Erin Ptah (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ptahrrific) wrote2011-10-30 08:36 pm
ptahrrific) wrote2011-10-30 08:36 pm
Fake News(/Hellsing) - Chilling
Title: Chilling
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Vampirism, hypnotism
Pairings/Characters: "Stephen", Jon
Disclaimer: Characters belong to the Report. Names of real people are used in a fictitious context, and all dialogue, actions, and content are products of the author's imagination only.
In honor of Halloween, have a bit more of the Eagle of Hermes 'verse, shortly after the attacks of '99. Jon's never done this before, so he's a little nervous. In trying to make it good for him, Stephen accidentally overdoes it on the hypnosis.
For my![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
hc_bingo round 2 card, prompt "brainwashing". Mirror on the AO3.
Stephen didn't know Jon did amateur carpentry in his spare time. He's beginning to suspect there are a lot of things about Jon he doesn't know.
"Think nothing of it," says Jon, when Stephen tries, clumsily, to thank him for the project being knocked together in his bedroom. (Stephen's not used to thanking people. He doesn't plan on making a habit of it.) "It's the least I could do."
The extra platform fits neatly in place under the slats of the bed frame. Jon swings a hammer with a confidence belied by his frankly fey looks, and balances nails between his fingers like the cigarettes he dropped cold turkey after...well, after. Stephen watches for a while, then goes off and mixes some lemonade from a fresh-squeezed packet of powder before he remembers he can't drink that stuff any more.
Jon, by now flushed and bright-eyed from the exertion, is happy to drink straight from the ice-cold pitcher. He downs a third of it in one go, passes the back of his hand over his mouth, and nods to the bed. "I'm going to need a hand to tip it back over. You take that side, and I'll—"
Stephen grips the frame with both hands and guides it back to having four feet on the ground without so much as a bump.
"Or you could do that," allows Jon.
Jerk. He knows full well he's the only one Stephen can show off to like this. He could at least act impressed. Would it kill him?
(Okay, bad choice of words.)
Putting on his best sulk, Stephen takes the box of native soil he's been using as a uniquely uncomfortable pillow and starts to pour. It zebra-stripes the platform beneath the slats, a rich red-brown against the sandy plywood.
The silence doesn't impress Jon either. He just gulps some more lemonade, then says, "How's that going, by the way? The strength, I mean. And the other...vampire stuff."
"Fine!" snaps Stephen, ignoring the way Jon's already healthy heart rate has jumped a notch further. "Completely under control. Why wouldn't it be?"
"What I meant was...is it fading? Are you, uh, hungry?"
Stephen grabs the mattress from where they left it slumped against the wall. It fits the frame no better or worse than it did before, but to his new senses it's infinitely more comfortable with good South Carolina dirt underneath. "I could eat."
"No sense putting it off until you're starving," reasons Jon. "And if something goes wrong, I've got the rest of the week to recover."
Stephen jabs an accusing finger at him. "You were planning this all along."
Jon grins. "Had my beef rare last night and everything."
Truth be told, he's scared half to death, but who wouldn't be?
They agree to convene in the kitchen. Stephen excuses himself to change "in case this gets messy," and comes back in a polo shirt which Jon could swear is the twin of the one he left in. For his own part, Jon has a dozen more grey T-shirts that are the twin of this one, so he busies himself going through Stephen's fridge and throwing out anything more than a week past its expiration date.
At least there's enough left that he doesn't have to insist on a shopping trip. It's not exactly the Red Cross, but he deserves his cookies and juice.
Stephen's eyes are brown, when he makes the effort. They're a dull crimson now. "Maybe you should sit down."
Two cans of diet Pepsi and an expired but unopened bag of potato chips watch from the counter as Jon sits cross-legged.
Stephen takes the same pose facing him, just another guy at the drum circle, except that his fangs flash when he talks. "Do you care which arm?"
Jon shrugs. "Start with the right, I guess."
"Okay." His eyes glitter red, or seem to. The room's well-lit; maybe it's a reflection. "Jon...it would help if you'd relax."
"I think this is as relaxed as I'm gonna get."
"I mean it." Oh, wow, his eyes really are cherry-red now. "It's going to be fine. I'll take half a pint, and not a drop more. You might not appreciate it — few people do — but my self-control is legendary."
Jon tries to think of a piece of evidence to back up that claim. He can't call to mind a single one.
But then, Stephen sounded awfully trustworthy when he said it.
In spite of himself, Jon nods.
The relieved smile on Stephen's face is adorable, fangs and all. He really is a very handsome man. "That's the spirit! If you're relaxed enough, it probably won't even hurt. Some reports suggest that it can feel pretty good if you don't fight it. And not just the Last Battalion propaganda reports, either."
"Right," murmurs Jon. Sounds easy enough. Why would he fight it?
He slumps without noticing until Stephen shimmers to his side. "Jon? What are you doing? You can't pass out now!"
There's a pleasant coolness to the arm under his shoulder blades; the hand that grips him fairly hums with strength. Jon's fully conscious, eyes focused and everything, and he's glad of it.
God, Stephen's gorgeous. This powerful, sexy man is about to sink into him, and Jon's not just ready, he wants it. Can't think of anything he's wanted more.
Maybe Stephen will be ravenous enough to finish him off after all. There are worse ways to go.
"Are you okay?" says Stephen.
Jon smiles.
It's all wrong.
Jon's not supposed to smile that openly, much less at him. He's supposed to look skeptical, or roll his eyes, or at most bite his lip to hold an unexpected smile down. He's not meant to gaze adoringly like that, like Stephen's a chocolate-covered cheesecake and Jon doesn't know what it means to be calorie-conscious.
The tension's gone like a dream. He's boneless in Stephen's arms, eyes glassy but alert, the blood pulsing just under his skin.
"Can I...?" whispers Stephen.
A shiver of pleasure runs through Jon's body, small enough that Stephen wouldn't have noticed if he hadn't been right up against it. Instead of answering, Jon tips his head back, baring the length of his throat to Stephen's gaze.
"Not there," says Stephen out loud. "We agreed on the arms, remember? Nice and subtle. Not like the...neck."
He won't bite. He won't. But it's right there, jugular vein tracing a throbbing scarlet path across his vision, and he's only inhuman.
Jon's flesh is warm against the flat of his tongue, sweat-salty from the earlier exertion. He savors it while he can, expecting every second for Jon to think twice and push him off. The heat. The flow of Jon's breath. The imagined taste of iron and copper as he traces the vein.
One of his fangs scrapes the skin.
It's almost his undoing. He grabs Jon's right forearm, pulls it straight in front of him, and plunges his fangs into the soft skin at the crook of Jon's elbow, hitting the cephalic vein as much by luck as by instinct. Blood wells against his tongue; he swallows and laps and swallows again, while Jon lies languid in his embrace.
"What did you do to me?"
Stephen doesn't look up from his tape of ER. "What was that? 'Thank you, Stephen, for bandaging my arm so neatly before putting me to bed and thoughtfully leaving a snack for when I wake up'?"
"Before that!" snaps Jon. He couldn't bring himself to touch the chips, though he's paying for it now in dizziness, even after a pleasant-enough nap in the bed he just refurbished. "Were there drugs involved, or was that just...you?"
He remembers. That's the worst of it. There's no chemical haze, no psychic equivalent of a hangover; it feels like he was lucid as a judge the whole time he was working out that his greatest ambition in life was to let Stephen have him for dinner. He can't even pinpoint when the shift happened. Stephen could be pulling the same thing right now and he'd have no idea which thoughts weren't his own until after (if) the vampire let him go.
Stephen pauses the tape with a groan. "I knew you were being too nice! It's called chilling out, and you should really try it more often, dude. Would make unlife at the office a lot easier."
He doesn't know.
The thought cuts Jon's next yell out from under him. Either Stephen's putting up a very convincing front — which would be a first — or he's acting like everything went fine because, as far as he knows, it did.
"Not your decision," Jon says. He can still bluff through this, as long as Stephen doesn't turn out to be an accidental mind-reader too. "I'm the boss here. You got that? I'll be as neurotic as I want, and if you try to talk me out of it again, I'll...." Stop feeding him? No, he can't imagine a path where that ends well. "...bump you all the way back down to production assistant. And not the real kind, either. The kind where it's code for 'guy who gets the coffee'."
"Touchy, touchy," says Stephen, though his posture shows he's been strongarmed into complying, at least for now. "Let it not be said that I told His Highness — for relative values of height — what to do, but if I were you, I would go get my Pepsi and come join a certain mild-mannered vampire in watching this ER episode. It's the one where George Clooney is handsome."
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Vampirism, hypnotism
Pairings/Characters: "Stephen", Jon
Disclaimer: Characters belong to the Report. Names of real people are used in a fictitious context, and all dialogue, actions, and content are products of the author's imagination only.
In honor of Halloween, have a bit more of the Eagle of Hermes 'verse, shortly after the attacks of '99. Jon's never done this before, so he's a little nervous. In trying to make it good for him, Stephen accidentally overdoes it on the hypnosis.
For my
hc_bingo round 2 card, prompt "brainwashing". Mirror on the AO3.Stephen didn't know Jon did amateur carpentry in his spare time. He's beginning to suspect there are a lot of things about Jon he doesn't know.
"Think nothing of it," says Jon, when Stephen tries, clumsily, to thank him for the project being knocked together in his bedroom. (Stephen's not used to thanking people. He doesn't plan on making a habit of it.) "It's the least I could do."
The extra platform fits neatly in place under the slats of the bed frame. Jon swings a hammer with a confidence belied by his frankly fey looks, and balances nails between his fingers like the cigarettes he dropped cold turkey after...well, after. Stephen watches for a while, then goes off and mixes some lemonade from a fresh-squeezed packet of powder before he remembers he can't drink that stuff any more.
Jon, by now flushed and bright-eyed from the exertion, is happy to drink straight from the ice-cold pitcher. He downs a third of it in one go, passes the back of his hand over his mouth, and nods to the bed. "I'm going to need a hand to tip it back over. You take that side, and I'll—"
Stephen grips the frame with both hands and guides it back to having four feet on the ground without so much as a bump.
"Or you could do that," allows Jon.
Jerk. He knows full well he's the only one Stephen can show off to like this. He could at least act impressed. Would it kill him?
(Okay, bad choice of words.)
Putting on his best sulk, Stephen takes the box of native soil he's been using as a uniquely uncomfortable pillow and starts to pour. It zebra-stripes the platform beneath the slats, a rich red-brown against the sandy plywood.
The silence doesn't impress Jon either. He just gulps some more lemonade, then says, "How's that going, by the way? The strength, I mean. And the other...vampire stuff."
"Fine!" snaps Stephen, ignoring the way Jon's already healthy heart rate has jumped a notch further. "Completely under control. Why wouldn't it be?"
"What I meant was...is it fading? Are you, uh, hungry?"
Stephen grabs the mattress from where they left it slumped against the wall. It fits the frame no better or worse than it did before, but to his new senses it's infinitely more comfortable with good South Carolina dirt underneath. "I could eat."
"No sense putting it off until you're starving," reasons Jon. "And if something goes wrong, I've got the rest of the week to recover."
Stephen jabs an accusing finger at him. "You were planning this all along."
Jon grins. "Had my beef rare last night and everything."
Truth be told, he's scared half to death, but who wouldn't be?
They agree to convene in the kitchen. Stephen excuses himself to change "in case this gets messy," and comes back in a polo shirt which Jon could swear is the twin of the one he left in. For his own part, Jon has a dozen more grey T-shirts that are the twin of this one, so he busies himself going through Stephen's fridge and throwing out anything more than a week past its expiration date.
At least there's enough left that he doesn't have to insist on a shopping trip. It's not exactly the Red Cross, but he deserves his cookies and juice.
Stephen's eyes are brown, when he makes the effort. They're a dull crimson now. "Maybe you should sit down."
Two cans of diet Pepsi and an expired but unopened bag of potato chips watch from the counter as Jon sits cross-legged.
Stephen takes the same pose facing him, just another guy at the drum circle, except that his fangs flash when he talks. "Do you care which arm?"
Jon shrugs. "Start with the right, I guess."
"Okay." His eyes glitter red, or seem to. The room's well-lit; maybe it's a reflection. "Jon...it would help if you'd relax."
"I think this is as relaxed as I'm gonna get."
"I mean it." Oh, wow, his eyes really are cherry-red now. "It's going to be fine. I'll take half a pint, and not a drop more. You might not appreciate it — few people do — but my self-control is legendary."
Jon tries to think of a piece of evidence to back up that claim. He can't call to mind a single one.
But then, Stephen sounded awfully trustworthy when he said it.
In spite of himself, Jon nods.
The relieved smile on Stephen's face is adorable, fangs and all. He really is a very handsome man. "That's the spirit! If you're relaxed enough, it probably won't even hurt. Some reports suggest that it can feel pretty good if you don't fight it. And not just the Last Battalion propaganda reports, either."
"Right," murmurs Jon. Sounds easy enough. Why would he fight it?
He slumps without noticing until Stephen shimmers to his side. "Jon? What are you doing? You can't pass out now!"
There's a pleasant coolness to the arm under his shoulder blades; the hand that grips him fairly hums with strength. Jon's fully conscious, eyes focused and everything, and he's glad of it.
God, Stephen's gorgeous. This powerful, sexy man is about to sink into him, and Jon's not just ready, he wants it. Can't think of anything he's wanted more.
Maybe Stephen will be ravenous enough to finish him off after all. There are worse ways to go.
"Are you okay?" says Stephen.
Jon smiles.
It's all wrong.
Jon's not supposed to smile that openly, much less at him. He's supposed to look skeptical, or roll his eyes, or at most bite his lip to hold an unexpected smile down. He's not meant to gaze adoringly like that, like Stephen's a chocolate-covered cheesecake and Jon doesn't know what it means to be calorie-conscious.
The tension's gone like a dream. He's boneless in Stephen's arms, eyes glassy but alert, the blood pulsing just under his skin.
"Can I...?" whispers Stephen.
A shiver of pleasure runs through Jon's body, small enough that Stephen wouldn't have noticed if he hadn't been right up against it. Instead of answering, Jon tips his head back, baring the length of his throat to Stephen's gaze.
"Not there," says Stephen out loud. "We agreed on the arms, remember? Nice and subtle. Not like the...neck."
He won't bite. He won't. But it's right there, jugular vein tracing a throbbing scarlet path across his vision, and he's only inhuman.
Jon's flesh is warm against the flat of his tongue, sweat-salty from the earlier exertion. He savors it while he can, expecting every second for Jon to think twice and push him off. The heat. The flow of Jon's breath. The imagined taste of iron and copper as he traces the vein.
One of his fangs scrapes the skin.
It's almost his undoing. He grabs Jon's right forearm, pulls it straight in front of him, and plunges his fangs into the soft skin at the crook of Jon's elbow, hitting the cephalic vein as much by luck as by instinct. Blood wells against his tongue; he swallows and laps and swallows again, while Jon lies languid in his embrace.
"What did you do to me?"
Stephen doesn't look up from his tape of ER. "What was that? 'Thank you, Stephen, for bandaging my arm so neatly before putting me to bed and thoughtfully leaving a snack for when I wake up'?"
"Before that!" snaps Jon. He couldn't bring himself to touch the chips, though he's paying for it now in dizziness, even after a pleasant-enough nap in the bed he just refurbished. "Were there drugs involved, or was that just...you?"
He remembers. That's the worst of it. There's no chemical haze, no psychic equivalent of a hangover; it feels like he was lucid as a judge the whole time he was working out that his greatest ambition in life was to let Stephen have him for dinner. He can't even pinpoint when the shift happened. Stephen could be pulling the same thing right now and he'd have no idea which thoughts weren't his own until after (if) the vampire let him go.
Stephen pauses the tape with a groan. "I knew you were being too nice! It's called chilling out, and you should really try it more often, dude. Would make unlife at the office a lot easier."
He doesn't know.
The thought cuts Jon's next yell out from under him. Either Stephen's putting up a very convincing front — which would be a first — or he's acting like everything went fine because, as far as he knows, it did.
"Not your decision," Jon says. He can still bluff through this, as long as Stephen doesn't turn out to be an accidental mind-reader too. "I'm the boss here. You got that? I'll be as neurotic as I want, and if you try to talk me out of it again, I'll...." Stop feeding him? No, he can't imagine a path where that ends well. "...bump you all the way back down to production assistant. And not the real kind, either. The kind where it's code for 'guy who gets the coffee'."
"Touchy, touchy," says Stephen, though his posture shows he's been strongarmed into complying, at least for now. "Let it not be said that I told His Highness — for relative values of height — what to do, but if I were you, I would go get my Pepsi and come join a certain mild-mannered vampire in watching this ER episode. It's the one where George Clooney is handsome."
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Angst from the early days! :) I love how dangerously innocent both of them are.
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