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The man in the white jacket was running for his life.
Running for one’s life had very little to do with running. Anyone who has ever had a nightmare can tell you that, and anyone who’s been face to face with real, physical danger knows this even better.
The man didn’t pump his legs and focus his breathing into neat little lines. He did not leap gracefully over obstacles, did not count two three four, inhale, two three four, exhale as his feet pounded the earth.
No.
He sprinted like his life depended on it. He ran comically, cartoonishly, he ran with a rictus grin on his face and tears spurting spasmodically from his eyes. His arms alternatingly pulled close to his chest and windmilled out at random. When he encountered obstacles, he scrabbled over them, hysterical ragged whimpers burbling out of his throat like the gargling of blood from a fresh wound.
People want to live so badly.
But this man? In the white sport coat? He was not going to.
Alastor watched the man stumble sprint through the woods, biding his time. Today, Alastor had decided that he wasn’t going to chase down his prey.
He had a dog for that.
White-jacket was ghosting out of sight, darting through the trees with labored breathing. He was easy to spot, but in spite of his clumsiness, he was moving quickly.
At his side, Alastor’s dog let out an impatient noise, furrowing the dirt with his fidgeting while his narrow eyes trained their prey’s escape.
Alastor never much fancied the idea of using a hunting dog to chase his prey down for him. For one, it seemed such a humiliatingly WASPish thing to do, old money behavior for people who wanted credit without doing any work. For another, Alastor liked the thrill of the chase, and had always thought sending a hound out after his prey would take all the joy from the hunt.
It turned out, however, that Alastor just had to meet the right dog.
“Alastor,” Vincent pleaded, pitched up into a whine. “Al!”
The prey was getting away, his white jacket bright against the dark trees, but fading every moment.
Not too far for a well-trained dog, though.
“Down, boy,” Alastor said, low in the back of his throat.
His dog shifted again, fidgeting. Alastor put a calming hand on his dog’s head, felt him sooth slightly, the whine sliding into an unhappy whimper. But Alastor knew his pet well. The exercise would do him good if he got to really give chase.
While Vincent all but frothed at the mouth, desperate to run after their prey, Alastor’s fingers feathered down from the top of his head, stroked his hair down to the nape of his neck, then traced down the line of his spinal cord till his finger hooked a finger around the slim metal collar on Vincent’s neck. Vincent arched into the touch, shivering slightly.
“Hmm, alright,” Alastor said at last, lazy and laconic. He let go of the collar. “Fetch.”
Vincent’s face split into a grin, bright white teeth gleaming from ear to ear.
Then Vincent sprinted into the woods like a bullet from a gun.
Alastor pulled his tarnished golden watch out, started timing, and jogged behind his pet in no particular hurry. Vincent might have been stir crazy letting the prey get a head start, but he was athletic and a born predator. Alastor had every confidence in his ability to run the man down and sink his teeth (or knife or bullet) into him.
And oh, it was a joy to watch Vincent hunt, second only to striking the killing blow himself.
The woods were thick enough that the prey could have hidden, in theory, if he ever calmed down enough to think of such a thing. Alastor doubted it, and as he heard the distant sounds of sobbing and feet pounding on the underbrush, he knew the man was not going to escape.
(Of course, he knew all along that the man wasn’t going to escape. The game wasn’t rigged per se, it wouldn’t be any fun if it was, but Alastor and his pet had never lost a round before.)
Twigs snapped like small bones. In the distance, Alastor heard Vincent’s maniacal laughter, breathless and wild and twisting in the air as the other man let out a gasping scream. Alastor slowed to a gentle stroll, listened to the faltering footsteps, the pained cries that were already wet with tears. Alastor peered around the tree, through a curtain of Spanish moss, and saw a shape the same shade of dusky blue as the night sky leap forward and crash into the white shape he had been following. With a crash, an explosion of dead leaves and detritus, both fell to the forest floor.
Alastor pulled the pocket watch from his vest again and clicked it off. Three minutes, fourteen seconds. Not bad at all, given the lead he’d allowed the prey beforehand. He strolled across the forest, careful where he stepped. As he approached, he heard the wet, gasping breaths of a man’s final sobs.
“You haven’t killed him yet, have you?” Alastor asked.
Vincent looked up. His hands were around the prey’s throat, thumbs pressed into the delicate hollow of his collar, but he hadn’t choked the life out of him yet. The man was weeping, his pretty white coat all streaked with mud and bits of weeds.
And to think, that same overdressed producer had called Alastor too rough around the edges. Said that Alastor brought an “urban” flair that they weren’t really looking for, that he was unpolished. Alastor would have kept his composure better in such a situation.
“No,” Vincent said. He blinked up at Alastor, his big eyes bright and reflecting the starlight that eked through the canopy above. “Just holding him for you.”
“What was that?” Alastor asked pleasantly.
“Sir!” Vincent said, huge eyes getting bigger. “Just holding him still for you, sir.”
Alastor fondly pushed a lock of hair behind Vincent’s ear.
“Good boy,” he said. “Very good. Your new best time.”
Vincent sagged under the compliment. His smile went lopsided with something between ecstasy and relief.
(The victim, meanwhile, kicked his legs out, scuffing the earth and clawing at Vincent’s hand around his throat. He gurgled against Vincent’s firm grip, whined like the frightened animal he was.)
“Which means,” Alastor continued. “You get to kill him.”
From the sheath tucked away, Alastor pulled out a long, wickedly curved knife. He handed it to Vincent, blade first.
“Thank you, sir,” Vincent said, his eyes and face lit up with wild joy.
The prey, who had before this point only been babbling and making noises of distress that were completely devoid of consonants, started screaming in earnest.
“No no please don’t do this please let me go let me live I have a family please please PLEASE!”
Alastor did nothing to stop Vincent, and Vincent was likely beyond the ability to hear the poor man’s plea.
Vincent raised the knife high over his head and brought it plunging down.
The prey’s scream cut off with a remarkably dry gasp. Vincent ripped the knife from the man’s chest with a squelch and a gout of brilliantly red blood that spattered against his pretty white cheeks.
Then Vincent brought the knife down again. A wet plunge, a pained exhale, crimson fireworks exploding from the man’s chest. A damp rip up, and Vincent brought the knife down again. And again. And again. And again.
Over and over, Vincent ripped the knife free and brought it crashing back down. Blood kept fountaining up into Vincent’s face, droplets catching like tiny garnets on his eyelashes and freckling his nose. The pretty white shirt he’d worn was soon soaked in scarlet, the fabric saturated shiny red.
A few feet back, out of the splash zone, Alastor watched as Vincent ravaged the man, knife to chest and knife to chest time after time till Vincent and the prey were both thick with gore.
“I think you got him, pet,” Alastor said. He waited a few minutes first, let Vincent have his fun.
When Vincent looked up at him, his face was dripping with blood.
“Oh,” Vincent looked down at the body and winced. “Sorry, sir. Was it too much?”
“No,” Alastor said. “It was lovely. But he’s quite dead, now.”
“Sorry,” Vincent ducked his head. A little bit of blood dribbled off his chin. “Oh, fuck, I didn’t mess up where you were gonna take a cut did I?”
“No, dearest,” Alastor said. “I’m going for a flank this time. Do you want to cut it for me?”
“Oh!” Vincent nodded. “Uh-huh, yeah, sure! Let me just…”
He rolled the corpse over, nearly sending it plunging into a little divot between thick old tree roots.
“Careful,” Alastor said. He slid a hand into his pocket, ran his thumbnail over the soft rubber button of a remote.
Nothing was pressed, and so nothing happened, but Vincent stilled anyway, his breath freezing in his throat.
“Gently,” Alastor said. “Start cutting just under the ribs, and be very careful not to puncture any of the organs as you go.”
“Yes, sir, of course, sir,” Vincent said. He took the tip of the knife and used it as a pointer to count down the ribs on the man’s side. At the bottom of the cadaver’s ribcage, Vincent pressed the knife under the skin and began to carve.
It was a little sloppier than Alastor would have done it, but dog training was serious work, and Vincent would never get better if Alastor didn’t push him to learn new tricks, right?
Alastor provided the plastic to wrap the meat up in when Vincent finished, and while the skin was still attached (the knife they had brought out to the woods with them was ill-suited to skinning animals) it was relatively clean.
“Not bad,” Alastor allowed as he wrapped the cut. “You’re doing quite well today.”
Vincent beamed, his teeth very white against the blood drying rust-red on his face.
“Thank you, Alastor,” he said. The name came out a little uncertainly, but the gratitude was real.
The body of the prey that lay cooling between them looked dreadful. His white jacket hadn’t absorbed the blood as artistically as Vincent’s white cotton t-shirt had, and the lining of the jacket was stained an ugly brown in comparison to the blue-black coagulated smears on his front. The blank, open eyes of the prey were shattered, reflecting the fractal fragments made of the tree branches above them. Immediately after Vincent finished his thirtieth or fortieth stab, the man’s chest wounds had been steaming. Now every part of the body was inert. Just a body, just a thing, no lingering signs of animation in it.
Vincent, on the other hand, was a beacon of life. His shoulders rose and fell with every breath he took, still deep and ragged with exertion. The thin shirt he wore had molded to him with the blood-soaking it had gotten, the lines of his stomach and chest revealed where the fabric had plastered itself to his muscles. The white stripes in Vincent’s hair were tinged red or pink at the front, a ruby-toned strand of hair hanging down over his bright eyes. Blood had stained his lips Victory Red.
And, under his bobbing Adam’s apple, the collar. A few droplets of blood had landed on it, but it was mostly the same pure shade of silver Alastor had admired when he affixed it around his pet’s neck earlier that day.
Alastor licked the pads of his fingers and rubbed the blood off Vincent’s collar.
“Good job,” Alastor assured him again. “But you’ve made quite a mess of yourself, dear.”
Vincent flushed, his skin turning pink under the constellation of blood on his face.
“Sorry,” he said.
Since Vincent was still on his knees and Alastor was standing, when Vincent pressed his face into Alastor, it rubbed against Alastor’s leg. He nuzzled his head into Alastor’s thigh, smearing blood all over Alastor’s new khakis.
He couldn’t even bring himself to care. Who could punish a dog for being affectionate? No, he ran his fingers through Vincent’s hair, and Vincent pressed his forehead ever harder against Alastor’s thigh.
“Pretty,” Alastor murmured.
And he was. There were few sights in the world that Alastor could imagine holding a candle to Vincent soaked in blood. The roots of his hairline were slick and black in the moonlight, the blood stood out beautifully against milk white skin and his blue and green eyes. Vincent was strong and pretty and so open, his emotions loud where they were projected on his face. He was wildly in love with Alastor and thrilled to have gotten the kill, he was content and tired and proud and still a little wild from the chase. His forearms, dusted with blood as his face, looked especially strong.
“You did very well,” Alastor said. “Such a good boy.”
Vincent twisted his head so his mouth was against Alastor’s pants, and he whined into Alastor’s side.
“Hmm,” Alastor let his nails rake down Vincent’s scalp to feel him shiver. “My good, good boy.”
Vincent shuddered and he gripped Alastor’s thigh with both hands.
“Al…”
“Hm?”
“Please,” Vincent whined, the word muffled against the fabric of his pants. “Please please please, may I-?”
Alastor hummed, then twined his fingers in Vincent’s hair, yanked his head back hard.
A tiny gasp ripped out of Vincent.
“You may,” Alastor said. “But sit for a moment, and be still.”
Vincent sat back on his haunches and tilted his head up obediently. Alastor savored the silver glint of the collar in the moonlight as he undid his belt, then the button of his pants, then the zipper. The slowness was partially for show, but partially just practicality — it was not easy to undress himself one-handed. He then untucked himself and watched as Vincent’s eyes grew feverish and glassy with naked want.
Then, Vincent lurched forward, and Alastor pressed a button on the remote clutched in his pocket with his other hand.
There was a very faint zzzt! before Vincent’s cry of pain drowned it out.
Alastor’s dog fell to the forest floor, fingers clutched around his collar, whine tight in his throat as he cried and kicked the dirt.
He pulled his finger off the button and let Vincent breathe.
“Bad dog,” Alastor said mildly.
“Sorry!” Vincent gasped. “‘M sorry, sir!”
“It’s alright, pet,” Alastor said. “You’re just eager, aren’t you?”
Vincent nodded. A tear track glimmered faintly on his cheek.
(It was, Alastor thought, worth noting that Vincent had not sprung at him with any particular speed. He hadn’t been trying to actually catch Alastor off guard, hadn’t been trying to get Alastor’s dick in his mouth before Alastor had anything to say about it. They both knew the game too well for that. Vincent just liked to be shocked a little, wanted a little bit of punishment before he got his reward. Alastor just liked doling it out in turn.)
“Sorry, sir,” Vincent whimpered again. His voice was pathetically wet. He scrabbled back up onto his knees, scraping leaf trash out of the way, and he settled back onto his ankles, chin tilted up, hands crossed behind his back, exactly the way Alastor liked him.
“That’s all right,” Alastor said. He stroked Vincent’s hair, and Vincent butted his head into the touch. He was ever arching towards Alastor, leaning into his touch and into his line of sight like a sunflower bending to the sun.
It was enough to make Alastor drunk just thinking too hard about.
“Please?” Vincent said, head back, eyes up, sitting so politely. “Please, may I?”
Alastor raked his fingers through Vincent’s blood-soaked hair. When he reached the nape of Vincent’s neck, where his hair grew a little bit longer, he twirled Vincent’s hair into a short little makeshift leash and yanked.
“Ah!”
Throat exposed safe for the shock collar, Vincent went completely tense. Alastor held him tight, and Vincent looked up at him with those beautiful, pleading eyes.
Slowly, Alastor released his grip on Vincent. He let the strands of hair fall away, pet the base of Vincent’s neck, and put his fingers in his mouth to lick the blood off of them. The salt-and-copper-and-velvet taste of fresh blood bloomed in Alastor’s mouth, and he let his index finger trail from the corner of his lips while Vincent looked up at him like a reverent man to his god.
“Yes,” Alastor said. “You may.”
Vincent was long since out of patience. The second Alastor finished speaking, Vincent had taken him deep into his throat, glistening lips smearing blood around the base of Alastor’s cock. Alastor let out a shaky sigh, braced his back on the tree behind him, his hands on Vincent’s shoulders, and let his dog do the work for him.
Historically, sex had not been Alastor’s favorite activity. Even now, it hardly held a candle to murder, but that was how they had worked things out. Vincent and Alastor had a very unique brand of foreplay, but it worked well for them.
Nose buried against Alastor’s pelvis, mouth full, it still sounded like Vincent tried to say something, or maybe just let out a contented hum. Alastor dug his nails into Vincent’s shoulders and bucked upward against his throat. Vincent let out a moan that vibrated up into Alastor’s core.
Next to them, the body was cooling, the blood glistening like precious rubies in the waning moonlight.
“Good boy,” Alastor murmured, because Vincent had been good and he deserved to hear it. “Such a good boy, aren’t you? Did so good for me…”
Vincent whined, and the sound carried with it more pleasure in the vibration. Alastor felt his balls tighten, felt his grip grow claw-like on Vincent’s shoulders. He reminded himself not to warn Vincent, that wasn’t the game.
At the last moment, Alastor moved a hand back to Vincent’s head and gripped his hair hard. Tight enough to yank with some real force.
Alastor bit back a shout as he came, letting out only a kicked huff of air, a sudden little sharp note mostly buried in his throat. The making noise when he finished was almost, to Alastor, as the act itself.
Vincent, with no such compunctions, gagged on Alastor as he came, made a loud noise midway between a moan and a whine, and, after loudly and deliberately swallowing, pulled off of Alastor with a pop.
“Fuck,” he said, voice cracked. “Al…”
Grateful for the tree to lean against, Alastor let out a weak little laugh. He could give himself a second. “Very good boy, Vincent.”
His pet still looked pleading, so Alastor felt in his pocket and gave Vincent one short burst of electricity into the collar.
“On your feet,” Alastor said, and Vincent jumped back onto his feet. His crooked grin had gone pink with blood and semen.
“Thank you, sir,” Vincent said.
He looked a wee bit dazed. Alastor idly hoped that shock collars couldn’t cause, say, minor brain damage with excessive use.
Not that Vincent would dream of letting him stop even if they did.
Alastor redressed, fastidiously tucking his shirt into his pants even though they (shirt and pants both) were definitely beyond saving with regards to all the blood stains. Club soda could do a lot of heavy lifting when it came to removing stains, but sometimes, the clothes were a necessary sacrifice.
The two of them had left changes of clothing in the car anyway, so no harm done.
“Do you need any help?” Alastor asked. He jabbed the toe of his wingtip shoe into the corpse, enjoying the little squidge noise it made as he did. “I figured we could just drop him in the gorge…”
“I can handle it!” Vincent said, all eager smiles.
Alastor stared at him till Vincent withered, just a bit.
“Darling,” he said. “It’s not a failure to tell me you need help. It is, however, a failure if you throw your back out trying to show off.”
“I’m not an old man,” Vincent grumbled, sounding more like himself, more like the Vincent he was when they weren’t engaged in recreational activities. “I’m not gonna break a hip!”
“He’s over two hundred pounds…”
“Less, now you took a chunk out of him,” Vincent said.
“Sweetheart.”
Vincent sighed.
“Yeah, okay. Alastor, could you help me?”
The two of them picked up the dead man together. They hauled him a quarter mile away, to a steep drop off into a stream that ran just deep enough to carry a body a good distance south of them. They began the trek back to the car, and Vincent reached up for his collar, for the latch on the back.
“Ah-ah-ah. Not yet, dearest.”
Vincent’s hands froze where they were, and he looked at Alastor with eager light glittering in his eyes.
Alastor smeared some of the last of the blood that hadn’t dried onto Vincent’s lower lip, then kissed him on the cheek.
“Dogs can’t take their own collars off, now can they?”