London Loves Ch. 06

Xavier did not smile because it would have hurt too much, but he knew by the surly tone that Matt would come and let him in. "Thanks, Matt. I owe you," he said, and hung up before Matty started in on just how much he was going to owe. He looked over at Clint. "Thanks for getting me home." He tapped his finger on the phone. "I'm thinking you didn't take this if you were bringing it back to me," he said, his brain starting to shift into forward gear again.

Clint nodded, looking apologetic as he started to explain but Xav held up a hand. "Don't worry about it. I was stupid, should have been watching better." He sighed; "Listen, Matt's more likely than not to be a total prick when he gets here. You don't have to hang around to get a load of shit from him if you'd rather take off."

"I'm not leaving you here on the fuckin' doorstep on your own," the boy warned him seriously. "You could keel over. That lanky streak of piss might decide to go back to bed and not bother. Then what?"

That seemed to settle it, and in the end Xavier was grateful. Matt took his sweet time getting there but he was drifting in and out for most of the wait anyway. Clint kept on shaking him and talking to him to keep him conscious. Even so he was in a light doze on the step, the pain throbbing dully as he huddled up to the boy, when Matt finally did arrive.

MANCHESTER

It felt strange to be sitting in the comfortable warmth of Dave's Mondeo, watching familiar streets flash by; like he had never been away, almost. He could forget that he was dressed in a way that would certainly get him attention, whether people recognised him or not. He could even, if he tried hard enough, convince himself that the last eighteen months had never happened; he'd never been to America, never experienced the claustrophobia of a seven foot square, windowless cell, or watched as a teenage boy, no older than Clinton, raised a semi-automatic and put two terminal bullets in the man he was making love to on their bed.

Rayne blinked and pulled his thoughts away from that. He would not think about any of it; whichever way he looked at it the feelings were disloyal, either to Kevan or to Xavier and he could not handle the guilt trip today, of all days.

"You okay?" Dave asked him, solicitous though he knew that the answer would be in the negative.

Rayne just shook his head, unable to speak for the pressure in his chest that was forcing an iron fist slowly up his tightening gullet into his throat. He felt sick and lost, his head so full of pressure that he could believe it might explode.

"Bernie sends his love," the other man said, to fill the silence. "He had to work today but he said to tell you he's thinking of you every step of the way. We both miss you, Ray."

"He's a sweetheart," Rayne said huskily, his voice still too tight. "You too, Dave. You didn't have to do this."

"And you reckon you could have done it on your own?" his friend asked with a wry smile.

"Eventually." Rayne glanced his way and forced a smile he didn't feel. "Can't keep putting it off, can I? I've got to say goodb... I've got to say it, in the end."

He swallowed again, because the word had almost unmanned him, as if he was not unmanned enough in this ridiculous get-up. He took a short, hard breath, and another. Dave's hand left the steering wheel and landed briefly on his arm and for once he did not push it away.

Manchester's Southern cemetery was a huge sprawling necropolis, with lawns and headstones in every shape and size imaginable reaching out as far as the eye could see. He was glad, on seeing it, that Dave had chosen to come with him. Finding Kev alone in here would be the challenge.

His escort, ever the gentleman, offered his arm and Rayne took it, figuring they might draw less attention that way. Kevan always told him that he was every inch the lady in his sleek drag attire but he felt conspicuous; too masculine for the delicate heels and silk stockings and the slick, tight feel of too much Maybelline smothering his trembling lips. He put a hand to his hair, trying in vain to smooth it and fighting a losing battle against the persistent Mancunian breeze. It was a grey day with low cloud, threatening the city's virtually omnipresent rain. The weather seemed suited to their purpose though. And Dave had thought to bring a large umbrella from the car.

"What was it like?" he asked as they walked, Dave shortening his stride to match Rayne's stilettoed steps without needing to be pulled back. "The funeral? Were there...? Did many people turn up?"

"It was a sell-out," Dave admitted with a grim smile. "Family, friends, colleagues; they all came out the woodwork. And the fucking press of course. Murdered Copper Laid To Rest! You could see the fucking headlines before they even stopped snapping us."

Rayne's head turned, eyes wide enough to tell Dave without words that he'd not seen any of it, that there was still a gap as big as Manchester in his memories of that time. For a moment Dave was brittle then he mellowed.

"You weren't around. I guess I keep forgetting that there's a lot you missed in that shithole." He had the decency to look embarrassed. "We... I did everything I could to get you out of there, Ray. It wasn't easy, there was a lot of circumstantial evidence. Your mate the Earl had a lot to do with them letting you walk, I reckon."

"I owe Dom for a lot of stuff," Rayne said neutrally, but his mind was already spilling ahead to that meeting with the grave and as they drew nearer he was getting that sharp pain in his chest again.

The plot, when they found it, took him by surprise. The stone was small and simple, a single piece of polished, onyx-coloured granite, chamfered at the edges and with a slight sparkle of mica. It was set at the head of a slab of paler, unadorned stone framed by a three sided rill filled with small, smooth, white pebbles. An inscription etched in gold, in a clear, square script, proclaimed the sole occupant.

Kevan Michael Joseph Delaney, husband and beloved father, 1970-2017. That was all, eight words and eight numbers to mark the brief existence of a man who had loved with a passion that still seared his soul.

"Can you give us a minute?" Rayne asked, feeling the words rise up to choke him.

Dave nodded solemnly. In silence he offered his umbrella but Rayne just shook his head. The threatened precipitation had been little more than a shower of fine drizzle which was easing off now. Gusts of wind rolled around the open aspect of the huge necropolis though, tousling his carefully styled and pinned hair until it hung around his pale face like a shroud of torn, black silk. He was glad in a sense because it gave him something to hide behind.

As the sound of Dave Ramsey's boots crunching on the gravel receded, Rayne took the last few steps that would make all of this deeply, horribly real. He crouched now, remembering to keep his knees together as lisping Paul, his femme stylist from Amberley's Bizarre, had once drilled him. It was not easy in heels but he managed to duck low enough to clear a few dead stems from the small, black marble vase with its gilded pepper-pot top that sat on the narrow plinth at the foot of the headstone.

Carefully now he set his single carmine rose in place in one of the small holes. It stood out like a splash of blood against the polished charcoal shade of the granite. Rayne closed his eyes, still struggling with his emotions. It was a surreal experience. He had expected to feel traumatised, overwhelmed by a sense of horror that was at least equal to the shock he had known as his memories began to return. Somehow those feelings remained dormant in him here though. Instead he knew only detachment. It felt slightly unreal. He wasn't able to associate his memories of Kevan with this innocuous dark grey stone.

It seemed inconceivable that Kev could be lying beneath the slab under his shiny, Manolo Blahnik heels. Somehow Kev - at least the Kev of his limited memories - seemed too big, too bold, altogether too jovial for such a cold, sombre resting place.

He touched the stone, seeking some kind of solace, as if he expected to feel Kevan's spirit reach out in the same way that Xavier's did. In his heart he knew it was folly; he'd lost enough people in his life to be reasonably sure that - barring a vampire bite - they did not come back.

"I'm sorry sweetheart," he said, huskily now, just in case Kev could somehow hear him, or feel the genuine sorrow in his heart. "I wanted to come sooner."

He felt bad, because that too was a lie. He'd barely known his own name when they released him from the hospital, and as soon as he was halfway well again he'd gone tearing off across the Atlantic in search of an escape from the memories.

"I didn't deserve you really, did I?" he murmured now. "I kept on trying to tell you that, but you never listened. In the end I couldn't even save you, could I? Fat lot of good I was!"

He caressed the cold, polished stone with his fingers, even though he knew it was a futile gesture. Kev would not feel it where he had gone. In fact, he would probably never feel anything ever again.

"I hope you can forgive me," he said now, regardless of this, just because he needed to say it; he had to get the words out before they strangled him. "I need you to forgive me, 'cause... 'cause I've met someone else, babes. And... you'd like him, I'm sure. He's blond, and he's cute as a kitten and he likes being tied up. All that kinky shit really pushes his buttons. And I'd like to think we'd got your blessing, right? Because I love him so much it hurts, and the thought of losing him like this... it rips me apart. And I reckon I understand now, I know what you were feeling like inside, and all the stuff you were trying to tell me that I was just too thick skinned, or just too plain thick to get while you were here..."

He closed his mouth, reaching for the band around the third finger on his left hand and twisting it distractedly as the wind lifted his hair and blew it in tattered flags across his ashen face. He felt the emotion well back up in him again, brooding like the storm clouds above the avenue of trees beyond this silent line of gravestones.

"I guess what I've come... what I've come to say is... well, goodbye I s'pose. I... I'm not good at this kind of thing. You know I'm not, but... well, I won't... I probably won't come here again. I've got to carry on you see. And there's people that need me now. I mean... I know you needed me too, but they're... they're here and alive... and..."

Rayne stopped again because he felt a single carmine tear run down his face, and then another. He reached up to rub them away but one still splashed down, wet and red on the damp stone. It was that single tear that opened up the floodgates and he was suddenly on his hands and knees, touching the cold, wet stone, sobbing his heart out because it was so unfair; so very horrible and cruel and desperately unfair to have to leave Kevan here in this cold, grim, awful place beneath a plain, insignificant piece of stone that didn't even begin to tell the world at large what a good, warm-hearted, loving man he had been.

He had meant to leave the ring, to push it into the soil or just leave it sitting on the gravestone and walk away. He had wanted to give it back, so that he did not have to think about what it represented, but now that he was here he found that he could not do it. And as Dave so wisely said, afterwards, when he had scooped Rayne up off the ground and wiped the scarlet streaks from his pale, pretty face; Kev would have wanted him to keep it.

"He gave it to you," the other man said gently, when they were back in the warmth of the car. "You don't have to wear it forever, but don't throw it back in his face now. He doesn't deserve that."

He had wanted Rayne to come back to the house, to stay with him and Bernie until he had to go home, but Rayne declined politely. He was effusive in his thanks for the other man's kindness to him today but tonight, of all nights, he was not looking for company.

Though, actually that was not true. He wanted Xavier; more than anything else he wanted to be back on a plane, flying home to be in his lover's arms. Being there beside that lonely grave today had shown him what was important, he supposed.

It was getting late by the time he got back to the apartment though, and by the time he had showered and changed and finished packing up the things that he did not want the removal company even seeing, let alone having to deal with, it was too late to get a flight back to London. So he curled up with a couple of bottles of vodka and wrapped himself in the soft, warm throw from the back of the sofa, trying in vain to drink himself into oblivion.

And that was when he began to get the shivers; the warning pangs that something was very, very wrong. He got up again and paced restlessly, then gave in to the need to call, to find out what was happening. Even if he was being completely stupid and he'd woken Xavier up on a mad whim, he would feel better.

At first no one answered and he settled back down again, nursing the phone to his breast, trying to tell himself that Xav was fine; he was sleeping. It wasn't so late though that he'd be sound asleep, surely? Rayne tried to push the warning feelings down, to make them be still but they just surged up more ferociously in his chest, making his heart beat hard of its own volition. He felt sick and scared, like he'd never felt in his life, not even when Carlsen stood over him with that spike and plunged it into his chest.

In the end he called again and this time a voice answered and he knew a second of relief before realising that it wasn't Xavier. It wasn't Xavier! Someone had his phone. Why the fuck would someone else have Xavier's phone? It didn't make sense.

He demanded to talk to his boyfriend and a very young sounding voice, slightly uncertain, told him that Xav couldn't speak to him right now. And then, as he lost his temper, the speaker hung up on him and turned off the phone. When he tried to call back it just went to voicemail.

Rayne dropped his mobile and pulled his clothes on then threw the last few things into bags and called for a cab. He didn't know what was going on but he understood one thing, he was no use to Xavier up here. He might not have been able to save Kevan but he was damned if he would sit on his arse feeling helpless whilst Xavier needed him. By the time the taxi turned up he was on the phone again, trying to get booked on the first available flight back to London.

LONDON

"Oh fuck!" the tall, blond dreadlocked vamp growled as he stumbled out of a taxi and took in the scene. "What the fuck happened to you? And what's that doing here?" He pointed an accusing finger at Clint who merely glowered at him, a look that was painfully reminiscent of his father. Matty, used to dealing with the older version by now, took it in his lengthy stride. "Don't look at me like that, you little fuck! I thought we'd been through this, heh? Did you not hear a fuckin' word that nice judge was saying to you? Stay Away From The Fucking House! Capiche?"

"Rayne isn't here," Clint retorted, sullenly, showing no inclination to move. "And if it 'adn't been for me, he'd be dead by now."

He pointed at Xavier, then gave him another little shake. "C'mon, stay with us."

That was perhaps a slight exaggeration, then again maybe not. Besides, Xavier doubted Matt would care or even have wanted the kid to make sure he found his way back in relatively one piece. His eyes cracked open and a groan of protest rose from him at being jostled again. Matty's face swam in front of him. Their bickering grated along his skinned nerves and he wished he had the strength to tell them both to shut the fuck up, but he was relieved Matt had actually come. He was icy cold now and he wasn't even sure he could make himself get up a second time tonight.

"Leave him alone, he's all right," Xavier mumbled softly in a weak attempt to diffuse any further harassment from Matt.

"You don't know the half of it, lover," the vampire sighed under his breath, but he rolled his eyes and bent to scoop Xavier up in his arms.

Matt Greening was stronger than he looked because he lifted Xav effortlessly and managed to juggle both him and the key pad as he opened the front door to the apartments and carried him through into Rayne's quiet, familiar lair. Clint hovered in the doorway for a moment, as if uncertain of his welcome, then Matt looked over one bony shoulder, dark eyes narrowed impatiently.

"Well... if you're coming in, do it, but whatever you're up to, shut the fucking door, all right?" he huffed at last, turning back towards the bedroom. "And try not to nick anything!" he called back vehemently.

Xavier heard the door click softly shut a few moments later, but it was the last thing he heard because he slipped back into the dark again as Matty laid him gently on the bed. When he regained consciousness, he slowly realised two things. Firstly that he was naked, and secondly, with a little ripple of anxiety, that Matt Greening, his lover's vampire ex was bent over him, licking his face like a puppy.

"mmph, wha'are you doin'?" he murmured groggily, although he sort of knew what he was doing given the way that his tongue drew slowly over the split in his lip. "Don't..." Xav whispered, knowing he wouldn't be able to keep him from looking in his head via the flow of his blood. It was a bit late for protests though. Xavier moved a fraction of an inch and groaned miserably. His poor face probably looked bad enough but his torso and back were covered in deep bruises that made him appear as if he'd been hit by a bus; it felt like it too. Fucking bastards!

Matty confirmed it for him, leaning back on his elbow with a little fanged smile and a lift of one studded eyebrow. Xavier was slightly startled to realise that the young vampire was also stark naked. And more than a little bit happy to see him! The studs and rings in his semi-erect cock glistened softly in the lamplight.

"It's too late for false modesty now, honey," he drawled, shaking his gold and silver dreads ruefully. "At least you didn't get knocked about turning tricks. Ray would have just loved finding out about that, wouldn't he! Where'd you think you are, loverboy?" Matt wagged a finger at him now. "London's nothin' like Mary-fuckin'-Poppins, you know? And you wanna watch your back if you're gonna start running around with little cunts like Stalkerboy. You can bet your bottom shekel he's got something to do with it, so don't get taken in by that bleedin' heart act he puts on."

Xavier was not in a receptive frame of mind for a lecture and his baleful expression said as much, but at the moment he was pretty much at Matt's mercy, which was a scary enough thought in itself!

"Clint didn't set me up," he argued. "He wanted me to stay. And I'm not fuckin' stupid. I know how to look out for myself...usually." His mouth closed and then he let out a sorry sigh. "I wasn't paying attention, it was stupid. I know." Xav tried to roll away from Matt and gasped, immediately wishing he hadn't moved. The pain that shot through him made him want to cry but he'd bite his own tongue off before he'd shed a tear in front of Matty Greening. "And I'm not a whore, you know!" he retorted hotly, grasping for anger to keep the tears at bay.

For a moment Matty's expression was completely unreadable, but he shook his head at last and the look on his face mellowed as he touched the backs of his long, cold fingers to Xavier's swollen cheek, ever so gently.

"I was licking you to heal the cuts on your face. I took my clothes off because I like my clothes and don't want your gore all over them. I know you're not a whore, Xavier Gavrilov. And I didn't do anything to you while you were out of it, all right? I'm not a rapist or a child molester," he said methodically, ticking off the points on his fingers as he spoke. "Now, I could bite you and share blood with you, which would help you heal. But I know Ray's already done that once at least. It doesn't stop me trying, but if he's marked you twice then I could actually Turn you by biting you like that. Help me out here, lover?"