Call of the Wild

[Trillian]

HIS ARM WAS DRAPED OVER her torso where the sheet failed to cover her.  Her small breasts heaved up and down with every shallow breath she took in her sleep, peaceful now after an eventful night and morning.

They\'d walked the city streets back to his place in comfortable silence, his arm possessively about her waist while she kept her coat tightly closed.  A few kisses to her temple had her smiling at him glowingly and the penthouse had finished the job for him.  He\'d shown her around briefly, discovering more about the apartment himself even as he gave the tour, both of them staring at the large supplies of animal blood in plastic baggies in the fridge.

When they got to the main bedroom there was little left to say and so he\'d stripped for her and then undressed her as well, moving her to the bed and deliberately making the second time around slow and steady in order to savour their time together.  It had been a long time since he\'d been with anyone and she was the perfect partner - willing and nubile.

They\'d manage to exhaust each other in the hours that followed, though he did mostly dominate their actions.  She was lovely and he kept telling her so, until she stopped arguing the point with him and seemed to accept it.  For now he was enamoured with her and that was good enough.  He wanted her to be lost in him and she seemed to be so, doing all she could to make him smile.

Now it was the beginning the next evening, though early.  He could feel the sun\'s lowering rays in the sluggishness of his muscles.  The window shades had not yet rattled up to let in the city night, not wanting to reveal the hint of sunlight lest he was burned.  Ben\'s body had vulnerabilities after all.

Jack didn\'t feel any side-effects to the physical course he\'d had last night but expected she would.  She\'d complained of soreness towards the end of their heated session but had pursued to the end anyway.  She seemed avidly attuned to his desires.

He got up and walked naked to the bathroom, turning on the shower and having one that was scalding hot, feeling it warm his too-cool skin and slake off her scent.  She would no doubt put it on him again though the smell of sex had been far too apparent for his sensitive nose.  When he finished showering and returned, he heard the rumbling rise of the window shutters as they opened to let the moonlight in, and saw that her eyes were open as well when he moved through the bathroom doorway.

"Hannah," he said, liking the sound of her name.

[Existentially Odd]

"Jack," she giggled, sitting up and throwing the sheet off her naked body.  "Mind if I have a shower?  I really have to get going," she told him flippantly, heading for the bathroom.  First, she needed to go to the toilet and then she would shower... but she rather hoped he would tell her he wanted her to return to him after her performance this night and her heart hammered with the thought of it, just about hearing the words in the pounding of her blood through her ears as she approached him.

Of course, that could also have been the sight of him standing before her, naked and clean, in all his muscled, sinuous glory.  He looked like a movie star, to her, young and gorgeous and so far out of her league that she still couldn\'t understand why he\'d looked at her twice.  She\'d given up fighting it and started luxuriating in it, though; her face ached from smiling and the rest of her just ached, but it was the best kind of sore she\'d ever, ever felt.

[Trillian]

He reached out to brush the back of his knuckles against her upper arm when she got close.  "You don\'t have to go anywhere," he told her, wondering what could be siren-calling her away from his presence.  "Call your friends, tell them you\'re alright and you\'ve found something better."  He smiled at her then, just before his gaze dropped to look her over before it met her face.

He didn\'t want to hear any opposition that she might have to that so his hand, close to her face, rose further and he pressed a finger to her lips, stroking the lower one even as he spoke again, interrupting anything she might\'ve thought to say.

"I\'ve only just arrived to this city, and I need someone by my side.  That could be you," he said to her, wanting a lackey for all intensive purposes.  He gave her a warm smile in attempt to sway her reasoning, knowing she was attracted to his physical appearance.

[Existentially Odd]

"It... could be," she answered playfully, attempting to duck around him because the urge to go to the toilet was getting stronger and stronger by the second, "but I have work and so I also need to go do that every night.  Hell, if being by your side paid for the rent on my van and kept me fed, I\'d be all for it, but I didn\'t think this was a paying position," she told him pointedly, a spark of challenge flaring in her eyes, daring him to offer to pay her to stay and thereby call her a whore.

[Trillian]

He let her move past him but stood, musing her words while he listened to her sit upon the toilet seat and relieved herself.

"The setup is inconvenient," he said at last, thinking of how far her living quarters was from the penthouse.  He would allow her to have her own place if she lived in this building, but as it was he could see no other way for her to be at his side unless she was literally at his side.

He turned on his heel and stared at her flatly now from the bathroom doorway, even as she wiped herself and stared back at him.

"You don\'t take up much space," he said to her, in case this was something she didn\'t know, "and this apartment is paid for."  He didn\'t know of such things as rent, or the requirement for money in relation to food.  Once he did know, Jack wouldn\'t have any trouble getting it, but right now it wasn\'t a priority.  Obtaining someone loyal was.  "Stay here instead."

[Existentially Odd]

"You... want me to live with you?" she asked uncertainly, getting up and flushing the toilet before going to wash her hands.  She was about to get in the shower so the handwashing wasn\'t strictly necessary, but it was a ritual she fell back on now, out of habit, when her mind was busy whirring through the implications of his orders.  Her heart felt like it was yammering in her very throat and she knew it was excitement at the prospect of living here... but it was crazy!  She\'d not even known the guy twenty-four hours!

Hannah turned to face Jack, gnawing delicately on the inside of her lower lip and looking very confused - despite the light dancing in her eyes.  "I\'d live here... but I\'d still have to go out and work and pay my rent but... I could come back here afterwards, every night?" she asked, hoping this was exactly what he meant and that he\'d agree.  It would be inconvenient to travel down to the carny grounds if she had to walk, but she could work out a bus route that suited, or maybe Jack could drive and he\'d just not bothered last night (quite frankly, the amount of things she did know about the man were far outweighed by what she didn\'t know about him).

[Trillian]

The tone in which she asked her question made the concept seem important somehow.  He lifted his chin a little, regarding her as she moved to the sink, listening to her justifications of work and rent.  He was about to oppose them but let it slide - there was no need for her to go to work and keep up the pretense of her own living quarters when she was living with him, but such a move was instinctively known to be too much too soon.

"As long as I don\'t get lonely, or hungry," he began before grinning at her, "everything will work out wonderfully."

He even had a car to give her, should she wish it, for he didn\'t know how to drive the blasted thing.

[Existentially Odd]

She smiled a blissful smile and strolled over to him, wrapping arms about his waist and gazing adoringly up at the breathtakingly beautiful blonde.  "I will do my absolute best to see that you won\'t, I promise," she vowed loyally, and leaned up on her tippy toes to kiss him.  She thought she might already be a little bit in love with him and she knew she would do her best to make him the happiest vampire around.

~*~

A very short time (unbeknownst to him) after Hannah drove away in Ben\'s proffered car, Kerr pulled into his usual parking space at the Capital Building.  He frowned at the empty park beside his, immediately concerned that the demon was gallivanting about in his beloved\'s car and that the beast wasn\'t in the apartment.  Yet there was still that sire/fledgling bond that told him Ben was nearby so... he was baffled.  Warily, he locked his car and rode the elevator up, still wearing the scowl.

He\'d had a few nights to come to terms with things - again, it had felt like hideously familiar territory and he\'d done a bit of crying, a lot of lamenting and whole truckload of pondering the future.  He\'d made the decision that he would go and see Sabrina the witch to see if she could help him out, but that he had to do a bit of housekeeping before then.

Even though he didn\'t want to be in the same apartment as the demon, he also didn\'t really trust him to be on his own and had thought up a few good excuses for calling in to see that things were as they should be.  For a start, he doubted that the parasite had any clue about how Ben used his credit card (and he\'d specifically dropped the amount of money in Ben\'s account so that the fucker couldn\'t spend at will once he was taught) to buy things, how the shutters in the apartment worked and that he shouldn\'t feed from the neighbours.  Hell, Kerr wasn\'t even sure that the demon was feeding properly and wanted to be sure that he wasn\'t killing every victim he drank from, causing Ben to be hauled before him at work imminently (and wouldn\'t that be ironic?), or even just scaring the general populace with his ungainly vampirism.

Kerr also had a few more clothes he wanted to take out of the wardrobe but that was beside the point; the focus of this visit was checking up on NotBen and letting him know how he could be contacted in an emergency (ancient demons likely had no clue about telephones, let alone mobiles) and that he would always be around.  Watching.

Deciding that it was his right, the Irishman therefore used his own key to let himself into the apartment, feeling the connection to Ben and knowing he was there but coming through the door and looking around anyway.  "Hello?" he called, his greeting succinct and not carrying any of the trepidation he was actually feeling (considering how wrung out he was over this whole ordeal, feelings weren\'t something he was overly fond of right now, anyway).

[Trillian]

Jack was trying, unsuccessfully, to unlock Ben\'s memories about the computer in Kerr\'s office.  The little shit was hiding from him, taking everything with him and had crawled into a mental space that Jack couldn\'t reach even with a lot of concentration - enough to even give himself a headache.  Once he started bleeding from his nose he\'d had to stop pursuing the memories and try and figure things out the regular way instead.

Turning it on had been easy though he\'d ignored the mouse in order to press buttons on the keyboard instead until the computer had started pulling up windows for him to look at.  He\'d managed to work out the internet and was typing all manner of things into the search engine, using the menu or tabbing through links.  So far he\'d looked up the city he was in by typing its name into the address bar while something called google prompted him.

He was getting bored and frustrated with how difficult things were to navigate when he felt a most unusual sensation of intimacy, his mind conjuring up images of Kerr - but it was more than that, it was like smelling someone\'s scent through his mind and body, not with his nose.  When Kerr entered the apartment and called out, Jack figured it must have something to do with the blood bond between them.

Instantly he was on his feet and abandoning the office in order to seek out Kerr, not bothering to quell or analyse the joy that rose in his chest at the thought of seeing him again.  As soon as he stepped out into the main room - dressed in dark blue jocks and nothing more - he had a smile for Kerr.

"I\'m pleased you have decided to return," he said, his shining eyes revealing the truth in this statement even before it was spoken aloud.  He closed the distance between them, the desire to touch and be touched by Kerr was too great to ignore.

[Existentially Odd]

Kerr - dressed informally in jeans, a snugly-fitting, untucked T-shirt (eerily, in the same dark blue colour as his fledgling\'s underwear) and sneakers - was rather bowled over by the other\'s appearance, feeling mightily overdressed on this occasion.  Considering all the fancy clothing they\'d bought when last together, \'almost nude\' was the last thing he\'d expected to be seeing the blonde wearing.

"Uh... hi," he said in an awkward monotone, pushing the door shut just in time to brace himself for the hug that came at him.  He made some small effort at returning the embrace, reaching up to pat awkwardly at Ben\'s bare back - until the pleasure he got from touching his lover\'s bare skin with his hands threatened to swamp him and he knew he had to stop.  He dropped his hands to his sides, expecting his fledgling to let him go in turn.

"I just... came to get a few things.  And check you were... okay," he said with no genuine concern in his voice and a formality that wouldn\'t be quelled.  He really wished the creature wouldn\'t be so familiar with him, it made things very difficult.  On the one hand, his body was attuned to Ben\'s, ready and easily stimulated by its proximity, its smell, its feel, wanting to touch, kiss, make love and basically revel in the blonde\'s presence.  The parts of him that weren\'t so uncouth and based solely on base, sexual instinct, however, were repulsed by suh thoughts and wanting as little to do with \'Jack\' as possible.

"Is everything... alright?"

[Trillian]

Jack found himself nuzzling against Kerr, taking in the scent that was the other vampire and liking the way he was held in return as soon as he\'d wrapped his arms around him.  The girl was a poor substitute, now that he had what he really wanted standing before him, but as soon as Kerr explained his presence here was only temporary he knew he would have to make do with her.  Perhaps she would surprise him.

"I cannot control the computer with ease," he said to Kerr, figuring Ben\'s plan to keep information from him was a tragically ill-thought out one, for it was simple enough to get instruction elsewhere.  It bothered him though, that the boy locked away inside of him could.

[Existentially Odd]

"Aaaaaand that would be the first thing I\'m taking with me," Kerr responded airily, trying to ignore the nuzzling and wait for NotBen to get tired of touching him.  He didn\'t feel like making a big deal about it, but he rather hoped the demon would take the silent hint (because if he said something along the lines of wanting to be released, he was afraid the truth of his feelings would come through in his tone somehow; he couldn\'t truthfully say he wanted Ben to let go of him, after all).

Instead, he looked over the blonde head upon his chest and made a conciliatory offer.  "If you want your own, you can buy one - you have access to the money I gave y-Ben, so I\'ll explain how that works - but you can\'t have mine, because you could destroy my files and even if I\'ve got backup DVDs burned, I think it\'s best you play around with something that\'s a bit more... uh... not mine," he finished limply, unsure how to put it because he didn\'t want to antagonise the demon by calling him an untrained monkey when it came to computers, but he thought it highly likely that he was.

[Trillian]

Jack found himself a frown and wore it darkly as Kerr declared he would be taking the computer away.  Even though he\'d just about given up on the thing in his frustration didn\'t mean that Kerr should remove it from him.  He\'d made progress, without memories to help him either, and believed that he\'d done very well, considering.  He also had Hannah to show him, later, but wouldn\'t be able to do that if there was nothing in the office for her to show him with.  Still, as he pondered all of Kerr\'s words, he\'d fixated on the fact of Kerr\'s promise of money.

"The plastic card," he said, "of credit," he finished after remembering the term for it.  "Credit card," he said at the end, reciting a phrase that he\'d heard while on the shopping spree.  At first he hadn\'t bothered to look at how Kerr had arranged for the clothes to be delivered from the merchants to himself, but after a while he realised that payment was taking place and there was some kind of invisible system that kept track of spendings.

When Jack had been in possession of his own body, the barter system had been in full effect and operating well.

His hands slid eagerly over Kerr\'s chest as he pondered the instruction he would receive from the vampire, touching the material in circles and liking the sensation of it against his palms.  Clothing was so much nicer these days, softer, finer and more interesting.

[Existentially Odd]

"Yes," Kerr replied curtly, growing impatient with the demon\'s inability - or unwillingness - to take his subtle hints and keep touching him, but determined not to provoke an argument.  "Ben has his own.  You won\'t want for much, so there\'s not an unlimited amount of money at your disposal, but feel free to buy what you need," he advised, stressing the word \'need\' over \'want\'.  He got the impression that the demon was materialistic in the extreme and already had visions of fifty pairs of leather pants dancing a can-can in his wardrobe, obliterating all the suits and other nice clothes he had at his end.

"How, uh... have you been going with uh... feeding?" he enquired, the tongue stud getting a workout by his teeth as he bit on it and swallowed the order to let him the fuck go he wanted to spit out.  Were his own hands by his side not enough?

[Trillian]

He didn\'t like the way Kerr was speaking stiltedly with him.  He understood that Kerr was angry for his taking possession of Ben\'s body, but surely he understood that it would be the same as being with Ben if he remained with Jack?

It was the question moving away from the topic of purchasing whatever he might need that sparked his interest.  A slow, knowing smile crept upon his face at how he\'d managed to persuade Hannah into being a willing donor for him - much nicer and fresher than using the stock supplies in the fridge.  He\'d always had a penchant for a warm and willing body however, it wouldn\'t be difficult to obtain as many as he pleased, he thought arrogantly.

"I\'ve fed," he informed Kerr bluntly, the smile lucscious and desiring as he looked at Kerr, remembering the sex that had come with it.  He wondered if Kerr and Ben fed from each other during the sexual act and now he regarded the vampire pensively.