Chapter Text
“Get up.”
The weeks of chasing after the Qliphoth’s summit had sapped whatever strength V was born possessing. So much so, that Nero’s urging command to rise almost didn’t cut through the haze. His consciousness swam, and when V did manage to force open his eyes, lids as heavy as lead weights, he almost didn’t understand what the boy was telling him to do.
They had sought refuge in one of the ruined hotels in the area. Though plaster and broken walls littered the area, the windows shattered and the electricity disconnected by either disaster or design, it was a covered, enclosed space, where they could hunker down and seek rest in between fights with demons, picking their way through the ruined landscape that had once been Redgrave City. V had rested on a bed there, one that Nero had cleared of debris. In truth, V was so tired, he might have been able to sleep propped against the wall.
V must not have responded to Nero in a timely enough manner, because the young man closed the distance between them and put a hand on his leg, giving a small shake.
“Hey,” he said, only loud enough to be heard. “Get up.”
“We need to move again?” V asked, grunting slightly as he went to sit up.
Nero shook his head.
“I found a shower that’s not destroyed.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “This place has a big hot water tank. Most of the bathrooms in this place got wrecked, but I found one that ain’t.”
“I don’t need a shower,” V murmured, confused and wanting to sleep again, to recoup whatever meager strength he still had in his crumbling husk of a body.
“Tell that to my achin nose,” Nero deadpanned, glowering. “You’re stinky. I’m stinky.”
Griffon guffawed, perched up on a door, an ever-present gargoyle, an ever-present ghoul, haunting V’s existence. V was tempted to lash out at him, to snarl and gnash his teeth, spew venom at him as he would have –
..
As he would have, when he was whole.
The knowledge that he was half – less than half – a being, and worse, he was dying weighed heavy on V, and never failed to take all wind from his sails.
“Maybe it wouldn’t be too unwise,” V allowed, his voice low. Nero seemed appeased, and offered V his hands to help haul himself to his feet. The dark poet winced, cringing hard, as the sudden weight put on his ruined leg shot pain up his spine. Nero took a moment to steady him. “Show me where it is?”
“We’ll have to go together,” Nero said, shaking his head.
V frowned, tilting his head, eyeing Nero with the one green eye that wasn’t hidden by a curtain of black hair.
“I don’t want to bathe together,” he deadpanned.
“This place has a hot-water tank that’s kept water warm, but the heater itself is probably tied to the power grid,” Nero explained. “I bet it’s got one good hot shower in it, but that’s it.”
“Then you use it,” V said, shaking his head.
“And let you suffer?” Nero said, his eyes hardening. “Whatever you got goin on, trust me, I have one too, if you’re shy. I just don’t think it’s right you’ve been really fightin hard. You’d be surprised how better you feel if you just get the chance to wash a bit.”
V couldn’t deny that hot water would feel good.
He hated this human body. He hated this human body’s needs.
He hated how easy it was to surrender to this weak, human body’s needs.
V was thinking about it as he sat at the edge of the tub, holding himself, slightly hunched. Nero had helped him get undressed, and he hated how easy that was for him to surrender to as well. Nero was behind him, getting undressed.
Following Nero’s movements out of the corner of his eyes, V watched him turn on the faucet. He flinched when the spray hit his legs. The water was cold, but it warmed quickly.
Nero stepped into the tub, and V was afraid to look. He wasn’t sure why it was fear , though? Perhaps that was the wrong word?
Anxious.
Why does the human in me love you? He thought.
No.
V shivered, rubbing his arms. Nero helped him to his feet again, and he tried to turn from him, turn away.
Not love –
“Nero?”
“I’m sorry.”
V looked at him, worried and not hiding it. Nero had spoken to him, just above the din of the water.
Nero looked far too young. Far too young .. He had an innocence about him, but it was tempered by the edge of a difficult youth, hard years that filed down the softness and left a callous. V realized, with a pit in his stomach and an ache in his heart, that Nero looked so much like him. Him, that nebulous, lost boy that looked back at V from his nightmares and dreamscapes.
Not love. Lust.
V made a small face, unsure and scared. Humans were scared. Humans felt fear so easily.
“I’m scared,” Nero admitted, heedless to V’s internal turmoil. “I think .. I really think we both might die soon. And I don’t wanna die.” He shook his head. “Not alone. I don’t know, really, if I can beat that fucker that stole my arm – “
He needed it, V wanted to plead. He didn’t mean to hurt you. He didn’t know.
“ – And I know you’re sick. I know you’re sick.”
He was holding V’s arms, but not to keep him still. Nero held him to keep him upright. That leg of his both throbbed and tingled, pins and needles that made V’s skin crawl. Nero looked concerned, sad, and angry. It was so unnatural, for Nero’s face, even though Nero had no way of knowing that.
“I don’t want us to die unloved.”
V shook his head, eyes closed, head bowed, as if to drown out Nero’s words.
“Nero, this may be a mistake,” he whispered, raising his head. “It’s natural to want to cling to someone or something when one’s mortality looms. I am not that person for you, Nero. I cannot be.”
“Why not?” Nero asked, barely a whisper.
V and Nero looked at each other for a long stretch of time, before the former spoke, trying to pull away from him. It ached to pull away. It ached and he hated that it ached.
“You do not deserve this fate, little wanderer,” V murmured, wanting to feel more of the hot water. “You will not perish.”
“Yeah, but you might,” Nero insisted, following him into the spray. “You might. And I don’t want you to go before I can – “
“Nero, it is not me you love,” V whispered, looking at Nero as the water soaked his skin, his hair. “You have another?”
“She wasn’t there when I woke up,” Nero confessed, softly. “You were. Maybe I’m just a dummy, and I imprinted but .. You are important to me. If you’re right, and tomorrow, or the next day, or the next day, you crumble away to dust .. ? Then at least we will have tonight.”
V’s heart was in his throat, as if he could not have chewed and swallowed it, could not force it down and forget it.
Nero reached out, bold, and cupped V’s face. V did not fight him.
I will die soon, he thought, as Nero pushed his firmer body against him. I will leave this world .. soon ..
Nero kissed him, and V found that he didn’t know how to kiss. Was that knowledge eaten by the demon king? Something he stole and kept to himself, a dragon hoarding gold?
V didn’t have to know how to kiss, Nero had that covered.
In fact, for a boy that – for all that V knew – grew up cloistered on a cult island, Nero knew how to do a lot more than kiss. He chased V’s lips with his own, tentative at first, but then growing more and more bold. V reasoned that he really was afraid and had this misplaced affection he pressed against the smaller man as much as he pressed his body.
If he knew the truth, V knew that Nero would not be so amorous.
Or maybe he would?
Maybe he took after his sire more than he realized – ?
V didn’t think much more about the then and there, however. Hard to think about anything else, when someone had their cock in their hand. He found himself staring at it, realizing that he had almost totally neglected this new body. Just as he had begun to neglect the old one.
He watched, the water falling around them, as Nero did something strange, or at least strange to him.
Gripping both of their phalluses in one hand, Nero rubbed them together, a languid up and down movement. He was an unashamed, hedonistic creature, V realized.
Like .. like Puck. Or Epicurius .. Not nearly as lewd as Dorian Gray, but he approached it —
And he was steadily approaching it. While V trembled, holding onto Nero’s shoulders, his head bowed and mouth open, breathing hard and trying not to make too much noise, Nero was a bathing Dionysis; youthful and taut, muscled and smooth, moaning and groaning along with the ministrations of his hand. V took into account he was using his left hand, his right was holding V upright, firm and cool, mechanical over V’s new skin.
It was bizarrely hypnotic to watch, actually.
The way the skin slid, the water making everything slick, the warmth and gentle tightness of Nero’s fist – Yes, V was staring at it. He had not really explored this body, he hadn’t felt the need. When faced with one’s looming death, and perhaps the deaths of everyone, everywhere, things like masturbation tended to fall by the wayside.
Now, though?
Now, the world had narrowed down to a single, fine, white-hot point.
There was no tree, in that moment. There was no fear of a rising demonic overlord with a severe inferiority complex fueling his rage. There was no looming demise on the horizon.
All there was, there, in that ruined hotel, in the last hot shower in inner-city Redgrave City, was Nero. Nero, who though he was also probably looking down his own impending death, who had been worried sick about the man he saw as a father figure being lost .. But Nero, who cared so much about this crumbling stranger, who had imprinted on him, who seemed to suggest that he was somehow affectionate towards him.
V let his head fall back, hadn’t realized he tried to retreat from Nero’s embrace all the way to the other side of the shower. His head thunked, dully, on the wall there, and he let it fall forward again, grumbling. Nero closed what little distance existed between them, his mouth on V’s neck. V had to resist the urge to twist, gripping Nero’s shoulders both for support in keeping upright as well as ground himself in the here and now.
With the steady movement of Nero’s fist on his cock, and the queer feeling of Nero’s cock against his own besides, V was losing himself. He was making noise .. Panting cries. His heart felt like it was beating hard.
“Nero, we can’t – “
“I won’t hurt you,” Nero whispered, his lips still against his skin. “M’sorry.”
“Sorry for what?” V breathed, his head swimmy, his blood hot.
“I don’t want you to think I made you do this .. “ His words were almost drowned out by the pattering of the shower water falling onto tile. “I just didn’t want to go into tomorrow and not have told you how I felt.”
V felt drunk.
His chest felt tight, his head felt like it pounded in time with Nero’s strokes.
“How is it that you feel, Nero?” V murmured.
Nero pulled back, looked at him more square.
Without answering him, or perhaps by way of answering him, Nero leaned forward and kissed V, full on the mouth. The tempest that swirled in V’s chest, then, was immense, vast in ways that he could not totally put into words, not that he was able to speak in that moment anyway.
His mouth worked against Nero’s.
The boy tasted of sweat, of salt.
He had seen, though eyes that were not his own, Nero’s fair features twisted in a mask of pain and terror, reaching with the only arm he had left. V had been afraid for that boy, had felt guilt for the suffering Nero endured.
V had pulled Nero away, when Dante faced Urizen. He had used so much strength, then, strength he didn’t have, strength he had to ration, to pull Nero to safety then. But he did, he had to. He had to.
Shamefully, he kissed back.
Shamefully, V wanted to chase the comfort and warmth that Nero was willing to give him. It felt like stealing. It was a theft of Nero’s affection, because oh, if Nero knew the truth ..
If Nero knew the truth of who V was, of where he came from, would he be worried about him dying, maybe, tomorrow, unloved?
V didn’t want to think about it. V chose not to think about it. He chose to focus on Nero’s stuttering tempo, the hand on both of their cocks working furiously, up and down, bringing them nearer to a mutual orgasm. V tried to breathe around Nero’s lips, Nero paused to gasp in air himself, before he moved to attack the junction of V’s throat and shoulder with teeth and tongue.
This body had never cum before, and V was surprised it didn’t crumble to dust when it did. He cried out, a soft sound, biting his lip to stifle it. Nero didn’t stifle his noise. He grunted and groaned, breathy and wild for a moment.
Then they stilled, two bodies breathing hard as the water from the shower continued to pour over them, growing only then cooler by the moment ..
“ .. I don’t want you to get cold,” Nero murmured, wrapping an arm around him, both arms now. An embrace. V was staring over his shoulder, exhausted eyes that threatened to give in to fatigue at any moment.
V returned the embrace, letting his eyes close, and for that moment, letting his body relax, letting the tension leave his weary bones.
“I’m not cold,” he whispered. “You’re very warm, Nero.”