Forbidden (BoyxBoy)

Chapter IX: No One

Alaric.

Like I'd promised, I was home in time to cook Kathleen and I dinner. When I emerged from my bedroom, the florentine sun only a long-ago memory on my skin, she was sitting on the couch watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Gatsby, my plump tabby cat with yellow eyes, was curled up on my armchair. 

"Feeling better?" She asked, turning her head and flashing me a comforting smile. She had been right, going back and spending a few hours with Maria had put me in a good mood. 

"Yes, thank you." I replied, heading straight for the kitchen. "Florence has put me in the mood for figs and cheese, does that sound good to you?" 

"Figs are the fruit of the gods. And seeing as I'm practically a goddess, you know my answer is yes." She answered dramatically, throwing her head back and pretending to feed herself an invisible bunch of grapes. I laughed, knowing full well that in her lifetime Kathleen had indeed been fed grapes by servants. 

Kathleen had been alive during the roman empire. Knowing that, one could clearly imagine her in an elegantly draped toga, her white hair weaved into complex braids, and her unsettling black eyes enticing Roman soldiers. Now she simply looked like an edgy, misunderstood millennial with a taste for crystal jewelry. 

I laughed at her response, feeling my spirits lift. Heading for the fridge, I pulled out some brie cheese and a few figs. I put the brie in a small clay pot with some white wine, garlic and thyme and put it in the oven. Slicing the figs into quarters, I drizzled them with honey and put them in the oven too, along with some slices of baguette. Kathleen had paused Buffy and moved to the kitchen counter to watch me, her head leaning against her palm and her eyes following my every move. 

"Why were you in Florence that year, Alaric?" She asked me out of the blue. I looked up from where I was emptying a packet of walnuts into a small serving bowl. Her dark eyes were searching my face, looking for answers. I was a little surprised, Kathleen and I didn't really talk about the past unless it was to reminisce about wild parties or times we had spent together with other vampires in our coven. 

Before I answered, I took two wine glasses from the cupboard and pulled a bottle of merlot from the winerack beside the fridge. I poured us each a glass of the smoke-and-molasses liquid. Kathleen took hers and sipped at it gently. 

"Before I came to Florence, I was living in Venice for a few years. I joined the venetian military, and there I met a young man. His name was Sandro." I explained. I remembered fondly his olive skin, and the way his coarse hair curled at the nape of his neck. Looking back, I hadn't loved Sandro, but as two young men fighting a war away from their homes, we had connected. Kathleen connected the dots, smiling at me knowingly. 

In her time, homosexuality was relatively normal amongst Roman society, and so she had been with men and women alike. By the time I was born, in 1143, Christianity dominated Europe. In my mortal life, I had never married, and never had sex with a woman. In my afterlife, I had, but had soon realised it wasn't what I wanted or needed. Kathleen had been instrumental in helping me come to terms with that. 

"Sandro," She repeated in an Italian accent. She was, of course, fluent in most languages. So was I. "That's hot. So, what happened?" 

"We defeated many threatening militia, and at the end of it all, he went back to his fiancée and I went back to an empty home in Venice." I explained with a shrug. At the time, it was lonely, but thinking back now it wasn't painful. Not like Maria. Sandro's portrait did not live in my rosewood box, and neither did one of his trinkets. 

"So I decided I needed a change of scenery. I packed up, and journeyed to Florence with a group of artists who were on their way to study there with one of the greats. The next thing I knew, I was standing in the Medici Piazza, and you were emerging from the building beside Cosimo de' Medici's wife." I laughed at the memory, not having planned to meet that year, but running into each other in one of the busiest cities of Europe of the era. Upon hearing her entrance into the story, Kathleen's face erupted into a guilty grin.