by S. K. Een
parentals that their son was at a gay vampire club,” he says with all reasonableness. “Fuck, if I heard him right, he knew more about the fucking dare than I did! And Johanna was talking to Mum on the phone, right? And fucking Swanston’s going to be telling everyone from here to Point Marcus that I’m an actual fucking fag now. It’s come out or go home at this point, whatever it is I—”
Steve stops, then, but the missing word is so loud Abe could have heard it if he screamed it across the room.
His use of the slur makes Abe wince: there’s too much bitterness in it. “I work with him, you know—we actually went to Feeders together, before he ditched me for Ares. Not dating, but so we’re not—we’re not going to a club alone.” Swanston is an arsehole, yes, but everybody knows that and nobody takes him seriously, so what does it matter what he says? Except it’s never that easy, Abe knows, and clearly Swanston hurt Steve enough for that word to stick. “He runs reception. Everyone knows he’s gay. Me too, for that matter.” He pauses, for it all seems obvious to Abe, but then he speaks anyway: “I, well, I didn’t get the impression that Greg cares who it is you’re kissing, as long as it’s not, uh, lethal. Those two girls, Johanna and the zombie, were cheering you on, I think. Your parents seemed delighted that I am—well, normal, they said. Four times. Do your friends here care?”
Steve doesn’t say anything for a moment. He just closes the book and slides it underneath the paper bag on the bedside table before he bursts into shaking, cackling laughter. “Normal! Oh, fuck, they did? Man!”
Abe nods. “They’re not thinking—well, that I met you in my drag queen persona or something?”
“Please fucking tell me you have a drag queen persona?” Steve sighs when Abe gulps and jerks his head: no, he most certainly does not! “Damn. Maybe I should have a drag queen persona. I’d be totally hot as a queen.” He yawns. “I told Mum and Chichi, in the ED last night, that I was probably bi or pan or something like that, and they could take me at my word or I could tell them in explicit detail how I kissed a boy and really fucking liked it. Johanna told Chichi that doesn’t mean the uncontrollable urge to fuck kitchenware. He was gaping for a bit until Mum elbowed him in the ribs. She really wasn’t surprised, do you know?”
They’re the words he’s been so desperately wanting to hear—and the words that don’t have quite the same meaning ever since Abe found Steve, slumped on the footpath, struggling to breathe.
“It was pretty damn obvious,” Abe says.
Steve grins. “And the parentals think you’re normal. That’s the best thing they’ve ever said about one of my dates.”
The very idea—that a gay vampire who is the possible trigger of serious anaphylaxis-causing allergies is in any way normal—has Abe leaning forwards, bursting into laughter. “Normal! If I’m normal...” He sits up and shakes his head, glancing around at a room that is some kind of unofficial homage to, or at least a storage space of, extreme sports equipment. “Well, maybe. This abseiling and rock climbing. I’ve never done anything like that. I hate heights. I’m scared I’ll fall off a horse. As for base jumping? No fucking way.” He reaches over and picks up one of the metal clips from the bedside table, something that looks like an oval-shaped dog clip without the sliding part; he fiddles with a round clasp that seems to hold the whole thing shut but can’t get it to work. “I don’t even know what this is or what it does.”
“It’s a carabiner. You use it to connect a harness to your ropes, among other things. I haven’t actually been base jumping yet, although I still want to. And, just for the record, I used to be fuck scared of heights and open spaces, but therapy can be effective.” Steve rests his eyes on Abe’s face in an oddly serious expression before he breaks into a smile. “You’re off work tomorrow, right—weekend and all? There’s this place a couple of clicks south-east of Darrensford where there’s an easy, short cliff-face. It’s great for first-time abseiling. Want to go? I mean, if you’re that scared you can’t, that’s fine, but if you want to try it—we can. We’ll get up early so you’re not out at noon or anything—how photosensitive are you?”
What is it about Steve that leaves him unable to do anything but stare? And why is that not such a bad thing?
He shouldn’t, shouldn’t say yes.
“You ... you want to go abseiling? Tomorrow? You nearly died last night...!”
Steve shrugs. “Okay, so tomorrow you come around and we play Trivial Pursuit. What about next Saturday?”
He doesn’t have anything planned for Saturday. Abe seldom does, besides sitting at the bar at Feeders and striking out with the tourists. There’s no reason in the world not to go, when viewed rationally. It’s not as though there is any risk of fatal injury to Abe; hell, he’d probably hurt himself worse in the run down the street last night than he would while carefully, secured with ropes and harnesses, scaling a cliff-face. He’s not so photosensitive that he can’t go out in daylight, as long as he brings enough blood to heal the sunburn. The only thing holding him back is fear, of course: fear of heights, fear of injury, fear of getting close to Steve, fear of hurting Steve, fear of the monstrous, blood-lustful side Abe would rather keep buried.
How can he be around Steve and not hurt him?
He must have paused for far too long, because Steve shakes his head and hits Abe with his sharp, piercing, lively brown eyes. “You amaze me.” The oddest thing about the statement is that his words are completely devoid of sarcasm. “I’m gasping like a fish on the footpath—I don’t know what the fuck is happening, seriously. But you know what to do, you know what to tell the person that answers an emergency call even though it’s fucking Aggie Skipton—and if I hadn’t been gasping I’d have been laughing so fucking hard, man—you even know enough to look at my symptoms and make a few accurate guesses on what’s going on. You and Johanna helped me, and that’s huge, and you didn’t bat an eyelid throughout any of it—well, much. Something small like backwards-walking down a cliff face? How can you not believe that you can do anything?”
Abe wonders if he’s ever heard anyone say anything quite like those words.
He’s scared of climbing cliffs, true, but he doesn’t want to see the disappointment in Steve’s eyes when Abe confesses the real reason for his hesitation.
He just has to not kiss Steve. He can do that, surely?
“I ... um.” He would have blushed, if he could. “How does she even work there? Anyway, I just watch a lot of, well, real life medical TV. Like What’s Good For You. RPA. I don’t know what it is, that stuff just became interesting, after I died.”
Steve sits up, and Abe gets to watch the transition from a bright, startled smirk to shoulder-shaking laughter. He laughs, even his hair shaking with the force of it, but Abe doesn’t feel like he’s being mocked, and that too feels strange, so that even while it takes a long time for Steve to stop laughing, he doesn’t mind: he just gives Steve a tenuous grin.
“They sometimes show the ‘what you should do in said emergency’ bits. Aren’t you glad I have this addiction to bad TV?”
Of course, if Abe had warned him, none of this would even matter…
“Sorry.” Steve gasps and bites down on his lower lip as if he can stop laughing through sheer force of will. “It’s just ... Mike Johnson, my neighbour? He’s a zombie, and he and his missus are fascinated by shows featuring children. Don’t get me wrong, not in any sick way, but just in an ‘Oh, they’re so young and alive, isn’t that beautiful?’ sort of way.” He smirks and slumps back against his pillow. “They’re awesome babysitters, once the kids get used to Mike doing weird-arse tricks with his dismembered arm. But now I’m wondering if I’m going to be stuck watching ACA or something after I’m dead ... oh, I fucking hope not. I’d rather someone dismember and burn me.” He swallows and hits Abe with a stare of his own. “But yes, mate, I’m grateful!”
Just how is he so cool with everything? He should have been scared, but every time Abe turns around Steve seems to be reacting in ways that are opposite to what any sane
person should expect. He should have been the vampire: Steve would have done something with it, something wild and crazy. Base jumping. Climbing to the caldera of an active volcano. Parachuting from space. Abe just goes to work, sits at home, watches TV, works his way through the Western literary canon, looks after his cat and, sometimes, tries to find a boyfriend—meanwhile Steve has no guarantee he will ever get those extended years in which to live without fearing death, has a body he can and does injure, and goes about dating trapeze artists and climbing cliff faces.
Can he just be Steve’s friend, despite the pain that might bring?
Or will he be another Great-Aunty Lizzie, sitting back at home and doing nothing but control her family, so afraid of the world he invents lists and rules to keep from being hurt by it—something, quite clearly, Steve would never do?
What would it be like to be around him?
What would it like to be a breather who lives?
“All right,” Abe says with a nod, even as he thinks he can almost hear Great-Aunty Lizzie shrieking, even as he can almost see himself lean over and drive his fangs into Steve’s tracksuit-clad thigh. “I’ll go. Uh. Trivial Pursuit? That’s ... I mean, it’s not very ... um.” He swallows, trying to thrust the image out of