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Simon’s fangs ached to the same throbbing tempo as his skull. He retched once, twice. Behind him, Millennium Lint was still playing, but the sound wavered in and out as his head swam.
Stumbling, he made his way to the fire door that would take him outside to the alley. A soft voice halted him in his tracks.
“Simon?”
Fuck. Maureen.
“Mo,” he said. “Now isn’t really a good time.” He squeezed his eyes shut against the sight of her, waiflike and blonde, her pink Strawberry Shortcake shirt, cheeks flushed with blood.
“It’ll just be a second,” she chirped. “I just--”
“Sorry, Mo, I really can’t.” Simon felt the metal of the push bar against his hands. All he could think was get out get out. He shoved the door open and sucked in lungfuls of cool air. It provided no relief.
Against the alley wall, Simon sank into a crouch, trembling violently. Was this what hunger felt like now? Not an ache and a lack in his stomach, but violent illness? He felt feverish, sick. He felt like death.
He heard the door swing open. Eyes still squeezed shut, he said, “Maureen, I’m sorry, I gotta be alone.”
“Who the fuck is Maureen?” Jace drawled.
Simon opened his eyes.
“You’re not Maureen,” he said stupidly.
“You’re not Clary,” Jace observed. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a wayward girlfriend to catch.” He turned to go, then turned back around. “What’s wrong with you? You look even more horrible than usual.”
“Blood,” Simon rasped. “Need.”
“Angels above. I can’t leave you like this.” Jace sighed. “Not because I particularly care whether you live or die, but because there’s a crowd of mundanes who would be traumatized if you ripped one of their throats out. And possibly someone named Maureen.”
Simon started retching again.
“Eugh. Disgusting. Don’t make a habit of this, okay?” Jace pulled out a blade from his jacket, and for a second Simon thought he was going to kill him, and braced himself for the blow.
Instead, Jace sliced his arm and held it out for Simon.
Even half-dead again, the scent of blood roused him. Sunlight and copper. With a ferocity Jace probably hadn’t been expecting, Simon clamped onto his arm. He felt Jace flinch when Simon’s teeth slid beneath the golden skin of his arm, but he didn’t pull away.
Simon drank.
Jace’s blood was hot, and God was it good. Salt and sweetness, life itself, filling up the black void inside him. Life gushing into his body, him, an animated corpse, a parody of life.
“Simon—" Jace said, a little strained. Simon realized his hands were digging into Jace's skin hard enough to bruise. He came up for a second, a quick breath of air. Jace's chest rose and fell as he breathed a little heavier than normal. His eyes had a glazed look, a little euphoric, and Simon remembered belatedly the effect his venom had. Like a drug. “Do you need more?” Jace asked.
“I don't want to drain you,” Simon said. But that was a lie. With Jace's blood running through his veins, all he wanted was more.
“There's plenty more where that came fr— oh,” he gasped as Simon’s fangs latched onto his neck.
Oh, this was better. Closer to the heart, Simon guessed, more oxygen. He wondered if over time he’d get better at identifying blood by the body part. Like a sommelier.
He adjusted Jace to get a better grip, one hand on the back of his neck, the other on his waist. Jace gave a soft, surprised breath, and Simon was ready for a sarcastic comment, or to be hit, but neither came. Maybe the relaxing effect of the venom was hitting him. He sunk microscopically deeper, his lips pressing into Jace's skin now. His tongue darted out to catch a drop of blood he’d missed, rolling down the side of Jace's neck, and he let out an ah that sounded somewhat less uncomfortable than surprised. Simon felt his muscles tighten, then relax, and he placed a hand loosely over Simon's bicep. Simon figured if Jace wanted him to stop he could tap out. So long as he wasn’t suffering from blood loss and passing out.
Simon unlatched after a few moments, feeling heady and invigorated, life pounding through his veins again.
“Feeling any better?” Jace asked. It seemed like he was trying to inject some of his trademark bravado into this statement, but there was an unsteadiness to his voice that undermined it.
“Yeah. Kinda.” Better was one word for it. He no longer felt like he was going to die. His head was swimming now in a different way, a little giddy. “Thanks for um, letting me drink you. If you’re ever feeling generous, maybe we could hook up an IV drip. Or maybe I’ll just stick a straw in you like a Capri Sun pouch.”
“I never have any idea what you’re talking about,” Jace said coolly. He was already bringing out his steele to trace runes into his skin, probably to replenish the blood he’d lost. “I’m going to find Clary now. But—and, Daylighter, if you tell anyone I said this, I'll stake you—if you find yourself hungry in the near future, I'm not completely unwilling.”
Was Simon hallucinating? “Um, thanks. Maybe I'll take you up on that. But seriously, no one can know about this, okay?”
“I’d rather die,” Jace said with devastating sincerity.
The next time was maybe worse.
“Daylighter, I'm not in the business of doing house calls,” Jace said.
Simon was sweating and sick and did not feel like putting up with this bullshit. The last batch of butcher blood he’d gotten had gone off, he guessed, or perhaps the animal had been sick. In any case, Simon had been retching up stomach acid for the better part of eight hours. “You can always go,” he said feebly.
“And let you snack on some innocent victim? I'm doing society a favor. I'm generous in that way.”
“Forget it. I'll get Jordan to grab me something from the butcher’s.” A different butcher this time. Though he wondered how many Kosher places there were in the world of vampire dining.
“Methinks the lady doth protest too much.” Jace rolled up his sleeve. “Will this do? or do you want to give me more hickeys I'll have to hide from Clary?”
“This is fine,” Simon said. Despite his protests, he was in no position to turn down blood, however annoyingly given. “Just, um— could you flex for a second?”
Jace's eyebrows nearly disappeared into his hairline. “Daylighter, are you hitting on me?”
“In your dreams,” Simon retorted. “It just makes it—taste better. When it’s more recently circulat— you know what, it’s fine, I really will ask Jordan."
“No,” Jace said, a little forcefully, and Simon looked at him in surprise.
“Okay, seriously, what is this about?”
“If you must know, the venom—helps.”
“Helps?” Simon repeated suspiciously.
“It—I've been having dreams,” Jace said.
“About me? What am I wearing?”
“Simon, if you don’t shut up, I will stake you.”
He did shut up, mostly because Jace used his name.
“The point is, I haven't been sleeping particularly well. But when you bit me, I actually slept that night. Without nightmares. I want it again.”
“I—okay. Cool. Arm still okay? Any… requests?”
“When you got my neck,” Jace said reluctantly. “It hit faster. closer to my brain, I suppose. Maybe try that again.”
He wasn't particularly interested in turning Jace into a drug addict, but as he was the one who’d wanted blood in the first place, he would oblige. Settling next to Jace on his knees, Simon tilted his head, fangs unsheathing for the bite. And stopped.
“What is it, Daylighter?” Jace asked testily.
“It’s just—the angle. It’s wrong.”
“By the Angel, you are a diva.”
“Ha ha, smartass. If I get jostled while sipping out of you, I don't want to risk ripping your throat out.”
“I wouldn't like that,” Jace agreed. “What's our alternative?”
For a few uncertain moments, they tried positioning in a better way. Facing each other on their knees was too awkward. Standing wouldn’t work—Jace was too tall. Sitting criss-cross prevented Simon from reaching Jace's neck at all. Finally, Jace got exasperated.
“Daylighter, I'm going to do something. And I mean it this time, if you tell anyone—“
“I know, I know. Dismemberment. Staking. Et cetera.”
“Good.” Jace nodded. “And don’t fucking say anything about this. Not right now.”
“What?”
Jace sat back against the wall and pulled Simon bodily on top of him, so Simon was straddling Jace's hips with his thighs. This was uncomfortably close to dry-humping territory, and Simon really wanted to say so, but Jace growled, “it’s only gay if you make one of your stupid comments about it. Now shut up and bite me, bloodsucker.”
Simon could follow directions. He leaned over, careful to avoid any contact with Jace's pelvic region, and braced his hands against the wall on either side of Jace's ribcage. Then he sank his teeth into warm, willing flesh.
Every time he thought he was done being surprised by it, and every time he was wrong. Jace groaned beneath him, but Simon barely heard it, his eyes sliding closed with ecstacy as he drank. Jace was burning hot and salty and so good, so fucking good. However weird and wrong this situation was, somewhere along the line Simon stopped caring. They were both getting something out of it, so who cared? He came up for air for a second—not that he needed air anymore, but he needed a momentary break between bites (swallows, for lack of a better word) so he knew he wasn’t going overboard. A dribble of blood ran down Jace's neck. Simon licked the stripe of blood away because he wasn’t going to let it go to waste.
This created an interesting reaction. Jace shifted a little, edging even more away from Simon's hips without moving his head any further. His face was turned to the side, but Simon could see a ruby blush staining his cheeks. Was he—oh, shit, Simon thought. Okay, don’t panic. It’s completely natural, probably. It’s just the position and the ecstacy from the venom. It’s not fucking weird.
“Not a word,” Jace rasped.
Simon exhaled. Okay. Normal. Clearly Jace was getting something, extra, out of this. Simon wasn’t going to judge. And he was secure enough in his masculinity that this wasn’t freaking him out. Instead, slowly, because he was still hungry, he lowered himself back down towards Jace's neck, giving him time to move away if he wanted to.
He didn’t.
Fuck it. Boundaries were blurring and it didn’t matter, because they liked it, they both liked it and they were into it, and they were both straight—at least, Simon was definitely straight, and Jace seemed that way to him, well, he never gave any indication otherwise, so whatever happened here would stay between them. This was something Jace needed to get out of his system, and Simon was secure enough in his sexuality to help him with it.
Experimentally, Simon pressed his lips to Jace's neck, without teeth, just to see.
The effect was instantaneous. “Simon I am warning you,” Jace said, but it sounded desperate and hungry and he was clutching Simon's biceps fierce and tight and definitely not pushing him away.
Simon sank his fangs back in, slow and deliberate. Jace sighed contentedly. Simon drank for a second, then retracted his fangs and licked the puncture wounds, taking his time, sucked at the skin there just a little while Jace tried not to twitch beneath him, and bit again, taking another long drink.
“Okay, I’m— yeah that’s all I got,” Jace gasped after a few seconds. Simon pulled out slowly.
Jace was breathing a little hard. The two made brief eye contact and both looked away, shocked.
“Do you—want any help with that?” Simon offered.
“Do not talk to me.”
“No, like, it’s fine, I just—if you want some privacy, I don't know.”
“Get off,” Jace choked out.
Simon quickly un-straddled and scooted to the far corner of his bed. He tried not to look at Jace having a crisis of sexuality on the other side.
“For the record it’s not weird,” he said very quickly.
“Shut up.” Jace pounced, his body crushing Simon’s, one forearm across Simon's throat.
“I’m serious,” Simon told him, and looked at the graceful blush staining Jace's entire face and quickly backtracked, “It’s my fault, I was definitely, I could have, I just thought it seemed better for you that way, yeah. It’s my fault,”
“Your fault,” Jace agreed.
“My fault.”
They stared at each other some more.
“I’m down if you are.”
“Fine.”
He was a graceless kisser, fast and hard and sloppy, clumsy as he fumbled with his belt buckle, and Simon definitely wasn’t looking—I’m doing this for him Clary you will never need to know please forgive me—but Jace felt decently sized and definitely, as evidenced from the previous bulge in his pants, definitely hard. Simon was just barely keeping up kissing, and he didn’t particularly feel the need to take care of himself, although it did feel good, pleasant and tingly in his stomach, he was enjoying this. Part of it definitely was seeing Jace, normally so controlled, get so worked up, part of it was his satiated bloodlust. A few frantic minutes of making out with too much tongue to be anything close to romantic and Jace was shaking and finishing into Simon's sheets. Superb, Simon thought, now I have to clean up jizz and blood. He wondered if Jace would pitch in some quarters for the washing machine, though he doubted it.
Jace was zipping up his pants and wiped his hands on the sheets. Classy. “And now we never speak of this again.”
“Agreed.” This was toeing every line and breaking every rule. Simon very much doubted he would be asking for Jace's blood again, and doubted that Jace would come asking for a bite either. Whatever frenetic, wild energy and tension had built between them was satisfied now and did not need to be revisited.
Jace left without another word. Simon rolled over in bed and exhaled. He was still a little unsteady; from the bad batch of animal blood earlier, and his resulting sickness, he told himself. He stretched. Maybe he should take it a little easy today. Play some video games.
Standing up, he crossed his room and opened the door, intending to boot up the Xbox. Instead he was greeted with an unwelcome sight.
In the middle of the kitchen, a half-eaten sandwich forgotten about in his hand, stood Jordan. His horrified expression told Simon everything he needed to know.
“Fuck,” he said.