Latrodectus

He was strong. Lean, but strong.

    Boyd caught himself assessing the stranger as they rubbed life back into him, and snapped his focus back into the task.

    When the stranger – Colqhoun – finally rose, there was no way to peel his eyes from his body. He truly did not seem like a man who had spent three months without food.

    The story Colqhoun told them satisfied his curiosity – unfortunately, it could not do the same for Toffler.

    "You must know there is no sin God will not forgive when you truly repent," he accosted Boyd amidst the movement to leave the fort.

    "Pardon?"

    "I would hate to be... Indiscreet, Captain," Toffler meandered on, "but I have seen you staring. A-and there are many men, military men, even, who've recovered from a condition such as yours through the grace of God. I just want you to know that I am here whenever you might want to... Seek His guidance."

    "Thank you, Toffler, that's... A very helpful offer."

    The preparation for the rescue mission saved Boyd from furthering that subject.

Colqhoun was amicable. Friendly, even, and helpful to a fault. Boyd chastised himself for suspecting the man.

    He finally found himself alone with Colqhoun on the first night of the rescue mission. The others had begun to retire to the tent, but knowing of Toffler's concern for him, Boyd curiously felt the need to stick around the fireplace for a while longer. Call it defiance, call it pure claustrophobia – either way, he'd rather wait until the man was asleep.

    Which left him side by side with the strange man he'd been so ungracefully caught eyeing earlier in the day.

    He looked back at Colqhoun and failed to conceal his surprise to find the other man already studying his face, for Colqhoun laughed abashedly and said,

    "Forgive me, I forget myself. Though you could not fault me for a habit you yourself share, now could you?"

    "I am sorry if I've offended you earlier, I-" Boyd had begun, embarrassed and reddened, but Colqhoun interrupted him.

    "I was flattered, Captain. Tell me, am I correct in assuming we have a common interest?"

    If Boyd was to judge what that common interest was off of the hand that now caressed his knee, then yes.
    He pulled his leg inward, ridding himself of the tantalizing warm weight, and avoided the man's gaze.

    "I am not in the habit of... indulging it." Oh, but wasn't it a tempting idea? Himself and this character, this man-of-God-turned-cannibal, pressed up against a tree somewhere, all urgency and want, while the silent threat of discovery constantly dangled above their heads?

    He could not measure his relief when Colqhoun got up and retired to the tent.

Hart was dead.
George was dead.
Toffler was dead.

    Reich was a still-warm body occupying half the ditch in which Boyd hid from the man he'd struggled not to throw himself at not three nights before.

Colonel Ives was amicable. It was easy for him to appear friendly to the others. They had not seen him chase Toffler while laughing like a maniac, they had not seen him get up from a shot to the shoulder with a smile on his face and showing no sign of it on his body mere days later.

    They had only seen the handsome young Colonel inexplicably awaken Boyd's unyielding obsession.

The most damning thing was how aware Ives was of his effect on Boyd.

    He came to Boyd's room and wiped blood off his face – made a show of sucking it off his own fingers, sighing as he dragged it out for the Captain's viewing alone. Boyd shivered like the fingers were his own.

    It was one thing to fear him, for the man was violent and raving mad. It was one thing to rage at him, for he'd killed what little Boyd could still sparsely call his friends. But to want him? To feel the lust pooling in his belly, dark and wanton, while the man dreamt obscenities on human flesh out loud? To feel his traitorous body react to that?

    He cursed the day he confided in Ives, back when the man still seemed a harmless victim of circumstance.

"You know, it's not courage to resist me, Boyd. It's courage to accept me."

    Out of the corner of his eye, Boyd noted Hart – the new Hart, with color in his hair and pieces of Knox in his arms – going into the cabin.

    "I mean, you're already one of us. Well… almost. You hunger for it. You just won't resign yourself to it."

    The words resounding in his head at the moment were Martha's.

    "It's not so difficult, really. Acquiescence. You just give in."

    You stop Wendigo, you give yourself.

    That's what had to be done.

    With a swift motion that left his leg throbbing, Boyd grabbed Ives and shoved him against the nearest wall, keeping their faces close together. He didn't dare look away from Ives's eyes – he was aiming. This intensity, he suspected, along with being nose to nose with one another, was what earned him a rare moment of silence from Ives – before Boyd pressed his lips against his.

    It was exciting. Satisfying – filling, a dark corner of himself provided. It warmed his heart and filled his arms and legs with a newfound adrenaline, his blood pumping again after weeks of ice alone running through his veins.
    It was everything Boyd didn't want kissing a monster to feel like.

    The sigh Ives released shortly before cupping Boyd's face with his own hands danced down his spine. Such a soft sound should not come from someone that made a joke out of the man who'd be made dinner. It was, however, forgettable compared to what Boyd drew out of the man by merely sucking his tongue and pressing their hips together. Ives wanted this just as much as Boyd didn't want to admit he did.

    He pulled away and hid a smidge of smug pride when Ives reflexively sought his lips halfway, his need-drowned eyes searching for the lost contact.
    Time for the second blow.

    "You were right," he rasped, using his nose to caress Ives's, "It's not so hard... To give in."

    This time it was Ives who pulled him in. Needier, hungrier. The rough fabric of Boyd's blanket dug into his neck as Ives held it close with far more force than was necessary – he bit Boyd's lower lip once, twice... Thrice. He almost suspected Ives was reconsidering eating him. Boyd dragged his hand up Ives's scalp and grabbed his hair firmly by the root, earning a delectable groan from him. He started kissing down Ives's neck, while his other hand tugged blindly at any opening he could find in the man's clothes.

    Ives pushed him away, holding onto his arms and leaning back into the wall.

    "You will eat with us." Question, demand- it didn't matter. Boyd was in it now.

    "Of course."

Boyd feasted. And the worst part was, he hadn't even had the decency to be disgusted with himself. Meanwhile, Ives watched him like a lion on the prowl. Oh, he spoke, yes, he remembered very consistently to lay on the charm and verbally peacock himself through the meal – but no whole minute went by without his eyes turning towards Boyd.

    He took a strange pride in that – playing seductress to a... A wendigo, was suddenly rising in his pathetic little list of achievements.

    Ives placed himself between the men when they rose.

    "Allow me," he said to Hart, all serviceable charisma, "I'll take care of our captain tonight, though hopefully soon there won't be a need for such precautions."

    So Ives was still going to restrain him through the night. Boyd had suspected as much, but hoped otherwise. Still, he could work with that.

"I understand what you said now," he said as the restraints clasped around his wrists, giving Ives pause. "About... Virility," his eyes flittered over Ives' face diffidently, and he knew he had the man ensnared. "No man should be unsatisfied after such a meal."

    Ives studied him for a long, silent moment. His white-knuckled grip on the restraints giving away the conflict behind the placid face he put on.

    The chains fell to the ground.

    Ives snorted and raised his eyebrows, "What makes you so certain?" He held one of Boyd's hands away by the wrist. Tight. The burn from the chains still stung.

    Boyd didn't react to the pain. He just looked Ives in the eye and said, "Why else would anyone lie with a man?"

    The man's eyes darkened. He threw back his shirt and vest in one move and pulled Boyd's sweater and undershirt over his head.

    There was no tenderness to it. The struggle that followed could only bring to mind the soft, hesitant caresses of Boyd's youth by stark contrast. The careful, hidden, half-clothed explorations against the animal clawing at the stitches of trousers that never stood a chance against it. Toying with Ives’s neck (with his mouth and teeth and tongue and teeth and teeth and teeth were all Ives seemed to react to), Boyd nearly laughed at the comparison; this wasn’t sex, it was an exorcism.

    The bare skin friction worked their bodies as expected – he wasn’t surprised, with Ives’s thighs around him and his hands pulling him in incessantly to the meeting of chests, necks, legs, cocks, to find himself hard. It was the emptiness in his stomach, the growing vibrational clamoring inside him to claw, to bite, to tear-and-swallow, that Boyd struggled to resist.

    Ives knew it; he teased it. Displaying his neck to the open maw, putting on his Colqhoun, his lamb-to-the-slaughter; waiting for it. Then he would grow antsy of his own hunger and continue his own assault of Boyd’s skin, deep bite marks all over his chest, his thighs, his face, his neck. His neck, his neck, already more purple than white, the centre of Ives’s affections, the trail to his ears. In the gnawing he gave himself Boyd’s earlobe, the deep sharp pain of tearing barely registering among Boyd’s senses, and swallowed with his chin up high, to show it. In the first few reactionless seconds Boyd gave him, he then drank from the wound like a freshwater stream.

    The scent of his own blood crumpled Boyd’s stomach – so did the bob of Ives’s throat swallowing his skin, the challenge in the pause, the uncontrolled scrambling to drink from his ear like an unweaned calf. He pulled Ives’s legs around his waist and, throwing their combined weight forward, slammed him on the small bed, falling with, on top of, him.

    Ives only grunted and rushed again to his draining source, which Boyd allowed him as a distraction while he angled their hips, and then, with force, shoved in. Ives hissed and clawed Boyd’s back in pain. Boyd let out a breathless laugh at the sensation of his cock dragging against the taut, dry skin inside, enjoying the friction and the thought of tearing Ives’s skin just from fucking him.

    He slammed into Ives with each new violent thrust, holding him down on the pillow by the neck, yet careful not to choke him. Ives seemed finally tamed; his nails frozen where they clawed at Boyd’s sides, arms only moving in tandem with Boyd’s hips – his own was raised, no guise of unwillingness left in him. His eyes glossed over and he breathed heavily, enjoying the stinging dragging on the sensitive skin, Boyd’s cock occasionally teasing that one spot that bloomed in pure pleasure before dragging in and out once again.

    Boyd felt the hot red wet coming in between them, – saw some of it leaking out of Ives – easing the movement, not sure from whom exactly as pain had long since stopped registering for him. He used the lubrication to slow down, watching Ives closely, rolling his hips to the exact movements that made Ives tremble and sigh under his hand. Still maintaining this new subtlety, he sped up, ignoring Ives’s already-leaking cock, and stopping him from touching it either. He would have full control of this body.

    He finally had Ives finish with a loud groan, the spill pooling on his belly. With one swift movement, Boyd’s hand fled from the neck to swipe from under the pillow the hunting knife that hid beneath. In the next second, he was pressing down the blade against Ives’s neck, (who still spasmed in pleasure) against the fight the skin put up, dragging forcefully across, not satisfied until red and white met beneath.

    Seeing the ecstasy mix with pain and horror on Ives's face as the velvet red draped down his neck was the first time John Boyd ever felt truly heroic. He came with a shudder into Ives's tight grip around his cock.

    And then the smell. Boyd's stomach ached as though he was starving. His saliva dripped on the blood. His face inched closer and closer until the hot liquor wet his nose and his chin.

    Boyd turned his eyes towards Ives one last time. He was dying. He was smiling.

    "Acquiescence..." Came the breathless whisper.

    Boyd glared. Kept his mouth well shut. Watched Ives's eyes turn glassy and lifeless with a renewed fire.

    He gripped the knife still in his hand. Leaned forwards. He was still inside Ives and he made no move to change that.

    He raised the blade to his neck. Every inch of his skin, inside and out, screeched against the intrusion. Boyd insisted with his his shaky grip until his throat was open.

    He collapsed on top of Ives only a few seconds after the blood began to drip out. Ives had died with his eyes open, his mouth in a wide breathless smile. Mocking him.
    In a way he was still right to do so; Boyd's cut wasn't as deep, and now he didn't have the strength to deepen it. He would die slower.

    As the cold seeped in, Boyd remembered Hart. Yes, there was Hart left. He would find them like this – locked together, bled out and cum-stained.

    He would probably kill himself too.

    Boyd's eyes were tired, or his vision blurred because of the blood loss. He tried one last tired glance at Ives's face. It was the same.

    His stomach growled again. His mouth still watered, perhaps more desperately now, as his face lost heat.
    Boyd wanted nothing more than to lick the salty nectar off Ives's neck.

    Instead, he kept his mouth shut so tightly his teeth cracked, closed his eyes, and let the cold in.