Work Text:
The thing staked to the floor of Benjamin Drake's second-floor flat wasn't human. Geoffrey knew that better than anyone. And yet somehow, embarrassingly, the smell of it all was making his stomach turn.
The blinds were open, letting in a rare mid-morning London sun, and the creature pinned to the floorboards was long past the point of pretending to be a man: its body was charred and cracked and halfway to boiled, thick dark globs of blood bubbling up like magma from the crevices in its skin. Deep gouges scratched into the floorboards where its hands and feet were pinned marked the desperate struggle it had put up back when it had energy to struggle. Its eyes had burnt out, leaving two blackened holes in its meat slab of a face. Its mouth, lipless and burnt, looked like a knife's gash carved into its skin. Occasionally it twitched, or wheezed its way through a strained, gasping breath, shivering with pain whenever it tried.
Young vampire, then. Young enough it hadn't forgotten the instinct to breathe. Only a few months ago that would've pleased him: another leech taken hunted down before it could grow into a full-blooded killer, before it could learn to be as vicious and crafty and bloodthirsty as the rest of its godforsaken kind. Now, thinking about young vampires just made his mind drift to—
Geoffrey shook his head viciously, casting the thoughts away. It didn't matter what he thought about, so long as he didn't hesitate. He was here to make a kill, not wax philosophical.
(And anyway, Reid was gone. Geoffrey hadn't caught sight of him in almost a week. Probably he'd run off to some new hunting ground with slower, easier prey, laughing all the while about how he'd tricked the head of Priwen himself. Leeches never got older without getting crueler; Geoffrey knew that, and yet he'd never once taken the opportunity to drive that stake into Reid's heart when he had the chance.)
"Well, Mr. Drake," Geoffrey said, looking down at the thing on the floor, the way it squirmed more violently at the sudden intrusion of a new voice. "You were... enthusiastic. Spare no effort in the defense of your home and family, right?"
The words came out with a bitter edge. He hadn't meant them to. It was good when civilians actually managed to do something without making themselves a victim in the process. He'd had to rescue far too many who thought they could face a vampire alone; seeing one succeed was almost a miracle.
It was just... there was something a little embarrassing about it all, the way Drake had gone about it.
This was a self-consciously fancy sort of sitting room, far more extravagant than anything Geoffrey'd ever spent time in by his own will, and it would have been work to lure the leech here. More work still to stake him down like this: framed perfectly in the outline of the window's light on the floor, like a grim sort of portrait painted in blood, to meticulously strip off whatever clothes the leech might've come here wearing to ensure there'd be not a scrap of skin spared from the searing, boiling agony of the sun.
Strange, too. He'd never met a cornered leech who'd sit still long enough for that.
"Dr. Drake," the man corrected sternly, solidifying Geoffrey's dislike of him with only two words, and then continued, "and of course not, how could I ever? The moment I had my eyes opened to the truth—that these things walk among us—I knew I had to do something. I couldn't have lived with myself if I didn't do everything in my power to keep this district safe."
That was what it was, Geoffrey thought as he watched him speak. The first thing that had put him at unease, subtle enough that he hadn't even noticed it consciously until right now.
"A noble cause," Geoffrey told him, just to see the way his eyes lit up at the praise.
Some recruits came to Priwen with a shadow behind their eyes that meant pain: they'd lost a loved one to the monsters, or watched someone devoured, or had their peace taken away from them by their knowledge of what truly lurked in the night. Some came with nothing but grim, straightforward dedication, their personality the sort that led them to devote themselves to the front lines of a war that might never end. And some of them came with a gleam in their eyes, an excitement not that they could hunt monsters, but that they'd finally found something they were permitted to kill.
Those were the problem recruits. The ones Geoffrey'd learned to look out for and turn away, no matter how starved for people Priwen might be.
The gleam in Drake's eyes was so bright it almost blinded, and it grew brighter every time the creature pinned to the floor moaned in pain. It was a gleam that promised a trail of animals killed under mysterious circumstances somewhere far, far back in his past.
"High praise." Drake's throat bobbed as he swallowed. He seemed almost feverish with delight to be standing over the suffering leech. "Especially coming from an... esteemed man like yourself."
The pause there told him all he needed to know and more. Drake hadn't exactly expected the leader of the mysterious secretive Guard of Priwen to be a man who looked like he did and had an accent like his.
Geoffrey bit the edge of his lip to keep from scowling. He'd come here not so much to dispose of the vampire—any Guard patrol could take care of that—as to see whether this man could be talked into lining Priwen's too-thin purse a little. From this conversation alone, he could tell it would be a pathetically easy task, and that it wouldn't be worth the effort it took no matter how much money they got from this. The sooner and more decisively they cut ties with Drake, the better.
And then there was the matter of the leech, still lying there on the floor.
The kindest thing to do was kill it. The smartest thing to do was kill it. But Drake caught his gaze, tracked it to the figure on the floor and said, in a hushed voice that didn't manage to cover the intensity of his desire, "If, ah, if you wouldn't mind for me to do the honors—"
"No," Geoffrey snapped, more on impulse than anything else. What was he going to do with a wounded leech? Nurse it back to health like it was a bird fallen from the nest? Hah. But the thought of bowing to Drake's will here—of killing any creature, even a leech, out of no reason more than wanting to watch something die—was as loathsome to him as the thought of putting a leech's fangs to his neck willingly.
(Maybe more loathsome, whispered a voice in his head, bringing with it an image: Reid standing above him while he knelt defeated on the floorboards, those teeth of his close enough to bite, to take what he must want. Geoffrey batted the thought away.)
"I need answers first," he said, trying not to let on how he was stalling, "Otherwise we'll have no way to know what we killed. Where did this leech come from? What pretense did it use to get into your home? And"—he glanced at the figure, anonymous in its suffering—"who was it, once?"
Drake grit his teeth. "Does it matter who it was? It's a beast now."
"It's young. We'll inform the family of their loved one's passing, if we can find them."
The look Drake gave him then was blandly unimpressed. No doubt he was ruining the man's image of him further by having any motivation beyond simple bloodlust.
"Fine," he sighed. "It said it was a doctor, though it was far too shabbily dressed for that. It came to our house, claimed it had something for my wife's pneumonia." Drake scowled. "How it guessed she was suffering, I've no idea. But I kept it away from her."
A doctor in a ragged coat, visiting at night, offering cures to London's ills. A chill ran down Geoffrey's spine. It couldn't be. There was no way. But—
The leech hadn't killed Drake, even when it was being pinned to the floor, even when it was having stakes hammered through its ankles and wrists. Geoffrey couldn't think of any vampire so reluctant to murder. Except one.
And Reid had been missing for a week.
His hands found Drake's lapels without his mind's permission, and it was pure furious instinct that made him take two frantic steps and slam Drake's back against the wall hard enough to rattle the bookshelves there.
A picture frame fell to the ground, spraying shards of glass across the floorboards. The wall was creaking. Geoffrey's blood was boiling in his veins. He felt as though he could push Drake right through the wall if only the man angered him a little bit more.
It was like being in the middle of a fight. Some cold, analytical part of him had detached from himself: he was furious and completely dispassionate at once, the two sides warring against each other as he stared into Drake's suddenly very pale face.
Reid was a leech, after all, no different than any other; hadn't Geoffrey been regretting not killing him only a few minutes ago? Drake hadn't done anything Geoffrey should disapprove of.
But Reid was different, and Geoffrey... the more he tried to deny it, the stronger the feeling grew, worming past all his defenses. He'd spared Geoffrey when he could have killed him, that night in Pembroke's basement; he patched up any of Geoffrey's soldiers who found themselves at his hospital's doors, no matter how they cursed him and his kind; and as much as Geoffrey stalked him, trying to catch him breaking his self-declared scruples, he refused to feed upon the helpless patients who gathered in Pembroke's over-crowded halls.
And he'd disappeared, and Geoffrey had assumed he'd run, when all the while—
Geoffrey's hands shook where he held them, white-knuckled against Drake's neck. Torturing Reid wasn't like torturing any other leech; it was like torturing one of his own people, like carving open and burning and mocking a Priwen soldier. Unforgivable.
Priwen didn't kill humans. But to rough one up, to make him realize exactly what sort of mistake he made—
He looked down to meet Drake's terrified stare, the bloodlust gone and replaced with an animalistic, primal fear as he stared up at Geoffrey. He'd never fought in a war, never taken on a vampire that was trying to fight back. Perhaps this was the first time Drake had ever feared for his own life.
"Please," Drake said, his voice shaking. "Please... I don't..."
Reid had let him live. Even knowing it would mean his own demise, Reid had refused to kill him. That was the thought that finally made him let Drake go, Drake going even paler as he dropped a few centimeters and his feet finally hit the floor once more. He stood there a moment, shaky, bloodless, and then with a gasp he slid to the floor.
"Enough," Geoffrey snarled. He was shaking too. He ran a hand through his hair, trying to force himself to calm down. To breathe.
Part of him was already sorting through excuses, each more absurd than the last: you ruined an undercover operation of ours, by capturing this one you've let a whole nest flee, I'm furious with your leech-handling technique. It didn't matter, though; he'd already decided against Drake as an ally, and there wasn't anything he could say to him now that would make his outburst less absurd.
Instead, he turned to him once more. "I'm leaving. You should get out of here before I do."
"Where..?"
Geoffrey sighed. Civilians were terrible about taking initiative. "Another room, at least. Or another house. Just so long as you're not bothering me."
He'd come up with a better explanation for his own soldiers once he could think properly again. Just in case any of them asked.
Drake nodded, and, still trembling profusely, stumbled to his feet and out of the room. Geoffrey listened to his retreating footsteps until he couldn't hear them anymore, then took stock of the room. He would've liked not to do any of this here, of all places, but London's wealthy weren't known for their discretion and walking out of here with a man-sized lump rolled in stolen curtains would raise more questions than he could afford to answer.
First thing was the windows: he drew the heavy curtains back over them, plunging the room into a dim, murky grey. Geoffrey shivered at the sensation of being alone in the dark with a vampire at the same time the thing on the floor—Reid, God, it was Reid lying there—gasped in open relief.
Even like this, pinned down and suffering and burnt beyond all recognition, Geoffrey could still see Reid's familiar mannerisms there now that he knew what to look for. Reid was paying attention to him, trying to muffle the shaky sobs he couldn't quite stop himself from making, trying to keep quiet and still. Trusting him.
Something far too close to guilt clutched at Geoffrey's heart. Just how long had Reid been trapped here? What else had Drake done to him?
He didn't stop to think about it. It wouldn't do him any good.
Next was the door, just in case Drake returned and just in case he brought someone in uniform with him. It was easy enough to grab an upholstered sofa from the corner of the room and shove it up against the door frame. Geoffrey kicked it once, just to make sure it would withstand a few blows, before he could relax enough to turn his back on the entryway.
And then, finally, there was nothing left but Reid.
He went very still when Geoffrey knelt beside him. Geoffrey wasn't sure if he could hear what he was saying through the damage to his ears, but just in case he muttered, "It's just me. Give me a second."
He knew exactly what he needed to do. He'd read about this before in Eldritch's old case files: Priwen's studies on what happened to a vampire exposed to sunlight were extensive and thorough. It'd never felt so personal before now, or so dangerous.
This wasn't enough to kill Reid. But he wouldn't heal, either. Not without help.
Geoffrey eyed the stakes for a moment, taking a deep breath before wrenching the first of them out of Reid's ankle. The smell of charred flesh worsened as more dark blood oozed out of the ragged hole left behind. Reid hissed, his voice breaking halfway to a sob, but didn't try to lash out even with a leg free.
Maybe he did recognize Geoffrey. Maybe he just didn't have the will to fight anymore.
The rest of the stakes came out as easily and as agonizingly as the first. Geoffrey didn't let himself dwell on the sound or the smell or the sensations of it all, the way the stakes came free with little chunks of flesh still stuck to them. He'd seen worse before. Done worse. The fact that this was Reid didn't—couldn't—mean anything to him.
He kept glancing back to the wounds, though, the miserable-looking holes brute force hammered into Reid's body, and then imagining running his sword right through Drake's smirking face.
When he finally had the last of the stakes free, stacked neatly beside him out of some perverse sense of organization, he hesitated. It was like he'd told himself: he knew exactly what he needed to do. It was just a matter of doing it.
Geoffrey had been fed from before, more times than he could count. Skals taking quick, snapping bites at him; Ekons rushing him in their blood-hunger; all manner of beasts had taken their fill in the moments when the fight got too frantic or he got too careless. Hell, even Reid had taken his fair share from Geoffrey's neck the first time they fought. He still had the scars to show for it.
But it was different, giving it willingly. Treasonous. Shameful. A betrayal of everything his mentor had ever taught him.
It was far too easy a decision to make. Hardly a dilemma at all.
"You bastard," he said tiredly as he rolled up one of his sleeves, taking refuge in the possibility that Reid might not be able to hear him. "You don't have a clue what you've done to me, do you?"
Of course he didn't. Reid was kind to everyone. The doctor, the savior. The leech with a conscience. He didn't know what it meant to Geoffrey to have strong, steady hands patching him up after a fight he should have lost, or someone to talk to when the thoughts eating at him were nothing he could burden his own soldiers with.
Geoffrey didn't want him to know. It would cost him everything if anyone ever found out. But he could do this for him, at least.
The hand was no good. Too slow to heal and it would hamper him in a fight until it did. Geoffrey aimed a little higher, mid-forearm, and carved a careful, steady cut along the skin there. Shallow enough to heal easily. Deep enough to bleed.
Blood, fresh and red, welled up immediately, finding the edges of the cut and then spilling over. On the floor, Reid made a choking sound; his eyeless face twitched against the floor, trying to find Geoffrey.
"All right," Geoffrey said, almost fondly, "I hear you," and then, like a kiss, he pressed his bloody forearm over Reid's open mouth.
At first there was barely a reaction. Reid was too weak even to latch. Geoffrey held his arm there, the shame burning hotter in his cheeks the longer he did, thinking, Come on, already.
The anticipation was the worst part somehow. Waiting for Reid to bite, for that sharp searing pain. Terrified he wouldn't.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity and couldn't have been more than a few seconds, a rough, cold, strangely dry tongue scraped its way along the length of Geoffrey's wound. Geoffrey winced but kept his hand there, and before long Reid was drinking messily from the shallow cut, mouthing at it with all the desperation of a dying man, his vicious predators' teeth scraping at the edges of the wound but never sinking in like Geoffrey knew he could. Never fully biting down.
Geoffrey watched, transfixed, at the transformation that came over Reid. Charred black flesh, cracked and burnt and weeping blood, sealing itself over as healthy pink skin began to crawl over it like a moss. Features reforming, slowly at first and then faster as his body remembered what it wanted to be: ears growing out of cartilage, shell-like and glistening red with fresh blood, before the skin traced its way across his face to cover the new tissue there; eyes growing shapeless and grey in the burned-out pits of his face, then slowly shifting and regaining color, iris and pupil and sclera; new hair sprouting from his head and chin like bloodstained plants.
It was grotesque. Inhuman. Disgusting. And yet, watching it, all Geoffrey could feel was relief, so intense his knees might have buckled if he were standing.
Reid was coming back.
After a minute or two the changes began to slow. Fingernails sharpening to claws, finer details writing themselves across his skin—it was like watching a sculptor put the last few finishing details on their work. All the while Reid stared at the ceiling, unmoving, eyes unfocused and seeing nothing.
"You awake in there?" Geoffrey asked him gruffly.
It was a moment before Reid could speak. He blinked and flicked his eyes about the room, moving with purpose for the first time. His gaze caught Geoffrey's and sharpened.
Slowly, his hands came up and pulled Geoffrey's arm away from his mouth. He stared at the wound a moment, confused, as his tongue darted out of his mouth to clean the blood smeared across his lips and beard and teeth.
"Geoffrey," he murmured, his voice rough. "I... I thought I'd heard you. You were really there?" A pause, and then, hesitating, he continued, "Are you really here?"
Geoffrey scowled. "What, don't remember the taste from the last time you bit me?"
"I remember." He swallowed. "Always. I kept hearing your voice in the dark. I thought I'd gone mad." His eyes dropped to his own, unblemished skin, and his frown deepened. "Maybe I have."
Reid was still naked. It hadn't been an issue when he was a charred piece of meat, but now it was getting more difficult to ignore, and Reid staring unabashedly at himself while he babbled nonsense wasn't exactly helping things. In the interest of not letting his eyes drift anywhere he'd regret, Geoffrey began to shuck his long overcoat off as he spoke.
"I'm not going to play a damn memory game, if that's what you're looking for. Tell me something only the real Geoffrey McCullum would know or anything like that. If you can't tell me by my scent, you're a worse leech than I ever expected." Coat fully off, he held it out to Reid. "And here, by the way. Until you find where this arsehole stuck your own."
For a moment, Reid just clutched at it, holding the ragged ends tight. Geoffrey bit down on the defenses he wanted to make—it might not be as fancy as Reid's own, but it sure as hell beat nothing at all—until finally Reid, without any warning, buried his face in it and inhaled deeply.
"What the hell are you doing?" Geoffrey asked.
Reid pulled it back away. For a second Geoffrey was certain he might cry, but then the sorrow broke and left nothing but deep gratitude in its wake.
"It really is you. Thank you, McCullum." He glanced around the room, taking in the thick curtains and no doubt smelling the absence of other inhabitants. "You saved my life, didn't you? And you fed me." His tongue swiped across his lips once more, though there was nothing else left there to chase.
Geoffrey shrugged uncomfortably. He still wasn't sure what to think about it all—hearing You saved me, from a leech's lips and knowing it was true.
He couldn't kill Reid. Couldn't stand back and let him die at another's hand either. He knew both those things about himself, now, and he couldn't make himself forget that.
The leader of the Guard of Priwen, fallen for a leech. It would be a perfect joke if only he weren't the punchline.
Reid fumbled the coat onto his own body with trembling hands, the most unsteady Geoffrey had ever seen him, and before Geoffrey could say something to put them back on familiar ground, Reid was rolling over onto his knees and half-walking, half-crawling the few steps over to Geoffrey's side. He collapsed there without a thought, burying his face into Geoffrey's side, the ragged coat around him making him look like nothing so much as some ancient marble statues.
Geoffrey tensed, bracing for the bite his training had taught him would come, but all Reid did was taking another absurdly deep breath before pulling his face away to instead lean on Geoffrey's leg.
"I'm sorry," he said, half-smiling, "I must seem like a madman."
"Madman's not a strong enough word, I'd say."
"It's... I'm sorry, I'm afraid I can hardly explain it myself." He shook his head. "How long have you been here for?"
"Half an hour, give or take," Geoffrey said. "Why?"
"I'd been hearing your voice."
So he had been able to hear. Hopefully he hadn't said anything too incriminating out loud. Geoffrey scoffed. "Not an incredible surprise, since I was talking."
"No," Reid said. "I don't mean that. From the moment I started to burn, I kept hearing you."
Geoffrey blinked. He hadn't been expecting that. Of all the people in Reid's life, he chose Geoffrey to hallucinate during his torturous second death?
"What was I saying to you?"
"Some encouragement." Reid laughed once, quietly. "A great many insults. It kept me sane. I'm entirely grateful."
Geoffrey blinked. It was his own mind twisting it, surely, making it all more than it was, but... this seemed like a dangerously intimate confession. And Reid was staring at him still, barely an arm's length away, close enough that it would be easy for Geoffrey to take hold of the lapels of his own coat and pull Reid in.
He turned away abruptly, digging his hands into his thighs to keep himself from doing anything foolish. Another moment and his control would break.
Priwen depended on him. He couldn't betray them all for the touch of one leech, couldn't give up everything he'd worked for and believed in chasing after a creature he was supposed to hunt. It was wrong for him to want any of that at all.
But God, he wanted it.
"McCullum?" Reid asked, sounding concerned.
"We..." he said. "We need to find your things and leave. Before the man I ran out of this house comes back."
"You sound unwell." Reid drew even closer, more than a hand's breadth now than an arm's length. He frowned. "Are you injured? Did I take too much?"
Geoffrey scowled. This beast, always prodding, always poking his nose into Geoffrey's business when he wanted someone prying least. It should've been the easiest thing in to despise him. To plant a stake through his cold heart and never once look back. And yet, instead—
He took Reid's face between his hands, feeling the smoothness of it even through the wiry curls of his beard, the strange newness of the regenerated skin, and then he pulled him in and kissed him.
It was a quick, sudden, shaky thing, every instinct Geoffrey had (save one, of course, the one that had overridden all the rest) screaming at him to let go and back off. To save what little still could be saved of his pride. Geoffrey held his mouth to Reid's for a count of three, then released him just as suddenly; the taste of Reid's mouth was on him, the coldness of his lips and the impression of his sharp leech's teeth, and Geoffrey could not take it back and he could not make Reid forget and there was nothing he could do now but wait.
He was breathing hard. His pulse thudded loudly in his veins.
"McCullum," Reid said, and then, after a moment's pause, "Geoffrey, I—"
"Don't," Geoffrey snapped, turning his face to the ground. "Don't—"
Reid sounded so goddamn reasonable right now. So careful, so kind. And there was nothing worse than pity. He'd take scorn or vicious rage a thousand times over before he let Reid sit there and use his kindly doctor's voice to let him down easy.
"I'm not," Reid said, a little helplessly. "Whatever you think I'm trying to say, I'm not." His hand found Geoffrey's, and he wrapped their fingers carefully together. "Come out of your own head and look at me, if you would. The life of a flagellant doesn't suit you."
Geoffrey looked at Reid, then, more out of a desperate desire not to seem a coward than anything else.
He'd been prepared for embarrassment, or disgust, or cold closed-off disinterest. What he hadn't been prepared for was the heat he saw in Reid's expression; the look in his eyes was anything but disinterest.
Geoffrey swallowed. Reid's eyes followed the movement of his throat.
"I'm not angry," Reid said, his voice growing even quieter. "Anything but."
So he hadn't imagined it, then. The realization was equal parts hope and fear. Reid felt something for him in turn—which meant there was no barrier left to Geoffrey throwing himself off the edge of sanity, no safeguard in place to keep him from betraying his people and his role in Priwen in one disastrous move.
"I can't," Geoffrey said, hating how fearful his voice sounded. "Not now. Not yet."
Reid nodded, and slid backwards with an inhuman litheness. "All right. You always know where to find me, anyway."
Geoffrey laughed. "So long as you don't try some stupid shite like this again."
"Ah, well." Reid offered him a smile in return. "If I do, I'm sure you'll find me eventually."
Bastard.
It was... easier now, though. His heart had come down to a near-normal rhythm, and the feeling of impending doom was now something much closer to embarrassment—embarrassment and a strange sense of wonder, the sort he'd never admit to anyone else.
He could still feel the press of Reid's lips on his own.
Reid rose to his feet, drawing Geoffrey's coat around him. He was still disoriented, stumbling for a moment on feet that had only recently regained their skin, but he righted himself quickly before offering one cold, pale hand to help Geoffrey up.
Geoffrey took it.
For a few moments they both just stood there, Geoffrey's hand wrapped around the thick muscle of Reid's arm, Reid's chest rising and falling with the breaths he didn't need to take.
Reid was going to be the death of him. He was sure of it.
"Thank you again," Reid said kindly, still watching him with a look in his eye. "If you ever need medical attention in return..."
Bastard. He knew exactly what he was doing, inviting him into his home so explicitly.
"Just help me find your clothes," Geoffrey said, trying not to make it obvious just how reluctant he was to wrench his hand away from Reid. "I want my own coat back."
Together, they began to search Drake's study in a companionable sort of silence. And if Geoffrey had a hard time keeping himself from sneaking glances Reid's way... well, it wasn't something he needed to worry about right now. Not when there was something that felt strangely like hope burning inside his chest.