InsaneJournal

Current mood:

sad

Damned vampires. I've been up most of the night, thinking about what the little bastard had said. It seems obvious to me that someone so well-versed in self-deceit would have a talent for decieving others. Twist a truth here, splash a doubt there, and voila! A mind-fuck. Maybe it's a talent one must learn in order to survive being what it is, a kind of coping mechanism for a breed that must disguise its own ugliness. Maybe it's an inherent personality trait that's a prerequisite for becoming such a thing. Or maybe it's just a hobby.

According to the Farmer's Almanac, tonight is the last night of the new moon. It's already been a week of significant changes and if I let myself, I would become paralyzed with dread to think what will happen as the moon is growing. Regardless of what happens, I have only twelve nights left to do something about it. I can't afford to waste time panicking. I also can't afford to dismiss everything the little corpse has said, especially if there is any grain of truth in it.

But I still lay in my bed for most of the night, hopelessly awake, feeling cold and numb. Afraid. It was a long night, which might not excuse what I did the next morning, but may explain some of it, at least.



I don't have much of a backyard, and most of it is taken up with the atrium I'd had built. I had to knock out half of the back wall of the kitchen in order to open it up, and the atrium itself is smaller than a deck but a bit larger than a breakfast nook. It's full of windows and highly-polished wood and greenery, and I put in a tiny granite-topped breakfast table because nothing else would fit. The seats aren't quite as comfortable as my armchair in the living room, but the atrium is still my favorite place in the house. It's always a soothing, beautiful place on any given morning, and especially when brooding over hazelnut Gevalia while listening to the rain come down and watching Ben putter around my kitchen attempting to make waffles.

I had to admit, my kitchen made an artful frame for Ben's lithe, ivory prettiness. His hair was tied back, his feet were bare, and the rest of him was clothed in pale linen. The varnished wood and brick-colored walls suited him well. Actually, most of my house suits him well. He looks good here. He feels good here. As though he'd been meant to belong here, from the moment I'd chosen the house, the paint chips, and the swatches.

It did all seem to point to Ben.

I could immediately bring to mind all the reasons why I shouldn't suspect him. Ben's not the only new person I've met recently; he's not even the only new person I've had sex with in the last half-month. He's just the only one who showed up at the hospital the day after the attack. He hasn't shown any obvious signs of being a monster: he's never displayed an uncommon strength, completely lacks that inner smugness of a person with a secret, nor has he displayed the behavior of a predator. He likes his steak rare, but so do many people. The hair on his body is so fine and sparse that it's practically non-existent; shouldn't a monster be... hairier? His most annoying habit is turning his face away whenever I make a strong statement that runs counter to his own will.

...No. It's not as simple as turning his face away, is it? It's baring his throat. Just like his way of stretching out on my bed isn't a display of his body, it's showing his belly, and licking my mouth isn't really a kiss. It's something Brenda might do, if I let her. Speaking of Brenda - I'm her master, she's been with me since before she was fully weaned, everything she knows and understands has come from me. Of course she got over her fear of me, accepted me. But this complete stranger, when she's never been afraid of strangers before? What had he done to make her accept him?

Well, fuck.

Just watching him, the flash of a grin on his face in response to some joke from the radio, the off-tune humming, the smudge of flour on his cheek, the small smiling glances in my direction... How could someone so fine and graceful and quiet and sweet-natured be... what I suspected him of being? How could the creature that tried to tear my throat out one night turn around and be like this on this rainy Saturday morning? How could every word, every glance, every smile, turn out to be such a... lie?

Feeling the cold and numbness tighten around me, I said softly, "I can smell you, you know."

And there it was. It was just the tiniest smirk, the barest twitch of his mouth, but there was the smugness I'd missed seeing before. Then he lifted his face and laughed, his dark eyes soft and mysterious in the rainy-morning light. "Are you telling me I need a shower?"

"I'm telling you that I've figured it out already."

He tilted his head. It was innocent and puzzled and it felt like a knife in my gut. "Figured it out?" he echoed. He glanced down at his hands, around the little island where he was mixing batter. "How many waffles you want, you mean?" he tried.

"Figured out why you showed up at the hospital even after it was pretty obvious that I was done with you."

The flash of hurt on his face couldn't have been feigned. It was too raw, too obvious. He wiped his hands on a towel, leaned back against the counter, crossed his arms defensively. I took another sip of my coffee, staring at him steadily over the rim, and he twitched a bit. He hated being stared at. So did Brenda; they even reacted the same way. He jumped back up, not looking at me, reaching for a wet rag and beginning to tidy up.

"When were you going to tell me?" I asked. "Would you have told me? Or would you have called it a coincidence?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," he replied. His voice was very small, very uncertain.

So I threw my coffee cup at his head.

A bit more drastic than my usual wont, but I was extremely angry by now. He ducked. Faster than thought, faster than he possibly could have moved if he'd really been what he was pretending to be. He threw himself to the side before either the hot liquid or the ceramic shards could touch him, slamming back against the refrigerater and staring at me with wide, frightened eyes, his mouth slack with surprise. "Julian!" he protested, still in that uncertain voice, and I stalked over to him, threatening him with my size and my anger. His eyes were so wide that I could see the whites around the rich chocolate-brown of his eyes. "Please, don't," he whispered.

"Don't lie to me anymore," I growled. Literally - it was a growl, the full-throated kind of sound I'd made earlier this week.

His head automatically turned to the side; I caught a good grip on his chin, forcing him back around to face me. "I don't want your throat," I told him. "I want the truth. Why me? What the hell gave you the right to do this to me?"

He was cringing, every line of his body displaying fear and submission, his eyes welling with unshed tears. Perhaps, if and when the monster in me had settled, laid its behavior patterns over my own, one day I'd accept that kind of submission and it would allay my anger. Today, though, I was still a man. His little hands came up, trembling, trying to stroke my arms, my chest. "Please," he begged, "please, Julian, don't do this. I lo-"

I hauled him off his feet and slammed him back into the refrigerator again. It forced the air out of his lungs in a little grunt, and shook the tears loose. "If you even try to say that one more time, I promise you I'll break your fucking jaw," I threatened. "And I'll do it anyway, if you don't start talking." He squeaked, his eyes squeezing shut as I tightened my grip in warning, and released him. He slid down to a crumpled heap at my feet, sobbing freely.

"Now," I reminded him.

"I n-n-needed you," he wept, his hand creeping up to cover the side of his face where my fingertips had dug in. He pulled himself up a little, huddling against the door of the refrigerator as though trying to crawl inside it. "I-I-I'm s-sorry! I wouldn't have d-done this if I hadn't needed you!"

"Need me? What the fuck could you need me for?" I shouted. "Money? A place to live? You had to ruin my life for that?"

"N-no!" He looked up at me, peering through the bangs of his hair, his eyes wide and open and as innocently pleading as a babe's. "We... w-we need an alpha," he said. "Someone strong, to look after us. To protect us! I can't do it, I'm not strong enough. I had to find someone - and you were perfect. You were everything we needed. Everything I wanted."

Everything. My suspicions about the cause of my recent symptoms, the truth about my future, Ben's utter betrayal... all of it confirmed in one sobbing confession. That fucking little corpse in California had been right all along - this was real, all of it. Looking at him, watching him swipe away the tears and trying to pull himself together, like some shattered prince whose grace is so inbred that even tears and snot and bruises can't ruin it...

Everything I wanted.

"Get out of my house," I murmured.

"Julian!" The protest, again.

"Shut up! Get your shit and get out. I don't care about your reasons, and I don't give a damn about what you need."

"But -"

"You have five seconds to get off that floor and start walking."

"You need me! I'm the only one who knows what's going to happen to you! Even if you don't want me -"

"Four."

"Julian, stop! Think -"

"Don't think I won't beat the shit out of you, boy. Three."

He sobbed out a breath, looking about as tragic and lovely and despairing as a poem. "Julian, I know you don't believe me right now, but I do lo-"

I hadn't realized I could snarl like that, or that anyone, superhuman or not, could move that fast.

I cleaned up the coffee and the remnants of the mug, put away the butter and the eggs, cleared away the detritus of the forgotten waffles, turned off the radio. For a long time, I sat in my favorite chair in my favorite room, listening to the silence. The rain stopped, the sun came out. The rest of the day was as soft and gorgeous as one could possibly hope for, the kind of day that should have been spent... happily.

Everything I wanted.

And wasn't that just one of the many things that were fucked up about all of this? After the false start, the bad first impressions and the mistakes and feeling as though I'd lucked out, been given a second chance, starting to think that he was everything I never even realized I thought was beautiful... A liar and a deceiver. Add user to the list.

And add Monster to the list of traits to describe me. I didn't need the hair, the teeth, and the claws. All I had to do was be the man I already was.