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"Stay still," Dennis grumbles, digging his fingertips into the enviably supple flesh within his grip.
"Quit nicking me, then! You shave every day, how are you this bad at it?"
"I'm only nicking you because this razor is blunt as shit," he retorts, squishing Charlie's cheeks again as he turns his face toward him. "If you didn't play around in filth I'd use mine."
"It works for me," Charlie insists, "maybe you're just doing it wrong."
Dennis rolls his eyes, scraping the blades up the underside of Charlie's neck, fighting against the resistance as it hits wiry, unkempt hairs. Charlie winces as it slips, fresh blood pooling until the surface tension breaks and it starts to run down toward the neckline of his t-shirt.
At first Dennis swipes it with his thumb, but it keeps flowing, too steady to leave it be and continue on. "Shit, I got you bad on that one," he mutters.
Charlie moves to put his hand over the wound but Dennis catches it before he can.
"Don't, it'll get infected."
With his hands full, there's not much he can do, and he latches onto the first idea that pops into his head out of sheer novelty alone. Dennis leans in close and licks up the trail of blood, salty and metallic, the taste of the shaving cream lather making him curl his lip as he gets closer to the wound. He drops the razor, hearing it clatter into the sink as he feels Charlie's arm go limp in his grasp. He tips his head back to allow Dennis better access, but Dennis quickly pulls away, pulls back to see Charlie looking... smug? That can't be right.
"What?" Dennis asks, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
"You are a vampire."
At first Dennis scoffs, but the thought amuses him and he finds himself scrunching his nose up to draw his top lip up, showing off one of his fangs. "Well, then I must have extraordinary restraint to keep from sucking you dry." He watches Charlie's expression falter, laughs when he shifts uncomfortably.
Shifts away from him, like he's suddenly worried Dennis might bite his head off. "Is this how you do it, dude? You're like, a vampire serial killer?"
"I don't—" he begins to protest, "Jesus Christ, I'm not a goddamn vampire, Charlie."
His weariness must be apparent, because Charlie looks disappointed and almost apologetic. "Alright, you're just a normal guy who likes to lick necks, then."
Charlie's neck. Charlie's blood, that's probably home to a million bloodborne pathogens. He sighs, making a mental note to schedule a blood test. "Yes, totally mundane and not supernatural in any way, because vampires don't exist, Charlie. And would you knock it off with the serial killer thing? I've never killed anybody. You know I haven't, dude, you were my alibi." He's still sore over what Charlie had said after his slip-up with those teenagers, confidently assessed as being Classic Dennis. He's sore over Charlie thinking he had planned to hurt people, planned to kill Tammy, planned to kill anyone. He's sore about everything, really. Too much fighting without ever being afforded a break from it all. He can't count on Charlie knowing he'd never do such a thing; he really thinks he would. He thinks he'd kill him on a whim. Like it means nothing. Like everything means nothing to Dennis. "Look, you've always got the beard hiding your neck, it's not that weird that I wanted to..."
"Lick my neck? No, that's still pretty weird, bro." Charlie absently scratches the back of his head, leaning back as he had earlier, and Dennis wonders if he's exposing his neck to him on purpose. He wouldn't put it past him to try to not-so-subtly tempt him into revealing himself. Dennis considers demonstrating restraint, proving Charlie wrong, but what good would that do? If he wanted to make a point, he'd have to go further than just ignoring him.
He lunges forward, grabbing a fistful of hair to keep him from recoiling in shock as he latches onto the side of his neck. Charlie freezes like a kitten that's been scruffed, but his body buzzes with restrained energy, ready to be called upon at a moment's notice. He's waiting to see what happens, waiting for Dennis to sink his teeth in and prove his theory has basis.
His canines don't protrude enough to make a convincing vampire — the braces he was made to wear in his teens ensured his teeth were strikingly uniform — but unlike with the goth chick he'd picked up a couple years back, he didn't have to pretend to be one. It only helped his case to bluntly scrape his incisors along the breadth of Charlie's neck. He was naturally defanged. His teeth weren't those of a predator's, they posed no inherent threat. He had always needed to make up for this deficiency. And the effort he would have to exert trying to break the skin would be a hassle for him too. Maybe he hadn't amassed quite as much damage as whomever he was biting, but the ache it caused in his jaw was still getting harder and harder to bear.
Charlie deflates a little, the adrenaline leaving him as he begins to realize that Dennis isn't actually about to drain him like a human blood bag. "Aw, c'mon, man, get some aftershave on this first if you're not gonna kill me."
Dennis ignores him, taking advantage of the opportunity to make his point, fitting his teeth along the ridge of the tendon running down Charlie's neck and biting, harder than he had thus far. He feels resistance as the muscles start to tense up, instinctively responding as it becomes apparent he's not letting go. Charlie tries to jerk away, but Dennis pushes him back, his fingertips shuffling against his scalp like a spider's legs. He quits using teeth as soon as Charlie relents, but his lips remain firmly against him still, sucking his neck, hollowing his cheeks like he's trying to get him off. He's determined to leave his mark — without puncturing the skin.
The moment Charlie realizes Dennis only intends to give him a hickey, he groans disappointedly, but still makes no move to stop him.
"Shaddup," Dennis mutters out the side of his mouth, "you want Classic Dennis, I'll give you a real Classic Dennis move."
"You'd have more room for that once all of this is off my face," Charlie gestures to his beard, little more than a third of the way shaved and patchy even where there had been an attempt to take the hair off. "Thought you liked me better cleaned up?"
Dennis pulls away with a smirk. Charlie cared about what he thought, did he? That was news to him. "Yeah, yeah... actually, seeing you now, I'm not so sure about that. Maybe you should go half and half." He reaches for the razor, pushing himself upright so that he can rinse it off under the tap. "Get sort of a Two-Face situation going on."
Charlie laughs despite himself, shaking his head like he can't believe that got him. "Yeah, you keep cutting my face up like that and I can see the comparison."
"Shut up, dude, I'm the one with the razor, don't piss me off or I might let it 'slip' a couple more times than I meant to." Once the words leave his mouth, picked up and processed, Dennis stops and looks up at Charlie to gauge how he's taken the joke. There's a fine line between getting him to do as he's told and making him believe he's truly capable of hurting him, and it's one he's been less and less willing to cross as of late.
Charlie just sits there with his legs crossed, waiting. That easy smile still graces his features, the full extent of it revealed by the freshly shaven strip near the corner of his mouth. Dennis didn't normally mind the beard, but this was a nice change.
Dennis ducks to hide his own smile and taps the razor against the edge of the sink before setting to work again.