His Stoic Mask, Her Bleeding Heart

Chapter 12: A Tense Situation

"Hey, Elyria," I began hesitantly, closing the front door of the apartment quietly behind myself. Kyrianna and Elyria both paused in their trek toward the living room to look back at me. "Can we talk?" I glanced pointedly at Kyrianna and added, "Alone?"

Kyrianna sighed. "I'll go take a shower," she said, and threw Elyria a halfhearted smile before making her way to the bathroom. Neither of us spoke until the soft thud of the door shutting filtered down to us from the hallway.

"What is it, Eli?" Elyria asked, flopping lazily onto the couch. She began to scratch at the drying blood on her neck, as she'd done several times in the car on the way home, and I wondered if she should've been the one showering instead.

I opened my mouth to speak, but paused. What was I going to say to her? "Have you noticed that you're out of your mind?" Yeah, that would go over well.

With a sigh, I sat at the end of the couch nearest her feet, my eyes focused on the glass-topped table as I thought. "Do you know what happened to you?" I decided after a moment. It was an innocent enough question, not as judgmental and cruel as the hundreds of other things I could've said.

"You mean, do I realize that I started to change again?" she asked, and the bluntness of the statement brought my eyes to hers. She shrugged at the surprise in them. "I didn't realize it at first, but the more I analyzed it, the more I knew what it was. It felt just like before, the first time I..." Her voice trailed off, and her eyes drifted to the black screen of the television, haunted by something she would never describe.

"But you stopped it this time," I told her gently, attempting to assuage the heavy emotion in her face. "You defeated the monster."

Her eyes met mine, empty and cold. "But what if I'm not so lucky next time? What if I completely lose myself again?"

"It wasn't luck that saved you today," I said with a slow shake of my head. "It was your own strength."

"How do you know that?" she snapped, glowing eyes narrowed in a glare I wasn't sure I deserved. "You weren't there. You didn't see what happened."

"I don't need to see it," I told her just as calmly as before. "I already know how monsters work."

She fell silent, then, turning her attention back to the imageless TV. She leveled the same glare on the television that she'd had trained on me a moment earlier, and I didn't quite think it deserved it, either.

"You know that I didn't mean to hurt you with what I did, right?" I said softly after a moment, my eyes never leaving her face. "It...What I did with Bethany was a moment of weakness, nothing more."

"For some reason, I don't think you're telling me the truth." She wouldn't look at me, wouldn't shake her glare, but at least her tone had become more even. "Obviously, you feel something for her. I don't think it was the reason for the sex, but you can't honestly tell me that it didn't factor in at all."

"I don't feel anything for her, Elyria," I nearly growled, aggravated by the know-it-all way she'd said such a thing, like she knew everything I felt and the reasons for everything I did. "I told you, it was just a moment of weakness. I just wanted her blood."

She rose to her feet with a sigh. "Look, Eli, I don't want to argue about this. I'm too tired to care anymore." She walked around the couch and started down the hall, and I sighed.

"Where are you going?"

"Bed," she answered over her shoulder. "Wake me up when it's time to meet Hale and Matthias." She disappeared into the hallway, and I soon heard the door click shut.

Alone now, I lay down on the couch and shut my eyes. After everything that had happened over the course of the morning, I figured I could definitely use some sleep, too.