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He misses the bottles three times. Hits on the fourth shot. Ethan’s impressed, or pretending to be, and Victor feels a rush of adrenaline unlike anything he’s ever felt.
No—not quite accurate. It’s similar to the rush when an experiment succeeds. Not the same, but similar. A rush of success. There’s something different, though, and it takes him barely a moment to figure it out: it’s Ethan. It’s the presence of another person, someone who knows more than he about this particular art. Mixed in with the feeling of success is gratitude, and perhaps—perhaps something more…
“You do it,” he says, the thrill of it still in his voice and, he’s sure, in his face. He wants to see Ethan shoot. He knows what he’ll see: the remaining bottles shot off the table. Five bottles, five shots. He wants to see it. Scientific curiosity, perhaps. Or perhaps not.
“No, no,” Ethan says with a smile.
“Go on.” Victor looks toward the bottles again.
“Look, I was a professional sharpshooter—”
As if that will dissuade him. “You know you want to.”
Ethan grins at him. Unthinking, Victor analyzes. Grinning because he wants to, or because he’s figured out that Victor wants to see him do it, grinning perhaps out of admiration. Grinning until the moment he unexpectedly turns away and shoots, one, two, three, four—
Victor lets out a “woo!” before he can stop himself. Impressed. Awed, perhaps. Certainly feeling something he’s not felt before. For Ethan? About Ethan? About the display?
“What about a rifle?” he says with excitement. “Do you have a rifle?”
But he doesn’t get an answer. Sembene is on the stairs behind them. He turns first, then Ethan.
“Sir Malcolm is inquiring about the noise,” Sembene says.
“Uh oh,” Ethan says. His eyes flicker to Victor’s. He’s smiling. Sounds like he’s barely holding back laughter. “We’re in trouble with dad.”
He goes to clean up the mess. Victor follows. The shards clink as Ethan bends down to pick them up and Victor feels something in the pit of his stomach. Not entirely unpleasant. Strange. Unfamiliar.
He hears Sembene’s footsteps retreating upstairs. Ethan straightens up and stares out, then shifts his gaze to Victor.
“So you’ve never been with a woman?” he says, conversationally.
Victor takes a step back in surprise. “No.” Of all the odd questions—“Nor a man, either,” he adds, as it occurs to him what Vanessa said.
Ethan chuckles. “I wasn’t gonna ask.”
“You were,” Victor says. He presses his palm flat against the rough wall. “I think.”
Ethan places a shard of glass on the table. “Okay,” he says, “maybe. Why did you want me to teach you to shoot?”
Victor tenses. “Because I thought you were the best man for the job,” he says. He pulls his hand from the wall as Ethan steps closer and leans there himself.
“Okay,” Ethan says again, “but that’s not what I was asking. What’s a guy like you got to shoot?”
“It’s a good skill to have.” Technically not a lie.
“Is that all?”
“I can’t say,” Victor says.
“Okay.” Ethan looks to the side and back at Victor. “What did you think?”
“Good lesson,” Victor says. His heart, why is his heart pounding? Ethan is not a threat. He’s not behaving threateningly. They are alone in the basement and if it came to a fight, Victor would lose, but it will not come to a fight and there are more dangerous things out there. His mouth feels dry. He thinks of Ethan’s rapid shots and feels no better.
“What else?” Ethan presses. He is absurdly close. Barely a foot of distance between them. Ethan could slide his food through the broken glass and—and what?
And be right in Victor’s face. Like the creature. Not like the creature at all.
“Oh,” Victor breathes as the lights go on in his skull.
“Oh what?”
His heartbeat pounds in his ears. His steady hands are shaking. Detached, he wonders if perhaps he is having an out-of-body experience. He can see his hand settling on the back of Ethan’s neck. He knows he’s moving it, just the same as he knows he is controlling the pull, the forward motion of his own head—
But the kiss—that’s all Ethan’s doing.
It’s Ethan who pushes forward into the first uncertain brush of lips. Ethan whose arm circles around Victor’s back, Ethan who turns them and shoves Victor against the wall, Ethan who presses his tongue against Victor’s lips until they part. Ethan who presses his body to Victor’s. Ethan whose gun presses against Victor’s thigh—or is that his gun?
I should be disgusted by this, Victor thinks. Vanessa’s face flashes in his mind. “Do you value cleanliness? That’s why you’re a virgin.”
A virgin. Here, in the basement, with Ethan Chandler’s tongue in his mouth—a virgin. And Ethan knows it. Just as he knows Ethan has been with, as he says, at least one man.
He presses both hands to Ethan’s chest and shoves him away. Ethan stumbles back, hits the table, rights himself. He looks bewildered. “What’d I do?”
“Not you,” Victor says. His hands are still shaking and he can taste Ethan still, taste his lips and tongue, and he wants more. He shakes his head rapidly. “I don’t—want to lose my virginity to you.”
Ethan tilts his head down. “No one said anything about fucking.”
Victor shudders. “Nonetheless,” he says. “I don’t—”
Ethan holds up his hands. “We don’t have to do anything. But if you don’t mind me saying, I was under the impression you were enjoying yourself.”
His hands are still shaking, damn them, and the taste—no, the feel more than the taste, the fact that his lips are tingling where Ethan’s touched them.
Guardedly, he says, “Perhaps I was.”
“Okay,” Ethan says. “So we don’t fuck. You wanna get in more trouble with dad, or call it a day?”
Victor laughs. It slips out, high-pitched, sounding frantic. “Why not,” he says. “Why not.”
Ethan steps forward, stops, waits for Victor to make a move. Victor spreads his hands. No longer shaking. Good. Ethan comes closer, his face only inches away now, but he doesn’t make a move to resume the kiss until Victor’s hands find his waist. The tip of his nose brushes against Victor’s, and their lips touch.
This time it’s Victor who pushes forward to turn it into a real kiss. Ethan’s being gentle, like he’s afraid of breaking him, like he’s afraid of scaring him off.
Victor is suddenly furious. As if he knows Victor’s limits—as if he could be scared off by something as trivial as a kiss. He grabs the back of Ethan’s head and pulls him in, shoves his tongue through Ethan’s lips, parted in surprise. It doesn’t take long for Ethan to get the picture, and in a second he’s knocked Victor back against the wall, his head making contact with a thud. He expels a breath from the contact, but Ethan’s mouth is back on his, and his hands are on Victor’s shoulders, pressing him into the wall. He slides one leg between Victor’s, presses their bodies together, holds him tight and Victor thinks, fuck me.
This must be what other people felt to drive them to cheat on their wives. This feeling must be why prostitutes abound in every city. Lust.
It is not a feeling Victor is familiar with. He isn’t certain he wants to be. Neither is he certain he wants this to stop.
Ethan’s lips leave his and Victor protests, wordlessly but audibly. But Ethan is not done. His lips instead find Victor’s neck, his breath hot against his skin. Victor breathes, and groans, and pushes back against the wall as his head tips back.
And Ethan, infuriatingly, stops.
“You all right there, Dr. F?” he says. Teases.
“Shut the fuck up,” Victor suggests. An echo of Ethan’s earlier words. It has the intended effect: Ethan laughs, low in his throat, and presses his mouth to Victor’s neck again. The pressure of his hands on Victor’s shoulders eases, and his fingers slide across the back of his neck, making the hair there stand on end.
Now Victor laughs, breathless. “Like touching a lady’s neck,” he says, again quoting Ethan. “Am I a gun, Mr. Chandler? Or am I a lady?”
“You’re whatever you want to be,” Ethan says. His beard brushes Victor’s neck as he speaks. “Anything at all.”
“You know that’s not true.”
“I wasn’t speaking literally, Doctor.”
He presses his lips to the crook of his neck and sucks. Victor shudders, his hand sliding from Ethan’s hair down to his back. His fingers press against his shoulder blades. He can feel them through his clothes, and he thinks they must be so elegant, from the feel. His hand slips down, fingers gliding along Ethan’s spine: again, elegant. The musculature—defined. Unclothed, Ethan must be a wonderful sight to behold.
Ethan’s fingers slide under Victor’s vest and that train of thought abruptly stops. Victor freezes. The image stays, but changes: instead of Ethan lying on the bed, passively letting Victor examine him, it is one of Ethan naked, writhing, hips bucking as Victor straddles him, also naked, fucking or being fucked.
He wants to throw up. His hands scramble to shove Ethan away again, but this time Ethan steps back of his own accord before he can get there, already holding up his hands in a peacemaking gesture.
“I don’t want to fuck you,” Victor blurts.
“I thought we’d already been over that.”
Victor shakes his head violently. “No. Not now. Not ever. I don’t want to fuck you, Mr. Chandler, and I never will.”
Ethan frowns. Frowns, and Victor watches the curve of his lips. Watches them move as Ethan says, “Then what are we doing here?”
Victor throws up his hands and steps away from the wall. “I don’t know. You tell me.”
“You’re the scientist,” Ethan points out. Is that a sting of anger in his voice, or is Victor imagining it? How does Ethan feel? Did Ethan have plans to fuck or be fucked in the first place?
Victor starts pacing. Angry, jittery. His lips still tingling, and his neck where Ethan sucked it. His mind whirs.
“I don’t know,” he says again. “I—I imagine what it might be like, writhing, undulating, naked bodies fucking indiscriminately—fucking in someone else’s bed, spilling semen and god knows what else—it’s disgusting. Disgusting.” The words spill out without giving him time to pull them back, refine them, change them. “Sex is—is unappealing at best. Horrifying at its worst.”
Ethan watches him silently as he breathes—steady inhale, steady exhale—and waits for him to say more. He has nothing more to say.
“That doesn’t answer the question, Doctor,” Ethan says. “What are we doing here, if sex is so disgusting to you?”
“We are here,” Victor says tightly, his teeth clenched, “because I like to watch you shoot.”
Ethan stares at him, like he’s trying to gauge the truth of that statement. Like he’s trying to figure out what Victor can possibly mean by it.
“Sir Malcolm would complain,” he finally says.
Victor lets out a frustrated groan. Frustrated with whom—himself? Ethan? “Then kiss me, damn it, that’s almost the same thing.”
Ethan frowns. “I don’t get you, Victor. You think sex is disgusting, but you—”
“Sex and kissing are not the same thing, despite what your personal history would have you believe,” Victor snaps. Like he’s an expert on the subject. He strides over, and Ethan straightens up. “There is no penetration in kissing, save for tongues, perhaps, no semen, spit the only bodily fluid exchanged unless your partner bites. Sex is crude and messy, shoving your cock in various orifices, fucking until you spill your seed inside them, and what then, hmm? If you’re lucky, you can clean up, but more likely than not you sleep in the mess, or you walk around with it, you—”
His lips lock on Ethan’s. He wraps his arms around his neck and kisses, sucking at his lips, wanting badly to bruise them, to mark him somehow. Ethan stumbles back, but after that holds his ground, and he draws Victor closer to him like this was his goal all along. He doesn’t understand what’s happening, Victor imagines, but he will make the best of it, enjoy what he has.
Victor’s thoughts again depart, this time not changing the situation, but the person. Images flit through his mind like fireflies, flashing in and out with barely a chance for him to count them. He replaces Ethan with Vanessa—revulsion. Caliban—even worse. In rapid succession he imagines everyone else he can think of in Ethan’s place, strangers on the street, people he has met only in passing, and the results are the same: it’s only Ethan he can even imagine wanting to kiss.
With the revelation comes a feeling of relief. At last, now, he can properly answer Ethan’s question. He pulls away, this time not bodily, only his head drawing back to give himself room to speak.
“You asked what we’re doing here,” he says. His breath feels unsteady, but his voice is even. “Why are we here? Because I can kiss you without wanting to rip my skin off.” He grabs the side of Ethan’s face. “Because when you kiss me, I enjoy it.”
Ethan stares at him. His hand mirrors Victor’s, but with less force, resting gently on his cheek. Unconsciously, Victor thinks. “You do?”
“Shut up and kiss me,” Victor growls.
He suspects Ethan still doesn’t quite understand. There is a little hesitance in the kiss—not much, and easily remedied when Victor pushes forward again—but enough. Ethan’s hands, thankfully, do not again try to move under his clothes. His lips stay on Victor’s, not straying to his neck, not again trying to bruise him. Ethan is being careful. Not avoiding a break: he knows better than that now. More avoiding a loss. He doesn’t know what he might do to make Victor push him away again, and for all he knows, the next time might be the last.
But Victor understands. He understands more than he had imagined he would, upon coming down here. He has long known that sex does not appeal to him, and kissing, too, seemed a frivolous waste of time. Now, with his lips hard against Ethan’s, he understands why people kiss, and why he himself enjoys it, with Ethan. He doesn’t believe in love at first sight, nor soulmates, but what he feels is neither love nor lust: it is darker than love, cleaner than lust. He knows that it would not happen were it not Ethan. He knows, too, that Ethan would never understand this. Ethan thinks in love and lust. Victor suspects he will never properly feel either.
When he pulls away, at last, their lips are red and sticky with saliva. They meet each other’s eyes, in mutual, silent agreement that this is not ending now because either dislikes it. It only ends so that they can breathe.
“Thank you for the shooting lesson, Mr. Chandler,” Victor says. Formal, but his eyes don’t leave Ethan’s, and he sees the spark there. “I’d like to repeat the experience, if you don’t mind.”
Ethan nods. His chest moves rapidly with his breathing. “Maybe somewhere more comfortable next time,” he says.
Victor nods. Straightens his vest. Proceeds past Ethan to the stairs. “I suppose it’s nearing time for one of us to check on Miss Ives.”
Ethan catches up with him easily. His hand brushes Victor’s back as he passes.
“I guess you’re right,” he says, and vanishes up the stairs.
Victor touches his fingertips to his lips. It’s only a few extra seconds that he lingers there at the bottom of the stairs.
“I guess I am,” he mutters to himself. He drops his hand and proceeds up the stairs after Ethan.