He did not just...!!

Virgil pretended that a yelp hadn't left his lips when the vampire lifted him without compunction. If he hadn't felt like the winnings of a bet before, he definitely did now. Were all vampires wildly inappropriate? He thought about protesting but it didn't (for some reason) seem polite - so he resigned himself to being carried like a vaguely disgruntled cat.

The back passages of Hookers looked more or less as he imagined, though in their realness appeared less sinister. He was surprised to find himself in a library, though.

Well, with all that time on their hands, why wouldn't vampires read?

"Terribly cosy," Virgil remarked once he was let down on two feet, trying and failing to look dignified as he drawled on. "Thanks for the lift, I suppose."

He glanced around for a second, unable to help picking out titles on the shelf. A library was so disarmingly normal. V approached the sofa and peeled off his jacket, then his jumper.

"You don't mind, do you?" he fell back onto the cushions, eyebrows raised with more daring than he felt. "Not my arms or neck, please."

This time he wasn't risking being cornered by a nosey Vaillancourt in the lifts again.

The English wizard's manner was so proper to Lazarus Blackburn's New World origins. It had to Lazarus's ear such a politeness, like following a strict set of social rules would keep everyone in their right safe places and keep vampire biting civilized. At least the kid didn't need prompting to make himself comfortable, serving himself up. Lazarus could see the blood beating under the bare pale skin of Virgil's torso.

Lazarus too, began making himself comfortable. He disposed of the cigarette in a cobalt glass ash tray and shed the black denim jacket onto the back of a chair. He kept his hat on, though. He cracked his neck and popped his jaw. As the blood was closer and closer to being his, the old vampire's casual chatter waned.

"It's all red to me," Lazarus said again, repeating himself as he approached Virgil on the couch. The vampire's eyes had gone gleaming ink-black. He hinged forward at the wait and laid his cold fingers on living skin, tracing life lines. There wasn't much fat on him, and with a big heart pumping under those ribs, anywhere would produce enough.

Laz stoppd his finger on a spot on Virgil's left, just above his sharp hipbone and traced a little X with his finger nail.

He almost forgot about that... that thing they did with their jaws, which reminded him of how vampires masqueraded as human. Virgil's gaze tracked the approach and he did not move despite the compulsion to do so. Laz's eyes were different now.

Those weren't the eyes that fought the fire; those were the eyes that won.

Cold hands. Virgil breathed in sharply at the touch - fear and arousal and anticipation stirring in his belly all at once, remembering what Robin said about pain. Liking pain, wanting pain, asking for pain. It hadn't shocked the Healer and he doubted it would shock ol' Laz either.

X marks the spot. V glanced down at the spot, soft flesh just where his bony hip stuck out from underneath his jeans. He swallowed, about to say something and then thought better of it. Why prevaricate? The vampire would take what he wante--

Virgil's head dropped back against the couch and he felt the air leave his lungs in a soft cry of pain. It hurt! He knew it would but for a second that was all he could think: it hurts it hurts it hurts, thrumming through his head.

And then it didn't, not in the same way. The tension in his shoulders melted. His varnished nails ceased tearing at sofa fabric. Virgil thought he was going to dissolve into the furniture and the books and the floorboards.

He shut his eyes in an indecent sigh, the ache sweet and throbbing and pulling at his thoughts until they were unwinding like a clock surrendered to disorder. Because he wanted this, maybe, it was astonishingly better than with Terry.

It was his body and his mind in agreement, a single instrument of pain and pleasure unable to tell one apart from the other.

Vampires these days were more like spiders than wolves, Lazarus had said once. When once they roamed and hunted and thrilled and dragged, now they laid luxurious traps to lure wet-eyed pleasure-seekers. The latter laid in the coven's velvet webs and moaned and the vampires must take total care not to let them expire that way. Some vampires Lazarus knew felt the entire situation was a step down for them all, that they were made impotent by the entire thing. Lazarus, well, he didn't mind.

He took his share from Virgil Carstairs, released his bite with an indelicate sucking sound, and wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with the base of his thumb. His jaw popped back into placed and he sighed deeply out of habit. With practice, Lazarus collected up Virgil's hand, put a clean handkerchief into it, then placed it over the bleeding bite marks.

"Press hard," he instructed, his voard more hoarse than usual.

The drink had been enough. Lazarus didn't feel hungry any more.

Unwound and as slack as a listless cat, he sensed a trickle of euphoria burst softly through the initial wave. It was like clarity, like the cogs in his head had been polished and oiled and put back into place. This was new - it was maybe what he would have felt if he hadn't been so terrified and anxious that night, when Nemo lost her game of cards.

Virgil opened his eyes only when he felt his fingers close on soft cotton and he registered the glancing terror of what it meant to forget you had a body.

"Hard," he repeated, perfunctory, clasping handkerchief to his hip. It didn't hurt. Later, maybe.

And then he stayed there for a while in stillness. Breathing. Moving only in his mind, which had turned strange thoughts out from under its floorboards, thoughts he hadn't pondered in ages. V sifted through them with this brief and newfound clarity: euphoria keeping him from being dragged down into brooding

At last - after a few minutes, or so it felt - V turned his head to the side, still resting against the back of the sofa. "Well?" he watched Laz the vampire, who had lost that look in his eye.

"How did I taste?"

Lazarus, risen from the dead, had no hurry in him. He had sat against the desk and smoked a cigarette watching Virgil Carstairs' heart beat in his neck for the past five minutes. New rules or not, it was good manners not to just leave humans in a pile, and Lazarus never disturbed a sleeping feline. Virgil came around and seemed to be fishing.

"A taste," Lazarus began using Emily Dickinson's words, "like a liquor never brewed. Not all the vats on the Rhine yield such an alcohol."

His mates could tell Laz was quoting some book when he didn't mumble and lavish over his own tongue. It took verse to get Lazarus to the point.

"Now you can say you've done it in a library," he said rising.

His lips spread into a delighted grin, as well-sated by the vampire's response as the vampire was by his blood. Virgil sat up straight and lifted his arms into a great stretch - wincing slightly at the sting on his hip, to which feeling now returned.

That would need healing.

"I'll have to start a list," he remarked, matter-of-fact and not really looking for a response as he reached for his jumper. "Although it's a shame not to use a good library for its intended purpose."

Though Virgil didn't subscribe to a particular belief system, he always felt libraries to be sacred. Which made this evening all the more delicious, of course. He slipped his top back on and relished the warmth; apparently getting drained left you feeling chilly.

"Perhaps you can tell me a story?" V glanced at Lazarus before lifting the hem of the jumper to examine his bite. "One I can't find in these books."

He drew his wand, hoping it would not offend to clean the bite in front of its biter.