This fair morn'...

[il_valentino]

continued from here. Since I'd hate to see a 4-month-thread go pop...

The first rays of sunlight proper. Striations of dappled green on the ground, and the world made over, as new, uncovered by Phoebus, laying Gaia bare to the eyes of the human dross and rabble. Shame, really. The morning hour is so shy.

Cesare dully looks on while Krycek takes his leave from the furry little runt, ostentatiously rubbing in that the whelp avoided Cesare's touch... and God's blood, does it ever set him off.

"I must assume you've been goading me on," he tells the purple-streaked sky. "You were drunk and hallucinating, and probably walked into a tree. So much for your fabled invisible wall then, eh? Fine. Let's head back."

Comments

[alexkrycek.insanejournal.com]

"Are you-" he comments dryly like a teenager just discovering masturbation and walks ahead, hand deep in the pocket of his jeans, light-headed from teh lack of sleep of the night, hungry and tired and ... scared? Maybe.

"You just wait and see. Just- wait and see." He can't muster the same confidence. They should be getting close now. Trees look all the same, but this far into the woods, or maybe it was after the next bend...

[il_valentino.insanejournal.com]

"Well, I will. See, I mean." Cesare ambles up and, walking, puts a reassuring hand low on Alex's back, patting his bum once, twice. "Andiamo."

[alexkrycek.insanejournal.com]

"Yeah didn't think you were talking about coming." He misses the night already, the bruised, drunken humping, the comfort of clammy skin and a hard cock. Misses teh sheets of the bed, too. He huddles deeper into his jacket. This looks like it. It does. He slows, cautiously taking steps forward but nothing happens. There is no wall, not here anyway - so maybe it was somewhere further along the road. He stands, puzzled expression. "It was here," he says haltingly, lamely.

[il_valentino.insanejournal.com]

He comes to a halt, hands shoved deep into his pockets, scans the skies. Then the ground. Then Alex.

He's known battle-hardened mercenaries, bloodthirsty Frenchmen, bravi and assassins; soulless, reckless people all, but. Each had a moment in which they broke. Each had a secret fear, like a secret wound, and if something touched it, they began to squeal.

Cesare placidly looks at Alex as he twists on a heel, peers down the road. "Here, you say," he repeats, raising one eyebrow. He'd like to know and see what it is that can unsettle Alex... scare Krycek.

"Well. And where would it have disappeared to, in your expert opinion?" he remarks, shrugging.

[alexkrycek.insanejournal.com]

"Well it was here and now it isn't," he snaps at Cesare, glowering at him. "How the fuck should I know?" He turns on his heel, turns in a circle once to survey the area. "Fine nothing to see, have your fucking laugh already." He walks off into the direction they have come from. "You coming or what? Nothing to see there, right."

[il_valentino.insanejournal.com]

"Ma che mi guardi così?" Cesare shrugs. "Not my fault if it's gone." He squints at Alex - Alex, who is oozing defiance from every pore. "I am not laughing, am I." He claps a conciliatory hand on Alex's shoulder. "Bene. Perhaps... perhaps I believe you."

[alexkrycek.insanejournal.com]

"What?!" He lets out a low laugh. "Right. Whatever." He glances at the spot where the wall should have been, really should have been, and squirms a little under Cesare's hand on his shoulder. "Believe what? That I'm a fool?"

Still alive but possibly braindead? So- thanks for the poke.

[il_valentino.insanejournal.com]

Tired, Cesare lifts his hand from the wriggling thing that Alex has become. He rubs his chin. "Believe that you possibly bumped into something. Whatever it was." He keeps skritching his stubble, squints into the light. "Bene. Do we head back? Unless you've got another spot to show for it, of course."

[alexkrycek.insanejournal.com]

"Why the change of mind?" Alex squints into the pale winter sun, tired still after the night and just wanting a bed, any bed- Cesare's bed even. He shrugs. "Haven't seen it elsewhere." He shrugs again and kicks at the curb. "Fuck. Fuck!" He looks back over his shoulder. "It was there. I didn't make that up."

[il_valentino.insanejournal.com]

"It's not so much a change of mind as a... temporary suspension of disbelief. An amnesty for delusion, if you will. We all suffer those, from time to time. It probably wouldn't do to accord less reality to yours than I'd be willing to grant mine." Alex is bristling, which makes Cesare bristle in turn. He's too tired to fight it out in a ditch now.

"Has anybody else of your acquaintance mentioned the thing?"

[alexkrycek.insanejournal.com]

"It wasn't a delusion." Granted, he'd been drunk and desperate, but it was hardly a dive off a cliff. He's cold, and huddles into his jacket, dismayed, tired, pouting, even. He needs a drink or a fuck, but what else is new.

Staring at the broken asphalt, he shrugs. "Ianto." It comes out a little forced, a little fucked.

[il_valentino.insanejournal.com]

"Oh well then. That makes it a little harder to verify, seeing as the gentleman isn't at hand." Cesare bares his teeth in travesty of a smile, thankful for the chink in the other man's armour. "Tired of you, has he."

[alexkrycek.insanejournal.com]

"Don' tthink it was a wall for him either, so just as well he isn't here."

Cesare's smile cuts a little, but it is hardly unexpected. He finds himself refusing the nod and "What makes you think it wasn't me who fucked him over and left him to beg?"

And it had been. Where had the black and white gone.

"He's a vampire, much like the toy you're fucking." He smirks.

[il_valentino.insanejournal.com]

Cesare shrugs loftily, watches birds wheel. "Donna Isabel hardly is a toy, and if anything, although the admission greatly hurts my pride, it's she who is fu-... having me." He sighs, shrugs again. "The frisson of potentially having your throat ripped."

Then Alex's words filter through, slowly. "A vampire, è vero? Physically? You don't mean that, do you? Would that explain the state I picked you up in?"

[alexkrycek.insanejournal.com]

"You-" It pulls him out of his reverie, the moody pouting and pining and moping, a suggestive eyebrow. "You let yourself be fucked." Interest gleams happily, messily, and the wry smirk of having one up on Cesare. "No shit." He laughs.

At Cesare's question he gives a sharp shake of the head, the sole of his boot catching on the curb and sending him stumbling for a moment. "Not physically, no. Not that I know of." He sounds more like a wounded dog than anything and it irks him.

[il_valentino.insanejournal.com]

"Ma che fai?" Cesare reaches out, a reflex, lest the other falls and bashes his nose into his brain. Not that he'd care. Well, perhaps in the way that one enjoys licking and sucking a sore spot in one's mouth, and hates to see it gone.

"Not what you're thinking," he frowns. "Sorry to disappoint; Madonna does not take me from behind. I would disapprove of that. But, if she'd so much as touch you with a ten foot pole, you'd discover, perhaps, provided you're not too drunk on your virility, that she has ways of twirling you around her finger - all the while allowing you to believe yourself master of the universe." His voice grows scratchy from the cold.

"So, what you mean to say is, you feel taken advantage of." Sharp, bleak laughter. "Oh the irony."

[alexkrycek.insanejournal.com]

Alex turns forcibly as the fingers close around his arm, poised to strike but restraining himself, fingers clenched into a fist at his side. "What!" he snaps, then shakes his head sharply and pulls his arm away.

"As if I would touch her," he replies coolly. "You can keep her count for you to drown in. Like to burrow in her juices?" He rolls his eyes, smirking. "Tongue her til she screams?" He laughs.

The laugh dies in his throat. He shrugs. "Shouldn't be surprised, you mean? Yeah well, fucking thanks."

[il_valentino.insanejournal.com]

"Tongue her 'til she screams, yes." Cesare smiles, not unfondly, and quite disinclined to return the barb. It didn't sting, after all. Actually, come to think of it, Donna Isabella doesn't scream all that much. But she's got other ways to show her pleasure. Oh, does she ever. He grows fidgety, simply thinking of it.

Alex has yanked himself away with a ferocity Cesare recognizes; he senses the other must've been this close to lashing out. It had been like that with Miquel; never one to handle overbearing fussing well. Lend a hand in help and feel the bridge of your nose break in thanks.

"You're welcome." Cesare shrugs, trudging on, lost in thought and looking at his feet. "You know what the oracle at Delphi said? Gnothi seauton. 'Know thyself.' Saves one a whole lot of trouble, I'd wager."

[alexkrycek.insanejournal.com]

"Ewww," Alex comments dryly, not sure he wants to think too much about it either. Cesare's fidgeting is curious, hilarious even, and he snorts. "Getting a hard-on just at the thought of her cunt?"

He laughs and kicks a pebble clear across the street where it bounces off a car and takes some of the paint with it. "Think I deserve it then? Think I deserve to be fucked over? Whatever. S'not worth the thoughts. Or words. Or anything. Fucking bastard."

He's not sure where they are going, or where he wants to go, either. Somewhere, that should be enough.

[il_valentino.insanejournal.com]

With a twitch and a scratch, he's got himself sorted at last. "For shame, Sandro. It's no secret that you're not fond of members of the gentle persuasion. Molto bene. That just means there's more for me." He scratches himself again, then resolutely walks on. "Madonna is a most gracious host," he continues, smiling.

He lets the other remark go; it's no use, squabbling with a heartbroken man; his remarks will hardly hurt or bite anyone who feels he's already been mortally wounded.

"So, do I drop you off at the nearest clinic, get yourself checked out? Because otherwise I'm headed home."

[alexkrycek.insanejournal.com]

"So you are fucking other cunts in Margate besides her? Regular holes to fill, eh." He laughs out loud as he continues next to Cesare. "You'll have to let me watch sometime. I'm sure it would be entertaining." It wouldn't, and the words are off the cuff and out before he can think about. It is he who fidgets now like a teenage boy. He smirks. "Do you undress for her, at least, or romp about in sweaty pants and shirts, too?"

"What's to check out." He shrugs, he's beaten up, sure but nothing he hasn't seen or felt. A bit like a lost puppy trailing about the town he follows Cesare without another comment. To be fair, there is hardly another place to be at.

[il_valentino.insanejournal.com]

"Depends. Undressing or not, I mean," he says distractedly. "Doesn't make a whole lot of difference." Of course it does. It's a world of a difference. Idly thwapping a hand against the seam of his pants, playing a mute chord, he is aware of Alex's shambling after him. He does not mind. In fact, what with all this talk about sex... he welcomes it.

"Would you?" Cesare looks at him obliquely, over the shoulder. "How entertaining would that be, I wonder, when you don't even like women?" A strange dilemma of sorts, and it intrigues him. As for other encounters, he keeps silent. It's the gentlemanly thing to do, after all.

[alexkrycek.insanejournal.com]

A half step closer takes him right up to Cesare's back. He leans forward. "Will you undress for me?" The whisper comes out a little hoarse, and is followed by a chuckle that denies any kind of serious intent. "Nevermind," he adds easily, "I think I like you dressed."

"I'd see you scream. Should be worth it? Her cunt on your cock as you lose it-" He doesn't exacttly want to think of her, her juices spilling over Cesare's cock, drenching him. It sends a faint twinge to his stomach.

[il_valentino.insanejournal.com]

"Oh?" Cesare half-turns. "As matters stand, you have seen me undressed. Or was it a slow, sensual dance you had in mind? Sorry to disappoint in that case." He pats the stubbly cheek that's digging into his sore shoulder. Motherofgod. Fuck. "Women are better suited for that."

He grimaces under Alex's pointy chin, then manages to twist away from him and hide the gasp in his voice. "Gesù, look at yourself, you're all green," he says eventually. "What an aphrodisiac that would be, you quietly vomiting into your hands while I'm nearing completion. No, I think I'll pass. You may always put the suggestion to madonna, provided she allows you to get close enough for her to incline her ear." He clears his throat.

And then Cesare's smile grows slow and dark and dirty. "What says I make you scream, this fair and mistful morn'?"

[il_valentino.insanejournal.com]

*pokes* you still alive?