Viral Love

Hojo handed me a cigarette with slightly shaking fingers. He didn’t even look at me, just passed me his materia bracelet so I could light the smoke. I lit it, gave the bracelet back and took a savory inhale.

He was scared. I could smell it. Funny thing was, I’d never smelled fear on him, not real fear. This, however, was different. He sensed things in here I couldn’t feel. I believed him simply because of his terror. It radiated from him like cold heat, like burning nitrogen.

I accessed Chaos. What? I asked him.

Malicious, blood-sucking ghouls, the demon replied. They want the scientist, badly. Stay close unless you wish him lost. I’ll watch when you sleep.

I acknowledged him and cut communication. “Hojo,” I said aloud. “Where are they now?”

Hojo didn’t even pause. “At every wall,” he answered lowly. “I think there’s at least five of them.” His voice shook.

I felt pity for his sake. Maybe it was just the kindness he’d given me during that time I recovered from the cactuar attack, but something prompted me to extend myself for his benefit. I threw my half-smoked cigarette against the stone wall and pulled the covers up closer. “To me,” I commanded.

Hojo abandoned his smoke and pressed himself to my body in a mere three seconds. He tucked his face against my neck, wrapped his arms under and over my waist and twined his left leg over my right hip, shuddering. “Oh, god,” he whispered. “Thank you, Vincent.” He’d used my name, and not for being a smartass.

He was really, really terrified. I couldn’t comprehend his dread. He shivered and trembled against me like a quaking aspen tree in the wind. He didn’t sob or cry, just manifested his horror in involuntary shakes and muscle spasms.

“Not much experience with the supernatural?” I asked quietly.

“No.” Hojo pressed his lips against the flesh of my neck, right where throat met clavicle bone. The sensation of his voice as it coasted over fine hairs and sensitive skin, made me shiver, too. His grip on my waist tightened. “If they’d just be quiet,” he said.

I summoned up some anger, feeling it stir my inner demons. “Silence,” I commanded the unseen inhabitants of our room.

Hojo inhaled sharply, then let the breath out with a whoosh. “Thank Da-chao,” he sighed. “I think I can bear it now.”

I thought about pushing a transformation just to eliminate the threat. Chaos liked the idea, too. But, I felt him weigh that option and discard it. It seemed he liked the way Hojo felt in my arms. Surprised, I sought him again, but he didn’t answer me.

Perhaps even ancient demons could miss gentle contact with another?

I’d known of stranger things.

Hojo’s rapidly beating heart gradually began to slow, but I still felt it strongly against my chest. The pulses of terror he emitted began to slow as well, replaced by strong contentment, relief and gratitude towards me. I’d never felt so many emotions from him, and never this strongly. Usually, I caught fleeting impressions, just snips of his feelings.

I had to admit it, since my only witnesses dwelt within me and I couldn’t lie to them anyway, Hojo did feel good in my arms. Not like a woman. Solid. Hard, but smaller than me, which satisfied the alpha that lurked in my ego. Even as I thought that, he started his shivering again. I put my hand on top of his head. “Are you cold?”

“Not on the outside,” he answered, his lips moving against my neck. “Our heat and the blankets seem sufficient.”

Ah. Cold on the inside, then, and because of the things he could feel watching us.

“They won’t get you,” I promised, stroking his slick hair just once. “Sleep, Hojo.”

He shivered once more, then obeyed me.

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He felt so good. I almost couldn’t comprehend it. Years upon years of fending for myself, sometimes doing a good job of it and sometimes not, had left me balanced between shredded nerves and apathetic numbness. Valentine made all that go away. He soothed me, pushed the fear back while bringing real feeling to my starved synapses.

Oh, his scent! Darkness, rich soil, gunpowder, blood, rain and musk. The ultimate man. So hot, so strong, so dominant. His arms kept the nightmarish ghouls away.

I felt his claws tapping against my shoulder in a thoughtful rhythm. He wasn’t alerting me to anything, just thinking. Quietly, patiently, he remained awake and aware of our surroundings even though he’d confessed the need for sleep. I’d teased him for his gallantry, but right now I relied upon it enough to make me ashamed of goading him. Without his unusual chivalry, I’d be a mess, or dead.

How did a Turk acquire such courtly valor? It had to have always been a part of him, part of his nature. He probably smothered it for the sake of being a Turk, but once that duty ended, he returned to it. It remained so much a part of his makeup that he’d suppressed a nearly overpowering desire to kill me, favoring the elimination of X2Geostigma over fulfilling a desire for revenge. He was noble despite his past, charitable despite having received nothing for his generosity.

He shamed me.

I deserved that. I deserved having my flaws shoved into the forefront for a thorough examination. I’d wronged him repeatedly, and then been clueless as to why he carried a grudge. Amazing that he could do so much for me now…

“You aren’t sleeping,” he accused in his soft, baritone drawl.

I pushed up from the bottom of my head. “I don’t need full sleep to function, just to have my body at rest,” I explained. His hand in my hair distracted me. I doubted he even knew his own fingers danced along my scalp like that. If he did, he’d stop.

“You’re limp,” he said, demonstrating by lifting my arm and letting it drop. “Is it so easy for you to distance your brain from your body?”

“Yes,” I admitted. “Except for my lips. They have to move for communication.”

“You couldn’t stop your mouth for worlds,” he replied.

I had to smile. He was right.

I drifted again, caught in a sweet mix of pleasure and anxiety. The things in the room were moving closer, perhaps emboldened by our stillness. But, Valentine’s strength and vigilance assured me. I was safe.

Because of that feeling, I remained limp even when I felt him transforming under me. I found myself rolled gently to the sheets, and him moving upright.

The cries of ghostly agony, Valentine’s primeval growling, and my own heartbeat combined into an unearthly music. I heard him splattering ectoplasm, the satisfying noises of ghouls bursting against stone walls. Then, in the awesome quiet, large, clawed hands lifted me. The bed groaned as he settled back onto the mattress. He settled me back onto his massive form. A great, leathery wing curled over my back.

I slept fully, earnestly, and heavily, the strong, steady heartbeat of a beautiful monster resounding in my ears and against my chest.