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“What now?” John asked.
The First of the Fallen licked a finger and turned the page of his book. “Hm?”
John got a look at the cover. Milton’s Paradise Lost . What a stuck up fucking wanker. He probably wasn’t even reading it, the tosser. Just picked something suitably fucking symbolic to have in his hands when John walked in.
“I asked what now , you fucking…” John’s voice rasped to a halt, and he had to swallow, hard.
The First looked up, amusement curling across his features. “Don’t cry, John.”
“I did my side of things.” John lit a cigarette. “Now, are you going to drag me to Hell? Or just wait and gloat until it’s my time?”
The First laughed, low and syrupy, and John hated him, hated him so much he could fucking scream. “You’ve just watched your entire life land in the shit-pot, Johnny, knowing it’s all your fault, and you think I’m going to do you the favor of killing you?”
John tried for a customary smirk, and managed a grimace. “It was worth a try.”
“You poor thing,” the First incinerated the book in his hand and rose from his chair, shaking the ash from his palm onto the carpet.
John didn’t look at him. He stared at the cherry of his cigarette until he could blame the stinging in his eyes on that.
The First cupped his face with one huge, calloused hand. If John had been stronger, he would have spat in his face, or bitten his fingers, or at least lurched away.
As it was—as he was—John just stood there. The warmth of the First’s hand was too close to comforting, after so long without a caring touch.
He’d gotten complacent, with Dani. Gotten used to kisses on the cheek, and holding hands, and sleeping with a warm body beside him.
Now she was gone, along with anyone else John could turn to, and all John had was this.
“Poor thing,” the First repeated, more quietly, with something like pity in his voice, and as false and manipulative as the softness edging his words had to be, it caught in John’s throat and squeezed.
“Not playing your games,” John choked, as if he hadn’t already played, and lost. As if his soul, ragged and worthless as it was, hadn’t been ante’d up the moment he dialed the number the First had given him.
The First leaned closer, close enough that John could smell the slaughterhouse on his breath, “Oh, John,” he purred, “you really fucked this one up, didn’t you?”
John couldn’t do anything. Couldn’t even nod or shake his head, with the way the First was holding his jaw.
With gentle fingers, the First plucked the cigarette from John’s lips and took a drag. He made a face. “How do you stand these things?”
Too quickly to evade, he pressed the cigarette into John’s neck, grinding it out against his pulse-point.
John groaned, mostly in pain.
“Really,” the First scoffed, as if he somehow hadn’t expected it. “Of all the things your daddy did to you, that’s what made an impact?”
John opened his mouth to retort. He even had a quip in mind— funny coming from you, mate, I don’t think you’ve done a single thing your old man didn’t think of first— but all that came out was a strangled sort of whine.
“You’re pathetic,” the First said, but he didn’t seem very pleased about it. “What did you do , John?”
His hand was still on John’s face, almost tender. He brushed a thumb across John’s forehead, probably the faint scar above his eyebrow. His other hand dangled at his side, still holding the stubbed-out cigarette.
“You really loved them, didn’t you?”
He sounded… angry. Angry at John, as if he had somehow failed him by caring. Any other time, John would have been ecstatic to have successfully pissed him off, but John didn’t feel anything, at the moment.
“Every time, every goddamn time—” the First let go of John’s face and turned his back on him, pacing two wide steps across the room and then turning back, raking one hand through his hair. “You love, and you lose, and it ruins you every time, and you still—!”
Finally, fucking finally , John realized what had spurred this layer of fixation.
“Well, I haven’t had all of human history to sulk, have I?” John said, lighting a cigarette. “And me dad didn’t love me from the start. I never had to lose that.”
The First panted a breath. “Enough with the fucking smoking, you pissant.”
John held out the cigarette. “Try it again. They grow on you.”
The First stepped closer again, but instead of taking the cigarette, he smacked it out of John’s hands, pinned John against the wall, and shoved his tongue in his mouth.
He’d probably expected resistance, maybe even a fight, but John, half to see what the First would do, kissed back.
The First pulled away before John did, face twisted in a snarl to cover up his shock. “I’ll… I’ll fucking—“
John found his smirk. “Face it, mate. There’s nothing you can do to me. If you kill me, you’ll be doing me a favor. If you leave me alone, you’ll have run away. Anything else, well ,” John pressed a kiss to the First’s slack lips. “I’ll add to my resume.”
“I could do anything to you,” the First muttered, kissing the cigarette burn he’d left on John’s neck.
“You could. But we’ve got all the time in the world once I kick it, mate. Why start cracking me open now? Besides…” John bit down on the First’s lower lip. “I’d probably enjoy it, whatever you have in mind.”
The First growled low in his throat and stepped away. John felt a pang of loss, just barely stopping himself from stepping after him.
“I want you to,” John said, quietly. “All right? I want you to. I’ve already thrown it bloody in, why not soothe my poor broken heart with sacrilege?”
The First looked to the left of John’s head for a moment. “Sit on the desk.”
John closed his eyes and took a breath, then opened them again, convincing his heart to stop pounding. He took off his coat, dropped it, and pushed himself up on the edge of the First’s desk.
“You do this my way,” the First ordered, grabbing John by the collar. He bared his teeth.
“Relax, mate,” John reached for the First’s tie, unknotting it as quickly as his trembling fingers could manage. “I’m not in the mood to be particularly bratty.”
“You fucked up little prat,” the First purred, back in the familiar territory of insulting John with things he already knew about himself.
Instead of shoving John onto the desk, or ripping his clothes off, or something similarly violent, the First took John’s face in both hands and kissed him again. Aggressive, certainly, but not quite what John had expected.
Shit. The bastard was lonely .
This wasn’t a pity fuck. It was a hookup, as sloppy and ill-thought-out as anything John might have done.
John had to laugh.
The First stiffened, a muscle jumping in the hard column of his throat. “What’s funny?”
John wrapped his arms around the First’s waist—trim beneath the waistcoat, the fucking ponce—and gave his best docile smile. “Nothing, mate. Just thinking about what kind of a life this is.”
The First smiled. It wasn’t happy, but it was close enough to something real that John’s breath caught. It had been too long since he’d been smiled at like that—like he was worth something, like he was beautiful without wretchedness.
John kissed him. Perhaps he’d played too long at rivalry.
There would be no victory for either of them.