After the Calling

<<<< Betray All: Part IV

 

Jericho Jr. was all Ryan from brow to chin, on the shorter side, big eyed, and ridiculously freckled, but these were observations that Llewell refused to accept he had made. If he admitted to himself that he was studying the teen, surreptitiously as he might have been, were he studying, he’d have to admit that Jericho looked nothing like his father. He’d have to admit that he was looking for the senior Jericho in the teen’s face.

Jericho Jr., however, was having no such internal denials, and was staring at Llewell as one might a mental patient. Or a mountain lion.

“I have a room in the back,” Llewell said, almost jumping himself when Jericho started at the sound of his voice. He realized he hadn’t spoken a word since Ryan had left the kid, without much fanfare or sendoff, at the door of his apartment building. He pretended he didn’t notice Jericho’s twitch. “Or there is space upstairs, a dormer, if you want more privacy.”

“I’ll take upstairs,” Jericho replied stiffly. His stare did not shift, and Llewell was sure he had not blinked in the last five minutes.

Llewell clenched his jaw. He was not a man who appreciated eye contact. Not so much the gaze on him, but the effort to return it. Looking at someone, anyone, in any meaningful manner, for him, was not simple. It became entirely about the details. The color of their eyes, their hair, how it fell, if their face was symmetrical, pupils dilated, eyebrows arched, if their lips were full, if their teeth were crooked, the number of freckles, the number of pimples, how their head was tilted, if the leaned toward him while they spoke, what they were wearing, if it was appropriate, if they filed their nails, if they noticed him looking. The details, insignificant and useless, would entrap him, and he’d have to fight himself to concentrate, and more often lately, fight his aura not to react. Not to mistake his scrutiny for interest and force upon him futures that he’d always prefer not to see.

It wasn’t a new development in him, his fixation on physical specifics. With those that he was intimate, he always needed to see and know their features, their form, and attempt to understand what it was about their body that made it destined to meet his. With those that he cared for, the most minor change could set into motion long sessions of superficial investigation, sessions that only he was ever aware of and could never justify. With those who he had not seen in years… Ryan… every difference, every unfamiliar wrinkle battled furiously with his memories, stubborn and loyal to their origins.

Yes, this habit of overanalysis had always been ripe in him. But the inconvenient reactions of his aura, this was a new development.

Ryan had almost set him off. Even as he insulted her, hardly even paying attention to what he was saying, mostly consumed with the age in her face, how different she was, the guilt beneath her expressions, his aura was heaving with the burden of a vision behind it, trying to force its way through. Had Ryan not stood up for herself and cut his influence in half, wielding the situation far less tyrannically than he had, he would have found himself immersed in the possibilities of her future. As much as that present moment had hurt him, involving himself in Ryan’s future would have been torture. He was almost glad that she had taken on the burden of a vision in his stead. Almost.

“You lack resilience,” one therapist had told him. “You have to strengthen your ability to cope with change, or your emotions will continue to teeter out of your control.”

“I’m very in control of my emotions,” Llewell had replied, stone-faced, finding the man’s male pattern balding to be particularly fascinating.

“Well. You’re very in control of that bunker you seal them in. But you wouldn’t have to keep them under lock and key if you were truly in control.” The therapist had smiled at him ruefully. “And eventually, it’s going to come through somewhere.”

And where else would it come through if not his aura? Llewell had left that therapist’s office and never came back, as he had done a dozen times prior, unable to disclose the inadequacies of his psyche to a non-psychic, and probably not really wanting to make progress.

“I don’t like being stared at,” Llewell said, abruptly returning Jericho’s stare. He bore down on him through his eyes with all the energy behind his aura, and passed along as much discomfort as he could to get the teen’s gaze off him. He used this tactic often. Those easily intimidated by it rarely deigned to look at Llewell directly again, and therefore left him free to avoid looking at them. Although, there were some who were stubborn and secure enough in themselves to know that it was all farce, and did not look away. Luckily, Jericho was not one of them.

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

Llewell nodded, and tried to find something to show for the ferocity behind his eyes, sending cursory attention to Jericho’s aura. “Your aura is… a lot like mine,” he said uneasily, somewhat surprised to find truth in the statement.

It didn’t seem that Jericho would have had a reply, but even if he had, his answer would have been interrupted by the vodka-smelling hurricane of limbs and profanity that had come swirling through the door.

“The motherfucking cunt-suckers shaft me every fucking night I swear to all fucking Shiva,” the hurricane said, rushing by them.

Llewell attempted an introduction. “Shane, this is –”

“Not something I give a half fucked piece of shit about.”

The hurricane reeled into the kitchen, flinging random articles of clothing in even more random directions, before snatching a teapot off the counter, impatiently filling it with water, and slamming it on the stove.

“How is it that there is never any fucking vodka in this place? How is that?!” the hurricane raged, yanking open the fridge. “Oh, but there’s fucking lite beer.”

The Miller Lite was the last offense, and the hurricane went charging into the master bedroom, pointedly slamming the door, at least fifty percent less dressed than he had been when he first entered the apartment.

The stillness that followed was near unbearable and Llewell rushed to fill it. “That’s… Shane,” he said, wishing that was enough of an explanation. “He bartends.”

“He’s your roommate or something?” Jericho asked.

“Boyfriend.”

The eyes came up for a brief moment, some grand revelation having been made, but, clearly not willing to risk another harsh staring match, they fell again.

Llewell made the decision then to ignore everything the kid did outside of using his aura. “You can head upstairs if you want. Shane will be easier to talk to later. Maybe.”

Jericho nodded gratefully and clutched the small bag he had come with.

Llewell watched him climb up the stairs and then passed into the kitchen, restoring the trail of destruction that Shane had left in his wake. He turned off the teapot that was just shy of a whistle and filled a mug before dropping a chamomile teabag into it. Careful to keep his knuckles from burning on the brim of the mug, he made his way into his bedroom.

 

“Don’t,” Shane said from a sprawl across the bed.

“Don’t what?” Llewell asked, setting the mug on the nightstand and tossing the collected mass of Shane’s discarded clothing in the direction of the hamper.

“Don’t ask how my day was, because it was the same day as every other day, and none of those days are worth talking about. So I’m not going to talk about my shit day, or how I hate the job that I’m too lazy to get out of. It is the job that I accept for myself, and I’m not going to complain about it. I’m just going to lay in it. This bed that I’ve made.”

Llewell was pretty sure that Shane had never made a bed in his life, metaphorical or otherwise. “Okay,” he said.

Shane propped up on his elbows. “I’m not complaining, Llewell, and I’m not going to talk about it, even though it really is shit. Common courtesy is non-existent. It is paper mache in its veracity. It’s like people live to walk into a restaurant and be prissy fucking bitches! Go and make you own pina colada, dick shit! No sir, I’m sorry, but a kiss on the ass does not come with your thirty fucking dollar meal. And the servers, God save them from getting fucking stabbed in the fucking throat, they shaft me every fucking night!” He pointed his finger at Llewell. “I’m not fucking complaining.”

Llewell shook his head mildly.

Shane kicked his legs over the edge of the bed and sat upright. “And you, how’d your day go?”

“Um.” Llewell found a loose thread in the comforter to examine. “The kid, he’s a cog. He’ll be staying with us.”

“Yeah, I figured. And you?” Shane tapped his leg. “Lew, look at me.”

Llewell closed his eyes in short-lived dissension before letting them travel to Shane’s face.

“What was your day like?” Shane asked softly. He was one of the few who refused to look away, eyes always probing, always demanding what they were looking for.

Llewell could see a slight flush in his cheeks, likely from a couple of shots at the bar before leaving work. His hair was mussed from haphazardly flopping on the bed. His eyes, deep as they were at that moment, looked tired. And a shed lash stood undisturbed at the corner of his eye. Llewell couldn’t get away from that lash. He wanted to touch it, brush it away, but if he did, he’d vision. His aura promised him that much.

“It could have been better,” he said, tearing himself away and escaping into the bathroom.

He didn’t bother closing the door behind him. He was planting the seeds of an argument, unintentionally as it were, and did not need pre-cognition to sense it growing. Closing a door would only water its roots.

He leaned over the sink and threw an ungainly hand over his eyes, dragging his glasses off of his face while keeping the mirror out of his line of sight. The captivation that held him in the faces of others did not carry over to his own reflection. There was something about his face that he found relentlessly irksome, something that he couldn’t pinpoint. It was the simultaneous effort to isolate it and distract himself from it, this unidentifiable discrepancy among the landmarks of his face, that led him to stage experiments with his features, bleaching his hair and super-sizing his glasses, among other things. But attempting to mask something that he could not detect in the first place was an exercise in futility. It simply made him less willing to look at himself, even to examine the damage he was inflicting upon his looks. Were it not for Shane, there wouldn’t be any mirrors in the apartment, but so practiced had Llewell become of not looking himself in the eye that even a house of mirrors would find him faceless.

Llewell could hear Shane push himself off the bed, and make, with suspiciously slow padding of feet across the bedroom carpet, a direct line to his side. He kept his eyes in the sink while two strong hands materialized to massage his lower back.

“I’d love to tell you my thoughts on how I can improve your day,” Shane said with lips against the back of his neck.

Llewell’s brain brought its defensive weaponry online and ordered a full range assault of heavy missile mental flagellation and short pulse artillery psychoanalytics. Target: itself. A bet was placed against the thousands of dollars spent on head shrinkage.

This was a test of Llewell’s resilience. He eyed the pill bottles sitting unassumingly on the counter beside the sink. The various suppressing, calming, sedating prescription medications, the anti-anxieties, the sleep regulators, the panic reducers. He could cheat on this test, but the proctor was standing right next to him, likely just as aware of the pill bottles as he was. Cheating was frowned upon. Llewell would have to wing it.

“Please don’t flirt with me right now.” Test failed.

Shane circled around him and leaned against the countertop, smirking. He deepened his voice and began a mock narration. “You are traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but where a man will tell his lover not to flirt with him. You’ve just crossed over into –,” he paused for dramatic effect. – the Twilight Zone.”

Llewell stared at him blankly. He never knew how to properly react to Shane’s humor. It was one of the traits that he so loved in him, his guileless wit, his ability to pull something funny out of the most morbid situations. But Llewell, despite be genuinely entertained on most occasions, could never muster a laugh, or even an encouraging smile. It wouldn’t be until later, when he was alone, that he’d relive the moment in his head and grin to himself.

“This?” Shane drew a circle with his index finger around Llewell’s impassive expression. “Annoying.”

Llewell dropped his eyes and edged around Shane out of the bathroom, not missing the subtle movement of leg and torso employed to make brushing against his groin completely unavoidable.

“You know, I’m used to it,” Shane said, moseying into the bedroom behind him. “You. Your menstrual cycle.”

Llewell shot a quick glance in his direction, before attempting to locate something banal to distract himself with. He settled on changing the bed sheets.

“You’ll be all stiff and detached for days. And I’ll have to chip away at you and drill holes in your armor until I break through. And when I do, ugh, you’re beautiful,” Shane mused as he walked across the room, watching Llewell begin to pull apart the bedding. “And then you’ll let me in, and we’ll make love like we’ve been apart for years. And I’ll feel like the world had begun and ended right there in your arms.”

Llewell forced his concentration away from the duvet cover and stood upright, trying to bring his gaze up to Shane’s. He wanted so badly not to feel uncomfortable with Shane’s words. He knew that he should be able to hear this from his partner and not want to climb out of the window, but the part of his brain telling him what he should be feeling wasn’t doing anything to change how he was actually feeling.

Shane, aware of his discomfort, he always was, rolled his eyes. “And then you’ll turn back into a tight ass, and I’ll have to start from the beginning. But, like I said, I’m used to it. I expect it. I can deal with that. In fact, if we were at that point in the cycle where you were torturous to be around, I wouldn’t give a shit that you are acting how you’re acting now. Par for course, you know,” Shane said. “But I was this close,” he scrunched his face and pinched his index finger and thumb together. “Thiiiiissss fucking close to getting you warm and willing to love me.”

“I’m always willing to – I – I do! …love you. I –”

“Willing to fuck me,” Shane revised.

Llewell gave up his battle to make eye contact then. He never won it with Shane anyway. “That’s not the same as love,” he mumbled. It sounded like something one of his many therapists had said to him.

“Nope. But it sure is great when they work together,” Shane said, not missing a beat. “You know what, that’s not even the point I’m trying to make here. I don’t care about that. I mean, I care. I’m 29 and I have the sex life of a 67-year-old. But I’m okay with that. And your demons? Who never take the backseat, and are around so often, fucking with you head, that they’re practically family? I’m okay with them too. In fact, they’re invited to the next cook-out. I’m okay with everything.” He spread his arms. “I’m okay with you. I love you,” he said. “What I’m not okay with is coming home and finding you all locked up, and not telling me why. And with some brat, and no intention of telling me who he is –”

“I had every intention! I tried to introduce you at the do –”

“Oh please, like I give a shit who he is,” Shane interrupted, with an irritated flick of the wrist.

“You just said –”

“Telling me someone’s name is very different from telling me what’s going on, and what they’re doing in our apartment, and why their presence has made you about as responsive as a toilet seat.”

“If I told you his name…” Llewell stopped, some internal burden sapping the air from his lungs. If I told you his name you’d know everything, he wanted to say, but instead let his words fumble into silence.

“This is shit, Lew.” Shane continued, refusing to let the silence settle. “Complete shit. And I hate putting up with it. That you compel me to put up with it. That for you, I have to put up with it.”

“Then leave me,” Llewell said lowly. “You won’t have to put up with anything.”

But Shane was unimpressed. “Oh, go suck a dick,” he said, exasperated, and turned out the door into the hall. “Mine, preferably.”

Llewell was always incredibly serious, as he was with everything, when he posed the option for Shane to leave him. And he posed it often enough to warrant the implication that he did want Shane to leave him. However, it was with a deep, heady relief that he met Shane’s derisive comments or indignant glare dismissing the notion.

Even so, he didn’t push his luck and crossed the room to the doorway. “Shane,” he called into the hall, leaning heavily against doorframe.

“You’re sorry. I know. Whatever.”

Llewell sometimes envied creatures able to carry their sanctuary on their backs. To be able to the pull yourself inside the cover of safety at a moment’s notice? He imagined the iron-clad contract that he would have drawn up for any shmuck turtle that might stupidly trade lives with him. No take backs.

Crawling into a shell would have been ideal at that moment, but seeing as he did not have one, he did the next best thing and closed his bedroom door. With Shane in the living room, feeling insulted, and Jericho Lee Jr. upstairs, breathing, there was enough risk of hazardous social interaction to justify the complete disposal of the day. He was done with it, and was going to bed. For Jericho’s sake, he hoped the kid wasn’t thirsty, or didn’t have to use the bathroom, or managed to find every suitable reason to remain upstairs. For if he did trek into the lair of Shane’s fuming and find himself mistreated, Llewell could and would do nothing about it.

He slapped the light switch off and pulled off his clothes. He thought about showering, but once it became aware that the notion of sleep had been thrown into consideration among other unlikely actions, such as spontaneously growing a shell on his back, Llewell’s body made known its wicked exhaustion. He suddenly felt like he had pulled every muscle in his back, although, he hadn’t done anything more physically strenuous than climb the stairs to his apartment in the past 24 hours.

He hauled his body, growing heavier by the moment, into bed and was able to get one leg under the covers before he fell asleep.

When his eyes opened again, the clock on his nightstand told him that despite it being near dawn, he had only been asleep for 2 hours. But the drug of sleep evaporated fairly quickly, his brain snapping awake to address the pressing matter at hand. Well, at thigh actually. And pressing hard.

There was someone between his legs, doing not unpleasant things, but Llewell moved quickly to halt any more not unpleasantries.

Shane sat up, giving him a look that was more aggravated than seductive. “Don’t fuck with me,” he said with quiet severity.

Llewell held his tongue, sure that Shane would not appreciate his willingness to fully comply with that order on a literal basis. There was a brief stalemate, a moment of communication entirely through expression, Llewell’s suppliant, Shane’s unconvinced, before Llewell was returned firmly to his back and Shane was upon him.

Although Llewell’s actions would never defend him, he did appreciate this. Want it, even. But there were mitigating factors that he couldn’t ignore, even if Shane could. When he had the wherewithal to maintain his self-control, he did. But he always kept Shane’s feelings in mind. He’d never reject him, outright. It’d be a lie, anyway, for the desire was always there. But in order to distract himself from it, and to effectively thwart or reverse all progress made toward intimacy, Llewell had managed to master the art of anti-seduction.

In no way would he aggress. He’d go limp, completely malleable, completely useless. He’d allow his hands to be placed erogenously before casually sliding them to more neutral zones of the body, from nipple to elbow, groin to clavicle. Kisses brought to him with passion and need were returned wilted and tepid. No direct attention was paid to the rigid heat grinding steadily against him, and his own erection, trained well and aided by mental images of dead moths and road kill, remained just as halfhearted as the rest of him. The course was plotted and the steps were taken until, finally, frustration met threshold.

“Fuck it,” Shane spat, snatching himself from the loose embrace that he had instigated. He rolled out of bed and stalked off toward the bathroom.

Lewell stared up at the ceiling in the darkness, these moments having become something of a miserable routine. There were a few minutes of bitter silence, followed by a sharp grunt and the flush of a toilet. The sink faucet turned on briefly, a quick splashing, and not long after, the mattress was sinking under the body of an upset lover. Experience told Llewell that there would be a back to him for the rest of the night.

The familiar guilt pangs crawled over him and demolished the remaining strain in his pelvis. He couldn’t stand that he had to do this to Shane. That this is was one of the fundamentals of their relationship. In the beginning, when it became clear what direction they were headed, Llewell had tried quite earnestly to get Shane to rationalize. The package would come fucked up, unwrapped, with all the insides broken. And fuck if that package was not trying to pull itself together, but things wouldn’t be normal. Did Shane really want this?

Shane had brushed aside all doubt, seeing and understanding something that Llewell couldn’t fathom. This is what he had chosen for himself. Laying in it. The bed had been made.

And it was in this bed that a grand set of intimacy issues had sprung forth. Llewell had always had problems in understanding the physical aspects of love. He had been forcefully introduced to it, and far too early. He used it inappropriately throughout his adolescence, and for a long time could not correctly categorize it among the multitude of social connections that one had to make in life. A broken heart at an early age and a slew of psychologists managed to inform him of its many written and unwritten rules, saving him from leaping into an even more destructive adulthood, but nothing that he could hear from a doctoral graduate, or get out of a pill bottle seemed to be able to fix a recurring issue that he had with normal sex. Well, at least what he called normal sex. The in, the out, the over. With these universal means of getting off, he simply could not.

In fact, his and Shane’s sex life might have been completely satisfactory to anyone’s standards, including Shane’s, if Shane was not so pressed about Llewell getting off. Llewell had become horrified with the things he had to do to Shane in order to orgasm. Acts of depravity he tried to forget even as he was engaging in them. No less horrifying was Shane’s willing participation, at times even asking for it.

It was the source of Llewell’s complex. The desire was there, and he would participate in the simple things, the gentle things, the normal things, the very pleasurable things that fostered love and deep connection and all those other things that sex guru’s wrote about in books published in the 1970s. Llewell would engage in these things, happily, until Shane would come, and then, with care not to completely destroy the mood, he’d try to escape and find release on his own, elsewhere. But Shane would never allow it, feeling personally responsible for the outcome of Llewell’s dick, and personally offended if Llewell suggested otherwise. It became a competition of will, a crusade over Llewell’s pleasure, and to date, Llewell had never won.

Shane had a way about him, demanding and intoxicating. He would become increasingly persistent, so gotdam needy, so fucking arousing that nothing could be done, no exception made, until Llewell was inside him, merciless, and forcing his face into the pillow. Smacking him or spitting on him. Shoving his entire length down Shane’s throat and not caring if he gagged or couldn’t breathe. Pulling his hair or biting him. Choking him. He’d find the most appalling names to call him, the most degrading insults. And the more pain and discomfort he caused, the harder he came.

Afterward, while he lay stiff with mortification, Shane would crawl beside him and swaddle him in kisses. Wrap his arms around him and somehow romanticize what they’d done. Call it love making. It always took days for Llewell to recover enough to even talk to Shane. Weeks to accept the most menial affections. Months to break down again and release his inner perversions.

And this was what Shane was now shunning him over? His attempt to preserve normalcy? His refusal to release his worst?

He closed his eyes and attempted to return to sleep. He hated the contemplation that followed every failed relation between himself and his partner. He remembered the beginning, that initial, immediate bond between them. It had been lovely, addicting, but the high slowly wore itself out, and the true light began to shine through. Llewell’s inability to connect with anything, other people, his emotions, his own damn penis, it was eventually going to end them. But he was trying. At least he thought he was.

“His name is Jericho Lee,” Llewell spoke unexpectedly into the darkness.

There was a split in the tense air, the body beside him making a near visible choice to remain unengaged. But Shane’s voice betrayed it. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The kid.” Llewell could feel a pressure building in his throat. Behind his eyes. “He’s Jericho Lee’s son.”

 

“Shut the fuck up,” Shane said with whispered incredulity. He turned over to face Llewell in a change of heart. “Serious? Like junior?”

Llewell gave a slight nod.

“Shut. The fuck. Up.” Shane repeated, gaping. “Serious?” But then he shook his head. “When the hell are you not serious. I’m sorry, Lew. If you had told me –”

“His name? Like I tried to?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Shane said, this time without sarcasm. “You could have told me to shove it and be still, and I would have. At any moment, you could have told me what was happening. You always have my ear. Fucking always, no matter what is going on with me.”

“I didn’t want it to be a problem. I didn’t want your reaction. I didn’t want to talk about it. I still don’t.” Llewell was beginning to feel the burden of Shane’s gaze. He could return it. He could lean up and kiss him. He could. He didn’t. “But I know I’m pissing you off.”

“Rage.” Shane said, but the bite was gone from his tone. “Why is he here?”

“His mother brought him to me. His cognition is ruining him. He’s ruining his cognition.”

“And you had to bring him here? You couldn’t get a return on any number of favors from the twenty some odd other pre-cogs in this city?”

Llewell shook his head. “Ryan asked me.”

“Do not do this. Do not. This will go horribly.”

“Why?”

Shane glared at him. “Are you shitting me? Why? You fucking know why.”

“It’s been twenty years.”

“I couldn’t tell that from the way you’re acting.”

“How am I acting?” Llewell frowned. “I’m not acting like anything.”

“Exactly. You’re a fucking hubcap.”

Llewell took a deep breath.  Anxiety was starting to curl around his throat. “You know what, can we stop?” he asked. “I was trying to – I don’t know what I was trying to do, but I really don’t want to talk about this.”

“Of course you don’t.” Shane’s animosity returned, its coffee break apparently over. But before he could gather up his side of the covers and huff himself into an unhappy ball on the furthest edge of the bed, Llewell grabbed his arm.

“And I don’t want you to be cold to me tonight. Please.”

“That is some strange shit to hear, coming from you,” Shane said uncivilly. “A fucking icicle.”

Llewell let go of his arm. His resolve to keep Shane near him was instantly depleted. They each wanted two different kinds of warmth, and as Llewell was not prepared to fulfill Shane’s yearnings, he was in no place to announce his. But even as he freed Shane to manufacture a sizable gap on the bed between them, his partner was pushing against him, making uncompromising readjustments to Llewell’s body position to create an optimal sleeping nook. A kneading cat with claws bared.

“Telling me not to be cold. Some fucking nerve,” Shane ranted quietly, more to himself than to Llewell. “I’ll set this whole motherfucker on fire with my big toe. I’m the hottest thing alive.”

“Stop being mad at me,” Llewell said, pressing his face into Shane’s neck the second their bodies made contact. “Right now.”

“Fuck you. I’m gonna have an attitude for the rest of the millennia. It is ridiculous how pissed off I am at you.” Shane squeezed himself close and threw his arms around the body against him. “Fucking nuclear anger.” He let Llewell silence him briefly with his lips. “World ending anger.”

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Aeryn’s trail from the house into the woods was strong, and it took little effort on Chauncey’s part to locate a small clearing, mired in her smell and ruffled with signs of a recent disturbance. The remnants of multiple energy exchanges, large ones, abraded Chauncey’s auroric perception, and the scent of Mickey intermingled with that of his father, sending his fury into stratospheric levels. A slight trace of Aeryn’s blood stalked him around the glade, and he could hardly think for rage when he found a tree with signs of struggle scraped into its bark.

Even though it was his senses that allowed him to hone in on every broken twig and ill-placed odor, he begrudged them. When focused, his eyes pierced through the darkness like beacons, his ears isolated the chirps of each individual cricket, and his nose caught every harassing smell.

“Like a fucking dog,” he derided himself as he paced the clearing, angrily cursing his vampiric aura while centering all of its ability on detecting a separate scent of his father.

He did. An isolated path leading further into the woods. Chauncey did not lose stride and turned to follow it.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Twice Jax made unconvincing efforts to remove himself from Aeryn’s grip, but she had no plans to grant his release, resigning her stronghold only when his body surrendered to being cemented to hers for as long as she chose and, rolling over onto his back, he pulled her on top of him. At some point in their tryst, her neck had begun to seep blood, and Jax took her hand and pressed it to the wound.

“I’d be much obliged if you held that that there.” He added, “Please.”

Aeryn kept her hand to her neck and watched him close his eyes. Beneath her, his body was very warm, as though he was running a fever, and yet a mild vibration occasionally rippled through him.

“Are you shivering?” she asked.

“I feel cold.”

Aeryn took gauge of the temperature in the room and found it comfortable. “Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you ill?” Aeryn leaned further up his torso, noticing the red in his cheeks. For some reason she was recalling what Mickey had told Jax in the forest. To get some help for his aura.

“If being near you is an illness.”

Aeryn didn’t know what he meant, and decided she didn’t want to. Absentmindedly, she fingered the punctures in her neck, checking to see if they had regained some semblance of scabs. “What does it taste like?” she asked Jax thoughtfully.

“What does what taste like?”

“Blood.”

“It tastes like blood.”

“And what does that taste like?” she pressed.

A small knit formed in his brow. “You’ve never bitten the inside of your lip? Nursed a paper cut?”

“That’s… different.”

“How so?”

She stared at him. “Would my aura gain something from purana?”

“No.” He shook his head slightly. “But having reason to consume it does not change the taste of the source. Why would it?”

“So that bitter, iron taste… gross,” she said, letting her arm fall.

Jax smiled and, without opening his eyes, returned her hand to her neck. “What my body senses, what it wants, leaves me with few options. It’s a need.” His smile faded. “It doesn’t matter what it tastes like. When it hits you, when it hits your aura, that feeling overrules all other senses. Nothing matters.”

“So there’s no control then.”

He evaded the statement. “If it makes a difference to you, everyone has a distinct flavor, if that is what you want to call it. Some are richer.” His hand trailed up her spine and entangled itself in her hair. He gave it a soft, playful tug. “Sweeter.”

Her body welcomed his affection but her brain froze, reminded immediately of the problem at hand. The dose of common sense was unwelcome. If only the ignorance could last a moment longer. But no. This was not good. She could not lay here, naked, on the bathroom floor of someone else’s house, pillow talking with this man. What the hell was wrong with her?

Jax opened his eyes, no doubt aware of the shift in atmosphere, and looked at her with overcast expectation. But she didn’t move or speak, she couldn’t, and they remained on the floor studying each other, waiting for the break, until burning water overflowed out of the tub, the slow-running faucet finally filling it to capacity.

“Soak,” Jax told her, compassionately ending the silence and sitting up. Despite him not having said it, she knew he wanted her to rinse away the evidence of their actions. Let the scent of him flow from her body and down the drain. She didn’t hesitate.

She climbed cautiously into the bath, draining some of the water to prevent a larger mess, and let the near boiling liquid engulf her. She watched him from the corner of her eye as he sat by the tub, watching her with far less modesty, his eyes flitting to the bruise on her arm, the marks in her neck, the welts on her back.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She took two handfuls of water and splashed it into her face. “I suppose you should be,” she said quietly. Her own contrition, she didn’t mention.

“I’ve never met that side of myself before. That side of my aura.”

“Better late.”

“Better never.”

She looked at him over her finger tips. “What happened?”

“Chloe.” He chuckled sadly and touched his neck. “She was trying to prove a point.”

“Did she prove it?”

He nodded.

“What was it?”

“I’m a puranadict,” he said pensively. They both paused for a moment before the silliness of the statement sent them both into quiet giggles, but he motioned into the water at wrist. “I guess I’m the reciprocal. I have a compulsion toward your energy. Your blood.” He added, “Among other things.”

“What does that mean?”

He looked perplexed, as if he didn’t quite know himself. “My psyche… aches for yours. For you. The energy of others makes me ill. Even the energy Mickey gave me, right now, it’s causing me discomfort. I have chills. My body hurts. At the time, I felt like she was killing me.”

“Why?”

“Precisely why, I’m not sure. I’ve never been so affected. I’ve never been affected at all, purana was purana. But your energy, it does something to me. Your heart beat…” He pressed the tips of his fingers into his eyes and pressed hard against their lids. “It’s toying with my senses. Your aura is distinctive, and I think that has something to do with it.”

“You’ve told me that before,” she said. “That I was… distinctive.”

He gave a slow nod. “Your aura was shattered once. It shows. But despite the damage it sustained, it thrives, and in a way that is nothing short of incredible. But maybe that isn’t something I need to tell you. I can’t imagine the experience having been pleasant.”

Aeryn shifted uncomfortably in the tub. “I don’t remember it,” she muttered, looking down. “Not much of it anyway. My brother – ” She drew in a sharp breath.  The sudden inclination to open up to Jax was disconcerting, and she took a moment to dispense of it. “My aura is nothing to be compulsive over,” she said, recomposed.

“That’s an opinion.” Jax replied. “I don’t know much about it, but I think Chloe does. I think this has happened to her. But I doubt I’d be able to get her to explain it to me now.”

“How long have you and Chloe been married?” Aeryn asked.

“Thirty-nine years.”

“Thirty – ”Aeryn balked at the number. “And you managed to miss Chloe having some strange addiction? She certainly didn’t miss yours!”

“In our older age, we settled down a bit,” Jax explained. “I was around more. She was around more. We had a child. But in our youth – well, you can say we spent more time looking for one another as opposed to being with each other. I’m sure I’ve missed a good number of Chloe’s more significant life moments. She had plenty of opportunity to experience them without me.”

“What was the point of marrying her then?”

“I loved her,” Jax answered easily.

Aeryn looked away, feeling a pang of something that she couldn’t decipher. She ignored it and tried to get a sense of his aura, but she was met with nothing, a solid barrier of concealment where a life force should have been, and remembered that he was shielding it. She also remembered why. Guilt seized her at the thought of Chauncey and Mickey, upstairs and unaware. “Why would you come here?”

“I shouldn’t have. Not in my state, but my head wasn’t clear. I was giving in to my duress. I’m sorry.”

“You’ve said that already.”

“I’ll never say it enough.”

“So then there is no point in saying it again.”

Jax began staring at her then, peering at her in that way of his. It provoked a physical feeling in the base of Aeryn’s stomach, warning her that his eyes might bore holes into her skull and peep inside. She could almost hear the mechanisms in his head rev to full tilt.

“Stop thinking,” she told him, sinking lower into the tub, as though the water could buffer the intensity of his gaze. “God, you ruin everything when you think.”

“Only when I say what I’m thinking.”

This conversation was familiar. “Then don’t say it.”

“Do you love Tobias?” he asked, as though she had said nothing.

She closed her eyes and let her chin sink into her chest. “Why do you care?”

“I feel, at this point, it’s my obligation to care.”

“You’re still no threat to him.”

She could feel the old tub shift as he leaned against it. “Is he a threat to me?”

 She opened her eyes, and sat up sharply in the tub, immediately livid. “Why are you asking me these questions?!”

“So I can hear their answers.”

She might have smacked him. “Yes,” she said heatedly. “Tobias is very much a threat to you. Your presence in my life is barely more than a fluke.”

“I won’t bother to go into why I don’t believe you.” Her sudden anger seemed to goad him and he moved closer toward her, leaning over the rim of the tub. ”But, I think you should know that he saw us.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“In the woods, he saw us. Everything.”

Aeryn jerked, sending water splashing over the edge. “How do you know?”

“I saw him. The wind informed me of the details.”

Her chest began to hurt. If what Jax was saying was true, then surely Tobias would have said something. Stepped up in the forest. Confronted her in the house. He had never been passive with her, his concerns were always known. A blow like this would not have gone silent. “He would have said something,” she said blankly.

“Not if he has his own secrets.”

Her vision focused and her eyes returned to him.

“If he had slept with someone else,” Jax said bluntly. “Recently.”

Aeryn kept still and waited patiently for Jax’s words to sting. To hurt her somehow. To overwhelm her with the urge to grieve. To make her feel anything. But nothing happened. His words bounced off a wall of apathy that she realized was based in relief. “Well… so have I,” she answered finally, feeling her body relax once again. A weight had, insensibly, been lifted from her shoulders. She was almost glad to hear this news. Tobias had cheated on her.

“He did so without provocation.”

Aeryn scoffed at Jax’s admittance that he had provoked this affair but she shook her head. “I’m no more forgivable than he is.”

“So you’ll stay with him?”

“You’re assuming that he’ll stay with me.”

“He will.”

“You don’t know that.”

“If he does?” Jax said, shrugging. “You’ll overlook his transgressions?”

Aeryn released an inappropriately joyous laugh. She was suddenly so very entertained. “You want me to pass judgment on him for doing something that I have done also. Something that you do whenever the urge hits you. If I were you – if Tobias was you, this would be a non-issue.”

Jax smiled. “You are not me. Tobias is not me.”

“No, he isn’t. Even if I didn’t stay with him, I… I couldn’t find myself with you,” she admitted hesitantly.

“Why not?”

“Why not?” Aeryn repeated, a little offended he would ask. “Jax, you’re married. What that means to you, I have no idea but –,” she paused. “What if we were having this conversation about your wife? Or every other woman you’ve slept with. Or every other woman you will sleep with.”

“We can,” he offered quietly.

Her words caught in her throat, not that she had any sane response to him. She was no longer feeling entertained, the irrational cheerfulness having been short-lived. “No, Jax. We have to stop.” She pressed her wet hands to her face. “You have to leave now. We’ve done this for long enough.”

Jax leaned forward further, not hiding his appraisal of her.  There was a near sadistic glint of amusement in his eyes. “I can’t.”

“Jax, don’t do – ”

“I can’t leave because Tobias is coming down the hall.”

Aeryn spun around in the tub and opened her senses, realizing immediately that Jax was right. Tobias’s aura was aiming a steady trail in their direction.

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