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“Since when do we do pest control?” the punk, leaning into his space, mutters in his ear. Annoyance radiates off him like waves. It almost makes the Dark Hawkeye grind his teeth.
Wonderful. Junior is in a mood.
On the other hand, he’s right, Bullseye has to acknowledge. Though he’s only distractedly listening himself, the mission the Iron Patriot is currently outlining could be summed up with these words: evict squatters from a federal building.
“Hawkeye, Wolverine, you’re up.”
He distinctly hears Daken groan aloud, but before the mutant can open his mouth:
“Any mention of washing your hair, manicure or spa appointment, and I swear, I stop stocking the lounge with good sake,” Osborn threatens.
That shuts up Junior right quick. Which is good, because Bullseye happens to like that sake too, that Daken lets him indulge with as well.
“License to kill?” Bullseye asks, more to hear Daken’s little delighted snort at the question than anything else. This Dark Hawkeye gig is starting to get a bit stifling with all its rules to follow, and he braces himself already for disappointment.
Only, Norman Osborn seems to actually ponder the question, and right besides Bullseye, Daken tenses up as well in anticipation.
“Yes,” the Iron patriot eventually settles.
He’s so taking out the Bullseye costume out of the closet for that!
“Oh. OK. These are at least mildly-challenging pests.”
Bullseye’s thoughts, exactly. (In retrospect, they should have wondered what Normie knew that they didn't.)
“And I needed a work-out,” Daken continues with satisfaction in his voice, loosing the shirt (and for a second Bullseye catches himself staring), and snikting the claws out.
“And we ought to have us some fun, Daken,” the hitman agrees whole-heartedly.
Though humanoids, the things are improbably fast, have claws, weirdly gleaming eyes, a weird obsession with trying to bite, and pointy canines oddly reminiscent of fangs.
They exchange smiles, Daken and he, wide toothy things not that different from their preys’. Then, they go to work. Though you might call it slaughter.
“Hey, Lester! Decapitation is go!” the punk even delightfully informs him at one moment, while they try to figure out what works on their critters.
They make a carnage. Bullseye discovers there might be a grain of truth to the saying, the more the merrier. Killing with Daken? It’s fun.
Bullseye realizes he takes as much pleasure dispatching his preys as watching Daken slash his…
“You’re bleeding, dear,” Daken suddenly mentions, once they’re done, doing this funny frowny thing with his nose. “You should have a look at yourself.”
“Sure it’s my blood?” Bullseye asks, a tad vexed. Seriously, one of these things managed to get past his guard?
Also, he’s a bit drenched in redness all over right now. Should have come with the Hawkeye costume, eventually. That one, he wouldn’t have minded marring to this extent.
“I can smell the difference, Lester. I know your blood. I know your meds. Also, it’s especially easy to tell here, since their blood stinks in comparison,” Junior complains, nudging a cadaver with his foot. Green ichor too gets on his leather shoe, makes him frown in distaste. “What were these things, anyway…?” Daken says.
“No, idea. And who cares, anyway. What they are is dead…” Bullseye absent-mindedly mumbles, trying to look at himself from every angle to find the damn wound.
Daken gets closer, starts inspecting him as well.
“Here,” the mutant says. His fingers lightly brush the nape of his neck.
It feels electric that contact, and oddly, Bullseye suddenly feels hungry.
It’s annoying, too. He can’t see the placement of the wound.
“It’s a just scratch,” he decides, because he doesn’t even feel it.
“If you say so,” Daken replies, even if he is frowning a bit in disagreement, and grabs his discarded shirt. And surprisingly starts to dab at it with focused attention. The scratch in question actually looks like two little puncture wounds. But nothing too serious.
Bullseye’s eyes grow large, seeing the sacrifice Daken makes. The Nancy-boy loves his shirts to a ridiculous extent. He has no idea what to do with this.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Daken mutters. “It was already ruined, anyway.”
Liar , Bullseye thinks. And then: But why?
They have the lounge to themselves: apparently the rest of the team has been sent on another assignment which they’re not done with yet. Their dinner doesn’t really appeal to him, tonight, even though Daken has been the one cooking and that usually makes him rather ravenous.
But there’s ants crawling under his skin. Bullseye itches for a fight in a very literal way. There’s only Daken here, and usually, the punk doesn’t begrudge him his fun. So he lunges.
“What the hell, Lester!” Junior yelps, fending him off in extremis with his claws. You can say whatever you want about Daken, his reflexes are as keen as his senses. What offends him more, it seems, though, is to have had his meal interrupted. Maybe that’s why, at first, his effort is rather half-assed.
But tonight, Bullseye feels stronger, faster than usual, and Daken ends up straining harder and harder to keep him at bay. The hitman has always been heavier thanks to the adamantium in his bones, but the punk had always had the advantage of his superior mutant constitution. Tonight though, it doesn’t matter. Bullseye gets the upper hand. He manages to pin the punk under him to the ground, and for once, Daken can’t seem to find a way to turn the table on him and escape.
Bullseye’s blood pumps in his veins. This light sentiment of euphoria almost makes him laugh, it’s so intense. He fails to note the way Daken’s eyes grow wide at the sight of his smile. He’s sprawled all over the punk and it feels good. It’s like he’s exceedingly conscious of the warmth emanating from the body underneath his, and he wants to make it his. And suddenly, he knows how. He plunges his face in Daken’s neck and bites, hard, feeling blood flood his mouth.
Daken actually cries out in surprise. Bullseye, so startled by his own impulse that he jerks back, kinda freezes for a moment. Blood dribbles on his chin. He meets the punk’s shocked stare. His grip on Daken goes lax for a second. It’s enough for the punk to seize the opportunity. He punches him in the face. Hard enough that a non adamantium-augmented human would have died. Bullseye hasn’t the time to see stars before passing out.
“Kuso ,” Daken tells him anyway. “I think I know what our pests were.”
When Bullseye comes to, he’s handcuffed to Daken’s bed. Both hands. Believe it or not, however kinky the punk is and however the punk can make his sensations go haywire to wreck him and lure him to his bed, it’s the first time it happens. Bullseye… is not exactly a fan.
Then, he notices the weird metallic taste in his mouth, and everything comes back to him. Including his hunger for liquid warmth. He licks the semi-dry blood off his lips with shameless voracity. It’s only because it’s far from enough that he starts to look for the punk with his eyes.
Daken is at his desk nearby, reading on his laptop and typing furiously. Without raising his eyes, he says:
“Dear, vampires exist and you are one.”
You’ll probably forgive Bullseye if he fails to find a better answer at these news than:
“Huh?”
“Bite me?” Daken adds with a wicked smile.
“HUH?”
It’s weird, but being handcuffed doesn’t exactly help his thinking. It’s a tad distracting. But the point is, Daken’s reasoning makes sense.
One, he’s hungry, and it’s bound to get worse.
Two, he can’t get around killing (more) people, or he might get in trouble and get found out. Which might prove problematic. (Bullseye could make the point he could kill whoever finds out, but he’d rather have Daken’s blood than argue, right this second.)
And finally, three, because Daken is very matter of fact about all this, the punk can handle the blood loss.
“Are you going to turn too?” Bullseye asks, though. The way Daken describes it, it’s an enzyme that spreads the vampiric infection. It’s a valid question.
“Doubtful. The healing factor is usually quite good with foreign substances hitting our bloodstream.” It doesn’t sound like he’s completely sure, though. Also, there’s a kind of unhealthy recklessness in his offer, like he doesn’t really care what happens to him, and it vaguely disgusts Bullseye. But… he looks at Daken, and it’s all new the way he sees him, feels him, even smells him, and he understands maybe a bit better already, how it is to be the punk with his heightened senses. Even from here, he is conscious of Daken’s blood, it calls to him.
In retrospect, it was obvious he was always going to say yes.
There’s a particular gleam in the punk’s eyes when he climbs into bed with him. So Bullseye is not overly surprised, when he doesn’t get freed from the handcuffs. But blood is getting closer, that’s already progress. And then, Daken starts removing their clothes.
“What do you think you’re doing, Nancy-boy!”
“C’mon, dear. That’s called compensation. Or more accurately, paying it forward?”
And Bullseye finds, bizarrely, he’s OK with that. It’s the first time accepting contact feels so uncomplicated. He even welcomes it. The slightly surprised look on Daken’s face is only cherry on the top.
For once, thanks to the handcuffs, Daken gets the luxury to pace him. Makes it drawn out and slow. This is not a wild ride, but Bullseye sinks in the sensations with rare abandon. It’s a good ride. The feeling of Daken’s body enclosing his dick and rocking like slow waves makes his blood sing to his own temples, and he can hear Daken’s blood answer from under the punk’s skin. His hunger grows with the tide of his pleasure.
Then, astride on him, Daken’s whole body arches and the punk comes quietly, with a soft moan that makes Bullseye want to rip his throat with his teeth…
“That was nice,” Daken says, and is suddenly shaken by a shocked little laugh that might be a tad insulting for Bullseye’s previous performances in bed. He’s beautiful, and flushed, and that blood so close to the skin drives Bullseye the tiniest bit crazy. (Crazier.) He strains against his bounds.
“My turn,” he says.
“Only fair,” Daken says, his hand flying to his neck to distractedly brush away hair matted with sweat.
Bullseye’s mouth go dry.
Once uncuffed, he first sits up, palming Daken’s face and angling it to reveal his neck better. It’s weird, that his first bite is not there anymore, and he instinctively looks for the same place. He sinks his teeth there without warning, and gets lost in the sea of this blood flooding his mouth.
The mutant’s first instinct is to fight the attack, even though he’s the one who offered. But the impulse doesn’t last. His mouth opens in a silent “oh”. He clamps his hands on the little carny’s neck more to keep him there than push him back, now.
Daken’s surprise is real. Pleasure hits him like a drug and he’s not so far gone that he doesn’t notice the irony of his getting a taste of his own medicine, in a way. It’s very close of what he’s used to do to the little carny when he wants to have fun with him, this rush of sensation that leaves him almost mindless and pliable. Thrumming with need for more…
His heart soon hammers against his chest: its pumping almost empty fucking hurts. Bless the survival instinct ingrained in his wolverine genes, his claws come out almost on their own. He runs them as soon through the fleshy part of Bullseye’s thigh.
“You've stabbed me!” the hitman howls.
“You weren’t going to stop, and there are limits to my benevolence, little man,” Daken says, panting, letting himself fall on his back, major blood loss making him flirt with the unconsciousness that wants to claim him. “Also, vampire. You’ll heal. Enjoy.”
“That still fucking hurts!” Bullseye complains.
“Welcome to the world of joys of healing factors,” Daken says, with no compassion whatsoever. “People don’t mind hurting you when you heal. Get used to it. Another reason to keep quiet about your new… condition.”
Their exchange of gazes at that seems to linger a bit. It strikes them at the same moment, that they’re a lot more alike now than they once were…
The next night, it’s the same. Daken lets himself fall, all boneless, back into the bed, still weak and limbs feeling like heavy with lead, waiting for the healing factor to kick in and fix the little carny’s damages. His skin uncomfortably itches for contact, any contact, letting him feeling raw and vulnerable.
It’s pretty… Bullseye thinks. Exsanguination lends Daken a pallor that makes the tattoo stand out even more in stark contrast with his skin. There’s this stillness from the punk, and the fact that he can afford himself the luxury to look at Daken while he’s being quiet and not trying anything funny, in this whole new way, with so acute senses that he feels like he could count every single one of Daken’s fucking eyelashes… And hell, he is even tempted to do just that.
Bullseye is fully sated but still hungry for the punk, surprisingly. A nipple catches his gaze, a splash of color on the too pale skin that calls to him.
The mouth playfully clamping there and lazily teasing him with tongue and the tiniest hint of teeth makes Daken’s whole body arch in unexpected need. Bullseye? Not a teaser, usually. It’s strange. Daken is still light-headed and hunger still dances in Bullseye’s eyes, but a different kind of hunger. The hitman’s mouth starts tracing a line of fire down his skin, lower and lower, and Daken finds himself obediently opening his thighs without meaning it. A bit of his self-preservation instinct comes back to him, then:
“I swear, your teeth do anything funny near my cock, I break your jaw.”
“Wouldn’t it grow back?” Bullseye asks, a gleam in his eyes.
“Would your head, were I to cut it off?”
“That’s a good point,” Bullseye easily concedes.
The new fangs oddly lend something whimsical to his little killer’s smile. Then, there’s a mouth on Daken's cock and the mutant kind of loses track. Just knows he wants it to stay where it is and his fingers bury themselves in Bullseye’ scalp in silent spurring to NOT STOP.
Riding the wave of pleasure, Daken laughs in his head. Bloodsucker. Cocksucker. Potayto. Potahto. Who would have thought?
Lester has never been this enthusiastic before. He could get used to that.
They play a complicated game of hide-the-sickness for the next few days. Hunger strikes the absurd little carny with no warning, at the oddest times. Daken finds himself ever watching him, sometimes dragging him away from unsuspecting H.AM.M.E.R. agents Bullseye starts to look at a bit too greedily when it happens, allowing him quickies to feed on him in stopped elevators, stairwells, between debriefings.
And still, Bullseye often comes for more at night. More blood, and more than blood. Vampiric hunger doesn’t care what people think. It’s freeing actually. And he hungers for Daken in every possible way.
It’s the glory of it.
Bullseye feeds, fucks and is generally a happy camper.
(Daken, less so. In a constant state of stressing his recuperating faculties, constantly walking on blood loss. Signs of his wearing out are starting to show. Still, he impossibly craves the little carny’s mouth and hands on him.)
And Bullseye can’t get enough of Daken’s drained body. These moments the mutants hovers between life and death before the healing factor kicks in. Under the spell of the vampire enzyme, the punk is oddly compliant in bed, and Bullseye can virtually do anything he wants with him. It’s a nice reversal. Even more so that he can be as brutal as he wants at times, and no one will ever see a trace on the punk. Even his interest for his job starts to wan in comparison. Defiling Daken in all the possible ways or pleasuring him to the point of making him beg for more could become his new religion…
This new brand of vampire is actually everywhere in town, these days. It’s becoming problematic. All heroes are on deck, even Osborn’s. There’s this guy called Blade that seems to have provided the community with kind of guidelines to deal with this particular specie. The Iron Patriot’s orders are clear. The race has to be eradicated entirely. Bullseye catches Daken’s I told you so look in the middle of the briefing.
It ups the stakes. The need for secrecy.
“We can reverse it,” Daken says that night while Bullseye’s fangs are buried in his thigh. “You haven’t killed anybody yet. Well, not for their blood, anyway. Which means all we have to do is find the biter that got you in the first place. Kill it. The enzyme in your blood disappears. Makes no scientific sense, if you ask me, but apparently the theory has been tested.”
Junior hisses when the fangs are wrenched from his flesh.
“Isn’t it dead already?” Bullseye asks in puzzlement, remembering their mission. But apparently Daken pains to focus, brain a bit hypoxic from constant blood loss.
“Who, dear?”
“Well, my biter.”
“Well, my blood is currently your everyday course, so I’d say no, dear.”
Bullseye plops on his back near the punk. The underlying meaning of this disturbs him greatly.
“I’m ashamed of us. We missed one.”
“Oh, so Vamp!Bullseye does miss, then?” Bullseye looks at him with overt horror in his eyes. "What?” Daken shrugs. “Logic says, he must have had turned you already, before he escaped. Maybe you have lost your gift when you transitioned?”
The mere idea is frankly disturbing, if not terrifying. He has to test it at once. He scrambles to grab one of his beloved cards in his discarded uniform on the floor of Daken’s room and throws it without thinking. He’s so relieved, when after a few ricochets, it neatly severs Daken’s jugular artery.
“Dammit, Lester,” Daken growls, but his hungry mouth is already on the punk’s wound, joyously making good use of the gushing hemorrhage. With a low moan Daken goes once again all lax in his arms.
“Do you remember how many they were?” Daken still continues, eyes closed. “It wouldn’t be surprising if a few of them had managed to sneak away in the melee. And if it had been killed by one other hero team, you’d have turn back to normal already as well.”
“Why would I want to reverse this,” Bullseye suddenly asks, angling Daken’s body to his liking to have his ways with it.
“Lester, dear,” the punk sighs. “You’re one of the worst villains alive. All the heroes hate your guts. The moment they learn you’re not entitled anymore with the sacrosanct provision of being a living human being whose life is still precious not matter what and all this crap, but are a literal monster? They’ll put you down. Monsters, they’re allowed to kill.”
“I can take them.” He might even enjoy this. He’s sure. He’s stronger, faster.
“Normie will fire you. Or terminate you. Or experiment on you. If this gets out.”
Which Normie had already done, Bullseye has to concede. He remembers the nanochains that had been implanted in him when he was a Thunderbolt. And that was when he was still a human that couldn’t be that easily disposed of legally.
“You won’t be the Great Bullseye, killer extraordinaire, anymore. You’ll be a dime a dozen vampire,” Daken goes on.
Bullseye huffs.
“Also, have you seen the camera feeds of our last mission, dear?” Daken grabs a tablet, shows him. He and the punk had been sent abroad to get rid of some terrorist cell or another. Even though Bullseye never took a drop of blood from his victims, he’d been a little bit carried away at that time, he remembers. But it seems even more damming on screen.
Yes, he accomplishes the mission, mauls his targets.
But there’s no art, no skill, no magic, just mindless animal rage. It’s not pretty to look at. He feels the first tendril of unease hit him at the sight. And still, the thing in his body, in his belly, craves for more. It’s trying to take over, just like psychosis once tried to take over his insane mind. This, it doesn’t sit well with Bullseye. He’s starting to get it. Daken’s voice eerily echoes his thoughts:
“You know, before seeing that, I would have been almost tempted to say, turning blood sucker has been good for your sanity. I’m not so sure, now…”
“I can see your point,” he allows at last.
But then, he turns the punk on his belly and fucks him from behind with an aggression that verges on punishment for opening his eyes. Daken screams, but blissed out of his mind on vampiric enzyms, also begs for more in utter submissiveness.
Bullseye thinks, he’s not the only one this infection is affecting…
They do it. They track the biter.
It’s actually easy. They hit a few bloodsuckers' nests and each time, the punk thoroughly explores the place. Daken is a literal bloodhound. Searches for the particular vampiric taint he can smell on Bullseye. One day, he catches the scent. And follows it to its source.
Bullseye wants to do this alone, so Daken is going to wait for him outside. It shocks Bullseye a bit, the way the punk kisses him before he goes in, a bit on the side desperate, trying to keep him near a little longer. It’s easy to respond in kind though, ravish him back.
“Go,” Daken growls at last, oddly averting his gaze. And he does.
It’s a bit anticlimactic, how easy it is, to dispatch the bloodsucker.
His minds clears almost instantly.
It makes Bullseye keenly understand the extent of his intoxication. How much not himself he was. Once he’s not under the influence anymore, it feels a bit like a dream, what happened in the last few weeks, and he finds himself a bit ashamed, he who is rarely self-conscious enough to know the sentiment, of the way he has fed on Daken, fucked Daken with abandon and joy. He can’t help his feeling of annoyance, when he goes out, at being confronted by the punk.
“Lester? Has it worked?” Daken quietly says. And when he simply, sullenly, stares: “You okay, little man?” the punk asks once again.
Junior’s hand instinctively raises itself to palm his face. Bullseye bats it away on reflex and snarls:
“What do you think you’re doing, Nancy-boy!”
Daken stills for a second, face devoid of emotion, shrugs, and simply walks out on him.
They make their separate ways to the tower.
They never get back to their previous statu quo of mean-spirited complicity and awkward covert fucking.
Bullseye feels out of sort for days.
He doesn’t see hide nor hair of the punk for the duration either.
Bullseye is left alone with his frustrated and unacknowledged needs…
One night, Bullseye can’t take it anymore. He spots Daken in a hallway (wouldn’t admit even to save his life that he kinda was laying in wait) and follows him to his rooms.
“Where have you been?” he asks the punk, putting his booted foot in the way before Daken can close his door.
“Oh, Lester!” Daken replies in this bright tone that annoys him to no end. Probably is designed to, by the way. “You, poor thing. Have I put a span in the work of your stalking habits?”
“Where were you,” Bullseye growls, his hand shooting to Daken’s throat, this time, pushing the punk against a wall. When the more accurate question would have been, why weren’t you where I can see you? But bizarrely, the punk seems to get it.
“Ho, excuse me if the disgust on your face any time you see me is a bit of a turn off, dear. I’ve never judged your urges, don’t you dare judge mine now that they don’t align with yours anymore… Or so you say to yourself.” Bitterness creeps in the words. Maybe some kind of hurt, too, but it’s the punk, so Bullseye wouldn’t be sure. That, Daken wouldn’t let it show.
There’s a tension to Daken’s body, the claws are seconds away to show, it’s obvious. And still, Bullseye gets closer, lets his scarred forehead fall on the punk’s shoulder.
Daken tenses at once at the contact, ready to retaliate any kind of aggression.
Good. The punk is right to be worried, Bullseye thinks with perverse satisfaction. And still, his lips brush skin. If feels weird, for a second, not to automatically feel the call of the blood. He can feel Daken’s sharp intake of breath. But he doesn’t want to see the punk’s face when the little freak will understand he has won.
“Hey,” he says in Daken’s neck. “Be my hunger. Make me feel it. Do your thing. Make me fuck you. I want to hurt you so much,” he adds too, for the sake of full disclosure. Because he hates Daken so much for making him feel like this. Making him feel, period.
And you always do, Daken bitterly thinks. Hurt me. But he can’t fault Lester for that, it’s in his nature, after all.
Still, the mutant misses the willingness of these hands on him, their intent, the uncomplicated drive that drew Lester to him in these days of blood and hunger, making him feel wanted like he only rarely has been.
And maybe Daken hates Bullseye, too, for making him feel like this. Making him feel, period.
There’s no use explaining, Daken thinks. That the little’s man desires are his own, that he hardly ever had to breath on these embers to get him going, even before. He can leave the little man with the illusion of plausible deniability. He knows. After all, Bullseye has come to him on his own, tonight. It has to be enough…
“Here, I’m making you want me, absurd little carny,” Daken says, but doesn’t release a ounce of pheromones in the air.
“I hate you,” Bullseye mutters again, even though something like need comes to light his pupils as he straightens up.
When Daken holds his hand out to Lester, the little man takes it (holding on too hard, making it hurt) and lets the punk lead him to the bed without a word.