The Pleasure of Life
Rating: PG-13, Kraven/Lucian slash
Summary: Kraven believes in life.
Disclaimer: Underworld and its characters belong to its talented creators and I’m simply borrowing them briefly.
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Kraven
There’s a tendency for people to think that I don’t think at all but they’re wrong. It’s just that I tend to do most of my thinking after the fact. It’s usually along the lines of ‘I probably shouldn’t have done that’ or ‘how can I work around this?’ The thing about being immortal, however, is that you start to see your life as a repeat of what’s gone before. There’s very little difference between your 54th affair and your 55th or, for that matter, between your 21st murder and your 22nd.
There are only so many times you can feel guilty about your choices before it becomes exhausting and boring. Either you decide that you’re too much of a bastard to continue living and stake yourself or you just stop feeling guilt. Now, while I do have a flare for the dramatic, I am far too much in love with life to relinquish it. I firmly believe in grabbing hold of life and never letting go. The sheer joy of being successful in a dangerous situation – the obsessively careful planning, the near-panic that consumes me when something threatens to go wrong, the relief when it doesn’t – is something that I could never give up. It’s the same ride every time but the emotions are vivid and real and they don’t fade with time.
When Lucian offered me a deal in which I had the choice of living or dying, I chose life. At the time, the fact that my survival was conditional upon the betrayal of my own coven was nothing more than a mere detail. Afterwards, it was an obstacle or a challenge that I obsessed about but it was never a matter for regret. I did what was best for me and I’d do it again.
It was not long before I’d spectacularly conquered my side of the bargain. The aristocrats danced to my tune and the death-dealers that could not be controlled were assigned the most dangerous of missions with the highest fatality rates.
Lucian kept his side of the bargain, keeping a low profile and mostly staying out of the country in a self-imposed exile. It would be more than an obstacle if the man that I claimed was dead had come walking up to the mansion gates. We kept in touch and Lucian passed me more inside information on the Lycan horde than any of the death-dealers had collected in four centuries of warfare and tortured prisoners. I used it to protect most of the Lycan interests and ensure that overly zealous death-dealers were pointed in the wrong direction. It was moderately successful, though less so when Viktor was ruling and urging his people to greater bloodshed.
Sometimes when the Lycans had suffered severe and unexpected losses, Lucian would ring in the middle of the day and rouse me from sleep. Sometimes he would be angry but sometimes he would barely be able to speak and would sit on the other end of the line in a despairing silence until I started talking to him. It often worked when I hissed venomous insults down the line at him and he would snap out of it simply for the sake of trading back equally inventive and genuinely hurtful replies.
One of Lucian’s calls came the same night that I’d broken up with one of my lovers. My lover had been a false, fawning young man with no personality but a great reputation in bed. I had grown tired of having him around but I had yet to find a replacement and I was horny. So, when Lucian rang and sat in desperate silence, I did something I’d never tried before. Phone-sex with a Lycan Master. I think it took him a moment to register what I was saying and then the silence changed. He listened as I told him what I wanted to do to his body.
When it was over, I was smugly satisfied to hear that Lucian’s breathing was as ragged as my own. It was a new way of dealing with Lucian that had never occurred to me before but it was surprisingly effective. I was almost disappointed that it was months before the next time that he rang me in such a state. I began the same tactic again but barely got a few sentence in before Lucian began speaking as well. This time he was the one who sat in smug silence as I caught my breath in the aftermath.
The consequences of such interaction were lost on me at first. I’d had many lovers over the years, both male and female. They had each managed to interest me for a time. I always entered each relationship based on the absurd hope that they’d be different or more permanent than the last but each relationship inevitably ended.
After a year and five such phone calls with Lucian, the two of us met face-to-face again. The meeting began as they normally did, with thinly-veiled insults and tense negotiation. Once decisions were made, I became acutely aware that we were alone in the room. Lucian was looking at me in hostile silence as he’d come off worse in the negotiation and we both knew it.
It wasn’t a despairing silence but I moved forward anyway and stroked the back of his neck. He shivered at my touch and it wasn’t long before he was pushing me up against the wall. The brief wrestle to see who could remain on top was almost as enjoyable as what happened when I finally surrendered.
The thing about vampyres is that everything is about negotiation; you give direct pleasure in order to get it. From what I can tell, the Lycans run on instinct and can be willing to give generously in return for an undefined return that they will expect some time in the unspecified future. It has its limits but there is a form of implicit trust there. Lucian was a generous lover but always withdrawn when it came to receiving attention in return.
At first, I took advantage of that and it was three more visits before I began to actively try to reciprocate. It was a way of pursuing a lover that I’d never encountered during my immortal life. I think he was as much flattered by the attempt to pursue him as he was by the pleasure of the end-result. He was too proud to say so. He was either aggressively in control or silent and watchful.
Being a Lycan, Lucian was different to any other lover I’d had. He smelled differently, moved differently, reacted unpredictably and he was both co-conspirator and adversary. We argued occasionally but only ever over business matters. We never mentioned the sex out loud.
It’s not the first time I’ve been in a relationship with a business partner. It adds a new dimension to negotiations. It reveals the moods and body language that a person carefully hides during conversation or confrontation. It exposes them to your understanding but at the same time they start understanding you better. It highlighted for me how important emotion was for the Lycan people. They’re not afraid to show it.
Despite this new insight, one day he rang me with a new kind of silence. It was a silence that I hadn’t seen coming. He sounded reluctant and he told me that it would be better for both of us if the relationship between us remained strictly professional from now on. It wasn’t the first time I had been dumped by a lover but the last occasion had been seven centuries ago. It was surprising and it hurt. The emotion was real and vivid.
We’re still partners in this conspiracy against the coven and I can taste a time when I’ll have more power than I’ve ever dreamed of. I will fight for life and everything I can get. I know that Lucian will not venture nearly so far. He can’t help being the Lycan that he is and I can’t help being the vampyre that I am. We are going in different directions and I can see where his path will lead him. He will sheathe his claws instead of fighting or he will die defending someone who is not worth saving. Instead of seizing life, he will wait for life to come to him and it will be his downfall.
I accept this fate and I know that it might very well be me who ends his life in a burst of anger. He will still trust me even as he insults me. For a moment, this thought almost makes me feel regret. But I am too in love with life to linger very long on what neither of us is willing to change.
THE END
