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The body of a man is the first telltale breadcrumb — a fresh kill, recently slaughtered and still warm, blood pumping out into a pool of claret on the floor of the warehouse, through the multiple entry and exit wounds to his torso, soaking into the unfinished concrete, and the man's clothes, like dishwater to a parched sponge.
The crumbling wall above the corpse has endured the wrath of violence too, the slugs nestled deep into the chalky brickwork and friable mortar, akin to bees ensconced in sticky honeycomb cells.
He imagines Vegas standing there, in the exact spot Pete finds himself in now, with the weight of a gun in his hand, as commanding and confident as he has ever been, a sinful smirk at the corner of his mirthful mouth as he freely pulls the trigger.
Swallowing hard, passion stirring low and hot in his gut, overheating his blood, his heart picking up its pace in his chest, Pete casts his eyes inquisitively across the room.
Wet footprints are the next markers on the trail, stark scarlet stamped in a series of elegant shapes, the tapered toe and Cuban heel revealing exactly who had walked through the man's blood without a single care for the lasting macabre mess it would make.
Pete follows the coagulating crimson tracks — the evidence of expensive taste and a penchant for Italian craftsmanship, alongside cool detachment from the brutality left behind — irresistibly drawn to their maker, as he always is; like a moth to a ferocious flame, like a magnet to its corresponding pole, like an addict desperate for a fix.
When he comes across him, standing in front of a long since smashed out window, looking out into the night, entirely at ease and nonchalant, a half burnt down cigarette hanging between slender, skillful fingers, Pete halts, his eyes drinking in his reward.
The air shifts around them somehow, becoming dense and heavy, like the sky before a surly storm, stealing Pete's breath momentarily, before it finally shakes its way back into his lungs.
That single breath reminds him of when Vegas had not long recovered, after the failed coup, his belly torn open by bullets and the surgeon's scalpel, when he'd been far too soft, abruptly and deliberately unrecognisable.
Unwilling to let him go, the Vegas that had lashed a belt across Pete's flesh without a second thought, Pete had bitten him so hard that he'd felt Vegas's skin split under the sharp edge of his teeth, had supped the acrid copper of his blood.
It was a wild, manic thing to do, he knows that, but it had worked; Vegas had pinned him, with his palm pressed to Pete's Adam's apple, and all Pete could do was grin up at him, his gums limned in cardinal red, painted in the taste of him.
He stays silent until he feels physically capable of speaking again.
“Vegas,” he exhales, much more reverent than he means to, far beyond the veneration he ever likes to reveal in public, embarrassed by what has become a blatant obsession, mutual, of course, yet an obsession all the same — one that Pete knows could easily end in bloodshed and heartache, but maybe that's what's so appealing about it: the thin line they tread each and every day, between love and execration.
His mind supplies a blissful picture: Pete spread out beneath Vegas, bare and completely at his mercy, wrists and ankles harshly bound, a mix of blood and sweat and come staining the both of them, purple bruises littering his neck, shining, slick with saliva.
Gulping against his arid dry throat, he watches as Vegas slowly tilts his head towards the noise, the one Pete wishes he could suck back down into his lungs, a shiver rushing down his spine at the quiet chuckle it elicits.
“You know,” Vegas starts, his voice a pleasant purr as he turns to face him, prowling forward, sultry and languorous all at once, “if you get hard every time I kill someone, we're never going to get anything done”.
The mocking sting in it has Pete's cheeks heating, like live coals in a well-stoked hearth, and, riled at the accusation, no matter how true, he opens his mouth to protest, snapping it closed — hard enough to make his teeth rattle in his head — clamping it shut against the strangled sound that gets lodged in his throat, when Vegas suddenly reaches out and unceremoniously grabs a handful of his crotch.
Another amused chuckle has him squeezing his eyes tight, his traitorous cock pulsing in the heat of Vegas’s hand, his arousal glaringly apparent, even through the layers of his clothing.
“Oh, Pet,” Vegas coos, condescending yet unbelievably fond, “you're so predictable,” he murmurs, so close to Pete's ear that his soft lips brush the sensitive shell of it, sending goosebumps rising up over Pete's skin, and he can't help but hold his breath.
Pete trembles as Vegas leans nearer still, pressing a warm kiss to Pete's jaw, grazing his incisors against the quivering muscle there.
“It should be boring, how easy you are,” Vegas continues, groping firmly at Pete where he still has his hand on him, and Pete stifles a lewd groan, catching it between his molars and chewing it to dust, “but it's my favourite thing in the world”.