Kill Me, Kiss Me

EIGHTEEN

WAS it the magnetic field? The density of the air? For it sunk around his shoulders and face heavier than even it had before, now a shroud of black silk. No, not just that, his fingers tightened around the handles of his chair as he sat upwards stiffly, abs crying in shock and indigence.

It was also the scent.

And how familiar it was, the old amber fig depth that ignited paintings of wooden floors, glittering chandeliers, Carpentier and cigars, a smell unique to old money and blood. But this blood lust didn't alarm him anymore; he couldn't even quite remember the fear he felt cupping the teeth marks on his neck and running. Now the cologne only simply left a sour disgust in his mouth.

And so Theo stood to the silent man before his desk, each figment of the man pounding straight through his head. How long has it been since he last saw Alexandr? A 'day' or so, but how long it felt, years, eons, so much so that the strong nose, arched brows, swept hair all seemed so foreign. And so tinged with familiarity, it was deja vu all over again.

    Alexandr's dark mahogany hair gleamed bright in the shifting moonlight, his eyes were cold and focused with a wolffish intensity, and for an ephemeral pause, Theo was dragged back into his apartment with Alexandr above him, knee digging into his stomach, teeth gnawing into his neck, that dreaded blood spilling slick and warm down their shirts.

    Complete and utter silence claimed their air. Alexandr stared at him, eyes unmoving and piercing with a honed fixation, redness creeping slowly up along the corners of his eyes, and he looked like he was on the edge of both crying and descending into an unquenchable rage. How different, Theo thought distantly, how different they were when they were in a rage. This one fought and fought and hid and hid and suppressed and suppressed until the storm brewed to an epiphany under the man's skin, until it replaced all bone, all tissue so that he became a man with the force of nature.

    Until one fated Big Bang where it all had to be unleashed otherwise he'd lose his mind.

    But that one... There had been no end, no beginning, no reason, no excuse, no harbouring of ill, his evil was his nature, it was spontaneous because it was part of him, just as his organs were a part of him, and if the need to slaughter could replace everything and still keep him alive, it would. It was his one recipe to survival, and he relished in it...

    Sudden nausea coursed up Theo's throat, and his fingers clenched the edge of his desk, the only obstacle between Alexandr and him. He did not forget. Why was the man here? He should be in his apartment waiting for his arrival, waiting to rip into his skin.

    "Mr Hew." The silence was too dense to part completely.

    Still, Alexandr made no reply.

    Theo's jaw clenched, and he looked away from Alexandr, fixing instead on the flashing red dot stuck to the glowing screen of his phone in his hand. The bitter chord of disgust drilled deeper into his chest, and he fumbled through his suit, in the pockets, in the lining, under the collar.

    "It's embedded in your ID card." Alexandr's scratchy voice blew away the hymn of silence.

    Theo's hands stilled and dropped to his side.

    "You disgust me."

    The furrow between Alexandr's brow deepened, and an electric mix of descending and ascending chords superposed into nothing, the white heart above his head flickering and dancing with crazy twitches until it again showed 10%.

"You're not surprised." Alexandr fought forwards, pushing into the desk, leaning over so that the unravelling craze in his eyes magnified final as a sun.