Opium Dreams

Michael lay for a long while against Adrian's chest before he realized something was weirdly wrong.

Adrian had no heartbeat.

The realization brought him gasping up from his sleepy daze to stare once again into his lover's burning red eyes, and was met unabashedly.

"So, you have figured out what I am? Are you going to run away now?" It was said matter-of-factly, but Michael, being a musician and mildly empathic, knew the challenge to be one made of fear, and little bravado. The fear was evident in the man's eyes, deep in the red depths, and the set of his thin lips.

Michael looked at him thoughtfully for a long moment, then said, "Unless you are really some kind of sadist; if you were going to kill me, you would have by now. Would not have invested in such time and effort to win me. No, I will not run away. But I have to know; what are you?"

"There's a lot of words for what I am, but the most common is vampire. I feed on the blood of the living, and will outlive every living being on the planet." The sorrow in his eyes spoke to something deep in Michael's heart of hearts, and he kissed him again, tenderly, affectionately.

"I feel it's important that we be as honest with one another as possible if this relationship is going to work, don't you think?" Michael said, stroking Adrian's raven hair away from his eyes. Adrian nodded silently, then pulled him into his arms again...

Adrian's brow furrowed in his Opium haze, a dark shadow of regret crossing his dreaming features. Without opening his eyes he took another long pull of the hookah held delicately in his long fingers, praying for the sweet oblivion it promised. But all the intoxicants in the world would not be able to stave off the memories that followed, and he braced for them like an inevitable, incoming tide...

"Where have you been all night, Adrian?"

The Doctor's voice was soft, cultured, and concerned as he questioned him, his pocketwatch in his slender hand. "We leave for Milan in an hour! The train will leave without us if we are not on board!"

Adrian fought not to look into the green eyes that dominated the vision, the pain creeping up from his chest threatening to strangle him mercilessly if he did not give in to the memory. "No..." he murmured in his sleep, his face contorting in his agony to a grimace of pain, his free hand coming up to swipe ineffectually at his closed eyes to dispel the nightmare.

"I thought we might take this fellow along with us to Milan," Adrian's voice sounded over bright to his own ears, too eager, to careless. He wanted nothing more than to scream at himself to shut up, couldn't he see what he was doing? Couldn't he see that he was dooming the lonely musician to a fate worse than death? Worse by far than the streets of Shanghai? And he... doomed to lose everything that had ever mattered to him. He would break the only heart that had the strength to love him through it all. The betrayal in the green eyes was worse than a thousand lashes at the hands of his sire, the constricting hand at his throat clenching ever tighter. He fought for breath he did not need, his closed eyes burning with unshed tears. God, no.

His world shattered at the single soft syllable the Doctor whispered at that moment, and his pleasant Opium daze spiraled into a black nightmare of regret and sorrow.

"Oh." Was all he had said.

The train ride home... long afternoons sitting beside the window, watching the landscapes rolling by, with Michael dozing beside him or wrapped in his embrace. Evenings spent lost in his amber eyes, while green ones looked on, suffering. Nights back in Milan playing divine music in the villa, filling the place with their rapture. Brief, beautiful memories doomed to be ended in blood and pain. Adrian's heart rate, sluggish from the opium, began to race in terrible anticipation, the burning, unshed tears now tracing down his sunken cheeks. He dropped the mouthpiece of the hookah to cover his closed eyes. The words that had ultimately ended their happiness, whispered carelessly in the darkness late one night in a moment of passion. "I love you."

The memories congealed into one, horrifying moment. Adrian passed the Doctor in the hallway as the doctor emerged from the music room, Adrian smiling for him blithely. The smile vanished at the sight that met him as he entered the room, his heart breaking. There was his beloved Michael, stabbed through the heart with clinical precision, only now sliding to the floor from where he had been pinned to the harpsichord, lifeless. Adrian turned to the doctor in shock he now cursed himself for feeling, and was met by his cold, green gaze, soulless as a mask as the doctor ran his rapier through Adrian's heart with the same perfection he had used to dispatch his lover. All the vampire could think to say was, "Why?"

He was not met with an answer, though the answer was plain enough without a word spoken: suffer, boy, as I have suffered, live through this with the memory of what you have wrought upon yourself, I am finished with you. Adrian's anguish echoed through the hallway after the doctor, his howled cries of "Why not me?" lost to his retreating back. He didn't even have the courage to follow him... and then he was terribly, horribly and completely alone.