Habit of A Lifetime Ch. 04

Simon supposed that it was not a great surprise. Thom and Rayne had never seen eye to eye. Simon suspected jealousies on both sides but he loved them both and it was an increasingly difficult choice he was being forced to make. So far Thom had not laid down the law, or threatened to sever relations completely. It was Simon's flat after all; the older man could do as he liked here. His lover did not pay rent, just occasionally contributed to the overheads by providing food and wine. Simon had never complained and he supposed that Thom felt awkward doing so now.

It hurt to think that Thom was spending his time away with other men though.

"No amount of time will give us back what we had," Rayne murmured, almost to himself, interrupting his friend's train of thought. "It's over, Si. I have to let it go."

Simon looked up at him imploringly, but Rayne was not even facing in his direction. He was still gazing out across the quay with a wistful expression on his face.

Matt was still very weak. Even so, Rayne refused to consider employing another manager, not even as a temporary measure. Kris Spedding at the record company had suggested it once and Rayne threw such a fit that the matter had been dropped immediately. Everyone in the music trade knew that Whipsnade kept SOLD Records afloat. That had been their saving grace. As far as the press releases were concerned, there was still a band. Even if Rayne refused to sing or write - or 'anything'! Even if they had no guitarist, and hence, no musical input.(Sean Courtney had unofficially walked out on the day Matty was admitted to hospital and flatly refused to speak to any of his band mates.)

Rayne remained withdrawn and uncooperative. Simon was growing increasingly frustrated. If Ray would even consent to sleep with him... He quickly pushed that consideration to the back of his mind. It would not work. He knew that from bitter experience.

"I wish you wouldn't talk like this," Simon told his friend unhappily, feeling very much as if he was holding a one-sided conversation. Rayne did not want to discuss the band at all, but Simon felt it was his duty to keep on nagging. "It's ridiculous. The whole business with Matt is settled. You know he'd forgive you like a shot if you'd ask him."

"I nearly killed him," Rayne said pointedly, without looking at him. "I still don't know what happened, but..." He stopped and lowered his head, his shoulders slumping despondently.

Simon chopped vigorously, taking out his impatience on the little green chillies on the board. He glanced up at the singer with narrowed eyes.

"I hate it when you two dance around one another, avoiding each-other and trying to pretend there's no problem. It's bad enough that we lost Court... If Matty quits too, then we're really sunk. He wants to see you."

"He doesn't. 'You' want him to see me," his lodger muttered. "There's a difference."

"He loves you. He'd forgive you anything," Simon ventured desperately, and knew it was the wrong thing to say at once. Anyone who tried to love Rayne Wylde was asking for an emotional trampling. He invariably pulled down the defensive barriers when people used that particular four-letter word around him.

Simon muttered an insincere apology. Ray just scowled out of the window and shook his head grimly.

"Don't ignore me, Ray! You know it sets my t...'Aagghhh! Owww!'"

Rayne turned from the window with astonishing speed as Simon dropped the knife and hunched over the chopping board with the fingers of his left hand clenched tight around the index finger of the right. The cut was deep, he could tell right away. It throbbed a counterpoint to the quickening of his pulse. Simon had always hated the sight of blood - especially his own. 'Especially of late'.

"What did you do? Uh-oh!" Rayne caught him as he swayed back from the board, the blood welling from between his fingers now and dripping down onto the marble slab on the counter. "Nasty!"

"Don't touch it," Simon said instinctively, pulling away from him. "Let me handle it."

Rayne took his injured hand firmly, ignoring the instruction with calm determination. Simon struggled, in vain.

"Don't be an idiot!" Ray responded in a mild, exasperated tone that took Si right back to their childhood together in Dymchurch. "You faint when someone has a fuckin' nosebleed. Let me..."

"I can't..." Simon looked up at him, crestfallen and unhappy. "Oh Ray... I just can't... I can't risk it."

"Fool." Rayne's eyes met his own, solemn and unblinking. "Do you think I never guessed? I've been here for weeks now. D'you think I never wondered why the guy who refuses to even take vitamins suddenly developed a pill-popping habit that makes Keith Richards look like some tea-total old granny? Simon, I 'know'! It doesn't 'matter', sweetheart. You 'can't' hurt me."

For a moment, Simon's lower lip quivered with combined shock and gratitude. He had dreaded having to tell Rayne about his HIV status for so long, and now, out of the blue, his best friend had suddenly made it so easy for him. He turned his face away, afraid that he might cry.

"I think I've cut my finger off!" he gasped at last, the colour draining from his face. "I don't want to look."

Rayne's fingers were slick with his blood as the singer lifted his injured hand. His touch felt cool and strong as he manoeuvred Simon back gently against the counter to inspect the damage. Simon was watching his face. That had to be better than looking at the damage to his finger. What he saw left him in no doubt that he should have looked elsewhere.

As Rayne's full, pale lips drew back from his teeth in a hiss of concern, Simon saw something he later wished he could convince himself was pure delirium. The long, sharp, dog-teeth protruding from Rayne's upper jaw seemed to extend as he studied the cut. It was a difference of less than an inch but enough that when he bit lightly on his lower lip in tense anticipation, the points of his canines drew a pair of tiny, bright beads of blood. In the other man's ice-green eyes Si recognised something like hunger and could suddenly think of nothing but Matt's lifeless body, as they wheeled him out of surgery and back into the hospital ward, pale and drained.

He remembered DS Parker at Woodfield Road asking him if he was sure that Rayne Wylde had not tried deliberately to kill their manager. Now, Simon panicked. The fear rising in him was sharp as ice in his own blood. As Rayne bent over his hand, he hauled himself bodily away and staggered back from the counter, shaking his head.

"No!" he screamed. "Leave me alone!"

Rayne looked incredulously at him, his pale-green eyes huge and astonished in the brightness of the kitchen lights.

"Don't be childish, Si. You've hurt yourself. I 'know' you hate the sight of blood!"

The overhead fluorescent flashed off his extended canines as he ventured an approximation of a reassuring smile. Simon shrank away from him until he felt the smooth, cold barrier of the fridge door against his back. He had nowhere to go. This was it. It was really all over. He was going to die.

Rayne took Simon's injured hand in both of his own once more and lifted it gently to his mouth. Very, very tenderly he closed his lips around the other man's bleeding digit and closed his eyes briefly as his mouth worked the damaged flesh. In spite of his terror, Simon was painfully conscious of how good it felt. Under any other circumstances, he would have died to have Rayne willingly pin him to the refrigerator and suck his fingers.

"M-mmmhhh..." Ray breathed hungrily as he let the tip of his colleague's gory limb slip from his mouth, trailed by a thin tendril of blood and saliva. "You taste of chilli pepper. I never realised that blood could taste 'green' before."

"Y-y-y..." Simon faltered incoherently, as Rayne gently continued to lip at his injured hand. "Y-you really did it? 'You' did that to Matty?"

Rayne's heartbreakingly clear eyes met his own, mere inches from his face. His best friend licked those full, sensuous lips once; a slow, deliberate sweep with the tip of his tongue.

"Yes."

He must have felt the panic in his companion for, as Simon began to struggle again, Rayne caught him. Impossibly strong hands closed around his upper arms, holding him back against the refrigerator. He was taller and broader than Ray but try as he might, he could not break loose. Simon cried out in terror and Rayne's mouth closed quickly over his own, kissing him and silencing him at once.

After a moment or so, he stopped fighting. They kissed like that for a long, breathless time. At some point, Simon felt his heart begin to slow and he sagged against the cold, smooth surface behind him, whilst Rayne's lips moved intimately over his, and his friend held him, more gently and responsively. This close to Ray, Simon could feel that he was intensely aroused but he was too petrified to reciprocate, although he was dizzy with pleasure at the touch of Rayne's lips and the cool, wet presence of the other man's tongue in his mouth. Finally, Rayne released him, leaning into him and nuzzling his neck tenderly. Simon's arms moved around him weakly and he ground his crotch in slow circles against the growing hardness he felt in his friend's tight, black jeans.

"You're driving me crazy," Ray whispered huskily. "I wish you'd find a plaster for that damned finger! I can't get the taste of you out of my head, Si!"

That sparked the fear again, though it was less than it had been. Simon pulled away from him like a drunken man and Rayne let him go, watching as he rummaged blindly in cupboards and drawers, with his one good hand. At last, he produced a plastic box of Band-Aid from the back of one drawer. He wrestled valiantly to dress his damaged finger, running it under the cold tap and trying to juggle the plaster at the same time. Ultimately, Rayne took it from him and peeled off the backing strips.

"Ready?" he breathed, refusing to meet Simon's eyes.

"I'm ready."

Simon took his hand from under the cold running water and wrapped it briefly in a towel. When he removed it, Rayne pressed the dressing down on his cut finger and pulled it tightly around the wound to staunch the flow of blood. He was shaking too when finally he let go and drew away. Simon caught him, pulling Ray back into his arms, not ready to relinquish the moment.

"Hold me," he whispered, barely audible, even to his own ears.

"Are you sure you trust me to?" Rayne's face was buried in his collar and the words buzzed softly against his neck. Simon nuzzled him gently, breathing in the clean, neutral scent of his hair and body. Ray felt cold. Si worried that he always seemed to feel cold these days. DS Parker's comment about Matty's condition came back to haunt him and he pulled Rayne closer still.

"I trust you with my life."

LATER...

"What's happened to you?" Simon asked him, over a glass of chilled vodka, once dinner was over. They were sitting quietly in the window bay once more, facing one another, with the lights of Katherine's Dock glimmering below them. "What I thought I saw tonight..."

He could not finish. Rayne did not look at him, but whispered; "I didn't want it to be true. But I can't deny it for much longer. I need something... more. I've changed, Simon, and I need to know what I've become, and if I can carry on living my life. Until then, I can't make plans."

"What do you 'think' happened?" Simon asked him warily. He was still visibly on his guard, refusing to let himself get drunk, no matter how much his body needed the alcohol right at this moment.

"Do you remember Manchester?" Rayne responded, nursing his condensation-beaded glass between long, steady fingers as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

"The last good gig of the tour," Simon said bitterly. "How could I forget it!"

"You remember the boy I got off with after the show?"

Simon looked at him quizzically. He remembered all right. It probably showed in his face. Rayne had always known when Simon disapproved of his behaviour and the way he vanished with the blond boy from the front row of the Apollo that night had rankled. Even if he said nothing about it.

"Something happened during that night I spent with him," Rayne told him steadily now. He held the glass very lightly between his fingers, almost as if he was afraid it might break in his hands. "I don't quite understand 'what', but in the morning, something very disturbing happened to me. I put it down to iffy coke at first, but since then nothing's been normal. I started to feel very weird. I really believed I was going crazy." He paused and looked solemnly at Simon Hathaway. "Si... I'm immortal. I 'can't' die."

This was such a ridiculous statement that Simon fought the urge to laugh. If Rayne's expression had not been so very serious, he would have failed. All the same it took an effort.

"Everyone dies, Rayne," he said instead, fighting to keep a tremor from his voice. "'Eventually', everyone dies."

The other man pushed himself to his feet and then, so very calmly that it made Simon jump, he smashed the vodka tumbler on the arm of his chrome and leather chair. Ignoring the alcohol splashed over his trouser leg and the beech-wood floor, he drew the jagged edge of the broken glass slowly up the inside of his forearm, cutting deeply; drawing blood. When Simon leapt up to stop him he was pushed back into his seat by the bloody hand of his imperturbable companion.

"Watch..." said Rayne Wylde imperiously. "I didn't believe it at first, but I do now."

The blood was already drying, turning slowly to dust. As Rayne breathed on his arm, blowing the rusty red powder away, the skin beneath looked as clean and unmarked as ever. Simon gaped at it, unable to believe his eyes.

"I've tried every suicide method I could think of," Rayne said, carefully rubbing his thumb over his inner arm as though he too found it hard to believe. "None of them works. 'Not' drowning was an interesting experience! Poisons don't have any effect. Noxious fumes are ineffectual 'cos I don't 'have' to breathe them in."

"You don't have to 'breathe'?" Simon queried, growing more incredulous by the minute.

"It has its benefits," said Rayne mock-coyly, casting a glance at him that, under different circumstances, would have been downright irresistible.

"Hang on..." Simon diverted him, shaking his head. He did not want to go in that direction right now. Apart from a little casual experimentation in their teens, before tonight he had never been physical with Rayne, although they often fell for the same type of lover and frequently found themselves in competition over the band's groupies. On numerous occasions, Simon had fantasised getting naked with his best friend. He had rubbed himself to climax on many a lonely night with that thought for company but he tried not to think now about how good it would feel to get inside Rayne Wylde. This was neither the time nor the place.

Moreover, Ray was not and never would be –to the best of his knowledge – a submissive lover.

Instead he asked; "What has any of this got to do with the kid from the gig?"

Rayne smiled coldly.

"It's all his fault," he said in blunt tones. "It's 'his' fault this happened to me. And now he's disappeared, and I need to find him... or at least, find out what happened to him."

ON THE ROAD

Simon had a contact in the House of Lords. Since discovering that he was HIV Positive he had been involved with a charitable organisation known as the Pharos Foundation whose members (generally high profile celebrities and millionaire philanthropists) raised money for research and development to help in the fight against AIDS. One such viral warrior was Lord Dominic Warren, a mad, gay peer from the North of England, who had taken Simon under his wing when he first became involved with the charity.

Simon's initial reservations that he would have nothing in common with a Peer of the realm some twenty years his senior were quickly relegated to a distant second place when they met up. Lord Warren was easily the most effusive person Simon had ever met (even counting some of Whipsnade's more obsessive fans!). His concerns about having nothing to say to the man were soon overwhelmed by the doubt that he would ever get a word in edgeways.

Within an hour of meeting his mentor he knew that Lord Warren was single, as well as gay (so they had at least one thing in common). Also that he was a White Witch and High Priest of a Coven that was well-regarded in Wiccan circles. Since then others had backed up his claims and even vouched for his spells and (in one case) for his powers of exorcism.

One afternoon in the bar at Westminster, they had a bizarre conversation about Vampires. Until that day Simon had been quite happy to disregard such things as folk tales and the kind of nonsense normally only found in horror movies. On discovering that Dominic Warren not only believed in them, but also actually professed to know someone who was a Vampire, he was not sure whether to take him at face value or politely excuse himself and run away. This conversation occupied Simon Hathaway's mind as he and Rayne motored north in the back of the Merc (with a most disgruntled Chaz Collister at the wheel, having had his weekend disrupted by work).

"D'you reckon this bloke will even talk to us?" Rayne wanted to know. He was sprawled across the back seat of the limousine in dark sunglasses and a tee shirt and jeans, taking advantage of the superior air conditioning offered by the Mercedes Benz.

"We don't know anything until we try. I do know that he's the only person I can think of who won't laugh us out of town if we ask him about the Undead," Simon said in grim tones.

He had tried to contact Lord Warren at his London address but got no reply. He then tried the House of Lords, and was informed that they were in their summer recess and that Lord Warren was most likely in Biarritz. Only slightly daunted, he then called Garry at the Pharos Foundation. It had been this last contact who gave him the details of Dominic Warren's Cheshire estate and suggested that he try there.

"And you reckon he'll be able to 'elp?" Rayne stretched languidly across the leather seat and Simon attempted to ignore him, even though the sight of his friend's bared midriff was giving him a hard-on.

"I don't know, Ray," he said bluntly. "I just don't know, all right!"

They reached the outskirts of the Black Country long before lunchtime. At half-past two they were still sitting in a jam, five miles north, just outside West Bromwich.

"What the fuck is wrong with this country?" Rayne wanted to know, peering out of the window at the queues of stationary vehicles on the M6.

"If you could control the fucking traffic, chief, you should have let me know!" Charley snapped back thoroughly fed up with the situation already. "There's been a spill - lorry jack-knifed up near Willenhall, or so the radio says. We could be here all day!"

Simon sighed heavily. Rayne was not quite so defeatist. "We can come off somewhere and avoid it, surely?" he demanded.

"Do you have the faintest idea where you are?" Charley barked at him.

"Birmingham?" suggested Rayne innocently.

"That's still a dirty word in my vocabulary," Simon murmured, pressing a button to wind down the window. Since midday the temperature had been rising, both in and outside of the car. Within minutes, he had closed it again. Heat was infinitely preferable to being gassed by exhaust fumes!

"For your information, children, we're just outside Handsworth... where the prison is," Charley told them in cutting tones. "If you'd like me to drop you there, just say the word."

Simon closed his eyes and stretched out with his feet up on the opposite seat by Rayne's head. "Aston Villa," he murmured.