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The first thing Fearless learns is that love has teeth. The rest comes after.
The first thing Fearless learns is that any show of weakness will have you eaten alive. So he carves it out and replaces it with a blank and impassive gaze. He is, perhaps, five years old. Perhaps eight. Perhaps ten. Malnutrition doesn’t lend itself to an accurate guess of age.
The first thing Fearless learns is that Vicious is a bright and shining star, and to come too close is to burn. He learns this when he tries to pickpocket him on the street, hungry and desperate, and instead finds his arm held in a grip hard enough to grind bone against bone. He looks into space-dark eyes, and does not show weakness, because he knows that if he does, his weakness will make him prey. So he holds that gaze, and feels himself burn, and does not look away even when he’s sure he’s about to crumble to ash and dust. And then a smile slashes across that star-bright face, bright and lovely.
Vicious takes him home as if he’s a stray. Love sinks its fangs deep and refuses to let go.
Vicious pulls him into bed night after night, and holds him close like something precious. The nightmares can’t get him when Fearless is there, he whispers in the weak light of dawn. Fearless consumes them. Fearless will always consume them, for as long as they’re together, which is always. They’re brothers, after all. Nothing will tear them apart.
Fearless is consumed by Vicious’ love, one bite at a time. He can feel those teeth ripping away at him, gulping him down piecemeal until he’s nothing but gristle and sinew. Vicious pulls him into bed, and presses him down, and kisses him with the force of a supernova, and nothing has ever felt so good in his life.
Vicious pulls him into bed and pries Fearless open with fire-hot hands, and Fearless opens for him because that’s what love is. It’s the ache of teeth in his skin, and the silken sound of whispers in his ear, and his heart beating hard enough to shake free of his body. To burrow itself into Vicious’ body, where it belongs. Where it has always belonged.
Fearless hands Vicious piece after piece of himself, just to watch him swallow.
Then there is Julia.
Fearless loves her, because Vicious loves her, so how can he not? He turns her gaze away from the bright hot fire that flares under Vicious’ skin, until he isn’t fast enough and she’s staring into the sun and she burns.
Fearless takes her home, tucks her away, and she cries diamonds that shatter when they hit the ground. Fearless aches to soothe her the way Vicious can be soothed, the only way Vicious will let himself be soothed, now.
Vicious loves her, so Fearless opens himself up to let her take what she needs. And she takes just as readily as Vicious does, desperate and trembling. What she needs is soft hands, and soft words, and lingering touch, and her love bites into him so delicately that he hardly feels it at first.
In the morning she smiles at him, glowing in the light seeping through the cracks in her blinds. Her hair makes the same pale halo as Vicious’, loose over her shoulders to curl around her neck. Her hand is soft against his chest, his cheek, as she kisses him one last time.
Julia’s love sinks its teeth into his neck. He smiles back at her, and it tightens like a noose.