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The Great War ended, and they parted on a compromise: when the next one started, Logan would come back. Until then, Victor would leave him the fuck alone. Victor kept his word for so long, Logan finally started to believe he'd actually meant it.
It was 1927, early spring in Peggy’s Cove, and their nets had taken an unholy beating from the storm, so there would be no going out on the water until they got patched up. Tommy was better with that kind of detail work than Logan, but he had to meet with the bank up in Halifax about the house, and the job couldn't wait another day.
So Tommy left first, slipping out of bed for an early start while Logan was still mostly dozing, and headed off in the car. Logan listened to it rumble away and tried to sleep a little longer, couldn't.
He fixed his coffee and set to work on the mending. It was easy enough--pleasant enough--to let his hands work and his mind drift into quietness. He could do that, when he was someplace safe.
The door opened again so soon--no more than ten minutes later--that Logan assumed Tommy had come back for some forgotten thing and didn't really hear it. He heard the wrong weight of the footsteps, at least, too late to do anything about it except watch Victor saunter into the doorframe and pause there, blocking the way out entirely.
"Guess you meant it when you said you wanted to play house," Victor said. His eyes flicked up and down Logan, around the room, taking both in with open contempt.
Logan's first thought--he would hold onto that, later, that this came first--was the one he voiced, a low growl. "If you've hurt him--"
Victor smiled and stepped fully into the room, moving toward Logan like a stalking cougar approaching its wounded prey. "Who, your little wife?" His head tilted to the side, eyes glinting with interest. "Unless you're the wife. Or do you save that just for me?"
He let his claws out and tensed up, ready. "What did you do, Victor?"
"Nothing," Victor said, mouth twitching with amusement, "you paranoid bastard. Your beau is safely en route to wherever the fuck he was headed. I thought this--" He paused and closed the rest of the distance between them. "--should be just you and me."
As Victor drew near, Logan felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. His heart was racing already, had been since the moment he'd recognized the sound of Victor's steps. "What's 'this' supposed to be?" he said, steady and controlled, letting just a hint of a snarl edge his voice.
"I never wanted to tell you this," Victor said, "since you've got a high enough opinion of yourself already." He leaned in close enough that his breath puffed against Logan's ear. "But you're a hell of a good lay."
Logan froze, gone hot all over, no thoughts but a roaring in his head like standing at the bottom of a waterfall.
"What can I say," Victor murmured. His body was a broad warm wall bearing down on Logan; his lips brushed Logan's skin when he spoke. "You ruined me for other boys, Jimmy."
It had been nine years since they'd parted ways. Logan had stopped actively waiting for Victor to show up three or four years ago, finally; stopped expecting it at all a couple years after that.
"I tried to be good," Victor said. He leaned back so he could look at Logan face to face, so Logan could see that familiar sideways grin he wore when he felt like really putting the effort in and seducing someone. Logan, usually. It was rare he found anyone else worth the trouble. "Just like you asked. But I just had to swing by for another taste.”
Logan tried to step back but ran into the table behind him. "Fuck you."
"That's not a no."
"Fuck you, no."
"Sure," Victor said easily. "Say, how long do you think your best girl will be out? Long enough for you to grow your guts back and tear me off him, do you think?"
It was beyond stupid to feel betrayed. Betrayal required trust, and it had been half a century since Victor had been anything but a threat, a liability, or--or something else that still wasn't capable of betrayal, only single-minded pursuit of his own desires. But Logan did feel it, a sharp stab through his ribs, and he showed it, and Victor drank it up like top shelf bourbon.
"Don't look at me like that, Jimmy. Here I am giving you the perfect excuse, and you're not even going to show a little gratitude?"
"The--what--" Logan stared at him, nonplussed. Gratitude was a new one. "Why the fuck would I--"
Victor touched one hand to Logan's face. With the claws pressed lightly against his skin, Logan could feel them as they lengthened. He wished bitterly that he had anything to fear from them; that might distract him from the nauseous storm of arousal that swirled in his gut as Victor dragged his claws down Logan's cheek, pressing just barely hard enough to draw five thin lines of blood that closed almost as soon as they opened.
"If you can't say no," Victor said, "you don't have to admit that you would've said yes. I'm doing you a kindness."
Logan shut his eyes. It only made Victor's scent more overwhelming. "A kindness," he rasped. "By raping me." He wanted the word to hit, to hurt, to mean something to Victor. What it did was make him laugh, loud and delighted.
"Trust me, Jimmy," Victor told him fondly, rubbing the pad of his thumb against Logan's lips, begging entrance, "if I ever rape you, you'll know."
Logan was going to hate himself for a long time after this, he thought, because that was what finally pulled a shudder and a moan out of him--what made him open his mouth and suck on the finger Victor gave him, what made him give.
"There you are," Victor purred, voice rich with satisfaction and what Logan recognized as his version of genuine affection. No matter how many times he made Logan roll over for him, the pleasure he took in it never seemed to diminish. And Logan...
He wanted to be surprised by how good it felt to roll over, wanted at least to have forgotten how fucking desperate and hungry it made him when Victor scruffed him and put him down hard. But it was just like he remembered, and sliding back into it--he'd thought he felt safe, a few minutes ago, but Victor was the only safety he'd ever really been able to believe.
He didn't want this, but he didn't have to want it. Victor would give it to him anyway.
Victor's thumbnail pierced his tongue as it extended. Pure instinct made Logan jerk his head back, and blood filled his mouth as the claw tore free, briefly splitting his tongue like a snake. There was pain in his life out here, pain everywhere the wide world round, but it wasn't the outrageous daily assault on his ever-healing body that he'd gotten used to during wartime, and he was unprepared for the whip-crack of high-pitched agony in his mouth as his flesh tore. His eyes flew open and he barked a wordless protest.
"Really?" Victor grabbed his hands and lifted them up in front of Logan. He hadn't even realized his claws had come back out. "You make me fight you for it, you'll have one hell of a mess to explain when the wife gets home."
"Don't--" Logan snarled, yanking his wrists out of Victor's grasp. Don't mention him. Don't make me think about what happens after. Worse than useless to say any of that. And worst of all that Victor was right, of course. Logan couldn't even allow himself the meager satisfaction of resisting. Knowing what Logan was and not caring was one thing, but if Tommy came back home to blood soaked through the floorboards and furniture smashed to pieces, Logan thought he might start caring that he'd been playing house with a monster in pretty short order.
Victor watched him struggle with himself, his gaze warm and interested. Logan wondered how many centuries it would take for his cock to quit getting hard when Victor looked at him like that. One clearly wasn't enough.
He pulled his claws back in and let his hands hang loose. Stood still, chin lifted just a little, and let it happen.
Victor kissed him the same way he had for decades: heavy, demanding, hungry. He was always so fucking hungry for it, whether it had been nine years or nine hours; there was never any bottom to his wanting. And the only way Logan was going to get through this was to fall down that chasm right after him, so he opened up and held on and when Victor's hand slid roughly through his hair and grabbed tight, Logan let it feel exactly as good as it always had. Still did. Always would, probably, and that thought shouldn't have coiled so deliciously at the base of his spine, but he let that happen too.
"Knew you'd be so fucking easy for it," Victor murmured, low and hoarse. He bit down hard on Logan's throat and kept his mouth right there as the blood welled up and spilled over his tongue. Logan closed his eyes and tilted his head to the side and shivered through the tingle of healing, not surprised when the teeth sank right back in. Over and over until he was almost ready to scream, because it was a fucking tease and Victor knew it was a tease.
Eventually Victor tired of that particular trick, probably because he could feel exactly how well it was working. He kissed Logan again, bloody-mouthed. It was Logan's first taste of blood in--it couldn't have been since the war, he thought; there must have been some moment, some injury, some brawl in town somewhere. But if there was he couldn't remember it. Blood was Victor's taste, and it made Logan's breath catch in his chest, made his hands slide down over Victor's back pockets and pull before he could stop himself.
Victor laughed the way someone might laugh at an animal doing a particularly impressive trick. "That’s right," he said, all fondness and heat. "Got all that fight out of your system. Now we can have some fun."
"Just fucking get on with it," Logan gritted out, feeling his face getting hot. He wasn't going to think about this; he wasn't going to think about anything. All he had to do was not say no, and god knew he'd perfected that skill years ago.
So he didn't. He didn't say no, and he didn't say no, Victor's perfect Jimmy just the way Victor spent so long shaping him into, and he didn't say no until Victor kicked open the door to the other room and tossed Logan onto the double bed on his back. The bed he shared with Tommy. The bed that still smelled like Tommy, less than an hour gone.
He went rigid all over, cold right down to his bones. "Not here."
Victor stood at the foot of the bed, huge and implacable, and raised his eyebrows. "Why not?"
"Anywhere else," Logan said. His heart slammed in his chest. He kept his voice steady, mostly, and with effort. "The floor. On the table. Fucking--outside."
"Didn't answer my question," Victor said. He dropped his shirt to the floor and started on his pants, popping the buttons with one quick motion of his thumb. Logan watched him, breath coming fast and shallow. He couldn't, he couldn't--he could give Victor anything and everything, but if he let go of this there wouldn't be anything left.
"You know," he managed finally, when Victor was down to his shorts, fly unbuttoned, his thumbs hooked in the waistband. "You know why."
"Yeah," Victor said, "I do." He pushed the shorts off and crawled onto the bed, and Logan watched him getting closer and couldn't move. "You don't want me sullying your marriage bed."
"Don't," Logan said stupidly, because there wasn't anything else to say. All the light was gone from the room; there was just Victor, advancing on him, everything else gone dark. His pulse roared in his ears until he could barely hear his own voice. "Victor, don't."
Victor began to unbutton his shirt, his fingers moving steadily and unhurried. "Ask me nice."
"Please don't do this." Logan might feel ashamed, later, at how easily the words fell out. Right now all he felt was desperate.
"Come on, Jimmy," Victor said. He dragged one claw down Logan's undershirt, splitting it down the middle, and pushed the halves aside. The thought crossed Logan's mind, wild and incoherent, that he'd have to tear that up a little more before tossing it in the rag pile, so it wouldn't look so obviously like what it was. "What are you so scared of? It's not like he'll know I was here."
But you will, he didn't have to say. Logan would be smelling him for days, lying next to Tommy and smelling Victor, Victor's scent filling his nose alongside Tommy's every time they fucked, so that Logan would remember it that way forever.
It was why Victor had come for him at all, Logan realized. Promising to leave Logan alone was one thing, but leaving him with someone else...that, apparently, was untenable.
He quit begging. Quit moving, quit thinking. Kept breathing, because he had to think to keep from doing that. He had to--he just had to take it. And Logan knew how to do that, he'd thought he knew how, but he'd never--Victor had never--
Because he'd never had to. Logan telling him to fuck off when he wasn't in the mood was acceptable; Logan putting any part of himself off limits forever was not. All right. He could think about that after.
Victor slapped his cheek, just hard enough to sting. "Wake up," he said sharply. "Not much fun if you're not here."
He made his eyes focus again and felt Victor's approving purr like it was resonating in his own chest. A thick veil still hung between his mind and the rest of his body, but it wasn't thick enough to hide in the way he'd been trying to do. And that was good enough for Victor, it seemed. He smiled, eyes darkening even more until there was nothing left but blown pupil and stark white, and laid a warm hand over Logan's throat.
Logan waited, breathless, for his grip to tighten, but it never did. Victor's hand just lay there, heavy and full of promise, just tight enough for Logan to feel the pressure when he swallowed. Then Victor drew his hand down over Logan's collarbones and across his chest, claws extending to scratch the same deep but fleeting marks he'd left there a thousand times before.
That brought Logan all the way back with a sharp jolt. He grabbed Victor's wrist and pulled it away from him, then grabbed the other when it immediately came at him. Victor's eyes flared hot and furious.
"No claws," Logan said, squeezing hard enough to feel bones creak, threatening to shatter.
"You want to try that again," Victor said--low, eerily calm--and it wasn't a question.
He squeezed harder. A couple of the small bones cracked, and Victor hissed but didn't move. "No claws," Logan repeated. "No blood." No evidence, and he saw the moment when Victor understood and the heat in his eyes shifted from rage to amusement. It was how he always looked when he decided to let Logan have his way, like giving ground didn't bother him at all.
"Sure," Victor said. He pulled his hands free from Logan's slackened grip and brought them to his chest again, shifting the angle of his fingers. When he drew them lightly down Logan's skin he didn't even leave a scratch. "I'll do it real sweet. Just like your wedding night."
"I'm not fucking married." He felt dizzy--from the staggering relief that Victor had let him set any kind of boundary, but also because this was...they didn't touch each other like this. It would be easier, really, if Victor did make him bleed, but that was out of the question, so Logan would just have to--handle it.
"No?" He flicked the buttons on Logan's fly open and Logan shifted his hips expectantly, but Victor didn't pull his jeans down right away. He let his hand rest heavily over Logan's cock--still hard, despite the panic, probably because of it--and squeezed.
"Fuck--" He arched up into the touch, heat shooting out all through him from that one point.
"You live in his house," Victor said. "You don't fuck anybody else, present company excepted. You stay in the same place for six years." He sounded perfectly calm, like he was having a friendly debate in someone's drawing room. "You'd be wearing his ring if you could. Don't know what else you'd rightly call it."
He kept squeezing as he spoke, in time with Logan's racing heartbeat. It wasn't that much sensation--through the denim and his underclothes and not even particularly forceful--but he wanted it, wanted it, wanted it. Wanted more. And he could have it.
"Will you quit talking," he snapped, and grabbed Victor's neck and pulled him down into a kiss.
It worked for a surprisingly long time. Victor didn't quite manage to keep his fangs out of it--Logan doubted he knew how--but that was fine, the blood had no chance to stain anything before it was swallowed and the pinpricks on his lip sealed back up almost as soon as Victor made them. When Victor tugged at his waistband, Logan arched up again to let himself be stripped. The haze of desire was getting thick again, blessedly thick enough to sink into and become just sensation. Victor took him in hand and gave him a few strokes, luxuriously slow, and it was almost enough.
When he started to roll over, though, Victor pinned him back down with a hand on his chest. "You got something I can use?" Amusement rumbled through his voice, still, like he was telling a joke.
The question was so unexpected--so familiar yet utterly foreign here, now, from him--that for a second Logan just stared up at him, uncomprehending. They didn't touch each other like this and they didn't fuck each other like that, like either of them wanted it to be easy.
He made himself speak, somehow. "Did you forget how to spit?"
"Come on now," Victor said. The hand on his chest eased up and began a sensual caress. Logan shuddered and tried to squirm away. "I thought you wanted it like this."
"I said no blood, not--"
Victor's claws were pressed against his throat in one swift, smooth motion. It didn't even feel violent.
"You're going to be good for me," Victor said. "Aren't you?"
The shock of arousal that shot through him was so strong it felt like agony. Logan moaned, heat rushing to his face, dizzy again, miserable, desperate.
"That's right." Victor pet his cheek, smiling fondly. "And I'm gonna be good to you. So answer my question."
"Under the mattress," Logan managed. "That side." He nodded his head to the left, then shut his eyes as Victor leaned over and felt around for the tin. Was this some kind of fucked up competition, Logan wondered--Victor trying to prove something, as if this wasn't just another flavor of violence. As if that wasn't the appeal for both of them.
They'd mostly given up on keeping slick around not long after enlisting for the first time, when it got hard to find cooking grease going spare and Victor quit bothering to replenish his battered tin. Quit bothering with a lot of things, during the war, that he didn't pick back up again after.
Even later, when the tubes of Vaseline began to come standard as part of their kit, Victor didn't always reach for it, and never did more than run a half-slick hand up and down his cock before taking Logan. He'd always liked it just the same when he now and then got in the mood to take it himself.
Victor found what he was looking for with a satisfied hum and set it on the bed next to them. Logan moved again to turn over onto his knees, but Victor stopped him again.
"Just like this," Victor told him, and Logan swallowed his instinctive protest. It was one of his games, now, with nothing to do but play along. Wasn't even like they never fucked face to face, anyway. Victor liked to watch him, from any angle. But now, here--
He let Victor move his legs where he wanted them and breathed in, out, steady. As slow as he could stand right now, which wasn't very. But steady, at least. When he closed his eyes, Victor’s claws dug into his thigh just hard enough to break the skin slightly, so Logan opened them again and let Victor watch his face as the slick pad of one finger began to tease at his hole, making him tense hard all over and open his mouth.
Victor cut him off. "No claws," he said, his tone gentle and mocking and perfectly sincere. "No blood." He made no move to push his finger inside, and Logan slowly relaxed. It had only been a few months after they started fucking that Victor's claws had fully finished growing in, finally more useful long as weapons than trimmed as camouflage, and that had been the end of any attempts at fingering. Not that Logan had needed it by then.
But Victor kept playing with him anyway, and that was the only way to describe it, for all that the thought made Logan's face burn. He played with Logan like a favorite toy, stroking and circling with the soft pads of his fingers, rubbing a slippery knuckle up and down Logan's twitching hole and pressing it in a bare half inch, just enough to tease. His hand slid up now and then to cup Logan's balls and stroke just too loosely at his needy, straining cock before his focus inexorably swung back, and he purred at every whimper and moan he pulled out of Logan's helpless mouth, as though he was the one suffering so much pleasure his blood burned under his skin.
"You're so easy," Victor said, watching his hand at work. He sounded so fucking satisfied. "Just gotta know where to touch you and you go to pieces, you need it so bad."
Victor knew every place to touch, knew everything, he'd found all of it, or put it there, coaxed it out, shoved it in, made it fit. Made Logan fit. Made Logan his, and Logan wanted to come, wanted to die, wanted to be fucked so bad he was going to die.
"Just do it," he said, half snarl and half whine. "Do it, fuck me, come on already. Please," he added, before Victor could tell him to, which earned him a dark, pleased smile that made shame heave and twist in his chest. It made his cock jerk hard against his belly, too. The smile or the shame or both, all of it--
Victor's attention shifted for a few moments as he scooped another generous two fingers' worth out of the tin and slicked himself more liberally than Logan had ever seen before. Not since the first time, anyway, when he'd been trying so hard to be careful. Staring at the ceiling, Logan caught his breath and tried to get ahold of himself, and he almost managed it despite everything. Then Victor leaned back over him, planted one hand on the bed next to Logan's shoulder, and pushed his way in. The pressure was so smooth, so painless--so fucking careful that it utterly unmoored him.
Logan felt his body open up, easy and welcoming, and gasped against a tidal wave of sudden, dizzying dislocation. It was as if the century had never turned--as if they hadn't spent those awful decades pushing the frontier west on a wave of blood just for something for Victor to do, as if they'd never crossed the border and put on those blue uniforms--as if he was still Jimmy, still Victor's, always Victor's, always the two of them. It's us. It should be us.
Victor made the same noise he always made on that first breach, a low, pained-sounding exhale, not quite voiced enough to be a grunt. He'd made that sound the first time, even. His breath had tickled the back of Logan's neck, made him shiver.
"Always so fucking tight," Victor said, his voice threaded with shocked pleasure. He was paused halfway in, and he sounded almost as dazed as Logan felt. They hovered there for a long moment, eyes locked, until Logan rasped out,
"Please," and Victor closed his eyes and slid deeper, easy as anything, all the way home.
The air clung to Logan all over, hot and liquid, slowing all his senses. When he grabbed at Victor's arm, the motion seemed to take a long time.
"Good," he slurred, "fuck, 's good, good..."
The groan Victor let out sounded like Logan had torn him open. He started to move, fucking Logan hard and fast right out of the gate, like he was already desperate.
God, Logan had missed this, the overwhelm of it, Victor huge and hot and covering him, holding him down. The way Victor’s cock broke him open, brand new every time. He clung tight to Victor’s arms, mouth open, panting, whining, and let himself shiver to pieces like a boat dashed on the rocky shore.
"Mine," Victor growled, slamming into him deep as he could get, over and over. "You’re mine, Jimmy, you can run as far as you want but you're still mine."
The words lit up Logan's spine with the same shivering delight as they always had, along with the tight thrashing misery that had accompanied the delight for decades now. Victor was looking at him again, his eyes black and focused and open, his whole face open.
Victor repeated it, mine, insisting, demanding. Begging, Logan thought, bright white understanding flooding his mind like a flashbulb going off. Because he doesn't have anything else.
"Yeah," Logan agreed breathlessly, and it was easy to say, easy to give him that. "Yeah, yours, I'm yours." It was even easier to sink into the space below his thoughts, where he could let the haze of sensation swallow him at last.
Time passed, somehow. Victor sank his teeth into Logan's shoulder when he came, Logan still too pliant and hazy from his own orgasm to remember he was supposed to protest. No sooner had Victor's hips stilled, though, than he was licking away the trickling blood until his lips were smeared red and no trace of it was left on Logan's skin.
He watched Victor come back to himself, and it was so fast--face shuttering as he pulled out and sat back, looking down. A tremor ran over his shoulders. He hadn't meant for it to be like that, Logan knew, and felt a small mean stirring of triumph. Victor hadn't meant for Logan to see anything. He hadn't meant for the momentum to carry him down too.
Logan had learned how to want on Victor. There was a space that he would always fit better than anyone else, because he'd made it. Logan had never considered that he might have carved out a space inside Victor too; that it might have been waiting for him, empty.
He didn't know what the fuck to do about knowing that now, but it gave him a heated satisfaction to know it at all.
**
He stood in the doorway and waited until Victor was a few long strides away to call after him. "You come for me again without a war on, I'm going to find a way to kill you."
Victor paused, but didn't turn around. "You wouldn't," he said, and he sounded almost certain.
"Come back and find out, then," Logan said. He stayed there, watching, until Victor was too far away to see anymore. Then he went back inside.
It wasn't noon yet, wasn't even close. He checked the sheets for stray drops of blood, knowing he wouldn't find any, and made the bed in the same loose, lazy way he always did. His bisected undershirt lay on the floor; he tore it a couple more times until it was just a handful of unremarkable scraps and tossed them into the rag pile.
He got what was left of last night’s dinner out of the icebox and ate it cold. Then he sat down and set to work again mending the nets. His hands were slower at the task than Tommy’s would have been, but he was finished by the time the clock chimed two.
About a mile northeast of the house the patchy woods turned thick and dark, even at midday. Logan stayed out there, thinking of nothing, until the thin shafts of light that struggled through the canopy began to fade.
The car was parked in front when he got home. He stood in the dark at the end of the muddy drive for a while, watching the glow of the lamp through the window, before he finally went inside.