fic: "a taste of you won't hurt"
author: schlicky
pairing: Brad/Ray
rating: NC-17
word count: 4,735 words
summary/warnings: Vampire!AU. Prompt picture is here.
notes: for blincolin. Thank you, dear. ♥
so take me where they cannot see us
and lay me down on coffin rich dirt
tonight I am a Transylvanian
a taste of you won’t hurt
“Are you sure you’re going to be able to handle it, Bradley?”
Brad rolls his eyes and puts the car in park, hidden in the back corner of the short-term parking lot. Ray is sitting in the passenger seat, grinning from ear to ear, dimples on show. Brad leans over and kisses one.
“I think I’ll be fine,” he answers.
“But it’s a whole week without your Ray-Ray.”
“I’ll find some way to manage,” Brad replies, trying not to smile. He’s more than happy to return the kiss Ray plants on him in return. He is less amused when Ray reaches across the center console to grope him through his shorts. “You dirty fucking cheater,” Brad accuses when he pulls away from Ray’s mouth.
“You’ll be fine,” Ray tells him and makes a gesture like he’s jacking off. “That’s why God gave you a right hand.”
“What the fuck ever. Get out of the car.”
Ray laughs at him but he shoves the door open and climbs out. He circles the hood of the car and leans in through the open window to give Brad another kiss. This one is softer. “Don’t forget to come pick me up, you fuckhead.”
“Yeah, yeah. Tell your mom I said hi,” Brad answers. Ray’s mom isn’t Brad’s biggest fan. Something about corrupting her baby even though it’s not like Ray was pure and innocent to start. He was already a filthy fucking homo by the time Brad got around to him. Ray’s words not his.
Brad had worried about her less than enthusiastic response and what that might mean in terms of DADT, but Ray had immediately waved off his concerns. “She may not be crazy about the idea of you fucking her son up the ass, but she’s not going to ruin your life over it, Brad.”
Ray flashes him another huge grin and reaches through the window to pinch Brad’s nipple through his t-shirt. “I’m sure she’ll be thrilled,” he tells him and dances away from the car before Brad can retaliate.
“I fucking hate you,” Brad says, but his voice is fond. Ray’s laugh carries across the parking lot as he heads toward the terminals.
--
It’s warm but not uncomfortably so. His hand slides over the familiar lines of Ray’s body next to him, the sleepy morning haze making the movements slow and unhurried. He presses close and leans in to steal a kiss. Ray’s mouth opens under his and Ray spreads his legs some in a clear invitation. Brad smiles.
The shrill ringing of his phone is startling. Brad drags his eyes open and glances blearily around for the stupid thing.
“This had better be really fucking good,” he mumbles into the phone, voice still thick with sleep.
Ray laughs softly into his ear. “Asleep already?” he asks. “That’s fucking sad, you know. It’s not even midnight there.”
Brad glances at the cable box. 11:42 PM - almost two in Missouri. He reaches for the remote and turns off the Indiana Jones movie he fell asleep watching. “Your mom asleep?” he asks.
“Mm, yeah,” Ray answers. “Thought I was gonna have to spike her sweet tea to get her to go to bed.”
Brad hears the rustle of sheets and the unmistakable pleased sigh that falls from Ray’s lips. His mouth tips up into a crooked smile. “Are you jacking off in your childhood bedroom with your mom down the hall?” he asks.
“Yeah.” Ray keeps his voice quiet, breathy. “You wanna help out, or are you just gonna listen in and let me do all the work?”
Brad turns off the light in the living room and pads into their bedroom, sliding between the cool sheets. He slips his free hand under the waistband of his sweatpants and wraps his fingers around himself. It doesn’t take long for his cock to harden and fill with his hand stroking slowly and Ray’s noises of pleasure in his ear.
“Sounds like you’re doing okay on your own,” he answers finally.
“Fucker,” Ray mutters, but it doesn’t do anything to dissuade him. The soft moans and whimpers continue until Brad hears Ray’s breath hitch in his throat, the sign that he’s there, that he’s ready.
“That’s it, Ray. Come on,” Brad murmurs. The strangled noise Ray makes as he comes sends a jolt straight to Brad’s dick and his strokes become more determined, less lazy.
“Shit, Brad.”
The hoarse way Ray says his name does it. Brad isn’t quiet because there isn’t anyone there to overhear him. His skin is still tingling when he hears Ray’s smothered yawn. Brad huffs a soft laugh. “Go to sleep, Ray. It’s late, and we both know your mom is going to get you up early.”
“Yeah.”
“Give me a call tomorrow,” Brad tells him.
“I’ll try,” Ray says. “You know how Mom is.”
Brad does. It’s better if Ray doesn’t make rough edges worse by spending too much time paying attention to his phone and to Brad than to her. “Okay. G’night.”
“Night, Brad.”
He doesn’t hang up the phone until he hears the click of Ray hanging up first. He stretches out in bed and has the fleeting thought that he doesn’t like how empty it is before he goes back to sleep.
--
There’s a horror movie marathon on one of the channels and Brad doesn’t have anything better to do than to sit down and watch it. They’re certainly horrifying, but not in a good way. He shakes his head and rolls his eyes and decides if the girl is dumb enough to wander around a foggy graveyard at night by herself when a psychotic vampire is on the loose, then the dumb bitch deserves to be drained dry.
Sure enough, the next shot is of the vampire coming out of the fog, but Brad is so disgusted with the predictability he changes the channel. It’s not as much fun to watch when Ray isn’t sitting there making fun of it with him.
That thought makes Brad glance at his phone, but it’s still blank. No new texts or voicemails or missed calls. Aside from the initial “I made it okay” text and the phone call the other night, Brad hasn’t gotten more than a couple of texts from Ray.
He hasn’t inundated Ray’s phone with texts, but a response to some of the ones he did send would’ve been nice.
Realistically, he knows it’s probably just because the cell phone reception in the middle of buttfuck nowhere sucks balls, and Ray’s mom no doubt has bitched about Ray using his phone too much even though he hasn’t used it hardly at all.
Brad knows this. But he’s still a trifle disgruntled. A hey, how are you, miss you in return wouldn’t fucking kill him. Those are easy to send in the privacy of the bathroom, or before crawling into bed at night.
He’s most of the way through a rerun of last week’s MythBusters when his phone lights up on the table and the incoming text alert sounds. Brad smiles involuntarily when he sees Ray’s name and the familiar number on the ID.
The smile slips off his face when he opens the text and reads it.
Brad, I am so fucking sorry.
His stomach sinks down to his toes. True, he’d been sort of irked by Ray’s lack of response, but the wording of this apology seems hugely disproportionate. Brad tries to put the building panic back in its dark corner and thumbs the reply button.
Why are you sorry?
A full thirty minutes later, Brad still doesn’t have an answer. He wipes his clammy palms off on the back of his jeans and tries not to climb out of his own skin, filled with worry and dread, his mind racing with a million different reasons for why he’d get an apology like that.
None of them are good.
The following morning when he wakes up and still hasn’t heard anything from Ray, he dials Walt. Walt answers on the third ring, his voice warm and friendly, like always. “Hey, Brad.”
“Hey.” He never calls Walt just to talk and shoot the shit like they’re sixteen year-old girls gossiping the way Ray does, so he just gets right to the point. “Have you heard from Ray by any chance?”
Walt makes a noise and there’s a pause, like he’s finishing chewing something before he speaks again. “Ain’t he in Missouri?” he asks.
“Yeah,” Brad answers. “Have you heard from him?”
“No, man. I haven’t talked to him since the beginning of the week. I was sort of enjoying the miracle of silence,” he jokes. The fact that Brad stays absolutely silent following that seems to set off some sort of alarm in Walt’s head. “Why? Is something wrong? When is he supposed to fly back?”
Brad lets out a breath and stares at the calendar on the fridge. R 3:15 PM OCN is printed neatly in red inside the square with tomorrow’s date.
“Tomorrow,” he answers. He doesn’t want Walt to worry needlessly so he adds, more lightly than he feels, “The dumb fucking hick probably forgot to charge his phone.” He hears Walt’s laugh in his ear but it doesn’t make him feel any better.
“You’re probably not far off on that one, Brad.”
“Hey. Just. If you hear from him, let me know, okay?” There’s a small part of him that hates to ask that. It makes him feel sick, makes him feel like Walt is going to think he’s some dependent piece of shit that can’t handle being alone for a week.
But this kind of apology from Ray and the ensuing radio silence is unusual.
“Sure, Brad.” Walt sounds perplexed by the request, but Brad knows he’ll follow through without asking too many questions.
“Thanks. Later, Walt.” Brad doesn’t wait for a response before he hangs up the phone.
--
Brad gets to the airport early. He shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans and tries to relax even though his stomach has started churning and he’s contemplating throwing up in the potted fern a few feet away from him. He thinks about getting a cup of coffee while he waits, but he’s already had almost an entire pot of it today, and he’s sure the addition of more caffeine isn’t going to help his nerves any.
The arrivals and departures board changes and ‘landed’ shows up next to the flight number from San Diego International. It’s one of those small propeller planes that Ray always jokes is probably going to crash in a ball of fire at the end of the runway. Brad usually punches him.
Five minutes pass. Five turns to ten, turns to fifteen. People start to file past the security lines, and Brad keeps an eye out for Ray.
The trail of people thins to nothing. Ray doesn’t show.
Brad checks his phone. There’s nothing from Ray that indicates he missed his flight out of St. Louis, or the connection in San Diego.
It feels simultaneously like his chest is too tight and like a rock has settled in the pit of his stomach.
The potted fern is looking better and better. He waits another fifteen minutes just to be sure that maybe Ray wasn’t the last one off the plane, or desperately needed to piss, or slipped and fell and cracked his head open.
Eventually Brad has to concede that Ray wasn’t on the plane.
--
His mom answers the door, takes one look at him and drags him inside. She sits him down at the kitchen table and sets an entire cherry pie in front of him.
It almost makes him smile. Almost. Brad doesn’t eat any of it. He’s not even remotely hungry.
She asks him questions that Brad doesn’t have any answer to - what happened, what do you mean Ray wasn’t on the plane, why wouldn’t he have called.
Brad tells her about the apology. He speculates aloud that it’s Ashley all over again except this time the significant other and the best friend are one and the same. That Ray must have found someone else, must be apologizing for cheating on him. Or maybe Ray’s mom has finally managed to plant some seed of doubt in her son’s head, and Ray has decided just to leave him.
Jean Colbert sounds firm and sure of her words when she tells Brad he’s a certifiable idiot for even thinking it, but it doesn’t make Brad feel better.
Not even fucking close.
It’s well after dark by the time he heads for home. Brad parks in his usual spot in the garage and closes the door behind him, walking into the house. He’s looking for something strong to drink when his phone buzzes against the surface of the counter where he’d set it down with his keys.
Brad stares at it for a long minute before he crosses the tile and picks it up. It’s from Ray.
I’m sorry. I need more time to figure this out.
Brad’s heart sinks. It’s a miracle he manages to put his phone back down instead of throwing it across the kitchen.
It’s an expensive brand of whiskey, but Brad barely tastes it as it goes down.
--
His mom must have broken down and called Poke since he has refused to answer his phone for the last three days, because Poke shows up on his doorstep and won’t take no for an answer.
Brad only gives in because he thinks an hour with Poke might buy him three more miserable days to himself.
Poke drives them to a bar a few blocks over, one of their usual haunts. Poke doesn’t ask any questions. He just buys Brad a few beers and a few shots and talks about inane bullshit while Brad frowns down at the surface of the bar.
“I don’t fucking get it,” Brad says eventually.
Poke glances at him and realizes quickly that Brad isn’t referring to the dirty joke Poke was just telling him. He shrugs his shoulders and rubs some condensation off of his glass. “I don’t know, dawg. Has that white boy ever made sense?”
The light joke falls far short, and Brad shoots Poke a glare. “Tony.”
Poke holds his hands up in a placating gesture. “I ain’t trying to start shit, Brad,” he says.
They’re both quiet for a few more minutes, and Brad kills another beer.
“It doesn’t make sense.”
“I think you need to try to calm down, Brad,” Poke says. He glances around to see if anyone is within hearing distance and ignores the incredulous look Brad is giving him. “You know how he feels about you.”
Poke knows about he and Ray, of course, but they’ve never discussed it aside from that initial conversation. He’d told Poke, and Poke had been adamant that he never wanted to hear any details about anything. He looks sort of uncomfortable talking about it now, but his words are still sure.
“I’m not saying it’s not a shitty thing to do, dawg, but he said he needed time. You know he ain’t the type to cut and run, especially not with you. He’ll come around. You just have to be patient, man. Sending him threatening texts ain’t gonna convince him to come home any sooner,” Poke says.
“I’m not sending him threatening text messages,” Brad snaps. He’s given up on sending any at all, but the ones he had sent had just been asking Ray to come home so they could talk about whatever it was that was keeping him away.
Poke doesn’t say much else and lets Brad settle into a surly silence. He closes out the tab after another hour and pulls Brad off his bar stool. “Come on, Iceman.”
As he follows Poke to the door, Brad swears for a second that he sees Ray sitting in the corner. He stops and turns to look again but of course Ray isn’t actually there. Brad wants him to be there so badly he’s starting to see shit.
“Brad? You okay, man?”
Brad shakes his head and digs the heels of his palms into his eyes for a minute. “No,” he answers honestly. He feels Poke’s hand fall on his elbow and he allows himself to be pulled toward the door.
“Come on, Brad,” Poke says gently. “Let’s get you home. You can sleep it off and you’ll feel better in the morning.”
Brad seriously doubts that.
--
He has dinner at his mom’s only because she threatens to burn his house down if he doesn’t. Brad’s pretty sure she wouldn’t follow through with it, but he goes anyway. The conversation at the dinner table stays well away from any subject even remotely concerning Ray. It somehow makes it worse.
Brad eats even though he’s not hungry. He’s not up to listening to the scolding that would ensue if he didn’t. He manages to get out without leftovers, the bike serving as a convenient excuse. He can’t take any leftovers if he has no way of storing them on the way home.
As he pulls the bike into the driveway, Brad’s heart nearly leaps out of his throat because Ray is sitting on the front steps. There’s a brief rush of relief that’s quickly replaced by a burning, white-hot anger. He kills the engine and climbs off his bike, yanking the helmet off.
Ray pushes to his feet and takes a few tentative steps away from the porch, toward Brad. He looks like shit, but Brad thinks he’s about to look a hell of a lot worse.
Brad’s anger gets the best of him and he punches Ray hard across the cheek, and Ray’s head snaps to the side. Better to show the anger than the hurt. “Where the fuck have you been?”
Ray touches his mouth and spits out some blood.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Brad is nearly yelling.
“Brad--”
Brad shoves hard at Ray’s shoulder hard enough that Ray has to take a step or two back to keep his balance. “No. Do you have any idea how fucking worried I’ve been? How fucking horrible it felt not knowing where the fuck you were, or what was wrong?”
“Brad, keep your voice down--”
“Fuck you. If you’re leaving, just get your shit and fucking go.” Brad starts to push past Ray but stops when Ray’s hand closes around his elbow. He wrenches his arm away. “I’m serious.”
Faster than the blink of an eye, Brad is flat on his back in the grass, gasping for breath as the air is knocked out of his lungs, stars dancing behind his eyes when the back of his head makes contact with the ground. Ray is straddling his ribs, his hands pinning Brad’s to the ground.
It takes Brad a couple of minutes to get his breath back and to clear his head. Ray bends over him, frowning, the grip he has on Brad’s wrists strong and unrelenting.
“Stop being a douchebag,” Ray tells him.
“I’m being a douche--” But the words die in his throat when he gets a good look at Ray above him. “You’re--”
“Yeah.” Ray releases Brad’s hands and sits back on his heels, eyeing Brad warily. “I told you we needed to talk,” he says softly.
Brad starts to push himself up and Ray shifts until he’s straddling Brad’s lap instead, his weight settled on Brad’s thighs. Brad swallows hard and brings his right hand up to brush his fingers against Ray’s lips. Ray parts them a little and sits still while Brad touches the pointed tip of one of the fangs lightly. He flicks his gaze up from Ray’s mouth to his eyes.
There are a thousand different thoughts running through his head, and Brad isn’t sure where to start.
“Maybe we should move off the front lawn,” Ray suggests quietly.
Brad swallows again. “I don’t - I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he manages. “Ray, I - I can’t - I need some time.”
“Okay.” Ray’s voice sounds strangled, devastated, and it slams Brad hard in the chest. “How - how much time?”
“I don’t know,” Brad answers. He pushes gently at Ray’s hip and climbs to his feet when Ray slides off his lap. Brad walks stiffly to the front door and unlocks it. When he closes the door behind him, he can see Ray still sitting in the front yard, shoulders shaking.
--
It takes him two days.
When Brad opens the front door slowly, he’s unsurprised to find Ray sitting on the front porch. What does surprise him, though, is the dried blood smeared across Ray’s cheeks and on his hands. “What happened?” he asks quietly.
Ray looks up at him and scrubs the back of one wrist over his cheek. “Vampires cry blood instead of tears,” he answers.
“How long have you been sitting out here?” He has a feeling he already knows the answer.
“Since sundown,” Ray replies.
Brad nods his head and reaches a hand down, wiggling his fingers a little. “Come on.”
Ray looks up at him and slowly takes Brad’s hand, letting Brad help him to his feet. He lingers in the doorway after Brad has gone inside.
“What are you doing?” Brad asks, turning to look at Ray still standing on the porch, bathed in the eerie yellow light from the lamp by the door.
“I can’t come in unless you invite me,” Ray answers quietly. The way he says it is like a punch to the gut, and Brad takes a step back toward him.
“It’s your house, too. Of course you can come in,” Brad says. He leads Ray into the kitchen and runs one of the dishtowels under the faucet, getting it damp. He wipes the dried blood off of Ray’s cheeks and gives him the towel to wipe his hands with afterwards.
“Brad--”
“Come here.” Brad reaches out and pulls Ray to him. It’s then that Brad realizes Ray is as tense and nervous as he is. Ray has probably been just as worried and just as terrified, if not more so. “I’m glad you came home,” Brad tells him softly.
“I would never leave you, Brad.” Ray looks up at him and Brad smiles softly, pushing Ray’s hair back away from his face.
“I know. I’m sorry.” Brad slides his arms around Ray’s shoulders and hugs him tightly. “I’m sorry. I was angry and scared and … surprised. I just needed time to process it.”
Ray nods his head and wraps his arms around Brad. They stand there for a few minutes, just touching, before Ray asks softly, “Do you still want me?”
Brad hates that Ray would ever think otherwise. He cups Ray’s face and kisses him, confident and sure. Maybe the only thing he’s ever been more certain of was joining the Marines.
“Of course I still want you, fucknuts,” he says. Ray laughs at that and it makes Brad smile, makes it feel a little less like there’s a fist closed around his heart. “I love you, you idiot.”
“I love you, too,” Ray mumbles it into Brad’s collarbone and follows more than willingly when Brad starts to pull him toward the bedroom.
They strip each other slowly, like this is somehow new even though it’s not. The only thing unfamiliar about Ray’s skin is that it’s cool to the touch when Ray is normally so warm. Everything else is how it should be, how Brad has memorized it.
Brad stretches out on his back in the middle of their bed and tries to remember to breathe. He closes his eyes when Ray’s mouth grazes his jaw and moves down to his neck. His heart starts to pound faster, but Ray just continues down the length of Brad’s body until he’s situated between Brad’s legs.
Ray spreads Brad’s knees apart and runs his mouth along the inside of Brad’s leg, from knee to groin, tongue darting out to taste salty skin.
“You’re scared.” It’s not a question.
Brad tries to will his legs to stop shaking, but they don’t. He nods. “Yeah, a little,” he admits.
Ray smiles. He kisses the inside of Brad’s thigh, and Brad’s cock twitches where it’s curved against his stomach.
“Fuck, Ray.”
“Shhh.” Ray sucks a mark onto the pale skin of Brad’s inner thigh and then moves back up Brad’s body to kiss his lips. “I’m not ever going to hurt you, Brad.”
Brad pushes his fingers into Ray’s mouth to touch his fangs. He takes a deep breath and nods his head. “I know you won’t.”
Ray grins at him. It shouldn’t be reassuring because of the fangs, but it is. The only thing different about the sex is that when Ray pins him, Brad can’t move unless Ray wants him to. Brad’s surprised to discover that he likes that a lot.
Brad thrusts his hips up as Ray slides down and he flexes against Ray’s hands on his wrists. “Oh, Christ, Ray.”
“Brad - I want - Can I?” Ray noses along the line of Brad’s neck. Brad tilts his head back and away, offering the vein in his neck up. It hurts when Ray’s fangs sink into his skin, but the blissful, almost orgasmic moan from Ray makes it worth the pain.
Brad gasps and arches his back, and the needy noises coming out of Ray as he drinks from him pushes Brad over the edge. It seems like the little bursts of pleasure across his skin last forever and then he goes boneless against the mattress, panting. He peels his eyes open and turns his head, his mouth seeking Ray’s.
Ray’s mouth and tongue have that metallic, coppery taste because of his blood, but Brad doesn’t even care. He’s more then content to spend a few minutes exchanging long, slow kisses.
Ray uses the point of one of his fangs to cut his finger open, smearing the blood over the puncture wounds on Brad’s neck so that they heal.
Brad watches Ray’s fangs retract, fighting sleep. Aside from Ray being paler than before, it’s almost like nothing is different at all.
Ray smiles at him and rubs his thumb along Brad’s neck. “Go to sleep, Brad,” he says fondly. “I know you’re tired, and losing the blood didn’t help.”
He would argue against that, but his eyelids are already heavy, and Brad doesn’t fight it much longer. When he wakes up, Ray is still lying in bed next to him, staring up at the ceiling. He reaches over and runs his fingers lightly over Ray’s cheekbone. There should be a bruise from the punch he threw two days ago, but there’s not.
Ray slowly turns his head to look at Brad and he looks lost. “What the fuck are we gonna do, Brad?”
Brad doesn’t have an answer for that. He wishes like hell he did.
“I don’t know,” he says. Brad turns to look at the alarm clock. It tells him it’s almost five thirty in the morning. “Where are you going to go for the day?”
“Not very far,” Ray answers. He goes back to staring up at the ceiling for a couple of silent minutes. “I’m so sorry, Brad,” he says softly.
“Why are you sorry?” Brad moves closer on the mattress and hooks one of his legs over both of Ray’s.
“Because of this,” Ray says, and Brad is startled by how choked Ray’s voice sounds. “Because I fucked everything up.”
“Hey.” Brad pushes himself up onto his elbow and looks down at Ray. He wipes at the fresh trail of blood on Ray’s cheek. “You didn’t fuck up anything. No, it’s not exactly what either of us planned, but we’ll do whatever we have to do to make it work. We’ll make do.”
Ray gives him a small, hopeful smile and returns the kiss Brad presses to his lips. “We’ll make do,” he agrees.