Jono didn’t know what to do or how to help. Then Patrick’s shaking fingers grabbed Jono’s hand and guided it to his erection. Jono gently pulled his hand free, hating the frustrated whine Patrick let out.
When humans took shine, they normally did it within the arms of a vampire who could help focus their desire for darkness through sex, helping them ignore the pain of the high and the teeth in their veins. Jono wasn’t about to have sex with Patrick in the state he was in.
“Not going to help you like that, Pat,” Jono said.
“Then why are you here if you won’t get me off?”
“Because I’m not leaving you.”
And Jono didn’t, despite the long, painful night that stretched out before them. The clarity Patrick had at the beginning crumbled beneath the insidiousness of shine. When he wasn’t puking up stomach acid or trying to hurt himself, he was trying to get Jono to fuck him, all the while slurring, “I can’t see. I can’t see. You’re toobright.”
Holding Patrick against his chest, Jono tiredly leaned his head back against the wall as Patrick jacked himself off with painful whimpers, the scent of sick and semen heavy in the bathroom. Patrick still had his jeans on, though they were shoved down past his hips once more, but at least this time the only hand touching him was his own.
Jono desperately called out to the god.Help me,Fenrir. I don’t want to hurt him.
The god’s presence filled his mind and body, skin itching with the need to shift. Jono resisted, and Fenrir let him. Instead, warmth filled his chest, seeping deeper past his bones to his soul itself. Jono blinked, feeling as if he was being constricted. He didn’t know what Fenrir had done until Patrick shuddered through a painful orgasm, head turned toward him and eyes finally cracking open a sliver before closing again.
“Where’d you go?” Patrick asked dazedly.
Jono shifted Patrick in his arms, keeping his breathing steady. “Nowhere.”
If Patrick could look at him without being in pain, Jono assumed his soul must have been hidden from sight. Whatever aura Patrick had seen pouring out of Jono’s body, he wasn’t seeing it now.
That didn’t stop shine from wreaking havoc on Patrick.
Listening to Patrick beg to be fucked made Jono furious even as he was helpless to do anything about it. In between his pleading, Patrick’s magic would burst out in small, uncontrollable eruptions that he desperately tried to reabsorb. The threshold around the apartment hummed in Jono’s ears after each release, getting shriller and shriller. After the fourth miniature explosion that shattered the mirror and broke the bathroom door off its hinges and nearly sent it crashing down on top of them, Jono hauled Patrick to his feet.
“You need to stop,” Jono pleaded. “Patrick, please.”
“Can’t,” Patrick muttered, reeling in his arms, bare feet sliding against the floor. Jono had gotten rid of both their shoes earlier after a near miss of the toilet when Patrick got sick. “I can’t. Not enough room in me. Can’tthink.”
“Then pour it through me. I can handle it.”
Patrick frantically shook his head, the motion causing him to get sick again. Nothing came out but dry heaves. Jono braced him over the toilet anyway when he would’ve sunk to his knees. He pressed his forehead to the back of Patrick’s sweaty head, expression twisting.
“You won’t hurt me,” Jono promised.
He’d done it before, in Central Park, and he knew he could do it again. He could handle it, even if Patrick didn’t want him to, because carrying something else in his soul wasn’t new to Jono. If Patrick was in a better state of mind, maybe he’d be able to stand firm. But he wasn’t, and Jono used Patrick’s glaring inability to saynoto get the mage to agree.
And Jono would always hate himself for doing it.
It took nonstop cajoling for almost thirty minutes to get Patrick to channel his magic inward instead of out on the next outburst. The soulbond burned like fire where it connected in Jono’s soul but better that burning pain than the building going up in flames around them. Sprawled now in the bathtub, with Patrick curled up on top of him, Jono refused to let him see how much it hurt.
Far less than what Patrick was going through.
Magic ripped through Jono’s soul, cascading downward into a ley line far below that he could sense only because of Patrick. The soulbond acted like a grounding mechanism, stealing away Patrick’s magic to channel it somewhere else that could safely absorb it.
Jono suffered through two more bouts of Patrick’s uncontrolled magical outbursts while trying to keep Patrick from undoing his own pants. Jono didn’t say no to Patrick when he rubbed off on him, coming dry and shaking from pain more than pleasure.
But as the hours ticked over one by one, the chemical smell seeping through Patrick’s skin began to fade. When Jono took a breath and all he smelled was Patrick’s bitter scent, long-dried cum, and sick, he closed his eyes in relief. He hoped Patrick was finally coming down from his unwanted high.
Jono pushed them both to a sitting position before carefully guiding Patrick to his feet. Jono stripped him with gentle hands, murmuring all the while so Patrick would know it was him. He hadn’t opened his eyes yet, and Jono paused every time he flinched. It took a few minutes to get him out of his messy clothes, but once he was naked except for his dog tags, Jono turned on the shower and pushed Patrick beneath the spray once it was warm.
Jono cleaned him up as quickly and carefully as he could, letting the events of the night wash down the drain, knowing it wouldn’t be that easy later on. Getting Patrick clean was important, and Jono committed himself to that task even as his own clothes became waterlogged.
Only when Patrick was dried off and wrapped in a towel did Jono get out of his own clothes. He left the mess in the damaged bathroom to deal with later in favor of picking Patrick up and carrying him to the bedroom, wincing as he stepped on broken glass. Jono tucked him under the covers before retreating to dig up a pair of his own sleeping pants and pulled them on.
He meant to get some water or Gatorade, at the very least some medicine, but all of Jono’s plans fled his mind the second Patrick murmured, “Jono?”
