Round Robin IX

Does IDK stand for anything in Roman numerals?

Last part here

*closes eyes and jumps in*

Samuel ran a hand through Blake’s hair, the dark strands still stiff with dried blood. Each touch brought the acrid scent to his nostrils, a smell like dawn. Like danger.

Like the danger facing two of Samuel’s mortals. Even though playing with Ken had never engaged Samuel’s quiescent heart, the boy had earned Samuel’s protection. Besides, he hated sharing his toys. Since being in two places at once wasn’t one of the advantages of his immortal existence, he’d have to use the advantages of his mortal persona if he were to keep them both safe. Sometimes being the head of trauma care was more useful than all his preternatural powers.

He punched the call button and told Cecilia to have Ken moved down to this room. As she agreed, a familiar voice rose behind him.

“Parasite. Carrion-eater.”

Blake’s voice. Blake’s body sitting upright on the gurney, but not Blake. All the extra drug had done was put the mortal to sleep and who—or whatever Samuel had seen looking out of his eyes had taken control.

The blood animating his body responded as Samuel stiffened his spine and tensed his muscles. “Did you have some sort of point or did you just come here to call me names?” He now had no doubt that everything that had happened tonight had been planned, arranged. The demon had put the idea in Blake’s head, weakened him with the accident, and sent him straight to Samuel.

“Don’t you recognize your old lover, Sam-u-el?” The inflection as the creature spoke his name blew through Samuel’s mind, awakening a memory. A memory that had nothing to do with the skin and flesh and voice sitting so still on the gurney.

“You’re not Blake.”

“No. Guess again.” Blake’s teasing tone, but a cold bitter layer kept Samuel from responding with a smile. Green eyes looked up through dark lashes. The thing was using Blake to flirt with him. “I’m crushed that you could forget me so easily, when you swore we’d be together. For eternity.”

If he weren’t already room temperature, Samuel’s body would have gone cold. As it was, the fresh blood froze in his veins. “Gregory?”

And in that instant he went back in time. His lover died on the Crimean battlefield in his own hospital tent, and Samuel so desperate, so inexperienced had given him the Gift only to watch it drive Gregory mad. So mad that Samuel had finally had to kill the man he had loved to keep him from destroying so many others, to keep him from exposing them all.

“See? It’s only been—oh how to reckon mortal time—a century or so? I never forgot you. Your promises. Your body. Your lovemaking. You were, as your newer conquest here might say, a hell of a fuck. Still are if the memories he holds of you are accurate. Though your tastes have grown—hmmm, exotic?”

“But you’re—“ Samuel stepped closer.

Those familiar green eyes held no trace of Blake. Just this thing that claimed to be Gregory. Blake’s lips curved in a smile, those lips whose satin warmth Samuel could still feel on his mouth, his body, his cock.

“A demon?” Gregory finished for him. “You could say that. Far better than the half-life you offered me. It took me a long time to track you down, lover.”

“Why?”

“To help you, of course."

“Help me?”

“Something’s coming, Sam-u-el. Something so big and dark that every horror you’ve seen or imagined in your puny time will seem like one of your drives through Hyde Park in your old mortal body.”

Samuel thought of the ancient one he’d seen, the one who had stolen essence from Ken. “It’s already here.”

“Him?” Blake had never smiled so menacingly. “He does the bidding of what’s coming. His power is nothing to what awaits.”

Samuel sometimes missed the ability to sweat, but not now. He wrapped himself in a calm he didn’t feel. “You’ve delivered your message. Now will you leave him?”

“Eager to have his body again? To bend his mind and will with your promises, those small tastes of power you will allow him before you deny him the Gift again? I know everything your Blake feels, everything he thinks. Would you like to hear more?”

“Leave him alone.”

The com buzzed. “Dr. Wexler? Cecelia is having difficulties with Dr. Dahl. Room 18. Stat.”