Title: je te bois des yeux
Author: technosage, written for yuletide 2006, originally posted 1/2007.
Fandom/Characters: Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Asher/Jean-Claude
Rating: NC17
Word Count: 2760
Spoilers/Warnings: Takes place at the end of Blue Moon and shortly following.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: He must not lose him, he cannot have him, and so he will drink him with his eyes.


i. tu me fais craquer
His mouth filled with the taste of fear: salt, adrenaline, sweet-thick copper turned sour. "Ma petite." The goblet in his hand fell on a whisper and shattered on a wave of anguish.

Under fingertips not his own, miles beyond his reach in Tennessee, a heart stuttered, failing, and from Anita's mental keening, he knew that it was Asher's. His beloved chardonerret lay dying.

His second-in-command bled out his life, and his human servant wept. Four hundred plus years, Master of the City of St. Louis, master of the strongest triumvirate in vampire history, but for all that, he could do nothing.

He almost did not make it to his office. Only the knowledge that he would kill Colin for this moved his leaden feet. "Non, non, non. Asher, mon frère, mon ami, mon amour. Non, non, non."

Throat closing around Anita's tears, he shut the door and sagged against it.

"Don't let Colin kill you. Please, please!" His petite begged; her terror resonated down their link, and he saw through her eyes that Asher refused her blood.

Non. He could not lose Asher. It must not be.

"Don't leave us, Asher." Anita's whisper ached across the miles.

Never to kiss those lips, never to taste the blood-tears of too much pleasure from those exquisite eyes again. Non, non. "Mon amour, do not die."

A ragged "please" tore from Jean-Claude's chest, and then as it had the night he had shown her how to tame him, his passion merged with Anita's: "Don't leave us, not now, not now that we've found you again. Tu es beau, mon amour. Tu me fais craquer." How he loved him. It felt his heart must shatter.

The tiniest shred of hope pierced his petite's panic, and Jean-Claude clung to it while she kissed Asher's scars, whispering words from liaisons long past: "Je t'embrasse partout. Je t'embrasse partout. I kiss you all over, mon amour."

He embraced her quivering rage and indignation, as Asher told her "je te bois des yeux" and she did not know the meaning. When he fed her the translation, Anita snarled, "Don’t drink me with your eyes, damn it, drink me with your mouth."

At another time, he would have laughed in delight at her sheer stubbornness, instead he wept pink-tinged tears that stained his fingertips at the echo of Asher's devotion: "Je t'adore."

She did not speak it, but mind-to-mind he heard her rejoinder: Adore me later. Just drink, damn you. Live.

Then pain burst, and bled down their bond.

Asher drank, and Jean-Claude knew gratitude such as he had never before felt. Ah, ma petite, you are magnificent.

For a moment, he felt her fighting Asher's power, then pleasure overwhelmed her. Jean-Claude's body tightened low and sweet in response.

Desire and jealousy blossomed together, but, resolute, he shut down the link to give them privacy. Asher would live, and all else could wait.

He had all the time in the world.


ii. je t'adore

Anita announced she intended to remain in Tennessee, and Asher protested. Jean-Claude's fury would be too great to bear, he told her, and she responded that Jean-Claude could take a long walk off a short pier; the danger from Colin had not abated, he argued, and she rejoined that Colin could join Jean-Claude. They quarreled for a half an hour, before her lovely mouth thinned to a grim line, dark eyes flashing, and told him that he also—

"Can take a walk off a pier, I know. We can swim, you realize?" Exasperation turned at last to humor. "Very well, Anita, but do not stay away too long. He needs you, though he would never admit it."

"And now the pot calls the kettle black."

Anita's reference escaped him. His brow creased in confusion, pulling his scars tight across it.

"'He needs you, though he would never admit it,'" she mimicked, mouth quirking wryly.

It had been three days since then, and he had still not gone to see Jean-Claude. But how could Asher go to him, loving Anita who feared him, loving Jean-Claude when he still heard Julianna's dying whispers?

How could he not, when his heart beat for love of his dark angel?

Had it been like this at the beginning, when he had found Julianna and they made room for Jean-Claude? He no longer remembered. Only remembered Jean-Claude's head thrown back in pleasure while he rode, obsidian curls falling away to reveal the pale skin of his throat stretched tight and inviting. Remembered the feel of his lean hips beneath Asher's hands.

And hours spent talking in low voices amidst silk sheets while Julianna drank wine for him and offered blood to Jean-Claude and ate hand-milled chocolates for herself that they would kiss away the taste of.

His heart lurched, and pleasant memory turned to ash. After hundreds of years, pain still rode him – if not so fresh as in the years after Belle Morte had cast him from her and Jean-Claude's bed, then deeper and more complex, taking on nuance with age.

Hair tucked behind his ear to reveal his disfigurement, arms crossed too tightly over his chest, Asher leaned in the doorframe to Jean-Claude's suite. "I have not forgiven you."

"Am I to be surprised by this revelation?" Jean-Claude rose from his regal sprawl to face the window. He sounded bored, tired, but Asher knew better; when Jean-Claude was bored or tired, he pouted, and the shape of his mouth alone had enticed entire courts to entertain him.

Arching out of his lean, Asher moved into the suite, melodramatic with its blacks and satins, and shut the door behind him before moving toward its occupant. Jean-Claude matched his furnishings, knee-high leather boots buffed to a low-perfect gleam, skintight brushed velvet breeches of the same midnight blue as his eyes, topped by a spill of white ruffled silk laced over his chest. No one else alive knew he had taken to the habit the day after Belle Morte had had him whipped for her pleasure, because as an aristocrat's whipping boy "he ought to be used to it."

"If you think to torture me with your silence, I should warn you I have had near three hundred years to accustom myself to it." Jean-Claude tilted his head to address him over his shoulder.

Acidic sarcasm to cover uncertainty. Next would come genteel questions that it would be impolite to ignore, and if he did, it would turn to cold, simmering rage. Asher knew the taste of that rage, had buried his hands in that silken black mane and kissed it all away.

"Je t'adore," he murmured.

Taut shoulders flinched as though under a lash. "Do not be petty, Asher, it does not suit you."

He thought… Of course he did.

"Jean-Claude." Asher pitched his voice low, intimate, warning him before he entered his space. Before he ran his unscarred hand down an arm that had not changed in three hundred years but felt as new as a virgin's blood.

Jean-Claude shuddered and whispered, "If this is a trick…"

If it was a trick, Jean-Claude would kill him, and regardless of the way their intimate arrangements most often played out, he could do so with ease. But it was no trick. He had not forgiven, but he could not hate, nor endure her loss alone when there was one who shared it. "On Julianna's memory, I swear it is no trick."

Only the subtle tilt of Jean-Claude's shoulders that brought their bodies into alignment told Asher that he'd heard at all. But that subtle signal said everything.

His hands went to Jean-Claude's hips, his face to Jean-Claude's throat through the familiar mass of curls with its unfamiliar modern fragrance.

An elegant hand lifted, wavered uncertainly, then burrowed into Asher's hair. "Asher, mon amour."

"Je t'adore."


iii. je te bois des yeux

Did vampires dream, he might have thought this one: moonlight through the windows, golden hair spilling over his shoulder and sliding through his fingers, the press of memory in his chest and fang at his throat – Asher at his back and hard with want of him.

Yet no dream could be this vivid, no pleasure as acute as this embrace so long delayed. Nor any pain so cruel as Asher's hand skimming his chest.

Eyes closing over a pained grimace, Jean-Claude trapped the hand under his own. "Non, mon amour. I cannot."

"I had thought…" Asher spun away, and took half of Jean-Claude's heart with him. "You do not want me like this."

"Please, Asher, my cock rises at the mere thought of you. I care nothing for your scars except to map them with my mouth." And for his guilt at not having been there to spare him from them.

"Then why?"

The raw pain in Asher's voice pulled him across the room to where he stood. Deft fingers unbuttoned the scarlet silk that made his pale eyes that much more stunning for the contrast. Jean-Claude pushed it away from broad shoulders, pressed his lips to the melted flesh above his heart.

Asher remained stiff, unyielding, with his fists clenched at his sides. "Why do you refuse me?"

Sighing, Jean-Claude stepped back to look up into Asher's ruined face. "It is ma petite." Lifting an eyebrow, he offered Asher a wry smile. "She has made me swear to monogamy, me, can you imagine? She will not share me."

"And you love her that much."

It was not, Jean-Claude noticed, a question, but he answered nevertheless. "She has caught my heart and caged it, even as you once did, mon amour." His hand came up to rake through his hair, frustrated both in his desire and in the circumstances. "Had I known…did I think there even a chance you would come back to me…You must believe me, you must. Tu es beau." Like the silk he wore, the horrid scarring only heightened the beauty of Asher's other perfect half. "I would love you until the morning and die with you beside me, had I not made this promise."

That drew a rough laugh from Asher, though Jean-Claude could not imagine anything less funny than the first love of his life hard and hungry for him and he likewise, and both of them trapped by his promise to his human servant who had loved Asher enough to share her blood to save his life.

Asher's hands began to move down his own chest, a slow, decadent stroking over flesh and scars. His cornflower gaze never left Jean-Claude's face, and when he reached his waist, both hands gripped the crimson silk then tugged it out of his leather breeches.

"Mon amour--" Jean-Claude protested.

Raising a single finger to his cruelly perfect mouth amidst the sea of scars, Asher pursed his lips, not merely hushing him but pressing a soft kiss to the digit before letting it fall away.

A tremor ran through Jean-Claude, anticipation, as though those lips had touched the crown of his cock or the hollow of his throat. His desire rose but the ardeur lay quiescent. He hungered, although he had fed; he hungered for his beloved.

The scarlet silk fell away on an intimate whisper and floated to Asher's feet. Strong fingers, those he had loved to feel parting his cheeks, driving deep into his body, worked at the fastenings of Asher's breeches.

He should turn away, but Jean-Claude could not. Surely his petite would understand that he could not refuse Asher this much. If she did not, she would be made to see it. He would not be without her, but if Asher had returned to him and he to Asher, he must not lose him.

"Tu es beau," he murmured again, his own fingers finding the lacing of his shirt, and drawing it open. "Je t'embrasse partout. I kiss you all over, Asher, mon amour." A cloud of white lace spilled from his shoulders, caressing the whip-scars on his back as it slid to the floor.

Asher watched, arrested in the act of pushing his trousers over his hips. He said not a word, but his lips shaped familiar praises "you tempt me" and "so beautiful, my angel," while Jean-Claude teased over his nipples, stroking and tugging until they stood, stiff little peaks, the way Asher had always liked them.

His breathing grew ragged, and if he did not need the air to live, still his lungs burned for more of it, as his lips for the feel of the bared skin of Asher's groin – for the melted flesh with its livid reminders of their history as well as the perfect and smooth. The velvet of his breeches did not soothe his need to touch; it made the pads of his fingers itch, but, for Asher, he traced the line of his shaft through it.

They drew breath together on a shared hiss, let it go on a single groan. Asher's gaze grew darker, fuller with his lust, and Jean-Claude shuddered with pleasure at the approval for his performance. His years as a catamite to Belle Morte's court had taught him to loathe that look, but he craved it from Asher, now after so much hatred more than he ever had – and he had, he recalled viscerally at the twitch of hard flesh under his hand, always appreciated it.

When Asher's breeches slid over his hips to reveal his blood-hardened shaft, Jean-Claude palmed over his own and sought the button at his waistband to free himself. He did not look away, nor wince, nor retreat to memory of that sensitive foreskin unscarred and supple under his tongue; he buried deep the pain of guilt and the ache of regret – not pity, never that – for the way the scarring pulled Asher's thick straight cock into an unnatural curve.

Asher closed his hand around the base and drew it up quickly to the midpoint, hiding himself from view, and Jean-Claude shook his head. "Non. Let me see."

A stiff nod, and Asher's hand slowed.

Jean-Claude's lids felt heavy, weighted with desire, but he would not let them fall. Instead he kissed every inch of Asher with the heat of his gaze while he fisted over his own cock. Slow, steady strokes at first, until his beloved's head tipped forward, golden mane cascading over his chest.

"Jean-Claude, mon amour, I have missed you." Then Asher moaned, the sound so sweet to Jean-Claude's ears that his body arched into his hand.

Pleasure cresting, he answered on a growl, "And I have longed for you."

Asher's unscarred hand moved in hard jerks, he had always preferred it slow, but with the scarring, perhaps he needed more stimulation – it mattered not, Jean-Claude would learn his needs again, but in the moment, this one, he simply matched his pace, tugging at his aching flesh, fucking through his own grip but feeling Asher's.

His tongue slicked over his mouth. It felt too flat, unbruised from Asher's kisses, unswollen from the press of hard flesh. His tongue felt too agile, not numb from the Asher's heavy weight, and the taste of his mouth too much his own and not enough salt or musk or Asher. His mouth, his ass, both ached with emptiness.

And yet, and yet. As he watched Asher's hand blurring over his shaft, and orgasm swirled in his belly and hips, Jean-Claude's chest felt more full than his balls. "Come. Je te bois des yeux."

Asher stiffened, then spilled, and Jean-Claude's knees buckled with the force of his beloved's climax. Pale blue eyes closed in pleasure, head tipped back, and Jean-Claude tasted him in his throat.

"Asher," he breathed, pled, need for the connection, slim though it was, of Asher's gaze upon him when his pleasure took him.

Asher heard and was there, eyes opening, lips parting on a sated purr, "Oui, mais oui, mon amour.

One hard stroke and then another, hand closing over the head to catch his seed; he came with a sharp cry wrapped around Asher's name. That, the name on his lips as much a joy as the release.

Their gazes locked, and for the first time since he had come, Asher smiled. A subtle thing, the lift of his lips, a wickedness in the depths of his exquisite eyes like a secret kept from the world, but Jean-Claude breathed to see it.

It was not enough, not nearly, this business of watching but not touching, but it was beginning. And they had all eternity in which to love.

"Welcome home, mon chardonneret."
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Notes: Written for katharos_8 for yuletide. This was my first Yuletide and a fabulous experience all around. I'd forgotten how much I love this pairing, so thank you to Katharos for asking for them so I could fall in love all over again. ♥ Much love to poisontaster who once again responded to a midnight hail for "omgdoesthissuck" assistance and to both her and toxictattoo for helpful thoughts on whether to include the porn. *g*