"UNDERWEAR..." An interlude
[This tale is set some eighteen years after Rayne Wylde becomes a Vampire. By this time he is living in Manchester (my neck of the woods - no pun intended!) and a brush with psychotic northern Vamps has led to his relationship with Kevan, a half-Irish detective sargeant with the Manchester Met Police.
The story also reintroduces Rayne's Sire, Jabez, a character I always love to play around with. It is submitted here in two parts.]
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Kevan Delaney sort of crept up on Rayne, emotionally speaking. The effect of being around him took the Vampire more than a little bit by surprise. On that first afternoon, (after the timely demise of Gerald Rafferty, the Canal Street Killer, whose fall he and Kev skilfully engineered) when Dave Ramsay, Kev's partner, finally left them alone in Manto to talk to one-another, Kevan opened himself up and spilled his feelings on the floor like so much discarded confetti. In the light of his fumbling, hesitant attempts to express his sexuality on the night before they terminated the Canal Street Ripper, this was an unprecedented flood tide of 'Kevan-ness'. The words poured from him unchecked and Rayne could only sit and listen in astonished silence.
Kevan talked of his life... his job... his failing marriage and grown up kids... his lack of direction. Unsurprisingly, he was ex-military - a former paratrooper, who lost his way in the mud and bloodshed of Goose Green whilst still in his twenties. Married before war broke out in the Falklands, his life was ripped apart irreparably by what he experienced there. He quit the Paras on his return to the UK and, after a period of therapy, joined the Police Force. Working on the Vice Squad some years later, he first linked up with David Ramsay, a veteran of Belfast and Bosnia; someone who could relate to his traumas and the nightmares which still haunted him.
In return, Dave admitted to his partner that he too had left the Army, not because he was unable to handle the bloodshed or the loss of lives, but due to the fact that he was living a lie. He loved the military lifestyle, but he also loved a Dutch pastry chef called Bernard, a relationship he was compelled to keep under wraps in case his superiors discovered it and cast him out on his ear. He quit the Forces eighteen months before the European Court of Human Rights legitimised his status.
Dave was never resentful about it. He and Bernard moved north from Aldershot to Whitefield and he worked alternately as a bouncer or a bar-tender until joining the Force. Dave Ramsay introduced Kevan to the Gay Village in Manchester, and was surprised by the way in which Kevan wholeheartedly embraced his lifestyle. Despite an avowed denial that he was queer, or even bi-sexual, Kev worked through the frustration of his failed marriage with a succession of nameless, faceless boys. Some of them, he claimed good-humouredly, were even far enough off their faces to blow him for free!
So it was that his feelings for Rayne also startled Kevan Delaney.
After that lunch date at Manto, they walked together by the canal for a while, talking aimlessly, neither wanting to be the one who let reality intrude by saying it was time to go. Rayne invited the other man back to his pad for dinner and impressed the plain-spoken cop with the art-nouveau and glass brick walls of his converted warehouse, on a block near the Northern Film Archive. It was past midnight by the time they called for a take-away, because they spent the remainder of the evening and night fucking; on the sofa and the panelled floor, and the stairs and in the shower, and finally on Rayne's expansive, oriental bed. They became a loosely linked 'item' without realising what had happened. Kevan was not Rayne's 'type' at all; the big, burly ex-para was blunt and jokey, utterly unsophisticated in fact. But he was also amazingly attentive. Kevan took the elegant little Vampire under his wing, even though he seemed aware that his lover could take perfectly adequate care of himself (probably both of them!). All the same, he insisted on trying to 'look after' the boy.
That was another thing; Kevan was forty six, and looked it. Rayne Wylde was technically forty eight but passed easily for a man twenty years younger. Since his Initiation he had not aged a day. The Vampire was not about to split hairs though; if Kev wanted a toyboy, he was perfectly prepared to play ball on that count. More perplexing to Rayne was his own tacit acceptance of the way in which Kevan dominated the relationship.
Since his own doomed love affair with a boy bludgeoned to death by a murderous brood of Vampires in London many years before, Rayne had been unattached save for the occasional painless fling. All his lovers had been Submissives, all younger than him. It had been over a decade since Rayne consented to regular sex with a dominant partner, but Kevan naturally took the initiative whenever they were together, and his lover was forced to admit that he actually enjoyed it. Kevan was skilful enough to make the experience satisfying for both of them. Kev doted on him. He loved to pamper his beautiful, immortal boyfriend. At the end of a busy shift he would phone to check that Rayne was free, then come over to the warehouse with a Thai carry-out and a bottle of good wine. More often than not they finished the wine in the bath together, or entwined on the bedclothes, drinking from one-another's mouths. Invariably they fucked until the dawn came up.
On analysis, Rayne was perfectly relaxed about the relationship. He was in no hurry to settle down and Kevan was not fool enough to suggest that they lived together. He respected Rayne's need for space, and even his obligations as a member of the Undead Community (which he did not understand but never questioned). Kevan seemed to accept without hesitation that there were times when his lover had work to do; work which normally involved the inhumation of some deserving soul who had been making innocent lives a misery. Kevan never pried, just as he had never asked why Rayne was stalking the Canal Street Ripper. In the detective's eyes, one less murderer or rapist on the streets of Manchester was no loss to him or anyone else.
He even seemed to accept that Rayne was not in love with him, content that the Vampire was happy just to be with him. It was true enough. In Kev's arms, Rayne experienced a profoundly satisfying sense of belonging. He was cherished and adored, which suited his fragile ego magnificently. As far as the Vampire was concerned, Kevan Delaney could put his own interpretation on the relationship.
A perplexing twist emerged in the Spring when, one evening as they made love on the bathroom floor, Kevan expressed a breathless desire to fuck his lover in women's underwear. Rayne Wylde gave him a 'look' which suggested that he would rather cut his own wrists on a rusty band saw blade, and nothing more was said, at the time.
Until, that is, the evening when Kevan bought him the matching basque and panties and a pair of pure silk stockings. They were exquisite creations, in carmine silk and lace, designed - Kev explained with boyish exuberance - to be worn by a man. The basque was full-cupped to give the impression of small, firm breasts when worn under clothing. The knickers were fuller in the crotch (as he demonstrated with one hand inside them) and cut away to a lacy thong at the rear.
"No." Rayne told him flatly. "No way, Jose!"
Kevan's face crumpled in an expression of abject misery. All night afterwards, he moped. Nothing would lighten his mood, not even sex. Nothing interested him.
"You're cruel," he berated his lover at one point. "I do so much for you. I never ask you for anything in return. I come over here when it's convenient for 'you'. We eat the things 'you' like. All I'm askin' is a little something that would turn me on. Is that so bad? Is it such a sick, kinky thing I'm askin' you to do? I didn't think you were so narrow minded, Ray."
Rayne glared at him, arms folded defensively. "You ask me what I want, and I tell you," he said tersely. "If you wanted something different, you should have said."
"What do you think I'm doing now?" Kev retaliated vehemently. "I'm asking you to wear something that will excite me. Or does what I feel not matter?"
The Vampire sucked in his cheeks irritably and drew a long, impatient breath. If there was one thing he really hated it was being made to feel guilty. And Kev was good at it. He was 'excruciatingly' good at it.
Finally, when the other man said nothing else, Rayne exhaled loudly through his teeth, snatching up the offending lingerie box and storming off up the open-plan stairs to the mezzanine where his bedroom and bathroom were. A long, brooding silence ensued and Kevan was patient for about fifteen minutes before plucking up the courage to go and investigate. He found a sorry sight when he climbed the stairs onto the balcony.
His lover was sitting on the edge of the low bed, ashen-faced and bewildered, his dark hair tangled around his sharp, elfin features and his pale eyes glittering with frustration as he wrestled valiantly with the hook and eye fastenings of the basque. The straps hung loose on his slender shoulders whilst the stockings pooled around his calves and ankles.
