FBI Agent Karl Mordo swore a blue streak as he slammed the door behind him, storming into the room behind the two way mirror. On the other side sat Doctor Stephen Strange, Professor of Neurology, genius, arrogant and humanitarian.
Sorcerer. The son-of-a-bitch Karl had spent the past three years of his life hunting. The psychopath who handcuffed his victims to chairs, who cut patterns into them and watched them bleed to death. Who took the lifeless bodies and crucified them, tying them with chains to any cross of metal he could find. The fucker responsible for fifty-three deaths just since Karl had become a part of the investigation.
Sorcerer, who had been fucking toying with Karl for all three of those years. The notes. The phone calls. And who he still hadn’t been able to catch.
But yesterday. Yesterday they’d had a breakthrough. Yesterday they’d found a warehouse. A warehouse with a bloodstain on the floor, a metal chair positioned in the center of it. A warehouse with knives and chains.
And photographs. Of Stephen Strange.
Who, despite all of this, despite the danger, despite all Karl’s best efforts to frighten him into seeing the reality of his situation, was refusing to be relocated and placed in Witness Security. Was refusing to even accept police protection.
Karl punched a wall. It didn’t help.
Fifty-three people. Fifty-three people on his watch. He wouldn’t let there be another. Not when there was finally something he could do, when he finally had a chance to save someone, he couldn’t.
His partner, Christine Palmer, entered, and Karl shot her a look.
“He’s still refusing,” she told him.
Karl began swearing again, pacing back and forth in the small space.
“Karl, if he doesn’t want protection, we can’t make him take it. He wants to leave, and we can’t hold him here…"
That was it. There. That was it.
“Yes we can,” he crowed triumphantly. “We can hold him here. If we arrest him, we absolutely can keep him here. Keep him in a secure building, surrounded by police officers, under surveillance…yes.”
“On what charges?”
“Find me something. We have 24 hours before we have to file formal charges, and I’m sure his lawyer will give us hell, but godammit, I’m not going to let Sorcerer have him without a fight.”
Karl poked his head into the interrogation room. “Get comfortable, Dr. Strange. You might be here awhile.”
He left before the Professor’s indignant sputtering could resolve itself into proper words.
Claire Frost the profiler for the Sorcerer case, should have been back from the warehouse by now. He needed to ask her about whatever she had found. He was on the way to her office when his phone rang.
Karl opened the phone without checking the caller ID. “Christine, tell me you have good news.”
“Release him, Mordo,” a familiar voice greeted him. But this was not how he was used to hearing it. Sorcerer was always calm, cool, collected. Always, always in control. Except not now. Now he sounded…beyond angry.
“Sorcerer,” Karl greeting him, gesturing frantically to get the attention of those around him. He did, eventually, and gestured to indicate that someone should put a trace on his phone.
“Stephen Strange is not a part of this, Mordo,” he growled. “Release him.”
“The photos we found in your warehouse suggest otherwise, Sorcerer.”
“For every hour he is kept from me, Mordo, I will kill. One person, every hour until he is released. Do you understand?”
Karl felt his blood run cold. This was not a bluff. Sorcerer didn’t bluff. “I don’t negotiate with serial killers,” Karl told him.
“This is not a negotiation. This is a promise, Mordo. If you can’t handle fifty-three deaths over the course of three years, how do you plan to cope with 24 in a day?”
“I will catch you,” Karl swore. “I will stop you before it gets to that.”
“You took Stephen into custody one hour and thirty-seven minutes ago, Mordo. All you will do is find the body I owe you.”
-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-
It had been twenty-three hours, and Kaecilius had never been so angry in his life. Not when the police found one of Kaecilius’s bodies. He has never felt like this before. If he had anything to say about it, he would never feel like this again.
Normally, he didn’t talk to them. His silence unnerved them, made them more afraid. Making them scared, drawing that fear out…watching them break down while he retained perfect control, perfect impassivity…that was what it was about. It was about the thrill, the control, the sharp tang of blood and the small whimpering cries and the metal he loved slick with blood.
Not today. There was nothing controlled here. This was pure, unadulterated rage. His careful, calculated cuts were gone. His stoic silence was gone.
“You,” he snarled at Palmer, “were trying to take him from me. Trying to keep him from me.”
He slashed his knife across her chest, deep and angry, and smiled in vicious, brutal satisfaction as the blood arced through the air, splashing against his already stained shirt, still warm.
“He isn’t supposed to be a part of this,” he told her, gripping her face in his slippery hands and wrenching it towards him when she tried to look away. “None of this was ever supposed to even touch him. But then you and fucking Mordo tried to put him into fucking Witness Security and now he knows.”
When he stabbed the knife into her stomach, he twisted, and the noise she made brought a smile to his face even as it made the fire in his chest burn all the brighter.
“Stephen is mine. He is mine, and I would let him leave if he asked.”
Kaecilius was slightly startled to discover that the words were true. He shook his head, refocusing on the task at hand. The knowledge only made what they had done that much worse, only made him angrier.
“But he didn’t ask. You tried to take him from me. You took what is mine, and now you’re keeping it from me, and I will bleed you dry for it. You and everyone else. I would burn the fucking world to the fucking ground to get him back. If you think one little police station is going to stop me, then you are very much mistaken.”
He glanced at his watch and shook his head in disappointment.
“Your hour is up, Agent Palmer. I certainly hope your partner changes his mind before too much longer.”
He slit her throat with one swift cut, perfected this far into the game.
Only it wasn’t a game. It was Stephen. Stephen with his too blue eyes and red lips and his soft, pale skin. Stephen, with his bright smile and his infectious laugh. Stephen, who made Kaecilius feel the way so few things could. Stephen, who’s happiness had become Kaecilius’s highest priority. Stephen, who was the most important to Kaecilius, even more important than himself.
Stephen, who the police had kept for him for twenty-four hours now. Stephen, who the police had attempted to keep from him forever.
He would give Mordo six more hours. Six more hours, and then he would tear apart the police station piece by piece to get to Stephen.
-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-
Stephen called Kaecilius the second Agent Mordo told him he was free to go. Twenty-seven hours, according to his watch. Twenty-seven deaths, according to the news regarding Sorcerer’s killing spree, Agent MacTaggert among them.
Kaecilius picked up on the first ring.
“Stephen,” Kaecilius exhaled, and his voice was like nothing Stephen had heard before. He could practically hear the violence seeping out.
“They’ve let me go. They couldn’t find anything to charge me with, and they couldn’t hold me any longer, so they let me go.”
Silence on the other end. “Are you coming home?” Kaecilius asked at last, and it was the kind of emotionless that could only hide the exact opposite.
Stephen didn’t understand it, until suddenly he did. The only time they had spoken in over a day when Stephen had called to let him know what was going on. He had had enough time to tell him why he had been brought in and that the police were trying to find a reason to arrest him because he was refusing to enter witness protection, and that was all he had managed to say before Kaecilius had disconnected.
Kaecilius knew Stephen was intelligent. He had to know he’d put the pieces together. He just didn’t know what Stephen was going to do with them.
Stephen had had a lot of time to think about that particular decision himself, and he thought he knew his answer. But he needed one last conversation with Kaecilius before he could be sure.
“Yes,” he told his anxious lover, and noise of relief on the other end was doing something dangerous inside his chest. “Agent Mordo has insisted upon giving me a lift, but yes.”
“Considerate of him, to save me the trip,” Kaecilius said, and while his words could easily be taken as something innocent, Kaecilius’s voice was emotionless again, a different kind then when he had asked if Stephen was returning to their shared house, and it sent shivers down Stephen’ spine.
“You’ll meet us there?” he asked.
“I should arrive shortly after you do.”
“We’ll talk then.”
Silence.
“Yes. We’ll talk then.” A long pause. “Goodbye, Stephen."
It sounded final.
Agent Mordo waited on the couch once they’d arrived at the house. Judging by the look in his eyes, he knew exactly what was coming, and had chosen not to run. Or perhaps not to fight it. Stephen’ wasn’t sure.
The back door opened with a creek and was shut quietly before familiar footsteps made their way closer and closer to where Stephen stood.
Kaecilius’s jeans were dark enough that they looked as if they might have been unscathed, but the wife-beater that might once have been grey under the multitude of red and rust-colored stains was a different story entirely. It left his muscular arms bare, and it was impossible for Stephen not to stare at the drops of blood drying on his shoulders, the same liquid coated his forearms and hands, the glistening knife held loosely in his fingers.
He crossed to the couch and quickly knocked Agent Mordo over the head with the hilt of the knife, putting him out like a light, before fastening a pair of handcuffs around the man’s wrists.
He could have cleaned up, Stephen acknowledged to himself as Kaecilius straightened. He had chosen not to. Kaecilius was showing Stephen, was giving him irrefutable proof. Kaecilius was giving Stephen the truth, was giving him the chance to make a fully informed decision.
Kaecilius, who had been staring at the floor, finally raised his eyes to meet Stephen’ own. He crossed the room in three long yet unsteady strides, letting the knife fall from his grasp onto the carpet. He raised a hand to Stephen’ face, slowly, cautiously, giving Stephen’ plenty of time to pull away.
Stephen remained perfectly still, afraid that if he made the smallest move Kaecilius would spook, run away and never look back.
The palm against his cheek and the thumb that ran along his cheekbone were gentle, almost unbearably slow.
“I…I thought I’d lost you,” Kaecilius said at last, voice hoarse with emotion.
Stephen chose his word carefully. “The police brought me in because they found evidence that Sorcerer was obsessed with me.”
Kaecilius swallowed, a pained expression on his face. “He is,” Kaecilius whispered. “Obsessed. Ever since you crossed his path…he’s been like a man possessed. He can’t think about anything else. Even the need to kill, the thrill filling that need brings…nothing can hold a candle to what you do to him.”
Kaecilius closed his eyes, a guilty man awaiting sentencing.
“Obsessed is one word for what he is, yes. But I don’t think it’s the most accurate.”
“Oh?” Kaecilius asked, opening his eyes, full of despair.
“I think you love me.”
That despair was slowly turning to hope. “Yes.”
“You won’t hurt me.” It was a statement of fact.
“I would take my own life first,” Kaecilius told him, voice so painfully honest that Stephen’ chest ached.
“If I had wanted to leave today, would you have let me?”
A long pause while Kaecilus visibly struggled with how to say what he wanted to say. “Not like that, no. I would…I wouldn’t keep you, if you didn’t want to stay. I wouldn’t make you stay, even if I wanted to. I would let you leave…but I don’t think I could let you go.”
It was a subtle distinction, but it was enough. Stephen wrapped his arms around the serial killer’s waist and tugged him close, one hand woven through his hair, the other under his shirt and resting along his spine before he kissed him.
Kaecilius kissed like a man whose world was crashing down around his ears and Stephen was the only one who could make it stop. It was possessive, it was desperate, it was deep and needy and oh-so-perfect.
“Why?” Stephen asked when they pulled apart for breath, now coated in blood himself. “Why do you do it? Is it the control? The thrill? Is it sexual? I know the metal is important but…how does it work, Kaecilius?”
“I would give you anything, Stephen. Anything. But I…please don’t ask me to stop. I don’t think I can stop.”
“I’m not asking you to stop,” Stephen corrected him, resting his head against Kaecilius’s chest, letting the other man wrap his arms around him even tighter. “I’m asking you to let me help. Not literally!” He corrected quickly as he felt Kaecilius freeze under him. “Not with…the…not with it. I want…I want to do what I can to help you control it. I don’t want to lose you.”
“You won’t,” Kaecilius swore. “I won’t let anything or anyone take you from me. Not again. It was…Stephen, I never want to feel like that again.”
“If they catch you…”
“They won’t.”
“If they catch you,” Stephen said again, “I will. You will. You’ve been very good so far. But there’s no need to put yourself at more risk than is necessary. So let me help you.”
“Alright,” Kaecilius mumbled into his hair, pressing a kiss to his temple. “I told you. I’ll give you anything. I’d do anything to keep you.”
“From now on, you tell me. When you feel like you need to…when you get the urge to…to kill, you tell me. Are their criteria for the victims?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll pick.”
“Fine.”
“Alright. We’ll…we’ll work this out later. For now, I need a shower. And you…Mordo is still on the couch. You need to…”
“Yes.”
Stephen took a shaky breath. He could do this. He could. He loved Kaecilius.
“Fine. But…only as long as it takes me to shower. Because I’m going to need your help shaving.”
Kaecilius stiffened. “What.”
“My father’s old straight razor. I want you to shave me with it. And then, I want you to take me to bed and handcuff me to the headboard and fuck me until I forget that this day ever happened.”
Kaecilius pulled back, searching Stephen’ face. Whatever he was looking for, he must have found it, because his breathing became unsteady, eyes dark with lust. “Stephen, I don’t…”
“I trust you,” Stephen told him, leaning up for one more kiss. “Now, go do what you need to do and hurry back.”
“I don’t…how could you…”
“I love you,” Stephen answered simply. “I love you, and everything else is details.”
Kaecilius kissed him, long and deep. “You are the only person who matters,” he said when he pulled away.
Kaecilius grabbed Mordo and tossed him over his shoulder, walking out of the house with determined look and half a smile. Stephen watched him until he had left the house before heading upstairs. He hadn’t showered in ages, and he needed to get off everything that Kaecilius had transferred onto him.
He turned the tap with his bloodstained hands and let the water wash everything away.