Imprinting

AN: Hellsing and all its characters belong to Kohta Hirano and whatever corporate entity has licensed the Hellsing portion of his soul. I make no money from my writing. And no, I don\'t know why my mind works like this. Many thanks to verdandi24 for her beta.


He opened his eyes and tried to look through the haze that occluded his vision. The first thing he saw was red.

Red.

He blinked and tried to focus. One eye refused to comply, but if he closed the left one, he could see clearly enough out of the right.

Red eyes. Blonde hair. Why was this face beautiful? Because it was the first one he saw? Because it was the only one in his now empty memory?

He felt cold wetness on his face and wiped it away, surprised by the kitten-weak shakiness of his arm and hand as he did so. He looked at the red stains on his hand and wiped it unselfconsciously on his white shirt.

The blonde man helped him sit up on the cold metal table and cradled him gently while he shook, as spasms shuddered across his body and he wept helplessly and unknowingly. The silent one didn’t offer meaningless words of comfort, only stroked the sobbing man’s back with a cool hand.

Why was he crying? He didn’t know – only that he felt an unidentifiable soul deep loss. He turned and buried his face in the other man’s shoulder and mourned for something so lost he didn’t even know what it was.

When his sobs stilled and he pulled away, the big man handed him a small object. He turned it over in his hands, carefully not touching the flawless glass, but not knowing what it was meant for.

It was the other man who took the object from him and clipped it to his nose, adjusting it to sit in front of the rebellious and heretofore almost useless left eye. It was the other man who carefully, gently, attached to his left ear the clip that held the chain that held the frame that held the lens – the lens that restored to him the advantages of binocular vision.

He looked around and saw for the first time the room where they were. He hadn’t realized that they weren’t alone. He drew away from the sight of the other men into the comfort of his caregiver’s arms. They were so ugly compared to his angel. He couldn’t stand to look at them, hated them almost for intruding on the quiet he had with the man who had been so gentle with him.

He refused to hear their words and turned his face away, seeking refuge, which he was given in a cool embrace. He ignored the few words that filtered through his denial of their existence, “…give him this, black will hide the tearstains better…” and “…marvelous that the boy wants Hans…” and “…too soon to bring him out to play…”

But he shuddered at one word he could not ignore no matter how he tried, “Butler.”

The word pulled at him and forced him to look at the man who had said it. Still, he was able to not hear the man’s words, he just shunted them to a waiting part of his amply empty mind until they needed to be heard and heeded.

He felt them leave and relaxed into his angel’s hands. He was relieved to not have to feel their eyes on him, their voices clanging in his ears.

Neither of them had spoken yet. He felt no need and his angel clearly didn’t either. After the pain of his birth and the pain of his unknown loss and the pain of the other men’s presences, this silent communion was bliss. When he felt able to sit on his own, he turned on the table to face his friend with his knees on either side of the man’s hips.

The other man held something up to him. He looked at it without understanding at first, much as he had with his monocle. Black cloth, buttons… It wasn’t until the man began to unbutton his shirt that he made the connection between the item he had held up and the bloodied item his friend (friend?) was helping him remove. He let the man unbutton his shirt and pull the tails out of his trousers, but his curiosity about the process of opening buttons made him reach out and fumble with the buttons of the other man’s shirt.

Scarred hands closed over his, holding his fingers still at the top button. He looked up at the other man and met his clear red gaze with his own peculiarly bisected stare. He waited, endlessly patient, until the man slowly nodded and released his fingers. By the third, he had regained his understanding of the secret workings of buttons and his fingers flew down the rest, opening them with a dexterity he had no reason to know was extraordinary.

He stopped then. What was he supposed to do? He looked at the expanse of chest that had been exposed by his fledgling need to learn and explore. It was broad and had a light dusting of curly blonde hair. He looked down at his own chest, which was a nearly translucent white with a small patch of black hair in the center that trailed off between his pecs, only to resume at his navel and run a fine line under the waistband of his trousers. He pulled his friend’s shirt open and saw that he had a similar line of blonde hair around his navel and down.

It felt so good to be held. Wouldn’t skin to skin feel better? He slid his hands under the open flaps of the other man’s shirt and pulled himself closer until their chests were touching. He leaned his head forward into the crook of the man’s neck and shoulder and closed his eyes. Something was missing; he could feel that something should be there with his head so close to… to what?

He pulled back and traced a blue line under the skin of his comforter’s neck with a sharp fingernail. The line was broken in three places by thin scars that wrapped all the way around his neck. Instinct told him that something should be there but wasn’t, something alive, something hot, something that would fill a need he was beginning to realize had been with him since his birth endless minutes ago. His mouth ached with it He leaned in to the blue line and without thinking, bit deep into the cool flesh.

His mouth filled with something that he gulped down greedily. Even in the blissful concentration of feeding, he felt the other man’s arms close around him and draw him in tight. He was held in an embrace that gave him the physical sustenance he needed in more ways than one. It was an anchor, and when the arms holding him slackened their hold, he looked up in concern, heedlessly letting blood spill from the wounds his teeth had left until the skin knit and hid the secret of the man’s blood away once more.

His friend looked back at him with half lidded eyes, and was that a smile at the corner of his mouth? On an otherwise impassive face, the slightest quirk at the edge of the silent man’s mouth was as effusive as the fat man’s broad grin had been before he left. He essayed a smile of his own, but was unsure of its success until the other man reached up and touched the corner of his mouth where the smile had shown.

The silent blonde shifted his hand and used it to draw their heads together. They sat, pressed together, foreheads touching. The silence between them was peaceful. He was grateful that his new friend didn’t talk the way the others had. They were doing a good enough job of communicating without words. His eyes closed when the other man’s hand moved to unbutton his trousers and he raised his hips slightly to assist him when his angel slid off his trousers and underwear.

He wanted to return the favor for his friend, but when he reached for the other man’s trousers, his hands were caught and an almost imperceptible headshake told him to stop. He gasped and cried out when the other man went to his knees and took his penis into his mouth. It was the first sound that was not a sob that he had made since awakening. He threw his head back and the emptiness inside his head filled with the sensations of a cool tongue sweeping up and down his shaft and swirling along the head until he was fully erect and grasping unconsciously at the man’s hair to pull him closer.

He sat at the edge of the table and let the pleasure fill him. Finally, a silver lining to his amnesiac state – with no memories to clutter his head, no thoughts or worries about anyone or anything else, he was able to become immersed in the sensations until they were the entirety of his existence. There was nothing else except the hot pleasure that was coiling at the base of his spine and the cool pleasure of the other man’s mouth wrapped around him. Even the occasional scrape of sharp teeth was a delightful counterpoint.

Too soon, he shuddered and thrust his hips forward while pulling on the other man’s hair. He felt the man’s tongue move against his almost painfully sensitive shaft as he swallowed and gave another slow stroking suck as though to be sure he had been thorough.

He felt languid and almost happy as he pulled the man off of his knees and into his embrace. He leaned his head against the man’s shoulder and found words at the tip of his tongue for the first time. “Thank you,” he whispered.

•••

The major turned away from the display on the video screen. “You are truly a genius, Doc. What better test of his locks than to imprint him on Hans?” He applauded briefly before turning to leave. “Do bring him up when he’s dressed again. I want to play with our new toy.”