Privideniya - Chapter 31

Raiden didn't know how long they stayed in the churchyard. After a while, a chilly fog coiled up from the ground, and fresh snow began to fall.

"Come on," Raiden said, wrapping his arm around Vamp's shoulders.

He let Raiden help him to his feet, and they walked back down the hill together, in silence. Raiden didn't touch him again, but he stayed close. Vamp didn't look so good, and if he collapsed again, Raiden wanted to be there to catch him.

His movements had lost their usual agile lightness. He no longer stepped gracefully like a dancer. His expression was impassive, no easier to read now that his guard was down, but to Raiden, it seemed that he was profoundly weary. It was as though he was seeing the man again after an absence of many hard years.

Once they were back at the rented room, Vamp sat down hard on the bed closest to the door. The springs creaked beneath his weight.

He reached for his boots, but his gloved hands struggled with the laces, and in the end he simply fell over on his side, tugging his legs up on the bed.

He pulled a flat, lumpy pillow over his head, and didn't move for the rest of the day.

Raiden was not entirely certain he was asleep, but when he pulled the blanket over him, Vamp didn't stir.

The room was cold and dark and claustrophobic, especially when the windows iced over. A single 40 watt bulb wasn't even bright enough to read by without straining his eyes, and eventually Raiden gave up.

The book Vamp had loaned him was dense and ponderous, with too many long paragraphs, not enough dialogue, and next to no explosions. When he at last tossed it aside in frustration, Raiden was glad that Vamp was not awake to see him do it and ask if he would prefer something with more pictures next time.

He could, he realized, almost see the tiny smirk that would twist Vamp's lips when he said it. Surely he must have known that expression completely ruined the lines of his face.

Raiden scowled. When, he wondered, had he learned to anticipate Vamp's moods? When had he had the time to map the lines of his face?

It was to be expected. They had been traveling together for close to a week now. All their time spent in each other's company. He'd had plenty of opportunities to observe Vamp, to take in all of him.

There was a lot of him to take in.

But Raiden was not satisfied with that answer. Back in New York, he had spent plenty of time with Snake and Hal, and he had never been able to picture them in his mind as clearly as he could Vamp.

Hell, he didn't even know Otacon's eye color off the top of his head, but the calm blue-gray of Vamp's gaze, he would see it in his dreams until the day he died.

And so, maybe Vamp was something else. Not a war buddy like Snake, and not a drinking buddy like Otacon.

Not more than that, but not less, either.

But whatever he was, Raiden was sure he did not want to know. He didn't want things complicated right now, not more complicated than they already were.

And so Vamp was a friend, and nothing more. Raiden repeated it to himself, several times, until it sounded like the truth.

He was only a friend. Not even a very good friend, closer to the acquaintance side of the scale.

Raiden had not, after all, entirely forgotten about the knife scars.

---

It was close to dusk before Raiden left their room.

He went downstairs to the open kitchen below. The white-haired woman who ran the boarding house led him to a chair at the scuffed dining table and brought him a plate of brown rice and sausages made with garlic and paprika.

She wrapped another plate for him to take back to Vamp.

When Raiden returned to their room, Adrian was awake. Sitting up in bed, his face locked in deep thought.

"How long was I out?" he asked.

Raiden shrugged, and thought, not for the first time, that perhaps Vamp had been only pretending to sleep.

"A few hours, I guess," Raiden said.

"That long? I don't feel rested at all."

Raiden set the plate down beside the bed. "Soup's on."

"What is it?"

"I don't know, but it's pretty good. Dense. Traveling food, I guess."

Vamp did not reach for the plate, but he turned to face Raiden, to get a better look at him in the low light. "Thank you."

"For what?"

"Taking care of me. You did… take care of me, didn't you?"

Raiden laughed nervously, and glanced away. "Don't tell me you forgot what happened."

"I didn't forget," Vamp said. "I just don't remember this afternoon so clearly."

Raiden came forward, and sat on the edge of the other bed. They were close enough that their knees would have touched if they had let them.

"Yeah, well, you were acting kind of spooky for a while."

"I apologize," Vamp said.

"It's okay. It must have been a shock, you know? Snake… told me about your family. I never did ask how he found out. It didn't seem right at the time."

"I see." Vamp frowned. "If he knows, then he knows. All the same, I wish he, of all men, did not."

"What about me?" Raiden asked softly.

Vamp sighed softly.

"You, Ingénue, may know whatever you like. I will unfold my secrets for you like a paper crane."

Raiden felt himself blushing, and he was glad it was dark. Vamp would know, of course. He seemed to always know.

"The ones you remember, you mean," he said quietly.

"I remember what is important," Vamp replied. "You prayed with me. You prayed for them. Your words will float Heavenward with the smoke of the votive candles. They will reach God's ears, and he will know that you meant them in earnest. He will look with favor upon their souls, and hasten their release from Purgatory."

"How do you know I prayed for them?."

"Oh?" Vamp looked startled, then disappointed.

It was disconcerting, and Raiden shook his head. "No. You're right. Of course I prayed for them. I don't know anyone else who would have appreciated it."

Vamp's expression instantly shifted to one of gracious relief.

"You know," Raiden said. "I think, sometimes we forget because there's no point in remembering. Forgetting can make us stronger. Remembering only makes us afraid."

"You learned that from Solidus." Vamp's tone was numbly accusatory.

"I…" Raiden lowered his eyes. "I don't remember. Maybe. Solidus said a lot of things."

"Solidus was wrong about a lot of things."

"I know," Raiden said softly, almost a whisper. "He was pretty broken. In the end, he was so messed up, there was nothing left for him to do but die."

"Is that what you believe?" Vamp asked. "Or is it what you tell yourself so you can sleep at night?"

Raiden shrugged helplessly.

"I don't know. I've been making compromises my whole life, just to make things break even in my mind. I can't even tell the difference anymore, between what I believe and what I want to believe. Is there really any difference, though?"

"There must be," Vamp said.

"But you believe in God because you want to, not because there's any proof. You take it on faith. Just like I have faith that we'll find Revolver Ocelot at the end of all this, and that we'll kill him. We might have different reasons for believing, but we both have reasons…"

"But faith is not unshakable. The theologians say that the strongest faith is one that is constantly tested. Lies and half-truths are not a reliable foundation for an entire life."

Raiden shrugged. "I don't know. You know I don't read as much as you do. You're too smart for me."

"I'm not that smart."

"Smarts and common sense are two different things," Raiden said, and smiled weakly.

"Which do you have, Ingénue?"

Raiden was silent for a long time, and the question hung unanswered between them like Damocles' Sword. He knew that Vamp had not meant it rhetorically, but he could think of no answer that would satisfy the man.

At last, he just laughed. A tired, hollow kind of laugh.

"I have whichever one makes me smell like a bear. I'm going to get cleaned up. You eat that stuff, okay?"

"Of course," Vamp said. "I appreciate it."

---

The bathroom was a small closet down the hall from their room. There was a rusty steel tub, up on feet like the trailer park incarnation of Baba Yaga's hut. Black dirt from a thousand bare asses ringed the bottom, and Raiden couldn't bring himself to sit in it.

He balanced on the edge instead, ran the water and washed as best he could with a spare hand towel and a bar of coarse lye soap.

He slipped his jeans back on, sniffed his shirt and then tossed it over the sink with the dirty towel.

The small mirror was cloudy and cracked. The light in here was even dimmer than the one in the bedroom, and it made Raiden's face look pale, his eyes sunken and shadowed.

It was a face he hardly recognized as his own.

Maybe it wasn't all a trick of the light. Raiden couldn't explain it, but he knew he did not feel the same as he had a week ago, before he had left New York.

Maybe he was changing. Inside and out.

He was acting without orders, for the first time. At first, he had been content to let Vamp take the lead, to defer to him as he would a commanding officer. But the way he had collapsed in the church yard today, the way he had trembled, made Raiden wonder if Vamp was really any more certain about this job, or if he was only better at acting like he was.

It was disturbing to him, and he felt the hollow, hopeless dread of a sailor set adrift on open water after a shipwreck.

Soon, he thought, the sharks would be circling.

A knock came on the bathroom door. Raiden didn't answer immediately, and so Vamp opened the door and came in.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

Raiden straightened, tearing his eyes away from his smudged and murky reflection.

"Yeah," he said quietly. "Just… dirty."

He turned to Vamp. "Did you eat?"

Vamp nodded, and held up his toothbrush. "Garlic."

"Oh, right. Because you're a…"

"Very funny."

Vamp propped his shoulder against the doorframe, twirling his toothbrush between two fingers like a knife. "I hope you're not upset about what I said earlier."

Raiden shook his head. "Maybe there was a time when I would have been, but…"

"But not now?"

"I've gotten used to you," Raiden said, and he smiled. "You're getting predictable."

"How tragic."

He came forward, stepping inside. Raiden picked up his towel and dirty clothes and started toward the door. But the room was small, hardly big enough for one. Raiden tried to twist around the sink, but ended up with his ass pressed against the porcelain, and one leg wedged between Vamp's hot thighs.

Raiden swallowed dryly.

They had been close before, but Raiden hadn't felt this self-conscious about it in a while. He hadn't been so aware of his bare skin, of the driving need to jerk away and the perverse desire to draw closer, as though he could find a way to do both at the same time.

"Adrian," he said quietly. He felt unbalanced, and he reached up to take hold of Vamp's shoulders. "I was just thinking…"

Vamp smiled thinly. He didn't need to touch Raiden to keep him from looking away. "About me?"

"Yeah. A little bit. About me, too."

"What did you decide?"

"I don't know."

"I do," Vamp purred, and he leaned down, capturing Raiden's lips in a kiss.

The first thing Raiden noticed was that Vamp did not kiss like a soldier, like a man who might die at any moment.

And that was what kept him from pulling away immediately.

He let Vamp break the kiss first, let him lean back on his heels. Let him draw a deep, sighing breath. "Was it something like that?"

Raiden licked his lips. They felt famished, insatiable. It would have been easy, he thought, to lean in again, to close the inches between them and demand another kiss.

Just something to take the edge off the hunger pains.

But he didn't. He pulled away.

He extricated himself from Vamp's hold, and ducked out the door. He kept his eyes down as he walked back down the hall to the bedroom.

Vamp came back a while later. Raiden heard the door open, but he didn't turn to look. He had crawled into bed as soon as he got back to the room, turned off the light. He lay there now, in the penetrating darkness, listening to Vamp undress.

Raiden had been in tighter scrapes than this, had stayed still – silent, almost without breathing – through closer calls than this.

But he couldn't remember the last time it had been so hard.

It seemed like years before he heard Vamp turn down the covers on the other bed, slip under them. He shifted a few times to get comfortable, and then was silent.

Raiden's eyes flew open in the darkness.

He waited, a moment longer, but Vamp was still. His breathing was even and relaxed, as though he was already drifting off to sleep.

The asshole probably would sleep tonight. He'd sleep like the fucking dead.

Raiden's eyes narrowed, and he abruptly flung back the covers. He swung his feet onto the floor, and crossed the abyss between the two beds, feeling his way in the darkness.

He pulled back the covers, and set his hand on Vamp's shoulder to nudge him over.

"Hey. Let me in."

"What is it now?" Vamp muttered, but he moved, letting Raiden under the blankets.

"I was waiting for you to get in bed with me," Raiden said. It was hard to get comfortable. The bed was narrow, and there was a lot of Vamp to fill it. He had assumed that once he got this close, the rest would fall into place easily. He hadn't anticipated the awkward tangle of limbs, the suffocating heat of Vamp's breath on his face.

And he frowned a little, because it had been easier the night before, when he wanted nothing more than to sleep.

Vamp didn't move as Raiden squirmed around, settling himself. "You could have said something."

"I didn't want to get caught…"

"You were scared."

"No. I just… didn't want anyone to walk in on us."

"I dislike being toyed with," Vamp said.

"I wasn't!" Raiden sighed. "I mean… I wouldn't. I wouldn't fuck with you, Adrian. I'm not crazy."

But Vamp was unyielding. He could be accommodating if he wanted to, Raiden knew that. He could soften himself, like he had in the back of the Jeep.

But he didn't. He was angry.

Raiden's eyes skated away. "And… maybe I was a little scared. Maybe you scare me a little. Maybe… I don't like the way you make me feel. The things you make me want to do. Satisfied?"

"If that's the case, then you have crawled into the very viper's den."

"I know," Raiden whispered. "And I don't care. I just want you to know… that I'm sorry."

He felt Vamp shift beside him, become more pliant. "Sorry for what?"

"Oh, don't start that. You know what I mean. I'm not going to fucking grovel."

Raiden reached out, touching Vamp's shoulder tentatively. "But I've been kind of a cooze. I know you like me. I… shouldn't have pretended not to notice. I shouldn't have pretended I didn't feel the same way."

Immediately, Vamp relaxed, and it was easier to lie beside him. All he had needed to do was give a little, Raiden realized. Vamp had been more than ready to meet him halfway.

Raiden swallowed dryly. His fingers traced abstract patterns on Vamp's chest, mapping old scars in the darkness.

"Can I kiss you again, Adrian?"

"If you like."

"Whatever I like, huh?"

"Within reason."

"Then… I'd rather you kiss me."

And Vamp did.

Raiden had been sure he had imagined the casual languidness of Vamp's lips. The way he had been more than willing to let each kiss stretch on indefinitely, to let them burn out rather than be snuffed.

No man who had ever faced his own death – who truly knew the value of a moment – should have been able to kiss like that.

And yet Vamp did.

He kissed him until the hair on the back of Raiden's neck stood up.

"Touch me?" he whispered between their pressed lips. He hardly dared pull away far enough to make the words.

Vamp's hands fastened around his waist, the sweetest vice he had ever known.

Rough fingertips skated along the waistband of his jeans. Raiden gasped as they slid over the sensitive hollows of his hips, but he did not cry out until they found the hard ridge between his legs.

"You needed this," Vamp said. It was not a question.

"No…" Raiden whispered.

"After we've come this far, it's hardly worth it to lie to me, Ingénue."

Raiden sunk his hands into waves of black hair, one on either side of Vamp's head, drawing him down into a deep kiss.

"I need you," he said.

Vamp hesitated, and when he began to pull away, Raiden caught him and held him fast. "Adrian. We've come too far for me to lie to you about something like that."

"It's been a long time since I heard those words."

"You're hearing them from me now," Raiden said.

"Yes…"

He kissed Vamp again, enticing his lips to part. "Forget the past, Adrian. Not forever. Just for, like, 10 fucking minutes, okay?"

"Ten minutes?" Vamp muttered against Raiden's mouth. "I hope you're good for longer than that."

Raiden blushed, and it took much-needed blood away from his groin. For a moment, his head swam. "I was just, you know… rounding."

Vamp's hand was back between his legs then, coaxing his cock back to full, aching hardness. "Rounding up or down?"

"Um… down?"

"Good answer," Vamp tugged at the button of his jeans, easing the zipper down. His hand slipped inside, closing around him.

"Shit…" Raiden moaned.

"Relax." Vamp hooked his hands in Raiden's jeans, sliding them over his hips and down. "I'll take care of you."

He pressed his lips to Raiden's neck, the point of his chin, the hollow of his throat. Then lower, leaving a slow, wet serpentine trail down his chest.

He paused to tease a nipple with his tongue.

"I've wanted you," he said, breathing cool air over the skin he had just dampened. "Ever since the Big Shell."

Raiden smiled faintly. "That's kind of messed up."

"I know."

Vamp dipped his head again, trailing a line of biting kisses past Raiden's diaphragm, and lower. Raiden's fingers twisted in the sheets, and his hips arched.

He trusted Vamp, he thought. He trusted him to make everything that was wrong about this seem right. And when he hesitated, with his lips pressed to the stretch of skin beneath Raiden's navel, Raiden sank his fingers into black hair.

"Don't stop now."

Vamp didn't.

He slid his lips along the underside of Raiden's cock, from the base to the tip. Then his lips parted, and he took him in.

At first, Raiden didn't dare make a sound, as though this was something that could be scared away. A dream he could awaken himself from if he cried out in his sleep.

He tightened his grip on Vamp's hair, tugging him closer. Vamp bore down on him like a sprinter in the last stretch of a race.

"Adrian…" Raiden gasped. And Vamp pulled away.

"What is it?" Raiden surged after him, catching him around the neck and jerking his head up into a kiss. "What's wrong?"

Vamp laughed, a low and faintly menacing rumble. It started deep in his chest, and rose, until it vibrated against Raiden's lips, spilling into his mouth like water on a hot day. Vamp's hands cinched around his waist, and twisted.

Raiden gasped, and then he was on his stomach. Vamp's hand glided down his back, and Raiden raised himself on elbows and knees to arch against it. Callused fingertips trailed off his tailbone, and around the curve of his ass.

With a flick of his wrist, he batted Raiden's legs apart. One knee tottered on the edge of the bed, and then Raiden let it fall, bracing his foot against the floorboards.

"Hey…" Raiden glanced back over his shoulder, but all he could see was the bend a white shoulder and black sweep of hair cascading over it. Vamp was leaning over him.

"You're not going to fuck me dry, are you?"

Vamp pressed a kiss to his shoulder. Before he pulled away, Raiden felt teeth skate over his skin.

"I have something we can use in my bag," Vamp said. "Don't go anywhere."

"Okay…"

Raiden started to push up on his knees to follow Vamp's retreat. "You brought stuff along?" he asked, as his eyes followed Vamp across the room. He was pale and ghostlike against the darkness.

And naked.

Very gloriously naked.

Raiden's eyes roamed over him as Vamp knelt down, unzipped his duffle bag and dipped a hand inside. When he straightened up again, Raiden glanced away before Vamp caught him looking.

"If you're asking whether I planned this…" Vamp said, tossing a little plastic vial into the air, catching it again casually on the downstroke. "I just like to be prepared."

"What a Boy Scout," Raiden muttered.

Vamp just set a hand on the back of his neck, pushing him forward again. "I thought I told you not to move."

The bed creaked as Vamp settled his weight on it again. There was a long, pensive silence, and Raiden fought the urge to glance back.

This was a test. Something like a test, he thought.

So he only pressed his eyes closed, lowering his head so it rested against his forearm. One of Vamp's hands came down on the small of his back, bracing him, and the other slid up between his legs.

Raiden was no stranger to this. He knew what to do; more than that, he wanted Vamp to know that he knew.

But he tensed up as Vamp slipped a slick finger into him, and it hurt.

"Easy," Vamp purred, his free hand caressing absently. Soothing, like he would a skittish housecat.

He added a second finger, stroking him slowly from within.

Raiden moaned softly, arching against him. "There," he gasped. "Shit, just… keep doing that."

"Just like this?" Vamp whispered. He drove his fingers in once more, hard, and then withdrew them. "I don't think so."

Raiden let his breath out sharply. He hadn't realized he had been holding it; he hadn't realized how much his lungs ached.

What he did know, was that his lungs weren't the only thing causing him pain right now.

Behind him, Vamp shifted around, pressing up on one knee, letting the other drop over the edge of the bed. His foot next to Raiden's on the floor, their legs twined together.

He felt Vamp nudge up against him, and then in. And he clamped his teeth down on his arm to keep from crying out.

He was not gentle, and Raiden had to dig his knees into the mattress and push back against him. He had to learn his rhythm quickly, because Vamp was uncompromising.

"Fuck…" Raiden whispered.

"Shh." There was laughter in Vamp's voice. He leaned over him, pressing his lips to the back of Raiden's shoulder, then to the side of his throat where they lingered a moment.

Raiden felt a shudder run the length of his spine.

"Don't even fucking think about it, Adrian."

"What?"

"You know what I mean."

"I thought you trusted me," Vamp said, and he braced Raiden's hips in his hands so he could thrust in hard.

And Raiden might have said more, but he lost the words when he felt something begin to tighten in the pit of his stomach.

He felt Vamp's hand cup his jaw, slip over his mouth, and he realized it was because he had been crying out. Loud enough to cut through the membrane-thin walls of the cottage. He clenched his teeth behind Vamp's hand, and squeezed his eyes shut.

He felt coiled, wound like a cord. Pulled too tight, until there was nothing left for him to do but snap.

And so he did.

Gasping and snapping his hips back against Vamp's body until he was wrung dry.

He was warm, inside and out, and weary. When Vamp let him go, he collapsed to the bed, damp hair clinging to his cheeks and sweat stinging his eyes.

"Fuck, Adrian…" he moaned softly. "Shit. Fuck."

Vamp smiled at him graciously. He grabbed a handful of tissues from beside the bed, cleaning them both off a little.

"I need a shower," Raiden muttered.

"Later," Vamp said. "Stay with me, now."

He pulled the blankets out of the way, and stretched out beside him. It was a tight fit, with both of them in the bed, and it took some experimenting to make it work.

Raiden was quiet for a while, and he felt his eyes begin to drift closed.

"I do," he said quietly. "By the way."

"Hmm?" Vamp shifted slightly against him, dragged one of his arms out from under Raiden's body and repositioned it more comfortably. "You what?"

"I trust you," Raiden said. "So if you were worried, you don't have to be."