequately impressed upon you what the consequences will be if you go spreading this around.”
“McCullum, can’t this wait?” Reid asks plaintively. “As you said, I really should eat something—”
“And didn’t you say that blood serum would tide you over?” McCullum says, standing with his scabbard in his off-hand. “You wouldn’t endanger a patient by lying about something like that, would you?”
Reid glances uncertainly at the sheathed sword. “... No, of course not—”
“Then shut your gob and listen well, Reid.” McCullum advances, drawing his sword and holding it menacingly aloft, herding Reid into the opposite wall. “If you tell anyone about this, I’ll hunt you down and have your guts for garters, and it’ll have less to do with you being a leech than you bloody well deserving it. And you’d better pray I don’t catch you, Reid,” McCullum says, “or when I’m through with you, you’ll wish you could die like a human.”
Reid’s back thumps to the wall, and the point of McCullum’s sword kisses the underside of Reid’s chin.
“Have I made my point clear?”
“Ah,” says Reid, tilting his head back. “Clear as steel.”
If Reid still has levity to spare for smart remarks, then evidently McCullum has failed to communicate the severity of the situation. They may have developed a comfortable rapport of banter and gallow’s humor over the course of their acquaintance, but McCullum is not making idle threats, and he doesn’t intend to let Reid brush this off as one.
McCullum grabs the collar of Reid’s coat and yanks him forward so he can shove the man hard against the wall, pressing his blade to the knot of Reid’s throat. Reid drops something, and the sound of that small glass something breaking on the hardwood is bright in the ensuing silence. McCullum looks down. It takes a moment for him to identify the mess of clear glass shards and carmine fluid as the woebegone remains of one of Reid’s blood serums.
McCullum looks up again just in time to see Reid's bloodshot eyes widen and darken, and in a dizzying rush of shadow, McCullum is the one having his breath punched out by an impact with the wall. His sword and sheath scrape and skitter in opposite directions across the floor, and Reid’s medical bag slumps to their feet.
McCullum isn’t left to fear for his life for long—because Reid's claws quickly loosen in the lapels of McCullum's coat, and by the time McCullum regains his sense of equilibrium Reid has sunken to his knees, his palms pressing to McCullum’s waist as his blood-and-darkness claws tremble with the effort to do no harm.
McCullum stares dumbfounded as Reid bows his head, heaving great, shuddering breaths into McCullum's thigh.
"Reid," McCullum says. "What in God's name are you doing?"
"Please," says Reid, and he sounds shattered, his composure in a million pieces on the floor. His claw tips are impossibly gentle as they settle around McCullum's waist. Reid lifts his head to nose clumsily at McCullum's iliac crest, and McCullum's stomach flips. "I understand. I'm sorry. But please, let me..."
Reid's behavior is so outrageous that McCullum nearly tells him off without even figuring out what he's asking for—but then Reid presses a wet whine into the crotch of McCullum's pants, and the nature of his request becomes abundantly clear.
McCullum opens his mouth in astonishment, his knee-jerk no on the tip of his tongue—until the tip of Reid's tongue finds McCullum's core unerringly through his trousers and underdrawers, like he can see the shape of it through the fabric. Just a few minutes ago the thought mortified McCullum, but now it makes his pelvic floor throb with perverse desire.
A soft, unexpected sigh betrays McCullum’s interest, and he grits his teeth against any more, but it’s too late: Reid’s eyes flash up at McCullum knowingly, eagerly, as their edges redden with bloody verve.
Reid seals his mouth over the mound of McCullum’s cunt and sucks, like he thinks he’ll be able to taste the blood despite the layers of clothing in the way. Maybe he can taste it. McCullum would be hard-pressed to credit any other explanation for the way Reid’s eyes flutter as he tongues the seam of McCullum’s cunt and sucks in slow, lazy pulses.
“Reid,” McCullum tries again, but it’s strangled, tight with desire, and his head drops helplessly back against the wall. The puckering, sucking sound of Reid’s vulgar kiss is disgracefully loud. Almost as disgraceful as the way McCullum scrabbles for purchase on the wall instead of shoving Reid away—or better yet, drawing one of the knives from inside his coat to underscore the sentiment.
McCullum lifts a hand to act on his screaming instinct, urges himself to grab Reid by the hair, and—
And that’s the moment that the diligent application of Reid’s tongue causes his saliva to seep through the layers of fabric, so on Reid’s next upstroke it feels as if there’s no barrier between them at all. McCullum’s breath gusts from his lungs in a desperate groan, and when the spots clear from his vision, he sees to his dismay that he has only succeeded in shoving Reid’s face even more tightly against his crotch.
Not that Reid has any complaints, if his enthusiastic huffing and licking is anything to go by. Lecherous leech.
“Christ...”
McCullum can feel the last strands of his resolve slipping from his grasp, less substantial even than the soft strands of Reid’s hair tangled between his fingers.
McCullum jerks Reid’s head back, thinking to admonish Reid that if McCullum is going to cede to momentary insanity then Reid had better behave—but this is a mistake, because the expression on Reid’s face just sends more desirous heat straight to McCullum's core: Reid's brow is drawn together in needful desperation, and his pupils are blown in his bloodshot eyes. His tongue hangs shamelessly from his mouth, pink and wet and profligate.
As mindless with bliss as Reid so clearly is, it would be child's play to knock him away or to the floor. But in that moment of febrile lunacy McCullum wants more, and damn the consequences.
McCullum lifts his leg over Reid's shoulder and pulls him back in by the hair, and Reid—
Reid catches on fast, wrapping an arm so tightly around McCullum's thigh that it presses the rapid pulse of McCullum's femoral artery to Reid’s ear. And Reid wastes no time returning his mouth to McCullum's cunt, growling and moaning into McCullum with rumbling abandon.
There's a chance McCullum could lose his balance like this, but absurdly, he trusts Reid not to drop him—particularly when Reid is so bloody intent on sucking McCullum's cunt through his pants, and McCullum pitching over would put something of a damper in that.
The new angle provided by McCullum's open legs gives Reid even more access, which he wastes no time taking advantage of. He pants like a dog as he licks with enough insistent pressure that McCullum's labia are pushed aside even through his trousers, eliciting a delectable shiver from McCullum with each subsequent pass of his tongue.
"Bloody hell," McCullum keens, the thigh he's got on Reid's shoulder trembling. "Reid..."
Reid hums into McCullum's cunt, and McCullum curses under his breath. His hand loosens in Reid's hair, because frankly he has no more guidance to impart or preference to make known that could possibly be an improvement upon what Reid is already doing.
Then McCullum's abdomen throbs with a cramp, and he can't fathom why he would want to do this against a wall.
"Bed," he says huskily. He snaps his fingers by Reid's ear to shake the man loose of whatever blooded cloud of heaven he's floating on. "Reid," he says, more insistent this time. "Bed."
Reid blinks into bestial alertness at the command, and he tightens his grip on McCullum's thighs.
Whatever feat of leechy strength or magic gets McCullum from the wall to the bed concerns him little, except insofar as he needs a moment to recover his wits after his shoulders thump to the mattress. But the moment McCullum figures out where all his limbs have ended up, he’s tossing off his coat—which clatters loudly on the floor with the weight of his hidden weapons, reminding McCullum in no uncertain terms that he is casting aside his last defenses against a bloodthirsty leech.
The most obstructive articles of clothing disposed of, McCullum props himself up on the pillow and turns his attention to his belt. This shift in focus naturally makes what Reid is doing a point of peripheral interest.
Reid has found time to divest himself of his coat as well, and at the moment he is meticulously rolling up his sleeves. The dignified and precise mannerism contrasts ludicrously with his frantically heaving chest and his great, shuddering breaths.
That he’s breathing so deeply is a bit strange. A few months back, McCullum informed Reid that leeches don't need to breathe—which had evidently been news to Reid, to the educated doctor's significant embarrassment. Ever since then Reid hasn't been much for psychosomatic breathing. Not unless he needed the air to speak or otherwise express himself.
Or, Mccullum reflects, unless Reid was putting that bloodhound nose of his to work.
Now that McCullum’s thinking it, he realizes that must be exactly what Reid is doing—breathing heavily through his nose like he can't get enough of McCullum's scent. The thought is suddenly so much less unwelcome than it is erotic.
McCullum's hands still with the revelation, and Reid’s eyes snap to McCullum's, no doubt curious about the holdup. The hungry heat in Reid's gaze might only be for McCullum's blood, but McCullum doesn't bother trying to tell that to his thirsty cunt. He pulls the belt free and flings it across the room, where the buckle snaps smartly against the floor.
Neither of them spare it a glance.
McCullum yanks his trousers and underdrawers down in one go, lifting his hips, cursing his lack of foresight in not removing his shoes first—until Reid obliges McCullum by removing his shoes for him, and they go the way of McCullum’s belt, flying carelessly over Reid's shoulder.
McCullum’s pants end up on the floor, and then there is nothing obstructing Reid from taking exactly what he wants.
For all the years McCullum spent learning to guard himself against vampires, there’s something almost funny about this. Even his defenses against mesmerism are ironclad—though that hardly helps him here. All that means is that he can’t blame Reid’s rudimentary powers of suggestion for overpowering his good sense.
If all his training and experience were likened to a castle surrounded by walls and moats and battlements, then McCullum has effectively opened the gates and lowered the drawbridge, inviting the enemy inside uncontested.
But of course, the pretense of Reid being an enemy is one they've both long since dispensed with, amid house calls and card games and wry repartee.
Reid's hands are almost warm enough to pass for human when they palm the underside of McCullum's thighs—not the inside of his thighs, though by now McCullum's willingness is surely a foregone conclusion. Reid bows his head, and McCullum feels Reid's eager breaths ghost over his hips.
"Please," Reid croaks, sounding like a man about to die of thirst. "Please let me."
McCullum watches Reid's shoulders tremble with restraint. It's captivating.
And then his cunt throbs with need, mourning the loss of its brief acquaintance with Reid's mouth, and McCullum grimaces and parts his legs in slightly more explicit invitation. "Get on with it then, you bloody addict."
Reid pulls McCullum's thighs tightly to his shoulders with a strangled growl, and McCullum's heart leaps into his throat.
When Reid flattens his tongue against the seam of McCullum's cunt with a rapturous moan, McCullum's hips jump at the wet contact. "Jesus, Reid," he mutters. He knew the leech was enthusiastic, but this is a bit dramatic.
In answer, Reid seals his lips to McCullum, rumbling with a chest-deep sound of contentment. McCullum's head drops to the pillow with a shuddering exhale.
"That good, aye?" McCullum asks breathlessly. Part of him is trying to get his bearings by sticking to the familiar landmarks of banter, but it's also a question borne of genuine bewilderment. He's never heard of leeches going in for menstrual blood.
Then again, for leeches that don't mind killing their prey—and that'd be all of them, with the one notable exception—McCullum supposes it makes little difference to them, what part of their victim’s body their blood comes from.
Reid pulls off McCullum like he's reluctant to go—like the wet, sucking kiss that's making McCullum's hips move so traitorously is holding Reid hostage, too. Obscenely loud, as if he's deliberately trying to be obnoxious about it—though one look at his panting, blood-smeared mouth quickly arrests the notion that Reid is capable of premeditating anything at the moment.
Because he's looking at McCullum like he hangs the bloody moon, shadows shifting restlessly behind his eyes as he says raggedly, "Yes."
McCullum's throat goes suddenly very dry. "Just watch those bloody teeth," he grumbles. "If you bite me there..."
The droll smile with which McCullum has grown so familiar these past few months makes an appearance then. With Reid’s black-red leech eyes and the mess of his mouth, it looks patently ridiculous, but it's so damn fond that it takes McCullum's breath away no matter how stupid it makes Reid look.
"Do give me a little credit, won't you?" Reid entreats. And he sucks several hard kisses into McCullum's thigh without even a hint of teeth, just to prove that he can. Soft purple-red bruises and tacky vermillion smears trail in his wake.
"Alright," McCullum concedes irately, his somersaulting heart softened irreparably by Reid's kiss. "You've made your bloody point."
“Mm,” says Reid, tongue swiping lasciviously across his bloody bottom lip.
Then Reid gets back to work, and McCullum is past the point of further protests.
With the way Reid is moaning, one might be forgiven for thinking he’s the one getting his world rocked by the most enthusiastic oral of his life. But that distinguished honor belongs to McCullum, and his somatic reservations of being too enthusiastic about the situation are quickly dissolving. He rocks his hips freely onto the firm plane of Reid's tongue, and the exertion eases the persistent cramp in his abdomen, like digging into a knot of tension until it unravels as the painkillers kick in.
Part of McCullum anticipated this being an artless affair, with Reid lapping at him with no more coordination than an underfed cur. Certainly it started like that—to slake the worst of Reid's thirst, if McCullum were in any state to hazard a guess—but Reid quickly regains control and starts bringing that nimble elegance of his to bear, and that's when McCullum knows he's done for.
Reid works diligently over McCullum's clit, though as a doctor he surely knows that's not where all the blood is coming from. He sucks and kisses and flicks his tongue there, hanging on McCullum's every reaction. When Reid presses too hard and McCullum cringes away from him, Reid immediately gentles his approach. When the faintest flicker of Reid's tongue elicits a gasp, Reid repeats the movement, coaxing McCullum to unparalleled heights of pleasure.
"Jesus, Reid," McCullum says again with feeling, his chest quaking so hard his voice wavers with it.
Reid hums contentedly in idle acknowledgment, and the unexpected vibration has McCullum’s hips twitching again. Reid's mouth has warmed considerably in the act, and when he goes in for more blood his tongue leaves a searing stripe behind. McCullum groans, lifting his hips helplessly in search of more contact.
Then Reid hooks McCullum's left leg over his shoulder, freeing his dominant hand to stroke and squeeze and knead at the pale flesh of McCullum's rear. It is as novel a touch as it is an unexpected one, and it sends pleasant little shivers tingling up to the base of McCullum's spine.
And then a cool touch comes into contact with his heated cunt, and all of McCullum hitches at once.
McCullum lifts himself on shaky arms. Reid's blackened gaze is possessed of such fervid desperation that it threatens to scorch McCullum to the bone with eye contact alone.
Reid pulls his mouth away, another wet, too-loud smack that makes McCullum's hips jump—and McCullum would have forgiven Reid if that sudden movement had ended with Reid's fingers inside him. Reid's supernatural dexterity means the excuse wouldn't fool either of them, but McCullum is hard pressed to imagine a scenario where he would be indignant enough about it to complain. His cunt flutters in anticipation of their intrusion, but Reid’s fingers linger politely at the entrance.
Reid licks his lip, eyelids fluttering prettily at the taste of blood, and says hoarsely, "Please. I want more."
McCullum takes a moment to process this. "More... blood?" he clarifies.
Reid averts his gaze like he's embarrassed about that somehow, which looks absurd when McCullum has only seen leech eyes turn that color on the bloody warpath. "Yes."
So Reid isn't, strictly speaking, asking for permission to fingerfuck McCullum in pursuit of the hunter's pleasure—but given how solicitous Reid has been thus far, that's likely to be a secondary consequence, if not a secondary motivation. Nor does Reid seem to be suggesting that he intends to open McCullum with his fingers in the interest of fucking him properly; the only clothes Reid has divested himself of are his coat and shoes, with no sign of any more forthcoming. And amusingly, McCullum can’t imagine Reid wanting to waste his dinner by smearing it all over his cock—though McCullum has a sinking suspicion that he'd probably let Reid do that too, considering everything else he's permitted tonight.
What Reid seems to be angling for is the privilege of coaxing McCullum's blood out by hand, and McCullum almost laughs when the realization arrives along with the mental image of Reid licking a bowl clean.
But—
Reid is flushing now, as if it is dawning on him that perhaps this request was too bold after all—and the thought that it's McCullum's blood under Reid's skin contributing to that bashful pink in his cheeks, the thought of where, exactly, that blood came from...
The black in Reid's eyes begins to dissipate, and McCullum never thought he'd be so desperate to keep them that way.
McCullum untangles his fists from the bedcovers and reaches out to stroke the dense, dark hair of Reid's bloodstained beard. Reid accepts McCullum's touch with undisguised gratitude, pressing into it so covetously that it presses McCullum's knuckles into his own thigh.
McCullum huffs and pulls his hand away—and before Reid can mourn the loss, McCullum presses his bloodstained fingers to Reid's lips. Tentatively, Reid opens his mouth to admit McCullum's fingers, subsiding into a full-body shiver when McCullum uses their bloody tips to bear down on Reid's tongue.
"If you make me come," McCullum says roughly, "I'll let you."
Reid’s expression of tender longing slackens at this pronouncement, and arousal rushes through McCullum when he feels Reid’s mouth flood with saliva. McCullum drags his fingers free, delighting in how ruined Reid looks with his face flushed, his jaw slack, pink strings of drool connecting him to McCullum’s fingertips.
Reading Reid’s reaction as acceptance of this ultimatum, McCullum makes to pull his hand away and let Reid get to work—but Reid seizes his hand mid-retreat. For a long, uncertain moment, McCullum fears Reid is going to bring the proceedings to a screeching halt with some kind of passionate declaration of sentiment—but to McCullum’s relief and disappointment, Reid simply places McCullum’s hand in his hair, inducing McCullum to tighten his grip with a squeeze of his own.
Then Reid bows his head, buries his nose in McCullum’s dark thatch of pubic hair, and sets about earning his keep.
McCullum thought it was pleasurable before, but Reid must have been invigorated with new enthusiasm by McCullum’s blessing, or the prospect of a challenge, because the attention he begins to lavish on McCullum’s cunt thereafter is so exquisite that McCullum’s head spins and his thighs tremble with it. Clearly Reid is playing for keeps—he does something with his tongue that puts spots in McCullum’s vision, and McCullum can't shake the suspicion that Reid is using his enhanced leech capabilities to drive McCullum to ruin.
It's not exactly how McCullum always feared Reid might betray him, but the irony of this technically fitting the bill does not escape him.
McCullum muffles his cries by shoving the knuckles of his free hand between his teeth, and he pulls Reid’s hair roughly, grinding on his warm and acquiescent tongue. McCullum can’t decide whether it’s a more tempting or intimidating thought that Reid can take him apart so easily.
Temptation wins out in the end, but by now McCullum's stopped being surprised by it. He breathes so hard he goes light-headed as his orgasm crests over him like a tidal wave, leaving him gasping.
McCullum's legs tremble faintly in the aftershocks of orgasm. He can feel Reid's palms stroking the outsides of his thighs firmly, the drag of calluses sending hundreds of little sensations skittering up to McCullum's hips. As his peripheral senses return to him, McCullum realizes he's still thrusting on Reid's unresisting tongue, his hand still fisted tightly in Reid's hair.
He'd feel discourteous for it, but the serene look on Reid's face conveys the unmistakable impression that there's nowhere else he'd rather be.
When the last thrill of satisfaction ebbs away, leaving him languid and lax, McCullum lets his hand fall from Reid's hair with a deep sigh. Reid takes his cue and pulls away, propping himself up on his elbows and licking his mouth obscenely—for all the good it does him.
McCullum huffs, too mellow by half to manage the sharp edges of a scoff. "Honestly, the bleeding state of you," he says hoarsely. "You look like a goddamn crime scene, Reid."
Reid's droll smile is too well-pleased to conceal the fact that he is about to say something phenomenally stupid. "Do I? Perhaps we ought to inform the constabulary."
Despite himself, McCullum laughs. His chest feels too light to do otherwise. "Christ. If you had any brains you'd be dangerous."
Reid's bloody smile ticks up at one end, crinkling the corner of his eye into a look of charming mischief. "Oh, most certainly. But it's blood all the way down, I'm afraid."
McCullum snorts. God, this man...
McCullum clears his throat. Reid raises his eyebrows and smiles attentively, and McCullum ventures, "You still thirsty, then?"
Reid averts his gaze and flushes again. It's even more absurd now than before, considering McCullum's blood is drying in his beard.
"Not as such," Reid says. " But, ah, if your generous offer is still on the table..." He seems to suddenly realize there is another stupid joke in what he just said—but rather than grinning smugly, Reid grimaces, as if concerned that his license to make stupid jokes has somehow expired in the last thirty seconds.
McCullum rolls his eyes. Fretting may be the purview of Reid's profession, but McCullum only finds it to be an impediment at the moment. "Saints preserve me—yes, you pillock, it's still on the bloody table. Or should I fetch the fine silver to assuage your high-born sensibilities?"
Reid exhales sharply with good-humored relief, his breath condensating on McCullum's inner thigh. "I think I'll manage," Reid replies. Emboldened, he settles his hand over McCullum's pubic mound, scratching lightly through the dark, wiry pubic hair.
Even if McCullum weren't already slick with blood, he imagines he'd still be wet enough from Reid’s recent performance to admit his fingers without much fanfare. As it is, Reid still presses inside so easily that McCullum barely even feels it—until Reid starts crooking his finger around, and McCullum's still-sensitive cunt throbs back like a bloody call and response.
But the pressure isn't consistent or rhythmic enough to really trouble him. And even if it were, the hungry, hypnotized look in Reid's eyes as he licks the dark, viscous red from his fingers is enough to make McCullum forgive the man just about anything.
“You know, this is awfully convenient,” Reid says in a low, satisfied rumble, smiling at McCullum through his spit-wet fingers.
McCullum wrests enough of his wits back to remind himself that Reid just spoke, and he probably ought to respond somehow. “What is?” he asks, trying not to sound as distracted as he is. “That my cunt is a free meal ticket?”
Reid's pursed lips look suspiciously like a pout. “Well. I wouldn’t call that in convenient.” His hand ventures back to McCullum's cunt, probing gently until his finger slides inside again with ease. "But that’s not what I was going to say.”
Reid crooks his finger, pressing more firmly than before, rotating his wrist to catch whatever else McCullum's body has to offer—like he's digging honey out of a jar.
McCullum swallows. “Well? Don't keep me in suspense, Reid.”
Reid pulls his hand free slowly, and McCullum almost misses it when it's gone. “Before I knew that you had a... cunt,” Reid says delicately, like he’s trying the word out for the first time. He inspects his tacky red prize, rubbing it between his fingers like its texture is some kind of modern marvel. “I was concerned that if you ever became amenable to exchanging sexual favors, my teeth would be a much more significant barrier to bringing you around to the idea.”
McCullum stares at Reid’s self-satisfied little smile. “You what, mate?”
“I wanted to suck your cock,” Reid elaborates, quickly finding his stride in the vernacular of debauchery. It sounds all the more obscene for being spoken in his precise elocution—and for being punctuated by a long, luxurious lick of his bloodstained fingers. “But I was concerned my fangs would prove to be a much more significant deterrent.”
Heat flashes through McCullum’s veins, and Reid’s eyes light up immediately, no doubt picking up on the hike in McCullum’s pulse—the bloody bastard.
Reid goes on speculatively, “If I’m honest, I wasn’t entirely certain I’d be able to make it work, even if you didn’t mind the considerable risk.” Reid introduces a second finger to the proceedings, and McCullum's breath hitches at the pleasant pressure. But he hardly pays it heed, thinking Reid will draw out in short order.
Only he doesn't—Reid's fingers slide carefully, delectably inside McCullum, in the pulsing clutch of his body heat—and McCullum realizes this must be because Reid is searching for further sustenance and isn't finding it.
"So it’s convenient, in that my fangs won’t present an issue here,” Reid concludes, pulling his fingers halfway free before pushing them inside and crooking them again, beckoning—trying to coax McCullum's blood out with soft, undulating strokes. Reid's face is calm, focused on the task at hand.
As if he doesn't realize he’s giving McCullum the laziest, most decadent fingerfucking of his life.
McCullum breathes a bit more deliberately, and his body heat begins to hike back up again. There’s still sweat drying beneath his shirt, and McCullum dispenses with whatever vestiges of modesty were still inexplicably lingering by yanking the buttons open. It’s complicated by the fact that he can’t take his eyes off Reid.
When McCullum has escaped from the confines of his shirt, he teases breathlessly, “Prim and proper Doctor Reid.” Reid’s fingers twitch inside him at the sound of his professional title in such an incongruous context. McCullum flexes his pelvic floor, and Reid’s lips part with undisguised desire at the sensation of McCullum tightening around him. “Who’d have thought?”
Reid is watching McCullum’s face now, and he seems to notice the pale, scarred expanse of McCullum’s exposed chest and neck. Reid wets his lips, and McCullum thinks for a moment it must be the hummingbird heart in his chest that has so thoroughly captured Reid’s attention—but when McCullum meets Reid’s eyes, he can’t shake the impression that Reid is staring longingly at his lips.
Reid pulls his fingers free once more, and McCullum sighs at the loss. Reid is not heedless of the sound, and he searches McCullum’s face with keen and curious interest, even as he lifts his hand to smear his bloody fingers across his tongue—though he can’t stop his eyes from fluttering shut in ecstasy at the taste of McCullum's blood.
“So,” McCullum continues when Reid goes in for more, wondering if he'll be able to feel Reid's reaction to this as well, “tonight isn't the first time you've considered getting on your knees for me.”
Despite boldly pressing knuckle-deep into McCullum’s cunt, Reid somehow finds room to be embarrassed about his fantasies of swallowing McCullum's nonexistent cock. "Not by half," Reid murmurs, and the way he says it makes it sound like he’s amused by his own understatement—as if fantasizing about McCullum actually takes up a significant portion of his time. Reid must take McCullum's subsequent silence as recrimination—rather than his brain blowing out like an overcharged bulb as he tries to wrap his head around the sheer depth of Reid's interest—because he hastens to clarify, "I hope it’s clear I’m not disappointed. If you have any complaints, I’d be happy to address them.”
Complaints, he says. McCullum would roll his eyes, but he's too busy wetting his lips and rolling his hips to properly express his incredulity. "Got one," McCullum huffs. "Are you going to keep bloody teasing me, or are you going to fingerfuck me like you mean it?”
Reid freezes completely then, looking at McCullum in stunned veneration. The man has been paying close attention to McCullum’s reactions, so it’s strange that this invitation should take him by surprise. Unless, perhaps, he was only watching so raptly to ensure he caused no discomfort, rather than for the express purpose of bedeviling McCullum into licentious temptation.
Not that knowing it makes McCullum feel any less bedeviled.
“If you like,” Reid says, sounding strained. He rises to a seated position with the languid grace of a panther, his fingers flexing inside McCullum with muscle movement corollary to the maneuver. With exceptional gentleness, Reid coaxes one of McCullum’s knees to his chest, opening McCullum even further to his questing touch.
"You'll have to tell me what you like, or dislike," Reid warns him. "I can't read your mind just by listening to your blood."
Reid is right to warn him, because McCullum dislikes the thought immediately. Still, he can't exactly send Reid off on a treasure hunt and not give him a bloody map. "Fine. Just... do what you were doing before," McCullum says, "but don't pull out this time."
Reid nods, watching McCullum's face closely as he resumes his exploratory, undulating strokes.
"Faster," McCullum immediately corrects, and Reid obliges, eliciting a shudder from McCullum as Reid pets his inner walls.
"Like this?" Reid asks. McCullum is tempted to tell Reid off for teasing again, but his expression is so painfully earnest as he searches McCullum's face that there's no way the question is anything but sincere.
"Yes," McCullum concedes, and marvels at the strangely self-conscious flush traveling down his neck. Somehow he didn't anticipate that Reid would hold his gaze the entire time. McCullum is used to partners who are either too overconfident or too shy, and finding his pleasure despite them.
But Reid's red and night-black eyes watch him unerringly, every reaction prompting his gaze to dart toward it with interest. The sight brushes against something in McCullum's hindbrain, nerves and years telling him this creature is dangerous—but Reid's moonstruck expression and McCullum's own knowledge of the man assuage his instinctual aversion. McCullum is not Reid’s prey.
Reid's prey is McCullum's pleasure.
Reid twists his wrist with deliberate pressure, and when he curls his fingers they drag along the side of McCullum’s passage, at an angle McCullum has never managed on his own—
“Ah—” McCullum’s voice catches in his throat at the shot of intense, ticklish pleasure. Reid pauses very briefly before repeating the gesture exactly, as if he needs to try it twice to substantiate his first impression of McCullum’s reaction. McCullum’s hips stutter, disrupting the rhythm he was building up to. “Christ, Reid—”
“Good, or bad?” Reid asks—and surely he must know, or else he wouldn’t have done it twice.
McCullum shoves a hand through his hair in agitation. “Good,” he says. Then even more begrudgingly, “A bit much.”
Reid relents in his methodical, targeted assault, though his attentions in general don’t falter at all. “That’s good to know,” he says gently. When he resumes his vigorous former rhythm, it is scarcely as gentle, but McCullum receives it eagerly.
Tirelessly Reid works him over, and somehow the fact that he's being watched, the fact that it's Reid, compounds every sensation. Every mortifying detail—Reid's unrelenting gaze, the obscene squelch of blood smacking flesh, the unthinkable, breathless nonsense coming from McCullum's own mouth—thrills McCullum, heightens his pleasure. It makes it all feel inexplicably more perverse—as if Reid making a feast of his endometrium is somehow less perverse than simply feasting his eyes on McCullum.
With one orgasm behind him, McCullum is so relaxed that he barely feels the intrusion of Reid's fingers. He is reluctant to ask anything of Reid, unaccustomed to talking even as much as they already have during sex—but whereas a partner seeking their own pleasure might deter him from asking after his own, Reid isn't even touching himself. There's little point withholding a preference when all this is for McCullum's benefit.
“How many fingers is that?”
Reid scissors his fingers such that the number is hardly in question, but he nonetheless graciously informs McCullum, “Two.”
Reid still has McCullum’s knee manipulated gently to his chest, which means he is close enough for McCullum to reel him in by his scarlet tie. Reid fumbles, and McCullum groans at the way the surprise makes Reid's fingers lurch inside him.
“Give me another,” McCullum demands, daring with desire. Reid pulls his fingers free, and McCullum’s cunt flutters hungrily in their absence—when they return, all three are quickly swallowed again. He tightens around the newly appreciable girth, relishing the singular pressure of being filled in this way—and the gratifying sound of Reid's unnecessary breaths stuttering in his throat.
Reid had started out half-leaning over McCullum, a consequence of his bending the man in half by the leg. By pulling his tie, however, McCullum has forced Reid to lean over him fully on his knees and elbow, the backs of McCullum's thighs resting on the clothed fronts of Reid's. In spite of the odd angle and McCullum's many demands, Reid has admirably kept up the pace, and the added pressure of more fingers makes each movement feel like so much more.
McCullum gets closer and closer to the edge, but he can't take the leap.
Frustrated, growing more maddeningly stimulated by the moment, McCullum says "Don't you stop, Reid," and reaches down with his non-dominant hand to stimulate his clit.
It's exactly what he needs, and his fist slackens around Reid's tie in the throes of such abject relief. Another thing that slackens is his lips, behind which his pitched cries can no longer be held captive.
"Fuck, Reid, right there—"
McCullum's frantic touch fumbles briefly into Reid's palm, a strange cooperative intimacy. McCullum lets himself meet Reid's eyes in those final moments, and is utterly taken with the expression of tranquil awe he finds there. As if Reid is the one on the verge of completion. As if Reid is actually fucking him. Their positions are reminiscent enough of the act—with the vigor of Reid's movements, his thighs are even rocking into McCullum's, a convincing imitation.
In that indulgent moment, liberated of the last of his reservations, McCullum does finally allow himself to imagine it: Reid between his legs just like this, but his cockhead at McCullum's entrance rather than his nimble, dexterous fingers. Reid would slick the way with ample lubrication, and Reid's lips would part with pleasure as he breached McCullum, just as they part now in vicarious pleasure at having brought McCullum to such a state.
McCullum imagines the way it would feel—the smooth head gently breaching him, and every aching inch of Reid's shaft, given slowly, excruciatingly considerate, filling McCullum more deeply than this—
His cunt squeezes Reid’s fingers tightly to better imitate the man's cock, which McCullum is suddenly, deliriously desperate for—and at last he plummets over that elusive edge, confident Reid will catch him.
Reid knew McCullum’s blood would be divine, and he was right—its heavenly scent fills his head, clings lovingly to his tongue—and now it flows freely over his knuckles, dripping in its abundance to the bedclothes. He is eager to taste it, but his cravings can wait. That phantom thirst from earlier has quelled, leaving behind only a niggling discomfort in his fangs. What spurs him now is not self-satisfaction, but a more reciprocal impulse.
McCullum has been quite generous, after all, and asked for precious little in return. Obliging his request to do what Reid was already doing, but with slightly more concerted and specific efforts, is far from an imposition.
It is, in point of fact, a rare and cherished privilege.
Reid is unwavering in his attentions, eager to please, starved for McCullum’s breathless, stifled sounds, the drama of his unmaking. He attends to the hot, slippery channel with the rhythmic pressure McCullum demands, while McCullum takes his pleasure further by rubbing his clit, rougher with himself than Reid is. Of particular interest is McCullum’s vivacious pulse, though Reid isn’t monitoring it with his vampiric sight—on the grounds that doing so would deprive him of the fine picture McCullum already makes, readily available to the naked eye.
But he can feel it, drumming desperately around his fingers.
Reid is transfixed by McCullum in the throes of orgasm. He is not so inconsiderate a bed partner as to abandon the task at hand just to ogle, but it is a challenge to divide his attention equally between his hand and his eyes: McCullum in nothing but his open, rumpled button-down, glowing with a sheen of sweat in the orange lamplight, lifting his hips in counterpoint to the rhythm of Reid’s fingers, touching himself, his mouth open in a silenced cry.
McCullum arches his back, tight as a bowstring with tension, and Reid wrings as many strangled sounds as he can out of the man while it lasts.
Then McCullum collapses with a great shuddering breath. Reid takes his cues from the way McCullum does not immediately stop touching himself, but rather gradually slows, like he must float himself down from his recent peak like a feather. McCullum's thighs rest heavily against Reid's, and Reid savors their restless trembling, the way they jolt when Reid lands upon a sensitive erogenous zone with his slowing strokes along McCullum’s anterior and side walls.
At length McCullum ebbs and slows to a stop in his masturbation, and Reid follows suit. A fond, accomplished pride finds Reid, knowing that McCullum took his pleasure before him, that it was Reid's ministrations which carried McCullum high enough for him to carry himself the rest of the way to completion.
Reid relaxes his fingers, allowing them to be pushed out of McCullum with the convulsions of his pelvic floor. When Reid’s fingertips slip free, he retrieves his hand to enjoy his spoils, lazily admiring McCullum's enervated body as he does.
Splayed on the rumpled bedclothes, his hair damp with sweat and his skin glistening with it, panting, satisfied, debauched—
Reid licks his fingers clean of the dark red slick and decides, with a quiet purr, that McCullum looks exceptionally beddable.
Though he has presumed much more tonight, Reid is uncertain he should be assumptive of his continued welcome between McCullum’s legs—but the man is positively dripping, and Reid is not eager to add the bedclothes to McCullum's list of misgivings about the evening, if indeed there are any.
"McCullum," Reid says softly, not expecting to be heard.
"Mm," McCullum says, a question rendered incoherent by exhaustion.
"You're dripping," Reid informs him. "And I wondered if—"
McCullum waves a hand flippantly. "Go on, then. Earned it."
So Reid leans in again and carefully parts McCullum's labia. The sight of the man's sex is momentarily arresting: the sensitive flesh is red and swollen in unambiguous arousal, and McCullum's clit twitches with orgasmic aftershocks. And his entrance, spilling forth its generous stream of red, flutters needfully, like McCullum is still flexing his pelvic floor, remembering Reid’s touch. The memory of the man tightening around Reid's fingers threatens to distract him completely, and he rallies his focus. Boldly Reid delves his tongue inside McCullum, and he is treated with a hungry convulsion and a weary, pleased sigh as he drinks his fill.
The teeming flow ebbs. Reid licks McCullum’s vestibule clean, and just as he's considering whether he ought to try and tidy the surrounding area for McCullum's comfort, he hears a faint huff of laughter, and McCullum's thigh knocks into Reid's cheek.
"Quit breathing on my cunt, Reid,” comes the breathless chastisement. “Jesus."
"Apologies." In his retreat, he presses a contrite kiss to McCullum's inner thigh, which earns him a wordless grumble so joyless that Reid's heart sinks in his chest. "What's the matter?"
McCullum drags a hand through his hair and works something over in his throat, eyes elsewhere. "Your beard is chafing."
Reid curses himself for making a dog's dinner of the encounter with his clumsiness, releasing McCullum's shivering thigh at once. "Sorry."
At Reid’s retreat, McCullum's thighs fall closed, and Reid gets the impression of being ushered quickly out of the castle gates, having put his foot in his mouth at the war table.
Well, if he’s already cocked it all up, then there’s certainly no reason to be prudish about the extent of his interest.
Reid slides across the bed and throws his legs over the edge, giving McCullum a modicum of privacy by turning his back to the man's side. Then he licks his lips in a blatant hunt for the last traces of blood around his mouth, and he strokes his beard speculatively where the blood has begun to dry, and says, “Do you think I should shave it?”
McCullum chokes, and Reid can’t resist the urge to turn and look. In McCullum’s dishevelment, he is no less tempting now than he was a moment ago, or indeed any moment prior—but the incredulous and awestruck look on McCullum’s face fills Reid with private delight.
And if he is not much mistaken, McCullum’s heart just skipped a beat.
“You what, mate?” McCullum asks hoarsely. Reid takes heart that his appellation of the hour is mate rather than leech, and he’ll count himself in clover if that’s the only part of this encounter that lasts past tonight.
Unable to contain his fondness and relief, Reid smiles as he elaborates. “Well, I’ve no strong feelings about it one way or the other. But if it bothers you, I don’t mind...”
The pale scars rampant on McCullum’s neck shift imperceptibly in indication of muscle movement in his throat. And Reid is certain, this time, of the jump in McCullum’s pulse. With how dramatically it quickens he would be hard-pressed to doubt it.
“Don’t shave your bloody beard,” McCullum grumbles. “You’ll look ridiculous. God only knows what kind of face you’ve got under there.”
The insult speaks to a sentiment which warms Reid, alleviating some of his self-conscious misgivings. “A harsh appraisal,” Reid says lightheartedly. “But I’ll take it under advisement.”
“You’d better,” McCullum mutters. “And if you don’t want to walk out of here looking like you killed me, you’d best wash it before that mess dries. The washstand has running water.”
Reid rises from the bed and avails himself of McCullum's modest washstand, taking the rare opportunity to peer behind the curtain into McCullum's private life, inspecting the labels on his scattered hygiene products with interest.
Prominently at the corner of the sink and gleaming in the lamplight is a grooming accoutrement of particular interest. “This is a lovely straight razor,” says Reid, lifting it into the light for a better look. Its polished handle and assiduously sharpened blade shine.
“Cheers,” McCullum says dryly. “See any other toiletries over there you’d like to personally endorse? My cologne, perhaps?”
“I do like your cologne,” Reid admits thoughtfully, “but I mention the straight razor because I wanted to ask if you’re sure I should keep the beard.”
The omission of any possessive pronoun is deliberate, and it has the desired effect: the telltale creak of the bedsprings—as if Reid’s pronouncement is so alarming that McCullum must sit up in bed to respond to it.
“No. I already told you—you’d look ridiculous.”
Reid indulges himself in a hidden smile as he picks flakes of blood out from under his fingernails. “But you don’t need to look at me for what I have in mind...”
“Do I need to come over there?” McCullum demands, a question as much as it is a threat.
The memory of McCullum looming over him with his belt looped tightly in one hand stokes a fire in Reid. “No, no,” he insists, setting the straight razor aside. “I’ll behave.”
McCullum doesn’t say anything in response to that, but Reid hears the way the word behave enlivens McCullum’s heartbeat. The bedsprings creak slowly, like McCullum is warily putting his fighting words away.
Reid washes up, peering at his pale face in the small, cracked mirror above the washstand. His inspection of the cupboard beneath it yielded a threadbare but assumedly clean hand towel, and he waves this at McCullum in wordless question, and McCullum waves back carelessly, go ahead.
Reid dries his face, and then dithers uncharacteristically before the mirror. With no further pretense to remain in McCullum’s company, he is apprehensive of being summarily dismissed the moment he turns around. But then, if McCullum wants him gone, it would be inconsiderate to overstay his welcome—
“For Christ’s sake, Reid,” McCullum says. “You’ll see stars above London before that mirror does you any bloody good. Get over here, I’ll look you over.”
Reid returns to the bed with a spring in his step, and not even McCullum's withering look can deter Reid from blooming with pleasure as he sits on the edge of the mattress.
McCullum has evidently done some tidying of his own: he must have located some sanitary pads, because he's replaced his underdrawers, the hem of which Reid can just glimpse at the edge of the hastily-straightened covers. And his shirt has joined the rest of their clothes on the floor, revealing a fascinating topography of white and pink scars—some are clearly from knives and teeth, but many are scored in the distinctive parallel pattern of claw marks. The scars converge in greater frequency as Reid’s eye travels upward, to a throat pierced by a thousand bites: a lifetime of battle laid bare, the marks made all the more striking in contrast to the red flush of the surrounding skin.
Most arresting of all, and heretofore concealed by either side of McCullum’s now-discarded shirt, are two distinct, symmetrical surgical scars beneath McCullum’s pectorals. Reid could look at McCullum all night, but he doesn't want his admiration to be mistaken for judgment, and so he does not let his gaze linger.
McCullum beckons him yet closer, looking beleaguered. “For God’s sake Reid, come here. Don’t suck the life out of me and then make me work for this.”
Reid laughs quietly. “Of course. My apologies.” He closes the remaining distance until their hips are touching, and he is well within McCullum’s reach. McCullum raises the knee furthest from Reid and braces his elbow on it with a sigh, lifting his other hand to seize Reid's chin, applying gentle directional pressure until Reid agreeably angles his face to one side, then the other.
McCullum narrows his eyes—understandably so, considering the dim light of the electrics—and digs his fingertips into the dense, wiry strands of Reid’s beard. The touch is more than welcome, but it takes Reid by surprise. Doubtless McCullum’s touch is intended to comb for any incriminating traces of blood, but Reid cannot help but indulge his fanciful impression that the touch is meant as a caress. His eyes fall shut in luxurious contentment. McCullum’s thumb passes over Reid’s mustache in his diligent search, and it grazes Reid’s upper lip, begetting a thrilled shiver.
Then something much softer than McCullum’s thumbs presses Reid’s lips. Both of his hands are duly accounted for on either side of Reid’s face, and when Reid blinks his eyes gently open, he realizes that McCullum is kissing him.
Reid inhales sharply, all his relaxation dissipating in an instant to be replaced with tremulous excitement. He hadn’t dared to hope for any further intimacy, least of all something so—soft, and sweet. One of McCullum’s hands trails to the back of his neck to pull him further into the kiss, removing all doubt to the other man’s conviction, and Reid groans.
The heat that spears through him when McCullum cheekily bites his lip threatens to consume Reid in a conflagration of desire. But Reid’s sore fangs press unmistakably into the inside of his own mouth, and with a mighty effort he reluctantly extricates himself from McCullum with a gentle hand to the man’s shoulder.
Judging by the disgruntled look on McCullum’s face, he is not feeling especially grateful to Reid for being gentle about it.
“I—my fangs,” Reid hastens to explain. “I wouldn’t want to—I’m concerned I’ll get blood in your mouth.”
McCullum’s dejection sees itself out, and he huffs with amused relief. “You’ve had all these months to get used to being a leech, and you still don’t know how to put your fangs away?”
“They’re not always out,” Reid objects. “They normally recede when I’m done feeding, or fighting. I thought it was an autonomic response.” This last he says with a thread of doubt woven into his professional opinion, as he sometimes does when deferring to McCullum’s expertise on matters of vampiric physiology.
McCullum straightens, wry and beneficent. “Let’s see it, then.”
Considering everything else they’ve shared this evening, opening his mouth for McCullum to look at his teeth really ought not to feel so significant. Yet when he opens his mouth and allows McCullum to cradle his chin in his hand, the cool sensation of dry air on his gums is a bit unnerving—as if he’d opened up his chest to expose his heart, rather than his teeth.
McCullum is gentle when he lifts one corner of Reid’s upper lip with his thumb, then the other. McCullum hisses in sympathy. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Your mouth is as red as a whore in church.”
Reid begins to pull away, and McCullum forestalls the motion by hooking his fingers under Reid’s jaw.
“I, uh,” McCullum says. His fingers are still in Reid’s mouth. Reid waits patiently for McCullum to speak, though the temptation to take advantage of McCullum’s inattention and do something saucy is difficult to resist. Reid can't help but wonder if McCullum could be tempted into another round if he sucks on his fingers. “Never actually done this, but I’ve heard there’s a pressure point you can manipulate to tuck your fangs away. If they’re stuck.”
“Oh?” Reid prompts. The odds of McCullum coming across such information as the leader of the Guard of Priwen seem slim, considering it has little to do with hunting leeches. He supposes it’s possible they have some Brotherhood documents on the subject lying around, but given how uncomfortable McCullum looks admitting it, Reid can’t help but wonder if the man's former acquaintanceship with Edgar evinced this strangely intimate detail of vampire physiology.
Reid diplomatically elects not to voice his suspicions about McCullum's sources.
"You want to try?"
Reid can't really give a detailed answer with McCullum holding his mouth open. So instead he licks McCullum's thumb to express his willingness.
McCullum retracts his hands and swats Reid's cheek. "You bawdy tom."
"Yes, all right," Reid says when his mouth is free, unperturbed by McCullum's tender abuse. "I trust you."
McCullum frowns at Reid for acknowledging it, but nonetheless puts his hands back in the lion's maw.
McCullum thumbs along Reid’s gum line from molar to cuspid. The oversensitive sting of it is unlike anything Reid has ever felt. Vampirism has introduced to him several novel sensory experiences, such as the strange tandem ache of bloodthirst in his teeth and throat, and the euphoric relief of quenching it; the vertigo of shadowstepping; the bestial elation of surrendering to his hunting instinct; and now the lately-discovered eyestrain of blood sight.
Now, he finds, there is even greater nuance to the toothache of bloodthirst than he previously anticipated. Neglected for so long, it has metastasized into a pain that occupies a space larger than itself. A cavity festering below the surface, above his fangs—over which McCullum firmly presses his thumbs.
Reid jerks in McCullum’s hold, clenching his hands in the bedding as he gasps in pain. McCullum snatches his hands back, and Reid slaps a hand over his mouth as his sinuses sting.
"Reid?! Fuck, I didn't mean to—"
"It's alright," Reid says, and he is surprised to hear his voice come out so waterlogged. McCullum's reaches for his face again, and Reid's teeth are so tender that he flinches on instinct—but McCullum's touch is achingly light, and he carefully brushes Reid's cheekbones with the pads of his thumbs. His touch comes away tacky and pink, and Reid realizes with dismal chagrin that the pain must have made his eyes water.
"Sorry," McCullum says, subdued and remorseful. "Didn't stop to think if that would hurt you."
Reid sniffs as the residual irritation to his sinuses dissipates. “No, you'd better go ahead with it," he says when he's recovered, and McCullum has thoughtfully brushed his tears away. "It wouldn’t do for me to go around not knowing how to stow my teeth. The other vampires will never let me hear the end of it.”
McCullum huffs, smiling crookedly with condolent disbelief. “If you insist."
Reid nods, and he surrenders himself once more to McCullum's command. McCullum's touch is much lighter on the approach this time, and Reid shudders in anticipation when McCullum comes to his fangs. Slowly, McCullum presses the hard ridge of bone above Reid’s canines and beneath the gums, and Reid endures it as best he can. Under the applied pressure, Reid’s jaw trembles, and just when he genuinely begins to consider knuckling under he finds, quite suddenly, that he doesn’t need to. Reid inhales sharply as his fangs shunt back into his jaw—a sharp and sudden pain, like a dislocated joint slotting back into place, followed by a similarly immediate and weary relief. Reid trembles with the unexpected reprieve from predatory anticipation as it evacuates his body. The loss of all that tension cuts him slack, and he collapses to the mattress with a groan.
McCullum stiffens in alarm. “Alright, Reid?” he asks, patting Reid’s cheek gently.
Reid opens his eyes drowsily, lets his gaze drift upward, and favors McCullum with a lazily affectionate smile. “Geoffrey,” he purrs, the man's given name unfamiliar on his tongue, but he nevertheless elongates the vowel luxuriously as he wraps his arms with indolent satisfaction around McCullum’s waist.
“Don’t hurt yourself,” McCullum snorts. “McCullum is fine.”
“McCullum,” Reid readily corrects, preferring the way the man’s surname ends with a sound he can hum mellowly into McCullum’s hipbone, anyway. “Your knowledge of vampiric physiology is superlative. Unparalleled. You ought to have a doctorate.” His speech is just this side of comprehensible, so torpidly boneless that even the minor effort of vocalizing is a challenge. It feels like waking up well-rested on a late spring morning, the sun shining kindly on his half-dreaming eyes.
“Don’t think they give out degrees for that sort of thing,” McCullum rejoins bemusedly.
"Doctor Geoffrey McCullum," Reid contrarily proclaims. “Licentiate in Vampiric Dental Surgery.”
McCullum scoffs. “Suppose I ought to give you a bill of clean health, then?”
“Oh no,” Reid protests, “I’m afraid I’ll need plenty of bedrest to recover.” He turns his cheek to rest it on the warm shape of McCullum’s thigh like a pillow, the blankets rasping against his beard.
McCullum brushes a strand of hair out of Reid’s face, and Reid shuts his eyes with a dreamy sigh, unresisting when McCullum pulls the corner of his mouth open to inspect his canines. “Your eyes are back to normal,” McCullum reports. “And your teeth...”
Reid is not expecting the touch, and a shudder of sensitized pleasure passes through him when McCullum strokes the flat of his canine with the pad of his thumb—and he is distantly appalled by the keening sound his throat produces when McCullum presses hard on the point of the tooth, only to come away unharmed by its blunted tip.
“Harmless.” McCullum takes his hand out of Reid’s mouth. “You’re as fit as a flea, Doctor Reid.”
A residual shiver passes through Reid, and he almost misses McCullum’s drollery as a consequence. “I’ve been demoted from leech to flea?” he asks wryly. “I’m not sure if I should feel flattered or insulted.”
"Well, the only leech in my acquaintance seemed eager for a proper kiss," McCullum says thoughtfully, "if only his fangs weren't in the way. But that couldn't be you—"
Abruptly, Reid remembers why he had been so eager to submit to McCullum's experiment, and he hastens to rise and accept the implicit invitation. But his limbs are heavy, uncooperative. The bliss of relief from his overtaxed fangs has subsumed him, rendered him ungainly.
He collapses into McCullum's lap.
"Hm," says Reid.
"That all it takes, eh?"
"I don't know if I emphasized just how uncomfortable that was," Reid says defensively. "In any case, I am indisputably indisposed." He sighs glumly into McCullum's stomach.
McCullum puts his hands under Reid's arms, and Reid begins to protest, thinking McCullum intends to extricate him, to bring their intimacy to a close—
Then Reid is hauled up by the shoulders and tossed onto the pillow in McCullum's former place. McCullum leans over him, expression sly. "Reid," he says, "I don't need you upright for this."
"Oh," Reid says faintly, winded still by the impact with the mattress—though he suspects his breathlessness has less to do with the impact and more to do with the hunger in McCullum's eyes. "Yes, of course."
McCullum leans down and plunders Reid’s mouth with great enthusiasm, drawing forth a menagerie of eager animal sounds from the willing doctor’s throat. Reid’s hand curls around McCullum’s nape, but exerts no greater downward force than what gravity alone creates, still too incapacitated to perform any act with force. Contrary to McCullum’s evident preference for being treated roughly, he seems well-pleased by Reid’s pliantly depleted state—responding to Reid’s whimpers with a few thrilling growls of his own.
As if he has discovered a taste for impassioned conquest—a new preference in Reid’s eager surrender.
Reid’s soft, trembling touches elicit warm reception, but evidently McCullum has something else in mind: warm hands close tightly around Reid’s pale wrists, pinning them to the mattress. Reid resists reflexively, and is taken aback by the arousal that flashes through him when he realizes he cannot break McCullum’s hold in his enervated state. Groaning, Reid arches eagerly into McCullum, into the kiss—and all his needless breath abandons him in a gust when McCullum’s thigh brushes his cock through his trousers.
Reid falls back to the bed, panting, and McCullum breaks the kiss to look down at Reid in open admiration. His lips are delightfully kiss-bruised, and his cheeks are warm and pink beneath his stubble.
“Look at you,” McCullum croons. Reid licks his lips hungrily, piqued by McCullum’s undivided attention. “You want to rut on my leg like a mutt, Reid?”
Reid has no objections whatsoever to this comparison. He growls flirtatiously, and McCullum’s surprised laugh makes him break character. “You daft cunt,” he says, rolling his eyes with an unwilling smile. He leans in for another soft, wet, fleeting kiss, and Reid groans helplessly. “Come on, then," he murmurs, his breath hot across Reid's mouth. McCullum plants his knee on the mattress between Reid’s legs, nudging lightly until Reid gets the idea, grows emboldened enough to grind on McCullum's bare thigh.
Reid is surprised by the intensity of his own arousal. Under McCullum's gaze Reid feels completely exposed, as if Reid is the one between the two of them who is barely dressed. But his proper state of dress only seems to increase the illicitude of the act, and being restrained gives Reid an unexpected, perverse little thrill. Pinned beneath McCullum like a specimen of interest, laid bare by the hunter's keen and desirous eye, Reid shivers like a butterfly wing.
He feels embarrassingly close to the edge—from the euphoria of feeding, the satisfaction of pleasuring McCullum so thoroughly, the relief of having his fangs finally holstered—Reid is subsumed by blissful rhapsody, pleasure filling him like a vessel. The novel, erotic thrill of restraint only exacerbates his condition.
Straining for more, Reid makes a feeble sound of need. McCullum flexes his thigh obligingly, creating a shallow crevasse of muscle for Reid to thrust into. Reid's mouth falls open in a groan, and he rocks gratefully into the slope which so exquisitely accommodates his length. His jaw is still slack when McCullum releases one of his wrists to seize his chin, angling for a searing kiss which Reid receives eagerly.
Warm and relaxed, Reid embraces the indolent ebb and flow of pleasure as he straddles McCullum's thigh. It's heady—leisurely savoring every sensation, basking in the heat of McCullum's attention. McCullum breaks away to press a kiss to Reid's bristly jaw, his neck, and Reid sighs and tilts his head back in tacit encouragement.
"Reid?" McCullum says, his breath humid against Reid's neck.
"Yes," Reid murmurs, belatedly taking advantage of having one hand free to stroke McCullum's hair, his movements sluggish and dreamy.
McCullum noses at the soft spot just beneath Reid's ear, and Reid arches his spine to meet McCullum's roaming touch—whatever he'll give, whatever he wants—
McCullum's stubble scratches the shell of Reid's ear. "Are you wearing my cologne?"
"Ah," says Reid. He braces himself for some lighthearted reprisal, but he doesn’t expect McCullum to bite him. The pain and pleasure strike a match over the slow building tension in his gut, which balloons and bursts like a bubble, sending ripples coursing from its centre like a smooth stone dropped in a garden pond.
Never has Reid succumbed to completion so gently, yet so satisfactorily. It leaves him shivering, chest heaving with breaths he doesn't need but which he chooses to savor anyway, feeling more alive in this moment than any other in recent memory.
Reid feels the bruise of McCullum's bite vanish from his awareness, the telltale sensation of accelerated healing—but before he can even miss it McCullum is biting down again, sucking hard, sending ripples of pleasure after the wake of Reid's orgasm.
McCullum keeps at it, and Reid finally has occasion to discover just how sensitive his neck is. He suspects he has just as much cause as McCullum to form reservations about letting teeth near his throat, of late. But if it might otherwise have bothered him, he is too comfortable and relaxed now to derive anything but singular delight from the act.
By the time McCullum’s tongue has acquainted itself with every exposed inch of his neck, and Reid's skin feels damp and cool with drying saliva, he has once more been reduced to incoherent cries. His fingers have tangled in McCullum’s hair, providing feedback and encouragement with their reflexive tensing and relaxing. And as his mind fills with white noise, he becomes aware of a sensation formerly consigned to his periphery.
McCullum's grip on his wrist has slackened to a loose hold, and his thumb sweeps across the soft skin of Reid's inner wrist, along his radial artery. This doting softness, this gentle regard, contrasts so starkly with the relentless ecstasy of McCullum's cruel bite that Reid is overcome by a dizzying rush of fondness.
Reid has been vocalizing freely as McCullum ravages his neck, making his approval known however he can. When Reid turns his wrist to capture McCullum’s hand and bring it to his lips, those sounds are bestowed upon McCullum’s chapped knuckles, alongside a loose, wet, affectionate kiss.
Merciful deprivation comes as McCullum retreats to fix Reid with a look of incredulous sentimentality. “You besotted egg.”
Reid squints like a cat with the canary, smiling irrepressibly into McCullum’s knuckles—which, tellingly, McCullum makes no move to extricate. Instead McCullum braces his free hand on the mattress and sits on Reid’s stomach. He makes a show of looking over his shoulder at Reid’s lap.
“You know, between the two of us, I thought I’d be the one making a mess of my pants,” McCullum confides.
Reid feels himself flush, but he basks leisurely in his indignity. “Oh dear,” he affects, with such egregiously false scandal that McCullum immediately rolls his eyes. “However will I survive the humiliation? I’ll have to climb out the nearest window to avoid giving rise to any unseemly gossip.”
McCullum hums in consideration. He takes up Reid’s free hand to rub its fingers thoughtfully against his stubble. “Too risky,” McCullum decides. “You’d better stay the night.”
In point of fact, what McCullum suggests is the riskiest course of action available to them. Yet the fact that he is suggesting it anyway—taking on this risk, accepting what it may entail, on Reid’s behalf—is a remarkably unambiguous expression of his commitment to this fledgling development in their mutually beneficial arrangement. Reid turns his foolish, elated smile further into McCullum’s knuckles. “Hmm. You’re right, I’d better do.”
“Glad you agree,” McCullum says, and he nicks Reid’s knuckles on the corner of his smile.
- 1
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the healer has the bloodiest hands