rivers_bend

master post
back to part 3


When they get back to the compound an hour before sunrise, Frank's dozing in his seat and Gerard's mumbling along to the music he's turned back up to chest-shaking levels. Mikey, Pete, and Mikey's day-guard Jarrod are waiting for them on the steps, two of Mikey's lieutenants flanking the door behind them. Frank worries for a moment that something's happened—maybe Ulrich sent a gang of his guards to get Frank—but Pete and Mikey are smiling, and he realizes that the muscle is there to carry all Frank's things back down to the lab. Mikey probably just missed his brother.

It's Pete who comes to help Frank out of the car, and he brushes a finger over the newly healed skin on Frank's neck. "Nice," he whispers when he puts an arm around Frank to steady him. "Shoulda known it would take you two getting away to make him realize."

"Realize what?" Frank asks, because Gerard doesn't seem to have realized anything, and Frank's never talked to Pete about what he wants from Gerard. But Pete just gives him a conspiratorial look and slaps him on the shoulder.

"I've got your boy, here, sire," he says to Gerard. "These brutes can get his bags."

This makes Mikey beam and Gerard glower before saying, "Can you stay with him today? Make sure he's okay?" Belatedly, he turns to his brother and asks, "He can stay with him, right?"

"You're the boss," Mikey says mildly, and Frank's about to protest that he doesn't need a babysitter, but Mikey winks at Pete so Frank figures the two of them are on his side already and Pete will leave him alone if he asks. What Gerard doesn't know won't hurt him.

Frank tries to stop at his lab on the way by, but Pete bundles him along right to his apartment. "I know where you keep the BloodPlus," he says when Frank resists. "And your lab will still be there after you get some more sleep." Which is true, Frank knows, but he doesn't have to like being told where to go and what to do.

"Fine," he grumbles when there's no give at all in Pete's hold. "I'll just sit and do nothing while you wait on me."

"Just like I sat there and let you bring me tea and that nasty fucking beef paste sandwich and then stab me in the ass with your needles full of vitamins or whatever."

"It's EPO and minerals mostly," Frank corrects him, but he does sit on his bed when they get there.

"Whatever. Blood juice. Stay here. If you're good I'll bring you something from one of those bags of food I saw Jarrod getting out of the car. I'm not the kind of asshole who makes a dude eat beef paste."

Because he's pretty sure Pete would tell him not to, Frank climbs in the shower while he's waiting. There are a few dicey moments where he thinks he might pass out, and he has to put up with Pete standing outside the door telling him he's an idiot and if he doesn't come out now Pete's gonna come in there and get him, but he's got a towel rail to hold on to, and he's pretty sure Pete won't make good on his threats, and the water feels too good for him to regret the decision.

The steam makes him high enough that he doesn't protest when Pete insists on doing the injection for him, or when Pete does his overly familiar thing and tucks him under the covers, dropping a smacking kiss on his forehead. "Here," Pete says, setting a smooth black cylinder about the size of Frank's thumb on his bedside table. "Button on the top sends an alert to Mikey's cuff. You can borrow it. I'll keep an ear open for you and be down here in a flash if you need anything."

Frank is pretty sure he's never seen the thing before. "Where'd you get it?"

"Made it," Pete says. "Piggybacked off the security comms network. Had some trouble a few months ago out near the borders, and I wanted to be able to call for help if it happened again."

"I would've made you something." That's Frank's job after all.

"I know. But I miss doing this kind of shit. Hope you don't mind."

If Pete likes making tech as well as designing it, Frank might have to put him to work. "Nope," he says, thinking about offering Pete jobs to do. But they'll have to talk about it more after Frank gets some sleep. He's too tired now to keep his eyes open.


Ten hours of sleep and accelerated red blood cell production have Frank feeling good as new by nightfall. Except that he can't concentrate on anything but how smooth the new skin on his neck feels under his fingertips, and how Gerard's live feed never shows him near the stairs leading down to the lab level. While he unpacks his cases and cleans his instruments, he watches Gerard's hands flit in front of his face as he talks to a serious and then obviously exasperated Mikey, and sorely regrets that he never put a live feed in Mikey's alts, so he can't see Gerard directly. He scrubs down the whole wetwork side of his lab even though it hasn't seen any action since the last time he did it, thinking maybe it's like a watched pot and if he turns his back on his monitors, Gerard might come down to see him. No such luck.

His apartment is next. Once he's put on a load of laundry, scrubbed the bathroom, and washed the dishes, Frank goes to find Pete and give him his alert button back. He'd originally hoped the errand might give him a chance to run into Gerard, but when he checks the feed again, he finds Gerard away from the compound looking at close-packed buildings Frank doesn't recognize.

If he's out looking for a new place for Frank to live, Frank might have to kill him.

"Frank!" a voice calls from the patio between the groundskeepers' quarters and the greenhouse as soon as Frank steps through his french doors. "Come up here and eat something." It sounds like Pete.

When he gets out of the glare of the house's floodlights, Frank can see smoke spiraling up between the buildings, and recognizes the smell of charcoal in the air. "You're not gonna try and feed me anything scary, are you?" he shouts back across the slope of the lawn.

Pete starts walking up to meet him. "You fucking wish. But my dick's spoken for. 'Less you need it to practice on for your vampire lovaaah."

Frank doesn't get Pete's sudden obsession with the status of Frank and Gerard's relationship. "Nothing like that happened, though."

"Why?" Pete asks, falling even with Frank and turning to walk the rest of the way to the greenhouse with him. "I've seen the way you look at him and bite your tongue not to ask me what it's like with Mikey. I'd have thought you'd be all the fuck over that first chance you got."

"Yeah," Frank says. "Well. He doesn't want to give me a chance."

Pete's laughter is loud and sudden, prompting Ray to pop up from behind the grill belching smoke in the corner of the courtyard. "What?" he says, making Pete laugh harder.

Frank looks at Ray, looks at Pete, and shrugs.

"Christa's getting the meat," Ray says. "She left me in charge of this." He waves his hand through the smoke.

"I told him he's got to open the vents and cover it, but he wouldn't listen." Pete grabs a tool and starts poking at the underside of the grill. Frank still wants to know why he was laughing so hard.

Preceded by two of her crew carrying an urn that smells like hot chocolate, Christa comes out of the quarters carrying a covered tray. "You two are useless with that," she says, laughing up at Ray. "Put this down over there. Let me do it." Once freed of her burden she takes the tool from Pete and smacks him on the ass with it. "You, go keep Frank company." She turns and gives Frank a smile. "Hey, Frank. I was going to send one of the boys down for you, but Pete said you were busy with the gerent."

"Nope," Frank says. Does everyone think he's fucking Gerard? "You're stuck with me."

The rest of the landscaping team shows up then and everyone starts bustling around the grill or the table laden with bottles of wine and bowls of what Frank assumes is more food. Even though there are less than a dozen people, Frank feels like he's in the way, so retreats to the far side of the patio where there's a low planter with a wide seat around it. Pete appears with two mugs of chocolate. Handing one to Frank, he sits.

"I didn't mean to laugh, but Frank, come on. The guy thinks you hung the moon."

"Because I make him like ten million a year. But I'm a tech. He doesn't look at me as someone to fuck."

"Pretty sure he does, dude."

And Pete would know this how exactly? "How would you even know?" He doesn't mean to sound like an asshole, but Pete doesn't look offended.

"Because his brother spends a fuck of a lot of time wondering out loud why the guy's not boning you already, so I assume he knows something about it we don't. Gerard tells him everything. And seriously. You guys should do it already, because these conversations take up time Mikey and I could be bumping uglies."

"Thank you for that image." Frank's dick is not ugly, thank you very much, and he bets Gerard's isn't either.

Pete just grins at him.

"You're kind of an asshole," Frank says.

"You're kind of a chicken shit. At least my ass is getting laid."

"Come eat," Ray calls. "Before these vultures pick the bones clean."

"Saved by the bell," Pete says, pushing Frank to his feet.


Once there's food in his belly, Frank's mood improves, and he stops feeling so out of sorts with the crowd and disgruntled about Pete's teasing. It turns out one of the gardeners is an old movie buff, and she and Frank spend more than an hour comparing their collections and making plans to exchange files, and over dessert Frank joins the conversation Ray, Pete, Christa, and Ray's apprentice are having about live music versus recordings. Maybe it's Pete being there to jolly Frank into socializing, or maybe it's the contrast between this small group of people and the creepy table full of them at Southern, but Frank doesn't feel quite as separate from everyone as he usually does.

The party's still going strong as sunrise approaches, but Frank says his goodbyes in time get back to his apartment before the shutters close. There is a light lock on the north side of the main house, but it's a long way around, and Frank would rather go through his own doors.

"I'll walk with you," Pete says trotting to catch up with him when he's half-way up the lawn. "Wanted to see Mikey before he goes to sleep anyway."

"You bragging?" Frank asks, but it doesn't have any heat.

"I'm just saying. If you didn't have a problem with him biting you, and clearly you didn't, then I think you should tell him what you want and not walk away until he gives it to you."

Frank opens his door and ushers Pete in ahead of him. "It's not that easy. Gerard isn't Mikey."

"Truer fucking words," Pete says, turning to give Frank a sympathetic half-smile and a "Sleep tight," before heading through the door into the hall and up to Mikey's rooms.


Frank intends to do as he's told—about the sleeping. Not the other thing. Pete's deluded about the other thing being a good plan—but it doesn't work out. As soon as he's under the covers and the lights are out, the other thing is all he can think about. After several hours of fitfully rolling over and back again, flipping his pillow and smoothing out the sheets, he gives up. The screen on his nightstand tells him it's 12:04.

He isn't hungry, and he doesn't want to work, drumming is too noisy, guitar is too much effort, and his eyes are too sore to feel like reading. He just wants— It's like he's living in a fucking cave. He needs to take a walk.

The sun is blinding when he rolls the shutters up, but it's the sharp kind of pain that's relieved by rubbing hard at his eye sockets, and feels better than the tired ache that was there before. Frank pulls on his clothes from last night, toes into his sneakers, and pushes out into the sunshine.

Past the garage, the greenhouse, the low apartments housing the groundskeeping staff, down beyond the garden, Frank hits the path that leads into the woods. Summers when he was little he used to go nut brown in the sun, but it's been too many years now, and it's a relief to step into the trees. The pale spring green of the leaves is just starting to darken, and the shade is dappled on the black of his hoodie and the muddy trail. The air is damp and verdant in his nose, reeking of not-lab, making him breathe deeply to try to catch the nuanced odors. Mushrooms, dirt, something blooming, the slightly mineral smell of the brook he can hear off to his left. And that's just with his human senses. What must Gerard be able to smell out here? Frank lifts his wrist to his nose, sniffs his skin, trying to tell the difference between where he's inked and where he's not, but he doesn't really smell like anything. Maybe a hint of smoke from the barbecue, a trace of detergent from his freshly-washed sheets.

He can't smell obsession, the constant feel of Gerard's hands on him, his fangs sinking into Frank's neck. Can't smell the way having a taste of what he's wanted for so long has changed his desire into something sharp and barbed. It should smell different. And what the fuck is he doing, standing in the woods sniffing his arm like a freak. This part of the path is flat and well maintained, and Frank takes off at a run.


Breathless, soaked with sweat, doubled over the fist balled into the stitch in his side, Frank feels better finally. What happened in the hotel, and at Ulrich's compound, what's been happening since Gerard with his ridiculous hair and expansive gestures sat down across from Frank at the recruitment table at Rutgers, isn't a knot in Frank's chest anymore. A tangle, still, sure, but there's room to get his fingers in and tug. And Gerard said he wanted. Wants. Frank. In his own, keep-away-for-your-own-good way, but fuck that. Frank gets to decide what's good for him and what's not. He needs to get back to the house. If he can just figure out where the hell he is.


James has been Gerard's day guard and business accountant since before Frank came to Eastern's compound, so he knows Frank's loyalties, even though for the most part they keep opposite hours. Frank's only a little worried that James won't let him into Gerard's suite.

"He's sleeping," James says when Frank appears in the small room that does double duty as office and antechamber.

Frank nods, glances at the tightly-shuttered window, nods again. The sky was just changing color when he came inside; he has half an hour, maybe forty minutes, until the shutters rumble open. He isn't going to wait that long. "I won't wake him," he promises. But he intends to be the first thing Gerard sees when he opens his eyes.

"He won't like it if I let you in," James says.

"I know. But—"

"And Mikey won't like it if I don't. Gerard is my gerent, but Mikey's technically boss to all of us in security, so I think maybe I have some discretion here."

"Really? You're— Thanks." Bouncing on his toes, Frank waits for James to reach for the button that unbars the door. Apparently Pete wasn't lying about Mikey thinking Frank is good for his brother.

"You promised not to wake him, though," James says, giving Frank his sternest look before finally starting the great steel bar sliding back.

"Thanks, man," Frank says, edging closer so he's ready to open the door as soon as it's free.

"He doesn't have anything on his schedule until eleven thirty," James tells him, grinning.

Frank can't quite grin back, because stubborn and blind as Gerard is, it could easily take a lot more than five hours to convince him he's got to bite Frank again. Or touch him. Or something. But he gives James the best smile he can muster before darting through the heavy doors into Gerard's chambers.

It's pitch black as soon as the door shuts again behind him. Frank has never been in Gerard's bedroom before, but there have been nights he didn't turn off his monitors after Gerard came back from hunting, nights he's watched—feeling ashamed but not stopping—until Gerard came to his rooms, climbed into bed. He closes his eyes now, relaxes, puts himself in Gerard's field of vision.

Bed straight ahead, in the center of the room, a huge carved thing Frank doesn't want to hit a knee on. Probably six feet away, maybe eight. Closet off to the right, bigger than Frank's kitchen, jackets, vests and shirts hung in rows, pants, jeans and t-shirts stacked on shelves, and then belts, scarves and shoes in their own section at the back. Overhead lighting. Frank's never been bright-blinded by Gerard turning it on, so if he keeps the door mostly shut it should give him enough light to guide him without waking Gerard up. Keeping one finger on the wall, Frank makes his way to where the closet door should be. It's farther than he expects, but of course Gerard always cuts a hypotenuse where Frank is taking the right-angle route. There's not a sound in the room besides the whisper of skin against wallpaper and the hush of Frank's breathing. Gerard might not even be here except that Frank can feel him with every inch of his skin.

The door frame takes him by surprise, but he gets the knob on the first try, and eases the door open enough to fit a hand inside to grope for the light switch. It's higher than any of the switches in Frank's apartment, but Gerard's rooms are in an older part of the house and built on a much grander scale. Frank keeps his eyes closed while he turns it on and doesn't open them until he's eased the door almost all the way shut again. It's two or three minutes of fiddling with the door and letting his eyes adjust before he's got the right balance of light and shadow so he can see the shape of Gerard in the bed. He remembers a chair in the corner by the window, and he considers sitting there and waiting, but that doesn't feel close enough. Gerard is a creature of instincts. Frank doesn't want to give him time to think. He needs to be right there for Gerard to smell and see and touch before his misguided sense of propriety comes back online.

So instead, Frank takes off his shoes and mud-spattered jeans and climbs up to sit near Gerard's knees.

It's hard for Frank to keep his promise. Now he's decided on a course of action, he wants to act. Instead, he tucks his hands into the folds of his knees and waits. This move was his, but the next belongs to Gerard.

If there's a clock in the room, Frank can't recall Gerard ever looking at it, and he can't see it now in the dim lighting. He left his wristcuff in his rooms when he went for his walk. But he probably killed ten minutes waiting for the door to open and getting the closet light on, seven at a conservative guess, so the shutters should open in something like twenty-five minutes, triggering Gerard to wake up. Frank starts counting his own breaths to pass the time.

He's at 311 when the whirring starts, gears turning to pull the chains that lift the shutters in their tracks. The shadows on Gerard's face shift as he inhales sharply and opens his eyes. "Frank," he says before his gaze even has a chance to shift to where Frank's sitting. In nothing but briefs and a t-shirt, Frank must reek of his run. That, and anticipation, frustration, the way he's gotten half hard watching the shadow between Gerard's slightly parted lips as he slept.

"Frank?" Gerard asks this time, taking an even deeper breath.

Frank doesn't answer him, just thinks hard about everything he wants Gerard to do to him right now and lets his smell speak for itself.

"The rules." Gerard sits up, edging away, putting space between them.

Fuck the rules. Fuck them so fucking much. Frank pulls his hands out from behind his knees and puts them behind his back, tilting his head so his pulse throbs in the moonlight. Gerard's almost out of the bed, one foot on the floor, three or four feet away from Frank now, but he's frozen, gaze right where Frank wants it.

When he moves, it's too fast for Frank to see. One second he's sure he's going to have to say something, and the next he's flat on his back, legs tangled under the press of Gerard's hips, hands pinned either side of his head, Gerard growling into his neck.

"Mmph," Frank says, the surprised squeak pushed from his chest by Gerard's weight, and then, "Yes," nothing more than a whisper as he presses up into Gerard's mouth.

Gerard's lips part and he sucks hard at Frank's skin, not piercing it, but pulling the blood to the surface. It burns, makes Frank dizzy, makes him struggle to free his hands or his legs, anything to hold on to Gerard, anchor himself, figure out which way is up. But Gerard doesn't give an inch, doesn't even push back where Frank's desperately trying to rut his hard cock up against Gerard's soft belly.

"Fuck, Frank. Frankie, you taste so good." Gerard mumbles the words against Frank's collar bone, nuzzling his nose against what already feels like a massive bruise. "You can't come in here and just taste like that."

"I can if I want you to fucking bite me already, fuck. Gerard, you are fucking— Just fucking do it."

Gerard's sharp inhale sends cold air rushing over Frank's wet skin, shivering through his shoulders and down his spine. "Please," Frank says, and Gerard listens.

Being bitten where he's already bruised is agony. Exquisite lightning making Frank jerk taut, rigid under Gerard's body. The sound he makes is lost in Gerard's moan, and then becomes a moan of his own as Gerard starts licking instead of sucking. "No," Frank says, wanting Gerard to take this from him. Wanting to give it. He can't spend another sleepless day all tangled up in need.

"Shh," Gerard says. "Shh. I want you to be— I want— I need to know I can control myself with you. If you want this there are ways, things— If I only take a little at a time we can make it last. It's even better than you running."

Through the fading pain in his neck, Frank tries to parse what Gerard just said. "Are you— Did you just offer me vampire foreplay?"

Gerard huffs a noise Frank can't classify. "You're still not a pet. It doesn't have to be sex. It can just be—" he says.

"It fucking does have to be sex," Frank says, getting what little leverage he can to push his dick harder against Gerard's stomach. "I don't want to be your damn pet. I want you to fucking fuck me." The few fumbling attempts at sex Frank made in college didn't exactly rock his world, but he's done more than enough experimenting on his own since to know what he likes.

"So fucking demanding," Gerard says, but that's not a no.

"You can't just bite a guy and leave him hanging," Frank says, managing to get more bravado into his voice than he expected.

"Demanding," Gerard mutters again, and this time it sounds like a yes.

He kneels up slowly, letting Frank's arms go, watching his face as he pushes Frank's shirt up over his head. "I used to design these," he says, running a fingertip over the tree on Frank's chest. "Before. Seemed so permanent at the time compared to drawing in paper. But it's probably eaten by worms now, or all burned up."

Frank looks down past the fabric bunched up under his chin and then helps pull his shirt over his head. "None of them turned?" He wants Gerard's clothes off too, but Gerard's too busy tracing lines of ink.

Finally, just when Frank's decided that these tickling touches are all he's going to get, Gerard asks, "How did you convince James to let you in?" He splays his hands on Frank's ribs, squeezes just hard enough to make Frank's breath catch, strokes down to his waist.

"I—" Frank can't remember for a minute. "He said, Mikey. That—"

Gerard either gets Frank's meaning or actually does not give a single fuck why James let Frank into his room, because done playing, he hooks his fingers in Frank's briefs, pulls them carefully over his cock, kneewalks backwards so he can get them down Frank's legs and off. He stares at Frank's face the whole time, eyes boring right to the heart of what makes Frank tick. Coherent conversation is off the table.

"Men smell so much stronger than vamps," Gerard says, pushing Frank's legs apart and settling between them. "I'd forgotten."

"You—" Frank's hands hover either side of Gerard's head but it doesn't seem right to touch, so he drops them back to the bed. "You've been sniffing me since we left Southern. How did you forget?"

"Not here." Gerard nuzzles into the sweat-damp crease of Frank's groin. "Not like this."

And that's so true. Gerard had his head pretty close to Frank's pits, but he hasn't had his face right there next to Frank's cock. "Mmmhmmngh," Frank says.

The nuzzling turns to licking and soft, sucking kisses that go on and on, covering the tops of Frank's thighs, his hips, move right up to the base of his cock, the edge of his sac, and any moment, any second, he expects Gerard to bite, or actually touch his fucking junk, because he's already put up with the teasing and his legs are shaking with the strain of anticipation. "Gerard," he groans, "please," and he can't keep his hands to himself anymore, someone has to fucking touch his dick.

But Gerard intercepts him, puts Frank's hands in his hair instead. And that's when he bites. Frank yells, surprised after all, and damn, that does not hurt any less than his neck, but his dick jumps, precome slipping out to smear along his belly, and his hips thrust, pushing Gerard's fangs deeper. It's even better when Gerard's fingers finally wrap around him, short quick tugs a counter to the languid suckling.

When he stops to lick the wound closed, he slows, gives Frank's dick a few long twisting pulls that make him want to writhe and thrust. "You," Frank gasps, "are a fucking tease."

"Told you I was gonna make it last," Gerard says.

"I hate you."

"I can tell," Gerard replies, squeezing Frank's cock, rubbing the resulting slick over the head with his thumb.

"No, real—" Frank starts, but Gerard sinks his fangs in again, and Frank can only hiss, "Yesssss."

This time Frank thinks Gerard's just gonna use his grip to keep Frank still, but then he starts moving again, strokes just tight and fast and long enough that Frank's almost convinced again Gerard has spy cameras in his apartment. "Oh," he says. "Oh, fuck. I—" and he'd wanted Gerard's cock, but this works too. They can— later.

He kicks when he comes, hard, and the pain where Gerard's biting him is blinding for a second before it starts to fade, Gerard licking him as he strokes Frank through the last of his orgasm.

When the bleeding's stopped and Frank's tongue works again, he says, "Do you kiss?" Because hands down best sex of his life, but Frank likes kissing too. And he'd like to know if that's gonna be on the agenda.

"Oh, fuck, Frankie, fuck," Gerard says, and he's there, face an inch from Frank's own. "Yes. I— You smelled so good I forgot."

"It's—" Frank tries to wave a hand in a way that means he's totally cool with the forgetting, because wow, but it's more of a weak flap.

Not that Gerard notices, because oh, yes. He definitely kisses. With the same single-minded intensity as when he feeds, hands framing Frank's face, lips and tongue flushed hot with Frank's blood. And if there was anything on earth that could make Frank get it up again, that would be it, but he's spent, so he just kisses back, hands cupping Gerard's shoulder blades, the tiny sliver of his brain not in a post-orgasm haze or thinking about how many years he's waited for this, wondering how he's going to get Gerard's clothes off.

Like with tracing Frank's tattoos and licking every inch of his pelvis, Gerard seems to have endless patience with kissing. But Frank gets his breath back, and eventually the tingling abates in his extremities, and he remembers that his fingers are good for more than idle rubbing along the edges of Gerard's spine. He doesn't get Gerard's shirt off, because Gerard won't release his mouth, but he gets it shoved up enough to get skin against his ribs and to get at the tie holding up Gee's pajama pants.

Frank made no promises at all to make things last, and makes no attempts at finesse. He cups Gerard's dick, surprised at how wet the fabric is against the back of his hand as he goes in, how slick Gee is already. He wonders if that's a vamp thing or just a Gerard thing, but either way it's awesome, because there's no need to lick his palm or worry about too much friction; he can just go fast and hard, work the shaft and the head and back down again in one silky glide until Gerard gives up kissing and just presses his face to Frank's jaw, clings to his shoulders, thrusts into Frank's grip.

"I'm sorry," Gerard says while Frank's wiping his hand on Gerard's pants. "You wanted me to fuck you. And I should have kissed you before I—"

"You can apologize when you break my magnifying glass, or spill my coffee in my keyboard, but no apologizing for orgasms."

"But I—"

"No." Frank covers Gerard's mouth with his palm. The palm he just wiped jizz off of, not very thoroughly. When Gerard starts tonguing it, it feels like he's licking Frank's dick, and Frank wonders if he might get it up again after all.

**


There's a four-day period where Frank spends almost every waking moment in Gerard's bed—and most of his sleeping moments, too—but when James stops putting off Gerard's appointments, Frank goes back to his lab. There's a stack of editing to catch up on, but no new install requests have come in. Frank isn't sure whether or not to be grateful. He'd like something to wipe Gerent Ulrich's installation from his mind, but he'd also like some time before he has to do that again.

Though once Gerard gets some of his backlog cleared and starts coming down and asking if Frank has a minute, Frank is extremely grateful that there's nothing more important than getting a few more vids up for download for him to be doing. Someone's bound to have a job for him soon, one that can't be interrupted for sex breaks.


According to Mikey, he shut his wrist monitor in the car door by mistake. But vampires don't tend to be clumsy that way, and Pete seemed overly concerned that it had possibly been crushed beyond repair, so Frank suspects Pete got as tired of Mikey constantly checking it as Gerard sometimes does, and found a more permanent solution than locking it in a desk drawer for a couple of hours. Not that it matters either way. Frank has the parts to fix it, and he's been wanting to try out some of his new circuits on something that gets the kind of use Mikey gives his tech, but can never get the guy to give it up long enough for Frank to work on it. If he'd thought of it, he'd have slammed it in a car door himself.

Gerard comes in as Frank's examining parts under his scope, sorting them into piles of keep and toss. "I'm not here to interrupt," he says before Frank's smile of greeting has even settled on his face. "I know Mikey wants that back ASAP. I just wanted to watch you work."

Frank is not convinced that's going to be feasible, since though it hasn't even been two weeks, he's already conditioned to stop whatever he's doing and climb into Gerard's lap or drag him to the nearest bed whenever Gerard walks into a room, but now's as good a time as any to get back to some semblance of normal operations—Gerard is in charge of the whole Eastern Zone after all, and can't spend all night every night having sex. "Okay," he says, using his tweezers to put the broken bundle of wires on the scope's stage into the toss pile. "Pull up a chair."

Frank expects Gerard to choose one of the comfortable chairs in the far corner, or maybe one of the wheeled chairs from the desk with all of Frank's monitors. But he perches on the stool in front of Frank's electron microscope, which is about six inches from Frank's right elbow. "Gerard," Frank says, because he's right there, and fuck Mikey and his wrist monitor, Frank wants to touch him.

"I'm not even here," Gerard says. He scoots the stool back a fraction of an inch. "Ignore me."

Right. Right. Frank'll get on that immediately. But he does try his best, and it helps that Gerard isn't breathing, that there's no body heat leeching off him into Frank's personal space, and by keeping his gaze on the pile of tech to his left or looking through his scope, Frank manages to almost do as he's told.

Until Gerard leans in and presses the flat of his tongue to the scorpion on Frank's neck. Frank completely mangles the part he's holding in his tweezers and gouges a divot out of the edge of the stage with their pointy tips. "Fuck," he breathes, dropping everything he's holding to grip the edge of the table, keep from just clawing at Gerard's shirt. Gerard said to ignore him. Frank's gonna try. Even when Gerard licks from the scorpion's head up beyond its tail. Even when he doesn't stop there, but moves back down again, lapping at the tatt like a kitten with a bowl of milk.

The sound Frank makes comes from high in his throat and he can feel it vibrating against Gerard's tongue. Any second he's going to feel the prick of teeth, the press of Gerard's lips, but he doesn't.

"Your ink tastes like iron," Gerard whispers, the words moving against Frank's skin. "Like blood. When you're warm, I can smell it from across a room."

"You're not—" Frank takes a deep, shuddering breath. "You're not across the room."

"No." Gerard brings a hand up to Frank's jaw, fingers and thumb tilting Frank's head. "I'm not."

And now. Now is when he's going to bite Frank. To feed. And Frank's ready for it, even though the stool he's on feels frail between his legs, and Gerard doesn't have an arm around him, is just holding him steady by the five points of contact on his face, and he's not sure he won't crumple to the floor. But Gerard just keeps licking, soft-wet-rough, until adrenalin and the sensation turn Frank's joints to water anyway.

"Gerard," Frank says again, a breath, a plea, his spine curling sideways to press his throat closer to his master's fangs.

"Later," Gerard says softly, pulling away, leaving Frank's skin wet and cold, raw feeling.

"No," Frank says without meaning to, his voice small and petulant.

"Later," Gerard repeats, moving away. "You have work to do. And the sun's almost up. Come join me when you're finished, and when the sun sets I'll let you give me your blood."

"Fucking tease," Frank grumbles. But he's saying it to an empty room.

**


Now that Frank comes up to his room most days, Gerard leaves his closet light on when he goes to sleep. He's also started undressing before getting in bed, which seemed crueler before Frank realized that it's much more difficult than he thought to wake a sleeping vampire, and if he's careful, he can touch. The door is angled so Gerard's face is in shadow, but his chest is lit softly, and Frank strips his own clothes off as he crosses the room to lick it. His tongue finds the smooth-skinned place just below Gerard's left nipple where last night Frank clawed half-moons, and he fingers the place on his own side where he still bears the marks from Gerard's nails. He wants to nibble, to follow Gerard's ribs down to where the sheet cuts across his waist, pull it lower, but Frank's learned that touching Gerard's dick crosses the line of what won't wake him, so he climbs into the bed and curls up with his back against Gerard's side, tucking his shoulder into Gerard's armpit. He's asleep by his third inhale.


Though the shutters are nearly silent, Frank wakes when they start to glide open. Gerard's still pressed against his back, but his arm is moving on Frank's chest, no longer dead weight. When Frank takes a sharp breath as Gerard's thumb catches a nipple, Gerard turns, fitting his hips to Frank's ass, his cock a soft weight nudging at Frank's cheeks. "Still want me to bite you, Frankie?" he whispers when Frank wiggles a little.

Frank just twists his head to give Gerard better access.

He bites low on Frank's neck, where it starts to curve out toward his shoulder, where the blood doesn't run so close to the surface; he's taking his time. Frank jumps at the initial pain, his body going rigid in Gerard's arms, but as Gerard suckles, strokes Frank's hip, gathers Frank's hands against his chest, Frank softens into the curve of Gerard's body.
 
"Mmm," Gerard hums, his mouth working slow in time with the shallow thrust of his hips.
 
Frank wants to press up into Gerard's fangs, wants to grind against Gerard's cock swelling harder between Frank's thighs, wants to reach down and stroke himself, but those are all distant desires lost in the high from the throb of his pulse against Gerard's lips. "More," he whimpers, leaving it up to Gerard what he wants more of.
 
Still sucking slowly, Gerard sinks his teeth in a fraction deeper, shifts them both so his dick's riding slick in Frank's crack, nudging up against his balls, and he cups Frank's dick to his belly, the press of his palm a sweet friction each time he rocks forward.
 
"Frankie," he says, pulling back enough to murmur against Frank's skin. "Gonna let me fuck you."
 
The words and Gerard's tongue skating the edges of Frank's wound make him shiver. "Do it," he says. He'd spread his legs for it, turn ass up, but Gerard's wrapped around him too tight for that. All he can do is clench his thighs against the thrust of Gerard's cock, twist his wrists a little in Gerard's grip.
 
"Shh," Gerard soothes. "I've got you."
 
But Frank wants to be taken, not held. A twist of Frank's hips hardens Gerard's fingers, makes him push rather than guide, and Frank only has time to drag in a shaky breath before one knee's pressed to his chest and Gerard's breaching him, nothing but the blood-fueled precome slicking his cock to smooth the way. Frank goes tense, instinct kicking in before he can stop it, and there's a moment where they're both pushing and getting nowhere, but then Gerard bites him again, between his shoulder blade and his spine, and Frank goes lax, letting Gerard inside. 

Wrapped up in Gerard like this, Frank feels tiny against vampire strength and speed and want, but huge in Gerard's focus, and it's like he's swelling and shrinking, swelling and shrinking, a heart beating heavy and full in the ribcage of Gerard's limbs. He's going to burst, be squeezed to nothing, feed Gerard forever, disappear. pleasepleaseplease, he's saying, but there aren't any words. All he can hear is the rush of blood in his ears. He's flying, scattered like dust in space, crushed by all the world's oceans, and he needs, needs something so he can breathe again.

"Harder," he gasps with the last air in his lungs, and Gerard stops suckling at Frank's blood, yanks him back into the next thrust, but it's not enough, so Gerard pulls Frank's hands up and his leg down, and rolls them so he's pounding into Frank from above. Frank's still pinned, hands above his head, thighs spread wide by Gerard's knees, but he can move with Gerard's rhythm, rock his dick against the sheets, feel friction, sweat, blood cooling on his back, and it's so fucking good.

Gerard makes a sound between a growl and a purr and grinds hard into Frank's ass, shuddering as he comes. And fuck, Frank was so close. But Gerard hauls him up so they're kneeling, Frank's back to Gerard's chest, and still buried deep, filling him up, jerks Frank off.


"Fuck," Frank breathes once Gerard's lowered him to the bed again. That was. Frank's pretty sure he actually left his body at the beginning there. "Wow."

"I keep thinking you're going to break, and you never break," Gerard says. Frank can't tell if he's glad or disappointed about this.

"Not yet," he says a little warily, even though he's almost certain that Gerard wouldn't want to break him. Not beyond repair at least.

That gets a smile and Gerard's hand smoothing down his back to his ass. "You're perfect."

"Don't you forget it," Frank answers a little more breathlessly than he intended.

"You should get some more sleep. I have a conference call." Gerard pushes a sweaty strand of hair off Frank's face, tucking it behind his ear. "I'll send Pete up in a while with some BloodPlus."

"I'm fine," Frank says, because he's fine. And he has shit to do.

"Sleep," Gerard repeats. "And BloodPlus. Or we can't do that again later. And I want to do that again later."

Frank's not actually sure he can survive two orgasms like that in one night, but he has no intention of arguing any further.


Pete doesn't get to Gerard's room before Frank's gotten up, but he does find Frank later in his lab. "I already took the BloodPlus," Frank says before Pete can open his mouth.

"I figured," Pete says. "It's addicting getting fucked while they feed, isn't it."

"He told you that? Ugh. He's the master of oversharing."

Settling on the stool next to where Frank's working, Pete punches him companionably in the arm. "He was just excited that you liked it. And wanted to make sure I understood how important it was to give you your injection."

Frank rolls his eyes, but he can't help smiling a little, because of course Gerard would have to explain to Pete why. Just telling him to do it wouldn't be enough.

"Anyway. I was talking to Christa, and I had an idea for a way to help her with watering the vegetable gardens. Wanted to know if you might have the parts."

Frank's first instinct is to ask Pete what his idea is and say he'll do it for him, but he has been meaning to see what else Pete can actually do with tech, and it would be great to have a hand in the lab. "Sure," he says. "What do you need?"

They only find half the parts necessary to upgrade the sprinkler system, so Frank adds the rest to the list of things he's running low on and calls up to ask if Mikey can spare anyone to take them shopping. "Someday I'd like to walk around without a guard," Pete says. He prods at the band around his wrist. "Isn't the damn jewelry supposed to protect us?"

Between Frank's parents, the campus gates at Rutgers, and the rules of Eastern's compound, Frank has never ventured into any of the cities or shopping districts on his own. "No pet's marker or tech's insignia is going to protect you from a vampire hungry enough to be stupid. Doesn't matter who your master is. And we have free run of the compound." He could never take being stuck in his apartments, but between the main house, the grounds and the outbuildings, he's never felt trapped here.

"'S not the same," Pete mutters, but he doesn't press his point.

The intercom beeps with Mikey getting back to them. "I'll take you," he says. "Meet me on the driveway in five minutes."

"Fuck," Frank and Pete say in unison once the line's disconnected. Mikey is a terrible driver. "See if he'll let you drive," Frank says. "He likes to make you happy."


Shopping with Mikey and Pete is a lot more fun than going on his own with two surly vamps who clearly feel like they have better things to do than babysit the gerent's pet tech. Mikey does let Pete drive, and he asks questions about what they're doing for the sprinklers, and gives Pete a fond, proud look that nearly matches the ones his brother gives Frank sometimes. Frank really isn't sure why Pete's complaining. If they were out in the world, they could be a vamp's dinner tomorrow with nothing to say about it. But then, Frank's never been a pet. Maybe it would be better for Pete if he could get a tech's badge and take off the bracelets.

"You still need new clothes?" Mikey asks Pete once they've finished with the things on Frank's list. "You need to get back, Frankie?"

Frank doesn't need to get back, and he just tore a hole in his favorite sweater the other day, so wouldn't mind hitting the clothes stores. "We've got time," he says.

But he might not have said that if he'd had any idea how much time clothes shopping with Mikey Way could take. Frank's always headed for the rack holding whatever he came in for, grabbed something if he saw it, left if he didn't. But Mikey stops just inside the door and starts going through everything methodically, pulling things out and piling them in Pete's arms until a sales person notices and comes over to get them a dressing room. Since Mikey seems to have had the same five shirts on rotation as long as Frank can remember, he's thrown, but Pete seems unfazed, so Frank does his best to roll with it.

"The jacket the gerent wanted should be in on Friday," the clerk says when she comes back for the second armload of outfits. And that makes more sense. Mikey's just shopping for Pete the way he's used to doing with Gerard. Frank could spend hours watching Gerard draw, or listening to him talk about history, and he's still really hoping they'll go driving again without the blindfold or the anemia or the deadline, but Mikey can keep the clothes shopping.

Pete tries on everything ever made, and Mikey buys him half of it, Frank finds a cardigan that's almost as soft as his old one, and they head for home.


It takes almost a week to redo all the automated systems for the garden, but Pete's idea saves time and water, and Christa's thrilled with it. They even get hugs from Ray, who is always happy when Christa's happy. It's easy to work with Pete, despite—or hell, maybe because of—the way he thinks in completely different ways than Frank. He got more computer classes than engineering under his belt before he ended up at Central as Gabe's pet, so he's not as good at building stuff from scratch, but he's got a hell of an instinct for cross-application and a willingness to think outside the box that more schooling would probably have trained out of him. In a lot of ways working together is like being back at Rutgers for Frank, but with a lot less stress, and a lot more sex in his down time.

**

Looking up from his book to make eye contact with Gerard, who's going through the district reports, Frank asks, "Who do we have to talk to to get Pete granted tech status?"

"Me," Gerard says. "And Pete. Maybe Mikey, technically, since Pete's his pet, but mostly Pete. And you. Since you're the one who's been training him."

Frank manages to keep his amusement at Gerard's compulsive over-explanation to a small smile. "So we don't have to go to a board of directors or anything is what you're saying."

Gerard smiles back, aware that Frank's laughing at him. "Nope. I can do whatever I want. Privilege of the office."

"Awesome," Frank says. "You should do me. Reports are boring."

"Reports are necessary," Gerard says, mouth curling down on one side. "But I should be done in an hour."

"Fine," Frank says. "Fine." He raises his book so it hides his grin, and palms his dick. "We'll just be here waiting for you to finish."

"Troublemaker," Gerard mutters, and lets his fangs show for a moment, a threat that looks more like a promise, before getting back to work.

**


part 5