Heads or Tails [Renard]

[Beckett]

If there were any two things that Renard always seemed to pull off really well, it was a devil-may-care attitude and a smug confidence in his ability to avoid the consequences of such an attitude. Beckett knew that the confidence came from the many years of experience, but that didn’t change his reaction to it each and every time. His muted green gaze narrowed on the other man’s face, his lips pursing into a look of disdain. Once upon a time, he had hoped that Ren would “outgrow” the need to be some kind of delinquent, but it really only seemed to get worse in adulthood. Now? Now, this adult was a bloodthirsty killer with the predatory instincts to go with it. Christ, what have I done? The thought came and just as quickly vanished. It wasn’t as if, despite the looks Ren earned for his behavior, that Beck really tried to persuade him against it, or even intervened enough to stop it from happening. Sure, he might open his mouth, but… there tended to be a certain incentive necessary for Ren to actually listen.

”You know, the other option there is that we don’t find out…” he muttered, more to himself than the man beside him. After all, he had been the one to even raise the question in the first place. His focus never settled on Ren as they roamed through the streets, following the unpleasant scent of booze, drugs, and no amount of cleanliness. Much like a child who thrived on superstition, his feet carried him over the various cracks in the sidewalks and the various plants that managed to peek through the concrete. And still, he never faltered in his stride, managing to remain perfectly in sync with Renard’s steps. A skill that came from years upon years of practice.

There was a slight pause, a mere second of hesitation in which Beckett finally turned to his partner, only to find amber trained on a townhouse just ahead. Perhaps due to his own distraction with the sidewalk, Beck hadn’t even noticed the increased potency of the smells surrounding the area. His stomach churned, and he was fairly positive he may have turned a sickly shade of green. Ren had thrown up before, and so it was obviously possible for vampires to take part in that particularly human function, but what would he even have to bring up? Blood? Ren’s blood? Speculation, yes, but Beck couldn’t imagine that the blood tasted quite as good coming back up as it did going down…

Renard tugged him toward the house and there was a slight resistance as he tried to free himself from the hold. Ultimately, though, he allowed himself to be pulled into the home, beaten down from lack of maintenance. It was the kind of space that should have been condemned years ago, and was only still in operation for continued use of gangsters, thugs, and drug addicts. Beckett stopped paying attention to his lover as he wandered deeper into the home, doing his best to avoid stepping into the many piles of trash that covered every surface available. He heard, rather than saw the door being locked, choosing to ignore the realities of such an action. ”I’m not entirely sure you could even call it a party…” he sighed, glancing around and spotting more than one used syringe, too many beer cans and bottles, and several baggies that had, no doubt, once been filled with any number of drugs.

He hadn’t followed his partner right away, choosing to move in the direction of a kitchen that was littered with dirty dishes, empty take out containers and boxes, and more bottles that reeked of stale beer and alcohol. As he backtracked toward the direction that Renard had taken, his comment on the inhabitants no harder to hear than if the man had been right next to him. And when he finally entered the space, his eyes roamed over the various bodies. All of them were eeriely still, but their goans and labored breathing were sign enough that they weren’t dead. Not quite, anyway. Beckett’s attention fell onto one girl, the needle still poised in her arm. She was deathly pale, and her chest rose and fell in an unnaturally slow pattern. So slow that she might have just stopped altogether. Hmm…” he hummed, holding up one finger in Ren’s direction before taking a turn around the room.

A part of him reeled from the fact that Renard was suggesting such a violent act. To wake someone from a drug-induced state purely for the sake of the chase, to savagely take from them what they both knew they needed. But another, quieter part of him revelled in the idea of being so shamelessly in control of a situation. To know, without a doubt, that their prey wouldn’t have a chance for escape. Like cornering an animal, except that even managing to evade one, simply put them in arms of the other. Maybe vampires were solitary hunters by nature, Beckett didn’t know, but if the many years with Ren were any indication to how things would work for them as a vampire couple...hunting alone wouldn’t be much of an option. Even so, the predator within him paced back and forth, impatiently waiting. Much like it had only moments before he’d attacked his lover.

His knowledge of the drug world was limited, sure, but he knew enough. As his gaze landed on a small black bag, he smirked, stooping down to retrieve it from beside some poor ********. ”If this is what I think it is…” he mused aloud, unzipping it to reveal the medication within. ”Perfect.” Without offering any means of explanation to Renard (and without reason to think that he necessarily needed one), Beck dropped down beside the woman. Shuddering, he pulled the needle from her arm and positioned her head in such a way that he could utilize the nasal spray from the emergency kit. It would take several minutes to really kick in, to make it possible to wake her from the high she was currently riding out. A high that could have, for all the attention her “friends” were giving, killed her.

Standing from his position, he tossed the emergency Narcan kit back to the poor guy he’d taken it away from, shooting a glance at Renard. ”You wanted a chase…” he explained, as if what his motives weren’t already obvious. ”It should only take a few minutes before we manage to wake her up.” His eyes dropped back to the female at his feet, his eyebrows raising. Shame really, that he probably just saved her life, only so that they could take it.

”Do we test the vampire high theory before, or after?”

[Renard]

Fate was threatening to squash Renard’s good time. After all, he wasn’t going to have any fun just eating the passed out humans on the floors, mattresses, couches (and in one case a table) at the townhouse. What fun was it shooting fish in a barrel? The thrill he’d experienced from before had been the hunt - tracking down someone to feed from and then the way she had shot him. Okay. Getting shot hadn’t been part of the fun, but her putting up a fight had been enjoyable if only because he knew he was actually beating someone who knew what they were doing. It hadn’t just been about feeding a physiological need, but a psychological one as well. And the fatal flaw in his plan had been that people who were strung out on something which essentially robbed them of their consciousness, probably weren’t going to do very much to stop themselves from being killed. Hell. He probably could have ended them all and none of them would have even realized it.

And that was when Beckett stepped in to fix the situation.

Usually, Beck had to be the voice of reason. He was the one who talked for the pair most often because Ren had this habit of putting his foot in his mouth. He could, without meaning to, offend everyone in his immediate vicinity with a shocking accuracy and speed. It was like his ******* super power. If you were a person with any values or ideals or ethics, Renard could piss you off. Fast. Usually, when they ended up pulling out of a nasty scrape, it was because Beck was there to talk Renard out of doing something dumb. Or was there to apologize for him. Or was there to talk other people into overlooking whatever the Killer had done. This was the way they had been for years. And yet, here was Renard’s lover enabling him. Not only not standing in the way of what he wanted, but actively helping him to get it.

That was ******* sexy.

"We’ll figure it out afterwards. I don’t want to be zonked out when this ***** is running away screaming.” He said as he slipped behind the other man. His chest pressed right against Beck’s shoulders, and his arms slid about a middle. It was not uncommon for Ren to demonstrate how possessive he was with his partner. Sometimes this took the shape of his fingers curling casually into the other man’s thigh, remaining there, squeezing gently. It was a not at all subtle display of what they were to each other, and a threat to anyone who decided to come near them. He tucked his cheek against a shoulder, and lazily rubbed it there while his gaze fell upon the woman. A few minutes? They had a few minutes all to themselves. The house was totally on lock down. She wasn’t going to ever get away, so that wasn’t a concern. And Renard wanted to touch his lover. Feel him. Make it clear just how much he appreciated his helpfulness.

And so his fingertips crept slowly in from the other man’s sides, eventually coming to rest right over an abdomen. He could feel the hard etching of muscle through a shirt, and the heels of his palms kneaded slowly and firmly into that place. They were effectively plastered together. “I want you so ******* much right now. If this place didn’t smell like gross, I’d have you on th…” There were no clean surfaces. “You get what I mean.” Not that he intended to do anything about that desire. He’d gotten a taste of his Beck earlier in the evening. He could wait for a little longer. Until after this new hunt. After they toyed with the drinking of blood and drugs. But that moment cemented that it was inescapable. Beck had all but unleashed a dark and wild thing in Ren that would stalk behind them slowly for some time, but it would certainly pounce.

That was when the woman on the drugs began to come around. She made a gurgling sound and then her head sat up, and she blinked wide eyes. Renard grunted, and held up a finger as if to say ‘hold on a sec, I’m doing something’, while he pressed his lips against his partner’s neck, where there used to be a pulse. He was going to nip there, when she made another unattractive sound, which really took Ren out of the mood. So he snarled, his fangs flashing as he stared at her. “HEY *****, SHUT UP.” In fact, all of his teeth were fangs, razor sharp and over-sized. It wasn’t intentional really. Or maybe it was, subconsciously. She got one look at his demonic visage, screamed, and scrambled to run away.

“****!”

[Beckett]

The look of exasperation that Beckett adopted at his partner’s response was immediate. It was such a dramatic shift that one could question if he’d honestly considered what he’d just done before he’d done it. The truth was, by allowing Renard to have exactly what he wanted, the Necromancer would manage to keep some semblance of control over the situation. Which, admittedly, didn’t make a whole lot of sense. But, Ren was an impulsive man and always had been. When he was bored, he tended to act out, if only for the thrill it would temporarily provide. If he couldn’t find it here, he would find it somewhere else. And, now, he was this freshly turned vampire with more potential than he’d be damned not to tap into, and just as good of a chance of getting himself (and thus, Beckett, himself) into a situation that he simply wouldn’t be able to talk them out of.

So, best to keep Ren’s little games to a semi-controllable environment, where their few possible witnesses couldn’t find their way out of a cardboard box, let alone explain to anyone what they had seen. Assuming any of them made it out of here, at all.

”You’re a horror, Renard Sutton…” he sighed with a slow shake of his head, even as his body relaxed against the other man’s frame, practically humming with contentment. That sense of completeness seeming to return little by little the longer the night wore on. They’d only been apart for a week, but it had been a good couple of years since their last...for lack of a better term, break. Since they’d spent any extended period of time apart. It wasn’t quite so dramatic as feeling like a gaping hole in his chest was closing, but more like reuniting with a lost limb, perhaps?

Okay, maybe that was pretty dramatic, after all.

The unpleasant sounds of the woman at his feet captured his attention once more and the bridge of his nose wrinkled, the moment lost. ”The gross factor of this hole has kept my mind from straying too much to what’s in your pants, but it’s good to know where your head is at,” Beckett muttered, even as his own head tipped slightly to the side as lips grazed over his skin. The suddenness of Ren’s shout startled him enough to step out of the embrace, twisting to look at his love with a scowl but unable to hold the expression with a moment’s hesitation at the sight of the man’s mouth that had only just been at his neck. ”Well, that’s...different…” he said with an indistinct wave at his partner’s face before stepping closer, an arm looping around his shoulders to ensure he didn’t make off for their pawn just yet.

Wholly unconcerned that the woman had managed to crawl her way out of the room, the pad of his thumb settled against Renard’s lower lip, index finger tucked beneath his chin, granting him a better look at the row of fangs. Beckett smirked, hardly managing to hide it as his own elongated canines threatened to pierce the flesh of his lip. ”I don’t know what the hell you did, but it’s almost creepy how well the look suits you. I take back my previous comment. I’m definitely thinking about what’s in your pants, now.” Green sought out amber just long enough to wink, and then Beck was stepping back, fingers releasing his chin for the sake of slapping gently against his cheek. ”Didn’t your mother teach you any manners?” A dark eyebrow rose in question, as if he didn’t already know the type of woman that Beatrice Croft was and how she raised her son. ”If you insist on playing with your food, at least stop being a dick to it, yeah?”

At that, he stepped back, gesturing toward the hall with his head. ”My guess...she’s making a vain attempt for the front door, or she's reached the point of realizing she isn't getting out and is now attempting to hide. I suppose that depends on how coherent she is. Let's go find out which, shall we?" It sounded cold. Uncaring. A little too serial killer-ish for his tastes, but he'd worry about that later. It was a little too late to change it, now. The game had already been started.

[Renard]

They were flirting. They were always flirting, it was just that it didn’t always seem it. Sometimes they said things to each other that no rational couple would ever say. Sometimes the nature of their romance took a very dark turn - one moment seeming to be totally normal, and the next absolutely insane. People who watched it for long enough sort of got it, but not totally. There were those who had advised them to break up, which usually resulted in said people needing their jaws wired shut because Renard decked them so solidly they broke their jaws. It had happened at least once or twice. Theirs was not the type of love that needed people to get it. They were the participants, after all. Not other people. Nobody else really mattered. And that had been before they were monsters. Or at least, before they had been turned into vampires. Being called a horror was not new territory for Renard, and all it did was inspire a grin from him, as if Beckett had offered him up the sincerest of compliments.

Why yes. He was a horror. But that was their genre wasn’t it? The two of them had faced down a number of particularly ugly demons together. What humor there was, was black and sardonic. What drama they allowed was always the most dangerous kind. They both knew what kind of show they were putting on, the play they were acting out. It wasn’t just a sweet romance.

And right as Renard was about to give chase, he was drawn close to his partner. He felt a thumb peeling back the softness of his lips to reveal the jagged jaws of some unknown carnivore. If the idea had been to distract Renard, it had worked. He suddenly didn’t want to rip the human apart at all. What he wanted was to shoved Beck to the ground and rut him right then and there, like a wild animal. In fact, as that part of the Killer was mentioned, it was like what lay hidden sought to fill the pants which were the very topic of their discussion. It was difficult to swallow with his teeth like that so he had to lift his hand to drag it across his mouth so that he didn’t end up drooling. But of course Beck was being a tease, which was evidenced in the way he pulled back, how a hand patted his cheek. He very nearly snapped his teeth at those fingers as a slight cord of frustration pulled taut inside of him. “Can we not kill my boner talking about my mom please?” He asked, adjusting to the way the fangs felt. They hadn’t receded at all.

It looked a little bit like a meat grinder in there, all sharp edges.

The matter-of-fact way in which Beck approached the situation, the callousness of it, the cruelty, all of it made Renard want his mate all the more. They were soulmates after all, were they not? And much as Beck could pass as a normal person when he wanted to, he was still bound deeply to the psychopath that was Renard. They were both terminally fucked up. And Ren didn’t know if he was feeling lust or bloodlust more. Both of them were like these siren songs in his brain, turning everything else into white noise. He stared at the other man for a long moment after the invitation to go get their prey. As if he wasn’t totally sure. And in that time, some of the saliva did bead at the corner of his mouth and ooze out, to trickle down over his chin.

And then he seemed to make a decision. His voice was little more than a growl, more guttural and inhuman than any person should have been able to make. ”I ******* love you.” He said before leaning close so that he could drag his tongue right over his lover’s cheek, and leave behind the slightest of nips with those too-sharp teeth. Then he was off, darting in the direction of the scent trail left behind by the mortal. It was true that he would most likely get to her first, but he was patient. He could mostly wait to have fun until Beck caught up. And, as it turned out, the path was a lot more linear than he originally realized. It was no shock that her trail got cold right after a closet door. At which point, Renard had to double back and sniff lightly at the area.

With a grin, he yanked the door open, and he caught sight of her covering her mouth with both hands. Renard reached in and grabbed her by her hair, giving a yank to drag her out. “I found her!” he called out just in time for her to claw at his face in an effort to get free. In much the way he’d had the urge to snap at Beckett’s fingers only a few moments before, he did all the same with the junkie. Only he didn’t stop himself. And he sort of accidentally sank all of the way through three of her digits at the knuckle, ripping them off with an unattractive popping and crunching sound. He pulled his head back, blood pouring over his chin, his eyes wide. Whoops! He hadn’t even meant to do that. He let the fingers fall from his mouth and couldn’t help but let out a low laugh. He must have still been getting used to all the new **** that came with being a vampire. And he wanted desperately to say ‘my bad!’ or something like that. But he was going to kill her anyway, so what did it matter? Thus...comedy gold.