by A. F. Henley
"Not in the least," Matthew said. "You two sound like you've been through enough. Do you want to talk about it? Can I help?"
Lyle spat a laugh. "Help? You want to help? Well, let's see. Do you know what it's like to have a psychic for a boyfriend? To have him give you that 'I know everything's going to be okay' smile every fucking time something comes along that he should get wound up about? If for no other reason than I just might like the idea that he's concerned? Or to have him give you that 'this is a bad idea, don't do it' glare when for just once you'd like to make up your own mind?" Lyle gave Matthew a cold smile. "I didn't think so. So, no, you can't help."
For a second, Matthew had to hide his grin. Lyle was right; Matthew hadn't experienced any of that. But wasn't it really just the same old story with a different title? Matthew's parents had been together for longer than most couples in their fine country and if anyone took the time to ask, his mother would have happily told them the reason why. Communication. With sane, respectful, sincere communication (sans any form of expletive—"Because that," she would say, "not only means you lack creativity but that you don't care if your tongue is spitting acid into the face of the person you're talking to"), a person could overcome any disagreement. Wars, she said, would cease to exist if both parties were willing to communicate sincerely.
"Have you talked to him about it?" Matthew asked.
Lyle crossed his arms. His voice dropped in volume but rose to a level of sarcasm that Matthew was more than sure was usually saved for dealing with his younger siblings. "You're asking if I've ever discussed my feelings with my psychic boyfriend? And why would I do that? To have him turn around and laugh at me? Tell me that everything's going to work out fine and I shouldn't worry about little things like that?"
"Knowing the outcome of something doesn't mean that he has any idea that you find it aggravating," Matthew said calmly. "He's not a vampire. He can't read your thoughts. And let me tell you something, I do know that's annoying as all whatnot, and yes, I did communicate that to Tall, Dark, and Toothy regardless of the fact that he would have been able to pick the idea out of my head. Sometimes hearing something..." he tapped his forehead, "and actually hearing it," he touched his lips, "are two totally different things. Inflection, tone, and expression can mean a world of difference—which you know yourself, if you've ever misread the tone of an email."
Lyle's lips pinched into a thin line which could have meant 'mind your own business' but could also just as easily have meant 'I never even thought of that.' "Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?"
Matthew shook his head. "I'm scared," he said simply. "I don't know if I can trust Gavin and I wanted to hear your opinion on that before I go back into that house and tell him to prove himself."
"My opinion?" Lyle's eyes widened. "You don't want to hear my opinion. At this point, I couldn't care less if we go back in that house and pin him through with a stake. Not having to worry about a vampire being this close to us… I'll deal with the repercussions later. This is a conversation you should have with my father. Or hell, ask Rafe, for that matter. If you get lucky, by morning he'll be able to tell you how the rest of your damn life is going to play out."
"You're angry."
Lyle shook his head but the gesture didn't carry to his words. "You're damn right I'm angry. I'm stressed the fuck out." He cast a quick glance at Matthew. "Sorry for the language, as that seems to be a pet peeve of yours, but it's the truth. And I'm tired. Worried." He suddenly threw both arms up and stepped back. "And why the fuck am I talking about any of this to you?"
Matthew gave Lyle a warm grin and what he hoped was a patient look. "I'm a doctor. It's my thing to make people feel comfortable enough to talk."
There was a moment of silence while Lyle considered him. "Then why in the hell are you here doing this? Why aren't you coaxing babies out of women's crotches or telling old men what vitamins they should take to keep them pissing regularly?" Lyle glared, but with a look behind his eyes that was more confusion than anything else. "Why aren't you doing something helpful for people?"
"Genetic research does help," Matthew said quietly. "If you think about the things we've learned about the human body—"
"But you're not researching, are you? You're spying for some dumbass company that believes they're the kings of the uncommon world. Why would you even do that?"
Matthew chuckled, but it was a dry, empty sound. "Quite simply, because the idea of you fascinated me."
And there was that word again.
Matthew shrugged. "Be honest, Lyle. You know what that's like, don't you? You were there—where I am now, I mean. Back in D.C., you were standing right here doing and feeling what I am. You can't tell me that your vampire didn't fascinate the pants off you because you've admitted that he did. Literally, I bet."
"And it almost got me killed," Lyle said. "Tell you what, Doc. You said you wanted my opinion, so I'll give you this much: be careful. Gavin's sexy, he's charming, but that's their thing. I don't know if it's their confidence or lifespan or what, but—"
"He did it to himself, you know." Why Matthew felt like Lyle should know that, he couldn't say. Maybe he just wanted to share the news. It had, after all, been circling in his head since he'd found out. "He wasn't attacked or anything. Gavin and the GDBCG took a needle and put that virus in his blood. It was completely consensual."
He cocked an eyebrow at Lyle's deadpan expression. "What do you think of that?"
Lyle nodded, as though Matthew had confirmed something he'd known all along. "I think he's nuts." He waved a hand at the sky. "I think I wouldn't give this up for all the charm in the world."
"You and me both, buddy," Matthew agreed.
"Then you should think about that." Lyle's gaze was still on the sky. "About what you'd be giving up. About what he's going to expect you to give up and I don't just mean the sunlight. What about your family? Your career? Have you thought about what's it going to be like to grow old beside a man that won't? To maybe even watch him fall in love with someone new while you're getting fitted for a pine box?"
Matthew chuckled. "Someone new, hmm? You've misunderstood what we are, who we are. He's not in love with me and I'm not in love with him—"
"You've slept together." Lyle smiled when Matthew shot him a look of surprise. "Rafe told us this morning. He saw you living like husbands. For some time, in fact."
And wasn't that a ridiculous conjuring, Matthew thought. Sleeping together once did not a husband make. Even if they had been playing the roles for the GDBCG. "That may be, but Rafe also said that not everything he sees in his dreams is the truth."
Lyle nodded down the road at Rafe. "I should go. Dad's going to want to talk." He stuck his hands in his jacket pocket and shrugged. "But I'll be back. We could talk some more. Maybe you can find out what exactly Gavin knows and get a feel for what sounds like truth and what sounds like the warped fantasies of a twisted mind. They do get them, you should understand." He tapped his forehead. "Bats in the belfry and what not. It could very well be that what he thinks he knows is nothing but a convoluted misrepresentation of what's really going down. Trust me, I've heard a number of speeches that were all kinds of fucked up conclusions."
He sighed, started to walk, and then stopped. "But who the hell knows? Maybe Arius isn't completely crazy. Maybe it is time to evolve and leave humankind behind. I mean, if what Gavin is saying about the GDBCG trying to fuck us over is true, then mankind doesn't deserve to live." He looked over his shoulder. "Nothing personal, of course."
Matthew shook his head. "Lyle, if I find out that the GDBCG is trying to eradicate you and your kind, I will agree with you completely. I will take up my virtual sword and stand right beside you; I will fight just as hard as you would to save your race and any other that might be threatened. The days are gone when we step aside and let officials tell us what is right and what is wrong. That's a lesson we should have all learned back in '45. And I mean that. Regardless of the fact that I'm one of the cur
sed humankind."
Before Lyle turned away, a small smile had crimped his face. Matthew thought that it was painfully cute on him. "Excellent. A wolf like me can never have too many flutterflies around."
Matthew frowned. "Flutterflies?"
Lyle didn't answer. He just lifted his hand in a wave and continued walking.
*~*~*
"Please don't."
Gavin's voice stilled Matthew's hand as he reached for the light switch in the kitchen. "Oh. You're still awake."
Matthew's deduction went ignored, and Matthew had to admit that as he wasn't getting teased for making it in the first place, that was all right. It didn't take a researcher working on a postdoctoral fellowship to come up with such a groundbreaking conclusion.
"It never really worked right, you know," Gavin said. His voice was low and deep. Tired, probably, though whether from lack of sleep or from life in general was anybody's guess. "I'm oversensitive to light. I think I might have said it already, but most vampires aren't like this. Not to this degree. Sure, sunlight, direct sunlight, but not the rest of it. Did you know that candlelight is the only light that doesn't need a filter? Even those," he pointed at the strip lights under the cupboards that offered no more than a soft glow to the areas below them. "Even those make my eyes hurt if I'm around them for too long. Did you know that? And it's getting worse. Fire and candlelight are the only ones I can take for any length of time these days. Some days I truly do feel like a bat. Or some kind of subterranean creature lurking in a cave."
Matthew leaned against the doorframe and tucked his hands underneath his arms, refusing the urge to flick the switch of the strip lights off for Gavin's benefit. If Gavin hadn't done it yet, then why should he? "Why are you telling me this?"
Gavin continued speaking, ignoring Matthew's question. "Of course, we have noted that photosensitivity varies in severity from vampire to vampire, which I think I also told you, but in all the cases that we witnessed, not one of them had such a dire response to plain old electric light, and even with sunlight, they don't succumb as quickly as I do." He ticked his chin to the right and for a second he said nothing. Then: "We tried it out, you know. The sunlight. UV lights. Fire. I gave them permission to try every damn thing they wanted and I suffered through all of them."
"For science," Matthew's tone was sharp and unimpressed. He held one hand to his heart in feigned awe. "How terribly brave of you. Again, why—"
"But not the science you might think, Doctor Do-Good." Gavin shook his head and smiled around a frown. "The idea of knowing what someone else is thinking at any given time is such a foreign concept to man. The thing is, I had my own fascination issues in the beginning. Mine was to hear—to experience—the mind of man. That's not what I had... well, let's say 'signed up for,' but it was what caught me. What held me to my convictions. What really goes on in the mind of man? What do they think when they're left to their own private thoughts?
"In those first months of testing, I learned more about the filth that men harbor in their psyches than I would have ever believed existed. Some men are fascinated by pain. The giving of pain. The taking of it. Some by terror. Some by power. But I was fascinated by learning about it. By gathering the knowledge of how deep and dark a man can be." He turned his smile on Matthew and his face seemed to brighten. "In the long run, I would have preferred your particular brand of fascination, I think. Back then, though..."
Matthew shoved himself away from the wall and walked to the coffee machine. He didn't really want another one; his mouth was dry and his tongue tasted like he'd been sucking on a rusty pipe. His stomach fluttered with reminders that he hadn't eaten since lunchtime the day before, but he knew without trying that his throat would close up tight if he made any attempt to fix that issue. He'd never been a good eater when he was under stress, and more than once during his years at college he'd shown up at his mother's doorstep only to listen to her cluck and coo over the fact that he was too skinny. It was an excellent diet plan that had gone the way of the dodo bird once he'd finally got himself settled at the GDBCG. It was, however, probably back from the dead, at least until this fiasco—whatever this fiasco ended up being—played itself out.
"Have some toast," Gavin said, rising. "Never mind the coffee. It'll just upset your stomach more than it already is."
Instantly, Matthew's lip began to twitch. "I asked you to stay out of my head."
"Then don't think so loudly." The grin that accompanied Gavin's statement was sincere enough—a just-doing-what-I-do-so-sorry kind of grin. It fell from his lips when Matthew merely stared back blankly.
"I'm trying to make you understand that I know what I know and I'm not making it up or embellishing it into whatever it is young Mister O'Connell believes I might be. Just like I know what your stomach is doing because you're thinking of it." He pointed toward the front of the house. "Like I know the two of you were out there talking about sunlight. Like I know that Abe's hands were shaking but it was more excitement than fear, and that the other half-witted wolfman they showed up with had a rash that was driving him crazy. Like I know that fucking Vaughn and fucking Randy laid in bed and held each other like schoolkids before they showed up here this morning because they were both fucking terrified."
Matthew lifted an eyebrow, even though a voice in his head told him he should be trying to soothe Gavin's escalating temper. "And out of all of that, it was the sunlight conversation you chose to broach?"
Gavin dropped back into the kitchen chair. The legs of it squawked in surprise. "Perhaps that was the one that bothered me the most," he murmured.
Or perhaps it was the fact that I was thinking about how cute Lyle's smile was at the same time? Matthew thought.
A twitch danced over Gavin's brow but he didn't let on that he'd caught Matthew's snark.
Matthew sat across the table from him. "Let's say all that's true." Matthew held up a hand when Gavin's expression darkened. "Then tell me—why did you need to hear Rafe's story at all? Why not just reach into Rafe's head and tell me later?"
"First of all," Gavin snapped, "you asked Rafe for that story, not me. I wasn't about to supersede your demand. I'm not your master and I don't want any of them thinking that I am. Besides, I wanted to get it from Rafe himself, not a recollection from one of the others." He paused, looked away as if embarrassed. "And Rafe's mind is closed to me for some reason. Short of sniffing his breath, I wouldn't be able tell what he'd had for breakfast."
"Interesting," Matthew mumbled. It was, too. Not just the idea that Rafe's mind couldn't be read, but that Gavin admitted it. It made the rest of the concept seem truthful. Why admit a failure if it wasn't?
Matthew huffed a long sigh and caught Gavin's gaze. "Okay, vampire. Convince me. Tell me how a group of men think they can eradicate a species that can be barely found, let alone contained. Tell me how they're planning to get close enough to a whole lot of killers in order to infect them, or shoot them, or..." He waved his hand. "Whatever the hell they hope to do."
"It's not their blood that the GDBCG has to infect, doctor." He began to drum his fingertips on the table in a light, consistent tap, tap, tap, clunk... tap, tap, tap, clunk. Baby finger, ring ringer, middle finger, then all four fingers at once. It sounded oddly like the rhythm of a heartbeat. "Why get close when they don't have to?"
Matthew circled his hand in the air. "More. And stop trying to be dramatic. Just tell me what you know."
"Let's say we find a virus—"
"Are we saying we might find one or have we actually found one?" Matthew snapped. "Pretending is fantasy. Truth is truth. It is one or the other and right now I need truth."
The eye roll and the sigh that Gavin gave him was almost comical. If, and only if, Matthew had any room left for comedy. Which he didn't. He circled his hand yet again. Go on. Continue.
"You are so impatient," Gavin growled. "Let me tell my story and then you can talk!" He sat back in his chair and crossed his hands over his chest. "Let's say we find a virus. A
deadly, crippling virus that does dramatic, obscene things to a body. The kind of virus that terrifies mankind—one that transfers easily and quickly from person to person."
"That kind of virus would be eradicated quickly," Matthew said. "At the very least it would be managed quickly because the government couldn't afford to let it get out of control. Smallpox, rotavirus, even rabies for that matter. All but eradicated and where it's not, watched—"
Gavin leaned forward. "But what if this virus is released to a small percentage of the population? Perhaps a portion of our people that are looked upon with distaste? Let's say that these people are so trivial to most of society that the virus is allowed to grow very quickly and with little or no regard because a lot of the rest of mankind think that maybe these folks deserve what's come to them. Maybe, even, we start circulating rumors over how this virus got started. We make those rumors nasty: bestiality, say. Drug use. Homosexuality. Anything, really, that gives the impression that those infected are miscreants that have taken part in immoral, sinful acts that are frowned on by church and country."
A familiar concept, Matthew thought. Way too familiar for a gay man.
"And what if we allow officials in high places to lie and tell their people that it can be managed with vitamins and a clean, healthy lifestyle. In turn, convinced, they tell their researchers that there are more important things to be working on—cancer, Alzheimer's, leukemia—and their very denial is what lets this virus grow to the point of disaster because at first, nobody cares. People will start their own rumors... that the virus can be cured with interactions with a virgin. That the waters of mystical pools will wash it away. But we don't actually do anything about it. It's not until this virus starts to leak into the mainstream that everybody starts to understand just how awful it is. Suddenly we start seeing it in patients who've undergone blood transfusions. Babies are born with it. Good, clean, normal folks who've had the unfortunate accident of coming across something or someone that was infected themselves start showing up infected. Now, and only now, when the problem is dire and the people are dying do we start to care." He lifted an eyebrow. "Go ahead, Matthew. Tell me I'm nuts. Tell me it could never happen."