_{This story belongs to its' author. You may download for your personal use. Do not distribute.}

Two men stood in a dark alleyway at midnight. The city slept, and thank God, because the overzealous who had bid Him goodnight were gone also. The alley was itself a respite, cut between a tavern which did not sleep and a library which did. Thus the smell of beer and books mingled in the air, a Bohemic tapestry of love and freedom for those drunken enough with one or the other to appreciate it's beauty. The poet Nathaniel looked up from a page in his hand presently.

"You are quite sick." Laughed the writer Lenar. "Your works are going to be viewed as pornography by the temple priests."

The poet Nathaniel just laughed back and replied, "For my honesty? What woman, from the wenches to the most pious virgins has ne'er dreamt of our beauteous prince in her bed? For that matter - well, some others would indulge fantasies of that "crude and indecent" crime with our Alex."

Lenar laughed and shook his head. "A degenerate, that is what you are. Crude and indecent."

"I would not have it any other way, my dear Lenar." said Nathaniel with a bow. "For what is an artist but the shaker and shaper of all carnal thought?"

"Which begs the question of whether you would be among that list of criminal intrigue." whispered Lenar with a coy smirk, keeping his voice down.

Nathaniel smiled, looking up at the swimming, purplish haze of the sky with a fantastical glaze over each blue iris. "You know better than to ask me such things, my dearest Lenar. I would not speak of it loudly enough to be heard, unless I trusted all my closest ears."

"Nor would I whisper it at any volume again, lover." Lenar blushed at the word just as he said it, and his companion lit up also. "But you make me so, so jealous."

"Oh Lenar - only had I not found you could any other fantasy be true desire." whispered Nathaniel in reply, smiling to his beloved with adoration. "But with you by my side, handsome creature, I am merely prone to fantasize from within a fantasy."

"Always you have been amorous. So dream, and to prince Alex his own. Which reminds me... what is this dark creature mentioned in these last two lines? Is that the sheep-killer on the other side of Mykandrite Mountain?"

Nathaniel shrugged in good humor. "Who else does Alex show any interest in? He's become absorbed in the business of stopping it. It is the closest thing he has to real passion. Perhaps he wanks to the thought of destroying that threat. Phuh. A meaningless obsession."

"And that saddens you, my young romantic? Perhaps you'd like to think it is real passion."

"Perhaps." Whispered Nathaniel. Without a beat he then pulled the page from Lenar's hand and let it float to the dirty ground. Smiling, he pushed himself forward into his lover's arms, pinning him against one wall. "But enough about lonliness. We have none of that."

"Indeed, my dear."

"Just forget about everything - that damned fiancé of yours, our poverty, and this entire cruel, loveless world. Let me show you real passion."

The two men kissed and moved back into the alley's shade, sharing a warm wind of books and beer between their smiling mouths.

Alex looked out at his blue city from a castle tower, not seeing the two illegal lovers, nor anything at all but the open gate. He squinted, watching the horizon beyond, the deadly and rumbling sky, and that large mountain in which Mykandrite was once mined. He watched all with a careful, precise stare, as if to uncover his foil's eyes staring back like before. Poor Alex was tormented by eyes, the grey eyes, even after all the weeks spent since he first and last gazed upon them. They still burnt on too, like candlelight in the next blink. They had injected themselves by gazing back, back into his very soul. For a moment it felt so perfect. But then Grey Eyes was gone with hardly another moment to clock, like an illusion never there.

The torment from that single moment had stretched across a month like something unfurling. One month, since that evening prince Alex of Emshyan had galloped off with sword in hand to meet a mere thief of sheep, to be a hero and perhaps a legend, but - but there was only someone's pale white visage, gazing across the top of a heavy, pooling cape, with two dim and faded silver plates perched beneath black hair so dashingly spread across a translucent brow. And they burned.

"Who are you!?" Alex shouted now as he pushed his hands firmly against the glass of his tower window, feeling the filtered moisture over the surface and spreading his skin oils into it. "What are you?"

Recitation - as the creature had spoken it that day: "I am... endlessly generous to those who shun me." Then of course it was gone, the last word stolen, perhaps forever.

With a sigh, Alex sat down on the windowsill and stared through his own watery, now oily reflection. It remained the distorted face of an angel, milk skin upon each delicate feature, dimpled at his two noble cheeks. Even his ears were fine and a noticeably pointed, nearly elven. His hair was a combed mass of yellow waves, blue in the reflection. Adorned in only his robe, his legs arced triumphantly within the hug of his strong arms, haired only with thin yellow curls and otherwise full and ideal, not at all knobby or boney. Even the padding on which he sat, to which his handsome thighs led and flared into, were buttocks which most women would be delighted to have. But his stomach held no manly curvaceousness, only ripples beneath a chest of great symmetry. Everything else, equally handsome, was shrouded by his warming robe of blue. All his robes were blue.

He loved his image, and sometimes thought to make use of it. But even when he touched himself, he was always distracted by other thoughts, so much that when he had real offers he turned them down - too inexperienced to be a virgin. How all those women who fainted at his feet would be shocked if they saw how uncertainly he might approach their beds, how poorly he might caress their alien figures, how meek he would have felt inside another body. He was not like the usual Grecian male beaut, not a stock character from the old romances or the new... he just looked that way. He really just felt like a shy weakling, dying inside every day.

He lifted his sword up by the golden hilt and laid the thin blade across his lap. "I cannot go on like this." He reasoned aloud, rising and going for his outfit. "I know they all speak of me and my fears and worries. It is this beast that slays sheep - I worry he will slay something worse. A child... anyone. Me. I have to do this." He donned his vest and picked up a lantern, sheathing the sword. "I hope I survive to see myself become a hero.."

He crept out at midnight, down the spiral staircase, dodging the guards with the honed skills of a rogue or of any teenager in rebellion. Then he dashed into the blue city street with lace wrapped around his throat, incognito. He made it briskly to his horse and sliced its rope in twine, then rode off into town, through the lit bazaar at the far end, and out that blasted gate before the guards could react. They flailed in place and ran behind him with swords extended, but his horse just galloped onward, out of range. There would be hell to pay when he got back - but father would understand when he returned with the fanged head in hand.

Nathaniel, still naked but now red and warm, peered out at the figure as it galloped off, smiling with certainty.

"I hope."

Tappata, tappata, tappata, and through it all he could hear the gasping of his horse, even with wind cutting past his pointed, aerodynamic ears. His cheeks flushed in the cold, and he got closer to the hair of the beast beneath him, resting his chin in the groomed mass for all the heat he could find. Mykandrite mountain hovered above and to his right, as he sought the path that lead to the creatures lair. But where he had been last waylaid there was no one, nothing.

Alex's thoughts were a jumble of introverted fantasy as he rode closer, reciting to calm his nerves as his horse went tottalot, tottalot... tottalot through the frosty silence, tottalot through the hickory night, nearer I came, and nearer, my face was like a light... for... the wind is a torrent of darkness... among the ghastly trees, yes, and the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon the cloudy seas, and red is... blue is...

I'm so alone... like the blue city I govern I... no - ahead, Alex, look ahead!

Ahead stood a tower, a round shadow on the mountainside. This was not a new sight. Once it had been a library for the mining village that used to reside nearby, when Mykandrite was yet unexhausted. Then it had been left alone for half a century. But presently the windows were lit with a dim yellow glow, fresh flames. Alex began to slow his horse down gradually as he made it up the path, now nearly half an hour along that rocky slope. He stopped short, tied his horse to a rock, gave it a bag of oatmeal and walked on alone while the first roll of thunder drummed overhead.

Alex approached slowly, unsheathing his sword and watching every shadow and light. But even as he worked himself up, it seemed like nothing was actually amiss. The lights were like dim beacons to hospitality in each of the three floors, and the tower itself was not imposing at all. It was clean at every stone and crack, and even the yard and path were completely immaculate. Not even a sheep bone. Legends never match reality, thought the prince, remembering his own ruminations on beauty.

The door was polished and oiled, but locked shut and made of iron. It would not break, for certain. So Alex took his blade, squeezing the hilt, and thrust it into the rock wall between blocks, felling shattered mortar. He hoisted himself up to grip the next extended stone. In this way he started up the rocky wall, his mind a blur, but overhead the purple sky began to tumble and light up with a storm, and he knew that the rain would soon follow at the worst hour. He moved quickly, already barely able to move up the rocky wall as it was, when again reality spoiled his fairy tale. The first pellet of rain slapped his left brow, shutting the eye with its weight. Still he pushed on for nearly a minute longer.

Then - inches before he could touch the first window, it snapped open with an arced spray of rainwater that looked like a lashing whip. The prince slipped with surprise, his sword falling the story to a forming puddle beneath him. Before he could follow it, his hand was clasped by a white fist through which the veins could be seen. It was soft, almost maternal, but dangerously powerful. It did not hold tightly, but the boy was suspended in air as if he were a feather.

"No!" shouted Alex, squirming like a fish on a cold hook. There was no sound, but the hand suddenly released him, letting him fall a brief ways until he landed on the muck of mud and torn mortar with a disgusting, crunchy splash. Without wasting a moment, the prince rolled to his side and clawed around for the blade, knowing that the owner of that hand would be coming down.

Then the door clicked and opened with hardly a creak.

Alex froze completely. A ghostly light embossed his body, and all he could see was his own silhouette, black and yellow like lit charcoal or brimstone. It was dreamlike. Then his eyes adjusted enough to notice another shadow, standing in the same golden beam. But the light was mere candle-light, and the shape was merely human. But the fading mirage spoke of destiny to Alex's heart.

"Young boy." Came the shadow's voice, powerful, steadfast with simplicity, like the soft white hand. "I was trying to help you up. You indicated that you'd rather just lie here in the dirt. Comfortable, are you? Or will you take my hand now?"

Still groping for his sword, Alex scooted away from the shadow in the doorway, causing mud to run into his pants and over his buttocks. "Identify yourself!" he cried.

"You are the one on my doorstep." Responded the voice, but it softened on the last beat and lost its sharpness entirely. "No - sorry... I only offer my assistance. Please... come inside and get out of the rain."

In the doorway two old grey eyes watched the mass of black dirt and mortar and saw a body stepping out from it. Pale pupils expanded, then the eyes shut as their owner caught breath and sank back into the building.

It was pouring now on the mountain (but not the city.) Alex rose up against the freezing element, glanced about, and realized that he couldn't see his sword anywhere now... it could have even toppled over the cliff with the flow of water. There was a part in him that said to go back for his horse, but still the sense of destiny came to him through that flowing candle light. A hope kept welling up, and somehow the thought of holding his sword again was sickening. So he collected himself and went towards the entrance, shakily at first, then with a small stride, placing one hand upon the door with caution as he entered.

The shadow stood inside and aside, but the meeting of the twine was so unreal that the prince looked around at everything other, examining the less foreign images of a well-lain room, with a table that had papers strewn over the surface, and old books and shelves from the tower's past life. All the while the creature himself - for this was clearly no female - stood motionless, just waiting and watching with intrigue. He smiled disarmingly when attention was regained, and Alex tried to smile back. The figure bowed his head, long dark hair swaying before his veined scalp. Then he moved, adorned in wide black pants and boots, rustling and now walking, walking towards the would-be hero who had fallen upon his doorstep a guest. He stood almost a foot taller than Alex, both more broad shouldered and slender limbed, muscled only simply as he was. He wore a makeshift shirt of black to go with the pants, apparantly spun in a large wheel standing behind him (so the sheep-killer had a hobby.) His face was wider than, yet just as lovely as Alex's own, mounted on those broad shoulders with a thick-lipped and sharp-nosed noble definition. Sharp canines poked out with his smile. Very sharp.

He stopped a few feet short of Alex and gazed upon his guest with such soft eyes. Grey. "Alright." Whispered he, the owner of the tell-tale spinning wheel and the more revealing eyes. "Why did you come to me? You are no drifter, nor rogue thief, I can tell by your - soiled - clothes. What do you want from me that you would come with sword in hand? A bath of dirt? Have you a pauper to trade lives with? Hmm hmm hmm."

Too amused not to smirk briefly, the prince lifted his chest. "You are the thief, and I want the sheep you stole." he said with a weak tone of accusation.

"Of course you do." Sheep-Killer said, sratching his chin thoughtfully. "But I only have two of them alive, and they are being treated much better than with the farmers. I can't give up my only nourishment. As much as I pity your overly wealthy sheep ranchers and their great estates, I could have taken one of them instead. I have been infinitely generous to everyone."

"In this land," said the prince with a shudder, "it is also crime to take livestock."

Sheep-killer sighed and crossed his arms. "Dear boy, though I may live here, I am hardly a part of this land. I am hated by those people, with their shudders and cries to God. I would be a citizen, could I, but I could not. I cannot find a job with which to purchase these meals of mine, whose blood I need - I who never assaulted a human being in my existence. I who would be burned alive at the stake for -"

"Vampire!" Shouted Alex, stepping back with a sudden fright and knocking a board loose with his heel.

"Careful."

"You are from hell!" Alex cried, lifting his hands to form a cross, then holding it in front of his face.

"No, I am in it." Replied the vampire sadly, then he reached up and broke the boys fingers apart from the shape of a crucifix. "Please stop that, it doesn't do anything but make me feel inferior to you. I don't like that feeling. I am a hundred years old and I have read every book in this library again and again and again, and I will probably do so for a hundred more years. I live off of stolen sheep. I stare at the moon on a rock in the rain. Do not add evil to my list of ails. Who would sell his soul for my life of loneliness? Do not be absurd, child."

Alex retreated his arms and stepped back akwardly. Everything felt awkward. "My people are afraid of you." he said. Awkwardly.

"I know." Replied the vampire. "It's mutual. Ah, wait! I see now. You are their famed prince I assume?"

"I am prince Alexander of Emshyan, sir."

"Of course..." the vampire said, giving Alex such a deep gaze for a few sweet seconds, then smiling again. "Introductions at last." he coughed out, bowing humbly as he reciprocated. "I am Raul Lorraine." the accent on his name was perfectly French.

"Lorraine you say?" Inquired the boy.

"Yes, dear prince - and indeed, a tie to that so-called royal bloodline of France. But I was exiled from my country long ago."

Alex reeled, short on words and breath. "What! The royal Lorraine familly? France? I hear no accent..."

"Were it a lie, I would fake one."

"But... no, you jest, you can't be - you're -"

The vampire pulled forth his necklace, a Lorraine cross with the double bars."But I can, prince Alex. Or at least, it was once so. The curse changed that for myself and many others, I'm sorry to say." Lorraine sighed quietly. "You have no doubt heard the poem that made us infamous: 'The arms of Jesus are the Cross of Lorraine, both the blood in the artery and the blood in the vein.'"

"I have, in fact. 'Both the source of grace and the clear fountaine.'

"And the second verse?"

Alex went on reciting, "The arms of Satan are the Cross of Lorraine, and in the same artery and the same vein, and the same blood and the troubled fountaine."

Lorraine dropped his famed cross against his chest and sighed heavily. "Correct... it held other meanings, but that poem was definately influenced by our curse... and it is also wrong. We are no minions of the devil... well not me... and... how very, very odd." He gave the boy a queer look. "You seem suprisingly receptive of that. You started as most mortals do, but here you look at me with understanding. Am I inventing this, with my practiced talent of face-reading?"

Alex shook his head politely. "You show unexpected civility, whatever you are. And be you a trickster, I am ready for you."

"Of course. Wise. But you should not worry. After a century I have little to hide, and little to gain from a human death. Nothing is worth that. I did not opt for this, you know, and I have yet to harm anyone just because of that. I hopefully never will - with my strength the need will probably never be neccesary."

"If that is true then I am sorry about your misfortunes - loneliness is... however, it remains -"

"Enough, stop. This conversation is going the wrong way - we can decide and bargain about sheep later." Said the vampire Lorraine. "In our introductions you have forgotten to be afraid of me, and we charmed one another with congeniality. This is something that I haven't experienced for a long time. Let's keep being human with one another, I beg. Look... see, you shake with cold. I cannot abide that. Excuse me a moment."

Lorraine crossed the room and knelt beside a stone fireplace, then started to heat it with some tinder. His back was turned to the boy for several moments, and this further relaxed young Alex to his hospitality, despite all the circumstances. Even the prospect of the undead, the beautiful chalkiness of this shadow's flesh, did little to deny Alex comfort. In some strange way, it added some.

"Thank you..." Whispered the prince, sitting before the warmth as a flame began to crackle. His mud was already drying and breaking in places.

"One moment." Said Lorraine, moving to his loom. He produced a large, red blanket with a ribbed design and brought it over, bundled against his chest. "Here..."

Alex looked at the blanket, then down at his soiled clothing.

"I want you to undress... and then wrap this around you when you lay out. That way you wont be submerged in your own filth. Or my floor, for that matter."

"Undress? Oh.. very well..." the prince said nervously, his cheeks warming up to the points of his ears. Always he hid his treasure of a body but... his clothes clung hard with dirt and cold, so he unbuttoned his vest and peeled it off, facing the fire. It felt good. Modestly, he lifted the blanket up around his waist while he undid the rest, exhaling with relief as the weight of rain and cold was taken from his firm hips and soft privates.

Lorraine looked up at the boy all the while, secretly. A shiver ran through his ageless body. Wet and soft skin had gone dark against his firelight, a dancing silhouette, and on the edges the rosy pink pigmentation was like a glow. Alex had a sturdy back worthy of a kiss for each inch, for each spinal bump, topped by a slender and noble neck behind his wet hair, almost brown now, which tumbled back over the curvature like honey. He was a dancing seductress in front of flame, without breasts and somehow more perfect for it. He looked like a boy nymph or a satyr fully naked, the blanket hiding all the most beautiful elements of his form but teasing them through the crumpled outline it intimated. Manly, muscled curveature.

"I... have wine." Said the vampire, partly to himself. He made his way to the shelves across the room, but still kept watching as this handsome guest went down upon his stomach. Soon he wished that the ribbed blanket didn't do so much to hide the shape of that pretty boy's upturned bottom, which seemed to be curved like a steamed holiday delicacy. If only he had sewn it differently, the backs of the thighs and calves would show. Lorraine had to think these things - his own body was all he knew for so much of his life. This was all so new to him, this kind of beauty, even in the vivid imagination of an old reader. But though it felt like mere curiosity about the foreign form, the innocence was not there. This slowly filled Lorraine with concern, for here was another man, and he a man - well. People were much more adamant about that 'crude and indecent' law than they were about vampires. He had been spared by the law before his fireplace, but how trusting could this prince be?

Cordially the host brought wine over and knelt down on the blanket, tugging it over the boy's backside a little with his weight. "Here." he said, his eyes roaming briefly.

"I thought you could not drink anything but blood." Said the prince, accepting his glass.

"I can drink whatever I like. Or eat, but my stomach has shrunk and it hurts to do so. I only find sustenance in blood, though. All else is pleasure."

"Isn't blood pleasure?" Inquired Alex, sipping his drink.

"If it comes from a human, they say it is." Lorraine sipped his own glass with a sigh.

Alex frowned a little, but he was comforted by this comment. His judgements were not unfounded. Here was a lonely, sad man, and that to Alex was redeeming even for a vampire. He somehow felt as if he had expected it to be this way, like a long awaited peace conference with one's misunderstood enemy when deep down he always knew it was gossip. And he did, in a way. He knew that from the prior month - and it had driven him near madness.

"You know..." Alex exhaled, confessing what I wrote, "I was so scared when I came up to see you. But you seem... you are just bookish and your cause is fair... so why don't you just show yourself? We could arrange a deal, you could be my librarian, and - "

"My dear friend, as a prince you must understand most of all... there are some things we fear to show others. Vampires are slain."

"That's no law." said Alex.

Lorraine tilted his head. "There is a guiding law that devises the others. All activists find their way to the gallows, one way or the other. Do you even notice that most of the poor make it to fetters ere long, and even that lovers are burnt at the stake?"

"Never! Oh... you speak of illegal lovers..." sighed Alex, but it was a good point. There are things we fear never to show... he thought about all those women who wanted him, wanted the treasures he hid. How fearful he was to strip before...

Lorraine paused, sipping his wine. "These things are close to home for me. And sad, for anyone who thinks as oft as I."

"And why is that, sir?"

"No, Lorraine is fine... because, young prince - young Alex -I do not murder, not all activists are wrong in their cause, the poor cannot save themselves from destitution, and no love should be illegal. It just should not be that way, ever."

Alex's felt his heart squeeze itself, but reciting as always, he replied: "Sodomy laws protect our youth from lust, not..."

The vampire's cool hand cupped the boy's shoulder, cradling it gently, paternally. "No child. Call it sodomy if you want, but there are night lovers in your city who think only of one another during the day, some married, some parenting, and all led on not by treachery of sin or a snake's whisper, but by the brutal world's isolation from beauty and love."

Alex closed his eyes and leaned into the massaging hand. "You would say that, in your condition. It makes sense for who you are... what you are. I mean... you don't have to die and face He who judges."

"I have to live and face judgement every day. If he is there, His judgement is everything. For that, yes, the curse opened my eyes. Time and knowledge always do. And time itself is a curse." Said Lorraine, sliding his hand down the boy's back, then away.

Sighing, Alex pressed his eyes into his wrist, still shut. "True, it draws on forever."

"We are not necessarily different." said Lorraine, running his fingertips up and down still over the boy's blanketed back. He knew it was dangerous to do, and hoped the boy would not stop finding it kind - for his life Lorraine couldn't stop touching. It was like finding the softest pillow of the world and laying upon it.

"We're not?" Said Alex, after a relaxed yawn. He felt good too.

"We are very much the same. Even though you symbolize law, and I am chaos to the people, we are both good, and no matter how many laws you recite like poetry, you do know the difference between wrong and right. You know, don't you?"

Alex turned to his side, his stomach tense and handsome and his torso exposed in firelight, a stage for the belly dancing of flames. "I don't, either, nor have I ever. No matter... how often I recite."

Lorraine just lay there beside him, pulling the blanket over his own waist. "Relax." Said he, "I am no fool. This time you did not squirm under my hand."

Alex gave the most beautiful smile, missing the point. "Well you're making me tired with your touch."

Lorraine smiled. "Just let yourself relax, and listen... I was saying, I think you know how often have you reviewed that law you were so quick to react upon. As if you know the law books front to back, like sodomy is a common notice... you are thinking you must not like that sort of thing because it is evil, and that my promoting it proves that, since I'm a vampire. But you know I am not evil - am I a trickster then? If me, than why not the world, the same that spawns all the tricksters and thieves of your city, the one that spawns lonely people like you who stare through windows at a world full of sorrow, a blue city, framed against a black mountain..."

"Wait... your touching me doesn't..." The boy squirmed meekly and the hand slid away for a moment. "No...don't stop." the hand came back.

"Ok. But tell me, how often do you review that law, in your mind?" Asked Lorraine, his grey eyes on the boy's firelit face.

"Lorraine... I can... do not desire men." Said Alex, weakly as a rain pearl. His eyes opened wide and looked up at the vampire's own. "Yes, I've reviewed the law and questioned it - but..."

Lorraine smiled. "You can't, or you think you can't. I used to feel the same way - but even in all this time alone, I have never been with nor thought upon anybody. Once I would have supported that law you are trying to protect, but as a lover I had to understand the truth eventually. Even now I am a lover of books, and they have aged to wrinkles around me when I am still seventeen. And they taught me how every love is different, a different story with a different style, and a different ending too."

"And what of who you love... that must die in your stead?" Alex felt his eyes quake at the horrible thought.

Wiping over them, though they had no moisture, Lorraine replied,"I knew you were a lover... Alex, I will find out, one day. I am sure there's a way, handsome, for love to win. That's one belief that no devil could lie for your trust. The devil cannot grasp that philosophy."

Alex closed his eyes again. "I know..."

"And therefore no goodness invented your laws of love." Lorraine the vampire loomed over suddenly, and a kiss was planted, cold, upon the red lips of the royal boy. "Forgive me if I cannot stop the angel in my heart right here and now. There are laws unwritten."

"But Lorraine..." gasped the pretty boy, shivering again beneath the blanket, though so warm. "I just now met - no... I know you but..."

Lorraine's mind kept asking itself what it was doing, like an endless loop, but he just kissed this prince once more. There was no resistance against him. "Still so receptive. Think, I could try to seduce you, but in all my years alone I have never desired seduction. Sinful, lustful is sodomy? Promiscuous is it? Even now, I just want you with me... see the fire reflected in my eyes. And I don't care how it's shown. If I lay here for eternity staring into yours at - at last, I will be happy and free. Love does not grow in an instant to what it is now, but it is. For how happily I have thought upon you since that day we met on this mountain."

Alex curled a little, his eyes still shut... whether to drown this out or to sink in, or to show trust, he did not know. "Me too." He heard himself whispering. The whole quick conversation and brisk seduction suddenly made so much sense, so much fearful sense.

"I know." Slowly Lorraine sat up, paused, then pulled his makeshift shirt over his head. He placed it behind him and then leaned into the boy beneath the cloth, a hand on one pert and perfect hip as their flat chests and stomachs met and nuzzled with warmth. He lay innocently with the beautiful prince, but the prince did not lay innocently also. He could feel this beaut's penis slightly swollen through only his own pants, and it made him smile. The boy blushed. "So. There's the truth." Lorraine whispered. "The flesh cannot lie when it is malleable to the soul. That's the ultimate proof of a romantic, right there. No wonder I obsessed about you all this time."

Alex opened his eyes, and looked up at the most purely beautiful face he had ever seen in his life. He kissed, without knowing why, lips to silverish lips. "Lorraine... Raul... you fill my dreams -"

"You mine, you mine! What magic is this!"

"I know not, but for the love of all that goodness you hold dear to you, take me away from this cold, blue world. It is iced. Keep me under this warm red blanket for eternity I have wondered if you could, somehow. Now I see -"

"But this is the world. You're just seeing it more freely." Said Lorraine, kissing back. "And I will hold you all night if so pleases you... or... if so pleases you... well. I'll please you, at any rate." He put a hand over Alex's own and pulled it gently to the buckle of his belt. It immediately acted, pulling the loop, then tugging it back against it's owner's tawny pink hips... and off. "Are you sure?" the vampire whispered, just holding this precious boy close to him, planting kisses on a raised shoulder.

"Yes... it's the only thing I've ever felt certain of in my life."

"Good. Because it is also the most beautiful." Lorraine gently touched the erection of the boy with his cool hand, exploring the warm, red length of one half foot and thumbing its veins. Throughout his moaning, Alex replied by fumbling the black pants down Lorraine's waist, exposing the other, cooler but also swollen. As that last article was kicked off in the last, the two men just lay side by side, squeezing and petting one another's senses. Their lips played also.

"One day..." whispered the prince in a breach, "I would let you drink from me... just enough to fill your heart with what I'm feeling in mine!"

"I don't want to this night..." replied Lorraine. "I am amorous enough to feel it myself."

Alex smiled, his eyes open - he seemed transformed now, into a true lover. He had let go, and now there was to be nothing stopping him from this moment in heaven he had been given, he believed, by the very Creator he believed in. For he had prayed - how often he had prayed. "Let me merely explore you. No biting... no penetration at all." Alex whispered.

"None? Not me here, not you there?" Lorraine caressed the boy's beautiful buttocks pointedly, but got a shaking head.

"It excites me to think of it. But no, I want to do things with you that I could not do with a woman... to know you and let you know me. If this is right, if this is pure, if this is beautiful and not some wild fetish, that will suffice, and our bodies will find a way to unite."

"You have thought of this before..."

"God damn me, yes."

"Hardly." sighed Lorraine, kissing him deeply yet again, speaking in between. "You... are... an... angel... come to my doorstep... literally fallen like a drop of... mmm, rain..." Their hands slid up to caress each other's abdomen now, running through the turtle shells of one another's stomach with such curious fingers. Then Lorraine pressed with his hips, and their phalli clashed like red blades, throbbing viciously together like external hearts. Moisture swam about the helms of each, and it felt like fire was sparked between the sensitive tips like colliding matchsticks laced with gunpowder.

Lorraine clasped Alex in his arms suddenly, hugging his waist - the best thing he had ever felt, so good that he almost burst into tears - then mounted the boy, sliding on top of him and taking hold of both wrists through which a pulse could be felt. He pinned these hands down flat. The handsome prince just smiled up at him, grey and blue eyes dialating in pairs, and pushed up again to meet with the other manhood. Belly ran across belly, sac across heavy sac. Stiffened nipples rolled together like smallish pebbles ground in balance on red discs.

Lorraine froze and smiled, peering down at the perfect body beneath him. Alex did the same, looking up, and relaxing. He at last saw that this ageless creature had beauty to match, a penis sizeable and beautiful, even if it was a little pale from the thin blood that filled it. One day, thought the prince, it would be red with his own essence. But this was good, a celebration of what Lorraine really was. The veins showed brightly, too.

Now that they had found away to make love, as men, as two men being men, they spoke to one another once more. But there was little new to say - the wonder of this hadn't worn off, the novelty of this quick passion, but it drowned other thoughts.

"How did this happen..." gasped Lorraine happily, "I love you, I love you... forever I'll..."

Moaning, Alex tilted his head aside, trusting fanged kisses to grace his neck. "I love you... I love you..." he recited, this time without trying.

The burn of sex was nearly painful now, and it made the sex heated - sweat ran in beads all over both pretty bodies. Up and down in rhythm, Lorraine moved his hips, gliding the tip of his erection across the belly of the other, each undeniably full, firm and flushed. A smell of masculinity in dance rolled up between them, arousing them further - then Lorraine caught the boy's hips raised, and slid his finger into the canal, tickling the round pinkness beneath the tailbone. Alex gave a little cry of pleasure and gripped the shoulders above him, thrusting up. Again the two arousals lay flush, but the thrust brought such a friction that sexual pre-oils rolled into their bellies in a collective pool, then peeled like webbing as Lorraine suddenly sat up, his powerful legs parted. The handsome drab meat bounced landing, its loose skin around the sac pooling heavilly against the vampire's inner thighs.

"In my lap..." he whispered.

But Alex wanted more than that. He sprung up onto his knees and knelt forward, kissing Lorraine's naval and below, his tongue extending to grace some of the clear fluids from the tip of heat. The beautiful boy had never taken another man into his mouth, but it was so simple an act. The length carried no suprising flavours save that bittersweet tip, which he kissed and licked upon, worshipping the tiny keyhole. His head was carressed by the strong hands of the vampire Lorraine while he sucked down an inch, his own shaft burning, aching, untouched. When he leapt up again he felt strong arms surround him, and even though his penis again ground into another, he felt really feminen held thus, though still happilly a man.

Up and down once again, they ground together, now upright and cloaked beautifully by the red sheet. This play of love gradually made them both as warm as the flames they sat before, the sound of skin rolling over skin and tongue over tongue drowning out every other sense that could be held, and Alex knew in his heart that no zealot who saw them would be able to deny that it was love, however his convictions. It had been a love long coming, a love long awaited, in fantasy and in image since that day they met. And suddenly he stopped reminding himself of it - it simply was.

When they came, they came together. It was as if by magic - just as the magic had brought them to come together as people, they came as lovers at once, firing each one source of grace and clear fountaine across one another's stomachs, hot and twirling together into the pretty lines of their abdomens.

An hour passed then, in which nothing happened but kisses, sweat and a deep, lasting squeeze. Then Lorraine sat up. "Beloved. The dawn comes soon and I must hide away... for now."

Alex nodded. "And I must show myself. I will get about two hours sleep but I imagine I will be quite starry-eyed."

Lorraine smiled at that, kissing him noisilly. "Mmm. What are you going to do with me then?"

"I will bring you your meals, worry not. And I will begin to work towards a better future for us both... and all stifled lovers."

"Then let me find you something to wear... my love."

The rain stopped outside the city, and the storm had long faded. But Lenar had kept Nathaniel quite awake. From the alleyway, the soiled page in his hand, Nathaniel watched the slow trot of a horse move across the street again. Atop, a happy, smiling prince sat with no head in hand, adorned in black woolen clothing.

Nathaniel smiled inwardly, watching him gallop off. Then he picked up his pen and wrote the end of his poem with sleepless certainty. The words came strangely to him, but some muse whispered them, some knowledgable and gossiping muse: