Forbidden (BoyxBoy)

Chapter XIII: Human

Alaric.

I pushed my food around my plate, my appetite unusually absent. Cooking had been a welcome distraction from Jason and the jittery nerves I felt thinking about our plans for Friday night. But with the excitement came a slow, building dread.

I had a growing, deeply rooted feeling that things were inevitably going to end badly. I knew that, even if I tried to distance myself from him, our fates were tumbling toward each other. It was as though we were attached by an invisible thread, and each time we saw each other, that thread got shorter and shorter. 

"- and then I told her that she can go to hell, because I'm not paying two hundred dollars for two weeks of blood. I mean, who does she think she is?" Kathleen ranted, twirling spaghetti on her fork and shoving it in her mouth aggressively. Today she had been out of town, trying to purchase blood from a dealer recommended by our friends in the Coven. 

Dealers in supernatural goods were almost always Fae, and considering vampires were their biggest customers, the two people groups had become allies over time. They were tricky and shameless creatures, vampires the only ones able to charm their way into the Fae's favour. On principal, witches had nothing to do with the fae, and so in order to maintain the peace, vampires had absconded witches from their circles alongside their werewolf allies. The supernatural world was a fickle and complex place, filled with unspoken rules that ensured all hell did not break loose. 

"That is overpriced." I commented half-heartedly, trying to appease her temper. Today Kathleen wore an violet cowl-neck knit, exposing her décollatage and making her pale skin look more severe than normal. Purple-blue bags rimmed her eyes, micking the colour of her sweater, a clear sign that she needed blood. 

"I swear, if the Coven hadn't recommended her, I would've ripped her apart." She sneered. Vampire's were solitary creatures, choosing to live and travel alone, but we were all connected to smaller groups of vampires created by the same Heir. Kathleen and I belonged to a small coven of about six vampires created by a vampire named Eve. She, like Kathleen, was biblically old. Eve was a hands-off kind of Heir, choosing instead to elect our sibling, Danté as acting coven leader.

"I'm sure you would have." I replied, twirling spaghetti around my fork and eating a small mouthful. Kathleen looked at me disapprovingly. 

"What? No, 'no Kathleen, our alliance with the fae is delicate', or 'upsetting them may mean we can't get supply, and we'll have to actually hunt to survive'?" She asked, mocking me by deepening her voice and pointing her finger at me dramatically. I huffed a laugh, shaking my head.

"I've told you that a million times, Kathleen." I excused. She shook her head, not satisfied. 

"Exactly, what's stopping you from telling me again?" She challenged me, folding her arms over her chest. I paused, looking at her inky eyes in thought. They were brilliantly shiny, shimmering like a lake in the darkness of night. 

A vampire's eyes had an unusual, otherworldly quality to them that was hard to pinpoint until you saw a group of them together, and noticed how each and every one of them had the same little something there. I wondered if Jason had noticed my eyes, which in my vampire lifetime had lightened to a blue so pale they reminded me of glaciers. 

"I have a lot on my mind right now, I'm sorry." I apologised, pushing my plate away to signal that I was finished eating. Kathleen impatiently took my plate and began finishing the leftovers, overcompensating her blood-hunger with mortal food. That remedy would only last another few days or so. 

"Does it have something to do with Jason?" She probed, a cheshire-cat smile on her face. I looked at her flatly, which was enough of an answer for her to wiggle her eyebrows at me suggestively.

"You haven't had a mortal in what, seventy years?" She said, squinting slightly as she counted back in time. I didn't want to talk about this, not even with my best friend for centuries.

"I don't 'have' people, Kathleen." I snapped, standing up from the table and marching to the kitchen. I took a crystal tumbler from the glassware cabinet, and poured myself a few fingers of bourbon. Kathleen remained seated at the dining table, her eyes following me warily as I sat, disgruntled, in my armchair. 

"You're doing that thing were you push me away, which means you're afraid." She said quietly. I sighed, leaning my head on my hand and taking a long sip of the rich, bitter liquid. Hard liquor and I didn't get along, but right now I needed the kick. I hadn't been able to articulate it before, but she was right. I was afraid. 

I was afraid because I was getting worked up about something that was never going to happen. Afraid, because deep down, I hoped that it would. Afraid, because getting close to someone inevitably meant losing them forever. Afraid, because I didn't trust myself around him, and because he might not realise how I felt. 

I was afraid for him because I was a monster, a predator, a good man in the skin of an unstoppable creature. The thought of that made me feel sick to my stomach.

I pressed my eyes closed and sat there, breathing steadily to avoid falling to pieces. I heard Kathleen stand, her feet pattering on the wooden floors as she walked over to me. The next minute, she had one hand on my shoulder, and the other was smoothing my hair affectionately. 

"I get that you don't want to talk about it," She whispered. I nodded my head in agreement. "But don't push me away, because it makes it difficult to be there for you." 

"I'm sorry." I breathed. I opened my eyes, my hands trembling ever to slightly.

"I know." She breathed in reply.  

Kathleen released her grip on me and sped back to the table, collecting the empty dishes and taking them to the kitchen. I sat there looking out the apartment window, and thinking about the fact that out there in the darkness, Jason might be doing the same thing. 

As I sat there, thinking about him, a single word raced through my head over and over, taunting me.

Monster. Monster. Monster. 

That was what I was, and he could never know that. Telling him would mean exposing a human to the complicated, violent, ugly life of a supernatural. Letting him near me would mean letting him near the heartbreaking, painful, incomprehensible truth of an immortal. I couldn't do that to him, I just couldn't.

But you're going to, a hopeless voice inside my head whispered. 

The thread tying us together pulled taught, and threatened to shorten once again. And I knew that I had made a mistake, inviting him here again. It had completely magnetised my body and soul, and now I felt like a part of me was being dragged across the universe. Jason kept that small, confused pound of my flesh with him, and now the only way to feel whole again was be with him. 

I cursed the part of me that was a monster, and I cursed the part of me that was still human.